Part 4

Heaven had, at all events, never heard the like of this before. Here is a human creature brought up in what is called the lap of luxury, wearing purple and fine linen, and fur cloaks worth 2,000 francs, eating and drinking to repletion, and indulging herself in every fancy; she divides a handful of coppers amongst five starving persons, and then retires behind a tree, and calls God to witness that no such kindness had ever been extended to her.

When Mlle. Elsnitz, her long-suffering companion--‘young, only nineteen, unfortunate, in a strange house without a friend’--at last, after suffering many things, leaves the service, it is recorded:

‘I could not speak for fear of crying, and I affected a careless look, but I hope she may have seen.’

Seen what? Why, that the carelessness was unreal. A quite sufficient reparation for months of insolence, in the opinion of Miss Marie.

It is said that Mlle. Bashkirtseff had a great faculty of enjoyment. If so, except in the case of books, she hardly makes it felt. Reading evidently gave her great pleasure; but, though there is a good deal of rapture about Nature in her journals, it is of an uneasy character.

‘The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is amongst the lonely hills,’

do not pass into the souls of those whose ambition it is to be greeted with loud cheers by the whole wide world.

Whoever is deeply interested in himself always invents a God whom he can apostrophize on suitable occasions. The existence of this deity feeds his creator’s vanity. When the world turns a deaf ear to his broken cries he besieges heaven. The Almighty, so he flatters himself, cannot escape him. When there is no one else to have recourse to, when all other means fail, there still remains--God. When your father, and your mother, and your aunt, and your companion, and your maid, are all wearied to death by your exhaustless vanity, you have still another string to your bow. Sometimes, indeed, the strings may get entangled.

‘Just now, I spoke harshly to my aunt, but I could not help it. She came in just when I was weeping with my hands over my face, and was summoning God to attend to me a little.’

A book like this makes one wonder what power, human or divine, can exorcise such a demon of vanity as that which possessed the soul of this most unhappy girl. Carlyle strove with great energy in ‘Sartor Resartus’ to compose a spell which should cleave this devil in three. For a time it worked well and did some mischief, but now the magician’s wand seems broken. Religion, indeed, can still show her conquests, and, when we are considering a question like this, seems a fresher thing than it does when we are reading ‘Lux Mundi.’

‘Do you want,’ wrote General Gordon in his journal, ‘to be loved, respected, and trusted? Then ignore the likes and dislikes of man in regard to your actions; leave their love for God’s, taking Him only. You will find that as you do so men will like you; they may despise some things in you, but they will lean on you, and trust you, and He will give you the spirit of comforting them. But try to please men and ignore God, and you will fail miserably and get nothing but disappointment.’

All those who have not yet read these journals, and prefer doing so in English, should get Miss Blind’s volumes. There they will find this ‘human document’ most vigorously translated into their native tongue. It, perhaps, sounds better in French.

One remembers George Eliot’s tale of the lady who tried to repeat in English the pathetic story of a French mendicant--‘J’ai vu le sang de mon père’--but failed to excite sympathy, owing to the hopeless realism of Saxon speech. But though better in French, the journal is interesting in English. Whether, like the dreadful Dean, you regard man as an odious race of vermin, or agree with an erecter spirit that he is a being of infinite capacity, you will find food for your philosophy, and texts for your sermons, in the ‘Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff.’

SIR JOHN VANBRUGH.

Jeremy Collier begins his famous and witty, though dreadfully overdone, ‘Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage’ with the following spirited words:

‘The business of Plays is to recommend Virtue and discountenance Vice; to show the Uncertainty of Human Greatness, the sudden turns of Fate, and the unhappy conclusions of Violence and Injustice; ’tis to expose the singularities of Pride and Fancy, to make Folly and Falsehood contemptible, and to bring everything that is ill under Infamy and Neglect.’

He then adds: ‘This design has been oddly pursued by the English Stage;’ and so he launches his case.

