Sell some books, of course! It made them shudder to think how many poets they had eaten in this fashion. A new history of socialism just sent me for review. Hang the review ; we want our dinner, don't we, little one? And then I've read the preface, and looked through the index—quite enough to make a column of—with a plentiful supply of general principles thrown in! Why, of course, there's our dinner, for certain, dull and in- digestible as it looks. It's worth fifty minor poets at old Moser's.
So off went the happy pair—ah! Old Moser found histories of socialism profitable, more pro- fitable perhaps than socialism, and he actually gave five-and-six- pence for the volume. With the ninepence already in their pockets, you will see that they were now possessors of quite a small fortune. You needn't wish to be much happier and merrier than those two lovers, as they gaily hastened to that bright and cosy corner of the town where those lovely ham-and-beef shops make glad the faces of the passers-by.
O those hams with their honest shining. Beauty used to calculate in her quaint way how much steel was worn away with each pound of ham, and how much therefore went to the sandwich. And what an artist was the carver! What a true eye, what a firm flexible wrist—never a shaving of fat too much— he was too great an artist for that. Then there were those dear little cream cheeses and those little brown jugs of yellow cream, come all the way from Devonshire—you could hear the cows lowing across the rich pasture, and hear the milkmaids sing- ing and the milk whizzing into the pail, as you looked at them.
And then those perfectly lovely sausages—I beg the reader's pardon! I forgot that the very mention of the word smacks of vulgarity. Yet, all the same, I venture to think that a secret taste for sausages among the upper classes is more widespread than we have any idea of. I confess that Beauty and her poet were at first ashamed of admitting their vulgar frailty to each other. They needed to know each other very well first. Yet there is nothing, when once confessed, that brings two people so close as—a taste for sausages!
But such are the vagaries of love—as you will know, if you know anything about it—" vulgar," no doubt, though only the vulgar would so describe them—for it is only vulgarity that is always "refined"! Then there was the florist's to visit. What beautiful trades some people ply!
To sell flowers is surely like dealing in fairies.
- The Boy Scouts at the Panama Canal.
- Building a Successful Team for Residential Care Managers (Residential Care Management Book 1).
- Bodley Heads No. 3: George Egerton.
- Cuddle the Cutest Kitten: School of Spells: Book 4?
Beautiful must grow the hands that wire them, and sweet the flower-girl's every thought. There remained but the wine-merchant's, or, had we not better say at once, the grocer's, for our lovers could afford no rarer vintages than Tintara or the golden burgundy of Australia ; and it is wonderful to think what a sense of festivity those portly colonial flagons lent to their little dining-table. Sometimes, I may confide, when they wanted to feel very dissipated, and were very rich, they would allow themselves a small bottle of Bene- dictine—and you should have seen Beauty's eyes as she luxuriously sipped at her green little liqueur glass, for, like most innocent people, she enjoyed to the full the delight of feeling occasionally wicked.
However, these were rare occasions, and this night was not one of them. Half a pound of black grapes completed their shopping, and then, with their arms full of their purchases, they made their way home again, the two happiest people in what is, after all, a not unhappy world. Then came the cooking and the laying of the table. For all her Leonardo face, Beauty was a great cook—like all good women, she was as earthly in some respects as she was heavenly in others, which I hold to be a wise combination—and, indeed, both were excellent cooks ; and the poet was unrivalled at " washing up," which, I may say, is the only skeleton at these Bohemian feasts.
You should have seen the gusto with which Beauty pricked those sausages—I had better explain to the un-Bohemian reader that to attempt to cook a sausage without first pricking it vigorously with a fork, to allow for the expansion of its juicy The Yellow Book—Vol. Meanwhile, the poet would be surpassing himself in the setting- out of the little table, cutting up the bread reverently as though it were for an altar—as indeed it was—studying the effect of the dish of tomatoes now at this corner, now at that, arranging the flowers with even more care than he arranged the adjectives in his sonnets, and making ever so sumptuous an effect with that half-a- pound of grapes.
And then at last the little feast would begin, with a long grace of eyes meeting and hands clasping ; true eyes that said "how good it is to behold you, to be awake together in this dream of life " ; true hands that said " I will hold you fast for ever—not death even shall pluck you from my hand, shall loose this bond of you and me " ; true eyes, true hands, that had immortal mean- ings far beyond the speech of mortal words. And it had all come out of that dull history of socialism, and had cost little more than a crown! What lovely things can be made out of money!
Strange to think that a little silver coin of no possible use or beauty in itself can be exchanged for so much tangible beautiful pleasure. A piece of money is like a piece of opium, for in it lie locked up the most wonderful dreams—if you have only the brains and hearts to dream them. When at last the little feast grew near its end, Love and Beauty would smoke their cigarettes together ; and it was a favourite trick of theirs to lower the lamp a moment, so that they might see the stars rush down upon them through the skylight which hung above their table. It gave them a sense of great sentinels, far away out in the lonely universe, standing guard over them,.
They were poor, but then they had the stars and the flowers and the great poets for their servants and friends— and, best of all, they had each other. Do you call that being poor? And then, in the corner, stood that magical box with the ivory keys, whose strings waited ready night and day—strange media through which the myriad voices, the inner-sweet thoughts, of the great world-soul found speech, messengers of the stars to the heart, and of the heart to the stars.
Beauty's songs were very simple. She got little practice, for her poet only cared to have her sing over and over again the same sweet songs ; and perhaps if you had heard her sing " Ask nothing more of me, sweet," or " Darby and Joan," you would have understood his indifference to variety. At last the little feast is quite, quite finished. Beauty has gone home ; her lover still carries her face in his heart as she waved and waved and waved to him from the rattling lighted tramcar ; long he sits and sits thinking of her, gazing up at those lonely ancient stars ; the air is still bright with her presence, sweet with her thoughts, warm with her kisses, and as he turns to the shut piano, he can still see her white hands on the keys and her girlish face raised in an ecstasy—Beata Beatrix—above the music.
