 | The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids |  |
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THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS AND THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS.
[Description: Image of first page of "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids">
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I. THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS.
IT lies not far from Temple-Bar.
Going to it, by the usual way, is like steal-
ing from a heated plain into some cool, deep
glen, shady among harboring hills.
Sick with the din and soiled with the mud of
Fleet Street — where the Benedick tradesmen are
hurrying by, with ledger-lines ruled along their
brows, thinking upon rise of bread and fall of
babies — you adroitly turn a mystic corner — not
a street — glide down a dim, monastic way
flanked by dark, sedate, and solemn piles, and
still wending on, give the whole care-worn world
the slip, and, disentangled, stand beneath the
quiet cloisters of the Paradise of Bachelors.
Sweet are the oases in Sahara; charming the
isle-groves of August prairies; delectable pure
faith amidst a thousand perfidies: but sweeter,
still more charming, most delectable, the dreamy
Paradise of Bachelors, found in the stony heart
of stunning London.
In mild meditation pace the cloisters;
take your pleasure, sip your leisure, in the garden
waterward; go linger in the ancient library, go
worship in the sculptured chapel: but little have
you seen, just nothing do you know, not the
sweet kernel have you tasted, till you dine
among the banded Bachelors, and see their con-
vivial eyes and glasses sparkle. Not dine in
bustling commons, during term-time, in the
hall; but tranquilly, by private hint, at a pri-
vate table; some fine Templar's hospitably invited guest.
Templar? That's a romantic name. Let
me see. Brian de Bois Gilbert was a Templar,
I believe. Do we understand you to insinuate
that those famous Templars still survive in mod-
ern London? May the ring of their armed
heels be heard, and the rattle of their shields, as
in mailed prayer the monk-knights kneel before
the consecrated Host? Surely a monk-knight
were a curious sight picking his way along
the Strand, his gleaming corselet and snowy
surcoat spattered by an omnibus. Long-bearded,
too, according to his order's rule; his face fuzzy
as a pard's; how would the grim ghost look
among the crop-haired, close-shaven citizens?
We know indeed — sad history recounts it — that
a moral blight tainted at last this sacred Broth-
erhood. Though no sworded foe might out-
skill them in the fence, yet the worm of luxury
crawled beneath their guard, gnawing the core
of knightly troth, nibbling the monastic vow, till
at last the monk's austerity relaxed to wassail-
ing, and the sworn knights-bachelors grew to
be but hypocrites and rakes.
But for all this, quite unprepared were we to
learn that Knights-Templars (if at all in being)
were so entirely secularized as to be reduced
from carving out immortal fame in glorious bat-
tling for the Holy Land, to the carving of roast-
mutton at a dinner-board. Like Anacreon, do
these degenerate Templars now think it sweeter
far to fall in banquet than in war? Or, indeed,
how can there be any survival of that famous or-
der? Templars in modern London! Templars
in their red-cross mantles smoking cigars at the
Divan! Templars crowded in a railway train,
till, stacked with steel helmet, spear, and shield,
the whole train looks like one elongated loco-
motive!
No. The genuine Templar is long since de-
parted. Go view the wondrous tombs in the
Temple Church; see there the rigidly-haughty
forms stretched out, with crossed arm
upon their stilly hearts, in everlasting and undream-
ing rest. Like the years before the flood, the
bold Knights-Templars are no more. Never-
theless, the name remains, and the nominal society,
and the ancient grounds, and some of the
ancient edifices. But the iron heel is changed
to a boot of patent-leather; the long two-hand-
ed sword to a one-handed quill; the monk-giver
of gratuitous ghostly counsel now counsels for
a fee; the defender of the sarcophagus (if in
good practice with his weapon) now has more
than one case to defend; the vowed opener and
clearer of all highways leading to the Holy Sep-
ulchre, now has it in particular charge to check,
to clog, to hinder, and embarrass all the courts
and avenues of Law; the knight-combatant of
the Saracen, breasting spear-points at Acre, now
fights law-points in Westminster Hall. The
helmet is a wig. Struck by Time's enchanter's
Wand, the Templar is to-day a Lawyer.
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But, like many others tumbled from proud
glory's height — like the apple, hard on the bough
but mellow on the ground — the Templar's fall
has but made him all the finer fellow.
I dare say those old warrior-priests were but
gruff and grouty at the best; cased in Birming-
ham hardware, how could their crimped arms
give yours or mine a hearty shake? Their
proud, ambitious, monkish souls clasped shut,
like horn-book missals; their very faces clapped
in bomb-shells; what sort of genial men were
these? But best of comrades, most affable of
hosts, capital diner is the modern Templar. His
wit and wine are both of sparkling brands.
The church and cloisters, courts and vaults,
lanes and passages, banquet-halls, refectories, li-
braries, terraces, gardens, broad walks, domicils,
and dessert-rooms, covering a very large space
of ground, and all grouped in central neighbor-
hood, and quite sequestered from the old city's
surrounding din; and every thing about the
place being kept in most bachelor-like particu-
larity, no part of London offers to a quiet wight
so agreeable a refuge.
The Temple is, indeed, a city by itself. A
city with all the best appurtenances, as the
above enumeration shows. A city with a park
to it, and flower-beds, and a river-side — the
Thames flowing by as openly, in one part, as by
Eden's primal garden flowed the mild Euphrates.
In what is now the Temple Garden the old Cru-
saders used to exercise their steeds and lances;
the modern Templars now lounge on the benches
beneath the trees, and, switching their patent-
leather boots, in gay discourse exercise at re-
partee.
