"That is nonsense, Mamma," answered Lilly, I thought a little coldly.
"Literary people do not meet to show their dresses. It is supposed at least, they meet to exchange great ideas. Your silk gown was bought and made in London, and you have some lovely English lace, what can you want more?" And then she salved the slight tone of reproof, by adding, "I am sure you look beautiful in them."
Lilly's opinions always satisfied me, and I found she was right, at least in one point. I was quite sufficiently dressed, but somehow I did not find any exchange of great ideas. There was, however, a famous Japanese noble, and his two servants, most picturesquely dressed, made and handed around the tea. I never tasted tea before that night; I am never never apt to taste it again. Once afterwards, Mr. Matthieson, a neighbor, was in the Chinese tea fields, and he brought me home a present of a small chest of tea bought on the field where it was grown, and it came nearest to the tea I had at Mr. Stedman's, the difference, I suppose, having been in the making of it. But no matter how full of great ideas the conversation at Mr. Stedman's had been, I should have let all other memories slip away, and recollected only the ethereal delicacy, and far too fugitive aroma of that delicious tea.
Surely such tea plants will grow for all of us in Paradise.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GODS SELL US ALL GOOD THINGS FOR LABOR
"All that is bitter, all that is sweet comes from God. It is our daily bread."
"The mysterious conditions of our everyday life give a gravity to all our work, and all our pleasure."
In this year 1887, I finished "The Border Shepherdess" and "The Master of His Fate" with my usual accompaniment of poems and articles for the papers. On April twenty-fourth I note that I copied "Cherry Ripe," a poem for _Harper's Weekly_, "A Strawberry Idyl" for the _Illustrated Weekly_, "The Romance of the Salad Bowl" for the _Christian Union_, and "The Two Talifers" for _Leslie's_. These with Bonner's usual poem were the papers on which I mainly relied and whose columns I felt must be kept open, no matter how interesting the novel on hand might be.
But early in May my hands began to trouble me. I had the right thumb in a splint, and no finger I possessed could lift a pin. The tips of my fingers seemed to have lost feeling. I could not use pen and ink, but if the pencil was placed in my hand, I could write as long as the pencil would mark; but I could not pick it up, if I dropped it. I was very unhappy about this condition, and then the relief came from a source most unexpected.
I had met on my last voyage from England, a Professor McAfee and his wife. Mr. McAfee was a professor in a college at a place called Claverick I think. He was a most charming man, widely and well cultivated, and I formed a pleasant friendship with him and Mrs.
McAfee. While my fingers were troubling me so much, they came to pay me a short visit, and he induced me to get a typewriter. I do not know how long they had been on the market, certainly not very long, for I had never seen one in any of the newspaper offices I visited. Mine came the day before he left, and he showed me all its peculiarities.
In less than a week I could use it very well; in a month I considered myself an expert.
The typewriter was an instant and immense relief; for the copying of all my work had doubled my labor, because it was not as interesting to copy, as to compose; and as it was necessary to write the press copy very clearly and particularly, the copying occupied more time than the composing. The kindly, clever professor who came to me in the hour of my need is dead. No. He could not die. What we call death was to him only emigration, and I care not where he now tarries. He is doing God's will, and more alive than ever he was on earth.
Mrs. McAfee, just before Christmas, sent me a lovely oil painting of poppies and wheat, done for me by girls in the college. Then I wrote the following poem in memory of it, which was published in _Harper's Weekly_ and I hoped it pleased them.
POPPIES AND WHEAT
Poppies have loved the golden wheat Many a thousand years, And still they lift a glowing face Up to the bending ears, Wherever the yellow wheat doth grow, Scarlet poppies will surely go.
Bind the sheaves in the East or West, Take seed where man ne'er trod, And when the corn bends to the breeze, The poppy there will nod.
No time, no distance, hath the power To change the love of grain and flower.
See how the silky petals stir Like banners in still air; See how the rich ripe ears sway down To flowers so idly fair.
