John Quincy Zinn’s experimental class at the Brownrrigg Academy did not sit inertly in their seats, but moved freely about, and were encouraged by their teacher to participate in divers conversations, and to ask a good deal of questions. They studied poesy not by committing verse to memory, but by writing it; they became disciplined in the exacting art of perception, by drawing (with many comical, but surely instructive, results); they were encouraged to invent new words, and new ways of spelling old words—for our great English tongue, as John Quincy taught, is itself a massive machine, an invention of sorts, in which all must participate. They learned geography by applying themselves to actual mapmaking, and anatomy, by studying the skeletons of real animals. Mr. Zinn being a firm believer in manual labor and dexterity, it was necessary that his young charges—girls no less than boys—acquire the use of hammers, saws, files, and planes, and other homely instruments, scorned by the genteel classes. Singly, or in small teams, these amazing children worked on their own machines, and experimented with weights and measurements, and pulleys, and wheels, and water, and fire, and rapid changes of temperature, and direct and indirect sunlight, and the relative buoyancy of feathers, pebbles, blocks of wood, grass, snow, and nails. They designed dirigibles, and submarines, and ideal dwelling places, and model cities. For Invention, Mr. Zinn taught, is at the very heart of the Universe, and the especial secret of our great Nation, yet but dimly understood by the rest of the world.
It was Mr. Zinn’s fervent belief that all Americans should wish to participate, to the degree of their capability, in the invention of the most remarkable civilization ever to appear on earth: nay, are we not the very civilization, for which the earth was created? “Our United States has naught to do with the Old, but only with the New,” John Quincy passionately averred, “for, as Mr. Thoreau has said, ‘Eternity culminates in the present moment.’ We are a New World, of questions and questers; visions, improvisations, and bold experiments; in short, a living invention. If I declare myself an American citizen, am I not also an inventor?—for it is our collective destiny, and must be God’s will.”
Thus the flavor, and the general content, of the young man’s public addresses, the which continued to be greeted with exuberant applause, and respectful notices in most of the papers, and an enthusiasm of such wide-ranging aspect, that it was not surprising that the children of such illustrious Americans as Commodore Matthew Perry and Mr. Horace Greeley, and Edwin Booth, were enrolled at the Brownrrigg Academy, to be the pupils, for a time, of the radical young schoolmaster.
YET WHY DOES he not speak? the wretched young woman queried her heart. Alas, will he not speak?
TWELVE
How astonished the young Zinn sisters would be, to learn that their beloved mother—now so stout, and so matronly, and so grimly practical in her expert housewifery—had once been a fainting, weeping, obsessed young woman!—and the stern-visagèd Mrs. Zinn (who commanded much respect, and not a little trepidation, in the Octagonal House), but a tremulous Miss Kiddemaster, to her shame o’erwhelmed by bitter thoughts directed against her rivals.
For there was not only Miss Parthenope Violette Brownrrigg, and Miss Evangeline Ferris, but also Vice-Admiral Triem’s pretty daughter Rachel, and Miss Honora LeBeau, and one or two others commonly mentioned, as prospects for John Quincy Zinn. Shall I live? Prudence queried, of her puffy and humiliated mirror image. Nay, can I live? For, if he chooses another, the shame of it shall o’ercome me.
Rumors flew throughout the city, blown gustily by the winter wind, and piled deep with the fresh-fallen snow; and even if the sadly distraught Miss Kiddemaster betook herself, of a weekend, to her family’s country estate in Bloodsmoor, she could not escape certain cruel whisperings: some of which, I am sorry to say, were reported to her by her own cousins, with the pretense of charity. The Brownrriggs’ strategic play for the young bachelor involved a formal dinner at which an English baronet was a guest, with some intelligent interest in “American science”; the Mignon Barfields (being the parents of Evangeline Ferris’s widowed mother) threw open their fabled dining room, in austere Barfield Hall, that they might honor John Quincy Zinn, who could not know, Prudence thought, with some spiteful gratification, how rare were the Barfields’ dinners, and how all of social Philadelphia would have prized an invitation! The Triems boldly made their play at a larger, and less formal dinner, at which (so it was reported to Prudence) John Quincy had quite shocked the company, by speaking of the significant differences in his employ at the Brownrrigg Academy, and his employ in Mouth-of-Lebanon: for, as the young man laughingly recounted, he had not only been obliged to chop firewood, and feed the stove, in his rural common school, but had acted as a carpenter, and a handyman, and a custodian of the outhouses—the which, as he explained, demanded a great deal of ingenuity, to be kept from stinking.
