Chapter III: Captain Leopold Introduces His Friend (5)

“What a facer!” thought the Foreign Office clerk as he called back the servant with the _entrée_ in question.

Miss Devereux did not understand any gentleman’s gushing in this manner upon an acquaintance of twenty minutes. If young ladies would only ice menkind occasionally, instead of permitting them to say what they will, their sway would be absolutely without limit; but, alas! the girls of to-day are too—but I will not be cynical.

“What part of Ireland do you come from, Miss ——?” He has not heard her name, and mumbles something unintelligible to fill up the gap.

“Connemara.”

“I know some people living out there.”

“Indeed! As I know everybody living _out there_, I am quite sure we shall discover mutual friends.”

Now, Mr. Eugene Percival, not having the remotest idea of who Miss Devereux might be, imagines that this is a very good opportunity for being very amusing, and he accordingly plunges _in medias res_ without more ado.

“The name is Devereux,” he said.

“Devereux?” she repeated. “There is but one family of that name in Mayo.”

“Of Bally—something.”

“Ballybo?”

“That’s it. Ballybo. Do you know them?”

She gave one short, sharp glance at him. Was this Englishman about to amuse himself at her expense? Was he going to exercise his English stupidity in a practical joke? No; she instinctively felt that Percival was a gentleman and would not _dare_ take a liberty; and she perceived him so full of suppressed mirth that she resolved upon letting him have it all his own way.

“Yes, I know them,” she replied.

“What sort of people are they?”

“Oh! very commonplace, and somewhat old-fashioned in their ways,” hardly able to keep back a burst of laughter.

“I thought as much. I’ll tell you a capital thing that has occurred within the last week.” Here he indulged in a series of gentlemanly chuckles. “I had a letter from Ballyporeen.”

“Ballybo? _You_, Mr. Percival?” she exclaimed in a surprised way.

“Yes, from an excellent lady, who addresses me as her cousin, and signs herself Martha Mary Grace Devereux, and who informed me that her son and daughter were coming to town, and begged of me to take care of them.”

Miss Devereux, dropping her knife and fork, gazed steadily at Percival. She became very white, while a sudden anger flamed in her expressive eyes.

“You, then, are Mr. Eugene Percival?” she said, a harshness in her voice.

“Yaas.”

“Of the Foreign Office?”

“I have the honor to be attached to that blundering institution.”

“If I do not mistake, Mr. Percival, you received more than _one_ letter from Ballybo.”

“Yaas, I got one from a sulky young Irishman who—”

“Have you met him?” she interrupted.

“No, thank Heaven! and I hope I never shall.”

This was uttered so fervently that Miss Devereux, yielding to an ungovernable impulse, rang out a peal of musical laughter so bright, so joyous, so contagious that the remainder of the company ceased their colorless prattle in order firstly to listen and then to join in it.

“You are having all the fun to yourself,” cried Lindsay, addressing Geraldine Devereux. “What is the _mot_? Do send it round; we want something more _piquante_ than an _entrée_ at this stage of the proceedings.”

Geraldine, all blushes at this unlooked-for notoriety and isolation, declared that her laughter arose from a story that was being narrated to her by Mr. Percival.

“It’s the first time Percival ever succeeded in making anybody laugh _with_ him,” exclaimed a sour-looking old gentleman who wore the red ribbon of a C. B. round his neck.

“Let us have it, Percival, _pro bono publico_.”

“Is it any secret of the office, Mr. Percival?” demanded Miss Lindsay. “Because if it is there’s ’a chiel amang ye takin’ notes.’ Eh, Lord Jocelyn?”

“Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison-house,” was Percival’s retort.

“Is it worth hearing?—that is the question.”

“Very well worth hearing,” said Geraldine.

“It’s merely an Irish adventure,” observed Percival.

“Merely? Why, where is adventure to be achieved, if not in Ireland? Come, Percival, let us have it,” urged his host.

This was too good a chance for the member of Parliament. “I was in the House the night the Home-Rulers—” And he commenced an anecdote under cover of which the Foreign Office clerk was enabled to beat a retreat.

“It’s an awfully funny story, but some of the people here wouldn’t see it, you know.”

“I can’t see it yet, Mr. Percival; you have only just commenced. Pray proceed.”

“Well, you see, I got this letter raking me up, you know, and the other letter from the young Irish wolf-dog, who wouldn’t have me at any price. How awfully emerald these people must be to imagine that _I_ could—may I use an Irish word?”

“No,” hotly.

“Bother myself about them, especially in the height of the season.” And Mr. Percival emptied a glass of champagne to his own sentiment.

“Poor things! And you don’t intend taking any notice of them?”

“No more than if they never existed.”

“And are you their kinsman?”

“I believe so, now that I have looked into the matter.”

“Don’t you think you are acting rather shabbily?”

“So Jack Pommery says.”

“And Jack Pommery is right,” exclaimed Geraldine, clinching her little left hand and bringing it down into the rosy palm of her right.

“Do you know Jack Pommery?” asked Percival.

“I—I have met him.”

“Here?”

“No.”

“It must have been in Ireland, then,” earnestly.

“It was.”

“By Jove!”

This exclamation caused Geraldine to observe Percival. There was a mysterious knowingness on his face that sent the mercury of her curiosity up into the nineties.

“Is Mr. Pommery an acquaintance of yours, Mr. Percival?”

“He is my _alter ego_, my better man; and I think I have got at his secret.”

“Surely such strong friends have no secrets from one another.”

