1853

1853:
Charlotte Bronte: "Villette" See: http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Bronte-Villette.html
An excerpt:
'But ours, Lucy, is a beautiful life, or it will be; and you shall share it.'
'I shall share no man's or woman's life in this world, as you understand sharing. I think I have one friend of my own, but am not sure; and till I am sure I live solitary.'
'But solitude is sadness.'
'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.'
'Lucy, I wonder if anybody will ever comprehend you altogether.'
There is in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may. Paulina had forbidden letters, yet Dr. Bretton wrote; she had resolved against correspondence, yet she answered were it only to chide. She showed me these letters; with something of the spoiled child's willfulness and of the heiress's imperiousness, she made me read them. As I read Graham's, I scarce wondered at her exaction, and understood her pride: they were fine letters -- manly and fond -- modest and gallant. Hers must have appeared to him beautiful. They had not been written to show her talents; still less, I think to express her love. On the contrary, it appeared that she had proposed to herself the task of hiding that feeling, and bridling her lover's ardour. But how could such letters serve such a purpose? Graham was become dear as her life; he drew her like a powerful magnet. For her there was influence unspeakable in all he uttered, wrote, thought, or looked. With this unconfused confession, her letters glowed; it kindled them, from greeting to adieu.
"In 1826 Mr. Brontë brought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Ann, playing with the soldiers, conceived of and began to write in great detail about an imaginary world which they called Angria."

William Wells Brown: "Clotel; or The President's Daughter" See: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2046
William was born in slavery but grew to become a conductor for the Underground Railroad and as a steam boatman on Lake Erie, a position he used to ferry escaped slaves to freedom in Canada.
An excerpt:
"Why stands she near the auction stand, That girl so young and fair? What brings her to this dismal place, Why stands she weeping there?"
"WITH the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slave-owners and their mothers’ slaves. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his mulatto child upon his knee, whilst its mother stands a slave behind his chair. The late Henry Clay, some years since, predicted that the abolition of Negro slavery would be brought about by the amalgamation of the races. John Randolph, a distinguished slaveholder of Virginia, and a prominent statesman, said in a speech in the legislature of his native state that "the blood of the first American statesmen coursed through the veins of the slave of the South." In all the cities and towns of the slave states, the real Negro, or clear black, does not amount to more than one in every four of the slave population. This fact is, of itself, the best evidence of the degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America. In all the slave states, the law says:--"Slaves shall be deemed, sold [held], taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever. A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him; dispose of his person, his industry, and his labour. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master. The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, or so as to maim and mutilate him, or expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death. The slave, to remain a slave, must be sensible that there is no appeal from his master." Where the slave is placed by law entirely under the control of the man who claims him, body and soul, as property, what else could be expected than the most depraved social condition? The marriage relation, the oldest and most sacred institution given to man by his Creator, is unknown and unrecognized in the slave laws of the United States. Would that we could say, that the moral and religious teaching in the slave states were better than the laws; but, alas! we cannot. A few years since, some slaveholders became a little uneasy in their minds about the rightfulness of permitting slaves to take to themselves husbands and wives, while they still had others living, and applied to their religious teachers for advice; and the following will show how this grave and important subject was treated:--
"Is a servant, whose husband or wife has been sold by his or her master into a distant country, to be permitted to marry again?"
"The query was referred to a committee, who made the following report; which, after discussion, was adopted:--

Charles Dickens: "Bleak House" See: http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/bleakhouse/
An Excerpt:
"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

"Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

"The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

"Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth."
Elizabeth Gaskell: "Ruth" and "Cranford" Gaskell -- "As a Unitarian dissenter living in the industrial town of Manchester, Gaskell wrote with compassion but at-times bold frankness about controversial issues of the day including the general poverty of the working classes, the hardships of men working in mines and factories, and women working in mills. After enjoying an idyllic middle class childhood in the country, she was shocked and saddened to see families living in slums eking out a miserable existence."
Excerpt from "Ruth" -- "It was curious to watch the young girls as they instantaneously availed themselves of Mrs. Mason's absence. One fat, particularly heavy-looking damsel laid her head on her folded arms and was asleep in a moment; refusing to be wakened for her share in the frugal supper, but springing up with a frightened look at the sound of Mrs. Mason's returning footstep, even while it was still far off on the echoing stairs. Two or three others huddled over the scanty fireplace, which, with every possible economy of space, and no attempt whatever at anything of grace or ornament, was inserted in the slight, flat-looking wall, that had been run up by the present owner of the property to portion off this division of the grand old drawing-room of the mansion. Some employed the time in eating their bread and cheese, with as measured and incessant a motion of the jaws (and almost as stupidly placid an expression of countenance), as you may see in cows ruminating in the first meadow you happen to pass."