Long lines of stately portraits in the banquet-
halls, show what great men of mark — famous
nobles, judges, and Lord Chancellors — have in
their time been Templars. But all Templars
are not known to universal fame; though, if
the having warm hearts and warmer welcomes,
full minds and fuller cellars, and giving good
advice and glorious dinners, spiced with rare
divertisements of fun and fancy, merit immor-
tal mention, set down, ye muses, the names of
R. F. C. and his imperial brother.
Though to be a Templar, in the one true
sense, you must needs be a lawyer, or a student
at the law, and be ceremoniously enrolled as
member of the order, yet as many such, though
Templars, do not reside within the Temple's
precincts, though they may have their offices
there, just so, on the other hand, there are many
residents of the hoary old domicils who are not
admitted Templars. If being, say, a lounging
gentleman and bachelor, or a quiet, unmarried,
literary man, charmed with the soft seclusion of
the spot, you much desire to pitch your shady
tent among the rest in this serene encampment,
then you must make some special friend among
the order, and procure him to rent, in his name
but at your charge, whatever vacant chamber
you may find to suit.
Thus, I suppose, did Dr. Johnson, that nom-
inal Benedick and widower but virtual bachelor,
when for a space he resided here. So, too, did
that undoubted bachelor and rare good soul,
Charles Lamb. And hundreds more, of ster-
ling spirits, Brethren of the Order of Celibacy,
from time to time have dined, and slept, and
tabernacled here. Indeed, the place is all a
honeycomb of offices and domicils. Like any
cheese, it is quite perforated through and through
in all directions with the snug cells of bachelors.
Dear, delightful spot! Ah! when I bethink
me of the sweet hours there passed, enjoying
such genial hospitalities beneath those time-
honored roofs, my heart only finds due utterance
through poetry; and, with a sigh, I softly sing,
"Carry me back to old Virginny!"
Such then, at large, is the Paradise of Bach-
elors. And such I found it one pleasant after-
noon in the smiling month of May, when, sally-
ing from my hotel in Trafalgar Square, I went
to keep my dinner-appointment with that fine
Barrister, Bachelor, aud Bencher, R. F. C. (he
is the first and second, and should be the third;
I hereby nominate him), whose card I kept
fast pinched between my gloved forefinger and
thumb, and every now and then snatched still
another look at the pleasant address inscribed
beneath the name, "No. — , Elm Court, Tem-
ple."
At the core he was a right bluff, care-free,
right comfortable, and most companionable En-
glishman. If on a first acquaintance he seemed
reserved, quite icy in his air — patience; this
Champagne will thaw. And if it never do,
better frozen Champagne than liquid vinegar.
There were nine gentlemen, all bachelors, at
the dinner. One was from "No. — , King's
Bench Walk, Temple;" a second, third, and
fourth, and fifth, from various courts or passages
christened with some similarly rich resounding
syllables. It was indeed a sort of Senate of the
Bachelors, sent to this dinner from widely-scat-
tered districts, to represent the general celibacy
of the Temple. Nay it was, by representation,
a Grand Parliament of the best Bachelors in
universal London; several of those present be-
ing from distant quarters of the town, noted
immemorial seats of lawyers and unmarried
men — Lincoln's Inn, Furnival's Inn; and one
gentleman, upon whom I looked with a sort of
collateral awe, hailed from the spot where Lord
Verulam once abode a bachelor — Gray's Inn.
The apartment was well up toward heaven.
I know not how many strange old stairs I climb-
ed to get to it. But a good dinner, with famous
company, should be well earned. No doubt our
host had his dining-room so high with a view to
secure the prior exercise necessary to the due
relishing and digesting of it.
The furniture was wonderfully unpretending,
old, and snug. No new shining mahogany,
sticky with undried varnish; no uncomfortably
luxurious ottomans, and sofas too fine to use,
vexed you in this sedate apartment. It is a
thing which every sensible American should
learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare
and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not in-
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ican Benedick snatches, down-town, a tough
chop in a gilded show-box; the English bach-
elor leisurely dines at home on that incompar-
able South Down of his, off a plain deal board.
The ceiling of the room was low. Who wants
to dine under the dome of St. Peter's? High
ceilings! If that is your demand, and the higher
the better, and you be so very tall, then go dine
out with the topping giraffe in the open air.
In good time the nine gentlemen sat down to
nine covers, and soon were fairly under way.
If I remember right, ox-tail soup inaugurated
the affair. Of a rich russet hue, its agreeable
flavor dissipated my first confounding of its main
ingredient with teamster's gads and the raw-
hides of ushers. (By way of interlude, we here
drank a little claret.) Neptune's was the next
tribute rendered — turbot coming second; snow-
white, flaky, and just gelatinous enough, not too
turtleish in its unctuousness.
(At this point we refreshed ourselves with a
glass of sherry.) After these light skirmishers
had vanished, the heavy artillery of the feast
marched in, led by that well-known English
generalissimo, roast beef. For aids-de-camp we
had a saddle of mutton, a fat turkey, a chicken-
pie, and endless other savory things; while for
avant-couriers came nine silver flagons of hum-
ming ale. This heavy ordnance having departed
on the track of the light skirmishers, a picked
brigade of game-fowl encamped upon the board,
their camp-fires lit by the ruddiest of decanters.
Tarts and puddings followed, with innumer-
able niceties; then cheese and crackers. (By
way of ceremony, simply, only to keep up good
old fashions, we here each drank a glass of good
old port.)