That seventh-story heaven once more leads a dull life as the office of a ship-chandler, and harsh voices grate the air where Beauty sang. The books and the flowers and the lovers' faces are gone for ever. I suppose the stars are the same, and perhaps they sometimes look down through that roof-window, and wonder what has become of those two lovers who used to look up at them so fearlessly long ago. But friends of mine who believe in God say that He has given His angels charge concerning that dingy old seventh-floor heaven, and that, for those who have eyes to see, there is no place where a great dream has been dreamed that is not thus watched over by the guardian angels of memory.
I AM writing to you from a lost corner of the far south-east of Europe. The author of my guide-book, in his preface, observes that a traveller in this part of the world, " unless he has some acquaintance with the local idioms, is liable to find himself a good deal bewildered about the names of places. I certainly might well have found myself a good deal be- wildered ; and if I did not for—Im afraid I can't boast of much acquaintance with the local idioms—it was no doubt because this isn't my first visit to the country.
I was here some years ago, and then I learned that BCKOB is pronounced as nearly as may be Vscov, and that Tchermnogoria is Monterosso literally trans lated— tchermnoe the dictionaries certify meaning red, and gora , or goria , a hill, a mountain. But if we were to enquire at the Foreign Office, I think they would tell us that our fashion of speaking is not strictly correct. In its own Constitution Monterosso describes itself as a Basilestvo , and its Sovereign as the Basile ; and in all treaties and diplomatic correspondence, Basile and Basilestvo are recognised by those most authoritative lexicographers, the Powers, as equivalent respectively to King and Kingdom.
Anyhow, call it what you will, Monterosso is geographically the smallest, though politically the eldest, of the lower Danubian States. It is sometimes, by the bye, mentioned in the newspapers of Western Europe as one of the Balkan States, which can scarcely be accurate, since, as a glance at the map will show, the nearest spurs of the Balkan Mountains are a good hundred miles distant from its southern frontier. Its area is under ten thousand square miles, but its reigning family, the Pavelovitches, have contrived to hold their throne, from generation to generation, through thick and thin, ever since Peter the Great set them on it, at the conclusion of his war with the Turks, in Vescova is rarely visited by English folk, lying, as it does, something like a two days journey off the beaten track, which leads through Belgrade and Sofia, to Constantinople.
But, should you ever chance to come here, you would be surprised to see what a fine town it is, with its population of upwards of a hundred thousand souls, its broad, well-paved streets, its substantial yellow- stone houses, its three theatres, its innumerable churches, its shops and cafes, its gardens, quays, monuments, its government offices, and its Royal Palace. I am speaking, of course, of the new town, the modern town, which has virtually sprung into existence since , and which, the author of my guide-book says, "dis- putes with Bukharest the title of the Paris of the South-East.
The old town—the Turkish town, as they call it—is another matter: Yet it is in the centre of the old town that the Cathedral stands, the Cathedral of Sankt Iakov, an interesting specimen of Fifteenth Century Saracenic, having been erected by the Sultan Mohammed II, as a mosque. The older portions of the Palace spring from the very brink of the precipice, so that, leaning from their ramparts, you could drop a pebble straight into the current, an appalling depth below. And, still to speak by the book, these older portions " vie with the Cathedral in architectural interest. It stands out very bold and black, gloomy and impressive, when the sun sets behind it, in the late afternoon.
I could suppose the place quite impregnable, if not inaccessible ; and it s a mystery to me how Peter the Great ever succeeded in taking it, as History will have it that he did, by assault. The modern portions of the Palace are entirely commonplace and cheerful. The east wing, visible from where I am seated writing, might have been designed by Baron Haussmann: Behind the Palace there is a large and very lovely garden, reserved to the uses of the Royal Household ; and beyond that, the Dunayskiy Prospekt, a park that covers about sixty acres, and is open to the public.
The first floor, the piano nobile , of that east wing is occupied by the private apartments of the King and Oueen. I look across the quarter-mile of red-tiled housetops that separate me from their Majesties habitation, and I fancy the life that is going on within. It is too early in the day for either of them to be abroad, so they are certainly there, some- where behind those gleaming windows: Theodore Basile , and Aneli Basilitsa. She, I would lay a wager, is in her music-room, at her piano, practising a song with Florimond. She is dressed in white I always think of her as dressed in white—doubtless because she wore a white frock the first time I saw her , and her brown hair is curling loose about her forehead, her maids not having yet imprisoned it.
I declare, I can almost hear her voice: The King, at this hour, will be in his study, in dressing-gown and slippers—a tattered old dingy brown dressing-gown, out at. Monterossan cigarettes are excellent, and Monterossan tea is always served in glasses. The King has literary aspirations, and—like Frederick the Great—coaxes his muse in French. You will occasionally see a conte of his in the Nouvelle Revue , signed by the artful pseudonym, Theodore Montrouge. At one o clock to-day I am to present myself at the Palace, and to be received by their Majesties in informal audience ; and then I am to have the honour of lunching with them.
If I were on the point of lunching with any other royal family in Europe. But, thank goodness, I'm not ; and I needn't pursue the dis- tressing speculation. You see, when he began life, Theodore IV was simply Prince Theodore Pavelovitch, the younger son of a nephew of the reigning Basile, Paul III ; and nobody dimly dreamed that he would ever ascend the throne.
So he went to Paris, and " made his studies " in the Latin Quarter, like any commoner. In those days as,—I dare say, it still is in these—the Latin Quarter was crowded with students from the far south-east. Servians, Roumanians, Monterossans, grew, as it were, on every bush ; we even had a sprinkling of Bulgarians and Montenegrins ; and those of them who were not more or less vaguely princes, you could have numbered on your ringers.