O sweet wind of the harvest day!
Tell me what do these lovers say.
Do they remember Nilus yet?
Ham's daughters dusky fair?
Greek girls with mingled wreaths of wheat And poppies in their hair?
Or fair Judean maids at morn Gleaning among the yellow corn?
Does grain of wheat, or seed of flower, Hold still a memory Of happy English harvest homes On many a pleasant lea?
And youths and maids amid the sheaves, Testing their love with poppy leaves.
If so, then winds of harvest haste Carry a greeting sweet, No heed where corn and poppies grow, Kin are poppies and wheat, Grain and flower of every strand, Came from the fields of Edenland.
I had never permitted Alice to go to any school, but had always had a governess for two or three hours daily, as she could bear it. During the many years she was thus instructed, she had many teachers of all kinds; but at this period a Mrs. Jones, the daughter of the Episcopal minister, came to her. And she loved Mrs. Jones, who was a beautiful and lovable woman, and I think of her often because I was always so happy when anything happened that made Alice specially happy.
For the rest, the year went quietly on. I wrote a story for Mrs.
Dodge, editor of _St. Nicholas_, the only woman I ever liked to write for. She put on no editorial airs, and if you brought her a good story, she made you feel that you had conferred a favor on her, and her magazine. Ah, Mrs. Dodge showed that her soul had been to fine schools, before she came into this life! Her courtesy was native to her--her fine manners the fruit of her good heart.
After I had finished Mrs. Dodge's story, called "Michael and Theodora", I was obliged to give up using my hands until October, then I began "Remember the Alamo" but had to stop early in November, to help Mr. Freund who wished me to write with him a play from "The Bow of Orange Ribbon." It was the first of at least twenty, I think I may say fifty, attempts that have been made to dramatize this novel.
Mr. Charles Frohman got the famous August Thomas to try it with me, but when I sent him the two first acts he said it was "a beautiful piece of literary work, but not playable." After the elopement, the original proposition is closed, and the play really ends there; but ending there, it is only half long enough. Some day, however, the difficulty will be conquered, and it will pay for all its previous failures.
I was busy with Mr. J. C. Freund until the day before Christmas. Then I began a Scotch story for Clarke called "The Household of McNeil,"
and at the end of the year had finished nearly two chapters; I make the following entry which says all that is necessary:
_December 31st, 1887._ This last week has been full of work. Mary came to see me before starting for Florida, and I am very unhappy about Lilly and Captain Morgan. But I trust for the best. O God, my times are in Thy Hands, and how glad I am to leave them there! Unto Thee I look, for "Thy compassions fail not."
The first three months of 1888 were occupied with "The Household of McNeil," and my regular fugitive newspaper work. Alice still had her good teacher, and Lilly did not speak about her unfortunate love affair. I knew she was very unhappy, but she tried to be cheerful, and to share my pleasures and my anxieties, as she had always done; and I thought her reticence wise, though I was ready at any moment she wished to advise or to console her.
My right thumb was almost useless. I held the pencil mostly between the first and second finger, and the outside of the little finger was so sensitive, that I wrapped it in cotton wool to prevent it feeling the movement on the paper. But on my birthday, March twenty-ninth, I was finishing the fourteenth chapter of "Remember the Alamo" and enjoying the writing of the book very much indeed. Sometimes General Houston seemed actually visible to me, and we had some happy hours together. General Sherman was positive that the men martyred at Goliad and San Antonio fought with the eight hundred gentlemen, who led by Houston captured the whole Spanish army, and gave the Empire State of Texas to the United States. The dead can, and do help the living, and I believe General Houston helped me to write the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the truth concerning that glorious episode, far too little valued and understood. If General Houston had been an Englishman, and had given the English Crown such a magnificent principality, he would have been ennobled and enriched. This great, ungrateful nation let him die wanting the comforts, yes, the necessaries of life. I have said more about this book than I intended, but I love it and "The Lion's Whelp" better than I can express. Their characters are living people to me. I have known them, either in this life, or some other life.