Poor Prudence was an unwilling spectator of Miss Honora LeBeau’s play for Mr. Zinn’s interest, and the degree of success of that play: for the LeBeaus had evidently thought so little of her, as a rival, that they invited her and her family to the lavish reception that yearly marked the spring exhibit, at the Academy for the Fine Arts—Miss LeBeau’s father being director of the Academy, and an esteemed portrait painter, in his own right. Ah, how it wounded Prudence to espy her beloved in conversational intercourse with the slender, ivory-skinned Honora!—that beauteous young woman being attired, for the occasion, in a new dress by Worth, many-tiered, and amazingly small at the waist (no more than eighteen inches, the unhappy Prudence reasoned: and her waist, these past several weeks, was ever growing thicker, and less amenable to her corset); a cambric ruff about her throat, and Mrs. LeBeau’s famous emeralds in full display, all over her person, and a smile of such dazzling composure, and charm, that Prudence could not wonder at John Quincy’s absorbed interest.
(Alas, so reckless had Prudence become, she ignored her mother’s blandishments, and, alone, approached the smiling couple, that she might o’erhear their conversation. And how absurd that conversation was—and how transparent, and how shameful! For, it seemed, Honora had succeeded in engaging Mr. Zinn in a discussion of balloon ascensions, in France, particularly that of the aerostatic locomotive designed by Monsieur Petin, which had excited some attention in the press: and in which Miss LeBeau had herself been a most amaz’d passenger. It fairly sickened Prudence to observe how John Quincy, failing to discern the base motive behind the young lady’s conversation, listened with rapt and very flattering attention, and expressed a great deal of boyish interest in Monsieur Petin’s remarkable design, consisting of three balloons of “goldbeater’s skin” (made from the intestine of an ox!), of generous proportions, with propellers driven by steam, and wheels with articulated blades: none of which meant a great deal to Prudence, but seemed to, to John Quincy Zinn. For that young man summoned forth enough daring to say, that he would consider it a journey well spent, to travel to France for such an experience, tho’, for the most part, he had no interest whatsoever in foreign climes, and could not imagine himself ever leaving his native shores. Whereupon coquettish Honora observed, with a skilled fluttering of her fan, that, her father being an “intimate acquaintance” of Monsieur Petin, it would be no trouble at all, for a lively ride in the air-locomotive to be arranged for Mr. Zinn. And all this transpired with no ironical sense, on John Quincy’s part, that he was being boldly manipulated! Nay, the flush-faced Prudence thought, and to her shame I must record it, seduced. O Reader, you may well imagine, and pity, the ensuing sleepless night, endured by poor Prudence, after this most ignominious of occasions!)
IT HAD BEEN in a chill and drear autumn, some five years previous, that the dissolute man-of-letters, Edgar Allan Poe, was found unconscious on a Baltimore street; and died at the age of forty. Thus, against the vociferous protestations of several older members of the Arcadia Club, a belated tribute to his poetic “genius” was planned, in which John Quincy Zinn volunteered to take part.
“It is a pity, and a scandal,” Miss Parth
enope Brownrrigg vehemently exclaimed, with an unseemly forcefulness to her voice, “that so rare, so strange, and so unique a poetic talent, has not been properly valued in Philadelphia.”
Tho’ Poe had dwelt in the city for some years, and had edited Graham’s Magazine, it seemed that no one amongst the Arcadians had known him; for he had not moved in the best society. There was the unpleasantness of the feud with Longfellow, and a battery of disquieting rumors: the man was ungentlemanly, and morbid, and alcoholic, and his linen was oft unclean, and his hair inadequately groomed.
