Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
"He has been the ruin of his country."—Morning Post.
"England owes everything to her patriot minister."
Morning Herald.
We now return to London and Miss Arundel again.
One evening, which, as usual, "had dragged its slow length along," on her and her hostess's return home, they were met with a request to adjourn to Mr. Delawarr's library; and there Lady Alicia grew almost animated with the pleasure of seeing her brother.
"Nothing at all has happened since you left us," said his sister.
"Nothing!" returned Edward Lorraine. "You mean every thing. Why, at this very moment I see your sleeves have assumed a different form. I left you in ringlets, and your hair is now braided. I have heard already that our richest duke has put a finish to the pleasures of hope; that seven new beauties have come out; that a new avatar of Mrs. Siddons has appeared at Covent Garden, in the shape of her niece Fanny Kemble; and that we have refused to emancipate the Jews, lest it should convert them—and their conversion being a sign of the end of the world, it is a consummation devoutly to be deprecated."
"Oh, I have heard all this a hundred times: one hears things till one forgets them. But what have you been doing with yourself?"
"Lording over the three elements;—fire-king with my hearth blazing with pine boughs—water-king, with the lightest of boats on the roughest of rivers—and earth-king, with the valleys flying before me, thanks to the prettiest of chocolate-coloured coursers—and am now come back to enlighten my club and enchant my partners with my adventures in Norway."
"Judicious, at least," observed Mr. Delawarr. "Nothing like laying the scene of one's adventures in a distant land. I only hope you will have no rival Norseman to encounter. One great reason why our old travellers are so much more delightful than our modern ones is, that they needed not to verify their facts; and I am afraid plain truth is like a plain face—not very attractive." "Nay, this is pre-supposing my Sir John Mandevilleism. I do not mean to be forgotten beside my adventures—I mean less to astonish than to interest. I shall tell any fair auditor not of the dark forest itself, but what my feelings were in the said forest."
"I dare say," said Lady Alicia, "you were very dull."
"I shall be ignorant of that feeling at least for the next six weeks, during which period I intend to be your visitor."
Edward did just glance towards where they were sitting; yet Emily could scarce help taking his speech as a personal compliment. Like poetry, gallantry must be born with you—an indescribable fascination, which, like the boundaries of wit and humour, may never be defined—seen rather than heard, and felt rather than understood.
"How very handsome Mr. Lorraine is!" said Emily to her pillow. Alas! the danger and decisiveness of a first impression.
When Mr. Delawarr, who was last at the breakfast-table, entered next morning, Edward rose, and threw down a paper he held amid a heap of others, and said, laughingly, "I have been deliberating, at the imminent danger of my coffee, which, thanks to my meditation, is as cold as Queen Elizabeth, and walks as fancy free—at least from any fancy of mine,—I have been debating, whether in emulation of the patriots of Rome, I should not arise and stab you to the heart with one of these knives—yonder columns having informed me that England, 'that precious stone set in a silver sea,' is on the brink of destruction, and that you are the political Thalaba of her peace and plenty; or to speak in less embroidered language, that the present ministry are the destruction of the country, and that you are worst among the bad. I have shuddered at the excess of your guilt. Luckily, farther to ascertain the extent of your enormity, I took up another newspaper; and now I am only anxious to make my homages acceptable to the deliverer of his country, and express my admiration of the patriotic minister in sufficiently earnest terms."
"I answer with Rosalind," said Mr. Delawarr—
" 'Which will you have—me or your pearl again?
Neither of either—I reject both twain.'
I am afraid I am neither quite worthy of the praise, nor, I trust, deserving of the censure;— and now some chocolate for consolation and change; for, to tell you the truth, indifference is as fabulous as invulnerability. There is no moral Styx; and in politics as in every thing else, censure is more bitter than praise is sweet."
"Thanks to my lately acquired bad habit of early rising," observed Edward—"the which philosophers and physicians praise, because they know nothing about it—I have been for the last hour studying leading articles, advertisements, &c., till I am possessed of matériel enough for three weekly papers. Really people should put their names to advertisements, or at least allow them to be whispered about. There is an ingenuity, an originality, which makes one lament over so much unappreciated genius. I began one paragraph: it deplored the evils brought on the country by the passing of the Catholic bill—observed that the King's silence about it in his speech at the opening of Parliament sufficiently indicated his opinion that Ireland was plunged into the deepest affliction. The depreciation of her produce was next insisted upon; and I found this exordium led to the information that Messrs. Standish and Co. had been enabled, from the depressed state of the market, to lay in a large stock of Irish linen at unheard-of low prices.—My next is one of quite antiquarian research. It begins with an allusion to Lady Fanshaw's Memoirs, when Hart Street, St. Olave, was a fashionable part of London—is philosophical with reference to the many changes of fashion—that capricious divinity, as it poetically entitles her—and finishes by rejoicing to see Leicester Square recovering much of its former splendour, when princes were its inhabitants, and noblemen were its wayfarers; and this we are informed is in consequence of the crowds of carriages which assemble daily to inspect Newton's tremendous bargains of Gros de Naples and French ginghams. And here is the worst of all, 'the Music of the Mazurka, as danced by the Duke of Devonshire'—shades of Paul and Vestris, welcome your illustrious competitor, 'as danced by the Duke of Devonshire!'"
"I think," replied Mr. Delawarr, "the Duke might fairly bring his action for libel."
"What! place his refined exclusiveness, as the Duke of Wellington did his chivalrous sense of honour, for the judgment of twelve tallow-chandlers! Let them ask for redress if the jury were their peers; but what sympathy could Mr. Higgins, the snuff-merchant, have with the exquisite dismay of the house of Cavendish at this exhibition of their head as a ballet master; or Mr. Wiggins, the butcher, know what was the Prince of Waterloo, the conqueror of Buonaparte's estimate of fame?
