Sir Nathaniel

“ All felt, even in the first days, that Nathaniel had undergone a thorough change in his whole temperament. He sank into a gloomy reverie, and conducted himself in a strange manner, that had never been known in him before. Every thing, his whole life, had become to him a dream and a foreboding, and he was always saying that every man, although he might think himself free, only served for the cruel sport of dark powers. These he said it was vain to resist, and man must patiently resign himself to his fate. ”

“ During the long interval between the parliament of 1629 and the summoning of the short parliament in 1640, Sir Nathaniel seems to have lived quietly at Ketton. He had married Jane, daughter of Sir Stephen Soame, knight, and alderman of London, who was lord mayor in 1597–8, and had by her a large family, in whose religious education he was deeply interested. His piety at home (he prayed thrice a day) , and his benevolence to ministers of religion, gave him a wide reputation among the puritans of the eastern counties. ”

“ The scene came up before her so vividly that she heard his voice, and felt herself turn to him with the light grace of her girlhood and cry again, in an ecstasy of surprised joy, "Oh, Nathaniel!"
A gust of wind whirled a handful of snow against her and some of it settled on her bare shoulders. She watched it melt and felt the icy little trickle with a curious aloofness. Suddenly she began to shiver, gripped by a dreadful chill, which shook her like a strong hand. After that she was very still again, the death-like cold penetrating deeper and deeper until her breath came in constricted gasps. ”

“ The old soldier laughed a little, and turned to Nathaniel. "Why, 'tis the minister his son. I know you by the look of your father in you. What bad dream have we waked you from, you pretty boy?"
"You have not waked me from it," cried Nathaniel. "I will never wake as long as I live, and when I die——!"
"Why, LeMaury is right. The poor lad is crazed. ”

“ Nathaniel’s brother, Robert, was mayor of Derry in 1689, and Nathaniel was also a man of affairs, holding many town offices. He was the first naval officer of the port of Boston and a merchant of prominence.
The papers now preserved in the Massachusetts State Archives show that he was a man of good education. His wife was Elizabeth, and their children were Nathaniel J., Robert, who is supposed to have died unmarried, and Samuel, who married Ann Miller. Nathaniel the second married Abigail Vaughan, whose father was one of the royal councillors and also chief justice of New Hampshire. ”

“ Pride in his name: a sturdy grasp of life: an unbending attitude toward those beneath him, and an abiding reverence for law and order and fealty to the throne—these were the foundations on which the father built Nathaniel's character.
Next in point of regard came the elder daughter Monica. Patrician of feature, haughty in manner, exclusive by nature she had the true Kingsnorth air. She had no disturbing "ideas": no yearning for things not of her station. She was contented with the world as it had been made for her and seemed duly proud and grateful to have been born a Kingsnorth. ”

“ Before, gentle reader, I proceed to tell thee what more befel the unfortunate Nathaniel, I can tell thee, in case thou takest an interest in the skilful optician and automaton-maker, Spalanzani, that he was completely healed of his wounds. He was, however, obliged to leave the university, because Nathaniel's story had created a sensation, and it was universally deemed an unpardonable imposition to smuggle wooden dolls instead of living persons into respectable tea-parties—for such Olympia had visited with success. ”

“ His indignation at Clara’s cold, prosaic disposition, constantly increased, and Clara could not overcome her dislike of Nathaniel’s dark, gloomy, tedious mysticism, so that they became more and more estranged from each other in mind, without perceiving it. The form of the ugly Coppelius, as Nathaniel himself was forced to confess, grew more dim in his fancy, and it often cost him trouble to colour with sufficient liveliness in his pictures, when he appeared as a ghastly bugbear of fate. ”

“ Feigning smiles only when cognizant of Michael glancing toward her and silent as death, she tacitly spoke to Nathaniel in an imaginary utterance, "I'll make this up to you—we must all play with the tinker toys of language in thought to have some degree of meaning within our petty lives; but God and heaven are empty make believe words of a feeble animal. ”

“ If you come to me there we will go together to France—to Paris—you will be the great artist——"
He was silenced by a gesture from the colonel, who now sat very straight on his horse and beckoned to Nathaniel. The boy came timorously. "You have heard lies about me, Everett. Be man enough to trust your own heart." He broke into a half-sad little laugh at Nathaniel's face of fascinated repulsion.
"You can laugh now," whispered the boy, close at his knee, "but when you come to die? Why, even my father trembles at the thought of death. ”

“ On the top he stopped and held up the gander. He disappeared; yes, my own Nathaniel disappeared. I think of him now as one who disappeared.
"November came. It was a terrible month on the coast that year. Storm followed storm; the sea-faring people talked constantly of wrecks and losses. I could not sleep on the nights of those high winds. I used to lie awake thinking over all the happy hours that I had lived with Nathaniel.
"Thanksgiving week came.
"It was full of an Indian-summer brightness after the long storms. The nights were frosty, bright, and calm. ”

“ Beyond the three great fires that blazed around the temple the clearing was bathed in a sea of light; in its concealment of giant trees the temple was buried in gloom. From the gloom a hundred cool men might slaughter five times their number charging across that illumined death-square!
Nathaniel could not repress a shudder as he looked. Screened behind each of the three fires was a cannon. He figured that there were more than a hundred rifles in that silent cordon of men. ”

“ Gridley! You’ve been coming along, Nathaniel. You’ve been coming along so fast I’ve hardly noticed. But to-night you’ve had a thing printed in the paper that’s brought me to my senses. You’re getting too big to thrash. So I’ve concluded to talk with you, I say. It’s time we got this poetry business straight. I’m responsible to God for your soul and this poetry business brings home how much. How old are you, Nathan? ”