And, anyhow, in that democratic and self-sufficient seat of learning, titles count for little, and foreign countries are a matter of consummate ignorance and jaunty unconcern. So we accepted Prince Theodore Pavelovitch, and tried him by his individual merits, for all the world as if he were made of the same flesh and blood as Tom, Dick, and Harry ; and thee-and- thou'd him, and hailed him as mon vieux as merrily as we did everybody else.
Indeed, I shouldn't wonder if the majority of those who knew him were serenely unaware that his origin was royal he would have been the last to apprise them of it , and roughly classed him with our other princes valaques. For con- venience sake, we lumped them all—the divers natives of the lands between the Black Sea and the Adriatic under the generic name, Valaques ; we couldn t be bothered with nicer ethnological distinctions. We tried Prince Theodore by his individual merits ; but, as his individual merits happened to be signal, we liked him very much.
He hadn t a trace of " side ; " his pockets were full of money ; he was exceedingly free-handed. No man was readier for a lark, none more inventive or untiring in the prosecution of one. He was a brilliant scholar, besides, and almost the best fencer in the Quarter. And he was pleasantly good-looking—fair-haired, blue- eyed, with a friendly humorous face, a pointed beard, and a slight, agile, graceful figure.
Everybody liked him, and every- body was sorry when he had to leave us, and return to his ultra- mundane birthplace. But then I shall come back. I mean always to live in Paris. That was in But he never came back. For, before his three years of military service were completed, the half-dozen cousins and the brother who stood between him and the throne, had one by one died off, and Theodore himself had succeeded to the dignity of Basilitch , as they call their Heir Presumptive. In he married. And, finally, in 88, his great-uncle Paul also died at the age of ninety-seven, if you please—and Theodore was duly proclaimed Basile.
He didn t forget his ancient cronies, though ; and I was only one of those whom he invited to come and stay with him in his Palace. I came, and staid That seems egregious ; but what will you say of another of us, Arthur Fleet or Florimond, as their Majesties have nicknamed him , who came at the same time, and has staid ever since? The fact is, the King is a tenacious as well as a delightful host ; if he once gets you within his portals, he won t let you go without a struggle.
Theodore's consort, Aneli Isabella, Basilitsa Tcbermnogory — vide the Almanach de Gotha —is the third daughter of the late Prince Maximilian of Wittenburg ; sister, therefore, to that young Prince Waldemar who comes almost every year to England, and with whose name and exploits as a yachtsman all conscientious students of the daily press will be familiar ; and cousin to the reigning Grand Duke Ernest. Theoretically German, she is, however, to all intents and purposes, French ; for her mother, the Princess Celestine of Bourbon-Morbihan , was a Frenchwoman, and, until her marriage, I fancy that more than half of Aneli's life was passed between.
She openly avows, moreover, that she " detests Germany, the German language, the German people, and all things German, and adores France and the French. She is a deliciously pretty little lady, with curling soft-brown hair, a round, very young-looking face, a delicate rose-and-ivory complexion, and big, bright, innocent brown eyes—innocent, yet with plenty of potential archness, even potential mischief, lurking in them. She has beautiful full red lips, besides, and exquisite little white teeth. Florimond wrote a triolet about her once, in which he described her as " une fleur en porcelaine.
All the same, " fleur en porcelaine " does, in a manner, suggest the general effect of her appearance, its daintiness, its finish, its crisp chisel- ling, its clear, pure colour. Whereas, nothing could be more misleading than " wax-doll," for there is character, character, in every molecule of her person. The Queen's character, indeed, is what I wish I could give some idea of. It is peculiar, it is distinctive ; to me, at any rate, it is infinitely interesting and diverting ; but, by the same token—if I may hazard so to qualify it—it is a trifle I heard and trembled, but the Queen only laughed.
And that will give you an inkling of what I mean. If she likes you, if you amuse her, and if you never remotely oppose or question her desire of the moment, she can be all that is most gracious, most reasonable, most captivating: Well, I suppose, the right way of putting it would be to say, in the consecrated formula, that she has the defects of her qualities.
Having preserved something of a child s simplicity, she has not entirely lost a child's wilfulness, a child s instability of mood, a child s trick of wearing its heart upon its sleeve. She has never perfectly acquired a grown person s power of controlling or con- cealing her emotions. If you don't happen to amuse her—if, by any chance, it is your misfortune to bore her, no matter how slightly ; and, oh, she is so easily bored!
If you manifest the faintest hesita- tion in complying with her momentary wishes, if you raise the mildest objection to them— gare a vous! Her face darkens, ominous lightning flashes in her eyes, her under-lip swells danger- ously ; she very likely stamps her foot imperiously ; and you are to be accounted lucky if you don't get a smart dab from the. And if she doesn t like you, though she may think she is trying with might and main to disguise the fact and to treat you courteously, you know it directly, and you go away with the persuasion that she has been, not merely cold and abstracted, but downright uncivil.
In a word, Queen Aneli is hasty, she is impatient. And, in addition to that, she is uncertain. You can never tell beforehand, by any theory of probabilities based on past experience, what will or will not, on any given occasion, cause her to smile or frown. The thing she expressed a desire for yesterday, may offend her to-day.
The suggestion that put her in a temper yesterday, to-day she may welcome with joyous enthusiasm. You must approach her gingerly, tentatively ; you must feel your ground. She is hasty, she is uncertain ; and then She talks in italics, she feels in superlatives ; she admits no com- parative degree, no emotional half-tones. When she is not ecstati - cally happy, she is desperately miserable ; wonders why she was ever born into this worst of all possible worlds ; wishes she were dead ; and even sometimes drops dark hints of meditated suicide.
