Horatia K. F. Eden - "Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books"

Richard le Gallienne - "Pieces of Eight"

E. Phillips Oppenheim - "The Black Box"

Anonymous - "The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran"

Books of The Times: A 5th Gospel Can Be Like a 5th Wheel
An independent publisher said it was negotiating to release Herman Rosenblat’s discredited memoir, “Angel at the Fence,” as fiction.

Arts, Briefly: False Memoir May Find New Life as Fiction
The architectural historian Kenneth Frampton has updated his 1995 book with 11 additional houses.

Currents | Books: 11 More Great Homes
A personal Christmas tale posted online by the author Neale Donald Walsch turns out to belong to someone else — the writer Candy Chand, who first published it 10 years ago.

Sue Petigru Bowen - The Actress in High Life

S >> Sue Petigru Bowen >> The Actress in High Life




The level space within this outwork was now crowded with couples, the
Portuguese ladies entering fully into the spirit of the hour. Mrs.
Shortridge and Lady Mabel stood aside, with L'Isle, and had the
pleasure of witnessing a genuine _impromptu_ Spanish ball in the open
air. They were at once struck with the sudden gayety and activity of a
people habitually so grave and inert. But as one dance followed
another, the vivacity of the party increased. Many of the officers and
some of their fair friends were from Andalusia, where music and the
castinets are never heard in vain. Presently the tune was changed, and
the excited dancers slid over into the fandango and volero, danced out
to the life in so demonstrative, voluptuous and seducing a style, that
Mrs. Shortridge declared such exhibitions abominable, and that they
should be prohibited by law; while Lady Mabel shrinkingly looked on in
bewildered astonishment. She had herself danced many a time, though
not as often as she wished; but such dancing she had never dreamed of
before.

At this moment the sun set, and the bells of the churches and convents
across the water gave the signal for repeating the evening prayer to
the Virgin. In an instant the gay crowd was arrested as if by
magic. The music ceased; the dancers stood still; the women veiled
their faces with their fans; the men took off their hats; and all
breathed out or seemed to breathe a prayer to the protecting power who
had brought them to the close of another day--all but the English
officers, who, mingled with the devout dancers, stood looking like
profane fools caught without a prayer for the occasion. After a short
solemn pause, the men put on their hats, the women uncovered their
faces, the music again struck up, and the throng glided off into
gayety and revelry as before.

"I would not have lost this for any thing," Lady Mabel exclaimed; "It
is so sudden and extraordinary a transition from the wild abandonment
of revelry to absorbing devotion and back again to the revels. Without
seeing it, I could not have imagined it. I have before witnessed and,
at times, been impressed with this solemn call to the evening prayer,
misdirected though it be. But here the effect is utterly ridiculous,
to say the least."

"This may give you an insight into the Spanish character on more than
one point," said L'Isle. "As to their love of dancing, and of the
fandango in particular, it is said, though I do not vouch for it, that
the Church of Rome, scandalized that a country so renowned for the
purity of its faith, had not long ago proscribed so profane a dance,
resolved to pronounce the solemn condemnation of it. A consistory
assembled; the prosecution of the fandango was begun according to
rule, and a sentence was about to be thundered against it. But there
was a wise Spanish prelate present who knew his countrymen, and
dreaded a schism, should they be driven to choose between the fandango
and the faith. He stepped forward and objected to the criminal's being
condemned without being heard.

"The observation had weight with the assembly. He was allowed to
produce before them a _majo_ and a _maja_ of Seville, who, to the
sound of voluptuous music, displayed all the seductive graces of the
dance. The severity of the judges was not proof against the
exhibition. Their austere countenances began to relax; they rose from
their seats; their legs and arms soon found their former suppleness;
the consistory-hall was changed into a dancing-room, and the fandango
acquitted."

Both ladies laughed heartily at this story, and L'Isle went on to say;
"In spite of the exhibition before us, these people, in their serious
hours, retain all the gravity and ceremonious stateliness in language
and manner of their forefathers, in the time of Charles the Fifth and
his glooming son, when the Spaniard was the admiration and dread of
Europe.

"I have been told," said Lady Mabel, "that you may, at this day, find
many a Spaniard who might sit for the portrait of Alva himself."

"Yes," answered L'Isle, "It has been well said that the Spaniard of
the sixteenth century has vanished, but his mask remains."

