Part 21

A short time ago Davenant and myself received an invitation to spend a few days with Villars. His favourite hunter, Sir Peter, had thrown him or fallen with him, I forget which, and after being a little put to rights, as he expressed it, at the little country place where the accident happened, he had been removed to the Hall, and ordered to keep himself quiet. There seemed to be some chance of his compliance with this admonition, as the rest of his family were all absent, and there was not a house within five miles; but in order to counteract these favourable symptoms as much as possible, he summoned us to his sofa. Cecil and Villars are the antipodes of one another; and, as is commonly the case, are the fondest friends upon all occasions, because they never can agree upon one.

We went accordingly, and were rejoiced to find our friend, pale to be sure, and very intimate with crutches, but still apparently free from pain, and enjoying that medicinal level of spirits which is a better preservative against fever than you will easily find from the lancet or the draught. He congratulated himself upon the safety of his nose, which Mr. Perrott the apothecary had pronounced broken, and only lamented the loss of his boot, which it had been necessary to cut from his leg. In a short time we quite forgot that he was in the slightest degree damaged, and conversed on divers topics without any intrusive compassion for his flannel and his slipper.

And first, as in duty bound, we began to discuss the _Quarterly Magazine_, and its past success, and its future hopes, and its patrons, and its contributors. Davenant was wonderfully angry because some “fathomless blockheads” found obscurities in his lyrical poem. “If there were any descendings into the deep fountains of thought, any abstruse researches ‘into the mind of man’--in short, to speak plainly, if there were anything in the poem which a man might be very proud to risk his reputation upon, then one might be prepared for darkness and coldness in this improving and understanding age; but a mere fancy piece like this, as simple in design as it is in execution--you know, Marmaduke, that incapacity to comprehend must be either gross stupidity or supreme affectation.”

“I think much may be said for the ‘blockheads,’” observed Marmaduke, shaking his head.

“You think no such thing,” said Davenant, “and you feel that you think no such thing: I shall detest you, Villars, if you ‘write yourself down an ass,’ merely for the sake of telling me I am one.”

“You know, my dear Davenant,” said Villars, “you know you never detested any body in your life, except, perhaps, a few of the commentators upon Shakespeare, and the critic who considered Campbell the first poet of the day and Wordsworth the second. But seriously, I cannot conceive why you are ruffled about your verses; you know they are admired, as Mr. Rigge says of his soap, by all the best judges; not to go out of our own circle, you know Lady Mary, and Tristram, and Gerard, who are worth all the world, think them about the best things going; nay, I am not clear that our good friend Joyeuse has not some suspicion of the kind, only he never speaks a word of truth upon any subject. And, loaded as you are with all these accumulated commendations, you want to add the weight of my valueless voice to your burthen, and to----”

“There never was a man more mistaken; what should I care for your opinion? It is not worth a straw, it is not worth ‘Gertrude of Wyoming’ to me. But I am in a passion when I see a tolerably clever man making a fool of himself wilfully. I read the poem to your sister, and she understood it perfectly.”

“Then you persuaded her first that she was a clever girl, and she thought her comprehension would confirm the idea. I will wager a beauty against a bottle, or a haunch of venison against a page of rhyme, or ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ against ‘The Excursion,’ or any other boundless odds which you like to suggest, that with the same object in view she shall admire the Iliad or dote upon the Koran.”

“There is no answer to such an argument. All I know is, that Amelia found nothing difficult in the poem.”

“What! she told you so, I suppose.”

“No; her eyes did.”

“Then her eyes lied confoundedly. Never, my dear Davenant--never, while you live, believe in the language of the eyes. I would rather believe in the miracles of Apollonius, or the infallibility of the Pope of Rome, or the invincibility of the French army. I believed a pretty piercing pair once, which told me the wearer was very fond of a particular person, and I cultivated my whiskers accordingly, and did double duty at my glass. By Paphos and its patroness, she went off in a month with a tall captain of fusiliers, and left me to despondency and the new novel.”

“And you longed to be so deceived again,” said Davenant.

