"Tis not in mortals to command success."--ADDISON.
"Ungallant!--unmilitary!" exclaimed the beautiful Orinda Melbourne, to her yet unprofessed lover, Lieutenant Sunderland, as in the decline of a summer afternoon they sat near an open window in the northwest parlour of Mr. Cozzens's house at West Point, where as yet there was no hotel.
"And do you steadily persist in refusing to write in my album? Really, you deserve to be dismissed the service for unofficer-like conduct."
"I have forsworn albums," replied Sunderland, "and for at least a dozen reasons. In the first place, the gods have not made me poetical."
"Ah!" interrupted Miss Melbourne, "you remind me of the well-known story of the mayor of a French provincial town, who informed the king that the worthy burgesses had fifteen reasons for not doing themselves the honour of firing a salute on his majesty's arrival: the first reason being that they had no cannon."
"A case in point," remarked Sunderland.
"Well," resumed Orinda, "I do not expect you to surpass the glories of Byron and Moore."
"Nothing is more contemptible than _mediocre_ poetry," observed Sunderland; "the magazines and souvenirs have surfeited the world with it."
"I do not require you to be even _mediocre_," persisted the young lady.
"Give me something ludicrously bad, and I shall prize it almost as highly as if it were seriously good. I need not remind you of the hackneyed remarks, that extremes meet, and that there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. Look at this Ode to West Point, written in my album by a very obliging cadet, a room-mate of my brother's. It is a perfect gem. How I admire these lines--
'The steamboat up the river shoots, While Willis on his bugle toots.'"
"Wo to the man," said Sunderland, "who subjects his poetical reputation to the ordeal of a lady's album, where all, whether gifted or ungifted, are expected to do their best."
"You are mistaken," replied Orinda; "that expectation has long since gone by. We have found, by experience, that either from negligence or perverseness, gentlemen are very apt to write their worst in our albums."
"I do not wonder at it," said Sunderland. "However, I must retrieve my character as a knight of chivalry. Appoint me any other task, and I will pledge myself to perform your bidding. Let your request 'take any shape but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble.'"
"But why this inveterate horror of albums?" asked Orinda. "Have you had any experience in them?"
"I have, to my sorrow," replied Sunderland. "With me, I am convinced, 'the course of albums never will run smooth.' For instance, I once, by means of an album, lost the lady of my love (I presume not to say the love of my lady.)"
Orinda looked up and looked down, and "a change came o'er the spirit of her face:" which change was not unnoticed by her yet undeclared admirer, whose acquaintance with Miss Melbourne commenced on a former visit she had made to West Point, to see her brother, who was one of the cadets of the Military Academy.
Orinda Melbourne was now in her twenty-first year, at her own disposal (having lost both her parents), and mistress of considerable property, a great part of which had been left to her by an aunt. She resided in the city of New York, with Mr. and Mrs. Ledbury, two old and intimate friends of her family, and they had accompanied her to West Point. She was universally considered a very charming girl, and by none more so than by Lieutenant Sunderland. But hearing that Miss Melbourne had declined the addresses of several very unexceptionable gentlemen, our hero was trying to delay an explicit avowal of his sentiments, till he should discover some reason to hope that the disclosure would be favourably received.
Like most other men, on similar occasions, he gave a favourable interpretation to the emotion involuntarily evinced by the young lady, on hearing him allude to his former flame.
There was a pause of a few moments, till Orinda rallied, and said with affected carelessness, "You may as well tell me the whole story, as we seem to have nothing better to talk of."
"Well, then," proceeded Sunderland, "during one of my visits to the city, I met with a very pretty young lady from Brooklyn. Her name is of course unmentionable; but I soon found myself, for the first time in my life, a little in love--"
"I suspect it was not merely a little," remarked Orinda, with a penetrating glance; "it is said, that in love the first fit is always the strongest."
"No, no!" exclaimed Sunderland; "I deny the truth of that opinion. It is a popular fallacy--I know it is," fixing his eyes on Orinda.
At that minute, the young officer would have given a year's pay to be certain whether the glow that heightened Miss Melbourne's complexion, was a _bona fide_ blush, or only the reflection of the declining sunbeams, as they streamed from under a dark cloud that was hovering over the western hills. However, after a few moments' consideration, he again interpreted favourably.
"Proceed, Mr. Sunderland," said Orinda in rather a tremulous voice; "tell me all the particulars."
"Of the album I will," replied he. "Well, then--this young lady was one of the belles of Brooklyn, and certainly very handsome."
"Of what colour were her eyes and hair?" inquired Orinda.
"Light--both very light."
Orinda, who was a brunette, caught herself on the point of saying, that she had rarely seen much expression in the countenance of a blonde; but she checked the remark, and Sunderland proceeded.
"The lady in question had a splendidly bound album, which she produced and talked about on all occasions, and seemed to regard with so much pride and admiration, that if a lover could possibly have been jealous of a book, I was, at times, very near becoming so. It was half filled with amatory verses by juvenile rhymesters, and with tasteless insipid drawings in water colours, by boarding-school misses: which drawings my Dulcinea persisted in calling paintings. She also persisted in urging me to write 'a piece of poetry' in her album, and I persevered in declaring my utter inability: as my few attempts at versification had hitherto proved entire failures. At last, I reluctantly consented, recollecting to have heard of sudden fits of inspiration, and of miraculous gifts of poetical genius, with which even milkmaids and cobblers have been unexpectedly visited. So taking the album with me, I retired to the solitude of my apartment at the City Hall, concluding with Macbeth that when a thing is to be well done, 'tis well to do it quickly. Here I manfully made my preparations 'to saddle Pegasus and ride up Parnassus'--but in vain. With me the winged steed of Apollo was as obstinate as a Spanish mule on the Sierra Morena. Not an inch would he stir. There was not even the slightest flutter in his pinions; and the mountain of the Muses looked to me as inaccessible as--as what shall I say--"
"I will help you to a simile," replied Orinda; "as inaccessible as the sublime and stupendous precipice to which you West Pointers have given the elegant and appropriate title of Butter Hill."
