Chapter III: Peregrine Courtenay to the Public (3)

CYA. Thus then: “It is necessary that thou shouldst understand, Cyane, how that Orestes is the murderer of his mother--a wicked thing, by Themis, a wicked thing; but justifiable in particular cases. Æmilius argued it so the other day, and saved his client--Publius it was, who had succeeded somewhat too suddenly to an inheritance. Alas, avarice never walks abroad, but she carries aconite fastened to her girdle. But as I said, Orestes has murdered his mother, and he rushes upon the stage with long hair, and short breath, and torn garments, and wandering eyes; and fifty furies are in readiness without, with snaky ringlets and blazing torches, which thou knowest, little Cyane, are the adornments which the furies most conceit. When Serranus played his Megæra, the torches went out; but those things shall be better cared for when I----but I lose time; listen! Orestes begins thus, faltering a little from fear, as is natural:

“‘Dark goddesses, swift-footed, serpent-haired,
Red-eyed, black-lipped, hell’s offspring, earth’s annoy,
Avaunt, I spit upon ye! King Apollo,
Lord of the beaming bow and echoing string,
Fair-browed, far-darting, Prince of Poetry,
Art thou a juggler? are thine oracles
Mere webs for witching flies? Behold! they come!
Railing and roasting, scampering and scaring,
All hot from hissing Tartarus! Ο God,
Pæan, Lycean,
God of music, god of day,
Delian, Patarean,
Help, help! and let me see an
End of these calamities as soon as I may.’”

DAM. Ha! ha! May Æsculapius put life into my father’s ashes, if I do not love thee entirely. The poet is under infinite obligations to thee; if thou wouldst only study this trade, the dirty Quirites would run from their bread--by Pollux! I think they would run from their games, to hear thee. And now the answer, pretty Saleius, the response of the Avengers!

CYA. Let me unfasten my mitra, and perform it in costume. There! “Now, Cyane,” he says, “thou must suppose, what doubtless thou hast already suspected, that the goddesses rush in with their shrivelled arms and terrible eyebrows, dancing, in groups of three or four, a dance dreadful to look upon, such a dance as Pomponia’s slave performs when he is whipped, or Paulus’s mistress when she is intoxicated; thus, Cyane, a rapid agitation of the right foot, then a corresponding movement of the left, with vibrations of the arms and contortions of the neck in unison. Presently the chief of them chants these terrible verses in a low and dismal scream:

“‘Ye raven-headed goddesses,
Who, in your cloudy bodices,
Hover with me around this ball of earth,
And ever love to mix
Dark drops from your own Styx
With every rivulet of living mirth,
Fit followers of mortality,
Fine teachers of morality,
Eternal servants of the Olympian thunder,--
Dwellers in mirky mists,
By whose unyielding wrists
Strong frames are racked, fine heart-strings rent asunder,--
Come hither, solemn sisters,
Rain, rain your boils and blisters,
Heart-thrilling ache, swift stripe, and searing cinder,
Come hither, oh! come hither,
And let him waste and wither,
Roaring like twenty bulls, and rotting into tinder!’”

DAM. Ho! ho! ho! Stop, dear girl, or thou wilt murder me indeed; thou art very Saleius from head to foot. Investigate the flagon and proceed: I would bring thee to the Emperor’s hearing, Cyane, had I not some scruples of jealousy in my composition. But thou must be chary of thy parlous wit, for those singing birds are marvellously inflammable; I have known them in their wrath more rude than a Briton and more robust than a rhinoceros. Codrus broke my skull in the first week of my consulship, because I asked him how often he had dined upon his Theseid; and Serranus has written five-and-twenty lampoons upon me, because I told him that Podalirius recommends cold water for a December cup. And I need not tell thee that these male sempstresses of absurdities have at their beck and bidding sword and dagger, plague and pestilence, balista and bowl--ay, by my head, and lightning-flash and thunder-bolt to boot, and the whole armoury of the skies. But go on, sweetest of all the Furies; maledictions from such lips as thine are worth blessings from any others.

CYA. I have done! Never was Sibyl more weary after an hour’s raving. But Damasippus hath noticed none other of his friends. Geta is here, and Parmeno, and little Amphitryon, and tall Antigonus. Come, do throw away a word upon them; it is long since they have looked upon their master.

DAM. Geta, worthy Geta, sovereign reducer of ringlets and princely mower of beards, how fares the world with thee! Well, as I can divine by thy red nose and round external. What! do the gallants still linger to babble truth and falsehood in the shade of thy dominion? Come, let us know what scandal is toward.

GET. I prate scandal! Now Mercury forbid! It is true that idle persons do consort to me often; and as my worshipful master knows, much talk will arise of princes and patricians, and matters with which the like of Geta are little concerned. But do I ever report a syllable? Now Mercury forbid! ’Twas but yesterday that young Nasica was telling of the quarrel between Aurelius and his wife; did you hear? She must go on the arena forsooth; nothing would serve her but helm and sword, glory and fencing. “Why not,” quoth the lady; “was not Julia in training with Capella, and had not Lucia foiled her master after three week’s learning?” Marry, Aurelius was but little moved by authority or precept. He stilled her arguments by oaths, and sold her paraphernalia by auction; carried her into the country on a lean mule, and confined her in what he calls his Tusculan, where he collects together gems he cannot name, and books he cannot read, busts with broken noses and bailiffs who talk philosophy.

DAM. Bravo! and has the lady laid her propensities on the shelf?