The cloth was now removed, and like Blu-
cher's army coming in at the death on the field
of Waterloo, in marched a fresh detachment of
bottles, dusty with their hurried march.
All these manoeuvrings of the forces were su-
perintended by a surprising old field-marshal (I
can not school myself to call him by the inglo-
rious name of waiter), with snowy hair and nap-
kin, and a head like Socrates. Amidst all the
hilarity of the feast, intent on important busi-
ness, he disdained to smile. Venerable man!
I have above endeavored to give some slight
schedule of the general plan of operations. But
any one knows that a good, genial dinner is a
sort of pell-mell, indiscriminate affair, quite
baffling to detail in all particulars. Thus, I
spoke of taking a glass of claret, and a glass of
sherry, and a glass of port, and a mug of ale —
all at certain specific periods and times. But
those were merely the state bumpers, so to
speak. Innumerable impromptu glasses were
drained between the periods of those grand im-
posing ones.
The nine bachelors seemed to have the most
tender concern for each other's health. All the
time, in flowing wine, they most earnestly ex-
pressed their sincerest wishes for the entire well-
being and lasting hygiene of the gentlemen on
the right and on the left. I noticed that when
one of these kind bachelors desired a little more
wine (just for his stomach's sake, like Timothy),
he would not help himself to it unless some
other bachelor would join him. It seemed held
something indelicate, selfish, and unfraternal, to
be seen taking a lonely, unparticipated glass.
Meantime, as the wine ran apace, the spirits of
the company grew more and more to perfect
genialness and unconstraint. They related all
sorts of pleasant stories. Choice experiences in
their private lives were now brought out, like
choice brands of Moselle or Rhenish, only kept
for particular company. One told us how mel-
lowly he lived when a student at Oxford; with
various spicy anecdotes of most frank-hearted
noble lords, his liberal companions. Another
bachelor, a gray-headed man, with a sunny face,
who, by his own account, embraced every op-
portunity of leisure to cross over into the Low
Countries, on sudden tours of inspection of the
fine old Flemish architecture there — this learn-
ed, white-haired, sunny-faced old bachelor, ex-
celledin his descriptions of the elaborate splen-
dors of those old guild-halls, town-halls, and
stadthold-houses, to be seen in the land of the
ancient Flemings. A third was a great fre-
quenter of the British Museum, and knew all
about scores of wonderful antiquities, of Oriental
manuscripts, and costly books without a dupli-
cate. A fourth had lately returned from a trip
to Old Granada, and, of course, was full of Sar-
acenic scenery. A fifth had a funny case in law
to tell. A sixth was erudite in wines. A sev-
enth had a strange characteristic anecdote of the
private life of the Iron Duke, never printed, and
never before announced in any public or private
company. An eighth had lately been amusing
his evenings, now and then, with translating a
comic poem of Pulci's. He quoted for us the
more amusing passages.
And so the evening slipped along, the hours
told, not by a water-clock, like King Alfred's,
but a wine-chronometer. Meantime the table
seemed a sort of Epsom Heath; a regular ring,
where the decanters galloped round. For fear
one decanter should not with sufficient speed
reach his destination, another was sent express
after him to hurry him; and then a third to
hurry the second; and so on with a fourth and
fifth. And throughout all this nothing loud,
nothing unmannerly, nothing turbulent. I am
quite sure, from the scrupulous gravity and aus-
terity of his air, that had Socrates, the field-
marshal, perceived aught of indecorum in the
the company he served, he would have forth-
with departed without giving warning. I after-
ward learned that, during the repast, an invalid
bachelor in an adjoining chamber enjoyed his
first sound refreshing slumber in three long,
weary weeks.
It was the very perfection of quiet absorption
of good living, good drinking, good feeling, and
good talk. We were a band of brothers. Com-
fort — fraternal, household comfort, was the grand
trait of the affair. Also, you could plainly see
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children to give an anxious thought. Almost all
of them were travelers, too; for bachelors alone
can travel freely, and without any twinges of
their consciences touching desertion of the fire-
side.
The thing called pain, the bugbear styled
trouble — those two legends seemed preposter-
ous to their bachelor imaginations. How could
men of liberal sense, ripe scholarship in the
world, and capacious philosophical and con-
vivial understandings — how could they suffer
themselves to be imposed upon by such monk-
ishfables? Pain! Trouble! As well talk of
Catholic miracles. No such thing. — Pass the
sherry, Sir. — Pooh, pooh! Can't be! — The port,
Sir, if you please. Nonsense; don't tell me so.
— The decanter stops with you, Sir, I believe.
And so it went.
Not long after the cloth was drawn our host
glanced significantly upon Socrates, who, sol-
emnly stepping to the stand, returned with an
immense convolved horn, a regular Jericho
horn, mounted with polished silver, and other-
wise chased and curiously enriched; not omit-
ting two life-like goat's heads, with four more
horns of solid silver, projecting from opposite
sides of the mouth of the noble main horn.
Not having heard that our host was a per-
former on the bugle, I was surprised to see him
lift this horn from the table, as if he were about
to blow an inspiring blast. But I was relieved
from this, and set quite right as touching the
purposes of the horn, by his now inserting his
thumb and forefinger into its mouth; where-
upon a slight aroma was stirred up, and my
nostrils were greeted with the smell of some
choice Rappee. It was a mull of snuff. It
went the rounds. Capital idea this, thought I,
of taking snuff at about this juncture. This good-
ly fashion must be introduced among my coun-
trymen at home, further ruminated I.
