Three.
The Two Poetasters
The sportsman was under a mistake about the girls being gone. They were still within the cove; only no longer conversing.
Their dialogue had ended along with their dressing; and they had betaken themselves to two separate occupations – both of which called for silence. Miss Girdwood had commenced reading a book that appeared to be a volume of poems; while her cousin, who had come provided with drawing materials, was making a sketch of the grotto that had served them for a robing-room.
On their emerging from the water, Keziah had plunged into the same pool – now disturbed by the incoming tide, and deep enough to conceal her dusky charms from the eyes of any one straying along the cliff.
After spluttering about for a matter of ten minutes, the negress returned to the shore; once more drew the gingham gown over her head; squeezed the salt spray out of her kinky curls; readjusted the bandanna; and, giving way to the languor produced by the saline immersion, lay down upon the dry shingle – almost instantly falling asleep.
In this way had the trio become disposed, as the explorer, after discovering the obstruction to his progress, turned back along the strand – their silence leading him to believe they had taken departure.
For some time this silence continued, Cornelia taking great pains with her drawing. It was a scene well worthy of her pencil, and with the three figures introduced, just as they were, could not fail to make an interesting picture. She intended it as the record of a rare and somewhat original scene: for, although young ladies occasionally took a sly dip in such solitary places, it required a certain degree of daring.
Seated upon a stone, as far out as the tide would allow her, she sketched her cousin, leaning studiously against the cliff, and the sable-skinned maid-servant, with turbaned head, lying stretched along the shingle. The scarped precipice, with the grotto underneath; the dark rocks here overhanging, there seamed by a gorge that sloped steeply upward – the sides of the latter trellised with convolvuli and clumps of fantastic shrubbery, – all these were to appear in the picture.
She was making fair progress, when interrupted by an exclamation from her cousin.
The latter had been for some time turning over the leaves of her book with a rapidity that denoted either impatience or dire disappointment in its contents.
At intervals she would stop, read a few lines, and then sweep onward – as if in search of something better.
This exercise ended, at length, by her dashing the volume down upon the shingle, and exclaiming:
“Stuff!”
“Who?”
“Tennyson.”
“Surely you’re jesting? The divine Tennyson – the pet poet of the age?”
“Poet of the age! There’s no such person!”
“What! not Longfellow?”
“Another of the same. The American edition, diluted, if such a thing were possible. Poets indeed! Rhymesters of quaint conceits – spinners of small sentiments in long hexameters – not soul enough in all the scribblings of both to stir up the millionth part of an emotion?”
“You are severe, cousin. How do you account for their world-wide popularity? Is that not a proof of their being poets?”
“Was it a proof in the case of Southey? Poor, conceited Southey, who believed himself superior to Byron! And the world shared his belief – at least one-half of it, while he lived! In these days such a dabbler in verse would scarce obtain the privilege of print.”
“But Longfellow and Tennyson have obtained it.”
“True; and along with, as you say, a world-wide reputation. All that is easily explained.”
“How?”
“By the accident of their coming after Byron – immediately after him.”
“I don’t comprehend you, cousin.”
“Nothing can be clearer. Byron made the world drunk with a divine intoxication. His superb verse was to the soul what wine is to the body; producing a grand and glorious thrill – a very carousal of intellectual enjoyment. Like all such excesses, it was followed by that nervous debility that requires a blue pill and black draught. It called for its absinthe and camomile bitters; and these have been supplied by Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate to the Queen of England, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, pet of the sentimental and spectacled young ladies of Boston. It was a poetic tempest, to be followed by a prosaic calm, that has now lasted over forty years, unbroken save by the piping of this pair of poetasters!”
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers!” repeated Cornelia, with a good-natured laugh.
“Yes!” cried Julia, rather irritated by her cousin’s indifference. “By just such a paltry play upon words, by the imagination of small sentimentalities, and sickly conceits, plucked out of barren brains, and then machined into set stanzas, have these same poetasters obtained the world-wide reputation you speak of. Out upon such pretenders! And this is how I would serve them.”
She raised her little foot, and, with a spiteful stamp, brought her heel down upon poor Tennyson, sinking him deep into the spongy sand!
“Oh, Julia, you’ve spoilt the book?”
“There’s nothing in it to spoil. Waste print and paper. There’s more poetry in one of these pretty seaweeds that lie neglected on the sand – far more than in a myriad of such worthless volumes. Let it lie!”
The last words were addressed to Keziah, who, startled from her slumber, had stooped to pick up the trampled volume.
“Let it lie, till the waves sweep over it and bear it into oblivion; as the waves of Time will wash out the memory of its author. Oh, for one true – one real poet!”
At this moment Cornelia started to her feet; not from anything said by her cousin, but simply because the waves of the Atlantic were already stealing around her skirts. As she stood erect, the water was dripping from them.
The sketcher regretted this interruption of her task; the picture was but half completed; and it would spoil it to change the point of view.
“No matter,” she muttered, closing her sketch-book, “we can come again to-morrow. You will, won’t you, Julia, to oblige me?”
“And myself miss. It’s the very thing, this little plunge sans façon. I haven’t enjoyed anything like it since landing on the island of – of – Aquidnec. That, I believe, is the ancient appellation. Come, then, let us be off! To-day, for a novelty, I shall dine with something resembling an appetite.”
Keziah having wrung out the bathing-dresses and tied them in a bundle, the three prepared to depart.
Tennyson still lay crushed upon the sand; and his spiteful critic would not allow him to be taken up!
They started to return to the hotel – intending to go up the cliff by the same ravine through which they had come down. They knew of no other way.
On reaching the jutting rock that formed the flanking of the cove, all three were brought suddenly to a stand.
There
