 | CHAPTER II.
CHRYSALIS COLLEGE. Cecil Dreeme |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
CHRYSALIS COLLEGE.
Stillfleet escorted me down to the long,
desolate dining-room of my hotel, the Chuzzlewit.
The great Chuzzlewit dined there on his visit
to America, and damned his dinner with such
fine irony, that the proprietor thought himself
complimented, and re-baptized his hotel.
“Here you are,” said my friend, “at a crack
house on the American plan. You can breakfast
on fried beefsteak, hard eggs, café au delay,
soggy toast, flannel cakes, blanket cakes, and
wash-leather cakes. You can dine on mock
soup, boiled porpoise, beef in the raw or in the
chip, watery vegetables, quoit pies, and can have
your choice at two dollars a bottle of twelve
kinds of wine, all mixed in the same cellar, and
labelled in the same shop. You can sup on
soused tea, dusty sponge-cake, and Patrick à
discrétion. How do you like the bill of fare?”
“Marine appetites are not discriminating.
But, Harry,” I continued, when I had ordered
I thought only raff — Congressmen, contractors,
and tide-waiters — went there.”
“Civilization makes its missionaries acquainted
with strange lodgings. They are building a big
abortion of a new Capitol. I go, as an architect,
to expunge a little of the Goth and the Vandal
out of their sham-classic plans.”
“Beware! Reform too soon, and you risk
ostracism. But before you go, advise me.
Where am I to live? Evidently not here at
the Chuzzlewit. Here the prices are large, and
the rooms little. I must have a den of my own,
where I can swing a cat, a longish cat.”
“Why not take my place off my hands? It
is big enough to swing a royal Bengal tiger in.
I meant to lock it up, but you shall occupy and
enjoy, if you like. It 's a grand chance, old
fellow. There 's not such another Rubbish Palace
in America.”
“Excellent!” said I. “But will you trust
me with your plunder?”
“Will I trust you? Have n't we been brats
together, lads together, men together?”
“We have.”
“Have n't we been comrades in robbing orchards,
mobbing tutors, spoiling the Egyptians
of mummies, pillaging the Tuileries in '48.
Have n't we been the historic friends, Demon
Answer me that!”
“We have.”
“Well, then, enter my shop, studio, palace,
and use and abuse my tools, rubbish, valuables,
as you like. Really, Byng, it will be a great
favor if you will fill my quarters, and keep down
the rats with my rat rifle, while I am in Washington
trying to decorate the Representative
Chamber so that it will shame blackguards to
silence.”
“Now,” said I, after a pause, and a little stern
champing over a tough Chuzzlewit chop, “all
ready, Harry; conduct me to your den.”
We left the Chuzzlewit by the side door on
Mannering Place, and descended from Broadway
as far as Ailanthus Square. On the corner,
fronting that mean, shabby enclosure, Stillfleet
pointed out a huge granite or rough marble
building.
“There I live,” said he. “It 's not a jail, as
you might suppose from its grimmish aspect.
Not an Asylum. Not a Retreat. No lunatics,
that I know of, kept there, nor anything mysterious,
guilty, or out of the way.”
“Chrysalis College, is it not?”
“You have not forgotten its monastic phiz?”
“No; I remember the sham convent, sham
castle, modern-antique affair. But how do you
defunct?”
“Not defunct; only without vitality. The
Trustees fancied that, if they built roomy, their
college would be populous; if they built marble,
it would be permanent; if they built Gothic, it
would be scholastic and mediæval in its influences;
if they had narrow, mullioned windows,
not too much disorganizing modern thought
would penetrate.”
“Well, and what was the result?”
“The result is, that the old nickname of
Chrysalis sticks to it, and whatever real name
it may have is forgotten. There it stands, big,
battlemented, buttressed, marble, with windows
like crenelles; and inside they keep up the traditional
methods of education.”
“But pupils don't beleaguer it?”
“That is the blunt fact. It stays an ineffectual
high-low school. The halls and lecture-rooms
would stand vacant, so they let them to
lodgers.”
“You are not very grateful to your landlords.”
“I pay my rent, and have a right to criticise.”
“Who live there besides you?”
“Several artists, a brace of young doctors,
one or two quiet men about town, Churm, and
myself.”
“Churm! How is that noble old fellow? I
count upon reclaiming his friendship.”
“How is Churm? Just the same. Tranquil
sage; headlong boy. An aristocratic radical.
A Timon without gall. Says the wisest things;
does the kindest. Knows everything; and yet
is always ready for the new truth that nullifies
the old facts. He cannot work inside of the
institutions of society. He calls them `shingle-cells,'
tight and transitory. He cannot get over
his cynical way of putting a subject, though
there is no cynic in his heart. So the world
votes him odd, and lets him have his own way.”
“Lucky to get liberty at cost of a nickname!
Who would not be called odd to be left free?”
“If Churm were poor, he would be howled at
as a radical, a destructive, an infidel.”
“I suppose he is too rich and powerful to be
harmed, and too intrepid to care.”
“Yes; and then there is something in Churm's
vigor that disarms opposition. His generosity
hoists people up to his level. But here we are,
Byng, at the grand portal of the grand front.”
“I see the front and the door. Where is the
grandeur?”
“Don't put on airs, stranger! We call this
imposing, magnifique, in short, pretty good. Up
goes your nose! You have lived too long in
Florence. Brunelleschi and Giotto have spoilt
inside. Follow me!”
We entered the edifice, half college, half lodging-house,
through a large doorway, under a
pointed arch. The interior was singularly ill-contrived.
A lobby opened at the door, communicating
with a dim corridor running through
the middle of the building, parallel to the front.
A fan-tracery vaulting of plaster, peeled and
crumbling, ceiled the lobby. A marble stairway,
with iron hand-rails, went squarely and clumsily
up from the door, nearly filling the lobby.
Stillfleet led the way up-stairs.
He pointed to the fan-tracery.
“This of course reminds you of King's College
Chapel,” said he.
“Entirely,” replied I. “Pity it is deciduous!”
and I brushed off from my coat several flakes of
its whitewash.
The stairs landed us on the main floor of the
building. Another dimly lighted corridor, answering
to the one below, but loftier, ran from
end to end of the building. This also was paved
with marble tiles. Large Gothicish doors opened
along on either side. The middle room on the
rear of the corridor was two stories high, and
served as chapel and lecture-room. On either
side of this, a narrow staircase climbed to the
upper floors.
By the half-light from the great window over
the doorway where we had entered, and from a
small single mullioned window at the northern
end of the corridor, there was a bastard mediæ
valism of effect in Chrysalis, rather welcome after
the bald red-brick houses without.
“How do you like it?” asked Stillfleet. “It 's
not old enough to be romantic. But then it does
not smell of new paint, as the rest of America
does.”
We turned up the echoing corridor toward the
north window. We passed a side staircase and
a heavily padlocked door on the right. On the
left was a class-room. The door was open. We
could see a swarm of collegians buzzing for such
drops of the honey of learning as they could get
from a lank plant of a professor.
We stopped at the farther door on the right,
adjoining the one so carefully padlocked. It
bore my friend's plate, —
H. Stillfleet,
Architect.
| CHAPTER II.
CHRYSALIS COLLEGE. Cecil Dreeme | |