Caroline Lee Hentz: "Helen and Arthur" Caroline was an American novelist and author and opposed to the abolitionist movement and her rebuttal to the popular anti-slavery book, Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." She was a major literary figure in her day, and helped advance women's fiction. While both Stowe and Hentz were raised in Massachusetts, Hentz finally moved to North Carolina with her three children and husband.
See: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/23106
An excerpt:
"Louis recognized his sister, standing on the airy arch of the bridge, and
rode directly to the garden gate. Clinton did the same, but instead of
darting through the gate, as Louis did, he only dismounted, lifted his
hat gracefully from his head, and bowed with lowly deference--then
throwing his arm over the saddle bow, he waited till the greeting was
over. Mittie was not the favorite sister of Louis, for she had repelled
him as she had all others by her cold and haughty self-concentration--but
though he did not _love_ her as he did Helen, she was his sister, she
appeared to him the personification of home, of womanhood, and his pride
was gratified by the full blown flower and splendor of her beauty. She
had gained much in height since he had last seen her; her hair, which was
then left waving in the wild freedom of childhood, was now gathered into
bands, and twisted behind, showing the classic contour of her head and
neck. Louis had never thought before whether Mittie was handsome or not.
She had not seemed so to him. He had never spoken of her as such to his
friend. Helen, sweet Helen, was the burden of his speech, the one lovely
sister of his heart. The idea of being proud of Mittie never occurred to
him, but now she flashed upon him like a new revelation, in the glow and
freshness and power of her just developed womanly charms. He was glad he
had found her in that picturesque spot, graceful attitude and partaking
largely and richly of the glorification of nature. He was glad that
Bryant Clinton, the greatest connoisseur in female beauty he had ever
seen, should meet her for the first time under circumstances of peculiar
personal advantage. He thought, too, there was more than her wonted
cordiality in her greeting, and that her cheek grew warm under his
hearty, brotherly kiss.

"Why, Mittie," cried he, "I hardly knew you, you have grown so handsome
and stately. I never saw any one so altered in my life--a perfect Juno.
I want to introduce my friend to you--a noble hearted, generous,
princely spirited fellow. A true Virginian, rather reckless with regard
to expenditure, perhaps, but extravagance is a kingly fault--I like it.
He is a passionate admirer of beauty, too, Mittie, and his manners are
perfectly irresistible. I shall be proud if he admires you, for I assure
you his admiration is a compliment of which any maiden may be proud."
Charles Kinglsey: "Hypatia" See: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/hypta10.txt
Kingsley's life was written by his widow in 1877: "Charles Kingsley, his Letters and Memories of his Life."
An Excerpt of "Hypatia":
In the four hundred and thirteenth year of the Christian Era, some
three hundred miles above Alexandria, the young monk Philammon was
sitting on the edge of a low range of inland cliffs, crested with
drifting sand. Behind him the desert sand-waste stretched,
lifeless, interminable, reflecting its lurid glare on the horizon of
the cloudless vault of blue. At his feet the sand dripped and
trickled, in yellow rivulets, from crack to crack and ledge to
ledge, or whirled past him in tiny jets of yellow smoke, before the
fitful summer airs. Here and there, upon the face of the cliffs
which walled in the opposite side of the narrow glen below, were
cavernous tombs, huge old quarries, with obelisks and half-cut
pillars, standing as the workmen had left them centuries before; the
sand was slipping down and piling up around them, their heads were
frosted with the arid snow; everywhere was silence, desolation-the
grave of a dead nation, in a dying land. And there he sat musing
above it all, full of life and youth and health and beauty--a young
Apollo of the desert. His only clothing was a ragged sheep-skin,
bound with a leathern girdle. His long black locks, unshorn from
childhood, waved and glistened in the sun; a rich dark down on cheek
and chin showed the spring of healthful manhood; his hard hands and
sinewy sunburnt limbs told of labour and endurance; his flashing
eyes and beetling brow, of daring, fancy, passion, thought, which
had no sphere of action in such a place. What did his glorious
young humanity alone among the tombs?