The remarkable decorum of the nine bach-
elors — a decorum not to be affected by any
quantity of wine — a decorum unassailable by
any degree of mirthfulness — this was again set
in a forcible light to me, by now observing that,
though they took snuff very freely, yet not a
man so far violated the proprieties, or so far
molested the invalid bachelor in the adjoining
room as to indulge himself in a sneeze. The
snuff was snuffed silently, as if it had been
some fine innoxious powder brushed off the
wings of butterflies.
But fine though they be, bachelors' dinners,
like bachelors' lives, can not endure forever.
The time came for breaking up. One by one
the bachelors took their hats, and two by two,
and arm-in-arm they descended, still convers-
ing, to the flagging of the court; some going to
their neighboring chambers to turn over the
Decameron ere retiring for the night; some to
to smoke a cigar, promenading in the garden on
the cool river-side; some to make for the street,
call a hack, and be driven snugly to their dis-
tant lodgings.
I was the last lingerer.
"Well," said my smiling host, "what do you
think of the Temple here, and the sort of life
we bachelors make out to live in it?"
"Sir," said I, with a burst of admiring can-
dor — "Sir, this is the very Paradise of Bach-
elors!"
II. THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS.
It lies not far from Woedolor Mountain in
New England. Turning to the east, right out
from among bright farms and sunny meadows,
nodding in early June with odorous grasses, you
enter ascendingly among bleak hills. These
gradually close in upon a dusky pass, which,
from the violent Gulf Stream of air unceasing-
ly driving between its cloven walls of haggard
rock, as well as from the tradition of a crazy
spinster's hut having long ago stood somewhere
hereabouts, is called the Mad Maid's Bellows'-
pipe.
Winding along at the bottom of the gorge is
a dangerously narrow wheel-road, occupying the
bed of a former torrent. Following this road
to its highest point, you stand as within a
Dantean gateway. From the steepness of the
walls here, their strangely ebon hue, and the
sudden contraction of the gorge, this particular
point is called the Black Notch. The ravine
now expandingly descends into a great, purple,
hopper-shaped hollow, far sunk among many
Plutonian, shaggy-wooded mountains. By the
country people this hollow is called the Devil's
Dungeon. Sounds of torrents fall on all sides
upon the ear. These rapid waters unite at
last in one turbid brick-colored stream, boiling
through a flume among enormous boulders.
They call this strange-colored torrent Blood
River. Gaining a dark precipice it wheels sud-
denly to the west, and makes one maniac spring
of sixty feet into the arms of a stunted wood of
gray haired pines, between which it thence eddies
on its further way down to the invisible low-
lands.
Conspicuously crowning a rocky bluff high
to one side, at the cataract's verge, is the ruin
of an old saw-mill, built in those primitive times
when vast pines and hemlocks superabounded
throughout the neighboring region. The black-
mossed bulk of those immense, rough-hewn,
and spike-knotted logs, here and there tumbled
all together, in long abandonment and decay,
or left in solitary, perilous projection over the
cataract's gloomy brink, impart to this rude
wooden ruin not only much of the aspect of one
of rough-quarried stone, but also a sort of
feudal, Rhineland, and Thurmberg look, derived
from the pinnacled wildness of the neighboring
scenery.
Not far from the bottom of the Dungeon
stands a large white-washed building, relieved,
like some great whited sepulchre, against the
sullen background of mountain-side firs, and
other hardy evergreens, inaccessibly rising in
grim terraces for some two thousand feet.
The building is a paper-mill.
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Having embarked on a large scale in the seeds-
man's business (so extensively and broadcast,
indeed, that at length my seeds were distributed
through all the Eastern and Northern States
and even fell into the far soil of Missouri and
the Carolinas), the demand for paper at my
place became so great, that the expenditure
soon amounted to a most important item in the
general account. It need hardly be hinted how
paper comes into use with seedsmen, as en-
velopes. These are mostly made of yellowish
paper, folded square; and when filled, are all
but flat, and being stamped, and superscribed
with the nature of the seeds contained, assume
not a little the appearance of business-letters
ready for the mail. Of these small envelopes I
used an incredible quantity — several hundreds
of thousands in a year. For a time I had purchased
my paper from the wholesale dealers in
a neighboring town. For economy's sake, and
partly for the adventure of the trip, I now resolved
to cross the mountains, some sixty miles,
and order my future paper at the Devil's Dun-
geon paper-mill.
The sleighing being uncommonly fine toward
the end of January, and promising to hold so
for no small period, in spite of the bitter cold I
started one gray Friday noon in my pung, well
fitted with buffalo and wolf robes; and, spend-
ingone night on the road, next noon came in
sight of Woedolor Mountain.
The far summit fairly smoked with frost;
white vapors curled up from its white-wooded
top, as from a chimney. The intense congela-
tion made the whole country look like one
petrifaction. The steel shoes of my pung
craunched and gritted over the vitreous, chippy
snow, as if it had been broken glass. The forests
here and there skirting the route, feeling the
same all-stiffening influence, their inmost fibres
penetrated with the cold, strangely groaned —
not in the swaying branches merely, but like-
wise in the vertical trunk — as the fitful gusts re-
morselessly swept through them. Brittle with
excessive frost, many colossal tough-grained
maples, snapped in twain like pipe-stems, cum-
bered the unfeeling earth.
Flaked all over with frozen sweat, white as a
milky ram, his nostrils at each breath sending
forth two horn-shaped shoots of heated respira-
tion, Black, my good horse, but six years old,
started at a sudden turn, where, right across the
track — not ten minutes fallen — an old distorted
hemlock lay, darkly undulatory as an anaconda.