GET. No; she has put her baggage on board; she has gone off to sea with that long armed destroyer of tigers, Cleobulus. The amphitheatre never saw a firmer hand or a quicker eye. But do I ever mention the story? Now Mercury forbid! Then there was merry Tiberius--ha, ha! a clever young fellow, and one who stands well with the court; and he was telling how Sulpicia tore the old Prætor’s hair to shreds, because he had never read Homer, and whipped a slave to death because he brought her some perfumes wrapt up in a page of old Horace. A strong woman, and terrible when moved! But do I circulate these tales? Now Mercury forbid!

DAM. Thou art the most silent of babblers, the most veracious of liars, the most honest of knaves! I would trust in thy keeping, dear Geta, all secrets that men strive most to conceal; I would breathe in thine ear my successful amours and my anonymous writings, my own merits and the failings of my friends.

GET. Ah! Damasippus was always witty with his slaves. But I suppose you have not heard of the tumult at Glycerion’s last night. I have heard mention of nought else to-day. Valla has said nothing of the Gauls, and Varus has been silent upon his lawsuit.

DAM. Prithee, now what was the manner of it?

GET. You know Glycerion--the little light-eyed Lesbian. And you know Titus too; and you used to cling as constantly to his side as the lictors to the consul or the duns to Flaminius. Well; he was shivering before her door last night in a thin cloak and sullen mood, with a lute in his hand, and a garland on his head, and perfumes enough on his apparel to convert Tartarus into Ida, and make Atinia herself endurable. A rival comes up; a young fellow in a long robe, masqued, and walking on tiptoes. Swords are drawn--crossed--thrusts given and returned; and Titus discovers that the sober votary of pleasure, the quiet Clodius, the dissipated Hippolytus, is no other than---- Guess now! You may study until a second Virgil rises, until the sun sets at daybreak, until I talk Greek, until my wife talks reason, and you shall never come near the mark. No other, by Jupiter and his transformations, than his studious and stern brother Caius.

DAM. Now, by Pollux, I am glad of it! Caius is a handsome young fellow, and deserves not spoiling by learning, and sobriety.

GET. But the beauty of the jest remains behind. They explain--coalesce--beat the door from its hinges, and find in the citadel Caius’s long-winded and long-bearded tutor, wrinkled Terentius, solacing his tired brain with stewed vegetables, golden smiles, and a goblet of damaged Falernian.

DAM. I will sacrifice a hecatomb. Thus it should ever be.

GET. But do I tell these stories? Do I repeat what may hurt reputation?--Now Mercury forbid! They told me, and it is indeed true, but do I repeat it?--now Mercury forbid!--that Aurunculeia was seen in the Suburra three nights ago in a mantle and hood, hastening to meet Lentulus, the----

DAM. Aurunculeia! Now, by Olympus and all its sojourners, I will drive the foul falsehood down thy black and calumnious throat. Withered imp of iniquity, cunning scatterer of poison, lie there; I put my sword’s point to thy throat, and recommend to thee silence and thy last testament.

SYR. Noble Damasippus!

MARS. Sweet prince, have mercy!

DAM. Mercy is not for him! He shall never smooth a chin or fabricate a lie again. Come hither, Cyane: take off thy scarlet slipper, girl, and beat him till he confesses.

CYA. Good Damasippus, do not be thus moved by a slave!

GET. Slave, quotha? I beg no mercy, I! Mercury forbid! I will speak out, and be gagged for no man. What now, master of the whip and wheel, do you dream that you are in the company of your cattle, where lash and blow are law? I do most cordially hate thee; and I tell thee, moreover, that if thou comest, braving it and bullying it with loud tongue and long rapier, I have here a stout flagon of Saguntum, which has made flaws in heads of stouter manufacture, and----

DAM. Why, thou foul-mouthed blasphemer of greatness!

GET. Thou impotent imitator of buffoons!

DAM. Thou idol of cobblers!

GET. Thou scorn of nobility!

MAR. SYR. CYA. In the name of the gods, Damasippus! Jove! there will be a goodly tumult!

MESSENGER [_without._] What, Syrinx--Syrinx, I say!

SYR. See now, if the Prætor be not here with a force!

MESS. Syrinx, I say--is Damasippus here to-night?

DAM. Well, fellow, who sends for Damasippus?

MESS. Truly, one that must send and find. The Emperor.

DAM. The Emperor! Hang ye, pestilent curs, give me my sandals. Quick!--and my cloak. So! am I steady, Syrinx? Thy venomous wine hath somewhat---- Adieu, Cyane; I will visit ye again ere long. A pest upon the Emperor!

MY FIRST FLAME.

Alderman Greenfat lives, from three to seven P.M., in joyous anticipation of the delights that hour will bring upon its wing. He tastes in fancy the never-cloying richness of the turtle, which if Jupiter had reigned now would have made Jupiter a candidate for civic honours; the invigorating flavour of the punch, which at once heightens the zest of the last and prepares the palate for the following dainty; the turbot, the venison, the champagne, the Burgundy--all are present to his imagination. Delicious! But seven o’clock arrives. What is the consummation? The meat is cold, or the wine is hot; the servants are awkward, or the next neighbour is a bore; repletion--indigestion--satiety--gout--the devil!

