Volume 32 / Part 15 — A DRAMA OF REAL LIFE.

(IN A LETTER FROM N. P. WILLIS TO THE EDITOR OF GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE.)

To Geo. R. Graham, Esq.

New York, December 1, 1847.

Dear Sir,—By to-night's mail should go to you a piece of mental statuary, which is yet in a marble block of the reluctant quarry of my brain—due to you by agreement on the first of December, one unconceived tale! But though we do so strangely bargain the invisible wares of the imagination, deliverable, like merchandize, on a certain day, the contractor is still liable to the caprices of the world he trades from, and your order on me for fancy yet undug, must, I fear, be protested. You would not believe me if I were to tell you literally why. But the truth is that I, and a certain cave (mentioned by Humboldt, on the banks of the Oronookoo, which he calls a "subterranean organ,") can only give out music in certain states of the weather. With the dry, sharp, icy north wind of the last few days, I could no more write than I could supply electricity to Morse's wire.

But—no failure is quite twenty shillings in the pound. What say you to the assets? The statue will not be forth coming—but will you have the model, after which the undug block was to have been chiseled? Shall I send you the literal truth which I had intended to drape with imagination—tell the facts of real life which I had designed to weave into a story. I shall thus, at least, clear yourself of the non-fulfillment of the promise of your pre-advertised contents, and (engaging to send you a story properly completed for the next number) shall effect, perhaps, a compromise for my delinquent punctuality.

This, then, is the thread of literal truth which was to have run through the fancy-woof of my story.

Some years ago, after a year or two of residence in different cities of Italy, I found myself very much at home in Naples. It was an unusually gay season—the concentration of the rank and fashion of the floating society of travelers varying between Rome, Florence, and Naples, very much as it does, in our country, between the different watering-places—by caprices that no one can foresee. The English people of rank, more particularly, were in very great force; and the blonde moustaches, so much admired in the dark-haired South, and the skins of alabaster and rose, so envied by the brunettes of Italy, abounded at the balls and in the public places. The king kept very gay court, the royal entertainments accessible to all strangers properly introduced, and the ambassadors and bankers, nobles and wealthy strangers, seemed to want twice as many nights and mornings in the week, so conflicting were the balls and breakfasts, driving-parties and dinners.

As, of course, an unobserved looker-on in scenes of such brilliant rivalry and display, I had more attention to spare than most whom I met; and I soon found myself—eyes, mind, fancy, and interest, absorbed in one study—a new revelation of a type of woman. We are accustomed to see the sex in classes—hundreds of a kind—and find them sufficiently absorbing as nouns of multitude. It is probably one of Heaven's principles of human safety, that women are made in "lots" so like, that a transfer of a slighted heart, from an unwilling beauty to some willing likeness of her, safely vents the volcano. Proportionately dangerous, however, are those rare women—of whom a man sees, perhaps, one or two in his life—who are the only ones of their type and kind; for, out of love for them, their is no exit but through their hearts.

You are going too fast if you fancy I am about to record a fruitless passion of my own. Though of "easy wax," I am not stamped, except by will of the imprintress; and my only cobweb thread of personal remembrance is a horseback excursion to Camaldoli, in which I played the propriety-third to the best of my discretion. It is necessary to define thus much, to redeem my estimate of the lady from the imputation of mere fancy. Had I known her intimately, or not known her at all, my judgment of her would be less reliable. In just the position for untroubled and most favorable observation, I studied her in silence through that brilliant season, and laid away her image (as one does without more than one or two choked-down aspirations) to people castles in the air, and fill niches in the temple of dreams.

The foregoing prepares you for a portrait of the proposed heroine of my story—but that you would have had, had the story been written. I never could draw a picture of a woman but from the life, and to that fictitious tale I should have transferred, with studied and careful truthfulness, the enamel portrait burnt in upon my memory, and which you would have admired my fancy for conceiving. Oh! the mistake of supposing that we can imagine things brighter than we have seen with our eyes—that there is any kingdom of air, visitable by poets, which is comparable to the glorious world we live in, with its some women, some sunsets, some strains of music, and some fore-tasted heaven-thrills of emotion.