“No; it was very fatiguing. Never, while you live, believe in the language of the eyes. But you will, because you were born to be a fool, and you must fulfil your destiny. As Rousseau says--he is somewhere about the room----”

“I have him in my hand,” said Davenant; “what a delightful little book! I dote upon the size, and the binding, and the type, and the----”

“Yes; he was of great service to me a fortnight ago, when my hurt was rather annoying at night. My people prescribed opium, and I used to take Jean Jacques instead. But this way is my treasure-house of reading: _eh! le voici!_” And he led us up to a bookcase where was conspicuously placed an immense edition of Voltaire, and began taking down the volumes and expressing the dotage of his delight with wonderful rapidity. “Ah! Alzire! charming--and Merope; you are going to talk about Shakespeare, Davenant. Hold your tongue!--a noisy, gross, fatiguing--no, no: the French stage for me!--_Eh! ma belle Zaïre!_--the French stage for me!--_tout dort, tout est tranquille, et_--and Candide! oh! I could laugh for a century. _Et puis--la Pucelle! oh, pour le coup_----”

And _le coup_ came with a vengeance; for Davenant, who hates a French play worse than poison, had just found something overpoweringly ridiculous in the woes of “L’Orphelin de la Chine,” and bursting into an ungovernable shriek of laughter, dropped some six or seven quarto volumes upon the wounded foot of our unfortunate stoic. He fell on the floor, in agony, and almost in a passion.

“Damnation!--_n’importe!_ My sweet Davenant, how could you---- Peregrine, my good fellow, do pull the bell! Horrible! Why, Cecil, how out of your wits you look! _Ave Maria! Vive la bagatelle!_ Why you look like a _diable_!--like a physician called in too late--_mort de ma vie!_--or like a--_monstre_!--like a wood demon at the English Opera House. Ring again, Courtenay! Ha, ha!--I played one myself once--_Oh! que c’est affreux!_--for a wager, ha, ha!--Oh!--with a long torch, ha, ha!--fire and brimstone!--with long black hair--_peste!_--but it would never stand on end like yours! _oh que non!_ Ring again, Courtenay!--_Eh! Perpignan!_ here has been a fall! a fall,--as they say upon ‘Change. _Cher Perpignan_: take me to bed, Perpignan; take it easy--_doucement!_ Ah! the wood demon, Davenant! I shall never get over it!--ha, ha!--Oh!----”

And thus was Marmaduke carried off, laughing, and screaming, and jesting, and swearing, by turns. His medical attendant was summoned, and we saw him no more that night; he sent us word that he was as well as could be expected, but that he should never get over the wood demon, in spite of which consolatory intelligence Davenant wore a Tyburn countenance the whole evening.

We met, however, the next morning, and proceeded most laudably to remember nothing of the accident but its absurdity. “I never found Voltaire heavy before,” said Villars, shaking Davenant by the hand; “but you poets of the Lake are so horribly in the habit of taking liberties with your own feet that you have no compassion at all for those of your friends. Mercy upon my five toes! they will not meet in a boot for a twelvemonth; and now, _àpropos de bottes_, we must have some breakfast.”

Rain confined us to the house, the newspapers were full of advertisements, and the billiard-table was undergoing repair. Davenant endeavoured to define intensity, and I endeavoured to sleep; Marmaduke struck his sister’s tambourine, and the great clock struck one. We began to feel as uncomfortably idle as a gaol-bird who has just been put in, or a Minister who has just been turned out. At last some notice was taken of two miniatures of our friend and his sister, which had been done many years ago, and now hung on opposite sides of the mantelpiece, gazing tenderly at one another in all the holiday magnificence which was conferred by laced cap and pink ribbons upon the one, and by sky-blue jacket and sugar-loaf buttons upon the other. Hence we began to talk of painting, and of “Raphael, Correggio, and stuff,” until it was determined that we should proceed to make a pilgrimage through a long gallery of family portraits, which Marmaduke assured us had been covered with commendations and cobwebs ever since he left his cradle. He hobbled before us on his crutches, and made a very sufficient cicerone. Marmaduke has no wit; but he has a certain off-hand manner which often passes for it, and is sometimes as good a thing.