Twilight was now failing them, and the party from Elvas hastened back
to the posada. The horses had been brought out, and some of the ladies
were already mounted, when Don Alonso Melendez came hastily up, having
followed them to take a ceremonious leave. His parting words with his
new friends, and especially his compliments to Lady Mabel, who did not
allow herself to remain in his debt, delayed them some time. As they
rode off, he waved his hat, and called out: "_Con todo el mondo
guerra, y paz con Inglaterra!_"

"We taught them that proverb long ago," said Cranfield, "by taking
their galleons laden with plate from the New World."

"The Spaniard has a treasury of wisdom locked up in his proverbs,"
said L'Isle. "What a pity it is he will not take some of it out to
meet the current demands on him."

They soon again crossed the bridge, and entered the _tete du
point_--but the dancers had vanished; their music was hushed; nor was
its place supplied by the song of the morning. The chorus of
"Guadiana--Guadiana," no longer arose from its banks. All was still,
dark and desolate before them.

Meanwhile, Lord Strathern, though not given to over caution, was
seized, as night drew on, with a sudden nervousness, at _Ma Belle_'s
taking a night ride across the borders of two such unsettled
countries, infested with patriotic guerilleros, who sometimes mistook
friends for foes. He entertained--in fact, cultivated--an unfavorable
opinion of his neighbors, the Spanish garrison of Badajoz. He laid at
their door every outrage perpetrated in the country around.--The party
from Elvas would afford a rich booty in purses, watches, and jewelry;
and he thought it quite possible that after some of their allies had
entertained them in Badajoz, with ostentatious hospitality, others
might waylay, rob and murder them before, or soon after they crossed
the frontier. So, he hastily ordered Major Conway to send out a patrol
of dragoons to meet them; and the Major sent off Lieut. Goring in a
hurry on this service.

Now, Goring had passed the day chafing with indignation at hearing of
the pleasant party, which he had not been asked to join; and his anger
was not soothed by being despatched to meet it, at a late hour, when
all the pleasure was over. Galloping on in this mood, with a dozen and
more dragoons, behind him, he came to the Cayo, and after taking a
look at the dark current, was about to cross, when he heard the sound
of horses' feet, and the clattering of tongues drawing near on the
other side. In the spirit of mischief, he followed the impulse of the
moment. He ordered his men to form on the edge of the water, fronting
the ford, to unbuckle their cloaks, and throw them over their helmets,
and not to move or speak a word. The men took the joke instantly. The
crescent moon, already distanced by the sun, was sinking below the
horizon; the bank of the river threw its shade over them, and they
stood below, a dark, undistinguishable mass.

Presently the party came straggling up, Dona Carlotta and her cavalier
leading them, and feeling their way down to the water.

"This cannot be the ford," said he; "the bank looks too steep on the
other side."

"What is that black object across the water?" asked Cranfield, from
behind. "Can the river have risen and the bank caved in?"

"It has too regular an outline for that," said L'Isle, who had now
come up, and was trying to peer through the darkness. "Do you not hear
the stamping of a horse across the water?"

"And a clattering sound?" said Cranfield, as a dragoon's sword struck
against a neighboring stirrup.

"Lady Mabel," said L'Isle, eagerly, (she had pressed close up beside
him,) "Pray ride back a little way, and take the ladies with you."

"I will, but what is the matter?"

"The road seems to be occupied. But go at once, and take them with
you."

"I wish it were daylight!" said she, trying to laugh off her
trepidation. "Adventures by night are more than I bargained for. Come
ladies, follow me."

"Tom," said L'Isle to his groom, without turning his head, but gazing
steadily at the dark object across the water, "Follow Lady Mabel."

"Better send the Doctor, sir," said Tom, doggedly. "He has not sword
or pistol."

"Whoever they are," said L'Isle to Cranfield, "they have posted
themselves badly for surprise or attack. Let us form here on the slope
of the bank, and if they attempt to cross, fall on them as they come
out of the water."

Officers and servants fell into line--a badly armed troop, with
infantry swords, and some without pistols. Meanwhile, L'Isle sent
Hatton's down to the edge of the river to challenge the opposite
party.

Now, Hatton's knowledge of foreign tongues was pretty much limited to
those vituperative epithets which are first and oftenest heard in
every language. He rode down to the edge of the water, and proceeded
loudly to anathamatize his opponents in Portuguese, Spanish and French
successively. Having exhausted his foreign vocabulary, he hurled at
them some well shotted English phrases--but the heretics did not heed
the damnatory clauses, even in plain English. Not a word could he get
in reply from them. L'Isle literally and figuratively in the dark,
grew impatient, and announced his intention to commence a pistol
practice on them that would draw out some demonstration. He rode down
to the water's edge, and was leveling a long pistol at the middle of
the dark mass, when some epithet of Hatton's more stinging than any he
had yet invented, proved too much for Goring's gravity. He began to
laugh, and the contagion seized every dragoon of the party. The mask
of hostility fell off, and they were instantly recognized as friends,
to the great relief of those on the other bank.

