Part 37

"Ay, but you have a weakness for diamonds," urged Mr. Mordaunt, an old admirer, who was very much _au courant_ as to the fair Judith's history and habits, had lent her money when she was losing at basset, and had diplomatized with her creditors for her. "Witness that cross the Jew sold you the other day."

Lady Judith reddened angrily. The same Jew dealer who sold her the jewel had insisted upon having it back from her when he discovered her inability to pay for it, threatening to prosecute her for obtaining goods under false pretenses.

"Mr. Topsparkle's diamonds--they belonged to his mother--are historical. His maternal grandfather was an Amsterdam Jew, and the greatest diamond merchant of his time. He had mills where the gems were ground as corn is ground in our country, and seem to have been as plentiful as corn. Egad, Lady Judith, how you would blaze in the Topsparkle diamonds!"

"Mr. Topsparkle must be sixty years of age!" exclaimed, the lady, with sovereign contempt.

"Nobody supposes you would marry him for his youth or his personal attractions. Yet he is by no means a bad-looking man, and he has had plenty of adventures in his day, I can assure your Ladyship. _Il a vécu_, as our neighbors say: Topsparkle is no simpleton. When he set out upon the grand tour nearly forty years ago, he carried with him about as scandalous a reputation as a gentleman of fashion could enjoy. He had been cut by all the strait-laced people; and it is only the fact of his incalculable wealth which has opened the doors of decent houses for him since his return."

"I thank you for the compliment implied in your recommendation of him to me as a husband," said Lady Judith, drawing herself up with that Juno-like air which made her seem half a head taller, and which accentuated every curve of her superb torso. "He is apparently a gentleman whom it would be a disgrace to know,"

"Oh, your Ladyship must be aware that a reformed rake makes the best husband. And since Topsparkle went on the Continent he has acquired a new reputation as a wit and a man of letters. He wrote an Assyrian story in the Italian language, about which the town raved a few years ago--a sort of demon story, ever so much cleverer than Voltaire's fanciful novels. Everybody was reading or pretending to read it."

"Oh, was that his?" exclaimed Judith, who read everything. "It was mighty clever. I begin to think better of your Topsparkle personage."

Five minutes afterwards, strolling languidly amid the crowd, with a plain cousin at her elbow for foil and duenna, Lady Judith met Mr. Topsparkle walking with no less a person than her father.

Lord Bramber enjoyed the privilege of an antique hereditary gout, and came to Bath every season for the waters. He was a man of imposing figure, at once tall and bulky, but he carried his vast proportions with dignity and ease. He was said to have been the handsomest man of his day, and had been admired even by an age which could boast of "Hervey the Handsome," John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and the irresistible Henry St. John. Basking in that broad sunshine of popularity which is the portion of a man of high birth, graceful manners, and good looks, Lord Bramber had squandered a handsome fortune right royally, and now, at five-and-fifty, was as near insolvency as a gentleman dare be. His house in Pulteney Street was a kind of haven, to which he brought his family when London creditors began to be implacable. He had even thoughts of emigrating to Holland or Belgium, or to some old Roman town in the sunny South of France, where he might live upon his wife's pin-money, which happily was protected by stringent settlements and incorruptible trustees.

He had married two out of three daughters well, but not brilliantly. Judith was the youngest of the three, and she was the flower of the flock. She had been foolish, very foolish, about Lord Lavendale, and a faint cloud of scandal had hung over her name ever since her affair with that too notorious rake. Admirers she had by the score, but since the Lavendale entanglement there had been no serious advances from any suitor of mark.

But now Mr. Topsparkle, one of the wealthiest commoners in Great Britain, was obviously smitten with Lady Judith's perfections, and had a keen air which seemed to mean business, Lord Bramber thought. He had obtained an introduction to the earl within the last half-hour, and had not concealed his admiration for the earl's daughter. He had entreated the honor of a formal introduction to the exquisite creature with whom he had conversed on sportive terms last night at the Assembly Rooms.

Lady Judith acknowledged the introduction with the air of a queen to whom courtiers and compliments were as the gadflies of summer. She fanned herself listlessly, and stared about her while Mr. Topsparkle was talking.

"I vow, there is Mrs. Margetson," she exclaimed, recognizing an acquaintance across the crowd: "I have not seen her for a century. Heavens, how old and yellow she is looking--yellower even than you, Mattie!" this last by way of aside to her plain cousin.

"I hope you bear me no malice for my pertinacity last night, Lady Judith," murmured Topsparkle, insinuatingly.

"Malice, my good sir! I protest I never bear malice. To be malicious, one's feelings must be engaged; and you would hardly expect mine to be concerned in the mystifications of a dancing-room."