“Jack kept one bottled up ever so tight, wired down like the bitter beer they send to India. May I ask you a question?” turning abruptly to Geraldine.

“You have asked so many that usage has almost become a right, Mr. Percival.”

“Are you fond of violets?”

A red, red rose-blush spread itself over the young Irish girl’s face and neck and shell-like ears—a blush that came and glowed and refused to be put down—a blush that wooed and caressed and fondled.

“Why do you ask me?” she palpitated.

At this moment Miss Lindsay telegraphed for the ladies to retire, and the usual uprising, and rustle and removal of chairs, and grim punctilio of menkind, and saucy _insouciance_ of womenkind took place. When the gentlemen had reseated themselves the host cried:

“Close quarters, _mes braves_. Approach to the attack of this fortress of Château Lafitte. Get up here, Percival; you were lost to me for the last two hours.”

In obedience to the mandate of his host the bureaucrat moved more above the salt, and, casting his eyes across the table, he was astonished and delighted to discover the young Irishman who had so pluckily distinguished himself upon the two occasions already detailed in this truthful narrative.

“I am awfully glad to meet you,” he said, taking up his glass and moving to a vacant chair beside Charley Devereux.

Charley bowed stiffly and awkwardly.

“I was at the Albion with a friend last Thursday when you dropped upon that disgusting cad.”

Devereux blushed like a schoolgirl.

“He was a low, swaggering blackguard, and, only I had an appointment with my sister, I’d have kicked him into Covent Garden among the cabbages,” he warmly exclaimed.

“He wanted my friend and I to witness what he called the assault, but we gave him scant encouragement. I also saw you the very same day do a very plucky thing in Hyde Park.”

“Oh! I know what you mean. Pshaw! it’s not worth mentioning.”

“Isn’t it? The eyes of our fair hostess tell another story.”

Charley Devereux drained a glass of claret and remained silent.

“As you announced your nationality at the Albion, I know that you are Irish.”

“To the backbone, I hope.”

“Do you reside here?”

“No; I’ve only run over for a few days.”

“I shall be glad to make you an honorary member of my club.”

“What club is it?” asked Charley.

“I belong to two, the Garrick and the Reform. I can make you an honorary member of the Reform; at the Garrick we are powerless.”

“Thanks. I won’t trouble you, my stay is so short. I know, at least I do not know, a member of the Garrick.”

“What’s his name?”

“Well, he’s not worth naming. He’s what you call in this country a cad.”

“We don’t patronize cads in Garrick Street, Covent Garden,” said Percival, somewhat coldly.

“Well, you’ve got one full-blossomed cad amongst you at all events—what we would call in my country a _shoneen_.”

“Of course, as there’s a black sheep in every flock, there’s a shady man in every club. May I ask who this _shoneen_ is?”

Charley Devereux was on the point of uttering the two words “Eugene Percival” when Lindsay burst in.

“I say, you two fellows, you’re snubbing my cellar most awfully. You remind me of two pashas whom I met at a dinner-party at Constantinople, who—”

“Speaking of Constantinople,” interrupted the member of Parliament, “Sir Stafford Northcote on Tuesday night—” commencing a sing-song, Dryasdust House of Commons story which lasted until coffee was announced.

As the gentlemen were ascending the stairs Percival observed to Devereux:

“I took a countrywoman of yours down to dinner.”

“You took my sister.”

“Indeed! You do not resemble one another.”

“There is just a family likeness, that’s all.”

“Do you reside in Dublin?”

“Not exactly; we live in the wildest portion of Connemara.”

“Will you permit me to exchange cards with you?”

“I haven’t got a card, but my name is Devereux.”

“Devereux!” exclaimed Percival, staggering against the wall.

“Yes, Charley Devereux.”

“Of Ballybo, County Mayo?” turning red and white by turns.

“Quite right.”

“And—and—the girl I took down to dinner is _your_ sister?”

“You took Miss Devereux into dinner,” said Charley proudly.

Percival said nothing. The situation revealed itself in a lurid flash. It was too ghastly. Miss Devereux had listened to his miserable story, and, while he imagined he had been amusing her, he had been engaged in digging a pitfall in which it were well he had broken his neck. He had been constructing a pillory wherein he had sat to be pelted with contumely and ridicule. And Devereux, this lion-hearted young Irishman, whose pluck was of the age of chivalry—this splendid specimen of an Irish gentleman whom he had disowned—had written him down a cad. What should he do? What _could_ he do? What could he say? All the water in the Irish Channel were not sufficient to wash him clean of the stains imprinted by his own bovine ignorance. What idiotic folly tempted him to rush into the details of that wretched episode? Why had he not acted as a gentleman? Why had he not replied to the letter of Mrs. Devereux and left his card on his kinsfolk? The affair would have died out then and there, and he would have done his _devoir_. He felt sick and giddy. The worst impeachment is that which comes from one’s self. No sentence so stern, no torture so severe. He felt that, blinded by prejudice, he had acted a mean, unmanly part, and was now hoist on his own petard. Nemesis had followed him, and the sword of Damocles descended how unexpectedly! Of course Miss Devereux despised him. She was civil because conventionality demanded it and because true blood always tells. To her brother he should reveal himself, cost what it would. All that a gentleman can do is to apologize, and the _amende honorable_ was already an overdue draft.

To do Eugene Percival justice, he was not a bad sort of fellow. He was only thoroughly English; and, whilst the English love the Irish individually, collectively they despise them. This farcical ignorance of Ireland and the Irish leads to a deal of misconception, and there are thousands of Saxons who would travel across Central Africa sooner than undertake the four hours between Holyhead and Kingstown, the sixty-three miles separating North Wales from the county of Dublin.