Yet, the younger Arcadians argued, was he not a native genius? Ah, and consider his wretched death!—brought about, it may have been, by the harshly materialistic and unfeeling world, which despised poetry.
Even Dr. Tremblay, whilst disapproving of the man himself, and doubtful of the value, to posterity, of his oeuvre, conceded the brilliance of “Ulalume,” “To Helen,” “The Raven,” and one or two other poems. John Quincy Zinn was, it was revealed, the only person at the meeting to have read both The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, and the remarkable Eureka, in their entirety; and he surprised the membership by stating that, in his opinion, certain of Poe’s scientific theories would one day be prov’d sound, by future scientists. With a very charming blush Mr. Zinn allowed that, had he sufficient freedom, which might only be acquired by financial independence, he might seek to verify Poe’s theories himself.
Each law of Nature depends at all points, on all other laws. This theorem of Poe’s struck Mr. Zinn as self-evident, and an expression of genius.
The meeting then proceeded, with several recitations of the tragic poet’s work, by his especial admirers. (How apt, that the evening was bleak, and drear, and darksome, and the leaded windows of the drawing room beset upon, by unfriendly winds!—so that Prudence, of late fatigued by sleepless nights, and a severe diminishment of her natural robust appetite, felt the chill pierce to the very marrow of her bones, and half-wondered, tho’ knowing full better, if the spectre of that wretched man did not stalk the earth, and seek a sort of underbred revenge, by peeking in at his betters, upon such ill-guided occasions.) It was toward the end of the o’erlong evening, during John Quincy Zinn’s mesmerizing recitation of “Dream-Land,” that something very untoward happened to Prudence: she grew lightheaded, and seemed to see “sparks” in the air, and would have sunk swooning to the carpet had she not been firmly ensconced, in an overstuffed Turkish chair, with substantial arms.
How her senses reeled!—the while her belovèd recited the poem, his eyes benignly shut, and his frame swaying just perceptibly from side to side, in obedience to the uncanny rhythm of the verse:
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—out of TIME.
At this, poor Prudence’s maiden heart beat the more rapidly, and her breath grew so wildly shallow, she was in terror of fainting: for the air seemed of a sudden stagnant, and her corset cruelly tight, and the hypnotic words of her husband-to-be so powerful:
By the gray woods,—by the swamp
Where the toad and newt encamp,—
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,—
By each spot the most unholy—
In each nook most melancholy,—
There the traveller meets, aghast,
Sheeted Memories of the Past—
Whereupon Prudence seemed to lose consciousness, with a scarce-audible sigh (which, fortunately, no one heard, being so rapt with attention, at John Quincy Zinn’s performance). She sank into a light swoon, and could not rouse herself for some minutes, until, with the completion of her belovèd’s recitation, the company generally bestirred itself: and her strength, and her consciousness, flowed back to her.
Ah, unhappy maiden! She was so ashamed of this curious manifestation of her weakness, that she did not care to tell her mother about it: for she believed (how mistakenly, we shall see), that it would never again happen to her: and there would be no public revelation, of her illicit love, for the handsome young bachelor Mr. Zinn!
THIRTEEN
It was the case that the Kiddemasters were well aware of their daughter’s fixation upon Mr. John Quincy Zinn, and her e’er-increasing turbulence, of mood and temper; but, for numerous reasons, they were somewhat hesitant to speak frankly to her. (Even Judge Kiddemaster, whose reputation on the bench had grown formidable, in recent years, confessed that he “did not like to stir a hornets’ nest—the female soul.”) That their only daughter should, after so many years of stubborn resistance, now fall in love, struck them as remarkable; for had they not, with some display of grim stoicism, resigned themselves to their daughter’s spinsterhood? (I am bound to record here, that it was not altogether true, that Miss Prudence Kiddemaster had spurned numerous suitors: but it was certainly the case that, had the young lady been more congenial, some would surely have stepped forward—the Kiddemaster fortune by no means being a modest one.)
