University of Virginia Library

21. XXI.
Jemima's Journal.

I HAVE hinted at the literary tendencies of
Miss Jemima Fudge. Like most literary
ladies, she keeps a journal, in which a great deal
of pent-up tenderness overflows. Very much of
that sort of tenderness which afflicts ladies of a
certain age, would, if put in print and distributed
in the leaves of a popular magazine, dispose people
to tears. It is fortunate for the world that it does
not so appear.

We have tears enough of our own, I think, without
finding them started by every distracted lady

who chooses to take a pen. There are griefs seaming
the texture of every mortal's life; and dispirited
ladies have no right to think, or to say, with their
hands on their bosoms: “Every heart has its own
bitterness;” as if the proverb applied to them, and
nobody else. There is, in fact, an immense deal of
affliction, and an immense deal of sentimental affliction
in the world, which needs only to be ripped
open to make a very bloody show. But a better
way of treating it is, to poultice with common-sense,
and to follow this up with a strong plaster of duty;
and in a month's time the evil is cured: or, what
is as well—is forgotten.

But cousin Jemima was not of this way of thinking:
she loved to fancy her little tweaks of sensitiveness
were the irradiations (so she called them)
of a delicate nature; and she nourished them, and
fondled them accordingly, as many a weaker man or
woman has done before her; and, it is to be feared,
will continue to do, till the crack of doom. It is
surprising what a magnificent growth of griefs our
own fancy can germinate, if it be only set in
that direction! It is frightful to contemplate the
personal woes which play before the vision of a
poetically-disposed young lady, dancing and gleaming
every twilight, like sheet-lightning in a bad
atmosphere.

As I said, the best way to disperse it all, is to
set about some healthful, honest, hearty work—
though it be no better than darning stockings for
the children of a ragged school.

Miss Jemima, instead, wrote verses; and, when
rhyme failed, wrote in her journal. There she
unbosomed herself; there she strewed passion, grief,
Byron, Mr. Smith, heart-speech, Tupper, Blimmer,
hope, desolation—in a flood.

I shall publish a portion of it herewith.

Will Jemima be offended when she finds the world
called in to sympathize with her bewildered heart?
Will she feel wronged to meet, through printed
pages, the pulsations of other hearts attuning themselves
to hers? I don't think she will.

Ladies of my cousin Jemima's cast of thought
love the fragmentary form; and I should be doing
injustice to her, as well as to all kindred natures, if
I were to alter it in the slightest degree:

— “And can it be, do I find my poor heart
yielding? Is it gone, or is it mine? How strange
and inscrutable are our natures! Like harps of a
thousand strings. Tupper says as much, but in a
far different way. How poor is language, at least
such as this, to express all our feelings! And yet
—and yet, I feel, I know, that it is bubbling over

as richly, and from as deep sources, as that of any
poet in the world. Oh! for a pen from an eaglet's
wing!

“Do I love Mr. Blimmer? Alas! my poor
beating heart! That he loves me, I am convinced.
His is not a poetic, but an earnest nature. Why
ought I to look for more? The world is a broken
and unripe world: opposites combine harmoniously.
I admire the rude energy of his character: is not
this a poem?

“And yet I fear that my delicacy has shocked
him; he is fearful; he distrusts; alas! if he knew
my weakness! Men give us credit for more resolution
than we possess. A word more, and I feel
that I should have given myself to him for ever;
strange thought! to be given to another for ever!
To find these emotions, these feelings, these burning,
suffocating feelings, all centred in one object!

“He was here this very day.”

The interview having been already described, I
shall not repeat here the account of Miss Jemima,
but pass on to subsequent entries, which will
advance the Fudge story.

“He has not come: does he doubt me? Does
he doubt my feeling—feeling growing stronger with

delay? Have I treated him coolly? Forbidding
thought! I must wait patiently the issue.

“Is it not a strange dispensation of fortune, that
we, whose susceptibilities are so keen, whose feelings
are so delicate, should, by the rule of custom, be
denied all open utterance of the heart, until first we
have won the accidental favor of an admirer? How
much better it would be if only we could throw
open the flood-gates of our feeling whenever strong
feeling is called into being! Is not this truer to
our own poetic nature, and truer to the first design
of Providence?

“Why is it that woman alone of all creatures
is compelled to cloak her deepest and strongest feelings,
and oftentimes, alas! to carry them with her
to the grave unuttered? Is it not a folly and a
wickedness so to belie ourselves?”

Miss Jemima here interpolates quotations from
Mrs. Hemans and Young's Night Thoughts, which
I omit.

“It is true that Mr. Blimmer is not all that I
could wish for in a husband; or, rather, he does not
seem wholly equal to the ideal I had formed in
seasons of rhapsody; yet, what woman has ever yet
found her ideal realized? Is it not tempting Providence

to pursue still farther the poetic images
of a fond heart and teeming imagination? Did not
Mrs. Brown, the poetess, marry a common-place
man? and does not Mrs. Brown indulge in her ideal
flights as much as ever? Did not Mr. Peabody,
the delightful sentimental writer, marry a short, fat
woman, and yet draw the same graceful pictures
of female loveliness, and broken hearts, that he did
before he commenced house-keeping with Mrs. Peabody,
who wears spectacles? Is not the mind,
after all, capable of making its own poetic world
to live in, whatever becomes of the less ethereal
portions of our nature? Would not the mental
part of Jemima Fudge remain itself, with its own
instincts and capacities, although the world should
call me Mrs. Blimmer? I cannot and will not
believe otherwise.”

