“Bless my soul, cousin! what was I doing? I have been sitting here still as a mouse; but I ‘ll turn my back, and read a good book”; – and round he turned, accordingly, till the catechising was finished.
When it was all over, and the servants had gone out, we grouped ourselves around the fire, and Ellery Davenport began: “Cousin Debby, I ‘m going to come down handsomely to you. I admit that your catechism is much better for children than the one I was brought up on. I was well drilled in the formulas of the celebrated Assembly of dryvines of Westminster, and dry enough I found it. Now it ‘s a true proverb,’ Call a man a thief, and he ‘ll steal’; ‘give a dog a bad name, and he ‘ll bite you’; tell a child that he is ‘a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven,’ and he feels, to say the least, civilly disposed towards religion; tell him ‘he is under God’s wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and the pains of hell forever,’ because somebody ate an apple five thousand years ago, and his religious associations are not so agreeable, – especially if he has the answers whipped into him, or has to go to bed without his supper for not learning them.”
“You poor dear!” said the old lady; “did they send you to bed without your supper? They ought to have been whipped themselves, every one of them.”
“Well, you see, I was a little fellow when my parents died, and brought up under brother Jonathan, who was the bluest kind of blue; and he was so afraid that I should mistake my naturally sweet temper for religion, that he instructed me daily that I was a child of wrath, and could n’t, and did n’t, and never should do one right thing till I was regenerated, and when that would happen no mortal knew; so I thought, as my account was going to be scored off at that time, it was no matter if I did run up a pretty long one; so I lied and stole whenever it came handy.”
“O Ellery, I hope not!” said the old lady; “certainly you never stole anything!”
“Have, though, my blessed aunt, – robbed orchards and watermelon patches; but then St. Augustine did that very thing himself, and he did n’t turn about till he was thirty years old, and I ‘m a good deal short of that yet; so you see there is a great chance for me.”
“Ellery, why don’t you come into the true Church?” said Miss Debby. “That ‘s what you need.”
“Well,” said Ellery, “I must confess that I like the idea of a nice old motherly Church, that sings to us, and talks to us, and prays with us, and takes us in her lap and coddles us when we are sick and says, –
‘Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber.’
Nothing would suit me better, if I could get my reason to sleep; but the mischief of a Calvinistic education is, it wakes up your reason, and it never will go to sleep again, and you can’t take a pleasant humbug if you would. Now, in this life, where nobody knows anything about anything, a capacity for humbugs would be a splendid thing to have. I wish to my heart I ‘d been brought up a Roman Catholic! but I have not, – I ‘ve been brought up a Calvinist, and so here I am.”
“But if you ‘d try to come into the Church and believe,” said Miss Debby, energetically, “grace would be given you. You ‘ve been baptized, and the Church admits your baptism. Now just assume your position.”
Miss Debby spoke with such zeal and earnestness, that I, whom she was holding in her lap, looked straight across with the expectation of hearing Ellery Davenport declare his immediate conversion then and there. I shall never forget the expression of his face. There was first a flash of amusement, as he looked at Miss Debby’s strong, sincere face, and then it faded into something between admiration and pity; and then he said to himself in a musing tone: “I a ‘member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.’” And then a strange sarcastic expression broke over his face, as he added: “Could n’t do it cousin; not exactly my style. Besides, I should n’t be much of a credit to any church, and whichever catches me would be apt to find a shark in the net. You see,” he added, jumping up and walking about rapidly, “I have the misfortune to have an extremely exacting nature, and, if I set out to be religious at all, it would oblige me to carry the thing to as great lengths as did my grandfather Jonathan Edwards. I should have to take up the cross and all that, and I don’t want to, and don’t mean to; and as to all these pleasant, comfortable churches, where a follow can get to heaven without it, I have the misfortune of not being able to believe in them; so there you see precisely my situation.”
“These horrid old Calvinistic doctrines,” said Miss Debby, “are the ruin of children.”