Lady Bauble waits patiently from March to May for the new Waverley novel, indulging perhaps in an occasional flirtation with Granby or a brief and hurried visit to Brambletye House, but turning eagerly from both to the prospect which the unnamed name of the Great Unknown opens before her imagination. Her visions are full of strange and appalling ideas. Some new Meg Merrilies appears to start into terrible existence; some second Balfour lifts up the sword of the Lord and of Gideon; Amy Robsart is regenerate, Front de Bœuf blasphemes again. But the three volumes come out, and present her with a commonplace bully or an everyday coquette--a lady who chatters at an evening party, a lord who figures in the _Morning Post_. “This really is too bad,” says Lady Bauble, yawning; “I must absolutely give up Sir Walter!”

Captain Eustace is ordered to Rangoon. Delightful dreams are his--dreams of success and of reputation, of promotion and of pay, of armies discomfited, of stockades stormed, of midnight glimpses of the King of Ava’s harem, of curry prepared in the King of Ava’s kitchen! A few short weeks, and the fairy vision fades with a vengeance: he finds an empty camp, and a crowded hospital; a weary surgeon, and a burning sun; a rifleman in every bramble-bush, and a rheumatism in every bone.

Ο that our hopes could last for ever! That we and the objects of our desire could run on, like the fore and hind wheels of a chariot, always close but never united. That we could be contented to let our enjoyments go on like the lamp of the Rosicrucians, burning and dazzling eternally; without advancing towards them the profane step which, by the essence and law of their nature, must destroy and crush them in a moment!

It is now about ten years since I left the residence of my respectable uncle and guardian in order to pay a visit of a few weeks to some friends at a neighbouring watering-place. My guardian, Sir Abraham, was in his day something of a character--and by-and-by I may sketch his portrait. For the present I shall only quote, as faithfully as I can, the old gentleman’s parting admonition, for so constantly and unremittingly had he laboured at my education, up to the age of sixteen, that he considered six weeks of absence a long period, and six miles an infinite distance.

“Hark ye, Frederic!” he began; “all young men are fools--very well! Some are more fools than others; there are degrees of comparison, but all are fools--very well! You I hold to be particularly and peculiarly a fool; no fault of mine--very well! Now you have been for the last two years pestering me with ravings and reveries about every pretty face that fell in your way; verses you have written, and they are my abomination--very well! I have found stanzas to Chloe in my shaving-pot, and sonnets to Araminta in the blank leaves of the Annual Registers--very well! You are going to-day to my cousin Sir Andrew’s; nobody to fall in love with there--too sensible a man; insists on a crooked nose in his laundress, and prefers a humpback to a ten years’ character in his choice of a dairymaid--very well! But hark you, sir! you may meet, at some of those hotbeds of frivolity and fevers, which are called card-parties, routs, balls, and I know not what beside--I say, sir, you may meet a girl called Adèle Lepicq--a fantastical name forsooth, but ladies are as fine now in their appellations as they are in their costume--very well! What’s in a name? I tell you, Frederic, if ever you mean to play the fool to any purpose, fall in love with that girl. Why, sir, she is rich enough to buy up the Bank of England--to keep even a ballad-monger from starving! Talk of beauty--sentiment--- affection! What are these to a rent-roll like hers? I tell you, a shape is as well set off by Mechlin lace as by brown holland; and a white neck is mere moonshine, till it has a diamond necklace about it. Bah!--very well!”

So spoke my revered relation, and the impression produced on my mind was that which similar speeches have produced on similar minds ever since old men were arbitrary and young men wilful. I sell myself for gold! I barter the first flush of the young heart’s emotion for what in poetry was always trash! I bend my knees to awkwardness or ugliness! I bow in adoration to malice and insipidity!

I set off, however, and found the stage which was to be my conveyance occupied by a fox-hunter and a brace of Militia officers, who were discussing the case of a poor man, named, for his sins, John Smith. He had been severely wounded in a duel. I listened with great interest to the usual interesting details--the chaises ordered at five in the morning; the vain attempt at a reconciliation; the ground measured; the surgeon in attendance; the firing, the dropping; the deep regret of the antagonist; the absconding; the apprehension of danger. All this was very well; but when, after going through the action, they proceeded to investigate the cause, what was my astonishment at finding that all this, which was to engross conversation for a week and fill the newspapers for a month, was occasioned by the fascinations of Adèle Lepicq!

“I never would risk my life for deformity,” said I, in a fit of enthusiasm. “Deformity!” quoth the foe of foxes, opening his eyes very wide; “why she is a divinity! Venus was a wax doll to her--Diana a dowdy! One glance of her might charm a statue from its pedestal, or inspire the Bench of Bishops with wit!” And then all three joined in a sort of chorus of eulogy, which conveyed to me no definite idea of form or feature, but expressed simply the conviction of the speakers that every perfection of both had been collected by the munificence of a bountiful destiny in the person of Adèle Lepicq.

I arrived at my journey’s end pretty considerably puzzled, and not a little annoyed. I fortified myself, however, in my preconceived dislike of my guardian’s angel, by remembering that wealth and want of ideas, loveliness and imbecility, were perfectly compatible qualities. “Some silly uneducated heiress--all heiresses are silly and uneducated--who knows nothing but what she has learnt from her glass, and likes no one who does not corroborate daily its assertions; who votes literature _mauvais ton_, and would rather look into a coffin than a quarto.” So thought I with myself as I lounged into Sir Andrew’s library, in the pride of my mathematical studies, to take down Laplace from the neglect in which I flattered myself he had slumbered for years. Laplace was gone; and the card, which according to the custom of the place accounted for the vacancy on the shelf, informed me that the appropriator of the treasure was Adèle Lepicq.