When she is not in the brightest of affable humours, she is in the blackest of cross ones. She either loves a thing, or she simply can't endure it ;—the thing may be a town, a musical composition, a perfume, or a person. She either loves you, or she simply can't endure you ; and she s very apt to love you and to cease to love. It is winter midnight or summer noon, a climate of extremes. Every evening for a week, when, at the end of dinner, the fruit was handed round, the King asked her that question ; and she, never suspecting his malice, answered invariably, as she crushed a bit between her fingers, and fervidly inhaled its odour, "Oh, do I like it?
She is hasty, she is uncertain, she is intense. Will you be sur- prised when I go on to insist that, down deep, she is altogether well-meaning and excessively tender-hearted, and when I own that among all the women I know I can think of none other who seems to me so attractive, so fascinating, so sweetly feminine and loveable? Oh, no, I am not in love with her, not in the least— though I don't say that I mightn't be, if I were a king, or she were not a queen.
If she realises that she has been unreasonable, she is the first to confess it ; she repents honestly, and makes the devoutest resolutions to amend.
- Criminal Liability for Non-Aggressive Death.
- File usage on Commons.
- The Amazing Slick McKinley: Greatest Athlete Ever!
If she discovers that she has hurt anybody's feelings, her conscience will not give her a single second of peace, until she has sought her victim out and heaped him with benefits. If she believes that this or that distasteful task forms in very truth a part of her duty, she will go to any length of persevering self-sacrifice to accomplish it.
She has a hundred generous and kindly impulses, where she has one that is perverse or inconsiderate. Bring any case of distress or sorrow to her notice, and see how instantly her eyes soften, how eager she is to be of help. And in her affections, however mercurial she may appear on the surface, she is really constant, passionate, and, in great things, forbearing. She and her husband, for example,. Princess Gugglegoo was all sweetness and pinkness, softness and guilelessness, a rose full of honey, and without a thorn ; a perfect little cherub ; oh, such a duck! Princess Ragglesnag was all corners and sharp edges, fire and fret, dark moods and quick angers ; oh, such an intolerant, dictatorial, explosive, tempestuous princess!
You could no more touch her than you could touch a nettle, or a porcupine, or a live coal, or a Leyden jar, or any other prickly, snaggy, knaggy, incandescent, electric thing. You did have to mind your p's and q's with her! But no matter how carefully you minded them, she was sure to let you have it, sooner or later ; you were sure to rile her, one way or another: Only, your characters are rather conventionally drawn. However, go on, go on. If you didn't really mean it, we'll pretend there wasn't. Well, my dears," he went on, turning, so as to include the King in his audience, " you never will believe me, but it's a solemn, sober fact that these two princesses were twin sisters, and that they looked so much alike that nobody, not even their own born mother, could tell them apart.
Now, wasn't that surprising? Only, Ragglesnag looked like Gugglegoo suddenly curdled and gone sour, you know ; and Gugglegoo looked like Ragglesnag suddenly wreathed out in smiles and graces. So that the courtiers used to say, Hello! What can have happened? Here comes dear Princess Gugglegoo looking as black as thunder. Or else— ' Bless us and save us!
File:Title page--Where Highways theranchhands.com - Wikimedia Commons
Here comes old Ragglesnag looking as if butter wouldnt melt in her mouth. I hope I'm not an insipid little fool, like Gugglegoo ; but I don't think I'm quite a termagant, either, like your horrid exaggerated Ragglesnag. If I had been even remotely thinking of your Majesty, I should never have dreamed of calling her by either of those ridiculous outlandish names. Gugglegoo and Ragglesnag, in- deed! But I hope I'm much too discerning ever to have applied such a sweeping generalisation to her as Ragglesnag, or such a silly, sugary sort of barbarism as Gugglegoo.
When she isn t as crude, and as blunt, and as phlegmatic, and as insensi- tive, and as transparent and commonplace and all-of-one-piece, as themselves, men always think a woman;s unreasonable and capri- cious and infantile. It's a little too discouraging. Here I wear myself to a shadow, and bore and worry myself to extermination, with all the petty contemptible cares and bothers and pomps and ceremonies of this tiresome little Court ; and that's all the thanks I get—to be laughed at by my husband, and lectured and ridiculed in stupid allegories by Florimond!
It's a little too hard. Oh, if you'd only let me go away, and leave it all behind me! I'd go to Paris, and change my name, and become a concert-singer. It's the only thing I really care for—to sing and sing and sing.
Oh, if I could only go and make a career, as a concert-singer in Paris! Will you let me? And I don t see why one hour isn't as good as another.
Highways and Byways in Surrey, by Eric Parker, Illustrated by Hugh Thomson
Will you let me go to Paris and become a concert-singer? And leave poor me alone and forlorn here in Ves- cova? Oh, my dear, you wouldn't desert your own lawful spouse in that regardless manner! You don't half appreciate me. You think I'm childish, and capricious, and bad- tempered, and everything that's absurd and idiotic. I don't see why I should waste my life and my youth, stagnating in this out- of-the-way corner of Nowhere, with a man who doesn't appreciate me, and who thinks I'm childish and idiotic, when I could go to Paris, and have a life of my own, and a career, and do the only thing in the world I really care for.
Why shouldn t you? Instead of staying here, and boring and worrying ourselves to death as King and Oueen of this ungrateful, insuffer- able, little unimportant ninth-rate country, why shouldn't we abdicate, and go to Paris, and be a Man and a Woman, and have a little Life, instead of this dreary, artificial, cardboard sort of puppet-show existence?
You could devote yourself to literature, and I'd go on the concert-stage, and we'd have a delightful little house in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and be perfectly happy. Of course Florimond would come with us. Why shouldn t we? Oh, if you only would! The King looked at his watch. But if, when you wake up to-morrow morning, you wish to resume it, Florimond and I will be at your disposal.
