Thomas Hervey

“ The utterings of the elements, the voices of beasts and of birds, Shakespeare could translate into the language of men; and the thoughts and sentiments of men he rendered into words as sweet as the singing of birds. ”

“ But we have still the galantee-showman wandering up and down our streets and squares, with his musical prelude and tempting announcement sounding through the sharp evening air, and summoned into our warm rooms to display the shadowy marvels of his mysterious box to the young group, who gaze in great wonder and some awe from their inspiring places by the cheerful hearth. ”

“ There is something unutterably solemn in watching the shade creep, day by day, round a circle whose diameter man might measure with his grave or even cover with his hand, and contrasting the limits within which it acts with the spaces of time which its stealing tread measures out, and feeling that it is the faithful index of a progress before which the individual being and the universal frame of things are alike hastening to rapid and inevitable decay. ”

“ On that other brow may be written some secret which, putting out the light of hope, should add the darkness of the future to the darkness of the past, until, amid the gloom before and the gloom behind, the festal lamps of the season, looked on by eyes dim with our own tears, should show as sad as tapers lighted up in the chamber of the dead. ”

“ Beautiful feelings, too apt to fade within the heart of man amid the chilling influences of worldly pursuit, steal out beneath the sweet religious warmth of the season, and the pure and holy amongst the hopes of earth assemble, to place themselves under the protection of that eternal hope whose promise is now, as it were, yearly renewed. ”

“ Vehicles of all kinds are in motion; stage-coach, post-chaise, and private carriage are alike filled with travellers passing in all directions to their several places of assembling, and give glimpses of faces bright with the re-awakened affections that are radiating on all sides to common centres. Everywhere hearts are stirred and pulses quickened by pleasant anticipations ”

“ We love those Lethes of an hour which have a virtue beyond their gift of oblivion, and while they furnish a temporary forgetfulness of many of the ills of life, revive the memory of many a past enjoyment, and reawaken many a slumbering affection. We love those milestones on the journey of life beside which man is called upon to pause, and take a reckoning of the distance he has passed, and of that which he may have yet to go. ”

“ We have been watching the year through the period of its decline, are arrived at the dreary season of its old age, and stand near the edge of its grave. We have seen the rich sunshines and sweet but mournful twilights of autumn, with their solemn inspirations, give place to the short days and gloomy evenings which usher in the coming solstice. ”

“ No doubt, the high chronicles of chivalry, and the mysterious traditions of the past, comport well with the gloom of the gothic gallery;—and, certainly, the long rambling passages of an old house afford at once room for the wandering of ghosts, and that dim, shadowy light by which imagination sees them best. But the true poetry of life is not confined to ancient dwellings; and every house, in every crowded thoroughfare of every city, has its own tales to tell around the Christmas fire. ”

“ The thousand natural inequalities of the earth's surface, and the vegetable columns which spring from its bosom, furnish—as do the spires and towers and columns which man rears thereon—so many gnomons of the vast dial, on which are unerringly written with the finger of shadow the shining records of the sky. ”

“ But what is he that looks down from yonder pedestal in the back-ground upon the merry muster, with a double face? And why, while the holly and the mistletoe mingle with the white tresses that hang over the brow of the one, is the other hidden by a veil? The face on which we gaze is the face of an old man, and a not uncheerful old man,—a face marked by many a scar, by the channels of tears that have been dried up and the deep traces of sorrows past away. Yet does it look placidly down from beneath its crown of evergreens on the joyous crew who are assembled at the voice of Christmas. ”

“ Once more our planet has completed one of those journeys in the heavens which perfect all the fruitful changes of its peopled surface, and mete out the few stages of our existence; and every day, every hour of that progress has in all her wide lands, in all her million hearts, left traces that eternity shall behold. ”