“My dear, they are all in the Thirty-nine Articles as strong as in the Cambridge platform, and all the other platforms, for the good reason that John Calvin himself had the overlooking of them. And, what is worse, there is an abominable sight of truth in them. Nature herself is a high Calvinist, old jade; and there never was a man of energy enough to feel the force of the world he deals with that was n’t a predestinarian, from the time of the Greek Tragedians down to the time of Oliver Cromwell, and ever since. The hardest doctrines are the things that a fellow sees with his own eyes going on in the world around him. If you had been in England, as I have, where the true Church prevails, you ‘d see that pretty much the whole of the lower classes there are predestinated to be conceived and born in sin, and shapen in iniquity; and come into the world in such circumstances that to expect even decent morality of them is expecting what is contrary to all reason. This is your Christian country, after eighteen hundred years’ experiment of Christianity. The elect, by whom I mean the bishops and clergy and upper classes, have attained to a position in which a decent and religious life is practicable, and where there is leisure from the claims of the body to attend to those of the soul. These, however, to a large extent are smothering in their own fat or, as your service to-day had it, ‘Their heart is fat as brawn’; and so they don’t, to any great extent, make their calling and election sure. Then, as for heathen countries, they are a peg below those of Christianity. Taking the mass of human beings in the world at this hour, they are in such circumstances, that, so far from it ‘s being reasonable to expect the morals of Christianity of them, they are not within sight of ordinary human decencies. Talk of purity of heart to a Malay or Hottentot! Why, the doctrine of a clean shirt is an uncomprehended mystery to more than half the human race at this moment. That ‘s what I call visible election and reprobation, get rid of it as we may or can.”
“Positively, Ellery, I am not going to have you talk so before these children,” said Miss Debby, getting up and ringing the bell energetically. “This all comes of the vile democratic idea that people are to have opinions on all subjects, instead of believing what the Church tells them; and, as you say, it ‘s Calvinism that starts people out to be always reasoning and discussing and having opinions. I hate folks who are always speculating and thinking, and having new doctrines; all I want to know is my duty, and to do it. I want to know what my part is, and it ‘s none of my business whether the bishops and the kings and the nobility do theirs or not, if I only do mine. ‘To do my duty in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call me,’ is all I want, and I think it is all anybody need want.”
“Amen!” said Ellery Davenport, “and so be it.”
Here Mrs. Margery appeared with the candles to take us to bed.
In bidding our adieus for the night, it was customary for good children to kiss all round; but Tina, in performing this ceremony both this night and the night before, resolutely ignored Ellery Davenport, notwithstanding his earnest petitions; and, while she would kiss with ostentatious affection those on each side of him, she hung her head and drew back whenever he attempted the familiarity, yet, by way of reparation, turned back at the door as she was going out, and made him a parting salutation with the air of a princess; and I heard him say, “Upon my word, how she does it!”
After we left the room (this being a particular which, like tellers of stories in general, I learned from other
sources), he turned to Lady Lothrop and said: “Did I understand that she said her name was Eglantine Percival, and that she is a sort of foundling?”
“Certainly,” said Lady Lothrop; “both these children are orphans, left on the parish by a poor woman who died in a neighboring town. They appear to be of good blood and breeding, but we have no means of knowing who they are.”
“Well,” said Ellery Davenport, “I knew a young English officer by the name of Percival, who was rather a graceless fellow. He once visited me at my country-seat, with several others. When he went away, being, as he often was, not very fit to take care of himself, he dropped and left a pocket-book, so some of the servants told me, which was thrown into one of the drawers, and for aught I know may be there now: it ‘s just barely possible that it may be, and that there may be some papers in it which will shed light on these children’s parentage. If I recollect rightly, he was said to be connected with a good English family, and it might be possible, if we were properly informed, to shame him, or frighten him into doing something for these children. I will look into the matter myself, when I am in England next winter, where I shall have some business; that is to say, if we can get any clew. The probability is that the children are illegitimate.”
