CHAPTER VII.
THE FRIENDS AND RELATIONS OF JAMES.
MR. ZEBEDEE MARVYN, the father of James, was the sample of anindividuality so purely the result of New England society and educationthat he must be embodied in our story as a representative man of thetimes.
He owned a large farm in the immediate vicinity of Newport, which heworked with his own hands and kept under the most careful cultivation.He was a man past the middle of life, with a white head, a keen blueeye, and a face graven deeply with the lines of energy and thought. Hiswas one of those clearly-cut minds which New England forms among herfarmers, as she forms quartz crystals in her mountains, by a sort ofgradual influence flowing through every pore of her soil and system.
His education, properly so called, had been merely that of those commonschools and academies with which the States are thickly sown, andwhich are the springs of so much intellectual activity. Here he hadlearned to think and to inquire,—a process which had not ceased withhis schooldays. Though toiling daily with his sons and hired man in allthe minutiæ of a farmer’s life, he kept an observant eye on the fieldof literature, and there was not a new publication heard of that he didnot immediately find means to add it to his yearly increasing stock ofbooks. In particular was he a well-read and careful theologian, andall the controversial tracts, sermons, and books, with which then, asever since, New England has abounded, not only lay on his shelves, buthad his pencilled annotations, queries, and comments thickly scatteredalong their margins. There was scarce an office of public trust whichhad not at one time or another been filled by him. He was deacon ofthe church, chairman of the school committee, justice of the peace,had been twice representative in the State legislature, and was inpermanence a sort of adviser-general in all cases between neighbour andneighbour. Among other acquisitions, he had gained some knowledge ofthe general forms of law, and his advice was often asked in preferenceto that of the regular practitioners.
His dwelling was one of those large, square, white, green-blindedmansions—cool, clean, and roomy—wherein the respectability of NewEngland in those days rejoiced. The windows were shaded by clumps oflilacs; the deep yard with its white fence enclosed a sweep of clean,short grass and a few fruit-trees. Opposite the house was a smallblacksmith’s shed, which, of a wet day, was sparkling and livelywith bellows and ringing forge, while Mr. Zebedee and his sons werehammering and pounding and putting in order anything that was outof the way in farming-tools or establishments. Not unfrequently thelatest scientific work or the last tractate of theology lay open byhis side, the contents of which would be discussed with a neighbouror two as they entered; for, to say the truth, many a neighbour, lessforehanded and thrifty, felt the benefit of this arrangement of Mr.Zebedee, and would drop in to see if he ‘wouldn’t just tighten thatrivet,’ or ‘kind o’ease out that ’ere brace,’ or ‘let a feller have aturn with his bellows or a stroke or two on his anvil,’—to all whichthe good man consented with a grave obligingness. The fact was, thatas nothing in the establishment of Mr. Marvyn was often broken or lostor out of place, he had frequent applications to lend to those lessfortunate persons, always to be found, who supply their own lack ofconsiderateness from the abundance of their neighbours.
He who is known always to be in hand, and always obliging, in aneighbourhood, stands the chance sometimes of having nothing forhimself. Mr. Zebedee reflected quietly on this subject, taking it, ashe did all others, into grave and orderly consideration, and finallyprovided a complete set of tools, which he kept for the purpose oflending; and when any of these were lent, he told the next applicantquietly that the axe or the hoe was already out, and thus he reconciledthe Scripture which commanded him to ‘do good and lend’ with that lawof order which was written in his nature.
Early in life Mr. Marvyn had married one of the handsomest girlsof his acquaintance, who had brought him a thriving and healthyfamily of children, of whom James was the youngest. Mrs. Marvyn was,at this time, a tall, sad-eyed, gentle-mannered woman, thoughtful,earnest, deep-natured, though sparing in the matter of words. In allher household arrangements, she had the same thrift and order whichcharacterized her husband; but hers was a mind of a finer and higherstamp than his.