File history
Meanwhile we're losing our beauty-sleep ; and I, for one, am going to bed. I don't think any woman was ever so badly treated. She didn't recur to the subject next day, however, but passed the entire morning with Florimond, planning the details of a garden-party, and editing the list of guests ; and she threw her whole soul into it, too: Please don t interrupt. Go back to your counting-house and count out your money, and leave us in the parlour to eat our bread and honey. It is in the nature of things, doubtless, that a temperament such as I have endeavoured to suggest, should find the intensity of its own feelings reflected by those that it excites in others.
One would expect to hear that the people who like Oueen Aneli like her tremendously, and that the people who don't like her tremendously don't like her at all. And, in effect, that is precisely the lady's case. She is tremendously liked by those who are near to her, and who are therefore in a position to understand her and to make allowances.
They love the woman in her ; they laugh at and love the high-spirited, whimsical, impetuous, ingenuous child. But those who are at a distance from her, or who meet her only rarely and formally, necessarily fail to understand her, and are apt, accordingly, neither to admire her greatly, nor to bear her much good will. And, of course, while the people who are near to her can be named by twos and threes, those who view her from a distance must be reckoned with by thousands. And this brings me to a painful circumstance, which I may as well mention with out more ado. At Vescova—as you could scarcely spend a day in the town, and not become aware—Queen Aneli is anything you please but popular.
Your true Slav peasant, with his mild blue eyes, and his trustful spirit, is as meek and as long- suffering as a dumb beast of burden. But your black-browed Monterossan, your Tchermnogorets, is fierce, lawless, resentful, and vindictive, a Turk's grandson, the Turk's first cousin: Well, at Vescova, and, with diminishing force, throughout all Monterosso, Oueen Aneli is entirely misunderstood and sullenly misliked. Her husband cannot be called precisely the idol of his people, either ; but he is regarded with indulgence, even with hopefulness ; he is a Monterossan, a Pavelovitch: Aneli, on the contrary, is an alien, a German, a Niemkashka.
The feeling against her begins with the nobility. Save the half-dozen who are about her person, almost every mother s son or daughter of them fancies that he or she has been rudely treated by her, and quite frankly hates her. I am afraid, indeed, they have some real cause of grievance ; for they are most of them rather tedious, and provincial, and narrow-minded ; and they bore her terribly when they come to Court ; and when she is bored, as we have seen, she is likely to show it pretty plainly. So they say she gives herself airs.
They pretend that when she isn't absent-minded and monosyllabic, she is positively snappish. They denounce her as vain, shallow-pated, and extravagant. They twist and torture every word she speaks, and everything she does, into subject-matter for unfriendly criticism ; and they quote.
But that's the trouble with the fierce light that beats upon a throne—it shows the gaping multitude so much more than is really there. Why, I have been assured by at least a score of Monterossan ladies that the Queen's lovely brown hair is a wig ; that her exquisite little teeth are the creation of Dr.
Evans, of Paris ; that whenever anything happens to annoy her, she bursts out with torrents of the most awful French oaths ; that she quite frequently slaps and pinches her maids-of-honour ; and that, as for her poor husband, he gets his hair pulled and his face scratched as often as he and she have the slightest difference of opinion.
Monterossan ladies have gravely asseverated these charges to me these, and others more outrageous, that I won't repeat , whilst their Monterossan lords nodded confirmation. It matters little that the charges are preposterous. Give a Queen a bad name, and nine people in ten will believe she merits it. Anyhow, the nobility of Monterosso, quite frankly hating Oueen Aneli, give her every bad name they can discover in their vocabularies ; and the populace, the mob, without stopping to make original investigations, have convicted her on faith, and watch her with sullen captiousness and mislike.
When she drives abroad, scarcely a hat is doffed, never a cheer is raised. On the contrary, one sometimes hears mutterings and muffled groans ; and the glances the passers-by direct at her are, in the main, the very reverse of affectionate glances. Members of the shop-keeping class alone show a certain tendency to speak up for her, because she spends her money pretty freely ; but the shop-keeping class are aliens too, and don't count—or, rather, they count against her, " the dogs of Jews," the zhudovskwy sobakwy!
She accepts her unpopularity with the most superb indifference. It s the meanness and stupidity of average human nature ; it s the proverbial injustice of men. To be popular, you must either be utterly insignificant, a complete nonentity, or else a time-server and a hypocrite. So long as I have a clear conscience of my own, I don't care a button what strangers think and say about me. I don't intend to allow my conduct to be influenced in the tiniest particular by the prejudices of outsiders. I will live my own life, and those who don't like it may do their worst.
I will be myself. One puts on extra clothing in winter, for example, however much, on abstract principles, one may despise such a gross, material, unintelligent thing as the weather. Just so, don't you think, one is by way of having a smoother time of it, in the long run, if one takes a few simple measures to conciliate the people amongst whom one is compelled to live? Now, for instance, if you would give an hour or two every day to learning Monterossan. When she was first married, indeed, she announced her intention of studying it. Grammars and dictionaries were bought ; a Professor was nominated ; and for almost a week the Crown Princess Basilevna , as she then was, did little else than grind at Monterossan.
Her Professor was delighted ; he had never known such a zealous pupil. Her husband was a little anxious. An hour or two a day should be quite enough. She is not the sort of person who does things by halves. Why should I addle my brains trying to learn it? I'll content myself with French and English. It's bad enough, in one short life, to have had to learn German, when I was a child.
And neither argument nor entreaty could induce her to re- commence it. The King, who has never altogether resigned him- self to her determination, seizes from time to time an opportunity to hark back to it ; but then he is silenced, as we have seen, with a " don't begin that rengaine. Practically, she does perfectly well with French, that being the Court language of the realm. Only, sometimes, when the public sentiment against her takes the form of aggressive disrespect, or when it interferes in any way with her immediate convenience, it puts her a little out of patience—when, for instance, the traffic in the street retards the progress of her carriage, and a passage isn't cleared for her as rapidly as it might be for a Queen whom the rabble loved ; or when, crossing the pavement on foot, to enter a church, or a shop, or what not, the idlers that collect to look, glare at her sulkily, without doing her the common courtesy of lifting their hats.
