Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

“ Best of all I have discovered a gorge, sloping gently on one side, the other a huge boulder covered with moss; in the bottom of the gorge a brook pushing its tortuous way over rocks; and alders and ferns close to the banks. Overhead there is a rift of sky, and the sunlight flickers about [112] generously, and the woods I have come through look so dark and impenetrable. There is a fine dry rock with the alders meeting like an arbour above it, and I sit there by the hour and wonder why the forest ever made me feel over-civilised. Beside these people I feel a pure child of Nature. ”

“ My distant peak was a monstrous turquoise. The thick woods about us showed every shade of green. The honeysuckle is gone, but the moss is richer than ever, and now and again one glimpses a purple lily. In little bays there are water-lilies, and on the miniature islands a wildness, a tangle of fern and young trees, that is indescribable. In some places there is a good deal of pollen on the water, but the greater part of the lake’s surface is golden-brown and bright. The only blot on the lovely picture is the too frequent dead spruce. ”

“ Up this rocky steep mountain brook, over the cascade, the trout climb in their thirst for the cold springs of the higher lakes. No other fish can make that perilous journey, so Chipmunk is one of the stars of the Adirondacks. The trout have no minnows or other small fish to feed on, and rise to the fly with little coaxing. I am become so learned in mountain lore! But I feel as if I had discovered [232] this wonderful country, and as happy as a poet in the nervous languor of creation. ”

“ He has argued famous cases before the Supreme Court, amassed a fortune, and his admirers—not this set—want him to go into politics. He is very striking in appearance, tall, thin, nervous, with a lean, clever, hard, mobile face, an eye that burns and penetrates, a mouth that looks as if it had conquered everything but his passions, and a quick nervous grip of the hand which suggests that what he does he does quickly and wastes no time arguing about. Next to Mr. Rogers Bertie likes him better than any one up here, and I must confess he rather fascinates me. ”

“ These islands were covered on all sides with the richest moss and the most delicate ferns, and on the top of each grew great trees, their long roots gripping the sides of the rock like petrified pythons. Then a water-course choked with smaller boulders, and rising [281] out of it, straight up for five hundred feet, a solid wall of rock crowned with a pine forest. The wall was a half-mile long and so smooth that one could well imagine some terrible convulsion of these Adirondacks during which a mountain had been split in twain, one side grinding itself into these boulder-islands of the forest. ”

“ Chenoweth. It must be a jolly sensation to have striven for something so high above your reach and finally achieved it. What contempt for those left below, what constant self-gratulation. Miss Simpson quite chilled me with the silent hauteur of her manner, the level dissecting rays of her fine eyes. She holds herself aloft, as it were, with the rigid spine of the traditional queen; but let me confide to you, Polly dear, she looks like a successful business woman, tout même, not at all like what I fancy she wishes to resemble. ”

“ This was what she had up her sleeve, Polly. What deceit, what treachery, what sneakingness. Only a widow would be capable of such a thing. But I must say I respect her. She fooled me completely. I could not have been capable of so clever a revenge, and I detest her for it, because she has not the true sporting instinct, but she is to be reckoned with all the same. In spite of her platitudes and her ingenuous pride in the seven generations, she is both clever and deep—when her pride is in arms, and revenge and ambition both spur her on to capture a duke. ”

“ I nearly starved trying to be a man, so I became an emasculated backboneless poseur to please the passionless women and the timid publishers of the United States. To please the sort of American woman who makes the success of a novelist—the [184] faddist and the gusher—you must tickle her with the idea that she is a superior being because she has no passion and that you are creating a literature which only she can appreciate—she with a refinement and a bleached and laundried set of tastes which have made her a tyrannical middle-class enthusiast for all that is unreal and petty in art! ”

“ Not but what I fancy the intellect is really there, Polly, but it is reserved as a sub-stratum, from which little sparks are sent up to irradiate, not a constant conscientious blaze like an energetic thunder storm.
[193] Mrs. Van Worden invited me into her bed-room and we muffled ourselves in warm wrappers and talked for hours while the wind howled. She really has seen the world, and is as interesting as—well, as you are. There is a woman who would sympathise with you from A to Z and never criticise. Fancy the attitude of Mrs. Laurence or Mrs. Hammond. What is Christianity, anyhow? ”

“ There is nothing of the frowning majestic awesomeness of wild mountain regions that I have read of and often imagined, and, as surely, there is nothing of the peace of England—that peace that must pervade any perfected civilisation just as repose comes to the truly cultivated mind of middle years. It is something between the two, beauty [22] without tameness, solitude without calm, yet with none of the feverish restlessness of the young civilisation at its feet, primeval wildness without its terrors; for scarcely a living thing that harms, human or brute, but has been exterminated ”

“ From the Lady Helen Pole to the Countess of Edge and Ross.
Boulder Lake,
June 18th
I WISH you were up here with me, Polly; I am sure you would forget all your troubles. It is such an extraordinary experience to be in a primeval wilderness, where one never hears a church bell, never comes suddenly upon a wayside calvary, never passes a peasant in costume, nor a picturesque hovel. The civilisations and the arts that have made Europe such an inexhaustible wonder never have ventured here. It is Nature, virgin and ignorant, and it often gives me the most unaccountable sensation. ”