Here occurs a chasm in the journal, which begins
again, in a nervous hand, thus:

— “The faithlessness and the folly of men! A
woman's heart is the toy that evil men play tricks
upon. How little they know the depth and earnestness
of the feelings with which they trifle! I
am deceived in Blimmer. He is the basest of his
sex. Yet what on earth can have induced him to

pay court to that dear little simpleton, Kitty Fleming?
He is old enough to be her father; the
villain! Is it that he despaired of winning my
affections? Does he wish to kindle my jealousy?

“But I will control myself, and make a record of
his strange proceedings. He had scarce seen me,
or met me only in the most ceremonious manner,
since the eventful day of our conversation. I attributed
this to a high-toned respect for my agonized
feelings; I might possibly have relented. It is well
I did not. My looks have been of marble. Matters
were going on thus, and Kitty getting ready
for her departure, when she ran to me in tears, only
yesterday, with a letter—an avowal of love—from
that unnatural man, Blimmer. It was better conceived
than I judged him capable of. There was
intensity in it, though in parts badly spelled. He
pretended that he has loved her long: what fearful
falsity!

“Kitty, poor little thing, was overwhelmed with
grief. I endeavored to comfort her; I assured her
that no harm should happen to her; Bridget and
myself have devoted ourselves to her relief. Blimmer
will find himself circumvented in his designs; we
have forbidden him an interview. Kitty is quieter.
I have myself dictated her reply; a cutting reply.
His offers have been repelled with deserved scorn:

his age was alluded to—perhaps too pointedly. Yet
it does not matter: what feeling but scorn can be
entertained for one so false-hearted? He promised
her wealth; can it be that the Blimmersville property
is rising in value? Should he relent, it may
not yet be too late. Alas! the struggles of a
woman's heart!

“I abandon the pen; I give myself for a moment
to tears; not private tears, but tears for the feebleness
and depravity of human nature. Would that
they might wash it out!”

I may remark here that this is a common indulgence,
and a common infatuation of over-sentimental
natures. Tears are very good things in their place,
it is true; and I like to see them sometimes. But
they will not wash away any considerable amount
of human depravity or human weakness, however
frequent they are, or however easily called up. As
a general thing, I am disposed to believe, on the
contrary, that they blind our eyes to the sight of a
great deal of service which might be rendered to
the world in general by a good, straight-forward
look into the face and eyes of Duty. It is all very
well to bemoan such matters of grief as gain large
proportion by the magnifying property of an eye-full
of tears; but a handful of help is better every

way. Miss Jemima's, however, was one of those
delicate natures which shrunk from the positive, and
ran irresistibly to the ideal. Idealism is very well
where it belongs—in the clouds. It makes pretty
rainbows, and that sort of thing; but the bows, so
far as I have observed, are lost when they touch
ground, and neither hold their color nor anything
else. There is an immense deal of dreamy philanthropy
which floats about in verse and romantic
spray, very gorgeous indeed, but lost so soon as you
try to squeeze out of it some palpable, fertilizing
drops.

Miss Jemima possessed a mass of this sort of philanthropy,
and pursued charity very much as the
Humble Lieutenant, in Fletcher's play, pursued his
love—too far off.

To return: poor Kitty was distressed at receiving
such a letter from Mr. Blimmer. If it had come
from the younger and more elegant Mr. Quid, or
even floated over ocean, in better-spelled words,
from the old-time companion of the country-evenings,
Mr. Harry Flint, I will not presume to say
what would have been her emotions.

As it was, she felt indignant, hurt, alarmed, and
entertained the unnecessary fear that she would
become thenceforth the prey to unmeasured persecution—such
as is spoken of in novels—with no

novel-like lover to defend her. She wrote to her
country mamma a dolorous letter, lamenting her
unfortunate and unprotected position, very much to
her mother's pride and gratification, who asked, in
reply, about Mr. Blimmer's age and prospects in
life, and shocked Miss Kitty, by hinting at the
necessity of caution in decisions of that sort, and
assuring her that a good husband would, in many
respects, be a very desirable acquisition.

I do not mean to imply by this, any hard-heartedness
on the part of Mrs. Fleming; she loved her
daughter as a good mother should, and who, after
being thoroughly satisfied with any offering suitor
for the hand of her Kitty, would very likely, before
the actual separation came about, be hysterically
opposed to it; and entertain very gloomy apprehensions
about the affections of a daughter who
could voluntarily desert her in her old age.

It will perhaps be observed, that Mrs. Fleming,
under the influence of the feelings supposed, would
have entirely lost sight of her former association
with Mr. Fleming, and of the manner in which
she deserted the Fudge family on the eve of her
own marriage. Marriage, however, is very much
the same thing with one good woman as it is with
another. It tears families apart, and it makes new
ones. The old order of love, and separation, and

trust, and tears, and household, overtakes daughters,
as it has overtaken mothers; and so it will
hold on to be, as long as men are married, or women
are given in marriage.

Kitty cried hard over her mother's letter; and
told her that Mr. Blimmer was an odious man, of
twice her own age, that she could never think of
loving him in the world, and that she had told him
so, and how she hoped never to see or hear of him
again.

All this was bitter to Mr. Blimmer, who had
founded considerable hope upon a sudden movement,
and had entertained the pleasing fancy of
carrying the young girl's heart by storm. Being
thoroughly thwarted, and foreseeing no farther
chances in that direction, he set about a reconsideration
of Mr. Bodgers' will. The flat rejection of
Mistress Kitty was not pleasant: such things are
never so. I have hinted as much in my first chapter;
giving very good ground for the opinion. I
allude to Mabel.

Mr. Blimmer was naturally disturbed, and
thought he might take all allowable advantage of
the circumstances in which he found himself placed.
And it was precisely under this state of feeling that
he was favored with a call from the elder Mr. Quid.