Gilbert White

“ When the only love of a silent man's life comes upon him when he is nearly forty, fairly sweeping him from his feet, and in less than three years wife and the child just forming her first words are snatched away, leaving him deaf at heart, work is the only consoler that can gain even his ear. So Gilbert had baked and swept and garnished, kept the geraniums and the calla lilies and pink flowering "Gypsey" in the windows, and a white spread upon the bed, and the hooded mahogany cradle-cover of pink and white basket-pattern patchwork, as it had been during those years. ”

“ Gilbert was before all things a draughtsman, and is likely to be remembered rather as an illustrator than as a painter. In water-colour his technique was largely determined by his practice in black-and-white. He would model his surfaces with the brush as if he were hatching with pen or pencil. Alike in water-colour and in oils he was a powerful colourist, with a special fondness for red; his shadows were often too black. ”

“ His letters have always come in old envelopes turned inside out; he walks whenever possible and wears a shabby white habit and broken boots. Both Frances and Gilbert loved him dearly and their rare meetings were red letter days for both. Besides the link of Distributism the two men were united in caring deeply for the reawakened interest in St. Thomas and his philosophy.
The Benedictine, as well as the Dominican, outlook and history especially appealed to Gilbert, and the friendship with Father Ignatius Rice, which had begun almost with the century, grew steadily. ”

“ Courtright and Gilbert made their first New York appearance at Charley White’s, 585 Broadway, October 12, 1872. Mr. Gilbert later eschewed burnt cork, and subsequently with Henry V. Donnelly and Eddie Girard starred in “Natural Gas.” Mr. Gilbert’s time is now mostly devoted to authoring theatrical sketches.
John D. Gilbert was born in Dublin, Ireland, September 3, 1857.
Wm. J. Sully (Sullivan) formed a partnership with Patsy Howard in 1873, doing a black-face act; they remained together one season. ”

“ A dumb obedience marked his relations with the guard. The white man’s civilization was as disagreeable and unnatural to him as his nomadic life would be to us. A fish could just as well live out of water as this pigmy in the white man’s land. ”

“ There is a psychological reason for thinking this story especially improbable and a physical reason for dismissing it as actually impossible.
A white horse had from his childhood been for Gilbert the supreme sign of romance, and he had chosen to spend the first night of his honeymoon at the White Horse Inn. From his honeymoon he wrote home that he had "a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a knife. What more can any man want?" ”

“ Gilbert's prose work in The Debater must have been little less surprising to any master who had merely watched him slumbering at a desk. His historical romance "The White Cockade" is immature and unimportant. But essays on Spenser, Milton, Pope, Gray, Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, "Humour in Fiction," "Boys' Literature," Sir Walter Scott, Browning, the English Dramatists, showed a range and a quality of literary criticism alike surprising. ”

“ In winter the little city lay still under a coverlet of pure white, with the mists from the river and the great falls above frozen upon the trees, clothing them as graciously as with white samite; so that far as eye could see there was a heavenly purity upon all, covering every mean and distorted thing. ”

“ Ever and ever through long months the everlasting white glitter of the snow and ice, ever and ever the cold stars, the cloudless sky, the moon at full, or swung like a white sickle in the sky to warn him that his life must be mown like grass. ”

“ By the shore the air was white with sea-gulls flying and circling, rising and descending, shooting up straight into the air; their bodies smooth and long like the body of a babe in white samite, their feathering tails spread like a fan, their wings expanding on the ambient air. ”

“ As white as falling snow my hair,
And faded all my girlish beauty.
I see my every charm depart;
But Memory's chain I cannot sever,
For ah, within my poor old heart
The fire of love burns bright as ever! ”

“ A hundred thoughts like these went through her mind as she stood by the table under the hanging lamp, her face white as the loose robe she wore, her eyes hot and staring, her figure rigid as stone.
To-morrow—how could she face to-morrow, and Louis! How could she tell him this! How could she say to him, “Louis, you are no longer Seigneur. The man you hate, he who is your inveterate enemy, who has every reason to exact from you the last tribute of humiliation, is Seigneur here!” ”

