Part of the “Brave Deeds: A Series of Cheap Gift Books”. The book went through many editions; last new edition 1911.
Preface [v-viii]
As the most striking lines of poetry are the most hackneyed, because they have grown to be the common inheritance of all the world, so many of the most noble deeds that earth can show have become the best known, and enjoyed their full need of fame. Therefore it may be feared that many of the events here detailed, or alluded to, may seem trite to those in search of novelty; but it is not for such that the collection has been made. It is rather intended as a treasury for young people, where they may find minuter particulars than their abridged histories usually afford of the soul-stirring deeds that give life and glory to the record of events; and where also other like actions, out of their ordinary course of reading, may be placed before them, in the trust that example may inspire the spirit of heroism and self-devotion. For surely [vi] it must be a wholesome contemplation to look on actions, the very essence of which is such entire absorption in others that self is not so much renounced as forgotten; the object of which is not to win promotion, wealth, or success, but simple duty, mercy, and loving-kindness. These are the actions wrought, “hoping for nothing again,” but which most surely have their reward. […] [vii] There is a cloud of doubt resting on a few of the tales, which it may be honest to mention, though they were far too beautiful not to tell. These are the details of the Gallic occupation of Rome, the Legend of St. Genevieve, the Letter of Gertrude von der Wart, the stories of the Keys of Calais, of the Dragon of Rhodes, and we fear we must add, both Nelson’s plan of the battle of the Nile, and likewise the exact form of the heroism of young Casabianca, of which no two accounts agree. But it was not possible to give up such stories as these, and the thread of truth there must be in them has developed into such a beautiful tissue, that even if unsubstantial when tested, it is surely delightful to contemplate. Some stories have been passed over as too devoid of foundation, in especial that of young Henri, Duke of Nemours, who, at ten years old, was said to have been hung up with his little brother of eight in one of Louis XI’s cages at Loches, with orders that two of the children’s teeth should daily be pulled out and brought to the king. The elder child was said to have insisted on giving the whole supply of teeth, so as to save his brother; but though they were certainly imprisoned after their father’s execu[viii]tion, they were released after Louis’s death in a condition which disproves this atrocity. The Indian mutiny might likewise have supplied glorious instances of Christian self-devotion, but want of materials has compelled us to stop short of recording those noble deeds by which delicate women and light-hearted young soldiers showed, that in the hour of need there was not wanting to them the highest and deepest “spirit of self-sacrifice.” At some risk of prolixity, enough of the surrounding events have in general been given to make the situation comprehensible, even without knowledge of the general history. This has been done in the hope that these extracts may serve as a mother’s storehouse for reading aloud to her boys, or that they may be found useful for short readings to the intelligent, though uneducated classes.
November 17th, 1864.
Introduction by Herbert Strange to later a edition, [London: Henry Frowde, Hodder & Stoughton, n.y. – Herbert Strange’s Library – abridged] pp. v-viii
[…] [viii] Her special appeal was to children, or at least to young people; but many of her works found a very large circle of adult readers. She wrote on many subjects, for her education had given her a wider field than most women writers of her generation; but whatever her subject, the tendency of each and all of her books was always religious and educational. It is characteristic of Charlotte Yonge that the proceeds of the scores of books that flowed from her pen during over fifty years of ceaseless literary activity were largely devoted to religious and educational objects. A Book of Golden Deeds, first published in 1864, has been one of the most deservedly popular of Charlotte Yonge’s works. It is full of noble enthusiasm for the great virtues, courage and self-sacrifice, that inspired the principal actors in these stirring narratives. Miss Yonge died in 1901, at her native village of Otterbourne. There, except for a few brief absences, she had spent the whole of her long life – truly a life of golden deeds, though not perhaps so stirring or dramatic as those of which she loved to tell us in these pages.