Herman Meville: "Bartleby, the Scrivener" See: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11231
An excerpt:
"At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons
as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy.
First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem
names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In
truth they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my
three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or
characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman of about my own age,
that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might say,
his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o'clock,
meridian--his dinner hour--it blazed like a grate full of Christmas
coals; and continued blazing--but, as it were, with a gradual wane--till
6 o'clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I saw no more of the
proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed
to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with
the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are many singular
coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the least among
which was the fact, that exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest beams
from his red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at that critical
moment, began the daily period when I considered his business capacities
as seriously disturbed for the remainder of the twenty-four hours. Not
that he was absolutely idle, or averse to business then; far from it.
The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic. There
was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity
about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand.
All his blots upon my documents, were dropped there after twelve
o'clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly
given to making blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further,
and was rather noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with
augmented blazonry, as if cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He
made an unpleasant racket with his chair; spilled his sand-box; in
mending his pens, impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them
on the floor in a sudden passion; stood up and leaned over his table,
boxing his papers about in a most indecorous manner, very sad to behold
in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most
valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o'clock, meridian,
was the quickest, steadiest creature too, accomplishing a great deal of
work in a style not easy to be matched--for these reasons, I was willing
to overlook his eccentricities, though indeed, occasionally, I
remonstrated with him. I did this very gently, however, because, though
the civilest, nay, the blandest and most reverential of men in the
morning, yet in the afternoon he was disposed, upon provocation, to be
slightly rash with his tongue, in fact, insolent. Now, valuing his
morning services as I did, and resolved not to lose them; yet, at the
same time made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways after twelve o'clock;
and being a man of peace, unwilling by my admonitions to call forth
unseemly retorts from him; I took upon me, one Saturday noon (he was
always worse on Saturdays), to hint to him, very kindly, that perhaps
now that he was growing old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in
short, he need not come to my chambers after twelve o'clock, but, dinner
over, had best go home to his lodgings and rest himself till teatime.
But no; he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance
became intolerably fervid, as he oratorically assured me--gesticulating
with a long ruler at the other end of the room..."

Susanna Moodie: "Life in the Clearings" See: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/lcgbs10h.htm
An excerpt:
The poet looked daggers at us, and seizing his carpet-bag, sprang to the deck, and from the deck to the shore, which he fortunately reached in safety, without casting a parting glance at his tormentors.
The Mountain Air.
"Rave not to me of your sparkling wine;
Bid not for me the goblet shine;
My soul is athirst for a draught more rare,
A gush of the pure, fresh mountain air!
"It wafts on its currents the rich perfume
Of the purple heath, and the honied broom;
The golden furze, and the hawthorn fair,
Shed all their sweets to the mountain air.
"It plays round the bank and the mossy stone,
Where the violet droops like a nun alone;
Shrouding her eyes from the noon-tide glare,
But breathing her soul to the mountain-air.
"It gives to my spirits a tone of mirth--
I bound with joy o'er the new-dress'd earth,
When spring has scatter'd her blossoms there,
And laden with balm the mountain air.
"From nature's fountain my nectar flows,
'Tis the essence of each sweet bud that blows;
Then come, and with me the banquet share,
Let us breathe together the mountain air!"

Charles Reade: "Peg Woffington" See: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3670
An excerpt:
TRIPLET'S FACTS. TRIPLET'S FICTION.

A farthing dip is on the table. A solitary candle cast its pale
gleams around.

It wants snuffing. Its elongated wick betrayed an owner
steeped in oblivion.

He jumped up, and snuffed it He rose languidly, and trimmed it with
his fingers. Burned his with an instrument that he had by his
fingers, and swore a little. side for that purpose, and muttered a
silent ejaculation

Before, however, the mole Triplet could undermine literature and level it
with the dust, various interruptions and divisions broke in upon his
design, and _sic nos servavit_ Apollo. As he wrote the last sentence, a
loud rap came to his door. A servant in livery brought him a note from
Mr. Vane, dated Covent Garden. Triplet's eyes sparkled, he bustled,
wormed himself into a less rusty coat, and started off to the Theater
Royal, Covent Garden."
Reades's complete works: See: http://www.online-literature.com/charles-reade/

Robert Smith Surtees: "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour" See: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16957/16957-h/16957-h.htm
An Excerpt:
"It was just as Mr. Sponge predicted with regard to his admission to Nonesuch House. The first person who spied his note to Sir Harry Scattercash was Captain Seedeybuck, who, going into the drawing-room, the day after Mr. Sponge's visit, to look for the top of his cigar-case, saw it occupying the centre of the mantelpiece. Having mastered its contents, the Captain refolded and placed it where he found it, with the simple observation to himself of—'That cock won't fight.'
Captain Quod saw it next, then Captain Bouncey, who told Captain Cutitfat what was in it, who agreed with Bouncey that it wouldn't do to have Mr. Sponge there.
Indeed, it seemed agreed on all hands that their party rather wanted weeding than increasing.
Thus, in due time, everybody in the house knew the contents of the note save Sir Harry, though none of them thought it worth while telling him of it. On the third morning, however, as the party were assembling for breakfast, he came into the room reading it.
'This (hiccup) note ought to have been delivered before,' observed he, holding it up.
'Indeed, my dear,' replied Lady Scattercash, who was sitting gloriously fine and very beautiful at the head of the table, 'I don't know anything about it.'
'Who is it from?' asked brother Bob Spangles.
'Mr. (hiccup) Sponge,' replied Sir Harry.
'What a name!' exclaimed Captain Seedeybuck.
'Who is he?' asked Captain Quod.
'Don't know,' replied Sir Harry; 'he writes to (hiccup) about the hounds.' 'Oh, it'll be that brown-booted buffer,' observed Captain Bouncey, 'that we left at old Peastraw's.'
'No doubt,' assented Captain Cutitfat, adding, 'what business has he with the hounds?'
'He wants to know when we are going to (hiccup) again,' observed Sir Harry.
'Does he?' replied Captain Seedeybuck. 'That, I suppose, will depend upon Watchorn.'
The party now got settled to breakfast, and as soon as the first burst of appetite was appeased, the conversation again turned upon our friend Mr. Sponge.
'Who is this Mr. Sponge?' asked Captain Bouncey, the billiard-marker, with the air of a thorough exclusive.