“ THE TWILIGHT OF LOVE Adieu! and the sun goes awearily down, The mist creeps up o’er the sleepy town, The white sails bend to the shuddering mere, And the reapers have reaped, and the night is here. Adieu! and the years are a broken song, The right grows weak in the strife with wrong, The lilies of love have a crimson stain, And the old days never will come again. ”

“ Both books shine with that light on the white road of man's endeavour, thrill with that life. Gilbert felt now the clue to history in his fingers and he used it increasingly. The Everlasting Man is the Orthodoxy of his later life and one difficulty in dealing with it adequately was expressed in a letter from William Lyon Phelps thanking the author for "a magnificent work of genius and never more needed than now. I took out my pencil to mark the most important passages, but I quickly put my pencil in my pocket for I found I had to mark every sentence." ”

“ He was certainly over forty when first elected to the house in 1571. On 20 April, on the first reading of a ‘bill for fugitives or such as were fled beyond the sea without licence,’ he attacked Sir Humphrey Gilbert [q. v.] for a speech delivered on 14 April deprecating interference by the house with the prerogative. ‘He noted’ Gilbert's ‘disposition to flatter and fawn upon the prince,’ comparing him to ‘the chameleon which can change himself into all colours saving white; even so ... ”

“ When the stars burn out, and the night cries To the blind sea-reapers, and they rise, And the water-ways are stark— God save us when the reapers reap! When the ships sweep in with the tide to the shore, And the little white boats return no more ”

“ Katisha, for years I have loved you with a white-hot passion that is slowly but surely consuming my very vitals! Ah, shrink not from me! If there is aught of woman's mercy in your heart, turn not away from a love-sick suppliant whose every fibre thrills at your tiniest touch! True it is that, under a poor mask of disgust, I have endeavoured to conceal a passion whose inner fires are broiling the soul within me! ”

“ Save in my dreams. There it was vast and lone,
Splendid in power, breaking against the stone
Walls of the world in thunder symphony.
From it arose mists growing into mists
Making a cool white curtain for the sun,
And melting mornward when the day was done,
A moving sphere where spirits kept their trysts.
A ceaseless swinging with the swinging earth,
A never-tiring ebbing to and fro,
Trenching eternal fastnesses; a girth
Round mountains in their everlasting snow. ”

“ She raised her head from the white petticoat she was ironing, and gazed out of the doorway and down the valley with a warm light in her eyes and a glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the fir-covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple and ash woods, with their hundred autumn tints, all merging to one soft, red tone, the roar of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the heights, the air that braced the nerves—it all seemed to be part of her, the passion of life corresponding to the passion of living in her. ”

“ In a blaze of joy the sun swept down behind the southern hills, and the windows of Lumley’s house at the Forks, catching the oblique rays, glittered and shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save the cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter of the foothills for the night. The white, placid snow made a coverlet as wide as the vision of the eye, save where spruce and cedar trees gave a touch of warmth and refuge here and there. ”

“ Padre Pastor, in his black gown, with his face all wreathed in smiles, was trying to explain to the schoolteacher’s wife that “stars were the forget-me-nots of heaven.” The young commissary sergeant had secured an alcove for the “Arizona babe,” and “Foxy grandpa,” taking a nip of something when his good wife’s back was turned, was telling his best anecdote of the southwest, “Ichabod Crane,” the big-boned Kansan—who had got the better of us all that afternoon in argument—swinging his arms, and with his head thrown back, was trying to herd the people into an old-fashioned reel. ”

“ We hate, and old wrongs lift their faces, To fill up the ranks of the new; We love, and the early love’s graces Are signs of the false and the true; We clasp the white hands that are given To greet us in devious ways, But meet the old sins, all unshriven, To sadden the burden of days. Though we lose the green leaves of the first days, Though the vineyards be trampled and red, We know, in the gloom of our worst days, That the dead are not evermore dead: December is only December, A space, not the infinite whole; Though the hearthstone bear but the one ember, There still is the fire of the soul. ”

