Rahere

“ There was Latin writ at the back.
‘“What a plague conjuration’s here?” said Hugh, turning it over. “Pum-quum-sum oc-occ. Magic?”
‘“Black Magic,” said the Clerk of Netherfield (he had been a monk at Battle) . “They say Rahere is more of a priest than a fool and more of a wizard than either. Here’s Rahere’s name writ, and there’s Rahere’s red cockscomb mark drawn below for such as cannot read.” ”

“ The spot being intersected by many brooks, much difficulty was experienced in forming even a foundation; but after the expenditure of a considerable amount of time and labour this was accomplished, and a grand building arose of which we purpose to speak, and whose noble remains testify to its simple, solid grandeur, and cause us to regret that so little is left to us of the original structure.
Rahere, we are told, was a man “sprung and born from low kynage,” not having cunning of liberal science—but that is more eminent than all cunning—for he was rich in purity of conscience. ”

“ It is Harold, my King!”
‘De Aquila crept forward. He walked about the man and swallowed.
‘“Bones of the Saints!” said he, staring.
‘“Many a stray shot goes too well home,” said Rahere.
‘The old man flinched as at an arrow. “Why do you hurt me still?” he said in Saxon. “It was on some bones of some Saints that I promised I would give my England to the Great Duke.” He turns on us all crying, shrilly: “Thanes, he had caught me at Rouen—a lifetime ago. If I had not promised, I should have lain there all my life. ”

“ From some points, just a glimpse can be had of its ancient red brick tower. This church is very old, next to the chapel in the Tower the oldest in London, founded by Rahere in 1123. Entrance to it is through an Early English gateway between the houses of West Smithfield, and so past the mouldering graveyard. The overhanging houses of Cloth Fair seem to have turned their backs on this home of long dead people. ”

“ The Square, where stands the memorial to the Martyrs, is between the market and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, the oldest institution of its kind in London and one of the wealthiest. Rahere, the favourite of Henry I., founded it in 1123, and it has been restored in parts and enlarged many times. You can see above the west gate the statue of Henry VIII. where it was set when the gate was built in 1702. Close by in the wall is a commemorative tablet that recites the burning of the Protestant martyrs. Many world famous men have been connected with the Hospital. ”

“ Was he so tired?’ said Una. ‘Hobden says beating is hard work sometimes.’
‘I think this tale is getting like the woods,’ said Dan, ‘darker and twistier every minute.’ Sir Richard had walked as he talked, and though the children thought they knew the woods well enough, they felt a little lost.
‘A dark tale enough,’ says Sir Richard, ‘but the end was not all black. When we had washed, we went to wait on the King at meat in the great pavilion. Just before the trumpets blew for the Entry—all the guests upstanding—long Rahere comes posturing up to Hugh, and strikes him with his bauble-bladder. ”

“ Her mother seemed grave, and even displeased, when Dr. Steck had spoken so eloquently at the table, and Rahel had no eyes for any one else while Max was with her. She would discover everything for herself, and then present to them all her prince in disguise, and he should know that never for an instant had she been deceived by the shabby surface.
She looked more like a child than yesterday, as she sprang down-stairs into the open air, for she had left her plaited hair hanging down her back, and replaced her coronet of braids with a snood of pale-blue ribbon. ”

“ All human beings desire and love to see themselves mirrored in the mind of a greater human being, all crave for sympathy, all would fain be understood. And those who approached Rahel—princes and nobles, diplomats and philosophers, poets and scientists—felt instinctively that this young girl with the slight, graceful figure, the beautifully formed limbs, the thick, waving hair surrounding a face with an expression of suffering, but with a deep, steadfast look in its dark eyes, was worthy of their confidence, and this for the one and sufficient reason, that she was innocent of all prejudices. ”