“O, I hope not,” said Lady Lothrop; “they appear to have been so beautifully educated.”
“Well,” said Ellery Davenport, “he may have seduced his curate’s daughter; that ‘s a very simple supposition. At any rate he never produced her in society, never spoke of her, kept her in cheap, poor lodgings in the country, and the general supposition was that she was his mistress, not his wife.”
“No,” said a little voice near his elbow, which startled every one in the room, – “no, Mr. Davenport, my mother was my father’s wife.”
The fire had burnt low, and the candles had not been brought in, and Harry, who had been sent back by Mrs. Margery to give message as to the night arrangements, had entered the room softly, and stood waiting to get a chance to deliver it. He now came forward, and stood trembling with agitation, pale yet bold. Of course all were very much shocked as he went on: “They took my mother’s wedding-ring, and sold it to pay for her coffin; but she always wore it and often told me when it was put on. But,” he added,” she told me, the night she died, that I had no father but God.”
“And he is Father enough!” said the old lady, who, entirely broken down and overcome, clasped the little boy in her arms. “Never you mind it, dear, God certainly will take care of you.”
“I know he will,” said the boy, with solemn simplicity; “but I want you all to believe the truth about my mother.”
It was characteristic of that intense inwardness and delicacy which were so peculiar in Harry’s character, that, when he came back from this agitating scene, he did not tell me a word of what had occurred, nor did I learn it till years afterwards. I was very much in the habit of lying awake nights, long after he had sunk into untroubled slumbers, and this night I remember that he lay long but silently awake, so very still and quiet, that it was some time before I discovered that he was not sleeping.
The next day Ellery Davenport left us, but we remained to see the wonders of Boston. I remembered my grandmother’s orders, and went on to Copps Hill, and to the old Granary burying-ground, to see the graves of the saints, and read the inscriptions. I had a curious passion for this sort of mortuary literature, even as a child, – a sort of nameless, weird, strange delight, – so that I accomplished this part of my grandmother’s wishes con amore.
Boston in those days had not even arrived at being a city, but, as the reader may learn from contemporary magazines, was known as the Town of Boston. In some respects, however, it was even more attractive in those days for private residences than it is at present. As is the case now in some of our large rural towns, it had many stately old houses, which stood surrounded by gardens and grounds, where fruits and flowers were tended with scrupulous care. It was sometimes called “the garden town.” The house of Madam Kittery stood on a high eminence overlooking the sea, and had connected with it a stately garden, which, just at the time of year I speak of, was gay with the first crocuses and snowdrops.
In the eyes of the New England people, it was always a sort of mother-town, – a sacred city, the shrine of that religious enthusiasm which founded the States of New England. There were the graves of her prophets and her martyrs, – those who had given their lives through the hardships of that enterprise in so ungenial a climate.
On Easter Monday Lady Lothrop proposed to take us all to see the shops and sights of Boston, with the bountiful intention of purchasing some few additions to the children’s wardrobes. I was invited to accompany the expedition, and all parties appeared not a little surprised, and somewhat amused, that I preferred, instead of this lively tour among the living, to spend my time in a lonely ramble in the Copps Hill burying-ground.
I returned home after an hour or two spent in this way, and found the parlor deserted by all except dear old Madam Kittery. I remember, even now, the aspect of that sunny room, and the perfect picture of peace and love that she seemed to me, as she sat on the sofa with a table full of books drawn up to her, placidly reading.
She called me to her as soon as I came in, and would have me get on the sofa by her. She stroked my head, and looked lovingly at me, and called me “Sonny,” till my whole heart opened toward her as a flower opens toward the sunshine.
Among all the loves that man has to woman, there is none so sacred and saint-like as that toward these dear, white-haired angels, who seem to form the connecting link between heaven and earth, who have lived to get the victory over every sin and every sorrow, and live perpetually on the banks of the dark river, in that bright, calm land of Beulah, where angels daily walk to and fro, and sounds of celestial music are heard across the water.