Sir John Vanbrugh, who fared very badly at the doctor’s hands, replied--and, on the whole, with great spirit and considerable success--in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Short Vindication of “The Relapse” and “The Provok’d Wife” from Immorality and Profaneness.’ In this reply he strikes out this bold apophthegm:

‘The business of Comedy is to show people what they should do, by representing them upon the stage, doing what they should not.’

He continues with much good sense:

‘Nor is there any necessity a philosopher should stand by, like an interpreter at a puppet-show, to explain the moral to the audience. The mystery is seldom so deep but the pit and boxes can dive into it, and ’tis their example out of the playhouse that chiefly influences the galleries. The stage is a glass for the world to view itself in; people ought, therefore, to see themselves as they are; if it makes their faces too fair, they won’t know they are dirty, and, by consequence, will neglect to wash them. If, therefore, I have showed “Constant” upon the stage what generally the thing called a fine gentleman is off it, I think I have done what I should do. I have laid open his vices as well as his virtues; ’tis the business of the audience to observe where his flaws lessen his value, and, by considering the deformity of his blemishes, become sensible how much a finer thing he would be without them.’

It is impossible to improve upon these instructions; they are admirable. The only pity is that, as, naturally enough, Sir John wrote his plays first, and defended them afterwards, he had not bestowed a thought upon the subject until the angry parson gave him check. Vanbrugh, like most dramatists of his calibre, wrote to please the town, without any thought of doing good or harm. The two things he wanted were money and a reputation for wit. To lecture and scold him as if he had degraded some high and holy office was ridiculous. Collier had an excellent case, for there can be no doubt that the dramatists he squinted at were worse than they had any need to be. But it is impossible to read Collier’s two small books without a good many pishes and pshaws! He was a clericalist of an aggressive type. You cannot withhold your sympathy from Vanbrugh’s remark:

‘The reader may here be pleased to take notice what this gentleman would construe profaneness if he were once in the saddle with a good pair of spurs upon his heels.’

Now that Evangelicalism has gone out of fashion, we no longer hear denunciations of stage-plays. High Church parsons crowd the Lyceum, and lead the laughter in less dignified if more amusing resorts. But, for all that, there is a case to be made against the cheerful playhouse, but not by me.

As for Sir John Vanbrugh, his two well-known plays, ‘The Relapse’ and ‘The Provok’d Wife,’ are most excellent reading, Jeremy Collier notwithstanding. They must be read with the easy tolerance, the amused benignity, the scornful philosophy of a Christian of the Dr. Johnson type. You must not probe your laughter deep; you must forget for awhile your probationary state, and remember that, after all, the thing is but a play. Sir John has a great deal of wit of that genuine kind which is free from modishness. He reads freshly. He also has ideas. In ‘The Provok’d Wife,’ which was acted for the first time in the early part of 1697, there appears the Philosophy of Clothes (thus forestalling Swift), and also an early conception of Carlyle’s stupendous image of a naked House of Lords. This occurs in a conversation between Heartfree and Constant, which concludes thus:

_Heartfree._ Then for her outside--I consider it merely as an outside--she has a thin, tiffany covering over just such stuff as you and I are made on. As for her motion, her mien, her air, and all those tricks, I know they affect you mightily. If you should see your mistress at a coronation, dragging her peacock’s train, with all her state and insolence, about her, ’twould strike you with all the awful thoughts that heaven itself could pretend to from you; whereas, I turn the whole matter into a jest, and suppose her strutting in the selfsame stately manner, with nothing on but her stays and her under, scanty-quilted petticoat.

_Constant._ Hold thy profane tongue! for I’ll hear no more.

‘The Relapse’ must, I think, be pronounced Vanbrugh’s best comedy. Lord Foppington is a humorous conception, and the whole dialogue is animated and to the point. One sees where Sheridan got his style. There are more brains, if less sparkle, in Vanbrugh’s repartees than in Sheridan’s.

_Berenthia._ I have had so much discourse with her, that I believe, were she once cured of her fondness to her husband, the fortress of her virtue would not be so impregnable as she fancies.

