 | CHAPTER XVIII.
THE VILLAGE POET. The guardian angel |  |
18. CHAPTER XVIII.
THE VILLAGE POET.
IT was impossible for Myrtle to be frequently at Olive's
without often meeting Olive's brother, and her reappearance
with the bloom on her cheek was a signal which her
other admirers were not likely to overlook as a hint to recommence
their flattering demonstrations; and so it was
that she found herself all at once the centre of attraction
to three young men with whom we have made some acquaintance,
namely, Cyprian Eveleth, Gifted Hopkins,
and Murray Bradshaw.
When the three girls were together at the house of
Olive, it gave Cyprian a chance to see something of Myrtle
in the most natural way. Indeed, they all became
used to meeting him in a brotherly sort of relation; only,
as he was not the brother of two of them, it gave him the
inside track, as the sporting men say, with reference to
any rivals for the good-will of either of these. Of course
neither Bathsheba nor Myrtle thought of him in any
other light than as Olive's brother, and would have been
surprised with the manifestation on his part of any other
feeling, if it existed. So he became very nearly as intimate
with them as Olive was, and hardly thought of his
intimacy as anything more than friendship, until one day
Myrtle sang some hymns so sweetly that Cyprian dreamed
about her that night; and what young person does not
know that the woman or the man once idealized and glorified
in the exalted state of the imagination belonging to
hours that follow? Yet something drew Cyprian to the
gentler and more subdued nature of Bathsheba, so that he
often thought, like a gayer personage than himself, whose
divided affections are famous in song, that he could have
been blessed to share her faithful heart, if Myrtle had not
bewitched him with her unconscious and innocent sorceries.
As for poor, modest Bathsheba, she thought nothing
of herself, but was almost as much fascinated by Myrtle
as if she had been one of the sex she was born to make in
love with her.
The first rival Cyprian was to encounter in his admiration
of Myrtle Hazard was Mr. Gifted Hopkins. This
young gentleman had the enormous advantage of that
all-subduing accomplishment, the poetical endowment.
No woman, it is pretty generally understood, can resist the
youth or man who addresses her in verse. The thought
that she is the object of a poet's love is one which fills a
woman's ambition more completely than all that wealth or
office or social eminence can offer. Do the young millionnaires
and the members of the General Court get letters
from unknown ladies, every day, asking for their autographs
and photographs? Well, then!
Mr. Gifted Hopkins, being a poet, felt that it was so,
to the very depth of his soul. Could he not confer that
immortality so dear to the human heart? Not quite yet,
perhaps, — though the “Banner and Oracle” gave him already
“an elevated niche in the Temple of Fame,” to
quote its own words, — but in that glorious summer of his
genius, of which these spring blossoms were the promise.
It was a most formidable battery, then, which Cyprian's
first rival opened upon the fortress of Myrtle's affections.
His second rival, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, had
made a half-playful bet with his fair relative, Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum, that he would bag a girl within twelve months
of date who should unite three desirable qualities, specified
in the bet, in a higher degree than any one of the five
who were on the matrimonial programme which she had
laid out for him, — and Myrtle was the girl with whom
he meant to win the bet. When a young fellow like him,
cool and clever, makes up his mind to bring down his
bird, it is no joke, but a very serious and a tolerably certain
piece of business. Not being made a fool of by
any boyish nonsense, — passion and all that, — he has a
great advantage. Many a woman rejects a man because
he is in love with her, and accepts another because he is
not. The first is thinking too much of himself and his
emotions, — the other makes a study of her and her
friends, and learns what ropes to pull. But then it must
be remembered that Murray Bradshaw had a poet for his
rival, to say nothing of the brother of a bosom friend.
The qualities of a young poet are so exceptional, and
such interesting objects of study, that a narrative like
this can well afford to linger awhile in the delineation of
this most envied of all the forms of genius. And by contrasting
the powers and limitations of two such young persons
as Gifted Hopkins and Cyprian Eveleth, we may
better appreciate the nature of that divine inspiration
which gives to poetry the superiority it claims over every
other form of human expression.
