Terribly Intimate Portraits Part 4

Was it the sudden relenting of malleable fate that caused the Merry Monarch to come riding blithely through sleepy Egham, followed by his equerry, Lord Francis Tunnell-Penge, and several of his suite? Halting outside the inn, Bloodworthy relates that his Majesty was immediately struck by a winsome face at an upper window. "Lud!" he cried laconically, and dismounted, taking several dogs from his hat as he did so, and one from his pocket; for he was devoted to animals, Bloodworthy goes on to say, and often spent days stroking their soft ears abstractedly. Then, seized by a sudden inspiration, he inquired of the landlady as to whose was the face he had seen. In a trice the story was told--the King waved his hand imperiously and took a pinch of snuff.

"Send her to me," he said.

When Sarah entered, all hot from her manual labours, Charles started to his feet. Here was no scullion, no plaything of an idle hour. Here was breeding, dignity and beauty. Ah! Beauty! Probably these cold sh.o.r.es will never again shelter beauty like Sarah Twig's. On seeing the King she curtsied low. He bowed with the stately elegance for which he was famed.

"Your name?" he asked.

The glorious vision veiled her eyes.

"I have no name, sire--now." With these words, spoken from a heart surcharged with bitterest sorrow, the poor woman swooned away.

"Lud!" remarked the King irritably, "the girl must have a name. You must marry her, Francis--she shall be Lady Tunnell-Penge." Then the impulsive monarch stooped, and, opening a locket on the unconscious woman's breast, read the name Sarah in blue diamonds on an opaque background.

"But," he added softly under his breath, "I shall know her only as 'Winsome Sal'!"

Thus Sarah Twig, so nearly an outcast through her own girlish folly, became possessor of a name honoured and even adored throughout England.

The first few years of her life at Court were more or less uneventful--she saw little of her husband and lots of the King. He and she used to wander along the river side, simply loaded with different dogs. Whenever there were theatricals given, Sheepmeadow tells us, Sarah invariably appeared as Diana or Minerva, preferring these parts on account of their suitability to her youth and figure. All these events took place long after Punter's portrait, though several others were done latterly. Her wit and gaiety were of course world-famed, and her political treatises are preserved to this day.[13]

On one dramatic occasion her brilliant political knowledge and presence of mind were the means of saving England from turmoil or worse. Hearing that the people were hungry and restless, Sarah rushed to the King.

"What's to do?" she cried breathlessly.

"G.o.d knows," replied Charles, adding "Lud!" as an afterthought. Then he went on fondling the long silky ears of one of his lap-dogs with which the room was strewn.

Heartbroken, Sarah left the room and rushed out of Whitehall as fast as her legs could carry her, heeding not the jeers of the crowd. She made for Tower Hill, from the summit of which she delivered her world-famous political speech, ending with the stirring words, "Sift your corn through sieves!"

How that speech sends a throb to one's heart--the defiance of it, the subtlety of it, and yet the intense womanliness of it! The people cheered her back to the palace. She went straight to the King's room--he was feeding his dogs.

"I've saved England!" cried Sarah exultantly.

"Lud!" replied the King, and handed her some cat's-meat. No wonder women loved him!

Incidents like these went to make up the multi-coloured mosaic of Sarah, Lady Tunnell-Penge's life. Her children were many--Arthur, later on Lord Crumpingfax; Muriel, later the d.u.c.h.ess of Dripp; and various others.

She died at the age of seventy-nine,[14] thus outliving her Royal paramour. A beautiful life, a n.o.ble life, a gentle life--yet was there something missing? Sometimes I gaze at her portrait and wonder.

JABEZ PUFFWATER

[Ill.u.s.tration: JABEZ PUFFWATER, OF OGGSVILLE, KENTUCKY]

Jabez Puffwater might have been so much physically, mentally and publicly and has been so little any way that a tattered moral must hang sadly upon the gaunt tree of his career.

He might have been many things--he might have been a successful theatrical manager, or only an artistic one--he might have been a naval commander, or a psychoa.n.a.lyst, or a Christian Science healer--he might have imparted to the United States Senate that infinitesimal something which would probably have proved to be the greatest comfort, especially in the cold weather.

If Mr. Belasco had not preferred Mr. David Warfield, Jabez Puffwater might have made an enormous success in "The Return of Peter Grimm"--had he but possessed an apt.i.tude for histrionic achievement. He might have sung at the Metropolitan year after year without ceasing if Miss Geraldine Farrar had not taken an instantaneous dislike to him at sight--and had he but possessed a flamboyant temperament and an elementary knowledge of Puccini. In fact there is almost nothing he couldn't have been if only Fate had but weaned him at the breast of opportunity instead of ordaining his life drama to be played out in lonely dignity in the drab but intensely political village of Oggsville, Ken.