_Worthy._ What! she runs, I’ll warrant you, into that common mistake of fond wives, who conclude themselves virtuous because they can refuse a man they don’t like when they have got one they do.

_Berenthia._ True; and, therefore, I think ’tis a presumptuous thing in a woman to assume the name of virtuous till she has heartily hated her husband and been soundly in love with somebody else.

A handsome edition of Vanbrugh’s Plays has recently appeared, edited by Mr. W. C. Ward (Lawrence and Bullen), who has prepared an excellent Life of his author.

Vanbrugh was, as all the world knows, the architect of Blenheim Palace, as he also was of Castle Howard. He became Comptroller of Works in the reign of Queen Anne, and was appointed by King George Surveyor of the Works at Greenwich Hospital, in the neighbourhood of which he had property of his own. His name is still familiar in the ears of the respectable inhabitants of Blackheath. But what is mysterious is how and where he acquired such skill as he possessed in his profession. His father, Giles Vanbrugh, had nineteen children, of whom thirteen appear to have lived for some length of time, and of John’s education nothing precise is known. When nineteen he went into France, where he remained some years.

During this period, observes Mr. Ward, ‘it may be presumed he laid the foundation of that skill in architecture he afterwards so eminently displayed; at least, there is no subsequent period of his life to which we can, with equal probability, ascribe his studies in that art.’

Later on, Mr. Ward says:

‘The year 1702 presents our author in a new character. Of his architectural studies we know absolutely nothing, unless we may accept Swift’s account, who pretends that Vanbrugh acquired the rudiments of the art by watching children building houses of cards or clay. But this was probably ironical. However he came by his skill, in 1702 he stepped into sudden fame as the architect of Castle Howard.’

It is indeed extraordinary that a man should have undertaken such big jobs as Castle Howard and Blenheim without leaving any trace whatever of the means by which he became credited with the power to execute them. Mr. Pecksniff got an occasional pupil and premium, but, so far as I know, he never designed so much as a parish pump. Blenheim is exposed to a good deal of criticism, but nobody can afford to despise either it or Castle Howard, and it seems certain that the original plans and elevations of both structures were prepared by the author of ‘The Relapse’ and ‘The Provok’d Wife’ himself. Of course, there may have been a ghost, but if there had been, the Duchess of Marlborough, who was soon at loggerheads with her architect, would probably have dragged it into the light of day.

The wits made great fun of their distinguished colleague’s feats in brick and mortar. It was not usually permissible for a literary gentleman to be anything else, unless, indeed, a divine like Dr. Swift, whose satirical verses on the small house Vanbrugh built for himself in Whitehall are well known. They led to a coolness, and no one need wonder. After the architect’s death the divine apologized and expressed regret.

The well-known epigram--

‘Under this stone, reader, survey Dead Sir John Vanbrugh’s house of clay Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he Laid many heavy loads on thee’--

is the composition of another doctor of divinity--Dr. Abel Evans--and was probably prompted by envy.

Amongst other things, Vanbrugh was a Herald, and in that capacity visited Hanover in 1706, and helped to invest the Electoral Prince, afterwards George II., with the Order of the Garter. Vanbrugh’s personality is not clearly revealed to us anywhere, but he appears to have been a pleasant companion and witty talker. He married late in life, and of three children only one survived, to be killed at Fontenoy. He himself died in 1726, in his sixty-third year, of a quinsy. His widow survived him half a century, thus affording another proof, if proof be needed, that no man is indispensable.

JOHN GAY.

The first half of the eighteenth century was in England the poet’s playground. These rhyming gentry had then a status, a claim upon private munificence and the public purse which has long since been hopelessly barred. A measure of wit, a tincture of taste, and a perseverance in demand would in those days secure for the puling Muse slices of solid pudding whilst in the flesh, and (frequently) sepulture in the Abbey when all was over.