"Exactly," responded Sunderland. "Parnassus looked like Butter Hill.
Well, then--to be brief (as every man says when he suspects himself to be tedious), I sat up till one o'clock, vainly endeavouring to manufacture something that might stand for poetry. But I had no rhymes for my ideas, and no ideas for my rhymes. I found it impossible to make both go together. I at last determined to write my verses in prose till I had arranged the sense, and afterwards to put them into measure and rhyme. I tried every sort of measure from six feet to ten, and I essayed consecutive rhymes and alternate rhymes, but all was in vain. I found that I must either sacrifice the sense to the sound, or the sound to the sense. At length, I thought of the Bouts Rimees of the French. So I wrote down, near the right hand edge of my paper, a whole column of familiar rhymes, such as mine, thine, tears, fears, light, bright, &c.
And now I congratulated myself on having accomplished one-half of my task, supposing that I should find it comparatively easy to do the filling up. But all was to no purpose. I could effect nothing that I thought even tolerable, and I was too proud to write badly and be laughed at. However, I must acknowledge that, could I have been certain that my 'piece of poetry' would be seen only by the fair damsel herself, I might easily have screwed my courage to the sticking place; for greatly as I was smitten with the beauty of my little nymph, I had a secret misgiving that she had never sacrificed to Minerva."
Our hero paused a moment to admire the radiance of the smile that now lighted up the countenance of Orinda.
"In short," continued he, "I sat up till 'night's candles were burnt out,' both literally and metaphorically, and I then retired in despair to my pillow, from whence I did not rise till ten o'clock in the morning.
"That evening I carried back the album to my fair one; but she still refused to let me off, and insisted that I should take it with me to West Point, to which place I was to return next day. I did so, hoping to catch some inspiration from the mountain air, and the mountain scenery.
I ought to have recollected that few of the poets on record, either lived among mountains, or wrote while visiting them. The sons of song are too often fated to set up their household gods, and strike their lyres, in dark narrow streets and dismal alleys.
"As soon as the steamboat had cleared the city, I took out my pocket-book and pencil, and prepared for the onset. I now regarded the ever-beautiful scenery of the magnificent Hudson with a new interest. I thought the Palisades would do something for me; but my imagination remained as sterile and as impenetrable as their eternal rocks. The broad expanse of the Tappan Sea lay like a resplendent mirror around me, but it reflected no image that I could transfer to my tablets. We came into the Highlands, but the old Dundeberg rumbled nothing in my fancy's ears, Anthony's Nose looked coldly down upon me, and the Sugar Loaf suggested no idea of sweetness. We proceeded along, but Buttermilk Falls reminded me not of the fountain of Helicon, and Bull Hill and Breakneck Hill seemed too rugged ever to be smoothed into verse.
"That afternoon I went up to Fort Putnam, for the hundred and twentieth time in my life. I walked round the dismantled ramparts; I looked into their damp and gloomy cells. I thought (as is the duty of every one that visits these martial ruins) on the 'pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.' But they inspired nothing that I could turn to account in my lady's album; nothing that could serve to introduce the compliment always expected in the last stanza. And, in truth, this compliment was the chief stumbling-block after all. 'But for these vile compliments, I might myself have been an album-poet.'"
"Is it then so difficult to compliment a lady?" inquired Orinda.
"Not in plain prose," replied Sunderland, "and when the lady is a little _a l'imbecile_, nothing in the world is more easy. But even in prose, to compliment a sensible woman as she deserves, and without danger of offending her modesty, requires both tact and talent."
"Which I suppose is the reason," said Orinda, "that sensible women obtain so few compliments from your sex, and fools so many."
"True," replied Sunderland. "But such compliments as we wish to offer to elegant and intellectual females, are as orient pearls compared to French beads."
Orinda cast down her beautiful eyes under the expressive glance of her admirer. She felt that she was now receiving a pearl.
"But to proceed," continued Sunderland. "I came down from the fort no better poet than I went up, and I had recourse again to the solitude of my own room. Grown desperate, and determined to get the album off my mind and have it over, an idea struck me which I almost blush to mention. Promise not to look at me, and I will amaze you with my candour."
Orinda pretended to hold her fan before her eyes.
"Are you sure you are not peeping between the stems of the feathers?"
said Sunderland. "Well, then, now for my confession; but listen to it 'more in sorrow than in anger,' and remember that the album alone was the cause of my desperation and my dishonour. Some Mephistopheles whispered in my ear to look among the older poets for something but little known, and transfer it as mine to a page in the fatal book. I would not, of course, venture on Scott or Moore or Byron; for though I doubted whether my lady-love was better versed in _them_ than in the bards of Queen Anne's reign, yet I thought that perhaps some of the readers of her album might be acquainted with the last and best of the minstrels. But on looking over a volume of Pope, I found his 'Song by a Person of Quality.'"
"I recollect it," said Orinda; "it is a satire on the amateur love-verses of that period,--such as were generally produced by fashionable inamoratoes. In these stanzas the author has purposely avoided every approach to sense or connexion, but has assembled together a medley of smooth and euphonous sounds. And could you risk such verses with your Dulcinea?"
"Yes," replied Sunderland; "with _her_ I knew that I was perfectly safe, and that she would pronounce them sweet and delightful. And in short, that they would exactly suit the calibre of her understanding."
"Yet still," said Orinda, "with such an opinion of her mental qualifications, you professed to love this young lady--or rather you really loved her--no doubt you did."