Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

“ Blue Lake Geneva!—blue as a woman’s eye, blue as the vault of heaven, dropped into the lap of the green earth like a great sparkling sapphire! Mont Blanc you know to be just behind the clouds on the other side, and that presently, after hours or days of patient waiting, he may condescend to unveil himself to your worshipful gaze.
“He is wise in his dignity and reserve,” mused Salemina as we sat on the veranda. “He is all the more sublime because he withdraws himself from time to time. ”

“ And where is Herself, the vanished Penelope, you ask; the companion of Salemina and Francesca; the traveller in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; the wanderer in Switzerland and Italy? Well, if she is a thought less irresponsible, merry, and loquacious, she is happier and wiser. If her easel and her palette are not in daily evidence, neither are they altogether banished from the scene; and whatever measure of cunning Penelope’s hand possessed in other days, Mrs. Beresford has contrived to preserve. ”

“ Peppina is the second maid, and as arrant a coquette as lives in all Italy. Her picture has been painted on more than one fisherman’s sail, for it is rumoured that she has been six times betrothed and she is still under twenty. The unscrupulous little flirt rids herself of her suitors, after they become a weariness to her, by any means, fair or foul, and her capricious affections are seldom good for more than three months. Her own loves have no deep roots, but she seems to have the power of arousing in others furious jealousy and rage and a very delirium of pleasure. ”

“ Atlas had a bundle of illustrated papers under his arm—The Sketch, Black and White, The Queen, The Lady’s Pictorial, and half a dozen others. The guard was pasting an “engaged” placard on the carriage window and piling up six luncheon-baskets in the corner on the cushions, and speedily we were off.
It is a sincere tribute to the intrinsic charm of Egeria’s character that Mrs. Jack and I admire her so unreservedly, for she is for ever being hurled at us as an example in cases where men are too stupid to see that there is no fault in us, nor any special virtue in her. ”

“ My heart beat high with joy and excitement, for I succeeded in establishing Miss Van with Salemina in one gondola, while I took all the luggage in another, ridding myself thus cleverly of the disenchanting influence of Miss Van’s company.
“Do come with us, Penelope,” she said, as we issued from the portico of the station and heard, instead of the usual cab-drivers’ pandemonium, only the soft lapping of waves against the marble steps—“Do come with us, Penelope, and let us enter ‘dangerous and sweet-charmed Venice’ together. ”

“ If I should be asked on bended knees, if I should be reminded that every intelligent and sympathetic creature brings a pair of fresh eyes to the study of the beautiful, if it should be affirmed that the new note is as likely to be struck by the ’prentice as by the master hand, if I should be assured that my diary would never be read, I should still refuse to write my first impressions of Venice. ”

“ Jack: “No; he is a reformer.”
Jack: “Even reformers fall in love.”
Mrs. Jack: “Not unless they can find a woman to reform. Egeria is too nearly perfect to attract Atlas; besides, what does it matter, anyway?”
Jack: “It matters a good deal if it makes him unhappy; he is too good a fellow.”
Mrs. Jack: “I’ve lived twenty-five years and I have never seen a man’s unhappiness last more than six months, and I have never seen a woman make a wound in a man’s heart that another woman couldn’t heal. The modern young man is as tough as—well, I can’t think of anything tough enough to compare him to. ”

“ To be able to recall those scenes of marvellous beauty so vividly that one lives through them again in fancy, and reflect, that since we have stopped being picturesque and fascinating, we have learned, on the whole, to behave much better, is as delightful a trend of thought as I can imagine, and it was mine as I floated toward the Piazza of San Marco in my gondola. ”

“ Not a suggestion there of the fripperies of a fine lady’s toilet, but, in their stead, heads of cherubs, wings of angels, slender bell-towers, friezes of acanthus leaves,—beauty of line and form everywhere, and not a hint of colour save in the riotous bunches of poppies and oleanders that lie on the broad window-seats or stand upright in great blue jars.
Here the Little Genius lives, like the hermit crab that she calls herself; here she dwells apart from kith and kin, her mind and heart and miracle-working hands taken captive by the charms of the siren city of the world. ”