Gifted Hopkins had shown an ear for rhythm, and for
the simpler forms of music, from his earliest childhood.
He began beating with his heels the accents of the psalm-tunes
sung at meeting at a very tender age, — a habit,
though it shows a sensibility to rhythmical impulses like that
which is beautifully illustrated when a circle join hands and
emphasize by vigorous downward movements the leading
syllables in the tune of Auld Lang Syne, yet it is apt to be
too expressive when a large number of boots join in the
performance. He showed a remarkable talent for playing
on one of the less complex musical instruments, too limited
in compass to satisfy exacting ears, but affording excellent
discipline to those who wish to write in the simpler metrical
forms, — the same which summons the hero from his repose
and stirs his blood in battle.
By the time he was twelve years old he was struck with
the pleasing resemblance of certain vocal sounds which,
without being the same, yet had a curious relation which
made them agree marvellously well in couples; as eyes with
skies; as heart with art, also with part and smart; and so
of numerous others, twenty or thirty pairs, perhaps, which
number he considerably increased as he grew older, until
he may have had fifty or more such pairs at his command.
The union of so extensive a catalogue of words which
matched each other, and of an ear so nice that it could tell
if there were nine or eleven syllables in an heroic line,
instead of the legitimate ten, constituted a rare combination
of talents in the opinion of those upon whose judgment he
relied. He was naturally led to try his powers in the
expression of some just thought or natural sentiment in
the shape of verse, that wonderful medium of imparting
thought and feeling to his fellow-creatures which a bountiful
Providence had made his rare and inestimable endowment.
It was at about this period of his life, that is to say,
when he was of the age of thirteen, or we may perhaps say
fourteen years, for we do not wish to overstate his precocity,
that he experienced a sensation so entirely novel, that,
to the best of his belief, it was such as no other young person
had ever known, at least in anything like the same
degree. This extraordinary emotion was brought on by
the sight of Myrtle Hazard, with whom he had never
before had any near relations, as they had been at different
schools, and Myrtle was too reserved to be very generally
known among the young people of his age.
Then it was that he broke forth in his virgin effort,
“Lines to M—e,” which were published in the village
paper, and were claimed by all possible girls but the right
one; namely, by two Mary Annes, one Minnie, one Mehitable,
and one Marthie, as she saw fit to spell the name
borrowed from her who was troubled about many things.
The success of these lines, which were in that form of
verse known to the lymn-books as “common metre,” was
such as to convince the youth that, whatever occupation he
might be compelled to follow for a time to obtain a livelihood
or to assist his worthy parent, his true destiny was
the glorious career of a poet. It was a most pleasing circumstance,
that his mother, while she fully recognized the
propriety of his being diligent in the prosaic line of business
to which circumstances had called him, was yet as
much convinced as he himself that he was destined to
achieve literary fame. She had read Watts and Select
Hymns all through, she said, and she did n't see but what
Gifted could make the verses come out jest as slick, and
the sound of the rhymes jest as pooty, as Izik Watts or
the Selectmen, whoever they was, — she was sure they
It is pleasant to say that the young man, though
favored by nature with this rarest of talents, did not forget
the humbler duties that Heaven, which dresses few singing-birds
in the golden plumes of fortune, had laid upon him.
After having received a moderate amount of instruction at
one of the less ambitious educational institutions of the
town, supplemented, it is true, by the judicious and gratuitous
hints of Master Gridley, the young poet, in obedience
to a feeling which did him the highest credit, relinquished,
at least for the time, the Groves of Academus,
and offered his youth at the shrine of Plutus, that is, left
off studying and took to business. He became what they
call a “clerk” in what they call a “store” up in the
huckleberry districts, and kept such accounts as were
required by the business of the establishment. His principal
occupation was, however, to attend to the details of
commerce as it was transacted over the counter. This
industry enabled him, to his great praise be it spoken, to
assist his excellent parent, to clothe himself in a becoming
manner, so that he made a really handsome figure on Sundays
and was always of presentable aspect, likewise to
purchase a book now and then, and to subscribe for that
leading periodical which furnishes the best models to the
youth of the country in the various modes of composition.