They had reached the drawing-room landing. At the open door Miss Devereux was chatting with considerable animation to Miss Lindsay.

“Mr. Devereux,” said Percival, “will you oblige me by stepping this way?” advancing to where the ladies stood.

“Well, Mr. Percival,” exclaimed Alice Lindsay, “when are we to have your Irish story?”

“Now.”

There was something in the tone that compelled attention. Miss Devereux, with a woman’s quick perception, felt the approaching _dénouement_, and, like a true woman, endeavored to spare this man his utter humiliation.

“Irish stories should be told in Ireland,” she cried.

“There is one Irish story that must be told _here_, Miss Lindsay,” said Percival gravely, “and I would beg your attention for a very brief moment.”

“Why, it must be a very tragic one,” cried the hostess. “You are as grave as the entire senate when Othello addressed them,” to Percival. “_You_, my dear little Irish girl, from being as joyous as Nora Creina, are as sad as poor suffering Erin herself; and you, _caballero mio_,” to Devereux, “have summoned a winter cloud of frown to your brow, behind it thunder. If Mr. Percival insists let us hear his horrible tale in comfort. _Messieurs et mesdames, asseyez vous._”

No one took a seat but the hostess, and she sought a coigne of vantage upon the stairs.

“I hardly know how to begin,” said Percival very slowly. “I can make no _amende_ beyond the utter humiliation the narration of the story will inflict, and no ordeal that I could be put to could possibly prove more bitter. Until five minutes ago I was in utter ignorance that to Miss Devereux and her brother I could claim relationship.”

“Relationship! How awfully jolly!” exclaimed Miss Lindsay, fanning herself violently.

“You, then, are Eugene Percival?” cried Charley Devereux, surveying him with a glance in which scorn and anger struggled for mastery.

“I am Eugene Percival, your kinsman. Stay,” he added as Charley was about to interrupt him. “I ask to be heard—that is all. To err is human, to forgive divine. I have made a ghastly mistake; I now eat the humblest of pie. I can urge nothing in extenuation for my silly small-talk. It was weak, it was shabby. I pillory myself. I beg to assure you, my cousins, that within the last five minutes I have passed through a bitter agony. I did not catch your name, Miss Devereux, when the honor was conferred upon me of taking you down to dinner. I had not the faintest conception who you were whilst my stupid tongue babbled. I was not aware that this gentleman was your brother. I did not know who he was until within five minutes. Fate has been playing at cross purposes with me. I offer no apology for my bad form in not replying to the letters I received. There is none that could be accepted. A chain of circumstances has woven itself which ties me to the earth. I can only say that I earnestly hope some chance may be granted me of showing how anxious I am to redeem myself with my Irish cousins.” And making a deep bow, Eugene Percival hurried down the stairs and from the house.

* * * * *

Upon the day following this _dénouement_ Percival called upon Jack Pommery at the lodgings of the latter in New Bond Street.

“Have you been appointed secretary of legation at Ujiji?” laughed Jack. “You look about as cheerful as if you were in for the yellow fever.”

“Drop chaff, Jack; I want to have a long talk with you.”

“Take that chair, old fellow, and out with it, whatever it is,” cried Pommery, rolling a luxurious arm-chair to his companion and flinging himself upon a sofa.

“Jack, go and call at the Charing Cross Hotel to-day.”

“What to do?”

“Miss Geraldine Devereux is stopping there.”

“Miss who?” demanded the other, springing like an acrobat to his feet.

“Miss Geraldine Devereux, of Ballybo, County Mayo.”

“You don’t mean it, Percival!” a great wave of joy passing over his handsome face.

“I do indeed.”

“How did you come by this?”

“I met her at dinner yesterday at the Lindsays’.”

“What!”

Percival repeated his reply.

“And I was asked there, and refused for a vile whitebait dinner at Greenwich,” said Pommery with a dismal groan.

“She is absolutely charming, Jack—so naïve, so frank, so coquettish, and so pure.”

“Are you hit?”

“I would be if my proof-armor had not been buckled on by my friend Pommery. No, Jack, I want to ask you all about these people, and I’ll tell you why: they are my Irish cousins.”

“Not the—”

“Yes, the writer of one of those fatal letters was Mrs. Devereux; of the other, Charley.”

“This is a bad business, Percival,” observed Pommery after a silence.

“It is a bad business. I am written down a cad, and, by George! I deserve the appellation,” cried Percival, smiting the arm of the chair a severe blow.

“Giving those letters to that ass Minniver was bad form, and I said so.”

“I have got them here. Luckily, Minniver has been down with Bertie Baging for the Ascot week, and, except to old Fladgate, he has never shown them to mortal. Do you know who Devereux turns out to be?”

“Who?”

“The young fellow who so pluckily sat upon the rowdy at the Albion.”

“By Jove!”

“And only fancy, he did not know who Alice Lindsay was until he came to dinner at Curzen Street.”

“By Jove!” repeated Jack Pommery.

Impart a piece of startling intelligence to an Englishman, and he will always exclaim, “By Jove!”

“Now, Jack, tell me all about the Devereux—all that you know. She has younger brothers. Has she a sister?”

“She has.”

“Younger?”

“Yes.”

“Anything like your girl?”

“She is _not_ MY girl, Percival. I only wish that she was,” he added with fierce energy.

“You should have seen how she blushed when I asked her if she liked violets.”

“Percival!” exclaimed Pommery, “that was hardly fair.”