In such circumstances, I dare say, she is more or less angered. At all events, a sudden fire will kindle in her eyes, a sudden colour in her cheeks ; she will very likely tap nervously with her foot, and murmur something about " canaille. When I first came to Vescova, some years ago, the Prime Minister and virtual dictator of the country was still M. Tsargradev, the terrible M. Tsargradev,—or Sargradeff, as most English newspapers write his name,—and it was during my visit here that his downfall occurred, his downfall and irretrievable disgrace.
The character and career of M. Tsargradev would furnish the subject for an extremely interesting study. The illegitimate son of a Monterossan nobleman, by a peasant mother, he inherited the unprepossessing physical peculiarities of his mother's stock: But to these he united a cleverness, an energy, an ambition, which are as foreign to simple as to gentle Monterossan.
Now, the Government of Monterosso, as the King has sometimes been heard to stigmatise it, is deplorably constitutional.
By the Constitution of , practically the whole legislative power is vested in the Soviete, a parliament elected by the votes of all male subjects who have completed three years of military service. And, in the early days of the reign of Theodore IV, M. Tsargradev was leader of the Soviete, with a majority of three to one at his back.
This redoubtable personage stood foremost in the ranks of those whom our fiery little Queen Aneli " could not endure. His servile, insinuating manner! It makes you feel as if he were plotting your assassination," she declared. It's exactly like lukewarm oil. He makes my flesh creep, like some frightful, bloated reptile. Eaving help your reputation, if you fell under her illustrious displeasure. I'm sure you think as I do—that he s a monster of low cunning, and cynicism, and craft, and treachery, and everything that's vile and revolting.
I think he's a bold, bad, dreadful person. I lie awake half the night, counting up his iniquities in my mind. And if just now I laughed, it was only to keep from crying. He could cut down our Civil List to-morrow, or even send us packing, and establish a republic. We're dependent for everything upon his pleasure. I think, really, my dear, you ought to try to be decent to him—if only for prudence sake. As if I didn't treat him a hundred million times better than he deserves!
I hope he can't complain that I'm not decent to him. I don't mean that you stick your tongue out at him, or throw things at his head. But trust him for understanding. It's what you leave unsaid and undone, rather than what you say or do. He's fully conscious of the sort of place he occupies in your heart, and he resents it. He thinks you distrust him, suspect him, look down upon him. And so does everybody who has any right feeling. We remember his power, and treat him respectfully to his face, how- ever much we may despise him in secret.
What s the use of quarrelling with our bread and butter? We should seek to propitiate him, to rub him the right way. I should like you to treat him with something more than bare civility. Why don't you admit him to your private circle sometimes?
File:Title page--Where Highways Meet.png
Why don't you invite him to your private parties, your dinners? My private parties are my private parties. I ask my friends, I ask the people I like. Nothing could induce me to ask that horrid little underbred mongrel creature. He'd be—he'd be like—like something unclean—something murky and contaminating—in the room. He'd be like an animal, an ape, a satyr. I know he bears us a grudge for it, and he s not a person whose grudges are to be made light of. I'm not afraid of him," Aneli retorted. I see it every time he looks at me, with his snaky little eyes, his forced little smile—that awful, complacent, in- gratiating smirk of his, that shows his teeth, and isn't even skin deep ; a mere film spread over his face, like pomatum!
Oh, I know he hates me. But it's the nature of mean, false little beasts like him to hate their betters; so it can't be helped. For the rest, he may do his worst. I'm not afraid," she concluded airily. Not only would she take no steps to propitiate M. Tsargradev, but she was constantly urging her husband to dismiss him. I haven't the least doubt he's murdered people. I'm sure he steals. I'm sure he has a secret understanding with Berlin, and accepts bribes to manage the affairs of Monterosso as Prince Bismarck wishes.
That's why we're more or less in disgrace with our. Because Tsargradev is paid to pursue an anti-Russian, a German, policy. If you would take my advice, you'd dismiss him, and have him put in prison. Then you could explain to the Soviete that he is a murderer, a thief, a traitor, and a monster of secret immorality, and appoint a decent person in his place.
You don t appear quite yet to have mastered the principles of constitutional government, my dear. I could no more dismiss Tsargradev than you could dismiss the Pope of Rome. You re the King, you know. But that has nothing to do with it. Tsargradev is leader of the Soviete. The Soviete pays the bills, and its leader governs.
The King s a mere fifth-wheel. Some day they ll abolish him. Mean- while they tolerate him, on the understanding that he's not to interfere. You ought to take the law and the Constitution and everything into your own hands. If you asserted yourself, they'd never dare to resist you. But you always submit—submit—submit. Of course, everybody takes advantage of a man who always submits. Show that you have some spirit, some sense of your own dignity. Order Tsargradev's dismissal and arrest. You can do it now, at once, this evening. Then to-morrow you can go down to the Soviete, and tell them what a scoundrel he is—a thief, a murderer, a traitor, an impostor, a libertine, everything that s foul and bad.
And tell them that henceforward you're going to be really King, and not merely nominally King ; and that you're going to govern exactly as you think best ; and that, if they don't like that, they will have to make the best of it. If they resist, you can dissolve them, and. Or you can suspend the Constitution, and govern without any Soviete at all. I could hardly satisfy them by declaring that I had my wife s word for it. But, seriously, you exaggerate. Tsargradev is anything you like from the point of view of abstract ethics, but he's not a criminal.