I was petrified. But distrust is slow to depart, when it has once been admitted. “A Blue, then--who studies Aristotle, I warrant, and criticizes Plato! who keeps a journal in Hebrew, and scribbles notes in the arrow-headed writing! She has, I doubt not, an album--full of doggerel compliments and pen-and-ink drawings, a cabinet of shells and fossils, a museum of butterflies and beetles! After all, the days were blest when women attempted nothing beyond embroidery and the making of puddings!” And with these charitable reflections I sat down to dinner. There was at table a detestable story-teller; I have met him often since, and have heard his fifty-nine stories fifty-nine times over; but on this occasion it was as much as he could do to get through one of them. It was about an _omelette soufflée_: how he was very partial to an _omelette soufflée_; how he ate an _omelette soufflée_ seven times a week in Paris; how he never tasted a good _omelette soufflée_ out of France except once; how a very romantic incident belonged to that _omelette soufflée_; how it was composed by a beauty--an heiress of sixteen; how she had studied the whole theory of an _omelette soufflée_ for her father’s gratification, because the old man could not live without an _omelette soufflée_. This tale, interrupted of course by the usual accidents which disturb at a dinner-table the most experienced narrator, concluded by a rhapsody concerning filial duty, and her who was the gastronomical example of its excellence--Adèle Lepicq.

I began to be infinitely plagued by this continual recurrence of Monsieur Tonson in the shape of a reigning toast. But I was haunted for more than a week by unceasing and unpitying rumours. The shops were full of Adèle bonnets and Lepicq shawls; the musicians dedicated their quadrilles to Miss Lepicq; the Poet’s Corner in the newspaper had always its stanzas to A---- L----. By her the harp I admired at Schneider’s had been bespoken; the Arabian I noticed at the riding-house was breaking for her. By degrees my imagination became more and more engrossed by the thought which was thus eternally forced upon its notice. I began to delight in forming conjectures about the extraordinary being who did all things, and all things well. First, I painted her reserved, retiring, shrinking from her own praises, and winning, in consequence, many more than she deserved. Then I drew her wild, piquante, with a little dash of the masculine, and spirits enough to provoke the advances which her pride checked in a moment. Sometimes she was alone by the side of a river stream, reading Shakespeare, and weeping unconsciously as she read; presently afterwards she was galloping along the hard sands of the sea-shore, her horse starting in vain from the echoing waters, and her hair floating long and dark upon the ocean breeze. She was my thought by day, my vision by night. I became like the lunatic who beholds, whithersoever he turns his eyes, an unvarying attendant figure, distinct in shape and hue to his own sight, but impalpable and unperceived to the gaze of others.

But I had never seen her, and I left the place in all the tortures of unsatisfied curiosity. If I was to meet her at a ball, she had a plaguy cold, and was confined to her room; if I looked for her on the public walk, she was the only person between the ages of seven and seventy who was not there; if I went to the theatre, she patronized the concert; if I rode on the downs, she rambled in the forest.

It was nearly a twelvemonth afterwards that I was one of three hundred who crowded, almost to bursting, two small drawing-rooms, not a hundred miles from Cavendish Square. I had picked up a lost fan, while the hurry and bustle of departure was going on, and was examining it in a fit of vacant abstraction, when I heard some charitable old lady annoying her friends with officious inquiries: “Where is Miss Lepicq’s fan?” “Who has seen Miss Lepicq’s fan?” “Where can Miss Lepicq’s fan be?” I started from my trance. The deuce take the fan, and the querist--but where is Miss Lepicq? She had just left the room--her carriage was stopping the way. I rushed to the landing-place, cleared the stairs with the celerity of a kangaroo, overturned a brace of footmen, and broke my shins over the pole of a sedan, arriving at the house-door just in time to see the last gleam of a kid slipper glide into the concealment of a carriage, to hear the “Home!” of the footman, and to make the best of my way to my hotel, with a head-ache and a sprained ankle.

Inquiries were bootless; she left London, England, the world; for she shut herself up in a convent, Heaven knows why: and, as her epitaph might say, is remembered with regret by all who knew her--and by one who did not.

Perhaps I ought not to lament--perhaps I do not lament--that I saw no more of Adèle Lepicq. I might have been blind to beauties which all the world adored; I might have discovered imperfections of which no others dreamed. It is pleasant, when I find in all I meet some little admixture of human frailty, to look back to one object which appears still all divine; it is charming, when I am deserted by the fondest friends, betrayed by the dearest hopes, to cling to an imaginative pleasure from which I can expect no treason or desertion. I have flirted with some score of beauties with sufficiently great perseverance, and sufficiently poor success; I have been desperately in love more than once; but if all the rapture of my real passions were set in one scale of a balance, and the luxury of this ideal one were put into the other, I believe the madder weight of the two would preponderate. I remember that in the fervour of my last disappointment I wrote a very fine copy of verses to the same effect; and thus, or nearly thus, they ran--

Many a beaming brow I’ve known,
And many a dazzling eye,
And I’ve listened to many a melting tone
In magic fleeting by;
And mine was never a heart of stone,
And yet my heart hath given to none
The tribute of a sigh;
For fancy’s wild and witching mirth
Was dearer than aught I found on earth;
And the fairest forms I ever knew
Were far less fair than--L’Inconnue!

Many an eye that once was bright
Is dark to-day in gloom;
Many a voice that once was light
Is silent in the tomb;
Many a flower that once was dight
In beauty’s most entrancing might
Hath faded in its bloom;
But she is still as fair and gay
As if she had sprung to life to-day;
A ceaseless tone and a deathless hue
Wild Fancy hath given to--L’Inconnue!