The heir to one of the oldest titles of England was the husband of this lady. The fortunes of his family had been wasted; and they had lived for a generation or two in comparative obscurity, when the present Lord —— came of age. He had been educated carefully, but was of great personal beauty, and I thought when I first saw him, was as fine a model as I had ever seen of the quiet, reserved, self-intrenched school of modern English manners. With his beauty and his title, though with little or no estate, he had easily married a lady of fortune—the only daughter of a retired banker. And this heiress, Lady ——, is the one whose story I would have told through a veil of fiction.

The Countess of —— was an unsurpassed horsewoman, and rode constantly. Her blood-horses had been sent round by ship from England; and she was always mounted on an animal whose every fibre seemed obedient to her thought, and with whose motion every line of her own tall and slenderly-rounded person, and every ringlet of her flowing, golden curls seemed in a correspondence governed by the very spirit of beauty. She rode with her rein loose, and her mind apparently absorbed with any thing but her horse. A turn of her head, or the pressure of her foot upon his shoulder, was probably the animal's guidance. But, of an excessively impassioned nature, she conversed in the saddle with the expression and gesture of the most earnest untrammeling of mind, and, in full speed, as in the repose upon a lounge in a saloon, she carried away the listener with her uncalculating and passionate absorption—no self-possession, however on its guard it might be, able, apparently, to withstand the enveloping and resistless influence which she herself was a slave to. Unconsciousness of every thing in the world, except the feeling she was pouring from her soul, seemed the only and every-day condition and law of her nature; and supreme as she was in fashion of dress, and style of manner, these seemed matters learned and lost thought of—she having returned to nature, leaving her triumphs as a belle to be cared for by infallible habit. A separate spirit of light, speaking from the lips of the most accomplished and best perfected of women—the spirit, and the form possessed, being each in full exercise of their best faculties—could scarcely have conveyed more complete impressions of wondrous mind, in perfect body, or have blended more ravishingly, the entireness of heavenly with the most winning earthly development. She was an earnest angel, in the person of a self-possessed and unerringly graceful woman.

I chanced to be looking on, when Prince ——, one of the brothers of a royal family of central Europe, was presented to the Countess ——. It was at a crowded ball; and I observed that, after a few minutes of conversation with her, he suddenly assumed a ceremonious indifference of manner, and went into another room. I saw at once that the slightness of the attention was an "anchor to windward," and that, in even those few minutes the prince had recognized a rare gem, and foreseen that, in the pursuit of it, he might need to be without any remembered particularity of attention. Lady ——- conversed with him with her usual earnest openness, but started a little, once or twice, at words which were certainly unaccompanied by their corresponding expression of countenance; and this, too, I put down for an assumption of disguise on the part of the prince. It was natural enough; with his conspicuous rank, he could only venture to be unguarded in his attentions to those for whom he had no presentiment of future intimacy.

That the progress of this acquaintance should assume for me the interest of a drama—a scene of it played every night, with interludes every day, in public drives and excursions—would not be wonderful to you, could I have drawn the portrait of the principal performer in it, so that you would understand its novelty. I had never seen such a woman, and I was intensely interested to know how she would bear temptation. The peculiar character of the prince I easily understood; and I felt at once, that of all stages of an accomplished man's progress, he was at the one most dangerous to her, while, perhaps, no other kind of woman in the world would have called upon any but very practiced feelings of his own. He was of middle age, and had intellect enough to have long anticipated the ebb of pleasure. With his faculties and perceptions in full force, he was most fastidious in permitting himself to enjoy an enthusiasm, to admire, to yield to, or to embark upon with risk. The admiration of mere beauty, mere style, mere wit, mere superiority of intellect in woman, or of any of these combined, was but a recurrent phase of artificial life. He had been to the terminus, the farthest human capability of enjoyment of this, and was now back again to nature, with his keenest relish in reserve, looking for such outdoings of art as nature sometimes shows in her caprices. In the Countess —— he recognized at once a rare miracle of this—a woman whose beauty, whose style, whose intellect, whose pride, were all abundant, but, abundant as they were, still all subservient to electric and tumultuous sensation. Her life, her impulse—the consciousness with which she breathed—was the one gift given her by Heaven in tenfold measure, and her impression on those she expanded to, was like the magnetizing presence of ten full existences poured into one. The heart acknowledged it before her—though the reason knew not always why.