What silk-mercer’s apprentice in these hard times, finding a place behind Messrs. Marshall and Snelgrove’s counter not jumping with his genius, dare hope by the easy expedient of publishing a pamphlet on ‘The Present State of Wit’ to become domestic steward to a semi-royal Duchess, and the friend of Mr. Lewis Morris and Mr. Lecky, who are, I suppose, our nineteenth-century equivalents for Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift? Yet such was the happy fate of Gay, who, after an idle life of undeserved good-fortune and much unmanly repining, died of an inflammation, in spite of the skilled care of Arbuthnot and the unwearying solicitude of the Duchess of Queensberry, and was interred like a peer of the realm in Westminster Abbey, having for his pall-bearers the Earl of Chesterfield, Viscount Cornbury, the Hon. Mr. Berkeley, General Dormer, Mr. Gore, and Mr. Pope. Such a recognition of the author of ‘Fables’ and ‘The Beggars’ Opera’ must make Mr. Besant’s mouth water. Nor did Gay, despite heavy losses in the South Sea Company, die a pauper; he left £6,000 behind him, which, as he was wise enough to die intestate, was divided equally between his two surviving sisters.

Gay’s good luck has never forsaken him. He enjoys, if, indeed, the word be not the hollowest of mockeries, an eternity of fame. It is true he is not read much, but he is always read a little. He has been dead more than a century and a half, so it seems likely that a hundred and fifty years hence he will be read as much as he is now, and, like a cork, will be observed bobbing on the surface of men’s memories. Better men and better poets than he have been, and will be, entirely submerged; but he was happy in his hour, happy even in his name (which lent itself to rhyme), happy in his nature; and so (such at least is our prognostication) new editions of Gay’s slender remains will at long intervals continue to appear and to attract a moment’s attention, even as Mr. Underhill’s admirable edition of the poems has lately done; new anthologies will contain his name, the biographical dictionaries will never quite forget him, his tomb in the Abbey will be stared at by impressionable youngsters, Pope’s striking epitaph will invite the fault-finding of the critical, and his own jesting couplet incur the censure of the moralist, until the day dawns when men cease to forget themselves in trifles. As soon as they do this, Gay will be forgotten once and for ever.

Gay’s one real achievement was ‘The Beggars’ Opera,’ which sprang from a sprout of Swift’s great brain. A ‘Newgate pastoral might make an odd, pretty sort of thing,’ so the Dean once remarked to Gay; and as Mr. Underhill, in his admirable Life of our poet, reminds us, Swift repeated the suggestion in a letter to Pope: ‘What think you of a Newgate pastoral among the whores and thieves there?’ But Swift’s ‘Beggars’ Opera’ would not have hit the public taste between wind and water as did Gay’s. It would have been much too tremendous a thing--its sincerity would have damned it past redemption. Even in Gay’s light hands the thing was risky--a speculation in the public fancy which could not but be dangerous. Gay knew this well enough, hence his quotation from Martial (afterwards adopted by the Tennysons as the motto for ‘Poems by Two Brothers’), _Nos hæc novimus esse nihil_. Congreve, resting on his laurels, declared it would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly. It took, and, indeed, we cannot wonder. There was a foretaste of Gilbert about it quite enough to make its fortune in any century. Furthermore, it drove out of England, so writes an early editor, ‘for that season, the Italian opera, which had carried all before it for several years.’ It was a triumph for the home-bred article, and therefore dear to the souls of all true patriots.

The piece, though as wholly without sincerity as a pastoral by Ambrose Philips, a thing merely of the footlights, entirely shorn of a single one of the rays which glorify lawlessness in Burns’s ‘Jolly Beggars,’ yet manages through the medium of the songs to convey a pleasing though absurd sentimentality; and there is, perhaps, noticeable throughout a slight--a very slight--flavour of what is cantingly but conveniently called ‘the Revolution,’ which imparts a slender interest.