He hasn't the faintest motive for doing anything that isn't in accord- ance with the law. He's simply a vulgar, self-seeking politician, with a touch of the Tartar. But he's not a thief, and I imagine his private life is no worse than most men's. Some day he'll come to grief, and then you'll see that he's even worse than I have said. I feel , I know , he's everything that's bad. Trust a woman's intuitions. They're much better than what you call evidence. And she had a nickname for him, which, as well as her general criticisms of his character, had pretty certainly reached the Premier s ear ; for, as subsequent events demonstrated, very nearly every servant in the Palace was a spy in his pay.
Roads Were Not Built For Cars 2015 | All rights reserved.
She called him the nain jaune. Subsequent events have also demonstrated that her woman's intuitions were indeed trustworthy. Perhaps you will remember the revelations that were made at the time of M. Tsargradev's downfall ; fairly full reports of them appeared in the London papers. Murder, peculation, and revolting secret debaucheries were all, surely enough, proved against him. It was proved that he was the paid agent of Berlin ; it was proved that he had had recourse to torture in dealing with certain refractory witnesses in his famous prosecution of Count Osareki.
And then, there was. He and Tsargradev, at sun- set, were strolling arm-in-arm in the Dunayskiy Prospekt, when the Colonel was shot by some person concealed in the shrubberies, who was never captured. Tsargradev and his friends broached the theory, which gained pretty general acceptance, that the shot had been intended for the Prime Minister himself, and that the death of Colonel Alexandrevitch was an accident due to bad aiming. It is now perfectly well established that the death of the Colonel was due to very good aiming indeed ; that the assassin was M.
Tsargradev s own hireling ; and that perhaps the best reason why the police could never lay hands on him had some connection with the circumstance that the poor wretch, that very night, was strangled and cast into the Danube. Oh, they manage these things in a highly unlikely and theatrical manner, in the far south-east of Europe! But the particular circumstances of M.
Tsargradev's downfall were amusingly illustrative of the character of the Oueen. Ce que femme veult, Dleu le veult. And though her husband talked of the Constitution, and pleaded the necessity of evidence, Aneli was unconvinced. To get rid of Tsargradev, by one method or another, was her fixed idea, her determined purpose ; she bided her time, and in the end she accomplished it. It befell, during the seventh month of my stay in the Palace, that a certain great royal wedding was appointed to be celebrated at Dresden: There's no expecting a penny for such a purpose from the Soviete.
We'll send your Cousin Peter. One must find some use for one's Cousin Peters. I'm very sorry to say we'll have to attend in person. How can you think of such a thing? We'd be bored and fatigued to death. It will be unspeakable. Nothing but dull, stodgy, suffocating German pomposity and bad taste. Oh, je m y connais! Red cloth, and military bands, and interminable banquets, and noise, and confusion, and speeches oh, the speeches! And besides, we'd be herded with a crowd of ninth-rate princelings and petty dukes, who smell of beer and cabbage and brilliantine.
We d be relegated to the fifth or sixth rank, behind people who are all of them really our inferiors. Do you suppose I mean to let myself be patronised by a lot of stupid Hohenzollerns and GratzhofFens? You can send your cousin Peter. But—you speak of ninth-rate princelings. A ninth-rate princeling like the Basile of Tchermnogoria must make act of presence in his proper skin. There's no getting out of it. If you choose to go and be patronised and bored, and half killed by the fatigue, and half ruined by the expense, I suppose I can't prevent you. But, if you want my opinion, I think it's utter insane folly.
And she re-absorbed herself in her letter, with the air of one who had been distracted for a moment by a frivolous and tiresome interruption. The King did not press the matter that evening, but the next morning he mustered his courage, and returned to it. What I wish to say is really very important. It's about going to Dresden. I—I want to assure you that I dislike the notion of going quite as much as you can.
But it's no question of choice. There are certain things one has to do, whether one will or not. I'm exceedingly sorry to have to insist, but we positively must reconcile ourselves to the sacrifice, and attend the wedding—both of us. It's a necessity of our posi- tion. If we should stay away, it would be a breach of international good manners that people would never forgive us.
We should be the scandal, the by-word, of the Courts of Europe. We'd give the direst offence in twenty different quarters. You can't imagine the unpleasantnesses, the complications, our absence would store up for us ; the bad blood it would cause. We'd be put in the black list of our order, and snubbed, and embarrassed, and practically ostracised, for years to come.
And you know whether we need friends. But the case is so obvious, it seems a waste of breath to argue it. You surely won't let a mere little matter of temporary personal inconvenience get us into such an ocean of hot water. Come now—be reasonable, and say you will go. The Queen's eyes were burning ; her under-lip had swollen portentously ; but she did not speak. The King waited a moment. Then, " Come, Aneli—don't be angry. Say that you will go," he urged, taking her hand. She snatched her hand away. I'm afraid she stamped her foot. I tell you I won't ". And you needn't call me your dear.
If you had the least love for me, the least common kindness, or considera- tion for my health or comfort or happiness, you'd never dream of proposing such a thing. To drag me half-way across the Con- tinent of Europe, to be all but killed at the end of the journey by a pack of horrid, coarse, beer- drinking Germans!
And tired out, and irritated, and patronised, and humiliated by people like —— and ——! It's perfectly heartless of you. And I when I suggest such a simple natural pleasure as a trip to Paris, or to the Italian lakes in autumn—you go and tell me we can t afford it! You re ready to spend thousands on a stupid, utterly unnecessary and futile absurdity, like this wedding, but you can't afford to take me to the Italian lakes!
And yet you pretend to love me! So the King had to drop the subject again, and to devote his talents to the task of drying her tears. I don't know how many times they renewed the discussion, but I do know that the Queen stood firm in her original refusal, and that at last it was decided that the King should go without her, and excuse her absence as best he might on the plea of her preca- rious state of health. It was only after this resolution was made and registered, and her husband had brought himself to accept it with some degree of resignation—it was only that her Majesty began to waver and vacillate, and reconsider, and change her mind.
