THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH (1836-1907) 1 Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and spent there that early boyhood which he has reproduced so vividly in his Story of a Bad Boy. He did not go to college because of his father's early death and the consequent necessity for earning money for the family needs. From 1852 to 1866 he lived in New York City, engaged in editorial work on various papers, and for a time he saw much of the Bohemian circle of poets and literary adventurers which flourished there in the years just before the war. He began publishing early, issuing his first dainty volume of poetry, The Bells, in 1855 and following it with other editions in 1858, 1859, 1861, 1863, and 1865. In this, the New York period of his life, he was a poet of the art for beauty's sake school, often somewhat sentimental, but always faultlessly accurate and artistic. The second period of his life began when Fields and Osgood offered him the editorship of Every Saturday. The rest of his life was connected with Boston. From 1881 to 1890 he was editor of The Atlantic Monthly. He published several distinctive short stories, three or four novels, and many carefully-wrought lyrics, a final and definitive edition of which he issued in his last years with the title Songs and Sonnets. He married into a wealthy Boston family, traveled much,- twice circling the earth, and wrote only when the mood was upon him. As a poet he must be classed as distinctively a lyrist. It is hard to speak of his work without referring to the English poet Herrick, as he himself has done in 'Hesperides.' He was the most artistic of our poets, the maker of exquisitely carved jewels of verse, perfect in their way, but throwing little light upon human life and its meaning. In his later years he did more substantial work. His prose is as distinctive as his verse, especially his short stories. He added the surprise ending, and gave to the form a lightness of touch and an urbane, patrician tone that hitherto had been lacking in American shorter fiction. Near the Levee, and not far from the old French Cathedral in the Place d'Armes, at New Orleans, stands a fine date-palm, thirty feet in height, spreading its broad leaves in the alien air as hardily as if its sinuous roots were sucking strength from their native earth. Sir Charles Lyell, in his Second Visit to the United States,' mentions this exotic: The tree is seventy or eighty years old; for Père Antoine, a Roman Catholic priest, who died about twenty years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he planted it himself, when he was young. In his will he provided that they who succeed to this lot of ground should forfeit it if they cut down the palm.' : Wishing to learn something of Père Antoine's history, Sir Charles Lyell made inquiries among the ancient Creole inhabitants of the faubourg. That the old priest, in his last days, became very much emaciated, that he walked about the streets like a mummy, that he gradually dried up, and finally blew away, was the meager and unsatisfactory result of the tourist's investigations. This is all that is generally told of Père Antoine. In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied by the Rebel forces, I met at Alexandria in Virginia, a lady from Louisiana,- Miss Blondeau by name, who gave me the substance of the following legend touching Père Antoine and his wonderful date-palm. If it should appear tame to the reader, it will be because I am not habited in a black ribbed-silk dress, with a strip of point-lace around my throat, like Miss Blondeau; it will be because I lack her eyes and lips and Southern music to tell it with. When Père Antoine was a very young man, he had a friend whom he loved as he loved his life. Émile Jardin returned his passion, and the two, on account of their friendship, became the marvel of the city where they dwelt. One was never seen 10 without the other; for they studied, walked, ate, and slept together. 15 Thus began Miss Blondeau, with the air of Fiammetta telling her prettiest story to the Florentines in the garden of Boccaccio. Antoine and Émile were preparing to enter the Church; indeed, they had taken the preliminary steps, when a circumstance occurred which changed the color of their lives. A foreign lady, from some 20 nameless island in the Pacific, had a few months before moved into their neighborhood. The lady died suddenly, leaving a girl of sixteen or seventeen, entirely friendless and unprovided for. The 25 young men had been kind to the woman during her illness, and at her death melting with pity at the forlorn situation of Anglice, the daughter - swore between themselves to love and watch over her as 30 if she were their sister. Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty that made other women seem tame beside her; and in the course of time the young men found themselves regarding their 35 ward not so much like brothers as at first. In brief, they found themselves in love with her. like the face of a saint on a cathedral window. Once, however, as she came suddenly upon the two men and overheard words that seemed to burn like fire on the 5 lip of the speaker, her eyes grew luminous for an instant. Then she passed on, her face as immobile as before in its setting of wavy gold hair. One night Émile and Anglice were missing. They had flown,- but whither, nobody knew, and nobody, save Antoine, cared. It was a heavy blow to Antoine, for he had himself half resolved to confess his love to Anglice and urge her to fly with him. A strip of paper slipped from a volume on Antoine's prie-dieu, and fluttered to his feet. 'Do not be angry,' said the bit of paper, piteously; 'forgive us, for we love? Three years went by wearily enough. Antoine had entered the Church, and was already looked upon as a rising man; but his face was pale and his heart leaden, for there was no sweetness in life for him. Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered with outlandish postmarks, was brought to the young priest, a letter from Anglice. She was dying; would he forgive her? Émile, the year previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that raged on the island; and their child, Anglice, was likely to follow him. In pitiful terms she begged Antoine to take charge of the child until she was old enough to enter the convent of the Sacré-Cœur. The epistle They struggled with their hopeless passion month after month, neither betraying 40 was finished hastily by another hand, in his secret to the other; for the austere And she? If Anglice shared their trouble, her face told no story. It was forming Antoine of Madame Jardin's death; it also told him that Anglice had been placed on board a vessel shortly to leave the island for some Western port. The letter, delayed by storm and shipwreck, was hardly read and wept over when little Anglice arrived. On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy and surprise, she was so like the woman he had worshiped. The passion that had been crowded down in his heart broke out and lavished its richness on this child, who was to him not only the Anglice of years ago, but his friend Émile Jardin also. Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty of her mother, the bending, willowy form, the rich tint of skin, the large tropical eyes, that had almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery to him. For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhappy in her new home. She talked continually of the bright country where she was born, the fruits and flowers and blue skies, the tall, fan-like trees, and the streams that went murmuring through them to the sea. Antoine could not pacify her. 5 By and by she ceased to weep, and went about the cottage in a weary, disconsolate way that cut Antoine to the heart. A long-tailed paroquet, which she had brought with her in the ship, walked 5 solemnly behind her from room to room, mutely pining, it seemed, for those heavy Orient airs that used to ruffle its brilliant plumage. Before the year ended, he noticed that 20 the ruddy tinge had faded from her cheek, that her eyes had grown languid, and her slight figure more willowy than ever. A physician was consulted. He could discover nothing wrong with the child, 25 except this fading and drooping. He failed to account for that. It was some vague disease of the mind, he said, beyond his skill. So Anglice faded day by day. She seldom left the room now. At last 30 Antoine could not shut out the fact that the child was passing away. He had learned to love her so! 'Dear heart,' he said once, 'what is 't ails thee?' 'Nothing, mon père,' for so she called him. The winter passed, the balmy spring had come with its magnolia blooms and orange blossoms, and Anglice seemed to revive. In her small bamboo chair, on the porch, she swayed to and fro in the fragrant breeze with a peculiar undulating motion, like a graceful tree. 'I am going there; mon père.' A week from that evening the wax candles burned at her feet and forehead, lighting her on the journey. All was over. Now was Antoine's heart empty. Death, like another Émile, had stolen his new Anglice. He had nothing to do but to lay the blighted flower away. Père Antoine made a shallow grave in his garden, and heaped the fresh brown mold over his idol. In the tranquil spring evenings, the priest was seen sitting by the mound, his fingers closed in the unread breviary. The summer broke on that sunny land; and in the cool morning twilight, and after nightfall, Antoine lingered by the grave. He could never be with it enough. One morning he observed a delicate stem, with two curiously shaped emerald leaves, springing up from the center of the mound. At first he merely noticed it casually; but at length the plant grew so tall, and was so strangely unlike anything he had ever seen before, that he examined it with care. How straight and graceful and exquisite it was! When it swung to and fro with the summer wind, in the twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if little Anglice was standing there in the garden. The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fragile shoot, wondering what manner of blossom it would unfold, white, or 35 scarlet, or golden. One Sunday, At times something seemed to weigh 45 upon her mind. Antoine observed it, and waited. At length she spoke. 'Near our house,' said little Anglice 'near our house on the island, the palmtrees are waving under the blue sky. O 50 how beautiful! I seem to lie beneath them all day long. I am very, very happy. I yearned for them so much I grew sick, -don't you think it was so, mon père?' 'Hélas, yes!' exclaimed Antoine, sud- 55 denly. Let us hasten to those pleasant islands where the palms are waving.' Anglice smiled. a stranger, with a bronzed, weather-beaten face like a sailor's, leaned over the garden rail, and said to him, 'What a fine young date-palm you have there, sir!' 'Mon Dieu!' cried Père Antoine, ' and is it a palm?' 'Yes, indeed.' returned the man. 'I did n't reckon the tree would flourish in this latitude.' 'Ah, mon Dieu!' was all the priest could say aloud; but he murmured to himself, 'C'est le bon Dieu qui m'a donné cela.' If Père Antoine loved the tree before, he worshipped it now. He watered it, and nurtured it, and could have clasped it in his arms. Here were Émile and Anglice and the child all in one! The years glided away, and the datepalm and the priest grew together, only one became vigorous and the other feeble. Père Antoine had long passed the meridian of life. The tree was in its youth. It no 5 longer stood in an isolated garden; for the pretentious brick and stucco houses had clustered about Antoine's cottage. They looked down scowling on the humble thatched roof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd him off his land. But he clung to it like lichen and refused to sell. Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he laughed at them. Sometimes he was hungry and cold and thinly clad; but 10 he laughed none the less. Get thee behind me, Satan!' said the old priest's smile. Père Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but he could sit under the pliant, caressing leaves of this palm, lov 15 ing it like an Arab; and there he sat till the grimmest of speculators came to him. But even in death Père Antoine was faithful to his trust. The owner of that land loses it, if he harm the date-tree. And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the incense of whose breath makes the air enamored. May the hand wither that touches her ungently! 'Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice,' said Miss Blondeau, tenderly. Atlantic Monthly, June, 1862. |