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The Pelican
by
She began by telling me that she had never been so frightened in her life. She knew, of course, how dreadfully learned I was, and when, just as she was going to begin, her hostess had whispered to her that I was in the room, she had felt ready to sink through the floor. Then (with a flying dimple) she had remembered Emerson’s line–wasn’t it Emerson’s?–that beauty is its own excuse for seeing, and that had made her feel a little more confident, since she was sure that no one saw beauty more vividly than she–as a child she used to sit for hours gazing at an Etruscan vase on the bookcase in the library, while her sisters played with their dolls–and if seeing beauty was the only excuse one needed for talking about it, why, she was sure I would make allowances and not be too critical and sarcastic, especially if, as she thought probable, I had heard of her having lost her poor husband, and how she had to do it for the baby.
Being abundantly assured of my sympathy on these points, she went on to say that she had always wanted so much to consult me about her lectures. Of course, one subject wasn’t enough (this view of the limitations of Greek art as a “subject” gave me a startling idea of the rate at which a successful lecturer might exhaust the universe); she must find others; she had not ventured on any as yet, but she had thought of Tennyson–didn’t I love Tennyson? She worshipped him so that she was sure she could help others to understand him; or what did I think of a “course” on Raphael or Michelangelo–or on the heroines of Shakespeare? There were some fine steel-engravings of Raphael’s Madonnas and of the Sistine ceiling in her mother’s library, and she had seen Miss Cushman in several Shakespearian rôles, so that on these subjects also she felt qualified to speak with authority.
When we reached her mother’s door she begged me to come in and talk the matter over; she wanted me to see the baby–she felt as though I should understand her better if I saw the baby–and the dimple flashed through a tear.
The fear of encountering the author of “The Fall of Man,” combined with the opportune recollection of a dinner engagement, made me evade this appeal with the promise of returning on the morrow. On the morrow, I left too early to redeem my promise; and for several years afterwards I saw no more of Mrs. Amyot.
My calling at that time took me at irregular intervals from one to another of our larger cities, and as Mrs. Amyot was also peripatetic it was inevitable that sooner or later we should cross each other’s path. It was therefore without surprise that, one snowy afternoon in Boston, I learned from the lady with whom I chanced to be lunching that, as soon as the meal was over, I was to be taken to hear Mrs. Amyot lecture.
“On Greek art?” I suggested.
“Oh, you’ve heard her then? No, this is one of the series called ‘Homes and Haunts of the Poets.’ Last week we had Wordsworth and the Lake Poets, to-day we are to have Goethe and Weimar. She is a wonderful creature–all the women of her family are geniuses. You know, of course, that her mother was Irene Astarte Pratt, who wrote a poem on ‘The Fall of Man’; N.P. Willis called her the female Milton of America. One of Mrs. Amyot’s aunts has translated Eurip–“
“And is she as pretty as ever?” I irrelevantly interposed.
My hostess looked shocked. “She is excessively modest and retiring. She says it is actual suffering for her to speak in public. You know she only does it for the baby.”
Punctually at the hour appointed, we took our seats in a lecture-hall full of strenuous females in ulsters. Mrs. Amyot was evidently a favorite with these austere sisters, for every corner was crowded, and as we entered a pale usher with an educated mispronunciation was setting forth to several dejected applicants the impossibility of supplying them with seats.