Many an eye of piercing jet
Hath only gleamed to grieve me
Many a fairy form I’ve met,
But none have wept to leave me;
When all forsake, and all forget,
One pleasant dream shall haunt me yet,
One hope shall not deceive me;
For oh! when all beside is past,
Fancy is found our friend at last,
And the faith is firm, and the love is true,
Which are vowed by the lips of--L’Inconnue!

THE INCONVENIENCE OF HAVING AN ELDER BROTHER.

I do not care for the paternal acres. To say the truth, Halbert Hall never pleased me. As a child I detested the long dark avenues of stunted trees; and the heavy melancholy stream of moaning water, and the long passages, with their doleful echoes, and their countless doors, and the vast chambers with all their pomp and pageantry of faded furniture and family portraits. I am happier here in Lincoln’s Inn, though one floor is my palace and one lackey my establishment; and I leave the Hall, without a sigh, to my elder brother.

I shall not die for the lack of ten thousand a year. I never longed to keep hounds, or an opera dancer; to give champagne dinners, or to represent a county; to win at Doncaster, or to lose at _rouge et noir_. Your true Epicurean does not need great wealth; I can afford to wear a tolerable coat, and drive an unexceptionable cabriolet; to be seen sometimes at the Opera, and keep myself out of reach of the Bench; to throw away a trifle at picquet, and cook a wild duck for my antagonist. These things content me; and, except when some unusual temptation has awakened my appetite or some more than common loss, for a time, ruffled my philosophy, I would not readily exchange them for the rent-roll and the three per cents. of my elder brother.

As for the title, it is not to be mentioned seriously as the object of a reasonable man’s ambition. In old times a belted lord had certain privileges and pastimes, which might make life pass pleasantly enough. It was interesting to war upon his equals; it was amusing to trample on his inferiors; there was some merriment in the demolition of an abbey; there was some excitement in the settlement of a succession. Nowadays, it is as well to be called Tom as my Lord, unless you have a mind to dine at the dullest tables, and make speeches to the drowsiest audience in the world. So I resign my chance of the peerage without reluctance; the more that the coronet must pass from the temples of its present apoplectic possessor over an artillery officer, a rural dean, and an attaché to an embassy, before it decorates the honoured brows of my elder brother.

But when I have resigned philosophically all longings after these distinctions and advantages, which would be mine if I could date my birth but a twelvemonth earlier--when I have congratulated myself that I am not bound, by any necessity or interest, to do battle for the privileges of the order or talk nonsense in support of the Game Laws--why am I to be crossed at every turning by some hateful memento of the inferiority to which my unlucky planets have doomed me? Why are smiles to grow colder, and conversation more constrained, at my approach? Why are my witticisms listened to with such imperturbable gravity? And why does Lady Montdragon look zero when I bow, and turn away to whisper “Viper!” in her daughter’s ear?

Thus it has been from my infancy. My mother, to be sure, had the usual maternal peculiarities, and was always in our nursery squabbles the unfailing protectress of the party which was most immediately dependent upon her protection. But she died, poor lady, almost before I could be sensible how much I needed her alliance, leaving me to carry on the war unaided against an adversary whose auxiliaries were many and zealous, in the butler’s pantry and the servants’ hall, in the tenant’s cottage and the keeper’s lodge. I was as handsome as Frederic; but his dress was more carefully tended, and his ringlets more studiously arrayed. I was as ravenous as Frederic; but his acquaintance with the cellar was more close and his visits to the store-closet more frequent. I was the bolder rider, but my pony was as rough as a bear. I was the better shot, but my gun was as heavy as a blunderbuss. Both learnt the lesson, but the praise and the shilling were for him; both plundered the orchard, but the reproof and the correction were for me. And when our father, with an unwonted exertion of impartiality, sent us to the same school, and supplied us with the same means of extravagance, though my hexameter was as smooth and my laugh as hearty, my scholarship as sound and my pluck as indisputable as my brother’s, he had more patrons and more friends than I had; and somehow or other, between Halbert major and Halbert minor there was a plaguy difference, though I scarcely yet suspected where it lay.

But I was soon able to discover of what materials the talisman was composed. My father broke his neck in a fox-chase, and my brother was master of the kennel and the stud; my uncle died of a late division, and my brother represented the borough. We came into the world, and began to jostle for places like the rest of its industrious citizens.

I met Lord Fortalice at a dinner-party. What could be more condescending than his lordship’s manner, or more flattering than his expressions? He had heard of my renown at college; he was confident of my success in life; he knew a host of my connections; he had had the sincerest respect for my father, he could assure me the Duke of Merino entertained the highest opinion of my talents, and Lady Eleanor had pointed me out last week as a model to her son. But when at last his lordship hoped that my principles would allow me to support the Bill which’ was next week to be before Parliament, and understood from me that the interests of sixty-seven independent men were in my brother’s hands, not mine, he gradually withdrew his civilities from me, and devoted himself thenceforth to the entertainment of a puny divine, who spoke in monosyllables, and took an appalling quantity of snuff.

