The Cardinal's Snuff-box (1898) by Henry Harland
The now forgotten Henry Harland (1861-1905) was born in Connecticut and educated in New York. In the 1880s Harland started his literary career by under pseudonym writing sensation novels. In 1889 he took the wise step of moving to London, where he came under the influence of the Aesthetic movement of the 1890s. He now began writing under his own name and became the founding editor of the famous magazine of the Aesthetic Movement, The Yellow Book. Harland worked together with such luminaries as Edmund Gosse, Arthur Symons, Aubrey Beardsley, and Frederic Rolfe. But Harland's own writing, mainly short stories, was still not very successful at that time. In retrospect, The Yellow Book was typical for its time: the contributions show all the weaknesses of the typical Nineties style. Harland was a dedicated editor and he behaved entirely like a decadent writer in this period, until the magazine closed down in 1897.
[Illustration from the novel]
Here is the basic plot. A young English writer, Peter Marchdale, lives in Italy, where he approaches the Duchessa Beatrice (an Alma Tadema-esque, ethereal being, who is also English and a widow), with whom he has fallen in love. He has seen her before in France and England, without ever having spoken to her, and he has made her into the idealized heroine of one of his novels. He now has rented a cottage for the summer next to the castle where she resides and makes her acquaintance from their neighboring gardens. The novel that Peter has written under an assumed name plays an important role in their rapprochement - the Duchessa also has read the book and they put on a kind of masquerade game with it - is he the writer and is he really in love with the heroine? As a typically inhibited Englishman, he hesitates to be open about this and so there is a temporary estrangement between them. Beatrice's uncle, Cardinal Udeschini from Rome, is also staying at the castle and he uses a trick with his snuff-box to prepare the scene where they finally come together. A happy ending is inevitable - but we already knew that from the luminous tone on which this novel started.
[Illustration from the novel]
“Would you like to have a good laugh, Signorino?” Marietta enquired.“Yes,” he answered, apathetic.
“Then do me the favour to come,” she said.
She led him out of his garden, to the gate of a neighbouring meadow. A beautiful black-horned white cow stood there, her head over the bars, looking up and down the road, and now and then uttering a low distressful “moo.”
“See her,” said Marietta.
“I see her. Well—?” said Peter.
“This morning they took her calf from her—to wean it,” said Marietta.
“Did they, the cruel things? Well—?” said he.
“And ever since, she has stood there by the gate, looking down the road, waiting, calling.”
“The poor dear. Well—?” said he.
“But do you not see, Signorino? Look at her eyes. She is weeping—weeping like a Christian.”
Peter looked-and, sure enough, from the poor cow's eyes tears were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the grass: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. “Why have they done this thing to me?” they seemed dumbly to cry.
“Have you ever seen a cow weep before? Is it comical, at least?” demanded Marietta, exultant.
“Comical—?” Peter gasped. “Comical—!” he groaned....
But then he spoke to the cow.
“Poor dear—poor dear,” he repeated. He patted her soft warm neck, and scratched her between the horns and along the dewlap.
“Poor dear—poor dear.”
The cow lifted up her head, and rested her great chin on Peter's shoulder, breathing upon his face.
“Yes, you know that we are companions in misery, don't you?” he said. “They have taken my calf from me too—though my calf, indeed, was only a calf in an extremely metaphorical sense—and it never was exactly mine, anyhow— [...]
“All the same,” insisted Marietta, “it is very comical to see a cow weep.”
“At any rate,” retorted Peter, “it is not in the least comical to hear a hyaena laugh.”
[Henry Harland]
of an aesthetic, symbolist era, which unfortunately has been lost now. The presence of the Cardinal adds a Catholic touch, but Harland, like many of his contemporaries, was only interested in the aesthetic aspect of the church. When they are talking about a marriage in church and Peter Marchdale sighs that you don't just become a Catholic, that it requires a great deal of spiritual preparation, the Duchessa exclaims that it is on the contrary the simplest thing in the world. “Easy!” she exclaimed. “Why, you've only to stand still and let yourself be sprinkled. It's the priest who does the work."
The novel can be downloaded here from Gutenberg.