Though Master Gridley was very kind to the young
man, he was rather disposed to check the exuberance of
his poetical aspirations. The truth was, that the old classical
scholar did not care a great deal for modern English
poetry. Give him an Ode of Horace, or a scrap from the
Greek Anthology, and he would recite it with great inflation
of spirits; but he did not think very much of “your
lot,” as he called the dreamily sensuous idealists who
belong to the same century that brought in ether and chloroform.
He rather shook his head at Gifted Hopkins for
indulging so largely in metrical composition.
“Better stick to your ciphering, my young friend,” he
said to him, one day. “Figures of speech are all very
well, in their way; but if you undertake to deal much in
them, you 'll figure down your prospects into a mighty
small sum. There 's some danger that it will take all the
sense out of you, if you keep writing verses at this rate.
You young scribblers think any kind of nonsense will do
for the public, if it only has a string of rhymes tacked to it.
Cut off the bobs of your kite, Gifted Hopkins, and see if it
does n't pitch, and stagger, and come down head-foremost.
Don't write any stuff with rhyming tails to it that won't
make a decent show for itself after you 've chopped all the
rhyming tails off. That 's my advice, Gifted Hopkins. Is
there any book you would like to have out of my library?
Have you ever read Spenser's Faery Queen?”
He had tried, the young man answered, on the recommendation
of Cyprian Eveleth, but had found it rather
hard reading.
Master Gridley lifted his eyebrows very slightly, remembering
that some had called Spenser the poet's poet.
“What a pity,” he said to himself, “that this Gifted Hopkins
has n't got the brains of that William Murray Bradshaw!
What 's the reason, I wonder, that all the little
earthen pots blow their covers off and froth over in rhymes
at such a great rate, while the big iron pots keep their lids
on, and do all their simmering inside?”
That is the way these old pedants will talk, after all
gone. The smiles of woman, in the mean time, encouraged
the young poet to smite the lyre. Fame beckoned him upward
from her templed steep. The rhymes which rose
before him unbidden were as the rounds of Jacob's ladder,
on which he would climb to a heaven of glory.
Master Gridley threw cold water on the young man's
too sanguine anticipations of success. “All up with the
boy, if he 's going to take to rhyming when he ought to be
doing up papers of brown sugar and weighing out pounds
of tea. Poor-house, — that 's what it 'll end in. Poets, to
be sure! Sausage-makers! Empty skins of old phrases,
— stuff 'em with odds and ends of old thoughts that never
were good for anything, — cut 'em up in lengths and sell
'em to fools! And if they ain't big fools enough to buy
'em, give 'em away; and if you can't do that, pay folks to
take 'em. Bah! what a fine style of genius common-sense
is! There 's a passage in the book that would fit half
these addle-headed rhymesters. What is that saying of
mine about `squinting brains'?”
He took down “Thoughts on the Universe,” and
read: —
“Of Squinting Brains.
“Where there is one man who squints with his eyes, there
are a dozen who squint with their brains. It is infirmity
in one of the eyes, making the two unequal in power,
that makes men squint. Just so it is an inequality in the
two halves of the brain that makes some men idiots and
others rascals. I know a fellow whose right half is a genius,
but his other hemisphere belongs to a fool; and I had a
friend perfectly honest on one side, but who was sent to
direction of picking pockets and appropriating æs alienum.”
All this, talking and reading to himself in his usual
fashion.
The poetical faculty which was so freely developed in
Gifted Hopkins had never manifested itself in Cyprian
Eveleth, whose look and voice might, to a stranger, have
seemed more likely to imply an imaginative nature. Cyprian
was dark, slender, sensitive, contemplative, a lover
of lonely walks, — one who listened for the whispers of
Nature and watched her shadows, and was alive to the
symbolisms she writes over everything. But Cyprian had
never shown the talent or the inclination for writing in
verse.