“Don’t agitate yourself, old fellow; the subject was handled, as we say at the office, ‘delicately.’ How old are the younger brothers?”

“One is about eighteen.”

“Bright?”

“Very. He showed me one of Browning’s poems done into Latin, French, and some other language—I think German.”

“You are certain of this, Jack?” cried Percival earnestly.

“I am certain the lad showed them to me, and that he said they were his own translations. He’s in Trinity College at Dublin.”

“What are they going to do with him?”

“They were speaking of the civil service or the Irish bar. _Entre nous_, they haven’t much money, and it’s a wonder they have a stiver, they are so recklessly hospitable. Why, my dear fellow, there were fifteen guests stopping at Ballybo while I was there, and we met a whole caravan traversing the beautiful road that runs from Westport along the Atlantic when _en route_ for the train.”

“This is admirable,” muttered Percival, half thinking aloud.

“What is admirable?”

“Never mind. Is Ballybo a handsome place?”

“It’s a fine old mansion of that order of architecture so much in vogue when Queen Anne was busying herself in distributing largess to Marlborough. It is surrounded by superb trees, in which ten thousand rooks keep up a cawing that is almost deafening. An inlet of the Atlantic almost brings the seaweed to the hall door-steps. The stables are fit for the Duke of Beaufort, and I can tell you there are horses in the stalls that would bring their five hundred guineas at Tattersall’s.”

* * * * *

The “Wild Irishman,” as the express from London to Holyhead has been termed, on account of the almost reckless speed at which it travels, was about to start from Euston Square when Mr. Eugene Percival made his appearance upon the platform, and, walking along the line of carriages, suddenly stopped opposite a first-class _coupé_. The compartment was occupied by a young lady and gentleman. The lady was Miss Geraldine Devereux, the gentleman her brother.

Percival had called at the Charing Cross Hotel, merely leaving cards. His visit was not returned. He sent Miss Devereux a box for the opera, with a superb bouquet from Covent Garden. The box voucher was sent back with the compliments of Mr. Devereux; the flowers Miss Devereux retained. For the few days that his Irish cousins remained in London Eugene Percival made no sign.

Removing his hat, he respectfully bowed to the occupants of the _coupé_. Miss Devereux sat nearest the window at which he stood.

“I have come to beg forgiveness,” he said. “Do not go back to Ireland without uttering my pardon.”

Now, it so happened that Charley Devereux, who had been dining with an old college chum, was in very good humor, all his war-paint having been removed under the pleasurable influences of a renewed friendship. So, thrusting forth his hand, he exclaimed:

“Don’t say anything more about it, Percival. I’m sure you’re sorry. You’ll do better next time, and won’t let your English prejudice bolt across country with you.”

“And you, Miss Devereux?”

“I may forgive you, and perhaps call you cousin, when you shall have made a lengthened tour in my own sweet land.”

“Am I to avoid Ballybo?”

“And commit another mistake?” she archly exclaimed.

“I have done with mistakes for ever.” And as he uttered the words the train moved silently but swiftly away.

About three weeks after Miss Devereux had regained her wild mountain home she was considerably astonished one morning upon receiving from out the post-bag a large, important-looking document with the words, “On Her Majesty’s Service,” in front, and an enormous seal on the back, with the royal arms of England stamped upon the red sealing-wax and “Foreign Office” underneath them.

“Can this be from Eugene Percival?” she thought, as she tore it open and read:

“FOREIGN OFFICE, July 26, 187—.

“DEAR COUSIN GERALDINE DEVEREUX: I enclose a nomination for the
Foreign Office for my cousin, Patrick Sarsfield Devereux, your
brother. From the correspondence which has taken place between my
dear friend Jack Pommery and my kinsman on the subject of his
future, I trust that this opening is one that will prove suitable to
his tastes and his talents. It is not impossible that I may visit
your ‘impossible country’ when Mr. Pommery runs over for the
grouse-shooting. With kindest regards to all my kinsfolk, I remain,
dear Cousin Geraldine Devereux, your friend and cousin,

“EUGENE PERCIVAL.”

“He’s a good fellow after all,” cried Geraldine with streaming eyes, “and has made more than the _amende honorable_ to his Irish cousins.”

ENGLISH STATESMEN IN UNDRESS.
LORD CARLINGFORD AND JOHN FRANCIS MAGUIRE.

The English statesman whose personal acquaintance I first made was the present Lord Carlingford, who was at that time the Hon. Chichester Fortescue, Secretary of State for Ireland in the cabinet of Mr. Gladstone. I had in my possession a letter of introduction to him, but I was unwilling to use it as a means of “interviewing” Mr. Fortescue. I desired to obtain certain information from him which he might not be willing to give; and I did not wish that my possible indiscretion in asking for the information should reflect at all upon the friend who had given me the letter. I wrote to Mr. Fortescue, telling him simply who I was and what I wanted, and asking whether he would permit me to call upon him. I received a note from his secretary, informing me that at a certain hour Mr. Fortescue would receive me at his office in Great George Street, Westminster. This was before the new government offices in Whitehall were completed, and when the various governmental bureaus were scattered about, hither and thither, in houses that were not altogether magnificent or imposing. By an error of my own in estimating the time necessary for a drive from Bayswater to Great George Street, I was some minutes behind the appointed hour; and when I gave my card to the servant in waiting he regarded me with a reproachful air. “You have been asked for, sir,” he said, as he conducted me up-stairs and ushered me into an ante-room very plainly, almost poorly, furnished. In a few moments he reappeared, and, leading me through a narrow hall, opened the door of a larger room, and I found myself in the presence of the Irish secretary: a tall, slim, thin-faced, handsome man, dressed with scrupulous neatness, rather starched and stiff, not unlike Fernando Wood in his prim correctness. Motioning me to a chair in front of his table, he resumed his seat behind it, and the conversation began. Cold and calm at first, he soon warmed with the subject, and spoke with earnestness and freedom, at times with enthusiasm. Her majesty’s government, he assured me, were earnestly anxious to do justice to Ireland; he thought they had proved this by their past acts. If they remained in power they would convince all the world of their sincere desire to remove every legitimate grievance of which Ireland could complain. He appreciated the force of my suggestion that the reflex action of public opinion in America upon public opinion in Ireland was not to be despised. He questioned me closely upon the extent to which the American press was influenced by Irish thought; were there many Irish writers in the New York newspaper offices? who were they? what were their opinions? were the adverse criticisms upon the Irish policy of the imperial government inspired by them, or were these the spontaneous thoughts of American observers?

