The Argosy — page 320: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Fohn Donne. 303 the little woman runs up-stairs to brush the Vicar’s best doublet, and otherwise prepare his clothes for the grand occasion. The hour for the Vicar of St. Dunstan’s to start for the palace arrives, an early mid-day hour in those times, when royalty dined at noon and supped at sunset. Mistress Donne bids her husband bring her back a full and particular account of every dish on the princely table, for she has a pretty taste in cookery, and very possibly she may be able to imitate some of them. If truth must be told, Donne’s heart beats a little faster than usual as he draws near the door of the palace. He certainly knew something of court life, but to sit down and eat with royalty is a new experience for him. ‘The first part of the ordeal is quickly over; he has passed through the long suite of gilded ante-rooms, and the Hines of richly liveried servants. Now, of course, he will be ushered into the grand banqueting-hall. But how is this? Instead of finding himself in a spacious apartment, glittering with gold and silver plate and filled with guests, he is left standing alone in a little shabbily-furnished room that seems to belong to the back-stairs part of the palace. Donne waits in silent wonder as to what this may mean, and various uncomfortable doubts and conjectures rise up within him. At length the door opens, and no less a person appears than the King himself. The clergyman casts an uneasy glance at his Majesty’s face, but there is no frown upon it; it is full of an indescribable, suppressed something that is very like a smile, that will try to make its own way out and gleam about the kps and sparkle in the eyes. At first the King chats about the most commonplace subjects. The Vicar represses the pangs of hunger, which are beginning to get rather importunate, as best he can, and answers respectfully, and as a subject should. At length James says, with what for a monarch is terribly like a knowing wink: ‘‘I doubt, Master Donne, that you are wanting your dinner, but I am going to offer you a dish that will serve for dinner, I think, and for supper both. What do you say to the deanery of St. Paul’s ?” This was the way in which Donne became Dean of St. Paul’s. An honourable position and considerable worldly prosperity now were his ; there was no need any longer to fear the biting blast of poverty for those he loved ; it seemed that he and his were standing in the midst of calmest brightness. But just then came the darkest cloud of sorrow that ever burst over his earthly life. There is a story which says that this trouble was foreshadowed to Donne in a strange, supernatural way ; it is given by many of his biographers, so we will tell it here. One night Donne was sitting up in the library of a friend in the country, with whom he was staying. He had been absent from home but a few days, and he had left his wife and children all well and happy when he took leave of them. He had become absorbed in some old folio, and he sat on till the whole of the rest of the house CONnRICMHOOKS. EO