Such have no longer personal cares, or griefs, or sorrows. The tears of life have all been shed, and therefore they have hearts at leisure to attend to every one else. Even the sweet, guileless childishness that comes on in this period has a sacred dignity; it is a seal of fitness for that heavenly kingdom, which whosoever shall not receive as a little child, shall not enter therein.
Madam Kittery, with all her apparent simplicity, had a sort of simple shrewdness. She delighted in reading, and some of the best classical literature was always lying on her table. She began questioning me about my reading, and asking me to read to her, and seemed quite surprised at the intelligence and expression with which I did it.
I remember, in the course of the reading, coming across a very simple Latin quotation, at which she stopped me. “There,” said she, “is one of those Latin streaks that always trouble me in books, because I can’t tell what they mean. When George was alive, he used to read them to me.”
Now, as this was very simple, I felt myself quite adequate to its interpretation, and gave it with a readiness which pleased her.
“Why! how came you to know Latin?” she said.
Then my heart opened, and I told her all my story, and how my poor father had always longed to go to college, “and died without the sight,” and how he had begun to teach me Latin; but how he was dead, and my mother was poor, and grandpapa could only afford to keep Uncle Bill in college, and there was no way for me to go, and Aunt Lois wanted to bind me out to a shoemaker. And then I began to cry, as I always did when I thought of this.
I shall never forget the overflowing, motherly sympathy which had made it easy for me to tell all this to one who, but a few hours before, had been a stranger; nor how she comforted me, and cheered me, and insisted upon it that I should immediately eat a piece of cake, and begged me not to trouble myself about it, and she would talk to Debby, and something should be done.
Now I had not the slightest idea of what Madam Kittery could do in the situation, but I was exceedingly strengthened and consoled, and felt sure that there had come a favorable turn in my fortunes; and the dear old lady and myself forthwith entered into a league of f
riendship.
I was thus emboldened, now that we were all alone, and Miss Debby far away, to propound to her indulgent ear certain political doubts, raised by the conflict of my past education with the things I had been hearing for the last day or two.
“If King George was such a good man, what made him oppress the Colonies so?” said I.
“Why, dear, he did n’t,” she said, earnestly. “That ‘s all a great mistake. Our King is a dear, pious, good man, and wished us all well, and was doing just the best for us he knew how.”
“Then was it because he did n’t know how to govern us?” said I.
“My dear, you know the King can do no wrong; it was his ministers, if anybody. I don’t know exactly how it was, but they got into a brangle, and everything went wrong; and then there was so much evil feeling and fighting and killing, and ‘there was confusion, and every evil work.’ There ‘s my poor boy,” she said, pointing to the picture with a trembling hand, and to the sword hanging in its crape loop, – “he died for his King, doing his duty in that state of life in which it pleased God to call him. I must n’t be sorry for that, but O, I wish there had n’t been any war, and we could have had it all peaceful, and George could have stayed with us. I don’t see, either, the use of all these new-fangled notions, but then I try to love everybody, and hope for the best.”
So spoke my dear old friend; and has there ever been a step in human progress that has not been taken against the prayers of some good soul, and been washed by tears, sincerely and despondently shed? But, for all this, is there not a true unity of the faith in all good hearts? and when they have risen a little above the mists of earth, may not both sides – the conqueror and the conquered – agree that God hath given them the victory in advancing the cause of truth and goodness?
Only one other conversation that I heard during this memorable visit fixed itself very strongly in my mind. On the evening of this same day, we three children were stationed at a table to look at a volume of engravings of beautiful birds, while Miss Debby, Lady Widgery and Madam Kittery sat by the fire. I heard them talking of Ellery Davenport, and, though I had been instructed that it was not proper for children to listen when their elders were talking among themselves, yet it really was not possible to avoid hearing what Miss Debby said, because all her words were delivered with such a sharp and determinate emphasis.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 271