In her bedroom, near by her work-basket, stood a table covered withbooks,—and so systematic were her household arrangements, that shenever any day missed her regular hours for reading. One who shouldhave looked over this table would have seen there how eager and hungrya mind was hid behind the silent eyes of this quiet woman. History,biography, mathematics, volumes of the encyclopædia, poetry, novels,all alike found their time and place there,—and while she pursuedher household labours, the busy, active soul within travelled cyclesand cycles of thought, few of which ever found expression in words.What might be that marvellous music of the _Miserere_, of which sheread, that it convulsed crowds and drew groans and tears from the mostobdurate? What might be those wondrous pictures of Raphael and Leonardoda Vinci? What would it be to see the Apollo, the Venus? What was thecharm that enchanted the old marbles—charm untold and inconceivableto one who had never seen even the slightest approach to a work ofart? Then those glaciers of Switzerland, that grand, unapproachablemixture of beauty and sublimity in her mountains!—what would it be toone who could see it? Then what were all those harmonies of which sheread,—masses, fugues, symphonies? Oh, could she once hear the Miserereof Mozart, just to know what music was like! And the cathedrals, whatwere they? How wonderful they must be, with their forests of arches,many-coloured as autumn-woods with painted glass, and the chantsand anthems rolling down their long aisles! On all these things shepondered quietly, as she sat often on Sundays in the old staring,rattle-windowed meeting-house, and looked at the uncouth old pulpit,and heard the choir fa-sol-la-ing or singing fuguing tunes; but of allthis she said nothing.
Sometimes, for days, her thoughts would turn from these subjects andbe absorbed in mathematical or metaphysical studies. ‘I have beenfollowing that treatise on Optics for a week, and never understood ittill to-day,’ she once said to her husband. ‘I have found now thatthere has been a mistake in drawing the diagrams. I have corrected it,and now the demonstration is complete.—Dinah, take care, that wood ishickory, and it takes only seven sticks of that size to heat the oven.’
It is not to be supposed that a woman of this sort was an inattentivelistener to preaching so stimulating to the intellect as that of Dr.H. No pair of eyes followed the web of his reasonings with a keenerand more anxious watchfulness than those sad, deep-set, hazel ones;and as she was drawn along the train of its inevitable logic, a closeobserver might have seen how the shadows deepened over them. For, whileothers listened for the clearness of the thought, for the acutenessof the argument, she listened as a soul wide, fine-strung, acute,repressed, whose every fibre is a nerve, listens to the problem of itsown destiny,—listened as the mother of a family listens, to know whatwere the possibilities, the probabilities of this mysterious existenceof ours to herself and those dearer to her than herself.
The consequence of all her listening was a history of deep inwardsadness. That exultant joy, or that entire submission, with whichothers seemed to view the scheme of the universe, as thus unfolded,did not visit her mind. Everything to her seemed shrouded in gloom andmystery; and that darkness she received as a token of unregeneracy,as a sign that she was one of those who are destined, by a mysteriousdecree, never to receive the light of the glorious gospel of Christ.Hence, while her husband was a deacon of the church, she for yearshad sat in her pew while the sacramental elements were distributed, amournful spectator. Punctilious in every duty, exact, reverential, shestill regarded herself as a child of wrath, an enemy to God, and anheir of perdition; nor could she see any hope of remedy, except in thesovereign, mysterious decree of an Infinite and Unknown Power, a mercyfor which she waited with the sickness of hope deferred.
Her children had grown up successively around her, intelligent andexemplary. Her eldest son was mathematical professor in one of theleading coll
eges of New England. Her second son, who jointly with hisfather superintended the farm, was a man of wide literary culture andof fine mathematical genius; and not unfrequently, on winter evenings,the son, father, and mother worked together, by their kitchen fireside,over the calculations for the almanac for the ensuing year, which theson had been appointed to edit.