“ They failed to entertain a coy public, at which I wondered, not that I set much account by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I do know how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns are great. Rahero is for its length a perfect folk-tale: savage and yet fine, full of tailforemost morality, ancient as the granite rocks; if the historian, not to say the politician, could get that yarn into his head, he would have learned some of his A B C. But the average man at home cannot understand antiquity; he is sunk over the ears in Roman civilisation ”

“ And the value of Rahel to us lies in the calm directness, the “innocence,” as she herself calls it, of her thinking. To her went the acclaimed wise men of the day for the comfort of her fearlessness and simplicity of thought upon their questions. She was said to be brilliant. She was not brilliant in the sense of being learned, or of being capable of mere intellectual jugglery and fantastic adroitness of thinking; she was brilliant in the crystal clearness and the sure rapidity of her thinking. ”

“ As Rahel looked at him in the light, she burst into a loud laugh, for she had little command over herself. He wore a complete costume of black velvet garnished with silver lace; the wind had reddened his cheeks, and blown some of the powder out of his brown hair, giving it a soft gray color that contrasted more conspicuously than pure white with his youthful face. ”

“ Rahel—the subtly gifted German woman, whose letters and memoirs are a treasury of delicate observation and sentiment—observes that people of marked spiritual affinities are bound to meet some time or other in their lives. If not entirely true, there is a good deal to be said for this comforting theory; as human beings of similar nature seem constantly converging as by some magnetic attraction. ”

“ Rahl thought more of his brass band than he did of his men, was full of good cheer and liked to have a good time. He would sit up till a late hour in the night, and then lie in bed till nine o'clock the next day.
The one who leads troops to war should be like a watch-dog, quick to see and to hear all that goes on, and to be on guard at all times.
Each day he had the guns drawn out and dragged through the town, just to make a stir and have the band out. But when the Ma-jor told him that he should have earth-works thrown up on which to place the guns he said, "Pooh! pooh! Let the foe come on! ”

“ He stopped his reforming process and, summoning all the power he could, glided toward the impulse.
When he did this, the impulse became definitely stronger; slowly his delicate, crystalloid form became more and more conscious of it; its power rose and rose, until it reached an almost unbearable intensity.
Waves of hunger beat against Rahll, as they had for centuries; but here, here at last, was satisfaction. His jagged cannibal's pattern roused itself, waiting for the new impulse to come within striking distance. And then.... ”

“ Alide looked at her in surprise, and tried to calm her. "Yes," continued Rahel, when she had recovered sufficient composure to speak; "I have fought against it long enough. I can endure it no longer. Everything I do turns out to be a blunder. I sit among these fine ladies dumb and awkward as a peasant. I do not dress nor talk like them, nor belong to their world. When I am with Anna, I ask myself a hundred times a day what it is that puts her above me, that makes me feel like an ignorant child in her presence. ”

“ Rahll floated, a dim pattern of electrical impulse in the void of space. He was vaguely aware that he was dying into nothingness, and that in a short time he would be a meaningless mass of aimless patterning, with no consciousness and no unity. But there was nothing that could be done about it; his flexible impulse had woven itself into millions upon millions of varying thought-forms, and no solution to his situation had presented itself. ”

“ Rahll's cannibal-pattern contracted and protracted in the black void. The faint blue lines of his form glowed a bit more strongly now than they had before, although the great hunger still shook his frame.
His thought-forms wove in and out in visions of power, a power he had never thought of possessing back in the time of the Great Pattern, a power with which he could absorb everything, every—
And then Rahll's thought-form twisted into a totally unfamiliar shape. And he thought of Hale.
He could picture Hale only vaguely; a big man—man ”

“ Rahel and Max were already in the porch with the pastor when they arrived. "Did you find it as pleasant as we did?" asked Rahel. "You must have loitered by the way, for we walked as far as the old pear-tree, and yet we are home first."
"It is a rarely beautiful night," answered her mother. "But come, girls, it is time to go in now; and, Otto, I am sure the gentlemen are quite ready, after their journey from Strasburg to-day, to be shown to their room." ”

