Читать книгу The Lady of Fashion - Eric Wollencott Barnes - Страница 6

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The young couple were to spend their honeymoon in Nyack, at the home of James’s married sister. They had scarcely been greeted by their hostess and installed in their room when Anna Cora set herself to write a long letter to Samuel Ogden. She was in anguish at the thought of his feelings when he learned of the marriage. Her action not only defied convention; it constituted the first breach in the perfect trust that had always existed between her father and herself. But most painful of all to set down was the admission of her deceit, which seemed to her a violation of the fundamental principle of her nature.

Somehow the letter did get written, and in due course a reply was received. Lily’s fears had not been unjustified. Mr. Ogden had been offended almost beyond words, and his indignation against Mr. Mowatt knew no bounds. There were further letters; but nothing, it seemed, would avail to pacify Lily’s irate parent. Never, never would he forgive her. Between letters the time stretched endlessly. “Those days seemed like a ‘never’ indeed to me.... I was almost heart-broken at the idea of losing my father’s love, upon which I had drawn too largely. My thoughts ‘through all the faithful past, went sorrowing’, and I could not bear to dwell upon a future of which he did not form the principal feature.” Such thoughts Anna Cora probably kept to herself; else they might have made Mr. Mowatt somewhat doubtful of his own position. Although there is no mention of the fact in the record, he seems to have behaved admirably through it all. But he might well have pondered the irony of having interrupted production of a play entitled The Mourning Bride, when he found himself with the real thing on his hands.

The period of suspense, which seemed eternal to Lily, and probably to James Mowatt, who had hoped for a somewhat different atmosphere on his honeymoon, lasted in fact three days. In view of the numbers of letters exchanged, and the variety of emotions aroused and subdued during this time, one must assume that every steamer between Nyack and New York was utilized for the correspondence. When the letter of forgiveness finally arrived, accompanied by an invitation to return home, Lily begged that the honeymoon might be curtailed. No matter what his personal feelings may have been, in the interests of prudence this seemed to James Mowatt the better course. Within a week the couple was back in the mansion on Warren Street, where father, mother, all welcomed them with open arms, and without one chiding word. Lily was overwhelmed by what she felt to be such completely undeserved tenderness. As for Mr. Mowatt, she informs us he was received less cordially, but “still with kindness.”

Samuel Ogden’s feelings must have been mixed. While genuinely upset at the loss of his favorite child and shaken by this first challenge to his authority, he was after all a practical man. By every standard James Mowatt was an excellent match. He was of good family, well-off, professionally respected, kindly, and of unblemished personal reputation. And though to Ogden’s systematic mind it would have been more suitable to marry off his daughters in the order of their ages, it was on the whole wiser not to be too much of a stickler in these matters.

As for Mrs. Ogden, her reaction was completely a mother’s. When she heard of the elopement, her main concern was for Lily’s health. When Matilda described to the family the wedding and the departure for Nyack, Mrs. Ogden remembered having seen Lily walking up the street in a flimsy summer dress. She was thoroughly alarmed, and went immediately to the nursery, where her worst fears were confirmed. Lying in a drawer of the great mahogany bureau, among the pantalettes and cambric nightgowns, were Lily’s flannel petticoats—left behind! The child would catch her death of cold. Her joy at having her delicate Lily home from Nyack without even a sniffle dominated all other feelings.

It was some time later that Lily learned another detail in connection with her flight. When Mrs. Ogden had gone to the nursery that morning, she had found a white geranium lying on the table. She knew that Lily must have worn it the day before: a bridal adornment.... She took the sprig and tenderly planted it. It grew and flourished as long as she lived—the favorite among the little collection of house plants in which she took such delight.

After a brief stay under the parental roof, the Mowatts moved to Flatbush. This was only four miles from New York, yet it was really open country; and for Lily, who suffered from a chronic bronchial trouble dating back to that terrible crossing of the Atlantic in 1825, fresh air and exercise were desirable. Since Lily was too young and inexperienced to be burdened with household cares, the couple found quarters in an old mansion which had been converted into a boarding-house.

This dwelling, located on what had once been part of the original Vanderbilt farm, had been built before the Revolution. Designed as the country seat of a wealthy Englishman, it had been requisitioned as a military headquarters during the war, and had later passed into the hands of General Giles. In the 1830’s it was regarded as the most handsome residence in the environs of New York. The mansion was approached by an avenue bordered with great dark pines. This parted directly in front of the portico to form a circle, in the center of which was a fountain. Behind the house were gardens and orchards, as well as a farmyard and stables.