I was introduced to Tom Manille at the Opera. He was charmed to make my acquaintance; he had been told of my good fortune at the Salon, and was aware what a favourite I had been with the Baronne de Lusignan. Did I want a servant? A friend of his was going to dismiss one who was worth all the Indies. Was I looking for a hunter? His cousin had one, which would suit my weight exactly. He would make my betting-book, he would superintend my cellar, he would take me to a _soirée chez Mademoiselle_, he would give me a special recommendation to his tailor. He must make me known to the Somerses--their cook was Ude’s first pupil. Of course I should belong to the Club--his influence was omnipotent there. A few weeks elapsed; and Tom Manille was riding my brother’s horses, and drinking my brother’s chambertin. He always calls me “My dear fellow!” and never passes me without a most encouraging nod. But I have never dined with the Somerses, and last week I was blackballed at the Club.

I wrote a treatise on the state of the nation, and submitted it to an eminent publisher. He was wonderfully delighted with the work. The views were so sound, the arguments so convincing, the style so pure, the illustration so apposite. I began to look forward to an infinity of popularity and an eternity of fame; I dreamed of laurel wreaths; I calculated the profits of tenth editions. In imagination I was already the pilot of popular opinion, the setter-up and the putter-down of Cabinets. But when I struck out the magical M.P. from the proof-sheet of my title-page, my fall was immediate and disastrous. My language lost its elegance, and my subject its importance; and my pamphlet lies forgotten in the limbo of unpublished embryos, wanting only life, and willing to win immortality. I should have been the most influential writer of the day if I had not had an elder brother.

At Brighton I fell in love with Caroline Merton. She was an angel, of course; and it is not necessary to describe her more particularly. Her mother behaved to me with the greatest kindness; she was a respectable old lady who wore a magnificent cap, and played casino while her daughter was waltzing. Caroline liked me, I am sure; for she discarded a dress because I disliked the colour, and insulted a colonel because I thought him a fool. I was in the seventh heaven for a fortnight; I rode with her on the downs, and walked with her on the Chain Pier. I drew sketches for her scrap-book, and scribbled poetry in her album. I gave her the loveliest poodle that ever was washed with rose-water, and called out a corpulent gentleman for talking politics while she played. Caroline was a fairy of a thousand spells; she danced like a mountain nymph and sang like a syren; she made beautiful card-racks and knew Wordsworth by heart; but to me her deepest fascination was her simplicity of feeling, her independence of every mercenary consideration, her scorn of Stars and Garters, her _penchant_ for cottages and waterfalls. I was already meditating what county she would choose for her retirement, and what furniture she would prefer for her boudoir, when she asked me, at an ill-omened fancy ball, who was that clumsy Turk, in the green turban and the saffron slippers. It was my elder brother. She did not start nor change colour; well-taught beauties never do; but she danced that night with the clumsy Turk in the green turban and the saffron slippers; and when I made my next visit she was just sealing a note of invitation to him, and had lighted her taper with the prettiest verses I ever wrote in my life.

If your father was an alderman, you may nevertheless be voted _comme il faut_; if your nose is as long as the spire of Strasburg, you may yet be considered good-looking; if you have published a sermon, you may still be reputed a wit; if you have picked a pocket, you may by-and-by be restored to society. But if you have an elder brother--migrate! Go to Crim Tartary or to Cochin China--wash the Hottentot--convert the Hindoo! At home you cannot escape the stigma that pursues you. You may have honesty, genius, industry--no matter. You are a “detrimental” for all that.

Last summer I saw Scribe’s amusing scenes, “Avant, Pendant, et Après,” at the Théàtre de Madame. In the “Avant,” when the Duchess of the old _régime_, after bestowing upon her eldest son unearned military rank and the richest _parti_ in all France, was quietly dooming her youngest born to live poor, unknown, and Chevalier of Malta, a fine little fellow, who was sitting in the front row before me, looked up at his father, and cried, “Mais nous avons changé tout cela, nést ce pas, mon papa?”

Much of it is changed. But to change it all, we must wait for a stranger revolution than that which has regenerated France.

TOUJOURS PERDRIX.

We have all been occupied for a great many years in considering whether we ought to emancipate the Catholics from their disabilities. Let us at last begin to think whether it is not high time to emancipate ourselves from the discussion of them. My respectable and Popish cousin, Arthur M‘Carmick, inhabits a charming _entresol_ in the Rue St. Honoré, where he copies Vernet and reads Delavigne, dreams of Pauline Latour, and spends six hundred a year in the greatest freedom imaginable; yet, because he is not yet entitled to frank letters and address the Speaker’s chair, Arthur M‘Carmick wants to be emancipated. I, whom fate and a profession confine in my native country, am fettered by the thraldom, and haunted by the grievance, at every turn I take. In vain I fly from the doors of Parliament, and make a circuit of five miles to avoid the very echo of the county meeting; my friend in the club and my mistress in the ball-room, the ballad-singer in the street and the preacher in the pulpit, all combine to harass my nerves, and weary my forbearance; even Dr. Somnolent wakes occasionally after dinner, to indulge in a guttural murmur concerning martyrdom and the Real Presence; and Sir Roger, when the hounds are at fault, reins up at my side, and harks back to the Revolution of 1688. Our very servants wear our prejudices, as constantly as our cast-off clothes, and our tradesmen offer us their theories more punctually than their bills. Not a week ago my groom assured me that there was no reason to be alarmed, for the Pope lived a great way off; and my barber on the same day hinted that he knew as much as most people, and that all he knew was this, that if ever the Catholics were uppermost they would play the old bear with the Church. I could not sleep that night for thinking of Ursa Major and the Beast in the Revelations. Yet I, because I may put on a silk gown whenever it shall please His Majesty to adorn me in such radiant attire, and because, some twenty years hence, I may have hope to be in the great council of the nation, the mouthpiece of some two or three dozen of independent individuals--I, forsooth, am to petition for no emancipation.

