The Rebel Ship Sumter

 

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Civil War Harper's Weekly, June 22, 1861

This Civil War newspaper features a cover illustration and story on William Russell, a war correspondent for the London Times. The paper also Covers Senator Douglas's Funeral, and has various scenes from the war.

(Scroll Down to See the entire page, Newspaper Thumbnails will take you to the page of interest)

 

William Russell

William Russell

Affairs in England

Affairs in England

Wheeling Convention

The Wheeling Convention

Senator Douglas

Senator Douglas Funeral

Cairo, Illinois

Cairo, Illinois

vigilantes

Vigilantes

Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis Indiana

Fort Monroe

Fort Monroe

Pensacola

Pensacola, Florida

Acquia Creek

Battle of Acquia Creek

Scenes from Alexandria and Washington

The Sumter

Rebel Ship Sumter

Cartoons

Jefferson Davis Cartoons

 

 

 

 

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

[JUNE 22, 1861.

398

THE "SUMTER," A REBEL SHIP OF WAR.-[SKETCHED BY OUR SPECIAL ARTIST.]

THE " SUMTER."

ABOVE we give a picture of the Sumter, a vessel of war belonging to the Southern Confederacy. She is the old Marques de la Habana which was captured by our fleet off Vera Cruz in April, 1860, and taken as a prize to New Orleans. We published a picture of her in the Weekly at that time. The secessionists have fitted her out, and are using her as a vessel of war. She will probably be caught ere long by one of our cruisers. Our picture is from a sketch by Mr. Davis, who has just returned from the South.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

A NOVEL.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
Splendidly Illustrated by John McLenan.
CHAPTER XLVIII.

PUTTING Miss Havisham's note in my pocket, that it might serve as my credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis House, in case her waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at seeing me, I went down again by the coach next day. But I alighted at the Halfway House, and breakfasted there, and walked the rest of the distance ; for I sought to get into the town quietly, by the unfrequented ways, and to leave it in the same manner.

The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet echoing courts behind the High Street. The nooks of ruin where the old monks had once had their refectories and gardens, and where the strong walls were now pressed into the service of humble sheds and stables, were almost as silent as the old monks in their graves. The cathedral chimes had at once a sadder and a more remote sound to me, as I hurried on avoiding observation, than they had ever had before ; so, the swell of the old organ was borne to my ears like funeral music ; and the rooks, as they hovered about the gray tower and swung in the bare high trees of the priory-garden, seemed to call to me that the place was changed, and that Estella was gone out of it forever.

An elderly woman whom I had seen before as one of the servants who lived in the supplementary house across the back courtyard opened the gate. The lighted candle stood in the dark passage within, as of old, and I took it up and ascended the staircase alone. Miss Havisham was not in her own room, but was in the larger room across the landing. Looking in at the door, after knocking in vain, I saw her sitting on the hearth in a ragged chair, close before, and lost in the contemplation of, the ashy fire.

Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood, touching the old chimney-piece, where she could see me when she raised her eyes. There was an air of utter loneliness upon her that would have moved me to pity though she had willfully done me a deeper injury than I could charge her with. As I stood compassionating her, and thinking how in the progress of time I too had come to be a part of the wrecked fortunes of that house, her eyes rested on me. She stared, and said in a low voice, " Is it real!"

" It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I have lost no time." Thank you. Thank you."

As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and sat down I remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were afraid of me.

" I want," she said, " to pursue that subject you mentioned to me when you were last here, and to show you that I am not all stone. But

perhaps you can never believe, now, that there is any thing human in my heart ?"

When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out her tremulous right hand, as though she were going to touch me ; but she recalled it again before I understood the action, or knew how to receive it.

" You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell me how to do something useful and good. Something that you would like done, is it not ?"

" Something that I would like done, very, very much."   '

" What is it ?"

I began explaining to her that secret history of the partnership. I had not got far into it when I judged from her look that she was thinking in a discursive way of me rather than of what I said. It seemed to be so, for when I stopped speaking many moments passed before she showed that she was conscious of the fact.

"Do you break off," she asked then, with her former air of being afraid of me, " because you hate me too much to bear to speak to me ?"

" No, no," I answered, " how can you think so, Miss Havisham ! I stopped because I thought you were not following what I said."

"Perhaps I was not," she answered, putting a hand to her head. " Begin again, and let me look at something else. Stay ! Now tell me."

She set her hands upon her stick in the resolute way that sometimes was habitual to her, and looked at the fire with a strong expression of forcing herself to attend. I went on with my explanation, and told her how I had hoped to complete the transaction out of my means, but how in this I was disappointed. That part of the subject (I reminded her) involved matters which could form no part of my explanation, for they were the weighty secrets of another.

"So !" said she, assenting with her head, but not looking at me. "And how much money is wanting to complete the purchase?"

I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large sum. " Nine hundred pounds." "If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep my secret as you have kept your own ?"

Quite as faithfully."

" And your mind will be more at rest ?" "Much more at rest."

" Are you very unhappy now ?"

She asked this question, still without looking at me, but in an unwonted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the moment for my voice failed me. She put her left arm across the crutched head of her stick, and softly laid her forehead on it.