Provoked as they were at this practical joke, their position had been
too ridiculous not to be amusing. After a hearty laugh, they hastened
to bring back the ladies, who were not found close at hand, for Dona
Carlotta and her friends had been posting back to Badajoz, and Lady
Mabel had only succeeded in stopping them by the assurance that the
road was doubtless beset, both before and behind them. When the two
parties, now united, had taken their way back to Elvas, Lieutenant
Goring found an opportunity of putting himself alongside of Lady
Mabel.

She reproached him with the boyish trick he had just perpetrated. It
might so easily have had fatal consequences. Goring, himself began to
think it not so witty as he had fancied it.

"It was very provoking, though," said he, "to be left out of your
pleasant party. I hope you will consider that, Lady Mabel, and forgive
me for the little alarm I have given you."

"Not to-night," said she. "My nerves are quite too much shaken. But
if I sleep well, and feel like myself again, I may possibly forgive
you to-morrow."




CHAPTER XVI.


(_Rosalind reading a paper_.)

From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind,
Her worth being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind,
All the pictures fairest lined,
Are but black to Rosalind,
Let no face be kept in mind,
But the face of Rosalind.

_Touchstone_.--I'll rhyme you so, eight years together; dinners and
suppers, and sleeping hours excepted; it is the right butter-woman's
rank to market.

As You Like It.


Whenever L'Isle took holiday from his military duties, he was pretty
sure to take it out of his regiment, the next day. On parade, next
morning, he inspected the ranks, bent on detecting some defect in
bearing or equipment, and peered into the faces of the men, as if
hunting out the culprits in the latest breach of discipline. Men and
officers looked for a three hours' drill, to improve their wind, and
put them in condition. But, to their great comfort, he soon let them
off, and hastened back to his quarters. Arrived there, he called to
his man for his portfolio, and at once sat down to write as if he had
a world of correspondence before him. But it was plain to this man,
who had occasion to come often into the room, that his master did not
get through his work with his usual facility. He found him, not so
often writing, as leaning on the table in laborious cogitation, or
biting the feather end of his quill, or rapping his forehead with his
knuckles, to stimulate the action of the organs within, or else
striding up and down the room, in a brown study, over sundry
half-written and discarded sheets of paper, scattered on the floor.
L'Isle's servant wished to speak to him, but was too wise to disturb
him in the midst of those throes of mental labor. But, when pausing
suddenly in his walk, he pressed his forefinger on his temple, and
exclaimed, "I had it last night, and now I have lost it!" his
confidential man thought it time to speak. "What is it, sir, shall I
look for it?"

L'Isle stared at him, as if just roused from a reverie, and bursting
into a hearty laugh, bid him go down stairs until he called for him.

Down stairs he went, and told his two companions that their master was
at work on the toughest despatch or report, or something of that sort,
he had ever had to make in his life, adding, "I would not be surprised
if something came of it."

"I have not a doubt," answered Tom, the groom, in a confident tone,
"that the colonel has found out some new way to jockey the French, and
is about to lay it before Sir Rowland Hill, or, perhaps my Lord
Wellington himself."

Being men of leisure, they were still busy discussing their master's
affairs, and had begun to wonder if he had forgotten that it was time
to go to dinner, when L'Isle called for his man; but it was only to
bid him send the groom up to him.

With an obedient start, Tom hastened up stairs. In a few minutes, he
came down with an exceedingly neatly folded despatch in his hand. He
seemed to have gained in that short interval no little accession of
importance. He had quite sunk the groom, and strode into the room with
the air of an ambassador.

"Now, my lads, without even stopping to wet my whistle," said he, "I
will but sharpen my spurs, saddle my horse, and then--"

"What then?" asked his comrades.

"I will ride off on my important mission."

"Were you right?" asked L'Isle's gentleman. "Is that for Sir Rowland
Hill?"

"Sir Rowland," answered Tom, carelessly, "is not the most considerable
personage with whom master may correspond. And as the army post goes
every day to _Coria_, he would hardly send me thither."

"Can it be for the commander-in-chief?" suggested the footman. "That
is farther off still."

"You are but half-right," said Tom, contemptuously; "for it is not so
far," and, holding up the letter, he pretended to read the direction:
"'To his excellency, Lieutenant-General Sir Mabel Stewart,
commander-in-chief of his majesty's forces in these parts.' If you had
not been blockheads, you might have known it, from the extraordinary
neatness of the rose-colored envelope, with its figured green border."