“That old gentleman,” he began, pointing to a magnificent fellow in rich chain armour, whose effigies occupied one end of the gallery, “that old gentleman is the founder of the family. Blessings on his beard! I almost fancy it has grown longer since I saw it last. He fought inordinately at Harfleur and Agincourt, was eminently admired and bruised, won a whole grove of laurels, and lost three fingers and a thumb. See, over his head is the crest which was his guerdon; a little finger rampant, and the motto blazoned gorgeously round, ‘_Mon doyt est mon droit!_’”

“A splendid servant of the sword,” said Davenant; “what a glorious scope of forehead, and what a lowering decision in the upper lip. A real soldier! He would have cleft down a dozen of your modern male _figurantes_!”

“Perhaps so,” replied Villars; “but you see he made a bad hand of it, notwithstanding. His nephew, there, is something more soberly habited, but he was not a jot less mad. Who would dream of such a frenzy in sackcloth and sad countenance? He was a follower of Wyckliffe before it was the fashion, and----”

“An excellent piece of workmanship too! I like to see some fury in a man’s faith. Who can endure a minister of the gospel mounting his pulpit at Marylebone, with his well-ordered bands, and his clean manuscript, and his matter-of-fact disquisition, and his matter-of-course tone! That bald apostle has lips I could have listened to: he might have been an enthusiast, or a bigot, or a madman, or e’en what you will; but he has a show of zeal, and an assumption of authority; there is fire about the old man!”

“There was once,” said Marmaduke, “for he was burned in Smithfield. Come hither, here is a young fellow you will admire--Everard the Beautiful (by the way, they say he is like me), who fell in love with the pretty Baroness de Pomeroy. He used to sing under her balcony at midnight, out of pure gallantry, and out of all tune: catching sighs from the high window, and colds from the high wind. He was full three years wailing and whispering, and dreaming and dying, and smarting in the left breast, and sonneting in the left turret. At last came the fifth act of the drama, death and happiness blended together with strict poetic propriety; the fates threw him into her arms one night, and the baron threw him into the moat one morning.”

“I loathe and detest that eternal sneer of yours. You believe and feel, Marmaduke, although you are too weak to confess it, that the life you have described, a turbid unresting sea of passion and anxiety, and hope and fear, and brief calm and long madness, is worth--oh! twenty times over--the sleepy river of a pedant’s philosophy, or the dirty ditch-water of your own clumsy indifference.”

“Why, my dear Davenant,” said Marmaduke, quietly, “you know love has its ditch-water occasionally; my poor ancestor found it so. But pass on. Here is a courtier of Queen Elizabeth’s day, lying on the green sward in despondency and an attitude, with a myriad of cares and a bunch of daffy-down-dillies in his bosom. There is your true cavalier; a health to short wit and long spurs, blue eyes and white satin! The race has been quite extinct since rapiers went out and political economists came in.”

“I wish,” muttered Cecil, “I wish I had lived with those men. To have had Spenser for my idol, or Sydney for my friend--to have held Leicester’s mantle at court, or Raleigh’s back-hand at tennis--to have stormed a town with Drake, or a bottle with Shakespeare--by Elizabeth’s ruff, it would have been worth an eternity! That was your age for choice spirits!”

“You will find very choice spirits at the Hummums,” said Marmaduke; “but we are getting into the Great Rebellion. It abounded in good subjects--for the pencil, I mean, not for the prince. Never was the land so sorely plagued with dire confusion and daubed canvas. There is silly Sir Lacy who lost his head, and was none the poorer; and sillier Sir Maurice, who lost his lands, and was many acres the poorer: and there is honest Sir Paul, who came in with the Restoration, and wrote my favourite song. Ha, Davenant!

“‘For prince or for prig, Long locks or flowery wig, I don’t care a fig!-- Fill the glasses. So I may hold my land, And my bottle in my hand, And moisten life’s sand While it passes.’”