“ After a year’s residence at Raymond, Nathaniel returned to Salem in order to prepare for college. He amused himself by publishing a manuscript periodical, which he called the Spectator, and which displayed considerable vivacity and talent. He speculated upon the profession that he would follow, with a sort of prophetic insight into his future. “I do not want to be a doctor and live by men’s diseases,” he wrote to his mother, “nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. ”

“ CREW, NATHANIEL, third Baron Crew of Stene (1633–1721) , bishop of Durham, was the fifth son of John Crew of Stene [q. v.] , Northamptonshire, by Jemima, daughter of Edward Walgrave of Lawford, Essex. His father was a gentleman of considerable fortune, who adopted a moderate line of action on the parliamentary side during the great rebellion. Nathaniel entered Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1652; he took the degree of B.A. in 1656, and soon after was elected fellow of his college. ”

“ Nathaniel, or Nat, as he preferred to be called, was a shrewd-looking, lank young man, younger than his length of limb and huge fists would indicate. He spoke in a high key with a slow, soft drawl and was not backward in asking questions, though he vouchsafed replies to those Miss Helen put to him, and by reason of which she learned that he was Miss Phebe’s sole assistant except when the apples were to be gathered or some other crop should be brought in.
[51] “Me and her runs the place,” said Nat. “She works as good as a man when it comes to some things. No, marm, she ain’t no hired girl. ”

“ Master Nathaniel looked at him. The fixed stare, the slightly-open mouth, the rigid motionless body, fettered by a misery too profound for restlessness—how well he knew the state of mind these things expressed! But there must surely be relief in thus allowing the mood to mould the body's attitude to its own shape.
He had no need now to ask his son for explanations. He knew so well both that sense of emptiness, that drawing in of the senses (like the antennae of some creature when danger is no longer imminent, but there) ”

“ Perchance, dear reader, you will believe that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is all the poet can conceive, as it were in the dull reflection of a dimly polished mirror.
In order that that which is necessary in the first place to to know, may be made clearer, we must add to these letters the circumstance, that shortly after the death of Nathaniel's father, Clara and Lothaire, the children of a distant relative, who had likewise died, and left them orphans, were taken by Nathaniel's mother to her own home. ”

“ Great was Master Nathaniel's satisfaction when one of them returned from his quest with the information that the late farmer's widowed daughter, Mistress Ivy Peppercorn, had recently bought a small grocer's shop in Mothgreen, a village that lay a couple of miles beyond the north gate.
There was no time to be lost, so Master Nathaniel ordered his horse, put on the suit of fustian he wore for fishing, pulled his hat well down over his eyes, and set off for Mothgreen. ”

“ And could you call Nathaniel later this week just to ask him how he is? Do you still have his mobile number? Good. Everybody needs to think that someone cares for him a little no matter if he does or not (laugh) ... I'm joking. Of course I am...Yes, I know you do in your own way as me in my own ways. We all have our ways."
A half hour later she got back into her car and drove into the embrace of darkness. It was 3:34 in the morning when she first saw the roof of her quasi-hermitage from a distance. ”

“ Was it possible that Ranulph, too, was a real person, a person inside whose mind things happened? He had thought that he himself was the only real person in a field of human flowers. For Master Nathaniel that was a moment of surprise, triumph, tenderness, alarm. ”

“ May 29th.—After breakfast, this morning, I wandered out and lost myself; but at last found the post-office, and a letter from Mr. Wilding, with some perplexing intelligence. Nottingham is an unlovely and uninteresting town. The castle I did not see; but, I happened upon a large and stately old church, almost cathedralic in its dimensions. On returning to the hotel, we deliberated on the mode of getting to Newstead Abbey, and we finally decided upon taking a fly, in which conveyance, accordingly, we set out before twelve. ”

“ These little snow-particles, which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air, will bury the great earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold her sister sky again for dreary months. ”

“ How dreary looked the forest-track that led backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up again the burden of her ignominy and the minister the hollow mockery of his good name! So they lingered an instant longer. No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. Here seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for one moment true! ”

“ Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with charcoal, sat watching his kiln at nightfall, while his little son played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble, when, on the hill-side below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of the forest. ”

“ "Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we must should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book ... the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this: 'We' (and then we say our own names) ”

“ See, at this moment, how they assail yonder poor woman who is passing just within the verge of the lamplight! One blast struggles for her umbrella and turns it wrong side outward, another whisks the cape of her cloak across her eyes, while a third takes most unwarrantable liberties with the lower part of her attire. ”

“ As Master Nathaniel jogged leisurely along, his thoughts turned to the farmer Gibberty, who many a time must have jogged along this path, in just such a way, and seen and heard the very same things that he was seeing and hearing now.
Yes, the farmer Gibberty had once been a real living man, like himself. And so had millions of others, whose names he had never heard. And one day he himself would be a prisoner, confined between the walls of other people's memory. And then he would cease even to be that, and become nothing but a few words cut in stone. What would these words be, he wondered. ”

“ Fancy a nightly assemblage of eighty thousand melancholy and remorseful ghosts, looking down from those tiers of broken arches, striving to repent of the savage pleasures which they once enjoyed, but still longing to enjoy them over again. ”

“ Roderick was reclining on the margin of a fountain which gushed into the fleckered sunshine with the same clear sparkle and the same voice of airy quietude as when trees of primeval growth flung their shadows cross its bosom. How strange is the life of a fountain!—born at every moment, yet of an age coeval with the rocks, and far surpassing the venerable antiquity of a forest. ”