“ The thousand bells of the city are pealing from its hundred belfries, filling the air with an indescribable sense of festival, and would alone set the whole capital in motion if they were a people that ever sat still. This singing of a thousand bells is likewise a striking feature of the day in London; and no one who has not heard the mingling voices of these high [338] choristers in a metropolis, can form any notion of the wild and stirring effects produced by the racing and crossing and mingling of their myriad notes. It is as if the glad voices of the earth had a chorus of echoes in the sky ”

“ Under all the forms of ancient festival observance, some offering was presented to this insatiable and disgusting appetite,—and that, too, by men entitled to stand erect, by their genius or their virtues, yet whose knees were rough with kneeling before as worthless an idol as any wooden god that the most senseless superstition ever set up for worship. From all the altars which the court had reared to old Father Christmas of yore, a cloud of incense was poured into the royal closet, enough to choke anything but a woman,—that woman a queen, and that queen a Tudor. ”

“ The older passer-by returns their uproarious salute, taking no umbrage at their mischievous jokes and impish tricks, and turning, as the sounds of the merry voices die in the distance, to a vision of the days when he too was a boy, and an unconscious rehearsal of the half-forgotten song of "Dulce, dulce domum!" ”

“ They who have entered upon the paths of knowledge, or gone far into the recesses of experience, like the men of yore who ventured to explore the cave of Trophonius, may perhaps find something higher and better than the light-heartedness they lose, but they smile never more as they smiled of old. ”

“ And now, when silent and desolate are even the high places over which Augustus ruled, fallen majestic Rome with all her gods, the religion proclaimed to the humble shepherds, whose sound was first heard by the moonlight streams and under the green boughs, has erected on the ruins of ancient grandeur a sublimer dominion than all those principalities of the earth which refused its hospitality. ”

“ Time, abstractedly considered as what in truth it is,—a portion of the vast ocean of eternity, a river flowing from the sea and flowing to the sea, a channel leading from deep to deep, through shores on which the races of the world are permitted to build for awhile, until the great waters shall once more cover all, and time, as time, "shall be no more,"—must long have defied the skill of man to map out its surface, and write his memorials upon its impalpable bosom. ”

“ I remember that even in those days, at times, in the silent night, when broken snatches of melodies imperfectly remembered stole through the chambers of my heart,—ever in the sweet tones in which it had learned to love them,—I have asked myself if the ties that bound us might ever be like those passing and half-forgotten melodies; if the time could ever come when they should be like an old song learned in life's happier day, and whose memory has been treasured, to make us weep in the years when the heart has need to be soothed by weeping ”

“ Much that man might not know and yet bear to abide. That twin face is Janus, he who shuts the gates upon the old year and opens those of the new, he who looks into the past and into the future, and catches the reflections of both, and has the tales of each written on his respective brows. For the past, it is known and has been suffered; and even at a season like this we can pause to retrace the story of its joys and of its sorrows as they are graven on that open forehead,—and from that retrospect, glancing to the future for hope, can still turn to the present for enjoyment. ”

“ But when the imagination sets out upon the actual experiment, and discovers that those limits are not assignable, save on one only side, and finds but a single point on which to rest its failing wing, and looks from thence along an expanse whose boundaries are nowhere else within the range of its restricted vision,—then does the mortal bird return into its mortal nest, wearied with its ineffectual flight, and convinced that a shoreless ocean and one whose shores it cannot see are alike formless and mysterious to its dim and feeble gaze. ”

“ All things are tinged with thy loss. All fair things have a look, and all sweet sounds a tone, of mourning since thou leftest me. How long it seems, as if ages, instead of years, of the grave had grown between us, as if, indeed, I had known thee in some former and far-removed state of being! I do not love to think of thee as dead, I strive to think of thee rather as of one whom I have left behind in the quiet valley of our youth and our love,—from whom I have wandered forth and lost my way amid the mazes of the world. ”

“ We love those festivals which have been made, as Washington Irving says, "the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bonds of kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family who have launched forth in life and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementos of childhood." ”