‘The Beggars’ Opera’ startled the propriety of that strange institution, the Church of England--a seminary of true religion which had left the task of protesting against the foulness of Dryden and Wycherley and the unscrupulous wit of Congreve and Vanbrugh to the hands of non-jurors like Collier and Law, but which, speaking, we suppose, in the interests of property, raised a warning voice when a comic opera made fun, not of marriage vows, but of highway robbery. Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, plucked up courage to preach against ‘The Beggars’ Opera’ before the Court, but the Head of the Church paid no attention to the divine, and, with the Queen and all the princesses, attended the twenty-first representation. The piece brought good luck all round. ‘Everybody,’ so Mr. Underhill assures us, ‘connected with the theatre (Lincoln’s Inn Fields), from the principal performer down to the box-keepers, got a benefit,’ and Miss Lavinia Fenton, who played Polly Peachum, lived to become Duchess of Bolton; whilst Hogarth painted no less than three pictures of the celebrated scene, ‘How happy could I be with either--were t’other dear charmer away.’

Dr. Johnson, in his ‘Life of Gay,’ deals scornfully with the absurd notion that robbers were multiplied by the popularity of ‘The Beggars’ Opera.’ ‘It is not likely to do good,’ says the Doctor, ‘nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil.’ The Church of England might as well have held its tongue.

Gay, flushed with success, was not long in producing a sequel called ‘Polly,’ which, however, as it was supposed to offend, not against morality, which it undoubtedly did, but against Sir Robert Walpole, was prohibited. ‘Polly’ was printed, and, being prohibited, had a great sale. It is an exceedingly nasty piece, not unworthy of one of the three authors who between them produced that stupidest of farces, ‘Three Hours after Marriage.’

Gay’s third opera, ‘Achilles,’ was produced at Covent Garden after his death. One does not need to be a classical purist to be offended at the sight of ‘Achilles’ upon a stage, singing doggerel verses to the tune of ‘Butter’d Pease,’ or at hearing Ajax exclaim:

‘Honour called me to the task, No matter for explaining, ’Tis a fresh affront to ask A man of honour’s meaning.’

This vulgar and idiotic stuff ran twenty nights.

Gay’s best-known poetical pieces are his ‘Fables,’ and his undoubtedly interesting, though intrinsically dull ‘Trivia; or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London,’ though for our own part we would as lief read his ‘Shepherds’ Week’ as anything else Gay has ever written.

The ‘Fables’ are light and lively, and might safely be recommended to all who are fond of an easy quotation. To lay them down is never difficult, and if, after having done so, Swift’s ‘Confession of the Beasts’ is taken up, how vast the difference! There are, we know, those in whose nature there is too much of the milk of human kindness to enable them to enjoy Swift when he shows his teeth; but however this may be, we confess, if we are to read at all, we must prefer Swift’s ‘Beasts’ Confession’ to all the sixty-five fables of Gay put together.

‘The Swine with contrite heart allow’d His shape and beauty made him proud In diet was perhaps too nice, But gluttony was ne’er his vice; In every turn of life content And meekly took what fortune sent. Inquire through all the parish round, A better neighbour ne’er was found. His vigilance might some displease; ’Tis true he hated sloth like pease.

‘The Chaplain vows he cannot fawn, Though it would raise him to the lawn. He passed his hours among his books, You find it in his meagre looks. He might if he were worldly wise Preferment get and spare his eyes; But owns he has a stubborn spirit That made him trust alone to merit; Would rise by merit to promotion. Alas! a mere chimeric notion.’

Gay was found pleasing by his friends, and had, we must believe, a kind heart. Swift, who was a nice observer in such matters, in his famous poem on his own death, assigns Gay a week in which to grieve:

‘Poor Pope would grieve a month, and Gay A week, and Arbuthnot a day; St. John himself will scarce forbear To bite his pen and drop a tear; The rest will give a shrug and cry, “I’m sorry, but we all must die.”’

It is a matter of notoriety that Gay was very fat and fond of eating. He is, as we have already said, buried in Westminster Abbey, over against Chaucer. When all the rubbish is carted away from the Abbey to make room for the great men and women of the twentieth century, Gay will probably be accounted just good enough to remain where he is. He always was a lucky fellow, though he had not the grace to think so.

ROGER NORTH’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.