There was a curious portrait a little farther on--a beautiful and interesting woman, as far as neck and bosom could give us any information; but in place of her countenance was painted a thick black veil. I asked for her history. “Oh,” said Villars, “that damosel was called Priscilla the Penniless. She was wonderfully killing, but of course that is not the reason she is veiled. Her uncle, the existing head of the family, struck her face out of the picture, and her name out of his will, because she married a young Roundhead, who had no merit but his insolence and no fortune but his sword.”

“What a detestable fool!” said Davenant, meaning the uncle.

“I think she was,” said Marmaduke, meaning the niece. “_Mais allons_; let me show you one more set of features, and we will adjourn. Here is my earliest and most complete idea of feminine beauty. Down on your knees, Davenant, and worship. The fairy-like symmetry of the shape, and the pretty threatening of the right arm, and the admirable nonchalance of the left, and the studied tranquillity of the black hair, and the eloquent malignity of the dark eyes, and the exquisite caprice of the nose, and the laughing scorn of her little lips! By Venus’ dimple, Davenant, I have stood here, and talked rhapsodies to her for hours.”

“Pray give us one now,” said Cecil, laughing.

“I will. Fairest of Nature’s works! perfection in duodecimo! I speak to you, and you do not hear; I question you, and you do not answer: but I read your taste in your dress, and your character in your countenance. You are the brightest of all earthly beauties. You would call me a blockhead if I called you a goddess; you are fashioned for a drawing-room, and not for Olympus--for champagne, and not for nectar; you are born for conquest and for mirth, to busy your delicate brain with the slaves of to-day, and to snap your delicate fingers at the slaves of yesterday; epigrams only are indited to your charms, witticisms only are uttered in your presence; you think laughter the elixir vitæ, and a folio of theology poison; you look with contempt on the Damon who has died for your sake, and with kindness on the fool who bows to the ground and vows he is ‘yours entire,’ head and hand, pen and pistol, from infancy to age, and from shining ringlet to shoe-ribbon!”

“Admirable!” cried Cecil, “and after all the woman is nothing extraordinary.”

“_Chacun a son goût_,” said Villars.

“She has no poetry about her,” said the first.

“I never write poetry about anybody,” said the second.

“She is not guilty of intellect,” said the reviler.

“She is guilty of coquetry,” said the admirer.

“She would never understand Milton,” said the poet.

“She would dance divinely,” said the fashionable.

“You are over head and ears in love,” said Davenant, laughing immensely.

“She died anno Domini seventeen hundred!” said Marmaduke, with inestimable gravity; and so we left the gallery.

We parted from our friend the next morning. If perfect indifference and composure in all trials and temptations can constitute happiness, Villars will be a happy man; but there is something repulsive in his very happiness. Which shall I prefer? Marmaduke, with his unsunned and unclouded weather, or Davenant, with his eternal alternation of bright glow and fleeting shower?

I could never settle the point.

LEONORA.

Poor Alonzo! He was the best friend that ever drank Xeres: he picked me out of the Guadalquivir, when I deemed I had said my last prayer.

It was a very conciliating introduction. I never in my life made a friend of a man to whom I was introduced in a formal kind of way, with bows from both parties, and cordiality from neither. I love something more stirring, more animated; the river of life is at best but a quiet stupid stream, and I want an occasional pebble to ruffle its surface withal. The most agreeable introductions that ever fell to my lot were these--my introduction to Pendragon, who was overturned with me in the York Mail; my introduction to Eliza, who contrived to faint in my arms on board the _Albion_ packet; and my introduction to Alonzo, who picked me out of the Guadalquivir.

I was strolling beside it on a fine moonlight night, after a brilliant and fatiguing party, at which the Lady Isidora had made ten conquests, and Don Pedro had told twenty stories: I was tired to death of dancing and iced waters, glaring lights and lemonade; and as I looked on the sleepy wave, and the dark trees, and the cloudless sky, I felt that I could wander there for ever, and dream of poetry, and--two or three friends.