"I wonder where he got it?" said the footman.

"He brought them out with him from home," said Tom, as if he were in
all his master's secrets, "for his love-letters to the Portuguese
ladies--but never met with any worth writing love-letters to. And,
now, my lads, hinder me no longer, I must ride and run till this be
delivered to my lady, and your mistress, that is to be." He was soon
in the saddle, and when there, rode as if carrying the news, that a
French division, having surprised the dreamy Spaniards in Badajoz, was
already fording the Cayo, without meeting even Goring's handful of
dragoons, to check its advance.

L'Isle now hastened to the regimental mess, and, after dining,
loitered there longer than usual, with a convivial set, until it was
late enough to visit Lady Mabel.

He found her alone, in her drawing-room; her father being still at
table, with some companions, the murmur of whose voices and laughter
now and then reached L'Isle's ears.

"Lieutenant Goring, who is down stairs," said Lady Mabel, "has been
amusing us at dinner with his version of our adventure at the ford of
the Cayo; and a very good story he makes of it, giving some rich
samples of Captain Hatton's polyglot eloquence. He, alone, seems not
to have been in the dark; and saw all, and more than all, that
occurred--nor does he forget you in the picture. But, papa cannot see
the wit of it at all."

"_Burlas de manos, burlas de villanos_. There seldom is wit in
practical jokes," said L'Isle; "but there was certainly more wit than
wisdom in this."

"By-the-bye," said Lady Mabel, "our excursion yesterday has procured
me a new correspondent. You will be astonished to hear who he is, and
at the style in which he writes."

"Indeed!" said L'Isle, with heightening color. "I hope he writes on an
agreeable topic, and in a suitable style?"

"You shall judge for yourself," said Lady Mabel. "But the
grandiloquence of the epistle, worthy of Captain Don Alonzo Melendez
himself, calls not for reading, but recitation. Do you sit here as
critic, while I take my stand in the middle of the room, and give it
utterance with all the elocution and pathos I can muster. You must
know that this epistle I hold in my hand, is addressed to me by no
less a personage than the river-god of the Guadiana, who, contrary to
all my notions of mythology, proves to be a gentleman, and not a
lady." And, in a slightly mock-heroic tone, she began to recite it:

Maiden, the sunshine of thine eye,
Flashing my joyous waves along,
The magic of thy soul-lit smile,
Have waked my murmuring voice to song.

Winding through Hispania's mountains,
Watering her sunburnt plains,
I, from earliest time, have gladdened
Dwellers on these wide domains.

I have watched succeeding races,
Peopling my fertile strand,
Marked each varying lovely model,
Moulded by Nature's plastic hand.

Striving still to reach perfection,
Ruthless, she broke each beauteous mould;
Some blemish still deformed her creature,
Some alloy still defiled her gold.

The Iberian girl has often bathed,
Her limbs in my delighted flood,
And no Acteon came to startle
This very Dian of the wood.

The stately Roman maid has loitered,
Pensive, upon my flowering shore,
Shedding some pearly drops to think,
Italia she may see no more.

While gazing on my placid face,
She meditates her distant home;
And rears, as upon Tiber's banks,
The towers of imperial Rome.

The blue-eyed daughter of the Goth,
Fresh from her northern forest-home,
In rude nobility of race,
Foreshadowed her who now has come.

The loveliest offspring of the Moor
Beside my moon-lit current sat;
And, sighing, sung her hopeless love,
In strains, that I remember yet.

The Christian knight, in captive chains,
The conqueror of her heart has proved;
His own, in far Castilian bower,
He bears her blandishments unmoved.

Thus Nature tried her 'prentice hand,
Become, at last, an artist true;
In inspiration's happiest mood,
She tried again, and moulded you.

Maiden, from my crystal surface,
May thy image never fade;
Longing, longing, to embrace thee,
I, alas! embrace a shade.

Fainter glows each beauteous image,
Thy beauty vanishing before;
I will clasp thy lovely shadow,
Fate will grant to me no more.

If the verses were not very good, L'Isle was ready to acknowledge it;
but, in fact, he had not the fear of criticism before his eyes; for
when did lady ever criticise verses made in her praise? But he had
reckoned without his host. Though Lady Mabel recited them exceedingly
well, in a way that showed that she must have read them over many
times, and dwelt upon them, there was an under-current of ridicule
running through her tones and action--for she had personified the
river-god--and when she was done, she criticised them with merciless
irony.