As the date approached for his departure, her alterna- tions became an affair of hours. It was, " Oh, after all, I can't let you go alone, poor Theo. And besides, I should die of heart- break, here without you. So—there—I'll make the best of a bad business, and go with you "—it was either that, or else, " No, after all, I can't. I shall miss you horribly. But, when I think of what it means , I haven't the trength or courage. I simply can't "—it was one thing or the other, on and off", all day. And if you're coming with me, I shall name my uncle Stephen.
But if you're stopping here, of course I shall name you. There is a bothersome little provision in the Constitution of Monterosso to the effect that the Sovereign may not cross the frontiers of his dominions, no matter for how brief a sojourn, without leaving a Regent in command. Under the good old regime, before the revolution of , the kings of Tcherm-. They found Paris, Monte Carlo, St.
Petersburg, Vienna, and even, if you can believe me, some- times London, on the whole more agreeable as places of residence than their hereditary capital. There was the particularly flagrant case of Paul II, our Theodore s great-grandfather, who lived for twenty years on end in Rome. He fancied himself a statuary, poor gentleman, and produced oh, such amazing Groups!
Tons of them repose in the Royal Museum at Vescova ; a few brave the sky here and there in lost corners of the Campagna he used to present them to the Pope! Perhaps you have seen his Fountain at Acqu amarra? Con - cerning the Appointment of a Regent. But the Oueen continued to hesitate ; in the morning it was Yes, in the evening No ; and the eleventh hour was drawing near and nearer.
The King was to leave on Monday. On the pre- vious Tuesday, in a melting mood, Aneli had declared, " There! Once for all, to make an end of it, I ll go. On Thursday it was brought to the Palace for the royal signature. The King had actually got as far as the d in his name, when the Oueen, faltering at sight of the irrevocable docu- ment, laid her hand on his arm. She was very pale, and her voice was weak. It's like my death- warrant. I I haven't got the courage.
You'll have to let me stay. You'll have to go alone. On Saturday morning it was presented to the King. Entrance to its exclusive circle may be regarded as a social cachet of the most authoritative sort…The headquarters of the Michaux are at an uptown cycling academy, where it has elaborately appointed rooms…The Central Park Casino and the Claremont do not see a more goodly array of fair women and gallant men, year in and year out, than on the occasions of the Michaux [Spring] meet.
With numbers and the support of high society, creating bicycle infrastructure was like pushing at an open door. Park commissioner Timothy L. Woodruff was a wheelman. It was he who led the parade of 10, cyclists that celebrated the opening of the return Coney Island cycle path. He was a member of the influential Skull and Bones secret society of Yale University later members included both the Bush presidents of the US but he made no secret of his allegiance to cycling:. I am anxious to do this not that I may cater to the comforts of a certain class of citizens, not because I am actuated by personal devotion to wheeling, but because I believe the safety bicycle is the most beneficial instrumentality of this wonderful age.
To be mayor in Brooklyn in the mids meant you had to be pro-bicycling. Mayor Charles Schieren said:. This is a fad which has come to stay, and the cyclers rightfully demand good roads or paths for their accommodation. We must therefore plan additional facilities and build practicable roads for the exclusive use of the wheel, the same as we have provided bridle paths for equestrians in our parks…We must reconstruct our park roads and set aside a portion of the roadway for the exclusive use of bicycles, or make additional paths for them…Good streets and roads will attract many people to a city or town which has them…If the townships of this island would construct excellent macadamised roads, they would double their population in a short time.
The cool summer breezes and fine, level country roads would make them a perfect paradise for cyclers…Brooklyn is now seriously considering a plan for building a system of good roads and cycling paths…which will give from twenty to thirty miles of excellent paths to the lovers of the wheel, and will prove a great attraction.
Wurster — was also pro-bicycling. In March , he said:. The bicycle has done more for good roads, and will do more for good roads in the future, than any other form of vehicle. The mayor was right that cyclists had pioneered the push for good roads but it was the next vehicle along that benefitted the most from the s love affair with the bicycle. By , sales of new cycles reached a peak and a steady decline set in.
High society took to motorcars; most everybody else migrated to trams. Cycling, once for everyone, slowly became an athletic activity alone. One of these was bought by Henry Wells of New York. While racing on public roads, he crashed into Evelyn Thomas, riding a Columbia bicycle on Broadway near West 74th Street. Wells became the first motorist arrested for what would later become known as dangerous driving. Thomas was hospitalised with a fractured leg. The Coney Island Cycle Path was poorly maintained after The paths were patched but not relaid. The path was never closed.
It still exists today. The return path was asphalted over and became a road. The Ocean Parkway is now a multi-lane highway, with a slim bike path and a separate walking path. Both paths have to cross over a great many roads, with priority now granted to cars. In the s, the Coney Island Cycle Path was the best known of an extensive network of interlocking bike paths and roads macadamised for cyclists. Bicycle paths were created along Pelham Parkway, and along Riverside Park and Drive, and there were macadamised roads radiating outwards from downtown to what were then open fields, but which are now parts of the concrete jungle.
Merrick Road on Long Island was one of many improved roads frequented by cyclists, for leisure, for scorching and for getting to and from work. It had a national reputation…It was so popular that people built hotels and businesses for all the cyclists who would visit from the city…Anything that creates a whole town is culturally significant.
There were also asphalted roads. New York City had twenty miles of such roads in Even in the s, bike paths still existed throughout New York City and more were built during the New Deal work relief projects of the s and s. The book will be published in August via a Kickstarter campaign that ends on April 20th, and a PDF of the book will also be given away, free, on this site later in the year.