The sound of a guitar and a sweet voice waked me; I do not know why I always associate the ideas of pleasant tones and bright eyes together; but I cannot help it, and of course I was very anxious to see the musician of the Guadalquivir. I clambered, by the aid of cracked stones, and bushes which hung to them, to the summit of a low wall; and looking down perceived a cavalier sitting with a lady under a grove of sycamores. The cavalier seemed to have seen hardly seventeen winters; he was slender and tall, with a ruddy complexion, black hair, and a quick merry eye. The lady appeared full five years older; her eyes were as quick, and her ringlets as black, and her complexion as warm, but more delicate: they were evidently brother and sister; but that was a matter of indifference to me.

I heard a Spanish song upon the fall of the Abencerrage, and another upon the exploits of the Cid: then the lady began an Italian ditty, but she had not accomplished the first stanza when a decayed stone gave way, and carried me through all the intricacies of bush and bramble into the cold bed of the river. I could not swim a stroke.

I remember nothing more until the minute when I opened my eyes, and found myself in a pretty summer-house, very wet and very cold, with Alonzo and his sister leaning over me. “For the love of heaven” were the first words I heard, “run, Alonzo, to call the servants.”

“I wait,” said Alonzo, “to hear him speak. If he be a Frenchman he goes to the bottom again.”

The Fates be thanked that I was born in Derbyshire, and called Sir Harry my father; if I had bathed in the Seine instead of the Derwent, I had rued my parentage bitterly. Alonzo detested the French.

From that time we were always together. They were orphans, and had scarcely a relation in the world except an aunt who had gone to the cloister, and an uncle who had crossed the sea, and a rich cousin who had betaken himself St. Jerome knew whither; but Alonzo, who had a much nearer concern in the matter, seemed to know little enough about it. They had travelled much, and Leonora was mistress apparently of the literature of all Europe; yet they went rarely into company, for they doted upon one another with a love so perfect and so engrossing, that you might have fancied them, as they fancied themselves, alone in the world, with no toil and no pleasure, but solitary walks, and songs of tenderness, and gazings upon one another’s eyes. If ever perfection existed in woman, it existed here. I do not know why I did not fall in love with Leonora; but to be sure I was in love with five or six at a time.

A few months flew delightfully away. Leonora taught me Spanish, and Alonzo taught me to swim. Every morning was occupied with romantic excursions by water or by land, and every evening was beguiled with literary conversation or music from the loveliest voice and the most eloquent strings that ever I had the fortune to listen to. And when we parted, we parted with warm hearts, and pleasant anticipations, and affectionate tears. In two brief years those hearts were separated, and those anticipations were blighted for ever, and those tears were exchanged for tears of bitterness and of mourning.

The troubles of Spain commenced; and my poor Alonzo joined the Patriots, and fell in his first campaign. Leonora had been--not a heroine, for I hate heroines--but a noble woman. She herself had decorated the young victim whom she sacrificed to her country’s good; she had embroidered the lace on his uniform with her own hand; she had given him the scarf which was found turned round his arm on the field; and she had smiled mournfully as she bade him wear it till some one more beautiful or more beloved had chosen him for her knight. And when he had girded on his father’s sword, and lingered with his hand upon his courser’s mane, she had said “farewell” in a firm voice, and wept while she said it.

It was on a journey to Scotland that I passed through the small village in which the Spanish lady had shrouded her fading beauty and her breaking heart. I sent up my name to her, and was admitted into her little drawing-room immediately. Oh! how altered she seemed that day. All the colour had disappeared from her cheek, and all the freshness from her lip; she had still the white hand and arm, which I had seen running so lightly over the strings of her theorbo, but they were wasted terribly away; and though her long dark locks were braided as carefully as they had been in happier days, they did not communicate the idea of brightness and brilliancy which they had been wont to scatter over her countenance. She endeavoured to rise from the sofa as I entered; but the effort was too great for her, and she sat down without speaking. She was evidently dying; and the contrast between the parting and the meeting, and the vague vision of the past and the melancholy reality of the present, struck me so forcibly and so sadly, that I stayed with my hand on the door and burst into tears.

“We are not to weep thus,” she said; “he fell like a true Spaniard, and I only regret that I was not born a man, that I might have put my rifle to my shoulder and died with my hand in his. Pray sit down; it is a long time since I have seen any friend who can talk to me of the old days.”