6. LETTER VI.
My dear Doctor: Your letter contained
“A few of the unpleasantest words
That e'er were writ on paper!”
Why should you not pass August at Glemmary?
Have your patients bought you, body and soul? Is
there no “night-bell” in the city but yours? Have
you no practice in the country, my dear Esculapius?
Faith! I'll be ill! By the time you reach here, I
shall be a “case.” I have not had a headache now
in twenty years, and my constitution requires a change.
I'll begin by eating the cucumbers we had saved for
your visit, and you know the consequences. Mix me a
pill for the cholera—first, second, or third stage of the
disease, according to your speed—and come with
what haste you may. If you arrive too late, you lose
your fee, but I'll return your visit, by the honor of a
ghost.
By the way, as a matter of information, do you
charge in such cases? Or, the man being dead, do
you deduct for not feeling his pulse, nor telling him
the name of his damaged organ in Latin? It should
be half-price, I think, these items off. Let me know
by express mail, as one likes to be prepared.
Since I wrote to you, I have added the Chemung
river to my list of acquaintances. It was done a l'improvista,
as most pleasant things are. We were driving
to the village on some early errand, and met a
friend at the cross-roads, bound with an invalid to
Avon Springs. He was driving his own horses, and
proposed to us to set him a day's journey on his way.
I had hay to cut, but the day was made for truants—
bright, breezy, and exhilarating; and as I looked over
my shoulder, the only difficulty vanished, for there
stood a pedlar chaffering for a horn-comb with a girl
at a well. We provided for a night's toilet from his
tin-box, and easing off the check-reins a couple of
holes, to enlighten my ponies as to the change in
their day's work, we struck into the traveller's trot,
and sped away into the eye of a southwest breeze,
happy as urchins when the schoolmaster is on a jury.
When you come here, I shall drive you to the
Narrows of the Susquehannah. That is a word, nota
bene, which, in this degree of latitude, refers not at all
to the breadth of the stream. It is a place where the
mountain, like many a frowning coward, threatens to
crowd its gentler neighbor, but gives room at its calm
approach, and annoys nobody but the passer-by. The
road between them, as you come on, looks etched
with a thumb-nail along the base of the cliff, and you
would think it a pokerish drive, making no allowance
for perspective. The friable rock, however, makes
rather a smooth single track, and if you have the inside
when you meet Farmer Giles or the stage-coach,
you have only to set your hub against the rock, and
“let them go by as likes.” The majestic and tranquil
river sweeps into the peaked shadow, and on again,
with the disdain of a beauty used to conquer. It reminded
me of Lady Blessington's “do if you dare!”
when the mob at the house of lords threatened to
break her chariot windows. There was a calm courage
in Miladi's French glove that carried her through,
and so amid this mob of mountains, glides the Susquehannah
to the sea.
While I am here, let me jot down an observation
worthy the notice of Mr. Capability Brown. This
cliff falls into a a line of hills running from northwest
to southeast, and by five in the summer afternoon,
their tall shoulders have nudged the sun, and the long,
level road at their bases lies in deep shadow, for miles
along the Owaga and Susquehannah. “Consequence
is,” as my friend of the “Albany Daily” says, we can
steal a march upon twilight, and take a cool drive before
tea. What the ruination shops on the west side
of Broadway are to you, this spur of the Alleganies
is to me (minus the plate-glass, and the temptations).
I value this—for the afternoons in July and
August are hot and long; the breeze dies away, the
flies get in-doors, and with the desire for motion, yet
no ability to stir, one longs for a ride with Ariel
through “the veins o' the earth.” Mr. C. Brown
now would mark me down, for this privilege of road
well shaded, some twenty pound in the rent. He is a
man in England who trades upon his taste. He goes
to your country-seat to tell you what can be done
with it—what are its unimproved advantages, what to
do with your wood, and what with your water. He
would rate this shady mountain as an eligibility in the
site, to be reckoned, of course, as income. A very
pleasant man is Mr. Brown!
It occurs to me, Doctor, that a new branch of this
gentleman's profession might be profitable. Why not
set up a shop to tell people what they can make of
themselves? I have a great mind to take out a patent
for the idea. The stock in trade would be two chairs
and a green curtain—(for taste, like rouge, should be
sold privately)—not expensive. I would advertise to
see gentlemen in the morning, ladies in the evening,
“secresy in all cases strictly observed.” Few people
of either sex know their own style. Your Madonna
is apt to romp, for instance, and your romp to wear
her hair plain and a rosary. Few ladies know what
colors they look best in—whether smiles or tears are
most becoming, whether they appear to most advantage
sitting, like Queen Victoria and Tom Moore (and
this involves a delicate question), or standing and
walking. The world is full of people who mistake
their style—fish for your net every one. How many
women are never charming till they forget themselves!
A belle is a woman who knows her weapons—colors,
smiles, moods, caprices; who has looked at her face
in the glass like an artist, and knows what will lighten
a defect or enhance a beauty. The art is as rare as
the belle. “Porquoy, my dear knight.” Because
taste is, where knowledge was before the discovery of
printing—locked up with the first possessor. Why
should it not be diffused? What a refuge for reduced
gentility would be such a vocation. What is now the
disease of fortunes would be then their remedy; parents
would cultivate a taste for eloquence in their
children, because there is no knowing what they may
come to—the reason, now, why they take pains to repress
it.