Remarkable, Prudence’s impassion’d feeling: and ironical, perhaps: and, should her high regard for Mr. Zinn not be returned, very possibly tragical. Thus the tongues wagged, and no one knew quite what to think. For, on the one hand, Mr. Zinn was quite clearly an estimable young man; then again, on the other— If he did sue for Prudence’s hand, was such a match tolerable, in Philadelphia?
On this issue, as the reader might well imagine, there was much controversy amongst the family: the women being generally of one opinion (tho’ arrived at only after much rumination), the men, somewhat stoutly, of another. For, consider: the Kiddemasters and the Whittons (Mrs. Sarah Kiddemaster being a Whitton, of Baltimore) were descended from old English country families, related by ties of marriage to the Lamberts of Sussex, the Ashbery-Foxes of Warwickshire, the Chuzzlewits of Manchester, the Gilpins of Rowbothan, the Bayards of Norwich, and the Duke of St. Giddings. A Kiddemaster officer had distinguished himself in Cromwell’s Army; another had fought bravely at Waterloo; still others had attained eminence, on this side of the Atlantic, as a consequence of their uncommon courage, and manly diligence in the field. The renowned Erasmus Kiddemaster, for instance, had led the noble expeditionary forces of the 1660’s, against the Dutch enemy, along the Bloodsmoor River: this fierce gentleman being feared, by his men as well as his foes, for the stern and unbending nature of his justice.
Nineteen-year-old Randolph Kiddemaster, a lieutenant in the Continental Army, was credited with saving General George Washington’s life, in one of the first skirmishes, in our glorious Revolution; and John Branch Kiddemaster, a controversial figure to this day, had so ensconced himself as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, that, for some three decades after the election of Jefferson, it scarcely mattered who was President, so resolute were this gentleman’s Federalist sympathies, and so ingenious his cunning.
In more recent decades, the Kiddemasters had acquired considerable wealth, by way of their iron mining property in the Chadds Ford region, and their several paper mills (the Kiddemasters having intermarried with the Gilpins, as early as 1790), and their import businesses (this being, I believe, primarily a China trade), and scattered investments, too complex and varied to be here enumerated. It is to be kept in mind, however, that this great family’s sense of decorum, and abhorrence of all fulsome display of material wealth, dictated their behavior in society; and would never have countenanced the erecting of any house, of a vulgarian sort of splendor, soon to become commonplace in the Union, as our troubled century unfolds.
Godfrey Kiddemaster, though disdaining politics outright, like all cultured gentlemen of his time, knew it his solemn duty to serve his country in some wise, and consequently entered the law: there, by merit alone, and the affec
tionate support of certain of his relatives, rising with enviable rapidity, having been, for some years, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, when young Mr. Zinn was to make his acquaintance. Nor was it entirely out of the question, that Judge Kiddemaster might be called soon to Washington—if only the Whigs were not so bankrupt, and the Free Soilers so churlish a lot, and the future of the Presidency so uncertain.
In this wise various observations were daily made to Prudence, with a semblance of the “accidental,” that she might absorb the moral that the Kiddemasters were, by no means, common: a fact the proud young lady well knew, but did not care to contemplate o’ermuch at this time—the spectre of John Quincy Zinn always hovering near, in her inflamed imagination.
I quite realize that I am a Kiddemaster, Prudence bethought herself, biting her lip, but must I remain thus, forever?
To her shame, she began to succumb to those very “spells”—lightheadedness, temper, weeping, melancholy, “fagged nerves”—she so deplored in the females of her acquaintance; nor did she resist her Aunt Edwina’s ministrations, as to dosages of Dr. Fayer’s Dyspepsia Pills, Essence of Tyre, Woodbridge’s Natura, and Miss Emmeline’s Remedy—this last medicine being most agreeable to the taste, syrupy, very sweet, with a pronounced orange base, and almost miraculously calming, to the distress’d heart.