'How can we reason but from what we know?'
and what could the retail individuals that constitute a jury know of these 'fine fancies and high estimates?'"
"They were very respectable men, Edward," observed Mr. Delawarr, with a decorous accent of reproof.
"Am I in the slightest degree detracting from their pretensions to our great national characteristic? A respectable man passes six days behind his counter, and the seventh in a one- horse chaise—imagines that his own and his country's constitution equally depend on roast-beef—pays his debts regularly, and gives away half-pence in charity. What can such"
"Hush! Really, Mr. Lorraine, these are very dangerous sentiments for a young man to express."
"Oh, you laugh; but what sympathy could these estimable individuals have with ideal honour and wounded feeling? "
"On the one great principle, 'every thing has its price;' damages are the chevaux de frise of our law."
"Well, well—but to turn from politics to literature: here I again lament over unappreciated genius. The unknown Chattertons of the columns display a flight of invention, a degree of talent, which often puts to shame the work whose merits they insinuate rather than announce. How completely to the calibre of the many—
'For gentle dulness ever loves a joke'—
is the following:—'Our town was alarmed last night by the intelligence that Satan had arrived by the mail-coach.' Lucifer's arrival was alarming enough. Fortunately, it turned out to be only the harmless, nay, even meritorious hero of Mr. Montgomery's poem, who came with all sorts of moral reflections, instead of temptations."
"I was somewhat surprised," replied Mr. Delawarr, "to see my own name in one of the keys that now seem to follow a work as regularly as its title-page to precede it. Of course, I read this setting forth of my thoughts, words, and actions; and was rather dismayed to find how little I knew of myself."
"It is certainly in the destiny of some individuals to be the idols of the circulating library. The Duchess of Devonshire, of whom I heard Lafayette say, when he showed me her picture, that her loveliness was the most lovely of his remembrances—was the fortune of seven novels to my own reading knowledge. I cannot enumerate the many of which Lord Byron was hero, under the names of Lord Harold, Lord Lara, Count Monthermer, &c. His throne was then filled by a woman; and Lady Jersey has furnished the leading feature of thirty volumes. Brummel has figured on the stage three times (but he is quite an historical personage); and Lord and Lady Ellenborough were subjects for two sets of three volumes. We have been enlightened with divers slight sketches of others; but those I have named have hitherto been principals in the field of fiction."
"I often wonder at many that are omitted. Now, Lord Petersham I should have thought the idéal of a modern hero: Lady Dacre, dramatist, poet, could they not have made a female Byron out of her? Can you, Edward, account for omissions like these? "
"Only on the principle, that there is a destiny in these things: but I do think a novelist will soon be as necessary a part of a modern establishment as the minstrel was in former times. The same feeling which in the olden days gave a verse to a ballad now gives a column to the Morning Post; only that the ball has taken place of the tournament, and white gloves are worn instead of steel gauntlets."
"I have heard my aunt say," observed Emily, "that Surr's Winter in London hastened the Duchess of Devonshire's death. She died of a broken heart."
"A most interesting fact to your aunt, who is, I believe, a most inveterate novel-reader; but one I rather doubt: people are not so easily written out of their lives—except by prescriptions."
"Most of the broken-heart cases I hear, put me in mind," rejoined Edward, "of our old friend Mrs. Lowe's story. A maiden lady of forty called on her one day on one of those sentimental errands to which maiden ladies of her age seem peculiarly addicted; and, after a deep sigh or two, said, 'I wished much, madam, to see you, for you were the death of my unfortunate aunt.' Somewhat surprised at this sudden charge of murder, Mrs. Lowe naturally inquired into particulars. 'Your husband was engaged to my poor aunt: he deserted her for you, and she died of a broken heart.' 'At what age?' inquired her unconscious rival. 'My poor aunt was fifty-two when she died.' 'At least,' said Mrs. Lowe, 'she took some time to consider of it.' For my part, I think hearts are very much like glasses—if they do not break with the first ring, they usually last a considerable time."
"What a charming old lady she was!" resumed Mr. Delawarr; "she had of age so little but its experience, and had lost of youth so little but its frivolity. I was once much delighted with an answer I heard her give to a young gentleman, whose silly irreverence of speech on sacred subjects richly deserved the rebuke it drew. 'Really, Mrs. Lowe, you have quite a masculine mind.' 'No, sir,' returned she, 'say a firm one.'"
"I can assure you, Miss Arundel," said Edward, "if you were to see her, you would quite anticipate the days of close caps, &c."
Emily smiled; but, somehow or other, she had never thought of her roses and ringlets with more satisfaction than just now.
Some authors, in discussing love's divers places of vantage ground, are eloquent in praise of a dinner-table—others eulogise supper: for my part I lean to the breakfast,—the complexion and the feelings are alike fresh—the cares, business, and sorrows of the day, have not yet merged in prudence and fatigue—the imaginativeness of the morning dream is yet floating on the mind—the courtesies of coffee and chocolate are more familiar than those of soup and fish. As they say in education, nothing like an early commencement—our first impressions are always most vivid, and the simplicity of the morning gives an idea of nature piquant from probable contrast. Perhaps one's rule of three for action might run thus: be naïve at breakfast, brilliant at dinner, but romantic at supper. The visions prepared for midnight should always be a little exalted: but if only one meal be at your choice, prefer the breakfast. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coúte, is as true of sentiments as saints.