The mansion itself, of Georgian design, was a splendid example of eighteenth-century elegance. The wide halls were beautifully paneled. A broad, gracefully-curved stairway led to the upper floor. There was a spacious ballroom with gilded cornices and ceiling ornamented with intricate plaster arabesques. The establishment boasted one of the rarities of the age, a greenhouse filled with exotic plants.

Under the kitchens there were dark vaults where it was said English prisoners had been confined during the war; and there was a secret chamber above the ballroom, accessible only by a small window. Here, according to local legend, a young girl had been imprisoned and starved to death; now her ghost wandered at night through the house. A romantic atmosphere hung over the whole place, as though it had been made to order for an imaginative girl with a head full of plots and a disposition to Byronic emotions.

James Mowatt regarded it as a perfect setting for the Lily he had plucked in Warren Street; and when he saw that his bride had become greatly attached to Melrose, as the place was called, he decided to purchase it. As for Lily herself, she was delighted at the prospect of living permanently in such picturesque surroundings. When a little later her sister May, four years her junior, was invited to come and stay with them so that Anna Cora might have companionship during the long days while James was at his office in the city, her happiness was complete.

At Melrose something of the old atmosphere of La Castagne was re-created. The spacious house with its handsome furniture, its orchards and arbors and flower gardens, the stables, and all sorts of pets—horses, dogs, rabbits, pigeons—even a goat—furnished the girls with constant amusements. And though Lily was now sixteen, a married woman with a position in society and mistress of a large country establishment, she occasionally forgot this fact. More than once, a visitor in white gloves and lace and feathers, driving up to the house for a formal call, found Mrs. Mowatt and her little sister gleefully rolling hoops in the graveled driveway.

Under her husband’s tutelage Anna Cora learned to shoot; in his company she would roam the countryside for hours. On these excursions she wore a garment of her own design, described as “half-Turkish costume”, by which she seems to have anticipated Mrs. Bloomer’s invention. She became so expert with her light single-barreled gun that she could bring down swallows on the wing. Later, when her passion for life and all things living became a veritable religion, she found it inconceivable that she should ever have indulged in such a pastime. But in those days, as she tells us, “I seldom saw with my own eyes or judged with my own judgment.”

Mr. Mowatt’s major concern continued to be his wife’s intellectual development. Out of his own broad background and keen appreciation for literature, he saw to it that his young bride read not only widely but well. She wrote critiques of everything she read, and made copious extracts which she set down in the form of a journal. For several years, as this journal witnessed, she read and commented upon between ninety and a hundred volumes yearly. With James she also read French and did exercises in English composition.

This constant supervision of Lily’s activities, and the discipline upon which he insisted, might indicate that James Mowatt was something of a tyrant—or at least of a dictatorial nature. But there is nothing in the picture of him, as given by his wife and supported by the few remaining letters from his hand, to show that this was so. His was a deeply sensitive and intuitive nature. He had perceived extraordinary qualities in Anna Ogden when he had first met her; and he felt a kind of moral compulsion to do all in his power to bring her talents to fulfillment. If, like most husbands of the time, he seemed to have a distinctly proprietary attitude toward his wife, there is no recorded instance of his failing to yield to her wishes on any important issue. He was conscious always of her individuality and her compelling personal charm. Later, when their rôles were reversed and it was Lily who became the mainstay of the family, whose talents and beauty made her the object of adoration to thousands, he was content to slip quietly and gracefully into the background. If he did so with a considerable sense of self-satisfaction, no one could blame him. No matter how great were Anna Cora’s personal triumphs later, it was James Mowatt who had provided her with the means to make something of herself.

Three things above all James Mowatt taught his wife. These were self-confidence, self-discipline, and the habit of sustained effort. He was quick to praise, thoughtful and intelligent in his criticism of her work, and always encouraging.

In the second year of her marriage Anna Cora experienced a greater sorrow than the temporary loss of her father’s affection when she eloped. In the winter of 1836, Eliza Lewis Ogden died. Although her personality had always been eclipsed by that of her masterful husband and exuberant children, her presence had been a powerful influence in the family. If Lily’s concern at the time of her elopement was mainly for her father’s forgiveness, it was because she was sure of her mother’s. She knew that her mother would understand, and she knew that her mother was incapable of harboring resentment. It was Eliza Ogden who by her own candor and scrupulous regard for truth established the atmosphere of mutual trust which kept the family so tightly bound together. Like Samuel Ogden, she had a profound respect for the conventions. But this never interfered with the flow of sympathy when an appeal was made to her generous nature. She had a large capacity for tolerating human weakness in others, though not in herself. This trait she passed on to all her children, but in richest measure to Anna Cora.