Lord —— would scarce have been human had he not loved such a woman, and she his wife. He did love her—and doubtless loves her at this hour with all the tenderness of which he could ever be capable. If they had lived only on their estates in England, where seclusion would have put up no wall of concealment to his feelings, she might have drawn from the open well of his heart, the water for which her ardent being was athirst. But with the usage of fashionable life, he followed his own amusements during the day, leaving the countess to hers; and in scenes of gayety they were, of course, still separated by custom; and all she enjoyed of nature in her rides, or of excitement in society, was, of course, with others than her husband. Naples is in the midst of palace-gardens, and of wonders of scenery—in seeing which love is engendered in the bosom and brain with tropical fruitfulness—and Lady —— could no more have lived that year in Italy without passionate loving, than she could have stayed from breathing the fragrance of the orange blossoms, when galloping between the terraced gardens of Sorrento.

When abroad, a little more than a year ago, I made a visit to a friend, whose estate is in the same county with that of the father of Lady ——, and between whose park-gates and his extends the distance of a morning's drive through one of the loveliest hedged winding-roads of lovely England. A very natural inquiry was of the whereabout and happiness of the Countess of ——, whom I had left at Naples ten years before, and had not been in the way of hearing of since; and I named her in the gay tone with which one speaks of the brilliant and happy. We were sitting at the dinner-table, and I observed that I had mis-struck a chord of feeling in the company present, and with well-bred tact, the master of the house informed me that misfortunes had befallen the family since the period I spoke of, and turned the conversation to another topic. After dinner, I heard from him the following outline of the story, and its affecting sequel.

Near the close of the season when Lord —— was at Naples, he suddenly left that city and returned with his wife and their one child to England. To the surprise of the wondering world, Lady —— went to her father's, and Lord —— to the small estate of his widowed mother, where they remained for a while in unexplained seclusion. It was not long before rumors arrived from Italy, of a nature breathing upon the reputation of the lady; and soon after a formal separation took place, Mr. ——, her father, engaging to leave his whole fortune to the son of Lord ——, if that nobleman would consent to give him to the exclusive keeping of his mother. With these facts ended the world's knowledge of the parties, the separated pair remaining, year after year, in absolute seclusion; and Lady —— never having been known to put foot beyond the extending forest in which her home was hidden from view, and the gates to which were guarded from all entrance, even of family friends.

It was but a few days before this sequel was narrated to me, that the first communication had been made from the Countess of —— to her husband. It was a summons to attend, if he wished, the burial of his only child—the heir of his name, and the bringer-back, had he lived, of wealth to the broken fortunes of his title. A severer blow could hardly have followed the first—for it struck down heart, pride, and all that could brighten this world's future. Lord —— came. The grave was made in a deep grove of firs on the estate of the boy's mother. There were but three mourners present—herself, her father, and her husband. The boy was ten or eleven years old when he died, and one of the most gifted and noble lads, in mind and person, that had ever been seen by those who knew him. On his horse, with his servant behind him, the young boy-lord was a constant sight of pride and beauty to the inhabitants of the county, and was admired and beloved every where he rode in his daily excursions.

The service was read; the two parents stood side by side at the grave, while the body was laid in it—the first time they had met since their separation, and both in the prime of life, and with hearts yearning—both hearts, beyond a doubt—with love, and longing for forgiveness; and when the earth rang on the coffin, they parted without exchanging a word. The carriage of Lord —— waited for him in the avenue; and with the expiring echo of his wheels through that grove of fir-trees, died all hope and prospect, if any had been conceived, of a re-union, in grief, of these proud broken-hearted.

I have told you thus, with literal truth, all that I could know of this drama of real life; but, of course, its sketchy outline could be easily filled out by fancy. Your readers, perhaps, will like to do this for themselves.

Yours truly,

N. P. Willis.