I began to think I was the interviewed and not the interviewer; but Mr. Fortescue was ready enough to answer questions in his turn. It was quite true, he said, that the land question and the question of higher education in Ireland bristled all over with difficulties. If the demands of the tenant-farmers in Ireland were granted, a precedent would be set up that might be attended with most inconvenient consequences in England; if Mr. Gladstone were to propose a measure for university education in Ireland that would be satisfactory to Cardinal Cullen, he would encounter a storm of opposition from the Irish and English Protestants, and from the even then rapidly-growing secularist party in England, that might overwhelm him. I remember the earnestness with which Mr. Fortescue refuted a chance suggestion of mine that Mr. Gladstone was at heart a foe to the Catholic Church. The very contrary was the case; he leaned, if anything, too much the other way. Archbishop Manning was his near and dear friend. He incurred the suspicion and the latent enmity of the ultra-Protestants, and especially of the Nonconformists, by his unconcealed anxiety to compensate the Irish Catholics for the wrongs they had suffered in the past, and to make the future equable and pleasant for them. In Mr. Fortescue’s belief, an American having it in his power to influence and enlighten American opinion, and especially Irish-American opinion, respecting the real wishes of the leaders of the Liberal party regarding Ireland, could not do a better work than to impress upon the minds of his countrymen the fact that England—at least the England of that day—was heartily and sincerely anxious to do justice to Ireland. The success of the then contemplated measures of the government would depend very much upon the spirit in which the Irish people received them.

Mr. Fortescue was evidently not thoroughly satisfied with the state of feeling in Ireland, and he made some remarks concerning the Irish press that it is not necessary to repeat. He returned again, however, to the subject of the influence that Americans, and Irish-Americans in particular, had upon Irish opinion; and his observations upon this point convinced me that the secret-service department of his bureau was not badly conducted. Towards the end of our conversation I mentioned that I had a letter of introduction to him from ——, and presented it, explaining why I had not done so in the first instance. We had a laugh over what he called my “un-American scrupulousness,” and we parted very good friends. Mr. Fortescue is the possessor of very enviable qualities. I was quite convinced of his sincerity; but I reflected that the fascination of his manner when he was aroused and anxious to make a point might easily blind the judgment. We met occasionally after this from time to time; and I last saw him at his residence at Strawberry Hill, where his wife, the Countess Frances Waldegrave (whose own history is a romance), is the centre of a circle of no small political and social importance. The future of which we had talked in our first interview had become the past: Mr. Gladstone had played his trump cards and had lost his game, Mr. Disraeli reigned in his stead, while Mr. Fortescue had become Lord Carlingford and was not unhappy. But Ireland was not happy yet; and I ventured to say so to his lordship. “What would you have?” he asked—“Catholic university education on Cardinal Cullen’s plan; a tenant-right law that would make the landlord the slave of the occupier; and Home Rule, under which the tragedy of the Kilkenny cats would be enacted all over Ireland until none were left to tell the tale, or tails. _Ce n’est pas possible, mon ami._”

The words “Home Rule” recall the memory of a very dear friend whose acquaintance I made in London, and who has now gone to rest. With sad but pleasant reminiscences I rummage through my letter-cases, filled with cherished epistles, until I come upon a packet tied with black tape and labelled “John Francis Maguire.” He was a splendid man, impulsive and quick, but with a sound judgment that held his emotions under sufficient control; full of lofty and poetic aspirations for his country’s future, but guided in his actions by the most sober and practical common sense. In the midst of arduous political and professional labors, all the more severe from the pressure of a constant struggle with inadequate pecuniary resources, from the demands of an exacting constituency, and from the burning passion of his soul for the happiness of Ireland, he found time for literary work that was at once a source of profit and of pleasure to him. Every one will remember his _Irish in America_ and his _Pontificate of Pius IX._; but it is with a pang that I remember the pages of manuscript that he read to me on my last visit to him. They were portions of a novel he was writing—and it was to be a Jesuitical novel. What Eugene Sue had done to vilify and traduce the Society of Jesus he would do to vindicate and exalt it. He described to me the plot; disputed with me over the proposed _dénouement_; laughed over the skill with which he had introduced well-known personages into the story; and asked me if, under the disguise of Sir Guichet de Nouvelle, I recognized that Don Quixote of Protestantism, Mr. Newdegate.