"I am far from happy, Miss Havisham ; but I have ether causes of disquiet than any you know of. They are the secrets I have mentioned."

After a little while she raised her head and looked at the fire again.

" It is noble in you to tell me that you have other causes of unhappiness. Is it true?"

" Too true."

"Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend ? Regarding that as done, is there nothing I can do for you yourself?"

" Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even more for the tone of the question. But there is nothing."

She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the blighted room for the means of writing. There were none there, and she took from her pocket a yellow set of ivory tablets, mounted in tarnished gold, and wrote upon them with a pencil in a case of tarnished gold that hung from her neck.

" You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers ?"

" Quite. I dined with him yesterday."

"This is an authority to him to pay you that money to lay out at your irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep no money here, but if you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the matter, I will send it to you."

Thank you, Miss Havisham ; I have not the least objection to receiving it from him." She read me what she had written, and it was direct and clear, and evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profiting by the receipt of the money. I took the tablets from her hand, and it trembled again, and it trembled more as she took off the chain to which the pencil was attached and put it in mine. All this she did without looking at me.

" My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under my name, ' I forgive her,' though ever so long after my broken heart is dust—pray do it !"

" Oh, Miss Havisham," said I, "I can do it now. There have been sore mistakes, and my life has been a blind and thankless one, and I want forgiveness and direction far too much to be bitter with you."

She turned her face to me for the first time since she had averted it, and, to my amazement, I may even add to my terror, dropped on her knees at my feet, with her folded hands raised to me in the manner in which, when her poor heart was young and fresh and whole, they must often have been raised to Heaven from her mother's side.

To see her with her white hair and her worn face kneeling at my feet, gave me a shock through all my frame. I entreated her to rise, and got my arms about her to help her up ; but she only pressed that hand of mine which was nearest to her grasp, and hung her head over it and wept. I had never seen her shed a tear before, and, in the hope that the relief might do her good, I bent over her without speaking. She was not kneeling now, but was down upon the ground.

"Oh !" she cried, despairingly. "What have I done ! What have I done !"

"If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to injure me, let me answer. Very little. I should have loved her under any circumstances. —Is she married ?"

" Yes."

It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the desolate house had told me so.

"What have I done ! What have I done !" She wrung her hands, and crushed her white hair, and returned to this cry, over and over again. " What have I done ! What have I done !"

I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she had done a grievous thing in taking an impressionable child to mould into the form that her wild resentment, spurned affection, and wounded pride found vengeance in, I knew full well. But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more than that; that, in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences ; that her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker, I knew equally well. And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world ?

"Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a looking-glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know what I had done. What have I done ! what have I done !" And so again, twenty, fifty times over, What had she done !

" Miss Havisham," I said, when her cry died

away, " you may dismiss me from your mind and conscience. But Estella is a different case. and if you can ever undo any scrap of what you have done amiss in keeping a part of her right nature away from her, it will be better to do that than to bemoan the past through a hundred years."

" Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip—my dear!" There was an earnest womanly compassion for me in her new affection. " My dear ! Believe this : when she first came to me, I meant to save her from misery like my own. At first I meant no more."

Well, well !" said I. " I hope so."

"But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my teachings, and with this figure of myself always before her a warning to back and point my lessons, I stole her heart away and put ice in its place."

"Better," I could not help saying, ' to have left her a natural heart, even to be bruised or broken."

With that Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for a while and then burst out again, What had she done !

" If you knew all my story," she pleaded, "you would have some compassion for me and a better understanding of me."

" Miss Havisham," I answered, as delicately as I could, " I believe I may say that I do know your story, and have known it ever since I first left this neighborhood. It has inspired me with great commiseration, and I hope I understand it and its influences. Does what has passed between us give me any excuse for asking you a question relative to Estella ? Not as she is, but as she was when she first came here ?"

She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair, and her head leaning on them. She looked full at me when I said this, and replied, " Go on."

"Whose child was Estella?"

She shook her head.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head again.

" But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here ?"

" Brought her here."

"Will you tell me how that came about?" She answered in a low whisper and with great caution : "I I had been shut up in these rooms a long time (I don't know how long ; you know what time the clocks keep here), when I told him that I wanted a little girl to rear and save from my fate. I had first seen him when I sent for him to lay this place waste for me ; having read of him in the newspapers, before I and the world parted. He told me that he would look about him for such an orphan child. One night he brought her here asleep, and I called her Estella."

" Might I ask her age then ?"

" About three. She herself knows nothing, but that she was left an orphan and I adopted her."

So convinced I was of that woman's being her mother, that I wanted no evidence to establish the fact in my own mind. But to any mind, I thought, the connection here was clear and straight.

What more could I hope to do by prolonging the interview ? I had succeeded on behalf of Herbert, Miss Havisham had told me all she knew of Estella, I had said and done what I could to ease her mind. No matter with what other words we parted ; we parted.

Twilight was closing in when I went down stairs into the natural air. I called to the woman who had opened the gate when I entered that I would not trouble her just yet, but would walk round the place before leaving. For I had a presentiment that I should never be there

" I SAW HER RUNNING AT ME, SHRIEKING, WITH A WHIRL OF FIRE BLAZING ALL ABOUT HER," ETC.

The Rebel "Sumter"
Great Expectations

 

 

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