“ Jack sternly, “you may think about them as much as you like; I have no control over your mental processes, but if you mention single tax, or tenement-house reform, or Socialism, or altruism, or communism, or the sweating system, you will be dropped at Bideford. Atlas is only travelling with us because he needs complete moral and intellectual rest. I hope, oh, how I hope, that there isn’t a social problem in Clovelly! It seems as if there couldn’t be, in a village of a single street and that a stone staircase.” ”

“ We have had a battle royal in Casa Rosa—a battle over the breaking of a huge blue pitcher valued at eight francs, a pitcher belonging to the Little Genius.
The room that leads from the dining-room to the kitchen is reached by the descent of two or three stone steps. It is always full, and is like the orthodox hell in one respect, that though myriads of people are seen to go into it, none ever seem to come out. ”

“ Rosalia, the cook, is a graceful person with brown eyes, wavy hair, and long lashes, and when she is coaxing her charcoal fire with a primitive fan of cock’s feathers, her cheeks as pink as oleanders, the Little Genius leads us to the kitchen door and bids us gaze at her beauty. We are suitably enthralled at the moment, but we suffer an inevitable reaction when the meal is served, and sometimes long for a plain cook. ”

“ She is in the heart of the Irish Theatre and the Modern Poetry movements,—and when she is not hobnobbing with playwrights and poets she is consorting with the Irish nobility and gentry.
I cannot help thinking that she would still be Miss Peabody, of Salem, Massachusetts, had it not been for my generous and helpful offices, and those of Francesca! Never were two lovers, parted in youth in America and miraculously reunited in middle age in Ireland, more recalcitrant in declaring their mutual affection than Dr. La Touche and Salemina! Nothing in the world divided them but imaginary barriers. ”

“ We had not been especially high-minded or educational in Switzerland, Salemina and I. The worm will turn; and there is a point where the improvement of one’s mind seems a farce, and the service of humanity, for the moment, a duty only born of a diseased imagination.
How can one sit on a vine-embowered balcony facing lovely Lake Geneva and think about modern problems,—Improved Tenements, Child Labour, Single Tax, Sweat Shops, and the Right Training of the Rising Civilization? ”

“ There are many small boats always in view, their orange sails patched with all sorts of emblems and designs in a still deeper colour, and day before yesterday a large ship appeared at our windows and attached itself to our very doorsteps, much to the wrath of Salemina, who finds the poetry of existence much disturbed under the new conditions. All is life and motion now. ”

“ Atlas may have taken her there because he could discuss single tax more eloquently when he was walking over the entailed estates of the English landed gentry, but I suspect that single tax had taken off its hat, and bowing profoundly to Egeria, had said, “After you, Madam!” and retired to its proper place in the universe; for not even the most blatant economist would affirm that any other problem can be so important as that which confronts a man when he enters that land of Beulah, which is upon the borders of Heaven and within sight of the City of Love. ”

“ We should never have found this romantic dwelling by ourselves; the Little Genius brought us here. The Little Genius is Miss Ecks, who draws, and paints, and carves, and models in clay, preaching and practising the brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of woman in the intervals; Miss Ecks, who is the custodian of all the talents and most of the virtues, and the invincible foe of sordid common sense and financial prosperity. Miss Ecks met us by chance in the Piazza and breathlessly explained that she was searching for paying guests to be domiciled under the roof of Numero Sessanta, Giudecca. ”

“ The walls of every room in the inn are covered with old china, much of it pretty, and some of it valuable, though the finest pieces are not hung, but are placed in glass cabinets. One cannot see an inch of wall space anywhere in bedrooms, dining- or sitting-rooms for the huge delft platters, whole sets of the old green dragon pattern, quaint perforated baskets, pitchers and mugs of British lustre, with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, and clocks of china. The massing of colour is picturesque and brilliant, and the whole effect decidedly unique. ”