Excerpts from chapter 1, What is a Golden Deed? [1-10]
We all of us enjoy a story of battle and adventure. Some of us delight in the anxiety and excitement with which we watch the various strange predicaments, hairbreadth escapes, and ingenious contrivances that are presented to us; and the mere imaginary dread of the dangers thus depicted, stirs our feelings and makes us feel eager and full of suspense. This taste, though it is the first step above the dullness that cannot be interested in anything beyond its own immediate world, nor care for what it neither sees, touches, tastes, nor puts to any present use, is still the lowest form that such a liking can take. It may be no better than a love of reading about murders in the newspaper, just for the sake of a sort of startled sensation; and it is a taste that becomes unwholesome when it absolutely delights in dwelling on horrors and cruelties for their own sake; or upon shifty, cunning, dishonest stratagems and devices. To learn to take interest in what is evil is always mischievous. [2] But there is an element in many of such scenes of woe and violence that may well account for our interest in them. It is that which makes the eye gleam and the heart throb, and bears us through the details of suffering, bloodshed, and even barbarity – feeling our spirits moved and elevated by contemplating the courage and endurance that they have called forth. Nay, such is the charm of brilliant valour, that we often are tempted to forget the injustice of the cause that may have called forth the actions that delight us. And this enthusiasm is often united with the utmost tenderness of heart, the very appreciation of suffering only quickening the sense of the heroism that risked the utmost, till the young and ardent learn absolutely to look upon danger as an occasion for evincing the highest qualities. […] The true cause of such enjoyment is perhaps an inherent consciousness that there is nothing so noble as forgetfulness of self. Therefore it is that we are struck by hearing of the exposure of life and limb to the utmost peril, in oblivion, or recklessness of personal safety, in comparison with a higher object. That object is sometimes unworthy. In the lowest form of courage it is only avoidance of disgrace; but even fear of shame is better than mere love of bodily ease, and from that lowest motive the scale rises to the most noble and precious actions of which human nature is capable – the truly golden and priceless deeds that are the jewels of history, the salt of life. And it is a chain of Golden Deeds that we seek [3] to lay before our readers; but, ere entering upon them, perhaps we had better clearly understand what it is that to our mind constitutes a Golden Deed. It is not mere hardihood. There was plenty of hardihood in Pizarro when he led his men through terrible hardships to attack the empire of Peru, but he was actuated by mere greediness for gain, and all the perils he so resolutely endured could not make his courage admirable. It was nothing but insensibility to danger, when set against the wealth and power that he coveted, and to which he sacrificed thousands of helpless Peruvians. Daring for the sake of plunder has been found in every robber, every pirate, and too often in all the lower grade of warriors, from the savage plunderer of a besieged town up to the reckless monarch making war to feed his own ambition. There is a courage that breaks out in bravado, the exuberance of high spirits, delighting in defying peril for its own sake, not indeed producing deeds which deserve to be called golden, but which, from their heedless grace, their desperation, and absence of all base motives–except perhaps vanity–have an undeniable charm about them, even when we doubt the right of exposing a life in mere gaiety of heart. Such was the gallantry of the Spanish knight who, while Fernando and Isabel lay before the Moorish city of Granada, galloped out of the camp, in full view of besiegers and besieged, and fastened to the gate of the city with his dagger a copy of the Ave Maria. It was a wildly brave action, and yet not without service in showing the dauntless spirit of the Christian army. But the same can hardly be said of the daring shown by the Emperor Maximilian when he displayed himself to the citizens of Ulm upon the topmost pinnacle of their cathedral spire; or of Alonso de Ojeda, who figured in like manner [4] upon the tower of the Spanish cathedral. The same daring afterwards carried him in the track of Columbus, and there he stained his name with the usual blots of rapacity and cruelty. These deeds, if not tinsel, were little better than gold leaf. A Golden Deed must be something more than mere display of fearlessness. Grave and resolute fulfilment of duty is required to give it the true weight. Such duty kept the sentinel at his post at the gate of Pompeii, even when the stifling dust of ashes came