She looked over his head as she talked to him, still on the watch for familiar faces among the crowd, smiling at one, bowing at another. Mr. Topsparkle was savage at not being able to engage her attention. At Venice, whence he had come lately, all the women had courted him, hanging upon his words, adoring him as the keenest wit of his day.

He was an attenuated and rather effeminate person, exquisitely dressed and powdered, and not without a suspicion of rouge upon his hollow cheeks or of Vandyke brown upon his delicately penciled eyebrows. He, like Lord Bramber, presented the wreck of manly beauty; but whereas Bramber suggested a three-master of goodly bulk and tonnage, battered but still weather-proof and seaworthy, Topsparkle had the air of a delicate pinnace which time and tempest had worn to a mere phantasmal bark that the first storm would scatter into ruin.

He had hardly the air of a gentleman, Judith thought, watching him keenly all the while she seemed to ignore his existence. He was too fine, too highly trained for the genuine article; he lacked that easy inborn grace of the man in whom good manners are hereditary. There was nothing of the Cit about him; but there was the exaggerated elegance, the exotic grace, of a man who has too studiously cultivated the art of being a fine gentleman; who has learned his manners in dubious paths, from _petites maîtresses_ and _prime donne_, rather than from statesmen and princes.

On this, and on many a subsequent meeting, Lady Judith was just uncivil enough to fan the flame of Vivian Topsparkle's passion. He had begun in a somewhat philandering spirit, not quite determined whether Lord Bramber's daughter were worthy of him; but her _hauteur_ made him her slave. Had she been civil he would have given more account to those old stories about Lavendale, and would have been inclined to draw back before finally committing himself. But a woman who could afford to be rude to the best match in England must needs be above all suspicion. Had her reputation been seriously damaged she would have caught at the chance of rehabilitating herself by a rich marriage. Had she been civil to him Mr. Topsparkle would have haggled and bargained about settlements; but his ever-present fear of losing her made him accede to Lord Bramber's exactions with a more than princely generosity, since but few princes could afford to be so liberal. He had set his heart upon having this woman for his wife--firstly, because she was the handsomest and most fashionable woman in London, and secondly, because so far as burnt-out embers can glow with new fire, Mr. Topsparkle's battered old heart was aflame with a very serious passion for this new deity.

So there was a grand wedding from the earl's house in Leicester Fields; not a crowded assembly, for only the very _élite_ of the modish world were invited. _The Duke_, meaning his Grace of York, honored the company with his royal presence, and there were the great Sir Robert and a bevy of Cabinet ministers, and Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had canceled any old half-forgotten scandals as to his past life, and established himself in the highest social sphere by this alliance. As Vivian Topsparkle the half-foreign eccentric, he was a man to be stared at and talked about; but as the husband of Lord Bramber's daughter he had a footing--by right of alliance--in some of the noblest houses in England. His name and reputation were hooked on to old family trees; and those great people whose kinswoman he had married could not afford to have him maligned or slighted. In a word, Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had good value for his magnificent settlements.

Was Lady Judith Topsparkle happy, with all her blessings? She was gay; and with the polite world gayety ranks as happiness, and commands the envy of the crowd. Nobody envies the quiet matron whose domestic life flows onward with the placidity of a sluggish stream. It is the butterfly queen of the hour whom people admire and envy. Lady Judith, blazing in diamonds at a court ball, beautiful, daring, insolent, had half the town for her slaves and courtiers. Even women flattered and fawned upon her, delighted to be acknowledged as her acquaintance, proud to be invited to her parties or to dance attendance upon her in public assemblies.

GEORG BRANDES

(1842-)

BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE

The man of letters who devotes himself chiefly or wholly to criticism is an essentially modern type. Although the critical art has been practiced in all literary periods, it has not until the present century enlisted anything like the exclusive attention of writers of the highest order of attainment, but has rather played a subordinate part beside the constructive or creative work to the performance of which such men have given their best energies.

In the case of some writers, such as Voltaire and Samuel Johnson, we recognize the critical spirit that informs the bulk of their work, yet are compelled on the whole to classify them as poets, or historians, or philosophers. Even Coleridge, who wrote no inconsiderable amount of the best literary criticism in existence, is chiefly remembered as a poet; even Lessing, one of the fountain-heads of authoritative critical doctrine, owes to his plays the major part of his great reputation. As for such men as Ben Jonson and Dryden, Lamb and Shelley, Goethe and Heine, their critical utterances, precious and profound as they frequently are, figure but incidentally among their writings, and we read these men mainly for other reasons than that of learning their opinions about other people's productions. For examples of the man of letters considered primarily as critic, we must then look to our own century, and we find the type best illustrated by such men as Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetière, and the subject of the present sketch.