Everything in the family arrangements was marked by a sober precision,a grave and quiet self-possession. There was little demonstrativenessof affection between parents and children, brothers and sisters, thoughgreat mutual affection and confidence. It was not pride, nor sternness,but a sort of habitual shamefacedness, that kept far back in each soulthose feelings which are the most beautiful in their outcome; butafter a while, the habit became so fixed a nature, that a caressingor affectionate expression could not have passed the lips of one toanother without a painful awkwardness. Love was understood, once forall, to be the basis on which their life was built. Once for all, theyloved each other, and after that, the less said the better. It had costthe woman’s heart of Mrs. Marvyn some pangs, in the earlier part ofher wedlock, to accept of this _once for all_, in place of those dailyout-gushings which every woman desires should be like God’s lovingkindness, ‘new every morning;’ but hers, too, was a nature stronglyinclining inward, and, after a few tremulous movements, the needle ofher soul settled, and her life-lot was accepted,—not as what she wouldlike or could conceive, but as a reasonable and good one. Life was apicture painted in low, cool tones, but in perfect keeping; and thoughanother and brighter style might have pleased better, she did notquarrel with this.
Into this steady, decorous, highly-respectable circle, the youngestchild, James, made a formidable irruption. One sometimes sees launchedinto a family circle a child of so different a nature from all therest, that it might seem as if, like an aërolite, he had fallen outof another sphere. All the other babies of the Marvyn family had beenof that orderly, contented sort who sleep till it is convenient totake them up, and while awake suck their thumbs contentedly and lookup with large, round eyes at the ceiling when it is not convenientfor their elders and betters that they should do anything else. Infarther advanced childhood, they had been quiet and decorous children,who could be all dressed and set up in chairs, like so many dolls, ofa Sunday morning, patiently awaiting the stroke of the church-bellto be carried out and put into the waggon which took them over thetwo miles’ road to church. Possessed of such tranquil, orderly, andexemplary young offshoots, Mrs. Marvyn had been considered eminent forher ‘faculty’ in bringing up children.
But James was destined to put ‘faculty,’ and every other talent whichhis mother possessed, to rout. He was an infant of moods and tenses,and those not of any regular verb. He would cry of nights, and he wouldbe taken up of mornings, and he would not suck his thumb, nor a bundleof caraway-seed tied in a rag and dipped in sweet milk, with which thegood gossips in vain endeavoured to pacify him. He fought manfully withhis two great fat fists the battle of babyhood, utterly reversed allnursery maxims, and reigned as baby over the whole prostrate household.When old enough to run alone, his splendid black eyes and glossyrings of hair were seen flashing and bobbing in every forbidden placeand occupation. Now trailing on his mother’s gown, he assisted herin salting her butter by throwing in small contributions of snuff orsugar, as the case might be; and again, after one of those mysteriousperiods of silence which are of most ominous significance in nurseryexperience, he would rise from the demolition of her indigo-bag,showing a face ghastly with blue streaks, and looking more like agnome than the son of a respectable mother. There was not a pitcher ofany description of contents left within reach of his little tiptoesand busy fingers that was not pulled over upon his giddy head withoutin the least seeming to improve its steadiness. In short, his motherremarked that she was thankful every night when she had fairly gottenhim into bed and asleep: James had really got through one more day andkilled neither himself nor any one else.
As a boy, the case was little better. He did not take to study, yawnedover books, and cut out moulds for running anchors when he should havebeen thinking of his columns of words in four syllables. No mortal knewhow he learned to read, for he never seemed to stop running long enoughto learn anything; and yet he did learn, and used the talent in conningover travels, sea-voyages, and lives of heroes and naval commanders.Spite of father, mother, and brother, he seemed to possess the mostextraordinary faculty of running up unsavoury acquaintances. He was ahail-fellow well-met with every Tom and Jack and Jim and Ben and Dickthat strolled on the wharves, and astonished his father with minutestparticulars of every ship, schooner, and brig in the harbour, togetherwith biographical notes of the different Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, bywhom they were worked.
There was but one member of the family that seemed to know at all whatto make of James, and that was their negro servant, Candace.