Gaining the Bellows'-pipe, the violent blast,
dead from behind, all but shoved my high-back-
ed pung up-hill. The gust shrieked through
the shivered pass, as if laden with lost spirits
bound to the unhappy world. Ere gaining the
summit, Black, my horse, as if exasperated by
the cutting wind, slung out with his strong hind
legs, tore the light pung straight up-hill, and
sweeping grazingly through the narrow notch,
sped downward madly past the ruined saw-mill.
Into the Devil's Dungeon horse and cataract
rushed together.
With might and main, quitting my seat and
robes, and standing backward, with one foot
braced against the dash-board, I rasped and
churned the bit, and stopped him just in time
to avoid collision, at a turn, with the bleak noz-
zle of a rock, couchant like a lion in the way —
a road-side rock.
At first I could not discover the paper-mill.
The whole hollow gleamed with the white,
except, here and there, where a pinnacle of
granite showed one wind-swept angle bare. The
mountains stood pinned in shrouds — a pass of
Alpine corpses. Where stands the mill? Sud-
denly a whirling, humming sound broke upon
my ear. I looked, and there, like an arrested
avalanche, lay the large whitewashed factory.
It was subordinately surrounded by a cluster of
other and smaller buildings, some of which, from
their cheap, blank air, great length, gregarious
windows, and comfortless expression, no doubt
were boarding-houses of the operatives. A
snow-white hamlet amidst the snows. Various
rude, irregular squares and courts resulted from
the somewhat picturesque clusterings of these
buildings, owing to the broken, rocky nature of
the ground, which forbade all method in their
relative arrangement. Several narrow lanes
and alleys, too, partly blocked with snow fallen
from the roof, cut up the hamlet in all direc-
tions.
When, turning from the traveled highway,
jingling with bells of numerous farmers — who
availing themselves of the fine sleighing, were
dragging their wood to market — and frequently
diversified with swift cutters dashing from inn
to inn of the scattered villages — when, I say,
turning from that bustling main-road, I by de-
grees wound into the Mad Maid's Bellows'-pipe,
and saw the grim Black Notch beyond, then some-
thing latent, as well as something obvious in the
time and scene, strangely brought back to my
mind my first sight of dark and grimy Temple-
Bar. And when Black, my horse, went darting
through the Notch, perilously grazing its rocky
wall, I remembered being in a runaway London
omnibus, which in much the same sort of style,
though by no means at an equal rate, dashed
through the ancient arch of Wren. Though the
two objects did by no means completely corre-
spond, yet this partial inadequacy but served to
tinge the similitude not less with the vividness
than the disorder of a dream. So that, when upon
reining up at the protruding rock I at last
caught sight of the quaint groupings of the fac-
tory-buildings, and with the traveled highway
and the Notch behind, found myself all alone,
silently and privily stealing through deep-cloven
passages into this sequestered spot, and saw the
long, high-gabled main factory edifice, with a
rude tower — for hoisting heavy boxes — at one
end, standing among its crowded outbuildings
and boarding-houses, as the Temple Church
amidst the surrounding offices and dormitories,
and when the marvelous retirement of this mys-
terious mountain nook fastened its whole spell
upon me, then, what memory lacked, all trib-
[Description: Image of sixth page of "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of M!
]
self, "This is the very counterpart of the Paradise
of Bachelors, but snowed upon, and frost-paint-
ed to a sepulchre."
Dismounting, and warily picking my way
down the dangerous declivity — horse and man
both sliding now and then upon the icy ledges
— at length I drove, or the blast drove me, into
the largest square, before one side of the main
edifice. Piercingly and shrilly the shotted blast
blew by the corner; and redly and demoniacally
boiled Blood River at one side. A long wood-
pile, of many scores of cords, all glittering in
mail of crusted ice, stood crosswise in the
square. A row of horse-posts, their north sides
plastered with adhesive snow, flanked the fac-
tory wall. The bleak frost packed and paved
the square as with some ringing metal.
The inverted similitude recurred — "The
sweet tranquil Temple garden, with the Thames
bordering its green beds," strangely meditated I.
But where are the gay bachelors?
Then, as I and my horse stood shivering in
the wind-spray, a girl ran from a neighboring
dormitory door, and throwing her thin apron
over her bare head, made for the opposite
building.
"One moment, my girl; is there no shed
hereabouts which I may drive into?"
Pausing, she turned upon me a face pale with
work, and blue with cold; an eye supernatural
with unrelated misery.
''Nay," faltered I, "I mistook you. Go on;
I want nothing."
Leading my horse close to the door from
which she had come, I knocked. Another pale,
blue girl appeared, shivering in the doorway as, to
prevent the blast, she jealously held the door ajar.
"Nay, I mistake again. In God's name shut
the door. But hold, is there no man about?"
That moment a dark-complexioned well-
wrapped personage passed, making for the fac-
tory door, and spying him coming, the girl rapid-
ly closed the other one.
"Is there no horse-shed here, Sir?"
"Yonder, to the wood-shed," he replied, and
disappeared inside the factory.
With much ado I managed to wedge in horse
and pung between the scattered piles of wood
all sawn and split. Then, blanketing my horse,
and piling my buffalo on the blanket's top, and
tucking in its edges well around the breast-band
and breeching, so that the wind might not strip
him bare, I tied him fast, and ran lamely for the
factory door, stiff with frost, and cumbered with
my driver's dread-naught.
