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قراءة كتاب Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 713, August 25, 1877
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 713, August 25, 1877
left with a young child to fight the world alone. Health and vigour, however, were her portion; and hearing that plenty of work for women was to be had at Cleator near Whitehaven, she repaired thither, and found a settlement and a living. While there, she was one day agreeably surprised by a visit from her kind friend Lady Curwen, who had driven from Workington Hall expressly to tell her that an advertisement applying for the heirs of John Pearson who worked in Beerpot Foundry, had that week appeared in the columns of a London newspaper, and urged her to attend to it. But she was illiterate, was unused to business habits, and being alone and helpless, put off the matter day by day, until at last she gave it up altogether. What might have come out of this, is of course unknown to the writer; but Isabella herself believed—I do not know why—that her aunt, Mrs Weeks, had died, and had bequeathed to her sister's children a considerable sum of money.
Time passed on, and her child grew, developing among other things a love of mischief; for one day, while her mother was at the mill where she wrought, she got to the box in which were kept her mother's cherished family documents and letters, and amused herself by setting them ablaze one by one at a lighted candle got for the purpose! Thus, in one half-hour, every document necessary to prove her mother's pedigree was destroyed, and with it all hope of bettering her position was thrown to the winds; so, when some years afterwards, Lady Curwen sent a messenger to tell her that the advertisement I have named had once more appeared in the public prints, she paid no attention to the information, satisfying herself simply with an expression of thanks to her kind benefactor!
She was, however, content with her lot. Her child was her chief comfort and joy. For her she toiled in the mill by day, and in her humble home at night; and as she grew in stature and in beauty, the mother's heart throbbed its gratitude and her eye beamed with admiration. But on one occasion she had nearly lost her. Playing one fine afternoon on the bank of the stream which drove the wheel belonging to the mill, her feet slipped, and she fell in. A man who happened to be a little in advance, had his eye drawn to an object on the water, which he at first took to be a quantity of loose hair; but another glance revealed to him the head of a little girl beneath the surface of the rapid stream. He ran and was just in time to lay hold of the hair as its possessor was falling over on to the wheel. Another moment, and Jane Ruddock (the drowning girl) would have been no more; in which case he who now pens these fragments of a strange history would not have been in existence—for that little girl became his mother.
I have little more to add. Isabella Pearson, who, as I have shewn, became Isabella Ruddock, wife of a common sailor, once more entered the matrimonial lists; but she neither improved her position nor increased her happiness by so doing. Indeed her life, while her second husband lived, was imbittered by his love of strong drink. But she survived him. She was a widow the second time when she became familiar to my youthful eye. Many a merry hour have I spent in her company. Often I have heard her relate the incidents which make up this story. She was a fine, tall, handsome woman while health remained with her; she had also a large womanly heart, a hot impetuous temper, and a remarkable simplicity and honesty of character. She died in 1849, weighed down with years and infirmities; but she ended her eventful life in much patience and peace.
A LADY'S ASCENT OF THE BREITHORN.
Fancy the following tableau. Scene—Switzerland; time—August 1875, at a desolate rocky part of the Surenen Pass. A group—Youthful grace and vigour; manly strength and endurance, &c. Foreground—Four heads eagerly bent over a huge bowl of café placed on a board, which is extended over four laps. Hands belonging to said heads ladling the mixture into their mouths with large wooden ladles with little curved handles, between convulsions of mirth. Background—The châlet of the Waldnacht Alp, from which the realistic artist should cause hideous odours to ascend in the form of dense vapour. At the door of it, the unwashed and scantily clad figure of a Swiss herdsman, fearful to behold, owner of châlet, and like Caliban himself, chattering an ominous jargon, and grinning at the English feeders. Right of background—Attendant guide, cheerful and pleased that he has at last secured some sustenance for his 'leddies,' who have been walking from eight A.M. to four P.M., and will yet have to go on till three-quarters of an hour after midnight. These tableaux, with minor variations, were frequent in our tour.
After many adventures and many jokes, after being lost in a pass from eight o'clock to ten, when the sun had set, and having to wander about for those two hours on the edge of a precipice guiltless of path, being finally rescued by a heaven-sent and most unexpected peasant with a lamp—after these things and their results, which were blackened complexions, dried skins, and dilapidated costumes, we arrived at Zermatt, where we settled down for a time. The object of the settling down was in one word—ascents.
Nothing much, according to the men, had yet been done, though we in our secret hearts hugged the proud thought that Pilatus had not defeated us, and that the Twelfth-cake-like snows of Titlis had been pressed by our tread; that the Aeggischhorn, though it had witnessed (N.B. at the end of a long day) the heat and perspiration which dimmed our few remaining charms, and had heard our smothered groans, had had in the end to feel our light weight upon its summit, and to bear us as we gazed with awe at its mighty circle of peaks. But what do these avail? In the eye of man they were mere preparation for mightier things.
After some debate, mingled with faint remonstrance on our part, when Monte Rosa was mentioned, the Breithorn was decided upon; and the manly spirits, which had become depressed by a few days' lounge, arose. Such is the enigma Man! The day was fixed, an extra guide (one Franz Biener—known as Weisshorn Biener) engaged on the night before we went up to the Riffel. After a few hours' disturbed sleep we were awoke at two; and dragging our weary and daily emaciating bodies from the beds where they had not been too comfortable, we dressed by the flickering light of a candle; and as we dressed, my friend and I cast fearful looks out at the Matterhorn, which fiercely pierced the dark sky, and seemed to say to me in the words of the poet:
Beware the awful avalanche!
As I put the last finishing touches to my collar at the glass, my feminine pulses slightly quickened to the tune of—'This was the peasant's last good-night;' and though no voice far up the height replied 'Excelsior!' yet a voice came from outside which meant in downright English very much the same thing; and my reflections were quenched in the carousal down-stairs, which I hastened to join. An unfortunate and sleepy maid was ministering to the wants of my friends in the dimly lighted salon of the Riffel-haus. Outside, the guides were impatiently stamping about in the frosty night, and complaining of the length of our delay, insinuating that the sun would soon be up. The fact is the preparations of toilet on our part were complicated. The uninitiated may not know that the feminine clothing of the present time, elegant though some may think it, is not conducive to comfort in mountain climbing. A well-tied back tablier has a restrictive influence upon the free movement of the lower limbs, and only admits of a