I presume it is in consequence of the diffusion of
printing that ignorance of the law is no apology for
crime. Were taste within reach of all (there might
be dispensaries for the poor), that “shocking bad hat”
of yours, my dear Doctor, would be a criminal offence.
Our fat friend with the long-tailed coat, and the waist
at his shoulder-blades, would be liable to fine for misinforming
the tailor as to the situation of his hips—
the tailor of course not to blame, having nothing to go
by. Two scandalous old maids together would be
abated as a nuisance—as it is the quantity of tin-pots,
which, in a concert upon that tintinnabulary instrument,
constitutes a disturbance of the peace. The
reform would be endless. I am not sure it could be
extended to bad taste in literature, for, like rebellion,
the crime would merge in the universality of the offenders.
But it would be the general putting down of
tame monsters, now loose on society. Pensex y!
What should you think of dining with a woman behind
your chair worth seven hundred thousand pounds
sterling—well invested? You may well stare—but
unless a large number of sensible people are very
much mistaken, you may do so any day, for some
three shillings, at a small inn on the Susquehannah.
Those who know the road, leave behind them a showy,
porticoed tavern, new, and carefully divested of all
trees and grass, and pull up at the door of the old inn
at the place, a low, old-fashioned house, built on a
brook-side, and with all the appearance of a comfortable
farmhouse, save only a leaning and antiquated
sign-post. Here lives a farmer well off in the world,
a good-natured old man, who for some years has not
meant to keep open tavern, but from the trouble of
taking down his sign-post, or the habit, and acquaintance
with travellers, gives all who come what chance
fare may be under the roof, and at the old prices common
in days when the bill was not ridden by leagues
of white paint and portico. His dame, the heiress, is
a tall and erect woman of fifty (“or, by'r lady, three-score”),
a smiling, intelligent, ready hostess, with the
natural manners of a gentlewoman. Now and then, a
pale daughter, unmarried, and twenty-four or younger,
looks into the whitewashed parlor, and if the farmer
is home from the field, he sits down with his hat on,
and lends you a chat with a voice sound and hearty as
the smell of day. It is altogether a pleasant place to
loiter away the noon, and though it was early for dinner
when we arrived, we put up our horses (the men
were all a-field), and Dame Raymond spread her white
cloth, and set on her cherry-pie, while her daughter
broiled for us the de quoi of the larder, in the shape
of a salt mackerel. The key of the “bin” was in her
pocket, and we were young enough, the dame said, as
she gave it to us, to feed our own horses. This good
woman, or this great lady, is the only daughter, as I
understand it, of an old farmer ninety years of age,
who has fallen heir to an immense fortune in England.
He was traced out several years ago by the executors,
and the proper testimonials of the property placed in
his hands; but he was old, and his child was well off
and happy, and he refused to put himself to any trouble
about it. Dame Raymond herself thought England
a great way off; and the pride of her life is her
fine chickens, and to go so far upon the strength of a
few letters, leaving the farm and hen-roost to take care
of themselves, was an undertaking which, she felt, justified
Farmer Raymond in shaking his head. Lately
an enterprising gentleman in the neighborhood has
taken the papers, and she consented to write to her
father, who willingly made over to her all authority in
the matter. The claim, I understand, is as well authenticated
as paper evidence can make it, and the
probability is, that in a few months Dame Raymond
will be more troubled with her riches than she ever
was with her chickens.
We dined at our leisure, and had plenty of sharp
gossip with the tall hostess, who stood to serve the tea
from a side-table, and between our cups kept the flies
from her tempting cherry-pie and brown sugar, with a
large fan. I have not often seen a more shrewd and
sensible woman, and she laughs and philosophizes
about her large fortune in a way that satisfied me she
would laugh just as cheerly if it should turn out a
bubble. She said her husband had told her “it was
best not to be proud, till she got her money.” The
only symptom that I detected of castle-building, was a
hint she let slip of hoping to entertain travellers, some
day, in a better house. I coupled this with another
remark, and suspected that the new tavern, with its big
portico and blazing sign, had not taken the wind out
of her sails without offence, and that, perhaps, the
only use of her money, on which she had determined,
was to build a bigger and eclipse the intruder.
I amused myself with watching her as she bustled
about with old-fashioned anxiety to anticipate our
wants, and fancying the changes to which the acquisition
of this immense fortune might introduce her in
England. There was her daughter, whom a little millinery
would improve into a very presentable heiress,
cooking our mackerel; while Mrs. Thwaites, the grocer's
widow in London, with no more money probably,
was beset by half the unmarried noblemen in England,
Lord Lyndhurst, it is said, the most pressing. But
speculation is endless, and you shall go down with
your trout line, dear Doctor, and spin your own cobwebs
while Dame Raymond cooks your fish.
I have spun out my letter to such a length, that I
have left myself no room to prate to you of the beauties
of the Chemung, but you are likely to hear
enough of it, for it is a subject with which I am just
now something enamoured. I think you share with
me my passion for rivers. If you have the grace to
come and visit us, and I survive the cholera you have
brought upon me, we will visit this new Naiad in company,
and take Dame Raymond in our way. Adieu.