Her death coincided with, and may even have contributed to, a change in Samuel Ogden’s affairs. In the general fever of expansion which infected most Americans during the 1830’s, he found he had overreached himself. It was not, of course, a repetition of the Miranda affair; but there were reverses, particularly abroad, and at home he became embroiled in an endless series of litigations. It was these which led some wag of the time to say that Samuel Ogden had the widest circle of relations of any man in New York, for he was connected by blood or lawsuit to practically everybody in town. To add to his other cares, his eldest daughter Charlotte had just become a widow; and though she did not remain long in this state, at the moment she and her children were dependent on him.

But Samuel Ogden was not a man to languish under either financial inconvenience or bereavement. Within a year he married again. His second wife, Miss Julia Fairlie, came also of a well-established New York family. She was a most lovable woman who soon won the complete affection of all her stepchildren. By this second marriage four daughters were added to the family. The youngest of these, Virginia, was born in 1850 when Samuel Ogden was seventy-one. For a man who so loved children, life could offer no greater reward than that enjoyed by Lily’s father. For nearly half a century (Charlotte was born in 1804) he had at least one child about the house, small enough to dandle upon his knee! In the later years there was a happy blending of children and grandchildren, all more or less of an age.

Meanwhile, at Melrose life went its pleasant way. Day after day, the hours of reading and lessons continued. Three times a week Anna Cora was visited by her singing-teacher, for James Mowatt thought that something ought to be done with her voice—which from her childhood had attracted attention by its extraordinary purity and silvery timbre. She worked hard at drawing, too, until it was discovered that it was not good for her lungs to spend long hours bent over a drawing-table.

Lily took delight in all these pursuits. But her greatest pleasure came with the evening hours. After May had been tucked into bed, Lily and James would settle down in the library to read. Side by side at the book-laden table, in the soft glow of the whale-oil lamp, they pored over volumes of philosophy. The particular interest at present was esthetics, which Lily found marvelously stimulating. She had never stopped writing verses; but now as she explored the philosophical theories of poetry in Aristotle and Sidney and Boileau, her effort took on a scientific interest. She was fascinated by Aristotle’s analysis of tragedy and the theory of catharsis, by Longinus’s exposition of the sublime, by Wordsworth’s ideas on poetic diction. Of the last she was suspicious: Wordsworth made poetry sound so ordinary. She was greatly relieved when Coleridge set everything to rights by pointing out that since ordinary people did not speak poetry, why should poetry employ the diction of ordinary people? Irrefutable logic!

Coleridge led inevitably to Schlegel. From the Lectures on Literature Lily learned that the original and highest form of poetry was to be found in the epic. That was enough for her. All her previous scribblings faded into insignificance before the prospect which now opened up. She would write an epic! Something grand, something with sweep—something immortal, no doubt!

The first thing was to find a subject. Having just finished Trueba’s Romance of Spain, she plunged into Spanish history for a theme. The daily routine was now altered to make room for epic-writing, to which Lily devoted herself with the same methodical application as to singing or drawing lessons. Each day she did a regular stint; and each night in the library she read the results to James.

“Mr. Mowatt listened, of course, with partial ears, and I believe I had a way of making versification sound more musical than it was—of creating a sense through certain modulations of voice which did not exist in the words themselves!”

Though she did not realize it, Lily had already developed the essential quality of the actress. It was not only her beautiful voice but her innate sense of poetic values that later enabled her to impart a charm and sometimes even grandeur to the most unmitigated trash. The new masterpiece, Pelayo or the Cavern of Cavadonga, was not quite that bad, even though Lily herself in time could not look at a page of it without shuddering. A Poetical Romance in Five Cantos (that is the subtitle) moves relentlessly through a hundred-and-thirty stanzas of varying pattern. The rhymes, which sometimes strained the authoress’s ingenuity, are on the whole correct. The lines are not absolutely regular, but this is readily explained:

’Twas nature taught me first to Rhyme,

And my impatient restless muse

To pen my thoughts scarce gives me time,

And pruning wholly doth refuse

And when I count—takes wing!