“ He died at Hackwood, near Basingstoke, the house of his son-in-law, Mr. C. Hoare, on 9 June 1894, in his eighty-sixth year, and was buried at Wells. By his wife Patience, daughter of John Singleton (born Fowke) of Hazely, Hampshire, and Mell, co. Louth, whom he married on 30 July 1839, and who (1901) survives him, he had twelve children, of whom five sons and three daughters survived him.
Hervey was a handsome and well-made man, had been a champion tennis-player in his younger days, and retained a remarkable amount of physical activity at an advanced age. ”

“ He smiled to himself, grimly. What Hsien Sgam had said was fresh in his ears. One of her men passed and opened the gate. Outside, on the embankment, she turned her mount, waiting at one side while the caravan moved out. Trent reined in his pony beside her.
"Look!" she commanded, pointing through the gate at the magnificent mass of Lhakang-gompa, above whose broken roofs the moon was poised. "Shingtse-lunpo—Lhakang-gompa—all! I hold them, like this!" And she made a gesture and laughed—that old familiar laugh that rippled low in her throat. "All is not finished! Nay! ”

“ If all goes well, Major Trent and I can arrange to return to Lhakang-gompa."
"You think," said Hsien Sgam, "it will be easy to leave the city?"
Kerth made a deprecatory gesture. "That is not difficult. I shall ride in the sedan-chair of His Holiness Sâkya-mûni, and until we pass Amber Bridge your Transparency will sit beside me to prevent any interference with our plans. There you may change to a pony and ride between two of the major's muleteers. Your own palanquin will be put to good use, as Miss Charteris can occupy that. ”

“ His eyes swerved to the path from the temple. After a moment, shadows took shape in the moonlight—mounts and riders. He wheeled his pony and rode to meet the caravan.
Sarojini Nanjee sat erect upon a horse at the head of a string of mules; the scent of sandalwood awakened in him a queer alertness. She always breathed of earth-perfume—an odor of the senses. Beyond her were the looming shapes of three men—muleteers. Trent saw the contours of sacks on the pack-animals.
"Your men have left the city?" was her first question. Her breath came quickly and the black opals had been kindled in her eyes. ”

“ Good night, Sir Francis."
She gave him her hand and moved to the door, where she halted, turning back.
"I nearly forgot," she said. "There is one other clause in the agreement. Major Trent must be kept in ignorance of the party with whom he is to work. To him you may call me—well, the Swaying Cobra." She smiled again. "By that name I was known when I danced on the Continent."
Then she departed, melting into the dusky hallway.
After a moment Sir Francis moved to the window and parted the draperies slightly. The palanquin was passing, swimming in yellow moonlight. ”

“ Hervey was a clever and unprincipled man, of loose morals and skeptical opinions. He was an effective though somewhat pompous speaker, a ready writer, and a keen observer of character. His wit and charm of manner made him a special favourite of women. ”

“ In the dimness, above the ray of the pocket-lamp, their eyes met, his expressionless, hers again like black opals. He heard her quick breathing—felt, as did she, the contagion of the jewels.... In her hands she held a fortune. Vaguely, irrelevantly, he tried to recall the sum at which the pearls of Indore were appraised; instead, wondered why she wished him to believe Chavigny out of the game.
"Hsien Sgam was the first to show me where the jewels were hidden," she resumed. "But he did not take me through the tunnel." Again the cool, musical tinkle as she dropped the pearls into the chest. ”

“ He was so pleased that, a few minutes later, when a blue-eyed Punjabi inquired the price of a string of ferozees, he did not haggle over it but sacrificed the necklace for exactly what it was worth.
"Eight o'clock," he repeated to himself. And his own price. He was a loyal servant of the Raj, yes; but that did not in any way affect his intention to charge the Raj well for his services.
He looked toward the shop of Venekiah.
"Brahmin dog!" he hissed in his beard. "Breeder of whelps!" ”