He was on the pleasantest terms with the young poet,
and being somewhat older, and having had the advantage
of academic and college culture, often gave him useful
hints as to the cultivation of his powers, such as genius
frequently requires at the hands of humbler intelligences.
Cyprian was incapable of jealousy; and although the name
of Gifted Hopkins was getting to be known beyond the
immediate neighborhood, and his autograph had been requested
by more than one young lady living in another
county, he never thought of envying the young poet's
spreading popularity.
That the poet himself was flattered by these marks of
public favor may be inferred from the growing confidence
with which he expressed himself in his conversations with
Cyprian, more especially in one which was held at the
“store” where he officiated as “clerk.”
“I become more and more assured, Cyprian,” he said,
I feel it in my marrow. I must succeed. I must win the
laurel of fame. I must taste the sweets of —”
“Molasses,” said a bareheaded girl of ten who entered
at that moment, bearing in her hand a cracked pitcher, —
“ma wants three gills of molasses.”
Gifted Hopkins dropped his subject and took up a tin
measure. He served the little maid with a beniguity quite
charming to witness, made an entry on a slate of.08, and
resumed the conversation.
“Yes, I am sure of it, Cyprian. The very last piece I
wrote was copied in two papers. It was `Contemplations
in Autumn,' and — don't think I am too vain — one young
lady has told me that it reminded her of Pollok. You
never wrote in verse, did you, Cyprian?”
“I never wrote at all, Gifted, except school and college
exercises, and a letter now and then. Do you find it an
easy and pleasant exercise to make rhymes?”
“Pleasant! Poetry is to me a delight and a passion.
I never know what I am going to write when I sit down.
And presently the rhymes begin pounding in my brain,
— it seems as if there were a hundred couples of them,
paired like so many dancers, — and then these rhymes
seem to take possession of me, like a surprise party,
and bring in all sorts of beautiful thoughts, and I write
and write, and the verses run measuring themselves out
like —”
“Ribbins, — any narrer blue ribbins, Mr. Hopkins?
Five eighths of a yard, if you please, Mr. Hopkins. How 's
your folks?” Then, in a lower tone, “Those last verses
of yours in the Bannernoracle were sweet pooty.”
Gifted Hopkins meted out the five eighths of blue ribbon
good measure, not prodigal, for he was loyal to his employer,
but putting a very moderate strain on the ribbon, and letting
the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of infinitesimals
which betokened a large soul in its genial mood.
The young lady departed, after casting upon him one of
those bewitching glances which the young poet — let us
rather say the poet, without making odious distinctions —
is in the confirmed habit of receiving from dear woman.
Mr. Gifted Hopkins resumed: “I do not know where
this talent, as my friends call it, of mine, comes from. My
father used to carry a chain for a surveyor sometimes, and
there is a ten-foot pole in the house he used to measure
land with. I don't see why that should make me a poet.
My mother was always fond of Dr. Watts's hymns; but so
are other young men's mothers, and yet they don't show
poetical genius. But wherever I got it, it comes as easy
to me to write in verse as to write in prose, almost. Don't
you ever feel a longing to send your thoughts forth in verse,
Cyprian?”
“I wish I had a greater facility of expression very
often,” Cyprian answered; “but when I have my best
thoughts I do not find that I have words that seem fitting
to clothe them. I have imagined a great many poems,
Gifted, but I never wrote a rhyming verse, or verse of any
kind. Did you ever hear Olive play `Songs without
Words'? If you have ever heard her, you will know
what I mean by unrhymed and unversed poetry.”
“I am sure I don't know what you mean, Cyprian, by
poetry without rhyme or verse, any more than I should if
you talked about pictures that were painted on nothing, or
statues that were made out of nothing. How can you tell
neither a regular line with just so many syllables, nor a
rhyme? Of course you can't. I never have any thoughts
too beautiful to put in verse: nothing can be too beautiful
for it.”
