Pinckney died of a cold, unostentatiously, and was buried like a
gentleman; though the Grand Duke ac tually wanted to put the court in
mourning for three days, and consulted with his chamberlain whether it
would do. Mrs. Pinckney had preceded him by some six years; but she was
an appendage, and her husband's deference had always seemed in
Carlsruhe a trifle strained. It was only in these last six years that
any one had gossiped of remorse, in answer to the sphinx-like question
of his marble brow. Such questions vex the curious. Furrows trouble
nobody--money matters are enough f them; but white smoothness in old
age is a bait, and tickles curiosity. Some said at home he was a devil
and beat his wife.
But Pinckney never beat his wife. Late in the last twilight of her life
she had called him to her, and excluded even the four daughters, with
their stout and splendid barons; then, alone with him, she looked to
him and smiled. And suddenly his gentleman's heart took a jump, and the
tears fell on her still soft hands. I suppose some old road was opened
again in the gray matter of his brain. Mrs. Pinckney smiled the more
strongly and said--not quite so terribly as Mrs. Amos Barton: "Have I
made you happy, dearest Charles?" And Charles, the perfect-mannered,
said she had; but said it stammering. "Then," said she, "I die very
happily, dear." And she did; and Pinckney continued to live at
Carlsruhe.
The only activities of Pinckney's mind were critical. He was a
wonderful orator, but he rarely spoke. People said he could have been a
great writer, but he never wrote, at least nothing original. He was the
art and continental-drama critic of several English and American
reviews; in music, he was a Wagnerian, which debarred him from writing
of it except in German; but the little Court Theatre at Carlsruhe has
Wagner's portrait over the drop-curtain, and the consul's box was never
empty when the mighty heathen legends were declaimed or the holy music
of the Grail was sung. In fiction of the earnest sort, and poetry,
Pinckney's critical pen showed a marvelous magic, striking the scant
springs of the author's inspiration through the most rocky ground of
incident or style. He had a curious sympathy with youthful tenderness.
But, after all, as every young compatriot who went to Baden said, what
the deuce and all did he live in Baden for? Miles Breeze had said it in
'Fifty, when he made the grand tour with his young wife, and dined with
him in Baden-Baden; that is, when Breeze dined with him, for his young
wife was indisposed and could not go. Miles Breeze, junior, had said
it, as late as 'Seventy-six, when he went abroad, ostensibly for
instruction, after leaving college. He had letters to Mr. Pinckney, who
was very kind to the young Baltimorean, and greatly troubled the Grand
Duke his Serenity by presenting him as a relative of the Bonapartes.
Many another American had said it, and even some leading politicians:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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