Mr. Maguire died before his novel was completed—at least, I never heard of its completion. When I first knew him he lived in pleasant apartments in Bessborough Gardens, and there it was I last parted from him. The presentation of my letter of introduction resulted in an invitation to dine with him the next day; and this was the first of a long series of little banquets that we had together, alternately at his apartments and in a cosey room on the third floor of the London Tavern, Fleet Street, where I played the host. Charming were these symposiums, generally held on Saturday nights, because the House was not then in session, and sometimes lasting far beyond midnight. I remember one of these occasions, on a lovely night in June, when, having sat together until two o’clock in the morning, I proposed that we should walk to Pimlico together, where I would leave him at his door. Our route took us through Temple Bar, up the Strand, down Parliament Street, past the Parliament houses and Westminster Abbey, and through St. James Park. The morning air was delicious. At this season of the year the night in London is very short; one can see to read without gaslight as late as nine o’clock, and the stars begin to pale as early as two o’clock in the morning. They were beginning to pale as we left the tavern and began our walk. The moon, hastening to hide itself before the sun arose, threw a soft light over the scene; all that was ugly and commonplace in the glare of day was hidden or disguised; all that was beautiful was arrayed in new and seductive splendor. The Strand was almost deserted; here and there a policeman paced his beat; here and there the form of some poor wretch glided out of the shade of an archway, lingered a moment, and disappeared. Trafalgar Square was glorious; the fountains made music for Marochetti’s lions at the base of Nelson’s pillar, and the little lion on the top of Northumberland House seemed to wag his tail as if beating time to the melody. Presently the grand vista of the Abbey and the Parliament houses opened before us; but scarcely had I glanced at it ere Mr. Maguire hurried me through a narrow passage to the left. “Come,” said he, “let us see where a king’s head fell.” I had seen it before—the little square in Whitehall where Charles I. was beheaded, and where the statue of James II. stands, the king pointing with his sceptre to the spot where the head of his father fell. In the daytime the place has a mean and squalid appearance, although the Crescent and gardens around it are handsome and trim enough. At this moment the surroundings of the place were bathed in a light that hid their deformities and enhanced their beauties, and the memories of the tragic scene enacted there had nothing to disturb them. The ghastly drama re-enacted itself before our mental vision. There was the window of Whitehall Palace in front of which the scaffold had been erected. From this window the king emerged; he stood on the scaffold, with his head erect, wishing to address the people; but the troops filled the place, and the populace were kept at a distance. “I can be heard only by you,” said the king to the soldiers; “I will therefore address to you a few words.” And he repeated to them a little speech which he had prepared. A curious discourse it was—grave and calm, “even to coldness,” as Guizot has it. He had been in the right, he said; every one else was in the wrong; the deprivation of the rights of the sovereign was the true cause of the unhappiness of the people; the people should have no voice in government; it was only on this condition that the kingdom could regain peace and liberty! While he was speaking some one touched the axe. “Do not dull the axe,” he exclaimed; “if it is dull it will hurt me.” The executioner directed him to gather up his long hair under a silk cap which he wore, and the Protestant Bishop Juxon assisted him to arrange it.

“I have,” said the king, “a good cause and a clement God.”

“Yes, sire,” replied Juxon. “There is only one more step before you; it is full of agony, but it is short, although it will transport you from earth to heaven.”

The king replied: “I pass from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown; there I shall fear no sorrow.” Then, after asking the executioner if the block was firmly fixed, and saying to Juxon the mysterious word “Remember!” he knelt down and extended his head upon the block. “I shall say a short prayer,” said he, “and when I extend my hands, then—” In a few moments the king stretched out his hands; the executioner struck, and the head fell directly over the spot where we were then standing.

“It was a wretched piece of work,” said Mr. Maguire as we walked away; “but the men who did it had the courage of their opinions. Who has the courage of his opinions now?”

“Mr. Gladstone, perhaps,” I suggested.

“Yes, no doubt; but what are his opinions? Those of to-day will be discarded to-morrow. He is all on our side now; there is nothing he would not do for us to-day; but to-morrow, if affairs go wrong, he will throw us over, and Ireland and the church may find in him their worst foe. The man wants a balance-wheel,” continued Maguire, warming with his theme as we walked on, “and only the grace of God can give it him. I think sometimes that he will have it yet. I admire him, I esteem him. If he were only a Catholic he would have a guide that would keep him from mischief. There,” said he, as we came to the end of Whitehall—“there is Westminster Hall, where Charles I. received his sentence; and there is Westminster Abbey, where his body was carried in the face of a blinding snow-storm and buried with maimed rites. There, too, is the door through which they carried the body of his murderer, Cromwell, to bury it among the kings. But the ashes of the kings are yet there, while Cromwell’s grave was broken open, his body dragged out and hung upon a gallows in Tyburn. He deserved it, the brute! Do you know the story of how, after his post-mortem execution, his head was cut off and stuck upon a spike on the top of Westminster Hall, just there in front of us, and how it remained there, blackening and withering in the air, until one stormy night it was blown down and picked up by the sentry on guard, who was an old Cromwellian himself? He hid the precious relic under his jacket, and afterwards sold it to a gentleman in Kent, in whose family the skull still remains.”