Oggsville, Ken. has been for many years a hotbed of occasionally seditious, but always subtle intrigue, the constructive and progressive policy of the upper part of the town, near the railway bridge, being in direct opposition to the destructive statesmans.h.i.+p and const.i.tutional conventionality of the lower residential quarter embracing the timber-yard, Elijah Square, and Aunt Martha's Soda Fountain. Naturally Jabez Puffwater, whose modest store stood figuratively and literally at the crossing of the ways, was always in a somewhat uncertain state of mind as to which side he should ultimately pin his colours. Perhaps on a Tuesday St. John Eddle, a staunch upholder of the C. and P.P., would enter Jabez's store and hit him in the face because he'd sent a tin of sardines to the Furdlehoe Mansion on the other side of the River. And maybe on a Friday Moses Whortleberry, a leading light of the D. S. and C. C. would belabour him with one of his own hams for daring to acquaint old Hiram Holdit, the station master, with the result of the cocoa coupon compet.i.tion.

One thing stood out firmly amid the turmoil of Jabez's environment--and that was his idealistic and almost fanatical admiration of the exploits of Buffalo Bill as depicted on the screen and retailed in small paper-bound books. Indeed so struck was he by the verve and virility of this astounding man that he took to attiring his lower limbs--which seldom showed above the counter--in the breeches, leggings, belt and pistol so well known to all lovers of the limitless prairie. The infinite pathos of Jabez Puffwater's blind devotion to one whom he had never seen will not fail to strike home to the stoniest heart. The tragedy of this man whose dauntless spirit so far outgrew his physical appearance--being compelled to sell cheeses, hams, mola.s.ses, etc, in order to live, is far more pitiful to me than the stern virginity of Queen Elizabeth, or even the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac.

It was when Jabez Puffwater had just reached his forty-third birthday that he first became seriously implicated in that political bombsh.e.l.l, the Goodge-Keewee Treaty made out with masterful cunning by Albert Goodge and Nicholas Keewee, with the sole motive of undermining the transcontinental railroad system to a devastating degree. The various reasons both for and against this daring policy are so excellently and clearly put forward in Vernon Treeby's "When Southern Blood is Dripping"

that I will not attempt to go into it here. Enough that it caused an unparalleled sensation in Oggsville, Ken. and was indirectly the means of introducing into the heart of Jabez Puffwater the secret fear which was destined to grow ever larger and larger until eventually its black wings beat his battered soul into eternity. "The fear of a Black Rising!" Jabez was undoubtedly a man of more than average courage but after reading the Goodge-Keewee Treaty he went back to his store a hara.s.sed man. What did it all mean? n.o.body knew. Ah, G.o.d! If only Jabez Puffwater had possessed the inspiring rhetoric of a Bernard Proon, or the imposing presence of a Freddie Hooter, what a lot he could have done. As it was he just went home--aching--yet withal as yet subconsciously--for the ability to be of use in some way, the opportunity of distinguis.h.i.+ng himself and saving his beloved home town from the awful effects of the fear that was fated from now onward to be with him always--the dreaded Black Rising.

For many years after that fateful conference Jabez was to be seen every evening seated outside his store with a horse pistol in his hand ever pointed in the direction of the wooded hills to the Southward. Little boys on their way home from school would throw mud at him, but he never heeded them; little girls would make rude noises quite near him with their rubber overshoes, but he ignored them utterly. I often wonder on looking back what Douglas Bogtoe would have been had he but possessed one half of Puffwater's concentrated repose. That celebrated appeal for the Louisiana Ca.n.a.l installation would have been worded very differently and as for his world-famed piscatorial argument with Olaf Campbell in the Brooke Club--that would have probably been approached from an entirely opposite angle.

To a.n.a.lyse and compare Bogtoe's electrical psychology with the phlegmatic determination and boyish zeal of Puffwater would take, alas, too long; so I will not seek to say more than that had the two widely differentiated spirits but been combined within the same material tissues--that a quainter nor a more peculiar juxtaposition of ent.i.ties it would have been hard to find, search where you may.

I try occasionally to picture to myself the lonely horror-stricken nights Jabez Puffwater must have endured with that appalling fear always crouching within him, egging him on towards the culminating tragedy of his sad career.

There had been talk of a lynching in New Orleans and of a shooting in Old Virginia and there were even whispers of a slapping in Alabama.

Jabez was priming his pistol one morning while he hastily scanned the elevating disclosures--social and otherwise--of the New York American, when a breathless woman rode up to the store on a tricycle. She delivered a note to Jabez and waited while he read it.