Like most writers’ early works, even when they deal with the faraway and long ago, Pelayo has a certain autobiographical coloring. We learn of the heroine Ormesinda, a Gothic maid,

Scarce sixteen summers bloom had shed

O’er her young brow its rich’ning glory,

And yet her heart was fondly wed

With one whose locks would soon prove hoary—

The story of Ormesinda and her warrior lover is handled with Byronic dash. There is much action and, of course, feeling. The hero’s sword play is alternated with fits of weeping. The heroine is chastely delicate and spends most of her time in situations which give emphasis to the fact. Like all epics Pelayo ranges freely, in both the horizontal and the vertical sense, through geography and time. At one point the American flag is unfurled, at least symbolically, by reference to the future national anthem. The authorship of this, incidentally, is attributed to Joseph Rodman Drake, who did write a poem called “The American Flag”. However, Anna Cora caught this slip herself and appended a foot-note: “Since this was in type we have heard it [The Star Spangled Banner] ascribed to Mr. McKey.”

With the reading of each day’s accomplishment James’s enthusiasm mounted. As a purely quantitative effort—as evidence of sustained application—Pelayo was indeed remarkable. So impressed was James that upon the poem’s completion he immediately proposed that it be published. Lily was startled. “I was not ambitious,” she informs us. “I had thought more of feeding birds and taming pigeons than of winning fame. I loved to think that I possessed a household harp that would make pleasant music for the ears of kindred and friends; but I shrank from playing my part of imperfect musician before the world. Yet I was easily persuaded. The authorship of Pelayo was to be kept a profound secret. I assumed the name of ‘Isabel’ and the book was published by the Harpers.”

Surprisingly, Pelayo attracted a good deal of attention—mostly unfavorable. Critics, languishing with little opportunity to exercise their talents (for epics by native writers were few and far between) descended on Pelayo with energy and delight. A typical opinion was that of Willis Gaylord Clark, writing in the Knickerbocker Magazine for September 1836:

The subject of Pelayo is not without its capabilities: but the execution of the poem, we are compelled to say, is indifferent enough. Perhaps little else ought to be expected from a writer who takes frequent occasion to advise the reader that she is not yet seventeen, and who makes it a matter of boasting that her restless, impatient muse eschews all pruning or revision.... If it were not rather ungallant to dissect the first “unpruned” effort of a lady of sixteen, and moreover, if it were not dangerous withal—for our fair authoress threatens to give two words for one in reply to the hapless critic who shall dare to incur her resentment by adverse comment—we should be induced to point out and serve up numerous blemishes and not a few glaring faults which judicious revision might have amended, if not obviated altogether. Among the rank shoots, however, that demand the extirpating hoe of criticism, it must be confessed there are a few robust flowers, but who would voluntarily labor in an unweeded garden where every stroke he aims at a useless or noxious plant is to be followed by a blow or two on the ear by a female hand? ...

Clark’s reference to “two words for one” regarding adverse criticism, concerns a somewhat unusual precaution Anna Cora took in publishing her maiden effort. Having read Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, she hit upon the idea of warning critics, in the preface to Pelayo, that if they attacked the poem, she would deal with them later. Before the last notice of the work had appeared, she was busy with her retaliation. The result was another slender volume entitled Reviewers Reviewed. This, so the subtitle indicates, is a satire. In it “Isabel” makes good her threat and systematically lampoons (lambastes would more accurately describe the style of her attack) the prominent critics of the day: James Watson Webb of the Courier and Enquirer, George P. Morris of the Mirror, Col. Stone of the Commercial Advertiser—and with special vigor, Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, whom she had confused with his brother, Willis, author of the offending review which we have noted.

Reviewers Reviewed also has a preface—in which Anna Cora defends her earlier effort:

Pelayo, the first rude effusion of a warm, though untutored heart, was presented to the public with all the rainbow hope, that unmingled buoyancy which ever attends the joyous visions of expectant youth. I studied not the science of poetry [a slight inaccuracy, committed doubtless in the interests of rhetoric]—I heeded not its rules; in the enthusiasm of the moment, I only felt that Nature formed her poets before Nature’s scorners shackled them with modern trammels.