Had Mr. Maguire lived a few years longer it is probable that the Home-Rule movement would have taken a somewhat different shape, and possibly might have been brought to a successful realization. When I first met him he was engrossed in developing and shaping his ideas on the subject; and I spent a whole night with him in explaining, in all its minutiæ, our own system of duplex government, State and federal, and showing how State rights and federal sovereignty were both preserved. He was the real father of the Home-Rule movement, and to his untimely death must be ascribed, in a great measure, the present apparent collapse of the party. No member of the House of Commons was more generally respected and esteemed than he; Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli alike regarded him with admiration. Uncompromising in principle, he knew how to be firm without being offensive; and he did not commit the too common error of insisting upon impossibilities. Even Mr. Newdegate cherished a sneaking liking for the man; and Mr. Maguire once happened to let me into the secret of that strange affection. “I can turn the laugh on him any day,” said he, “and if it comes to serious work he gets the worst of it; but often it is best to let him have his fling. Occasionally I give him a lift over a stile, knowing quite well that if he goes on a little farther he will tumble into the ditch and scramble out all covered with mud.”

Respecting Home Rule, Mr. Maguire’s favorite idea was a confederation of the three kingdoms, England, Ireland, and Scotland, upon such a basis as that of our Union, with a written constitution defining with exactness the limits of provincial autonomy and of imperial sovereignty. It was to perfect this plan that he made me expound to him, in the most minute detail, the workings of our own duplex system of government; and among his papers should have been found an elaborate scheme for the British Confederation, the joint result of our deliberations. I was summoned to these momentous conferences by such notes as these—and I select with a sad heart the last I received from him, a few months before his death:

“I shall be at home this evening altogether, and would be glad to
see you, and we could spend an hour or two over wine or
whiskey-punch. Or I shall be at home to-morrow after seven o’clock.
Send me a line quick to say when you will come.”

“Wine” and “whiskey-punch” had an esoteric meaning as well as their ordinary significance; for “wine” meant mere gossip, while “whiskey-punch” was understood to be the accompaniment of very serious political discussions.

THE CREATED WISDOM.[163]
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
III.

My flowers are flowers of gladness: mine
The boughs of honor and of grace:
Pure as the first bud of the vine
My fragrance freshens all the place.

The mother of fair Love am I:
With me is Wisdom’s name and praise:
With me are Hope, and Knowledge high,
And sacred Fear, and peaceful days.

Be strong all ye that love your God:
He maketh Wisdom to abound
Like Tigris swollen with vernal flood,
Like broad Euphrates harvest-crowned.

Through garden-plots my course I took
To bathe the beds of herb and tree:
Then to a river swelled my brook:—
Ere long my river was a sea.

More high that sea shall rise, and shine
Far off, a prophet-beam of morn,
Because my doctrine is not mine,
But light of God for seers unborn.

Footnote 163:

Ecclesiasticus xxiv.

LOPE DE VEGA.

A prolific playwright, a popular poet, a voluminous romance writer, an author whose fecundity is equalled only by the elder Dumas, the contemporary of Shakspere, the friend of Cervantes, the intimate and guide of Calderon, the founder of the Spanish national drama—Lope de Vega was all these, and yet today he is carefully forgotten. His biography even remains unwritten. The attempt, it is true, has been made, with more or less success, in England by Lord Holland, in America by Mr. Ticknor, and in France by M. Damas-Hinard. None is fully satisfactory; all three are too prejudiced, the first two against him, the last in his favor. Mr. Ticknor’s is the fairest and the ablest. But the space in a history of literature which can be assigned to any one author is necessarily too limited to permit the introduction of a full-length portrait; with a slight sketch, or a kit-cat at best, we must content ourselves. The articles in the various encyclopædias and biographical dictionaries are either scant or in great part taken from Lord Holland’s book. Much biographical material exists, scattered here and there, and needing only judicious gleaning. But a few months after his death _La Fama Postuma_, a eulogy containing many curious details of his manner of life, was published by his friend and follower, Montalvan, whom Valdivielso calls the “first-born of Lope de Vega’s genius.” The allusions to him in the works of his contemporaries are copious; but his bare biography can be condensed into a few lines.

Lope Felix de Vega Carpio was born at Madrid, November 25, 1562. He was a precocious child, reading Latin as well as Spanish at the age of five, and at eleven he wrote his first plays. Left alone in the world at the age of fourteen by the death of his father, also a poet, he travelled as far as Segovia with a school-fellow. Their money gave out, and when they attempted to sell a gold chain to pay their way back they were arrested. The _corregidor_ before whom they were brought, seeing that they were but school-boys, kindly sent them back to Madrid in care of an _alguacil_. At fifteen Lope was a soldier warring in Portugal and Africa. At sixteen he was the page and secretary of Geronimo Manrique, Bishop of Avila, and also studied and took the degree of Bachelor at the University of Alcala. While in the bishop’s house he wrote a few eclogues and a pastoral comedy. Then he became the secretary of Antonio, the grandson of the great Duke of Alva; his _Arcadia_, written then, is more or less an account of the gallant adventures of his patron. Returning to the bishop, he was about to become a priest when he fell in love, and in 1584 he married Doña Isabella d’Urbina. Quarrelling with a _hidalgo_ of little reputation, he was arrested, by the aid of Claudio Conde released from prison, and exiled; he lived two years in Valencia, and there he first regularly wrote for the stage. Shortly after his return to Madrid his wife died, and in conjugal despair he embarked on the famous Armada, finding time to write a poem, “The Beauty of Angelica,” a continuation of the _Orlando Furioso_, before the dispersion and destruction of the great fleet by Drake. After travelling in Italy he returned to Spain and became the secretary of the Marquis of Sarria. In 1597 he married Doña Juana de Guardio. For nearly ten years Lope de Vega seems to have been quietly happy, devoting himself to the care of his son Carlos, but in 1607 or 1608 both his wife and his son died, leaving him an infant daughter. During these years he had been writing steadily for the stage; in 1609 he delivered his _Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_, and in the same year he became a priest. He was also a Familiar of the Inquisition—an honorary distinction, attesting the purity of his Catholic blood, and conferring the privilege of being called into the service of the institution. In 1625, according to Mr. Ticknor, “he entered the congregation of the native priesthood of Madrid, and was so faithful and exact in the performance of his duties that in 1628 he was elected to be its chief chaplain.” After working for the theatre for forty years, in 1630 he definitely renounced dramatic authorship. In 1628 the pope, Urban VIII., wrote him an autograph letter, conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity and naming him a Knight of the Order of Malta. For more than twenty-five years he daily devoted some portion of his time to the service of the church; on the title-page of his plays he calls himself Frey Lope de Vega, Familiar of the Inquisition, and the last important work he published was _Dorotea_, a long prose romance in dialogue, probably slightly autobiographical. Finally, on August 27, 1635, at the age of seventy-three, Lope Felix de Vega Carpio died. The funeral ceremonies, lasting nine days, were magnificent; the eulogistic poems published in Spain and Italy would fill several volumes; and “most solemn of all,” says Mr. Ticknor, generally disposed to underrate Lope de Vega’s popularity and ability, “was the mourning of the multitude, from whose dense mass audible sobs burst forth as his remains slowly descended from their sight into the house appointed for all living.”