There are persons who cannot bear the uninterrupted ticking of a pendulum in their chamber. The sustained converse of a wife vexes many. I have heard of a prisoner who was driven mad by the continued plashing of water against the wall of his cell. Such things are lively illustrations of the disquiet I endure. It is not that I am thwarted in an argument or beat on a division; it is not that I have a horror of innovation, or a hatred of intolerance; you are welcome to trample upon my opinions, if you will not tread upon my toes. I will waltz with any fair Whig who has a tolerable ear and a pretty figure; and I will gladly dine with any septuagenarian Tory who is liberal in his culinary system and puts no restrictions upon his cellar. The Question kills me: no matter in what garb or under what banner it come. Brunswick and Liberator, reasoner and declaimer, song and speech, pamphlet and sermon--I hate them all.

Look at that handsome young man who is so pleasantly settling himself at his table at the Travellers’. He spends two hours daily upon his curls, and the rings on his fingers would make manacles for a burglar; surely he has no leisure for the affairs of the nation? The waiter has just disclosed to his view the _anguilles en matelotte_, and the steward is setting down beside him the pint of Johannisberg. And he only arrived yesterday from Versailles; it is impossible he can have been infected in less than four-and-twenty hours. Alas! there is the _Courier_ extended beside his plate; and the dish grows cold, and the wine grows warm, while Morrison sympathizes with the feelings of the Home Secretary, or penetrates the mysteries of the Attorney-General’s philippic.

Watch Lady Lansquenet as she takes up her hand from the whist-table. With what an ecstasy of delight does she marshal the brocaded warriors who are the strength of her battle; how indignantly does she thrust into their appointed station the more ignoble combatants, who are distinguished, like hackney-coaches, only by their number; how reverentially does she draw towards her those three last lingering cards, as if the magic alchemy of delay were of power to transmute a spade into a club, or exalt a plebeian into a prince. Then, with what an air of anxiety does she observe the changes and chances of the contest; now flushed with triumph, now palsied with alarm; and bestowing alternately upon her adversary and her ally equal shares of her impartial indignation. Lady Lansquenet is neither pretty nor young, nor musical nor literary. She does not know a Raphael from a Teniers, nor a scene by Shakespeare from a melody by Moore. Yet to me she seems the most conversible person in the room; for at least the Question is nothing to Lady Lansquenet. One may ask her what her winnings have been without fear. “I have lost,” says her ladyship, “twenty points. I am seldom so unfortunate; but what could I expect, you know--with a Popish partner!”

I will go and see Frederick Marston. He has been in love for six weeks. In ordinary cases I shrink with unfeigned horror from the conversation of a lover--barley-broth is not more terrible to an alderman, nor metaphysics to a blockhead, nor argument to a wit. But now, in mere self-defence, I will go and see Frederick Marston. He will talk of wood-pigeons and wildernesses, of eyebrows and ringlets, of sympathies and quadrilles, of “meet me by moonlight” and the brightest eyes in the world. I will endure it all; for he will have no thought to waste upon the wickedness of the Duke of Wellington or the disfranchisement of Larry O’Shane. So I spoke in the bitterness of my heart; and, after a brief and painful struggle with a Treasury clerk in the Haymarket, and a narrow escape in Regent Street from the heavy artillery of a Somersetshire divine, I flung myself into my old schoolfellow’s armchair, and awaited his raptures or his apprehensions, as patiently as the wrecked mariner awaits the lions or the savages, when he has escaped from the billow and the blast. “My dear fellow,” said my unhappy friend, and pointed, as he spoke, to a letter which was lying open on the table, “I am the most miserable of fortune’s playthings. It is but a week since every obstacle was removed. The dresses were bespoken; the ring was bought; the Dean had been applied to, and the lawyer was at work. I had written out ten copies of an advertisement, and sold Hambletonian for half his value. Λ plague on all uncles! Sir George has discovered ‘an insuperable objection.’ One may guess his meaning without comment.”

“Upon my life, not I! Have you criticized his Correggio?”

“Never.”

“Have you abused his claret?”

“Never.”

“You have thinned his preserves, then?”

“I never carried a gun there!”

“Or slept while his chaplain was preaching?”

“I never sat in his pew.”

A horrible foreboding came over me. I sat in silent anticipation of the blow which was to overwhelm me. “Oh, my dear friend,” said Frederick after a long pause, “why was I born under so fatal a planet? And why did my second cousin sign that infernal petition?”

My father’s ancient and valued friend, Martin Marston, Esq., of Marston Hall, has vegetated for forty years in his paternal estate in the West of England, proud and happy in the enjoyment of everything which makes the life of a country gentleman enviable. He is an upright magistrate, a kind master, a merciful landlord, and a hearty friend. If you believe his neighbours, he has not been guilty of a fault for ten years, but when he forgave the butler who plundered his plate-closet; nor uttered a complaint for twenty, except when the gout drove him out of his saddle, and compelled him to take refuge in the pony-chair. If his son were not the readiest Grecian at Westminster, he was nearly the best shot in the county; and if his daughters had little interest in the civil dissensions of the King’s Theatre, and thought of Almack’s much as a Metropolitan thinks of Timbuctoo, they had nevertheless as much beauty as one looks for in a partner, and quite as many accomplishments as one wants in a wife. Mr. Marston has always been a Liberal politician, partly because his own studies and connections have that way determined him. and partly because an ancestor of his bore a command in the Parliamentary army at the battle of Edgehill. But his principles never interfered with his comforts. He had always a knife and fork for the vicar, a furious High Churchman; and suffered his next neighbour, a violent Tory, to talk him to sleep without resistance or remonstrance--in consequence of which Dr. Gloss declared he had never found any man so open to conviction, and Sir Walter vowed that old Marston was the only Radical that ever listened to reason.