“ There is an orchard beyond the sea, And joy to its haven hies; And a white hand opens its gate to me— Oh, deep are my true love’s eyes! There is an orchard beyond the sea, Its flowers the brown bee sips; But the stateliest flower is all for me— Oh, sweet are my true love’s lips! There is an orchard beyond the sea, Where the soft delights do roam; To the Great Delight I have bent my knee— Oh, good is my true love’s home! There is an orchard beyond the sea, With a nest where the linnets hide; Oh, warm is the nest that is built for me— In my true love’s heart I bide! ”

“ In the electric moonlight the blue mountains, more mysterious than ever, stand out in bold relief. What restless tribes of savages are wandering now through the trackless forests, sleeping in lofty trees, or in some scanty shelter amid the tangled underbrush! The light that flickers in the distant gorge, perchance illumines some religious orgy—some impassioned dance of primitive and pagan men. ”

“ With Frontispiece. God and the Man. With 11 Illustrations by Fred. Barnard. Lady Kilpatrick. The Martyrdom of Madeline. With Frontispiece by A. W. Cooper. Love Me for Ever. With Frontispiece. Annan Water. Foxglove Manor. The New Abelard. Rachel Dane. Matt: A Story of a Caravan. With Frontispiece. The Master of the Mine. With Frontispiece. The Heir of Linne. Woman and the Man. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each. Red and White Heather. Andromeda: An Idyll of the Great River. The Charlatan. By Robert Buchanan and Henry Murray. Crown 8vo, cloth, with a Frontispiece by T. H. Robinson, 3s. ”

“ The monotony of the motion and the balm of the day began to intoxicate Gilbert. It is not easy to feel that fate is against one when the sun shines, the sky smiles, and the air is quivering with light and dancing shadow; harder still in the face of the blue, endless sea-spaces of the horizon; hard indeed when the horse before you conveys subtly to your hand that he is prepared to transport you, behind the beating pulse of his trot, to Eldorado—to the Isles of the Blessed—anywhere. ”

“ Edward Chesterton practised "water-colour painting and modelling and photography and stained glass and fretwork and magic lanterns and mediaeval illumination." And, moreover, "knew all his English literature backwards."
It has become of late the fashion for any one who writes of his own life to see himself against a dark background, to see his development frustrated by some shadow of heredity or some horror of environment. But Gilbert saw his life rather as the ancients saw it when pietas was a duty because we had received so much from those who brought us into being. ”

“ Rich. [Looking after him.] Ah, it's a thousand pities he's such a poor opinion of himself, for a finer fellow don't walk! Well, I'll do my best for him. "Plead for him as though it was for your own father"—that's what my heart's a remarkin' to me just now. But here she comes! Steady! Steady it is! [Enter Rose—he is much struck by her.] By the Port Admiral but she's a tight little craft! Come, come, she's not for you, Dick, and yet—she's fit to marry Lord Nelson! By the Flag of Old England, I can't look at her unmoved.
Rose. Sir, you are agitated—
Rich. Aye, aye, my lass, well said! ”

“ Gilbert, pitying his state of mind, turned to leave; but at the moment he stooped to pick up his portmanteau and cane, the youth, with a well-directed blow of his whip, struck off his hat, which rolled into the ditch, and when Gilbert, surprised and indignant, was about to throw himself upon the young traitor, he had already pushed his horse to a full gallop, and in the twinkling of an eye he reached the main road, where he disappeared in a whirlwind of dust. Gilbert was much more affected by this adventure than his philosophy should have permitted. ”

“ The thought of a Chesterton whose heart was too small presents a paradox in his own best manner.
To Edward Macdonald who had missed a message that he was too ill to be visited, Gilbert talked in his old fashion and promised a poem he had just thought of for the paper—on St. Martin of Tours. "The point is that he was a true Distributist. He gave half his cloak to the beggar."
Soon after this he fell into a sort of reverie from which awaking he said:
"The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side." ”