For forty years the works of Lope de Vega had filled the theatres not only of Spain but of all Europe. There were but two dramatic companies in Madrid when he began to write; there were forty when he ceased. He composed over fifteen hundred dramas and an unknown number of lighter pieces, in addition to his non-theatrical works. He was as popular as he was prolific. Not only in Europe but in America were his plays performed. One of his comedies, the _Fuerza Lastimosa_, was even exhibited within the seraglio at Constantinople. His merit was so universally recognized that to call anything a _Lope_ was to stamp it as being sterling; it was sufficient to say _es de Lope_. When the king and queen of Spain met him in the street they caused their carriage to stop, that they might better see the illustrious man. The Spanish dramatists of his own and the succeeding age did not hesitate to call him their master. Tirso de Molina, Alarcon, Calderon, and Guillen de Castro hail him as their chief. And he was as popular a man as he was an author; he was personally beloved by nearly all his contemporaries; he had few enemies and many friends. A gentleman by birth, breeding, and education, he had a kind word for all. He was handsome and agile. He wittily declared that he disliked only those who ask a person’s age without matrimonial intentions, those who take snuff in the presence of their superiors, those old men who dye their locks, those churchmen who consult gypsies, and those men who, though born of woman, yet speak ill of the sex.

Although it is as a playwright that he is best known, yet he was the author of many other works. He wrote two heroic, four mythological, four historical poems (among which was _La Dragontea_, devoted to the abuse of Sir Francis Drake), one burlesque (_La Gatomachia_, describing the loves and rivalries of two cats), many descriptive and didactic verses, and a multitude of sonnets and epistles. He was also the author of eight almost interminable prose novels. His plays, however, are the noblest monument of his genius, although he himself thought otherwise. He declared that his _autos_ (a sort of revival of the mysteries and moralities of the middle ages) were his best works, and regretted that he had not devoted his whole life to religious poetry.

His dramas (the Spanish word _comedias_ meaning merely plays) may be roughly divided into three classes:

1. Comedies of common life, or domestic dramas;

2. Heroic dramas, which perhaps might sometimes be called tragedies; and

3. Comedies of intrigue, or _comedias de capa y espada_ (comedies of Cloak and Sword, as the Spanish call them, from those frequently-used “properties”).

He also wrote religious plays, some, like the _autos_, resembling the mysteries and moralities, others more infused with a modern and secular spirit. He often chose Scriptural subjects for his plays, and in some of his heroic dramas the heroes are holy men and saints. But it is especially in the _comedias de capa y espada_ that he excelled. They were interesting stories thrown into dramatic shape and written with the view of exciting surprise and curiosity. Only those ignorant of the Spanish habits and the Spanish customs of that day will reproach him for his frequent use of duels and disguises. He faithfully transcribed the romantic existence of the time. A rigid examiner may declare that his most successful pieces were comedies of intrigue rather than comedies of manners. They please by their plot, always ingenious and almost always original; by their interest, always sustained and exciting. Lope de Vega was a thorough master of stage effect. He weaves and reweaves the web and woof of his story, gaining and retaining the attention of the spectator by the growing interest. We are carried rapidly along by the skill of the dramatist, sometimes in spite of ourselves. Even in the best of his plays the incidents are often improbable, but in our enjoyment we can readily pardon this. When Shakspere has called Bohemia a desert country by the sea, and Beaumont and Fletcher speak of Naples as though it were an island, it would indeed be strange if Lope were exempt from such errors. In one play we find Adam and Eve “dressed very gallantly after the French fashion”; in another Nero sings a serenade in the streets of Rome. The American Indians discourse of Diana and Phœbus; Cyrus the Great, after his ascension to the throne, marries a shepherdess; Job, David, Jeremias, and St. John the Baptist are introduced in one play; and in “The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus,” among the _dramatis personæ_ are Providence, Imagination, The Christian Religion, Idolatry, and a Demon. Haste is hardly an excuse for this, and De Vega worked in haste. The elder Dumas wrote a novel in seventy-six consecutive hours. For fifteen days De Vega wrote an act a day, and more than one hundred of his plays were written within twenty-four hours each. At least this seems to be the meaning of

“Pues mas de ciento en horas veinticuatro
Pasaron de las musas al teatro.”