When I visited Marston Hall two months ago, on my road to Penzance, matters were strangely altered in the establishment. I found the old gentleman sitting in his library with a huge bundle of printed placards before him, and a quantity of scribbled paper lying on his table. The County Meeting was in agitation; and Mr. Marston, to the astonishment of every one, had determined to take the field against bigotry and persecution. He was composing a speech. Poachers were neglected, and turnip-stealers forgotten; his favourite songs echoed unheeded, and the urn simmered in vain. He hunted authorities, he consulted references, he hammered periods into shape, he strung metaphors together like beads, he translated, he transcribed. He was determined that, if the good folk of the West remained unenlightened, the fault should not rest upon his shoulders. Every pursuit and amusement were at an end. He had been planning a new line of road through part of his estate, but the labourers were now at a standstill; and he had left off reading in the middle of the third volume of “The Disowned.” I found that Sir Walter had not dined at his table for five weeks; and when I talked of accompanying his party to the parish church on Sunday, Emily silenced me with a look, and whispered that her papa read the prayers at home now, for that Dr. Gloss was a detestable fanatic, who went about getting up petitions. Mr. Marston could talk about nothing but the Question, and the speech he meant to make upon it. “Talk of the dangers of Popery,” he said, “why old Tom Sarney, who died the other day, was a Papist; I hunted with him for ten years; never saw a man ride with better judgment. When I had that horrid tumble at Fen Brook, if Tom Sarney had not been at my side my Protestant neck would not have been worth a whistle that day. Danger, forsooth! They are Papists at Eastwood Park, you know; and, if my son’s word is to be credited, there is one pretty Catholic there who would save at least one heretic from the bonfire. My tenant Connel is a Papist; never flinches at Lady-day and Michaelmas. Lady Dryburgh is a Papist, and Dr. Gloss says she keeps a Jesuit in her house. By George, sir, she may have a worse faith than I, but she contrived to give twice as many blankets to the poor last Christmas. And so I shall tell my friends from the hustings next week.”

When I observed the report of the proceedings at the County Meeting in the newspaper a fortnight afterwards, I find only that Mr. Marston “spoke amidst considerable uproar.” But I learn from private channels that his speech has been by no means thrown away. For it is quoted with much emphasis by his gamekeeper, and it occupies thirteen closely written pages in Emily’s album.

THE BEST BAT IN THE SCHOOL.

“It is the best bat in the school. I call it Mercandotti, for its shape. Look at its face; run your hand over the plane. It is smoother than a looking-glass. I was a month suiting myself, and I chose it out of a hundred. I would not part with it for its weight in gold; and that exquisite knot! lovelier, to me, than a beauty’s dimple. You may fancy how that drives. I hit a ball yesterday from this very spot to the wickets in the Upper Shooting Fields; six runs clear, and I scarcely touched it. Hodgson said it was not the first time that a ball had been wonderfully struck by Mercandotti! There is not such another piece of wood in England. Collyer would give his ears for it; and that would be a long price, as Golightly says. Do take it in your hand, Courtenay; but, plague on your clumsy knuckles! You know as much of a bat as a Hottentot of the longitude or a guinea-pig of the German flute!”

So spoke the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant, the _decus columenque_ that day of his Dame’s Eleven; proud of the red silk that girded his loins, and the white hose that decorated his ankles; proud of his undisputed prowess, and of his anticipated victory; but prouder far of the possession of this masterpiece of nature’s and Thompson’s workshop, than which no pearl was ever more precious, no phœnix more unique. As he spoke, a bail dropped. The Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant walked smilingly to the vacant wicket. What elegance in his attitude! What ease in his motions! Keep that little colleger out of the way, for we shall have the ball walking this road presently. Three to one on Ragueneau’s! Now! There was a moment’s pause of anxious suspense. The long fag rubbed his hands, and drew up his shirt-sleeves; the wicket-keeper stooped expectantly over the bails; the bowler trotted leisurely up to the bowling crease, and off went the ball upon its successive errands; from the hand of the bowler to the exquisite knot in the bat of the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant, from the said exquisite knot to the unerring fingers of the crouching Long Nips, and from those fingers up into the blue firmament of heaven with the velocity of a sky-rocket. What a mistake! How did he manage it? His foot slipped, or the ball was twisted, or the sun dazzled him. It could not be the fault of the bat; it is the best bat in the school!

A week afterwards I met my talented and enthusiastic friend crawling to absence through the playing-fields, as tired as a posthorse, and as hot as a salamander, with many applauding associates on his right and on his left, who exhibited to him certain pencilled scrawls, on which he gazed with flushed and feverish delight. He had kept his wicket up two hours, and made a score of seventy-three. “I may thank my bat for it,” quoth he, shouldering it as Hercules might have shouldered his club; “it is the best bat in the school!” Alas for the instability of human affections! The exquisite knot had been superseded. Mercandotti had been sold for half-price, and the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was again to be eloquent, and again to be envied; he had still the best bat in the school.