Cyprian left the conversation at this point. It was getting
more suggestive than interpenetrating, and he thought
he might talk the matter over better with Olive. Just
then a little boy came in, and bargained with Gifted for a
Jews-harp, which, having obtained, he placed against his
teeth, and began playing upon it with a pleasure almost
equal to that of the young poet reciting his own verses.
“A little too much like my friend Gifted Hopkins's
poetry,” Cyprian said, as he left the “store.” “All in one
note, pretty much. Not a great many tunes, — `Hi Betty
Martin,' `Yankee Doodle,' and one or two more like them.
But many people seem to like them, and I don't doubt it is
as exciting to Gifted to write them as it is to a great genius
to express itself in a poem.”
Cyprian was, perhaps, too exacting. He loved too well
the sweet intricacies of Spenser, the majestic and subtly
interwoven harmonies of Milton. These made him impatient
of the simpler strains of Gifted Hopkins.
Though he himself never wrote verses, he had some
qualities which his friend the poet may have undervalued
in comparison with the talent of modelling the symmetries
of verse and adjusting the correspondences of rhyme. He
had kept in a singular degree all the sensibilities of childhood,
its simplicity, its reverence. It seemed as if nothing
of all that he met in his daily life was common or unclean
to him, for there was no mordant in his nature for what
was coarse or vile, and all else he could not help idealizing
the leaf after its kind as well as the flower, and the root as
well as the leaf, and did not exhaust his capacity of affection
or admiration on the blossom or bud upon which his
friend the poet lavished the wealth of his verse. Thus
Nature took him into her confidence. She loves the men
of science well, and tells them all her family secrets, —
who is the father of this or that member of the group, who
is brother, sister, cousin, and so on, through all the circle
of relationship. But there are others to whom she tells
her dreams; not what species or genus her lily belongs to,
but what vague thought it has when it dresses in white, or
what memory of its birthplace that is which we call its
fragrance. Cyprian was one of these. Yet he was not a
complete nature. He required another and a wholly different
one to be the complement of his own. Olive came
as near it as a sister could, but — we must borrow an old
image — moonlight is no more than a cold and vacant glimmer
on the sun-dial, which only answers to the great flaming
orb of day. If Cyprian could but find some true, sweet-tempered,
well-balanced woman, richer in feeling than in those
special imaginative gifts which made the outward world at
times unreal to him in the intense reality of his own inner
life, how he could enrich and adorn her existence, — how
she could direct and chasten and elevate the character of
all his thoughts and actions!
“Bathsheba,” said Olive, “it seems to me that Cyprian
is getting more and more fascinated with Myrtle Hazard.
He has never got over the fancy he took to her when he
first saw her in her red jacket, and called her the fire-hang-bird.
Would n't they suit each other by and by, after
Myrtle has come to herself and grown into a beautiful and
noble woman, as I feel sure she will in due time?”
“Myrtle is very lovely,” Bathsheba answered, “but
is n't she a little too — flighty — for one like your brother?
Cyprian is n't more like other young men than Myrtle is
like other young girls. I have thought sometimes — I
wondered whether out-of-the-way people and common ones
do not get along best together. Does n't Cyprian want
some more every-day kind of girl to keep him straight?
Myrtle is beautiful, — beautiful, — fascinates everybody.
Has Mr. Bradshaw been following after her lately? He
is taken with her too. Did n't you ever think she would
have to give in to Murray Bradshaw at last? He looks
to me like a man that would hold on desperately as a
lover.”
If Myrtle Hazard, instead of being a half-finished school-girl,
hardly sixteen years old, had been a young woman of
eighteen or nineteen, it would have been plain sailing
enough for Murray Bradshaw. But he knew what a distance
their ages seemed just now to put between them, —
a distance which would grow practically less and less with
every year, and he did not wish to risk anything so long
as there was no danger of interference. He rather encouraged
Gifted Hopkins to write poetry to Myrtle. “Go
in, Gifted,” he said, “there 's no telling what may come of
it,” — and Gifted did go in at a great rate.