"This is no timid rhymster," she exclaimed, "but a true poet of the
Spanish school: No figure is too bold for him. A mere versifier would
have likened a lady's eyes to earthly diamonds or heavenly stars; the
blessed sun itself is not too bright for our poet's purpose.--My timid
fancy dared not follow his soaring wing; to me at the first glance,
the 'stately Roman maid' was building her mimic Rome on the banks of
the Guadiana with solid stone and tough cement, and I saddened at the
sight of her labors. To come down to the mechanism of the verse," she
continued, "besides a false rhyme or two, the measure halts a
little.--But we must not forget that the river-god is taking a
poetical stroll in the shackles of a foreign tongue. In this case we
have good assurance that the poet has never been out of his own
country, and to the _eye_ of a foreigner 'flood' and 'wood' and 'home'
and 'come' are perfect rhymes. We must deal gently with the poet while
'trying his 'prentice hand,' hoping better things when he shall
'become an artist true;' and when we remember that to the national
taste sublimity is represented by bombast, artifice takes the place of
nature, and sense is sacrificed to sound, the love of the _ore
rotundo_ demanding mouth-filling words at any price, we cannot fail to
discover the genuine Spanish beauties of the piece. I only wonder that
in his chronological picture of the races he should omit to display
the Phoenician, Jewish and Gipsy maidens to our admiring eyes."

"Heyday!" exclaimed Colonel Bradshawe, who now came in with Major
Warren, while she was still standing in the middle of the floor, with
the paper raised in her hand, "Is this a rehearsal? Are we to have
private theatricals, with Lady Mabel for first and sole actress? With
songs interspersed for her as _prima donna_? Pray let me come in as
one of the _dramatis personae_."

"It is no play!" said Lady Mabel, much confused. "I have just been
throwing away my powers of elocution in an attempt to make Colonel
L'Isle perceive the beauties of a piece of model poetry, moulded in
the purest Spanish taste. I thought him gifted with some poetic
feeling, but he shows not the slightest sense of its peculiar merits."

L'Isle, though much out of countenance, had kept his seat through the
recitation, but now got up looking little pleased with it.

"Try me," said Major Warren. "You may be more successful in finding a
critic."

"I never suspected you of any critical acumen," said Lady Mabel; "and
so could not be disappointed."

"Do not overlook me," said Bradshawe. "Poetry is the expression of
natural feeling, in a state of exaltation. Now, I am always in an
exalted state of feeling in your company, and may be just now a very
capable judge."

"No; one failure is enough for me," said Lady Mabel. "I am not in the
humor to repeat it."

"Let me read it then," said Bradshawe, offering to take the paper from
her hand.

Lady Mabel declined, and L'Isle tried to divert his attention. But
Bradshawe's curiosity was strongly excited, and he made more than one
playful attempt to get possession of the verses. Upon this, Lady Mabel
went to the table near which L'Isle was standing, and pretended to
hide them between the pages of one of the books there. L'Isle, anxious
that they should be kept from every eye but hers, watched her
closely. Could he believe his eyes? As she stooped over the table, she
actually, unobserved, as she thought, slipped the verses into her
bosom. Bradshawe pertinaciously began to search the volumes; on which,
Lady Mabel took up the largest of them, and with a grave face carried
it out of the room, leaving L'Isle so well satisfied with her care for
his epistle, that, by the time she came back, he was ready to bear,
without flinching, any severity of criticism.

The rest of the company below being gone, Lord Strathern now entered
the room. "Ah, L'Isle, I am glad to find you here; I was just about to
send after you. I have this moment received a dispatch from Sir
Rowland. He needs you for a special service, and this letter contains
his instructions."

"Is it in verse, Papa?" asked Lady Mabel, coming close up beside her
father.

"In verse, child? What are you dreaming of? Sir Rowland is a sane man,
and never writes verses?"

"I thought it might be a growing custom to correspond in verse. The
last letter I received was in regular stanzas."

"Who from?" asked Lord Strathern.

"A Spaniard--a genuine Spaniard, of the purest water," said Lady
Mabel. "And, strange to tell, I never saw him but once in my life."

"The impudent rascal!" exclaimed his lordship. "I will have him
horsewhipped by way of answer, a stripe for every line."

"Nay," said Lady Mabel, "a stripe for every bad line will be cutting
criticism enough."

"Who is this fellow? Is it the Don Alonso Melendez you were telling me
of?"

"Never mind his name, Papa. I am afraid you might have him flayed
alive, while the poor fellow deserves nothing but laughter for his
doggerel." And while this doggerel was secretly pressed by her bosom,
she stole a look at L'Isle, and was surprised to see how little galled
he seemed to be by her ridicule.

Copyright (c) 2007. topmasterworks.com. All rights reserved.