Immediately I found myself standing in a
spacious, intolerably lighted by long rows
of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene
without.
At rows of blank-looking counters sat rows
of blank-looking girls, with blank, white folders
in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank
paper.
In one corner stood some huge frame of
ponderous iron, with a vertical thing like a pis-
ton periodically rising and falling upon a heavy
wooden block. Before it — its tame minister —
stood a tall girl, feeding the iron animal with
half-quires of rose-hued note paper, which, at
every downward dab of the piston-like machine,
received in the corner the impress of a wreath
of roses. I looked from the rosy paper to the
pallid cheek, but said nothing.
Seated before a long apparatus, strung with
long, slender strings like any harp, another girl
was feeding it with foolscap sheets, which, so
soon as they curiously traveled from her on the
cords, were withdrawn at the opposite end of
the machine by a second girl. They came to
the first girl blank; they went to the second
girl ruled.
I looked upon the first girl's brow, and saw it
was young and fair; I looked upon the second
girl's brow, and saw it was ruled and wrinkled.
Then, as I still looked, the two — for some small
variety to the monotony — changed places; and
where had stood the young, fair brow, now stood
the ruled and wrinkled one.
Perched high upon a narrow platform, and
still higher upon a high stool crowning it, sat
another figure serving some other iron animal;
while below the platform sat her mate in some
sort of reciprocal attendance.
Not a syllable was breathed. Nothing was
heard but the low, steady, overruling hum of
the iron animals. The human voice was ban-
ished from the spot. Machinery — that vaunted
slave of humanity — here stood menially served
by human beings, who served mutely and cring-
ingly as the slave serves the Sultan. The girls
did not so much seem accessory wheels to the
general machinery as mere cogs to the wheels.
All this scene around me was instantaneously
taken in at one sweeping glance — even before I
had proceeded to unwind the heavy fur tippet
from around my neck. But as soon as this fell
from me the dark-complexioned man, standing
close by, raised a sudden cry, and seizing my
arm, dragged me out into the open air, and
without pausing for word instantly caught up
some congealed snow and began rubbing both
my cheeks.
"Two white spots like the whites of your
eyes," he said; "man, your cheeks are frozen."
"That may well be," muttered I; "'tis some
wonder the frost of the Devil's Dungeon strikes
in no deeper. Rub away."
Soon a horrible, tearing pain caught at my
reviving cheeks. Two gaunt blood-hounds, one
on each side, seemed mumbling them. I seemed
Actæon.
Presently, when all was over, I re-entered
the factory, made known my business, con-
cluded it satisfactorily, and then begged to be
conducted throughout the place to view it.
"Cupid is the boy for that," said the dark-
complexioned man. "Cupid!" and by this
odd fancy-name calling a dimpled, red-cheeked,
spirited-looking, forward little fellow, who was
rather impudently, I thought, gliding about
among the passive-looking girls — like a gold
[Description: Image of seventh page of "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of M!
]
fish through hueless waves — yet doing nothing
in particular that I could see, the man bade
him lead the stranger through the edifice.
"Come first and see the water-wheel," said
this lively lad, with the air of boyishly-brisk
importance.
Quitting the folding-room, we crossed some
damp, cold boards, and stood beneath a area
wet shed, incessantly showering with foam, like
the green barnacled bow of some East India-
man in a gale. Round and round here went the
enormous revolutions of the dark colossal water-
wheel, grim with its one immutable purpose.
"This sets our whole machinery a-going, Sir
in every part of all these buildings; where the
girls work and all."
I looked, and saw that the turbid waters of
Blood River had not changed their hue by com-
ing under the use of man.
"You make only blank paper; no printing
of any sort, I suppose? All blank paper, don't
you?"
"Certainly; what else should a paper-factory
make?"
The lad here looked at me as if suspicious
of my common-sense.
"Oh, to be sure!" said I, confused and stam-
mering; "it only struck me as so strange that
red waters should turn out pale chee — paper, I
mean."
He took me up a wet and rickety stair to a
great light room, furnished with no visible thing
but rude, manger-like receptacles running all
round its sides; and up to these mangers, like
so many mares haltered to the rack, stood rows
of girls. Before each was vertically thrust up
a long, glittering scythe, immovably fixed at
bottom to the manger-edge. The curve of the
scythe, and its having no snath to it, made it
look exactly like a sword. To and fro, across
the sharp edge, the girls forever dragged long
strips of rags, washed white, picked from baskets
at one side; thus ripping asunder every seam,
and converting the tatters almost into lint. The
air swam with the fine, poisonous particles, which
from all sides darted, subtilely, as motes in sun-
beams, into the lungs.
"This is the rag-room," coughed the boy.
"You find it rather stifling here," coughed I,
in answer; " but the girls don't cough."
"Oh, they are used to it."
"Where do you get such hosts of rags?" pick-
ing up a handful from a basket.
"Some from the country round about; some
from far over sea — Leghorn and London."
"'Tis not unlikely, then," murmured I, "that
among these heaps of rags there may be some
old shirts, gathered from the dormitories of the
Paradise of Bachelors. But the buttons are all
dropped off. Pray, my lad, do you ever find
any bachelor's buttons hereabouts?"
"None grow in this part of the country. The
Devil's Dungeon is no place for flowers."
"Oh! you mean the flowers so called — the
Bachelor's Buttons?"
"And was not that what you asked about?
Or did you mean the gold bosom-buttons of our
boss, Old Bach, as our whispering girls all call
him?"
"The man, then, I saw below is a bachelor,
is he?"