In those days, when domestic slavery prevailed in New England, itwas quite a different thing in its aspects from the same institutionin more southern latitudes. The hard soil, unyielding to any but themost considerate culture, the thrifty, close, shrewd habits of thepeople, and their untiring activity and industry, prevented, amongthe mass of the people, any great reliance on slave labour. It wassomething foreign, grotesque, and picturesque in a life of the mostmatter-of-fact sameness: it was even as if one should see clusters ofpalm-trees scattered here and there among Yankee wooden meeting-houses,or open one’s eyes on clumps of yellow-striped aloes growing amonghardhack and huckleberry bushes in the pastures.
Added to this, there were from the very first, in New England, seriousdoubts in the minds of thoughtful and conscientious people in referenceto the lawfulness of slavery; and this scruple prevented many fromavailing themselves of it, and proved a restraint on all, so thatnothing like plantation-life existed, and what servants were owned werescattered among different families, of which they came to be regardedand to regard themselves as a legitimate part and portion,—Mr. Marvyn,as a man of substance, numbering two or three in his establishment,among whom Candace reigned chief. The presence of these tropicalspecimens of humanity, with their wide, joyous, rich physical abundanceof nature and their hearty _abandon_ of outward expression, was arelief to the still clear-cut lines in which the picture of New Englandlife was drawn, which an artist must appreciate.
No race has ever shown such infinite and rich capabilities ofadaptation to varying soil and circumstances as the negro. Alike tothem the snows of Canada, the hard, rocky land of New England, withits set lines and orderly ways, or the gorgeous profusion and looseabundance of the Southern States. Sambo and Cuffy expand underthem all. New England yet preserves among her hills and valleys thelingering echoes of the jokes and jollities of various sable worthies,who saw alike in orthodoxy and heterodoxy, in Dr. This-side andDr. That-side, only food for more abundant merriment;—in fact, theminister of those days not unfrequently had his black shadow, a sort ofAfrican Boswell, who powdered his wig, brushed his boots, defended andpatronized his sermons, and strutted complacently about, as if throughvirtue of his blackness he had absorbed every ray of his master’sdignity and wisdom. In families, the presence of these exotics was agodsend to the children, supplying from the abundant outwardness anddemonstrativeness of their nature that aliment of sympathy so dearto childhood, which the repressed and quiet habits of New Englandeducation denied. Many and many a New Englander counts among hispleasantest early recollections the memory of some of these genialcreatures, who by their warmth of nature were the first and most potentmesmerizers of his childish mind.
Candace was a powerfully built, majestic black woman, corpulent,heavy, with a swinging majesty of motion like that of a ship in aground swell. Her shining black skin and glistening white teeth wereindications of perfect physical vigour which had never known a day’ssickness; her turban, of broad red and yellow bandanna stripes, hadeven a warm tropical glow; and her ample skirts were always ready tobe spread over every childish transgression of her youngest pet andfavourite, James.
She used to hold him entranced long winter evenings, while she satknitting in the chimney-corner, and crooned to him strange, wildAfrican legends of the things that she had seen in her childhood andearly days,—for she had been stolen when about fifteen years of age;and these weird, dreamy talks increased the fervour of his rovingimagination, and his desire to explore the wonders of the wide andunknown world. When rebuked or chastised, it was she who had secretbowels of mercy for him, and hid doughnuts in her ample bosom to besecretly administered to him in mitigation of the sentence that senthim supperless to bed; and many a triangle of pie, many a wedge ofcake, had conveyed to him surreptitious consolations which his moreconscientious mother longed, but dared not, to impart. In fact, theseministrations, if suspected, were winked at by Mrs. Marvyn, for tworeasons: first, that mothers are generally glad of any loving-kindnessto an erring boy, which they are not responsible for; and second, thatCandace was so set in her ways and opinions that one might as well comein front of a ship under full sail as endeavour to stop her in a matterwhere her heart was engaged.
_Candace’s defence of James_
_Page 70._
Sampson Low, Son & Co. Feby. 25th, 1859]
To be sure, she had her own private and special quarrels with ‘MassaJames,’ when he disputed any of her sovereign orders in the kitchen,and would sometimes pursue him with uplifted rolling-pin and flouryhands when he had snatched a gingernut or cooky without suitabledeference or supplication, and would declare, roundly, that there‘never was sich an aggravatin’ young-un.’ But if, on the strength ofthis, any one else ventured a reproof, Candace was immediately round onthe other side: ‘Dat ar chile gwin’ to be spiled, ’cause dey’s allersa’pickin’ on him; he’s well enough on’y let him alone.’