This sense of companionship in many, indeed in most, of my books has made them easy and delightful to write. Sometimes it has been so vital that I have found it impossible to shut my study door. It seemed like shutting them out of my life, and I really loved these invisible, intangible friends, and often whispered their names, and bid them good night before going to sleep. To say that I shall never see them, or speak with them in another life, is an incredible thing. I expect General Sam Houston, and the great protector of England, Oliver Cromwell, to praise me, and thank me, for what I have done; and I shall not be disappointed. As far as General Houston is concerned, I have already the thanks of the son he loved so devotedly, in the following letter:
GALVESTON, TEXAS, Oct. 22, 1888.
MY DEAR MADAM:
Returning to this city a short time since, I found awaiting me your latest very interesting book, "Remember the Alamo." Please accept my thanks, and as well, my assurances of due appreciation of the honor conferred.
The general reader I am sure cannot fail to find the style in which the work is written in the highest degree entertaining. To one bound by ties of birth and blood to Texan history and traditions, it naturally possesses a peculiar interest, an interest which throughout does not flag.
Of the rather numerous productions based on the same theme, few, if any, read so much like actual history, and I think I can safely say, none show that intimate acquaintance with the peculiar social elements which composed the Texas of the days of the Republic, manifest in the valued work I now have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of.
While I have derived much pleasure from a perusal of "Remember the Alamo," as a production of merit, I could not be insensible to the tribute paid my revered father's memory; that the wreath is from the hand of woman lends it a grateful perfume.
I cannot but regret I am denied the honor of the personal acquaintance of one, who through her pen has made me so much her debtor for enjoyment of the most enduring kind.
I am, dear madam, with abiding sentiments of esteem,
Yours sincerely,
WILLIAM R. HOUSTON.
Often I have believed that my heroine was a real personality, that she had once lived in the very scenes I depicted. This was particularly the case with the book "Bernicia." It is many years since I told the story of that fascinating creature, but she is as real to me today, as if she had spent the summer with me. Sometimes these phantom heroines are very masterful. In "Friend Olivia," _Anastasia_ made me throw away many pages, but I always discovered as the book progressed, that they did not belong to it.
Until April of this year, I was more or less troubled with Mr. Freund and the proposed play. I say "troubled" because I felt all the time that the work I had to do, was useless, that the thing someway was not right, and I know now, that neither Mr. Freund--clever actor and manager as he was--nor I, could build a play, any more than we could build a house.
On April tenth, 1888, we moved into a little cottage on Storm King Mountain, for the house we were in was sold, and the buyer wished to occupy it. I remember so well the afternoon I first drove up the mountain. It was a lovely April day, Nature was making a new world, and there was no sound of hammer, or axe, or smoke of furnace. Only an inscrutable, irresistible force at work, a power so mighty, that the hard trodden sod under our feet was moved aside by a slender needle-like shaft of grass, or plant, which the faintest breeze could blow and bend. A miracle! Yes, a miracle before which science is mute.
The birds were singing as if they never would grow old, and the winds streamed out of the hills as cool as living waters. The grass was climbing the mountains until it met the snow, and the mountains rose like battlements, with piny slopes furrowed by one or two steep paths.
The house I came to see was a mere cottage of five rooms, but it stood in a pleasant croft, full of fruit trees, mingled with pines and a few maples. My heart went into the place without opening gate or door, and I said to myself, "I will buy this little house, and make it a home, if God wills so; and as for it being small, there is only three of us, and we can enlarge it, if it is necessary." The view from it was enchanting--a long stretch of the Hudson River, with mountains and valleys on every side of it. But I remembered the English dictum about buying a house, namely, "to summer and winter it first;" so I refrained the words on my lips, and instead of buying it, I offered to rent it for a year, promising to buy it then, if I still liked the place.