Anna Cora then explains that her allusion to unfriendly critics in the preface to Pelayo was merely the result of a “playful exuberance of spirit” which might have amused a circle of her friends. She marvels at the misapprehension of her motives. Yet this she can overlook. What she cannot forgive is the implied derogation of the poetic genius of her native land, noted in some of the criticisms of Pelayo. One critic had pointed out the folly of writing poetry when poetry itself was on the wane. Anna Cora is outraged at this idea:

In the old world, where the muse’s glory had reached its meridian height, her power may well decline. But are not we of the new world? and shines she here, or has she ever shone, in full maturity and splendor, arrayed in laurels from which time has plucked no leaf? How revolting to our national pride, how humiliating, to believe that America should only produce a sickly poetic fire, expiring at its birth! Can poetry be on the wane while such men as Halleck and Bryant are in their prime? Though its infant pinions are yet weak, may they not one day soar beyond even proud Albion’s constellated host of bards?

The main idea of Reviewers Reviewed (which runs to 1600 lines without missing a beat) is that before critics begin to pick flaws in other people’s poetry, they had better try to write some themselves.

If the attention bestowed on Pelayo was surprising, the reception of Reviewers Reviewed was more so. The book had an even wider sale than Pelayo and actually received several favorable notices—probably, reflected Anna Cora, “through the sympathy of some critic who had himself been lashed by his contemporaries.” As for the fate of the epic, in later years she could only think of that with a smile. “Its existence was as ephemeral as it deserved to be. As readily crushed by the critics as a butterfly could be crushed, it died an easy death. I alone suffered in its expiring agonies.”

After this splash in the literary pond, during which Lily was in some trepidation for fear the identity of “Isabel” would be discovered, domestic life was a welcome relief. There was a great deal of entertaining at Melrose, for Anna Cora had now taken her place as a young matron in New York society. However, these entertainments were never wholly frivolous. Although there were occasional balls, these were never mere dancing-parties. Usually there was special music, or poetry-reading (by Anna Cora), or plays. There were also community responsibilities in the village of Flatbush. The Mowatts regularly attended the Episcopal Church, and Lily was in great demand at bazaars, where she sold flowers or operated the fortune-teller’s booth. Sometimes they went into New York to the theatre; but there is no proof that the excitement created by her first visit, when she saw Fanny Kemble, built up any overwhelming desire for the drama which could not be satisfied at home. In fact, she did not develop a passion for the professional theatre until she herself went on the stage.

Yet some form of dramatic activity was constantly in progress at Melrose. There were regular weekly “concerts” performed by Lily and May and any other of the sisters who chanced to be visiting just then. The word “concert” was a designation used to justify the time the girls spent in studying music, though it seems that none of them had any musical talent. Anna Cora herself, whose actual voice was unusually fine, had difficulty keeping on key—a distinct advantage in speaking the lines of a play, but a handicap when singing. So the “concerts” generally involved burlesques of Italian opera (to which Lily’s singing was ideally suited), scenes from tragedies, and tableaux vivants. For most of these exhibitions, Mr. Mowatt made up the entire audience.

One original dramatic creation of this period was a work entitled “The Gypsy Wanderer, or The Stolen Child”, with a cast of three, little Julia being the temporary addition. This was described as an operetta; and its plot was refreshingly simple. It involved a noble lady whose child had been stolen by the gypsies—and who, in consequence of this deed, had had an aversion for gypsies ever since! She would not even allow them in the house; and when a gypsy child sang one day under her window she ordered her niece Lucille (played by May) to send the child away. But Lucille, tender-hearted, persuaded her to let the waif in. Whereupon it was discovered (several songs and two or three scenes later), through the interesting device of a birthmark, that the gypsy waif was none other than Lady Ivon’s own little lost Florette. The representation of this work, notes Lily, “occupied an hour and a half.”

These idyllic occupations might have continued indefinitely had not Anna Cora suddenly been taken ill. The chronic bronchitis was diagnosed as consumption, already so far advanced that drastic action was imperative. The classic remedy of the time was a sea-voyage, and Lily was ordered immediately to Europe.

So in the spring of 1837, accompanied by one of her father’s sisters, she sailed for Liverpool. Was it chance or some prophetic instinct that led the ladies to travel on one of the packets of the Collins Company—known as the Dramatic Line because the ships all bore the names of famous stage figures? There were the Siddons, the Garrick, the Talma, and so on. Lily and her aunt traveled on the Roscius, named for the great Roman actor. Among their fellow-passengers was the celebrated comedian Tyrone Power (whose choice of this ship undoubtedly had been dictated by a sense of appropriateness.) The great Irish actor was returning to his native land after a triumphant American tour, with fresh laurels on his brow and 20,000 Yankee dollars in his pockets.