Well, under this miscellaneous assortment of influences,—throughthe order and gravity and solemn monotone of life at home, with theunceasing tick-tack of the clock for ever resounding through clean,empty-seeming rooms,—through the sea, ever shining, ever smiling,dimpling, soliciting, like a magical charger who comes saddled andbridled and offers to take you to fairyland,—through acquaintance withall sorts of foreign, outlandish ragamuffins among the ships in theharbour,—from disgust of slow-moving oxen, and long-drawn, endlessfurrows round the fifteen-acre lot,—from misunderstandings with graveelder brothers, and feeling somehow as if, he knew not why, he grievedhis mother all the time just by being what he was and couldn’t helpbeing,—and, finally, by a bitter break with his father, in whichcame that last wrench for an individual existence which some time orother the young growing mind will give to old authority,—by all theseunited, was the lot at length cast; for one evening James was missingat supper, missing by the fireside, gone all night, not at home tobreakfast,—till, finally, a strange, weird, most heathenish-lookingcabin-boy, who had often been forbidden the premises by Mr. Marvyn,brought in a letter, half-defiant, half-penitent, which announced thatJames had sailed in the ‘Ariel’ the evening before.
Mr. Zebedee Marvyn set his face as a flint, and said, ‘He went outfrom us because he was not of us,’—whereat old Candace lifted hergreat floury fist from the kneading-trough, and, shaking it like alarge snowball, said, ‘Oh, you go ’long, Massa Marvyn; ye’ll live tocount dat ar boy for de staff o’ your old age yet, now I tell ye; gotde makin’ o’ ten or’nary men in him; kittles dat’s full allers willbile over; good yeast will blow out de cork,—lucky ef it don’t bust debottle. Tell ye, der’s angels has der hooks in sich, and when de Lordwants him dey’ll haul him in safe and sound.’ And Candace concluded herspeech by giving a lift to her whole batch of dough, and flinging itdown in the trough with an emphasis that made the pewter on the dresserrattle.
This apparently irreverent way of expressing her mind, so contrary tothe deferential habits studiously inculcated in family discipline, hadgrown to be so much a matter of course to all the family that nobodyever thought of rebuking it. There was a sort of savage freedom abouther, which they excused in right of her having been born and bred aheathen, and of course not to be expected to come at once under theyoke of civilization. In fact, you must all have noticed, my dearreaders, that there are some sorts of people for whom everybody turnsout as they would for a railroad-car, without stopping to ask why—andCandace was one of them.
Moreover, Mr. Marvyn was not displeased with this defence of James,as might be inferred from his mentioning it four or five times in thecourse of the morning, to say how foolish it was,—wondering why it wasthat Candace and everybody else got so infatuated with that boy,—andending, at last, after a long period of thought, with the remark thatthese poor African creatures often seemed to have a great deal ofshrewdness in them, and that he was often astonished at the penetrationthat Candace showed.
At the end of the year James came home, more quiet and manly than hehad ever been known before,—so handsome with his sunburnt face, andhis keen, dark eyes and glossy curls, that half the girls in the frontgallery lost their hearts the first Sunday he appeared in church. Hewas tender as a woman to his mother, and followed her with his eyes,like a lover, wherever she went: he made due and manly acknowledgmentsto his father, but declared his fixed and settled intention to abide bythe profession he had chosen; and he brought home all sorts of strangeforeign gifts for every member of the household. Candace was glorifiedwith a flaming red and yellow turban of Moorish stuff from Mogadore,together with a pair of gorgeous yellow morocco slippers with peakedtoes, which, though there appeared no call to wear them in her commoncourse of life, she would put on her fat feet, and contemplate withdaily satisfaction. She became increasingly strengthened thereby in theconviction that the angels who had their hooks in Massa James’s jacketwere already beginning to shorten the line.