George J. Whyte-Melville: "Dibgy Grand" George was a Scottish novelist of the sporting-field and a poet. "Digby Grand" was his first novel. When the Crimean War broke he volunteered as a major of the Turkish irregular cavalry. After this war he wrote21 more novels and died while hunting in 1878.
This was the only work I could find of his online: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11085/11085-8.txt
An excerpt of M. or N. "_Similia similibus curantur_"
"A wild wet night in the Channel, the white waves leaping, lashing, and
tumbling together in that confusion of troubled waters, which nautical
men call a "cross-sea." A dreary, dismal night on Calais sands: faint
moonshine struggling through a low driving scud, the harbour-lights
quenched and blurred in mist. Such a night as bids the trim French
sentry hug himself in his watch-coat, calmly cursing the weather,
while he hums the chorus of a comic opera, driving his thoughts by
force of contrast to the lustrous glow of the wine-shop, the sparkling
eyes and gold ear-rings of Mademoiselle Thérèse, who presides over
Love and Bacchus therein. Such a night as gives the travellers in the
mail-packet some notion of those ups and downs in life which landsmen
may bless themselves to ignore, as hints to the Queen's Messenger,
seasoned though he be, that ten minutes more of that heaving,
pitching, tremulous motion would lay him alongside those poor sick
neophytes whom he pities and condemns; reminding him how even _he_ has
cause to be thankful when he reflects that, save for an occasional
Levanter, the Mediterranean is a mill-pond compared to La Manche. Such
a night as makes the hardy fisherman running for Havre or St. Valérie
growl his "Babord" and "Tribord" in harsher tones than usual to his
mate, because he cannot keep his thoughts off Marie and the little
ones ashore; his dark-eyed Marie, praying her heart out to the Virgin
on her knees, feeling, as the fierce wind howls and blusters round
their hut, that not on her wedding-morning, not on that summer eve
when he won her down by the sea, did she love her Pierre so dearly,
as now in this dark boisterous weather, that causes her very flesh to
creep while she listens to its roar. Nobody who could help it would
be abroad on Calais sands. "Pas même un Anglais!" mutters the sentry,
ordering his firelock with a ring, and wishing it was time for the
Relief. But an Englishman _is_ out nevertheless, wandering aimlessly
to and fro on the beach; turning his face to windward against the
driving rain; trying to think the wet on his cheek is all from
_without_; vainly hoping to stifle grief, remorse, anxiety, by
exposure and active bodily exercise."
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May - Beginning of an outbreak of Yellow Fever that kills 7,790 in New Orleans.
Inauguration of US president Franklin Pierce.
July -- Outlaw and bandit Joaquin Murietta is killed.
Year of the Potato Chip
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Corning Journal, May 27th, 1853:
I Will Always Pray:
‘Evening and morning and at noon will I pray.’ Psalms
“I will rise and pray while the dews of morning
Like gems are scattered o’er the tree and thorn,
Ere the sun comes up, and in His Glorious Power,
To waken the Bird and open the flower;
I will turn from the earth, to heaven inspiring
With faith unshaken, hope untiring.
And for strength to walk through the weary day
To God of Love will I kneel and pray.
“I will pray at noon, when the fervid glow
Of the sultry sun is upon my brow;
When the rocks have sought the shading trees,
When ______ (I couldn’t read this portion due to smudginess)
I will gaze o’er the beautiful each abroad,
And praise the doings of nature’s God;
Then closing my eyes on the glorious day,
To the God of Love will I kneel and pray.

“Thus will I pray for I find it sweet
To be often found at my Maker’s feet:
I will always pray -- on the heavenly road --
I ne’er shall faint while I lean on my God.
I shall gather strength for my upward flight,
My path will be as a shining light,
It shall heighten to perfect, eternal day:
Therefore to God, will I always pray.”
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