"Oh, yes, he's a Bach."
"The edges of those swords, they are turned
outward from the girls, if I see right; but their
rags and fingers fly so, I can not distinctly see."
"Turned outward."
Yes, murmured I to myself; I see it now;
turned outward, and each erected sword is
so borne, edge-outward, before each girl. If
my reading fails me not, just so, of old, con-
demned state-prisoners went from the hall of
judgment to their doom: an officer before, bear-
ing a sword, its edge turned outward, in signif-
icance of their fatal sentence. So, through con-
sumptive pallors of this blank, raggy life, go
these white girls to death.
"Those scythes look very sharp," again turn-
ing toward the boy.
"Yes; they have to keep them so. Look!"
That moment two of the girls, dropping their
rags, plied each a whet-stone up and down the
sword-blade. My unaccustomed blood curdled
at the sharp shriek of the tormented steel.
Their own executioners; themselves whetting
the very swords that slay them; meditated I.
"What makes those girls so sheet-white, my lad?"
"Why" — with a roguish twinkle, pure igno-
rant drollery, not knowing heartlessness — "I
suppose the handling of such white bits of sheets
all the time makes them so sheety."
"Let us leave the rag-room now, my lad."
More tragical and more inscrutably mysteri-
ous than any mystic sight, human or machine,
throughout the factory, was the strange inno-
cence of cruel-heartedness in this usage-hard-
ened boy.
"And now," said he, cheerily, "I suppose
you want to see our great machine, which cost
us twelve thousand dollars only last autumn.
That's the machine that makes the paper, too.
This way, Sir."
Following him, I crossed a large, bespattered
place, with two great round vats in it, full of a
white, wet, woolly-looking stuff, not unlike the
albuminous part of an egg, soft-boiled.
"There," said Cupid, tapping the vats care-
lessly, "these are the first beginnings of the
paper; this white pulp you see. Look how it
swims bubbling round and round, moved by the
paddle here. From hence it pours from both
vats into that one common channel yonder; and
so goes, mixed up and leisurely, to the great
machine. And now for that."
He led me into a room, stifling with a strange,
blood-like, abdominal heat, as if here, true
enough, were being finally developed the germ-
inous particles lately seen.
Before me, rolled out like some long East-
ern manuscript, lay stretched one continuous
length of iron frame-work — multitudinous and
mystical, with all sorts of rollers, wheels, and
[Description: Image of eighth page of "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of M!
]
motion.
"Here first comes the pulp now," said Cupid,
pointing to the nighest end of the machine.
"See; first it pours out and spreads itself upon
this wide, sloping board; and then — look —
slides, thin and quivering, beneath the first
roller there. Follow on now, and see it as it
slides from under that to the next cylinder.
There; see how it has become just a very little
less pulpy now. One step more, and it grows
still more to some slight consistence. Still an-
other cylinder, and it is so knitted — though as
yet mere dragon-fly wing — that it forms an air-
bridge here, like a suspended cobweb, between
two more separated rollers; and flowing over
the last one, and under again, and doubling
about there out of sight for a minute among all
those mixed cylinders you indistinctly see, it
reappears here, looking now at last a little less
like pulp and more like paper, but still quite
delicate and defective yet awhile. But — a lit-
tle further onward, Sir, if you please — here
now, at this further point, it puts on something
of a real look, as if it might turn out to be some-
thing you might possibly handle in the end.
But it's not yet done, Sir. Good way to travel
yet, and plenty more of cylinders must roll it."
"Bless my soul!" said I, amazed at the elon-
gation, interminable convolutions, and deliber-
ate slowness of the machine; "it must take a
long time for the pulp to pass from end to end,
and come out paper."
"Oh! not so long," smiled the precocious
lad, with a superior and patronizing air; "only
nine minutes. But look; you may try it for
yourself. Have you a bit of paper? Ah! here's
a bit on the floor. Now mark that with any
word you please, and let me dab it on here, and
we'll see how long before it comes out at the
other end."
"Well, let me see," said I, taking out my
pencil; "come, I'll mark it with your name."
Bidding me take out my watch, Cupid adroit-
ly dropped the inscribed slip on an exposed part
of the incipient mass.
Instantly my eye marked the second-hand on
my dial-plate.
Slowly I followed the slip, inch by inch;
sometimes pausing for full half a minute as it
disappeared beneath inscrutable groups of the
lower cylinders, but only gradually to emerge
again; and so, on, and on, and on — inch by
inch; now in open sight, sliding along like a
freckle on the quivering sheet, and then again
wholly vanished; and so, on, and on, and on —
inch by inch; all the time the main sheet grow-
ing more and more to final firmness — when, sud-
denly, I saw a sort of paper-fall, not wholly un-
like a water-fall; a scissory sound smote my
ear, as of some cord being snapped, and down
dropped an unfolded sheet of perfect foolscap,
with my "Cupid" half faded out of it, and still
moist and warm.
My travels were at an end, for here was the
end of the machine.
"Well, how long was it ?" said Cupid.
"Nine minutes to a second," replied I, watch
in hand.
"I told you so."
For a moment a curious emotion filled me,
not wholly unlike that which one might experi-
ence at the fulfillment of some mysterious proph-
ecy. But how absurd, thought I again; the
thing is a mere machine, the essence of which
is unvarying punctuality and precision.
Previously absorbed by the wheels and cylin-
ders, my attention was now directed to a sad-
looking woman standing by.
"That is rather an elderly person so silently
tending the machine-end here. She would not
seem wholly used to it either."