thicker and thicker from the volcano, and the liquid mud streamed down, and the people fled and struggled on, and still the sentry stood at his post, unflinching, till death had stiffened his limbs; and his bones, in their helmet and breastplate, with the hand still raised to keep the suffocating dust from mouth and nose, have remained even till our own times to show how a Roman soldier did his duty. […] Such obedience at all costs and all risks is, however, the very essence of a soldier’s life. An army could not exist without it, a ship could not sail without it, and millions upon millions of those whose “bones are dust and good swords are rust” have [5] shown such resolution. It is the solid material, but it has hardly the exceptional brightness, of a Golden Deed. And yet perhaps it is one of the most remarkable characteristics of a Golden Deed that the doer of it is certain to feel it merely a duty; “I have done that which it was my duty to do” is the natural answer of those capable of such actions. They have been constrained to them by duty, or by pity; have never even deemed it possible to act otherwise, and did not once think of themselves in the matter at all. For the true metal of a Golden Deed is self-devotion. Selfishness is the dross and alloy that gives the unsound ring to many an act that has been called glorious. And, on the other hand, it is not only the valour, which meets a thousand enemies upon the battlefield, or scales the walls in a forlorn hope, that is of true gold. It may be, but often it is a mere greed of fame, fear of shame, or lust of plunder. No, it is the spirit that gives itself for others – the temper that for the sake of religion, of country, of duty, of kindred, nay, of pity even to a stranger, will dare all things, risk all things, endure all things, meet death in one moment, or wear life away in slow, persevering tendance and suffering. Such a spirit was shown by Leæna, the Athenian woman at whose house the overthrow of the tyranny of the Pisistratids was concerted, and who, when seized and put to the torture that she might disclose the secrets of the conspirators, fearing that the weakness of her frame might overpower her resolution, actually bit off her tongue, that she might be unable to betray the trust placed in her. The Athenians commemorated her truly golden silence by raising in her honour the statue of a lioness without a tongue, in allusion to her name, which signifies a lioness. [6] […] Another woman, in 1450, when Sir Gilles of Brittany was savagely imprisoned and starved in much the same manner by his brother, Duke François, sustained him for several days by bringing wheat in her veil, and dropping it through the grated window, and when poison had been used to hasten his death, she brought a priest to the grating to enable him to make his peace with Heaven. Tender pity made these women venture all things; and surely their doings were full of the gold of love. So again two Swiss lads, whose father was dangerously ill, found that they could by no means procure the needful medicine, except at a price far beyond their means, and heard that an English traveller had offered a large price for a pair of eaglets. The only eyrie was on a crag supposed to be so inaccessible, that no one ventured to attempt it, till these boys, in their intense anxiety for their father, dared the fearful danger, scaled the precipice, cap [7]tured the birds, and safely conveyed them to the traveller. Truly this was a deed of gold. Such was the action of the Russian servant whose master’s carriage was pursued by wolves, and who sprang out among the beasts, sacrificing his own life willingly to slake their fury for a few minutes in order that the horses might be untouched, and convey his master to a place of safety. But his act of self-devotion has been so beautifully expanded in the story of “Eric’s Grave”, in “Tales of Christian Heroism”, that we can only hint at it, as at that of the “Helmsman of Lake Erie”, who, with the steamer on fire around him, held fast by the wheel in the very jaws of the flame, so as to guide the vessel into harbour, and save the many lives within her, at the cost of his own fearful agony, while slowly scorched by the flames. Memorable, too, was the compassion that kept Dr. Thompson upon the battlefield of the Alma, all alone throughout the night, striving to alleviate the sufferings and attend to the wants, not of our own wounded, but of the enemy, some of whom, if they were not sorely belied, had been known to requite a friendly act of assistance with a pistol shot. Thus to remain in the darkness, on a battlefield in an enemy’s country, among the enemy themselves, all for pity and mercy’s sake, was one of the noblest acts that history can show. Yet, it was paralleled in the time of the Indian Mutiny, when every English man and woman was flying from the rage of the Sepoys at Benares, and Dr. Hay alone remained because he would not desert the patients in the hospital, whose life depended on his care–many of them of those very native corps who were advancing to massacre him. This was the Roman sentry’s firmness, more voluntary and more glorious. Nor may we pass by her to whom our title page points as our living type of Golden Deeds – to her who [8] first showed how woman’s ministrations of mercy may be carried on, not only within the city, but on the borders of the camp itself – “the lady with the lamp”, whose health and strength were freely devoted to the holy work of softening the after sufferings that render war so hideous; whose very step and shadow carried gladness and healing to the sick soldier, and who has opened a path of like shining light to many another woman who only needed to be shown the way. Fitly, indeed, may the figure of Florence Nightingale be shadowed forth at the opening of our roll of Golden Deeds. Thanks be to God, there is enough of His own spirit of love abroad in the earth to make Golden Deeds of no such rare occurrence, but that they are of “all time”. […] Of martyrdoms we have scarcely spoken. They were truly deeds of the purest gold; but they are too numerous to be dwelt on here: and even as soldiers deem it each man’s simple duty to face death unhesitatingly, so the “glorious army of martyrs” had, for the most part, joined the Church with the expectation that they should have to confess the faith, and confront the extremity of death and torture for it. What have been here brought together are chiefly cases of self-devotion that stand out remarkably, either from their hopelessness, their courage, or their patience, varying with the character of their age; but with that one essential distinction in all, that the dross of self was cast away. Among these we cannot forbear mentioning the poor American soldier, who, grievously wounded, [9] had just been laid in the middle bed, by far the most comfortable of the three tiers of berths in the ship’s cabin in which the wounded were to be conveyed to New York. Still thrilling with the suffering of being carried from the field, and lifted to his place, he saw a comrade in even worse plight brought in, and thinking of the pain it must cost his fellow soldier to be raised to the bed above him, he surprised his kind lady nurses (daily scatterers of Golden Deeds) by saying, “Put me up there, I reckon I’ll bear hoisting better than he will”. And, even as we write, we hear of an American Railway collision that befell a train on the way to Elmira with prisoners. The engineer, whose name was William Ingram, might have leapt off and saved himself before the shock; but he remained in order to reverse the engine, though with certain death staring him in the face. […] While men and women still exist who will thus suffer and thus die, losing themselves in the thought of others, surely the many forms of woe and misery with which this earth is spread do but give occasions of working out some of the highest and best qualities of which mankind are capable. And oh, young readers, if your hearts burn within you as you read of these various forms of the truest and deepest glory, and you long for time and place to act in the like devoted way, bethink yourselves that the alloy of such actions is to be constantly worked [10] away in daily life; and that if ever it be your lot to do a Golden Deed, it will probably be in unconsciousness that you are doing anything extraordinary, and that the whole impulse will consist in the having absolutely forgotten self.
Contents
What is a Golden Deed? 1The Stories of Alcestis and Antigone 11
The Cup of Water 17
How one Man has saved a Host 23
The Pass of Thermopylae 34
The Rock of the Capitol 45
The Two Friends of Syracuse 58
The Devotion of the Decii 63
Regulus 71
The brave Brethren of Judah 78
The Chief of the Arverni 88
Withstanding the Monarch in his Wrath 98
The Last Fight in the Colisæum 105
The Shepherd Girl of Nanterre 115
Leo the Slave 121
The Battle of the Blackwater 135
Guzman el Bueno 142
Faithful till Death 147
What is better than Slaying a Dragon 154
The Keys of Calais 161
The Battle of Sempach 174
The Constant Prince 180
The Carnival of Perth 187
The Crown of St. Stephen 195
George the Triller 205
Sir Thomas More’s Daughter 217
Under Ivan the Terrible 226
Fort St. Elmo 241
The Voluntary Convict 253
The Housewives of Löwenburg 260
Fathers and Sons 268
The Soldiers in the Snow 280
Gunpowder Perils 285
Heroes of the Plague 296
The Second of September 309
The Vendéens 318
The Faithful Slaves of Haiti 339
The Petitioners for Pardon 347
The Children of Blentarn Ghyll 368
Agostina of Zaragoza 375
Casal Novo 383
The Mad Dog 389
The Monthyon Prizes 394
The Loss of the Drake and the Magpie 413
The Fever at Osmotherly 423
The Chieftainess and the Volcano 431
Discipline 435
The Rescuers 441
The Rescue Party 447
The Children in the Wood of the Far South 456