It is indeed a rather remarkable fact that the most conspicuous figure in literary Denmark at the present time should be not a poet or a novelist, but a critic pure and simple; for that is the title which must be given to Georg Brandes. Not only is his attitude consistently critical throughout the long series of his writings, but his form and matter are also avowedly critical; so much so that hardly one of his score or more of published volumes calls for classification in any other than the critical category. Even when he takes us with him upon his travels to France or Russia with the best intentions in the world as to the avoidance of "shop," he finds himself in the end talking about the literature and the politics of those countries. One of his latest books, 'Udenlandske Egne og Personligheder' (Foreign Parts and Personalities) has a preface with the following opening paragraph:--

"One gets tired of talking about books all the time. Even the man whose business it is to express himself in black and white has eyes like other people, and with them he perceives and observes the variegated visible world: its landscapes, cities, plain and cultivated men, plastic art. For him too does Nature exist; he too is moved at sight of such simple happenings as the fall of the leaves in October; he too is stirred as he gazes upon a waterfall, a mountain region, a sunlit glacier, a Dutch lake, and an Italian olive grove. He too has been in Arcadia."

Yet half the contents of the volume thus introduced must be described as the work of the critic. Not only are the set papers upon such men as Taine, Renan, and Maupassant deliberate critical studies, but the sketches of travel likewise are sure to get around to the art and literature of the countries visited.

The life of criticism, in the larger sense, comes from wide observation and a cultivation of the cosmopolitan spirit. And it must be said of Brandes that he is a critic in this large sense, that he has taken for his province the modern spirit in all its varied manifestations. The very title of his chief work--'Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century'--shows him to be concerned with the broad movements of thought rather than with matters of narrow technique or the literary activity of any one country--least of all his own. It was peculiarly fortunate for Denmark that a critic of this type should have arisen within her borders a quarter-century ago. The Scandinavian countries lie so far apart from the chief centres of European thought that they are always in danger of lapsing into a narrow self-sufficiency so far as intellectual ideals are concerned. Danish literature has been made what it is chiefly by the mediation of a few powerful minds who have kept it in touch with modern progress: by Holberg, who may almost be said to have brought humanism into Denmark; by Oehlenschläger, who made the romantic movement as powerful an influence in Denmark as it was in Germany; by Brandes, who, beginning his career just after the war in which Denmark lost her provinces and became as embittered toward Germany as France was to become a few years later, strove to prevent the political breach from extending into the intellectual sphere, and helped his fellow-countrymen to understand that thought and progress are one and have a common aim, although nations may be many and antagonistic. There is much significance in the fact that the name of 'Emigrant Literature' is given to the first section of his greatest work. He thus styles the French literature of a century ago,--the work of such writers as Chateaubriand, Senancour, Constant, and Madame de Staël,--because it received a vivifying impulse from the emigration,--from the contact, forced or voluntary, of the French mind with the ideals of German and English civilization. It has been the chief function of Brandes, during the whole of his brilliant career, to supply points of contact between the intellectual life of Denmark and that of the rest of Europe, to bring his own country into the federal republic of letters.

A glance at the course of his life, and at the subjects of his books, will serve to outline the nature of the work to which his energies have been devoted. A Jew by race, Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was born February 4th, 1842. He went through his academic training with brilliant success, studied law for a brief period, and then drifted into journalism and literature. A long visit to Paris (1866-7) gave him breadth of view and the materials for his first books, 'Æsthetiske Studier' (Æsthetic Studies), 'Den Franske Æsthetik' (French Æsthetics), and a volume of 'Kritiker og Portraiter' (Criticisms and Portraits).

A later visit to foreign parts (1870-1) brought him into contact with Taine, Renan, and Mill, all of whom influenced him profoundly. In 1871 he began to lecture on literary subjects, chiefly in Copenhagen, and out of these lectures grew his 'Hovedströmninger i det Nittende Aarhundredes Litteratur' (Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century), a work that in the course of about ten years extended to six volumes, and must be considered not only the author's capital critical achievement, but also one of the greatest works of literary history and criticism that the nineteenth century has produced. The division of the subject is as follows:--1. 'Emigrant Literature'; 2. 'The Romantic School in Germany'; 3. 'The Reaction in France'; 4. 'Naturalism in England'; 5. 'The Romantic School in France'; 6. 'Young Germany.'

In spite of the growing fame that came to him from these masterly studies, Brandes felt the need of a larger audience than the Scandinavian countries could offer him, and in 1877 changed his residence from Copenhagen to Berlin, a step to which he was in part urged by the violent antagonism engendered at home by the radical and uncompromising character of many of his utterances. It was not until 1883 that he again took up residence in his own country, upon a guarantee of four thousand kroner (about $1000) annually for ten years, secured by some of his friends, the condition being that he should give courses of public lectures in Copenhagen during that period.