“ In the living-room is a huge fireplace of stones with the moss on, the low ceiling is crossed with heavy [12] beams, and there are several mounted deer heads. From the front verandas and windows we get a fine view of the lake and the little irregularities which form its bays, but on all other sides we look directly into the forest. There is no clearing to speak of about the house, and the tall spruce-trees, pointed like church spires, and the maples with their delicate beautiful leaves form a perfect wall; for their branches grow to the very ground. ”

“ Then I felt my eyes twinkle and he recovered himself in a manner that would have done credit to a woman of the world in her fourteenth flirtation; men are usually so clumsy about these things; he smiled quickly and added in the light tone of any man complimenting any woman: “You are really unique here, you know, Lady Helen. Perhaps lily is rather your prototype in the floral world than rose. You make my countrywomen seem like hot-house flowers—if there were a floral heaven they would all be beautiful orchids in the next world.” ”

“ They, too, are on the edge of the lake, covered with moss that sometimes is green, sometimes a mingling of the most delicate tints, pink and green and pearl and blue. Rioting everywhere along the edge of the lake is the wild honeysuckle, pink and intoxicatingly fragrant. By the Club House is an open field where they raise hay. Just now it looks like a wild lawn full of buttercups and daisies, almost as much of an anomaly up here in this wilderness as these comfortable houses and gaily painted boats. ”

“ Some of the smaller trees have been cut down and I could see a little distance into the forest. It looked so quiet—so expectant. I have decided that that is the spirit of these mountain forests of the New World—expectancy, waiting. Civilisation is held in check at present by the laws of New York, which owns the greater portion of the Adirondack tract. But for how long? And they have had more than a glimpse of man, these forests, from the old dead trappers to the flowers of modern and greedy civilisation. What is it they expect? ”

“ I entered it presently and walked down the logs as rapidly as I could, for the exercise; pausing whenever I reached a ledge—in these woods you cannot walk and admire at the same time unless you care to run the risk of a broken ankle—to drink in that wild yet awesome perspective of the forest. The trees are so high, and often their branches leap across and clasp hands!—and crowding upon the heels of the advance guard is the green, fragrant, ancient army, a million strong. And every now and again the distant mountain beyond the high wild valley. ”

“ Bertie is coarse at times, but nobody can deny that he is expressive.
Polly, are these people merely snobs? What do you make of them? You write me, you dear thing, that my letters are profoundly interesting to you and that I pop the people I meet right into your imagination. I am so glad, for they certainly interest me. It is like living in a novel—an American one, it is true, but fresh and new, and full of unsolved problems to the mere outsider. ”

“ Say what you like you have an enormously large aristocratic class, a class which is always looking round for somebody to snub and which holds itself immeasurably above the masses. You’ll be a monarchy yet with every title that ever was heard of, and American inventions to boot. The result of your Trust system will be two classes—the wealthy and the helpless poor. The hour the wealthy class feels that it is strong enough it will make for a court and a nobility. ”

“ He certainly is interesting, Polly, although in so different a way from all the men I have ever known or read about that I really do not know whether I like him or not. He fascinates me, but that is his magnetism, the concentration of his preternaturally clever mind upon [145] myself, the brilliant and unexpected things he says, and the truly delightful little attentions he pays me, when I know that he is full of restlessness and hardness, and ambition and nervous contempt of the details of life. ”

“ They are quite content to be just men and do the sensible things every-day men usually do without bothering about it. They say much prettier things to one than our men do, and I like it, but how much they mean I am not prepared to say. They are not in the least exaggerated or silly in their admiration, like a Frenchman or a Spaniard—will you ever forget that experience in Madrid?—for their common sense and their sense of humour never fail them. And they are all clever—no doubt of that!—but somehow their cleverness does not annoy one as the women’s does. ”

“ But I should say that the great Writers of the Past had never been imported to the United States. Perhaps they were carefully edited and put into drawers first.
By the way, talking of the strange inconsistencies of this country, I have noticed much the same quality in the many American women who have visited England from time to time, some of whom I have known rather well. When they have a lover—and they usually have as far as I am able to judge—they appear to be so frightened that people will find it out. They say and do the most absurd things to throw you off the track. ”

“ But after we were in the mountains all was changed, we drove through the very heart of the woods, thick with high trees and full of a pleasant gloom; and once in approaching them we passed a hill that looked to be set close with green church spires, so thick were the spruce among the maples.
[23] The trees about the lake grow down to the edge of the brown water, almost out of it, and so densely, that in rowing past, one rarely has a glimpse into the woods. When one does, it is to see the great boulders that have given the lake its name. ”

“ It is a blessed relief to be here in this silence and fragrance and beauty; and when the horrors that men and women make for themselves come into my mind, I go out and look at the solitary peak that towers above the long receding range of mountains at the head of the lake. ”

“ I think if I had known others like him or had known him about five years I should almost fall in love with him; but how we cling to our [146] ideals! Independence of thought! We are all creatures of traditions.
I may just as well tell you first as last, Polly, that I am sure both Mr. Rogers and Mr. Nugent have made up their minds to marry me. Agatha is blind and Bertie amused, for he cannot imagine me falling in love with anything un-English and new. You see, I look so—well, traditional, few know or suspect that I am impetuous and full of curiosity and love of novelty inside. ”

“ Frankly then I do not think that any of my authors are great, but I think it best to convince the world that they are because they are unquestionably on the right track and their success will encourage the younger talent to follow in their footsteps, crowning the achievement of to-day with the richer harvest of a more virile generation. I am quite aware that we lack virility, but when a more full-blooded generation does arrive think of the vast advantage it will have in this skeleton example of flawless art and perfect taste. ”