“ There had been eminent and interesting women in German intellectual society before Rahel. The latest were Caroline, Dorothea, and those others known to fame through the Romanticists. Rahel is the first great modern German woman, and the first to be completely conscious of her originality. [4]
The pursuit of originality in her day was not without its accompanying danger. It is not the danger of affectation that I allude to. In all days and times there have been affected creatures who imagine that they are original when they help themselves to soup with their shoes. ”

“ We feel the spiritual kinswoman, the admirer of Rahel, in these words.
Harassed by the drudgery of his daily life, troubled by the sterility of his overrated talent, he was sometimes irritable, sometimes gloomily stolid. She tries every means to brace him. At one time she fancies that he is too lonely, that he requires the stimulation of more female society—and she is not jealous. She writes (October 1834) : "I wish, Heinrich, that you could have more intercourse, either personal or by correspondence, with clever, womanly women. They are the poet's true public. ”

“ The young Rahel, endowed with great intelligence and unerring tact, united to a truly kind heart, was valued and sought by every one as soon as she appeared in society. She was exceedingly amiable, full of an obliging good temper that made her anticipate wishes, divine annoyances in order to relieve them, and forget herself in seeking to make others happy. ”

“ When we have wandered all our wayes,
Shutts up the story of our dayes.
But from which grave and earth and dust
The Lord will rayse me up I trust.
These lines Sir Walter Ralegh wrote in his Bible, the night before he was beheaded, and desir'd his relations with these words, viz. 'Beg my dead body, which living is denyed you; and bury it either in Sherburne or Exeter church.'

[848] The bishop of Sarum saieth that Sir Walter Raleigh lyes interred in St. Marie's church at Exon, not the cathedral: but knowes not if any inscription or monument be for him. ”

“ In his face was boyishness with something indefinable about the deep corners of his mouth that already spoke of world-weariness, and the peculiar twinkle in his narrowed eyes accentuated the suggestion of cynicism.
Rahel, with the savoir faire of the hostess of a celebrated salon, made a special effort to put the young man at his ease. She realized that in spite of his innate pride—the pride she well understood—the gathering of so many notables, so many years his seniors, embarrassed him. She meant to be his patroness. Inwardly she was already proud of him. ”

“ Of Rahel’s nature, warm, richly exuberant with a healthy sensuousness and desire for sunlight, Jean Paul’s letter to her gives us the essence. “Wingéd one—in every sense—” he wrote, “you treat life poetically and consequently life treats you in the same way. You bring the lofty freedom of poetry into the sphere of reality, and expect to find again the same beauties here as there.” ”

“ I think it is that thing to which General Rayières gives his time."
"Indeed? What is that?" According to the answer, mother would remain in the car or enter the church.
"In the pavement is a magic stone. If one steps on it, one marries before the year is out."
"And if two step on it?" I ventured.
For the first time a light of malice sparkled in the melancholy Latin eyes. "Rayières is a large man, and his feet are of a size! There will not be room on that stone for his feet with those of a second person." ”

“ Palgrave is not well at all, and his little black boy he fears will die, and several people in the steamer are ill, but in Luxor there is no sickness to speak of, only chronic old women, so old and ugly and achy, that I don’t know what to do with them, except listen to their complaints, which begin, ‘Ya ragleh.’ Ragel is man, so ragleh is the old German Männin, and is the civil way of addressing a Saeedee woman. ”

“ The Clare arms have been found quartered with those of Ralegh on a Ralegh pew in East Budleigh church. The family had held Smallridge, near Axminster, from before the Conquest. Since the reign of Edward III it had been seated on the edge of Dartmoor, at Fardell. There it built a picturesque mansion and chapel. The Raleghs of Fardell were, writes Polwhele, 'esteemed ancient gentlemen.' But the rapacious lawyers of Henry VII had discovered some occasion against Wimund Ralegh, the head of the family in their day. They thought him worth the levy of a heavy fine for misprision of treason ”