“ Jack: “No; but Egeria isn’t a—yes, she is, too; I can’t deny it, but I don’t believe she knows anything about the sweating system, and she adores Ossian and Fiona Macleod, so she probably won’t appeal to Atlas in his present state, which, to my mind, is unnecessarily intense. The service of humanity renders a young man perfectly callous to feminine charms. It’s the proverbial safety of numbers, I suppose, for it’s always the individual that leads a man into temptation, if you notice, never the universal;—Woman, not women. I have studied Atlas profoundly, and he is nearly as blind as a bat. ”

“ Your soul is so steeped in illusions; so submerged in the Lethean waters of the past; so emasculated by thrilling legends, paltry titles, and ruined castles, that you forget that Pestalozzi was the father of popular education and the sometime teacher of Froebel, our patron saint. When you return to your adored Boston, your faithful constituents in that and other suburbs of Salem, Massachusetts, will not ask you if you have seen the Castle of Chillon and the terrace of Corinne, but whether you went to Yverdon.”
Salemina gave one last fond look at the lake and picked up her Baedeker. ”

“ Very well, then, what was Penelope inspired to do when she became Mrs. Beresford and left the Atlantic rolling between the beloved Salemina, Francesca, and herself? Why, having “crossed the sea and back” repeatedly, she found “the sit-fast acres” of the house of Beresford where she “left them” and where they had been sitting fast for more than a hundred years.
“Here is the proper place for us to live,” she said to Himself, when they first viewed the dear delightful New England landscape over together. ”

“ I shall live here!” cried Mrs. Jack. “I said that a few times in Wales, but I retract it. You had better live here, too, Atlas; there aren’t any problems in Clovelly.”
“I am sure of that,” he assented smilingly. “I noticed dozens of live snails in the rocks of the street as we came down; snails cannot live in combination with problems.”
“Then I am a snail,” answered Mrs. Jack cheerfully; “for that is exactly my temperament.”
We found that we could not get room enough for all at the tiny inn, but this only exhilarated Egeria and Tommy. ”

“ On the third side of the Yverdon Monument is Pestalozzi’s noble speech, fine enough indeed, to be cut in stone:—
“J’ai vécu moi-même
comme un mendiant,
pour apprendre à des
mendiants à vivre comme
des hommes.”
We sat a long time on the great marble pedestal, gazing into the benevolent face, and reviewing the simple, self-sacrificing life of the great educator, and then started on a tour of inspection. After wandering through most of the shops, buying photographs and mementoes, Salemina discovered that she had left the expensive tumbler in one of them. ”

“ I don’t believe English people are as good as we are; they can’t be; they’re too comfortable. I wonder if the little discomforts of living in America, the dissatisfaction and incompetency of servants, and all the other problems, will work out for the nation a more exceeding weight of glory, or whether they will simply ruin the national temper.”
“It’s wicked to be too luxurious, Egeria,” said Tommy, with a sly look at Atlas. ”

“ If she wields the duster occasionally, in alternation with the paint-brush and the pen, she has now a new choice of weapons; and as for models,—her friends, her neighbours, even her enemies and rivals, might admire her ingenuity, her thrift, and her positive genius in selecting types to paint! She never did paint anything beautifully but children, though her backgrounds have been praised, also the various young things that were a vital part of every composition. ”

“ Beppo sent a stinging reproof in verse to Peppina by the new gardener, and the Little Genius read it to us, to show the poetic instinct of the discarded lover, and how well he had selected his rebuke from the store of popular verses known to gondoliers and fishermen of Venice:—
“No te fidar de l’ albaro che piega,
Ne de la dona quando la te giura.
La te impromete, e po la te denega;
No te fidar de l’ albaro che piega.”
(“Trust not the mast that bends.
Trust not a woman’s oath;
She’ll swear to you, and there it ends,
Trust not the mast that bends.”) ”