Among the works not yet named, mention should be made of his volumes upon Holberg, Tegnér, Kierkegaard, Ferdinand Lassalle, and the Earl of Beaconsfield. These brilliant monographs are remarkable for their insight into the diverse types of character with which they deal, for their breadth of view, felicity of phrase, and originality of treatment. There are also several collections of miscellaneous essays, with such titles as 'Danske Digtere' (Danish Poets), 'Danske Personligheder' (Danish Personalities), 'Det Moderne Gjennembruds Mænd' (Men of the Modern Awakening), and 'Udenlandske Egne og Personligheder' (Foreign Parts and Personalities). The latest publication of Brandes is a careful study of Shakespeare, a work of remarkable vigor, freshness, and sympathy.

As a critic, Brandes belongs distinctly to the class of those who speak with authority, and has little in common with the writers who are content to explore the recesses of their own subjectivity, and record their personal impressions of literature. Criticism is for him a matter of science, not of opinion, and he holds it subject to a definite method and body of principles. A few sentences from the second volume of his 'Hovedströmninger' will illustrate what he conceives that method to be:--

"First and foremost, I endeavor everywhere to bring literature back to life. You will already have observed that while the older controversies in our literature--for example, that between Heiberg and Hauch, and even the famous controversy between Baggesen and Oehlenschläger--have been maintained in an exclusively literary domain and have become disputes about literary principles alone, the controversy aroused by my lectures, not merely by reason of the misapprehension of the opposition, but quite as much by reason of the very nature of my writing, has come to touch upon a swarm of religious, social, and moral problems.... It follows from my conception of the relation of literature to life that the history of literature I teach is not a history of literature for the drawing-room. I seize hold of actual life with all the strength I may, and show how the feelings that find their expression in literature spring up in the human heart. Now the human heart is no stagnant pool or idyllic woodland lake. It is an ocean with submarine vegetation and frightful inhabitants. The literary history and the poetry of the drawing-room see in the life of man a salon, a decorated ball-room, the men and the furnishings polished alike, in which no dark corners escape illumination. Let him who will, look at matters from this point of view; but it is no affair of mine."

The boldness and even the ruthlessness which characterize much of the author's work were plainly foreshadowed in this outspoken introduction; and he has grown more rather than less uncompromising during the quarter-century that has elapsed since they were spoken. Matthew Arnold would have applauded the envisagement of literature as "criticism of life," but would have deplored the sacrifice of sweetness to gain increased intensity of light. Brandes came back from contact with the European world full of enthusiasm for the new men and the new ideas,--for Comte and Taine, for Renan and Mill and Spencer,--and wanted his recalcitrant fellow-countrymen to accept them all at once. They were naturally taken aback by so imperious a demand, and their opposition created the atmosphere of controversy in which Brandes has ever since for the most part lived--with slight effort to soften its asperities, but, it must be added, with the ever-increasing respect of those not of his own way of thinking. On the whole, his work has been healthful and stimulating; it has stirred the sluggish to a renewed mental activity, and has made its author himself one of the most conspicuous figures of what he calls "det Moderne Gjennembrud"--the Modern Awakening.

BJÖRNSON

From 'Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century': Translated by Professor Rasmus B. Anderson.

It is only necessary to bestow a single glance upon Björnson to be convinced how admirably he is equipped by nature for the hot strife a literary career brings with it in most lands, and especially in the combat-loving North. Shoulders as broad as his are not often seen, nor do we often behold so vigorous a form, one that seems as though created to be chiseled in granite.

There is perhaps no labor that so completely excites all the vital forces, exhausts the nerves, refines and enervates the feelings, as that of literary production. There has never been the slightest danger, however, that the exertions of Björnson's poetic productiveness would affect his lungs as in the case of Schiller, or his spine as in the case of Heine; there has been no cause to fear that inimical articles in the public journals would ever give him his death-blow, as they did Halvdan, the hero of his drama 'Redaktören' (The Editor); or that he would yield, as so many modern poets have yielded, to the temptation of resorting to pernicious stimulants or to dissipation as antidotes for the overwrought or depleted state of the nervous system occasioned by creative activity. Nothing has injured Björnson's spine; his lungs are without blemish; a cough is unknown to him; and his shoulders were fashioned to bear without discomposure the rude thrusts which the world gives, and to return them. He is perhaps the only important writer of our day of whom this may be said. As an author he is never nervous, not when he displays his greatest delicacy, not even when he evinces his most marked sensibility.