Murray Bradshaw did not write poetry himself, but he
read poetry with a good deal of effect, and he would sometimes
take a hint from one of Gifted Hopkins's last productions
to recite a passionate lyric of Byron or Moore,
into which he would artfully throw so much meaning that
Myrtle was almost as much puzzled, in her simplicity, to
know what it meant, as she had been by the religious fervors
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker.
He spoke well of Cyprian Eveleth. A good young
man, — limited, but exemplary. Would succeed well as
rector of a small parish. That required little talent, but
a good deal of the humbler sort of virtue. As for himself,
he confessed to ambition, — yes, a great deal of ambition.
A failing, he supposed, but not the worst of failings. He
felt the instinct to handle the larger interests of society.
The village would perhaps lose sight of him for a time;
but he meant to emerge sooner or later in the higher
spheres of government or diplomacy. Myrtle must keep
his secret. Nobody else knew it. He could not help
making a confidant of her, — a thing he had never done
before with any other person as to his plans in life. Perhaps
she might watch his career with more interest from
her acquaintance with him. He loved to think that there
was one woman at least who would be pleased to hear of
his success if he succeeded, as with life and health he
would, — who would share his disappointment if fate
should not favor him. — So he wound and wreathed himself
into her thoughts.
It was not very long before Myrtle began to accept
the idea that she was the one person in the world whose
peculiar duty it was to sympathize with the aspiring
young man whose humble beginnings she had the honor
of witnessing. And it is not very far from being the solitary
confidant, and the single source of inspiration, to the
growth of a livelier interest, where a young man and a
young woman are in question.
Myrtle was at this time her own mistress as never before.
The three young men had access to her as she
walked to and from meeting and in her frequent rambles,
besides the opportunities Cyprian had of meeting her in
connection with the great lawsuit, Murray Bradshaw could
make, without question, at The Poplars.
It was not long before Cyprian perceived that he could
never pass a certain boundary of intimacy with Myrtle.
Very pleasant and sisterly always she was with him; but
she never looked as if she might mean more than she said,
and cherished a little spark of sensibility which might
be fanned into the flame of love. Cyprian felt this so
certainly that he was on the point of telling his grief to
Bathsheba, who looked to him as if she would sympathize
as heartily with him as his own sister, and whose sympathy
would have a certain flavor in it, — something
which one cannot find in the heart of the dearest sister
that ever lived. But Bathsheba was herself sensitive,
and changed color when Cyprian ventured a hint or two
in the direction of his thought, so that he never got so far
as to unburden his heart to her about Myrtle, whom she
admired so sincerely that she could not have helped feeling
a great interest in his passion towards her.
As for Gifted Hopkins, the roses that were beginning
to bloom fresher and fresher every day in Myrtle's cheeks
unfolded themselves more and more freely, to speak metaphorically,
in his song. Every week she would receive a
delicately tinted note with lines to “Myrtle awaking,” or
to “Myrtle retiring,” (one string of verses a little too
Musidora-ish, and which soon found itself in the condition
of a cinder, perhaps reduced to that state by spontaneous
combustion,) or to “The Flower of the Tropics,” or to the
“Nymph of the River-side,” or other poetical alias, such
as bards affect in their sieges of the female heart.
Gifted Hopkins was of a sanguine temperament. As
that they must reach the heart of the angelic being to
whom they were addressed. That she was slow in confessing
the impression they made upon her, was a favorable
sign; so many girls called his poems “sweet pooty,”
that those charming words, though soothing, no longer
stirred him deeply. Myrtle's silence showed that the impression
his verses had made was deep. Time would
develop her sentiments; they were both young; his position
was humble as yet; but when he had become famous
through the land — O blissful thought! — the bard of Oxbow
Village would bear a name that any woman would be
proud to assume, and the M. H. which her delicate hands
had wrought on the kerchiefs she wore would yet perhaps
be read, not Myrtle Hazard, but Myrtle Hopkins!
| CHAPTER XVIII.
THE VILLAGE POET. The guardian angel | |