"Come at once--am exceedingly ill--Aunt Topsy."

Jabez thought for a moment--then crus.h.i.+ng down his rising apprehensions he mounted his mare Buffalo Babs and made for the hills.

Ten miles there and ten miles back, and the fear always with him--the fear of the Black Rising.

Many psychoa.n.a.lysts have endeavoured to discover the exact motive for Jabez Puffwater's sudden and unexpected slaying of his old Aunt Topsy--whose coal-black arms had fondled him as a baby. Many theories have been put forward, but none of them--with the exception, perhaps, of Herman Pipper--possess the ring of truth. Pipper's deduction of the circ.u.mstantial evidence is that it was all the outcome of a naughty practical joke played by little Michael Drisher who appeared suddenly during Jabez's interview with his Aunt and burst the awful news upon them that there had been a fearful Black Rising in Oggsville, Ken. and that debauch--murder--and worse were going on all over the globe.

"With a great cry," Pipper tells us, "Jabez smote his brow. 'At last!'

he moaned in deep anguish. 'At last it has come!' Then he turned, and seizing a large milk bottle he battered the head of Aunt Topsy, crying the while in the voice of a fanatic, 'For my home town! For my home town! This is a just reprisal!!!' Then with a last look at the havoc he had wrought he went out of the house and into the wilderness--"

Pipper's imaginative description ends too abruptly to be really satisfactory; but one fact about the life of Jabez Puffwater will remain emblazoned on America's history for time immemorial--that if he had only possessed the rhetoric of a Proon--the presence of a Hooter--the education of a Floop--the racial understanding of a Bogtoe and the mentality of a Snurge--he would not only have proved himself invaluable to the home const.i.tuency of Oggsville, Ken. but have been an entirely different man altogether.

FURSTIN LIEBERWURST ZU SCHWEINEN-KALBER

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRETCHEN LIEBERWURST ZU SCHWEINEN-KALBER

_From the famous etching by Grobmeyer_]

How strange it seems that she of whom we write is dust and less than dust below the fertile soil of her so beloved Prussia--Furstin Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber! Can you not rise from the grave once more to charm us with the magic of your voice? Are those deep, mellowed tones, so sonorous and appealing, never to be heard again? Ah, me! Why, indeed, should such divinity be so short lived? Who could play Juliet as she could? n.o.body! Her enemies laughed and said that her chronic adenoids utterly destroyed all the beauty of the part. Jealousy! Vile jealousy! Genius always has that to contend with. Every one has failings. Gretchen Lieberwurst zu Schweinen-Kalber made of Juliet a woman--a pulsating, human woman, with failings like the rest of us, the chief of which happened to be adenoids.[15]

To trace this soul-stirring actress to her obscure birth has indeed been a labour--but withal, a labour of love! For who could help experiencing exquisite joy at unearthing trinkets and miniatures and broken memories of such a radiant being?

Nuremburg, red-roofed and gleaming in the sunlight, was the place wherein she first saw the light of day. Her father, Peter Schmidt, was by trade a sausage-moulder, for in those far-off days there was not the vast machinery of civilisation to wield the good meat into the requisite shape. Gretchen, when a girl, often used to watch her father as he plied his trade and recite to him verses she had learnt at her dame school--fragments from the Teutonic masterpieces of the time--"Kruschen Kruschen," and--

"Baby white and baby red, Like a moon convulsive Rolling up and down the bed, Utterly repulsive!"--

a beautiful little lullaby of Herman Veigel's. Gretchen used to recite it with the tears pouring down her cheeks, so poignantly affected was she by the sensitive beauty of it. Her father also used to weep hopelessly--also her mother, if she happened to be near; and Heinrich, the cat, invariably retreated under the sofa, unutterably moved.

Life dragged on with some monotony for Gretchen. She often used to help her mother in the kitchen--and occasionally in the sitting-room. One day she became a woman! Every one noticed it. Neighbours used to meet her mother in the _stra.s.se_ and say, "Frau Schmidt, your Gretchen is a woman." Frau Schmidt would nod proudly and reply, "Yes, we have seen that; my Peter and I--we are very happy." Thus Gretchen left her girlhood behind her. It was her habit, so Grundelheim tells us, to walk out in the forest with one Hans Breitel, an actor at the munic.i.p.al theatre. He used to teach her to talk to the birds, and when she besought him ardently to tell her stories of the theatre, he would relate to her the parts he had nearly played. Gretchen's heart thrilled--oh to be an actress, an actress! On her twenty-fourth birthday von Bottiburgen[16] tells us, Gretchen left home, and went to Berlin.