"Oh," knowingly whispered Cupid, through
the din, "she only came last week. She was a
nurse formerly. But the business is poor in
these parts, and she's left it. But look at the
paper she is piling there."
"Ay, foolscap," handling the piles of moist,
warm sheets, which continually were being de-
livered into the woman's waiting hands. "Don't
you turn out any thing but foolscap at this ma-
chine?"
"Oh, sometimes, but not often, we turn out
finer work — cream-laid and royal sheets, we
call them. But foolscap being in chief demand,
we turn out foolscap most."
It was very curious. Looking at that blank
paper continually dropping, dropping, dropping,
my mind ran on in wonderings of those strange
uses to which those thousand sheets eventually
would be put. All sorts of writings would be
writ on those now vacant things — sermons, law-
yers' briefs, physicians' prescriptions, love-let-
ters, marriage certificates, bills of divorce, regis-
ters of births, death-warrants, and so on, without
end. Then, recurring back to them as they here
lay all blank, I could not but bethink me of that
celebrated comparison of John Locke, who, in
demonstration of his theory that man had no
innate ideas, compared the human mind at birth
to a sheet of blank paper; something destined
to be scribbled on, but what sort of characters
no soul might tell.
Pacing slowly to and fro along the involved
machine, still humming with its play, I was
struck as well by the inevitability as the evolve-
ment-power in all its motions.
"Does that thin cobweb there," said I, point-
ing to the sheet in its more imperfect stage,
"does that never tear or break? It is marvel-
ous fragile, and yet this machine it passes
through is so mighty."
"It never is known to tear a hair's point."
"Does it never stop — get clogged?"
"No. It must go. The machinery makes it
go just so; just that very way, and at that very
pace you there plainly see it go. The pulp
can't help going."
Something of awe now stole over me, as I
gazed upon this inflexible iron animal. Al-
ways, more or less, machinery of this ponderous,
elaborate sort strikes, in some moods, strange
[Description: Image of ninth page of "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of M!
]
panting Behemoth might. But what made the
thing I saw so specially terrible to me was the
metallic necessity, the unbudging fatality which
governed it. Though, here and there, I could
not follow the thin, gauzy vail of pulp in the
course of its more mysterious or entirely invis-
ible advance, yet it was indubitable that, at
those points where it eluded me, it still marched
on in unvarying docility to the autocratic cun-
ning of the machine. A fascination fastened
on me. I stood spell-bound and wandering in
my soul. Before my eyes — there, passing in
slow procession along the wheeling cylinders, I
seemed to see, glued to the pallid incipience of
the pulp, the yet more pallid faces of all the
pallid girls I had eyed that heavy day. Slowly,
mournfully, beseechingly, yet unresistingly, they
gleamed along, their agony dimly outlined on
the imperfect paper, like the print of the tor-
mented face on the handkerchief of Saint Ve-
ronica.
"Halloa! the heat of the room is too much
for you," cried Cupid, staring at me.
"No — I am rather chill, if any thing."
"Come out, Sir — out — out," and, with the
protecting air of a careful father, the precocious
lad hurried me outside.
In a few moments, feeling revived a little, I
went into the folding-room — the first room I
had entered, and where the desk for transacting
business stood, surrounded by the blank count-
ers and blank girls engaged at them.
"Cupid here has led me a strange tour," said
I to the dark-complexioned man before men-
tioned, whom I had ere this discovered not only
to be an old bachelor, but also the principal pro-
prietor. "Yours is a most wonderful factory.
Your great machine is a miracle of inscrutable
intricacy."
"Yes, all our visitors think it so. But we
don't have many. We are in a very out-of-the-
way corner here. Few inhabitants, too. Most
of our girls come from far-off villages."
"The girls," echoed I, glancing round at their
silent forms. " Why is it, Sir, that in most factories,
female operatives, of whatever age, are
indiscriminately called girls, never women?"
"Oh! as to that — why, I suppose, the fact
of their being generally unmarried — that's the
reason, I should think. But it never struck
me before. For our factory here, we will not
have married women; they are apt to be off-
and-on too much. We want none but steady
workers: twelve hours to the day, day after day,
through the three hundred and sixty-five days,
excepting Sundays, Thanksgiving, and Fast-
days. That's our rule. And so, having no
married women, what females we have are
rightly enough called girls."
"Then these are all maids," said I, while
some pained homage to their pale virginity made
me involuntarily bow.
"All maids."
Again the strange emotion filled me.
"Your cheeks look whitish yet, Sir," said the
man, gazing at me narrowly. "You must be
careful going home. Do they pain you at all
now? It's a bad sign, if they do."
"No doubt, Sir," answered I, "when once I
have got out of the Devil's Dungeon, I shall
feel them mending."
"Ah, yes; the winter air in valleys, or gorges,
or any sunken place, is far colder and more bit-
ter than elsewhere. You would hardly believe
it now, but it is colder here than at the top of
Woedolor Mountain."
"I dare say it is, Sir. But time presses me;
I must depart."
With that, remuffling myself in dread-naught
and tippet, thrusting my hands into my huge
seal-skin mittens, I sallied out into the nipping
air, and found poor Black, my horse, all cring-
ing and doubled up with the cold.
Soon, wrapped in furs and meditations, I as-
cended from the Devil's Dungeon.
At the Black Notch I paused, and once more
bethought me of Temple-Bar. Then, shooting
through the pass, all alone with inscrutable na-
ture, I exclaimed — Oh! Paradise of Bachelors!
and oh! Tartarus of Maids!
| The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids | |