Two Years Ago Volume I Part 20

The wretched old woman hurried upstairs, and brought him down a half-sovereign out of her private h.o.a.rd, trembling like an aspen leaf, and departed.

"So--scotched, but not killed. You'll gossip and lie too. Never trust a laudanum-drinker. You'll see me, by the eye of imagination, committing all the seven deadly sins; and by the tongue of inspiration go forth and proclaim the same at the town-head. I can't kill you, and I can't cure you, so I must endure you. What said old Goethe, in all the German I ever cared to recollect:--

"'Der Wallfisch hat doch seine Laus; Muss auch die meine haben.'

"Now, then, for Mrs. Penberthy's draughts. I wonder how that pretty schoolmistress goes on. If she were but honest, now, and had fifty thousand pounds--why then, she wouldn't marry me; and so why now, I wouldn't marry she,--as my native Berks.h.i.+re grammar would render it."

CHAPTER VII.

LA CORDIFIAMMA.

This chapter shall begin, good reader, with one of those startling bursts of "ill.u.s.tration," with which our most popular preachers are wont now to astonish and edify their hearers, and after starting with them at the opening of the sermon from the north-pole, the Crystal Palace, or the nearest cabbage-garden, float them safe, upon the gus.h.i.+ng stream of oratory, to the safe and well-known sh.o.r.es of doctrinal commonplace, lost in admiration at the skill of the good man who can thus make all roads lead, if not to heaven, at least to strong language about its opposite. True, the logical sequence of their periods may be, like that of the coming one, somewhat questionable, reminding one at moments of Fluellen's comparison between Macedon and Monmouth, Henry the Fifth and Alexander: but, in the logic of the pulpit, all's well that ends well, and the end must needs sanctify the means. There is, of course, some connection or other between all things in heaven and earth, or how would the universe hold together?

And if one has not time to find out the true connection, what is left but to invent the best one can for oneself? Thus argues, probably, the popular preacher, and fills his pews, proving thereby clearly the excellence of his method. So argue also, probably, the popular poets, to whose "luxuriant fancy" everything suggests anything, and thought plays leap-frog with thought down one page and up the next, till one fancies at moments that they had got permission from the higher powers, before looking at the universe, to stir it all up a few times with a spoon. It is notorious, of course, that poets and preachers alike pride themselves upon this method of astonis.h.i.+ng; that the former call it, "seeing the infinite in the finite;" the latter--"pressing secular matters into the service of the sanctuary,"

and other pretty phrases which, for reverence' sake, shall be omitted.

No doubt they have their reasons and their reward. The style takes; the style pays; and what more would you have? Let them go on rejoicing, in spite of the cynical pedants in the Sat.u.r.day Review, who dare to accuse (will it be believed?) these luminaries of the age of talking merely irreverent nonsense. Meanwhile, so evident is the success (sole test of merit) which has attended the new method, that it is worth while trying whether it will not be as taking in the novel as it is in the chapel; and therefore the reader is requested to pay special attention to the following paragraph, modelled carefully after the exordiums of a famous Irish preacher, now drawing crowded houses at the West End of Town. As thus;--"It is the pleasant month of May, when, as in old Chaucer's time, the--

"Smale foules maken melodie, That slepen alle night with open eye So priketh hem nature in their corages.

Then longen folk to goe on pilgrimages, And specially from every s.h.i.+re's end Of Englelond, to Exeter-hall they wend,"

till the low places of the Strand blossom with white cravats, those lilies of the valley, types of meekness and humility, at least in the pious palmer--and why not of similar virtues in the undertaker, the concert-singer, the groom, the tavern-waiter, the croupier at the gaming-table, and Frederick Augustus Lord Scoutbush, who, white-cravated like the rest, is just getting into his cab at the door of the Never-mind-what Theatre, to spend an hour at Kensington before sauntering in to Lady M----'s ball?

Why not, I ask, at least in the case of little Scoutbush? For Guardsman though he be, coming from a theatre and going to a ball, there is meekness and humility in him at this moment, as well as in the average of the white-cravated gentlemen who trotted along that same pavement about eleven o'clock this forenoon. Why should not his white cravat, like theirs, be held symbolic of that fact? However, Scoutbush belongs rather to the former than the latter of Chaucer's categories; for a "smale foule" he is, a little bird-like fellow, who maketh melodie also, and warbles like a c.o.c.k-robin; we cannot liken him to any more dignified songster. Moreover, he will sleep all night with open eye; for he will not be in bed till five to-morrow morning; and p.r.i.c.ked he is, and that sorely, in his courage; for he is as much, in love as his little nature can be, with the new actress, La Signora Cordifiamma, of the Never-mind-what Theatre.

How exquisitely, now (for this is one of the rare occasions in which a man is permitted to praise himself), is established hereby an unexpected bond of linked sweetness long drawn out between things which had, ere they came beneath the magic touch of genius, no more to do with each other than this book has with the Stock Exchange. Who would have dreamed of travelling from the Tabard in Southwark to the last new singer, _via_ Exeter-hall and the lilies of the valley, and touching en pa.s.sant on to cardinal virtues and an Irish Viscount? But see; given only a little impudence, and less logic, and hey presto!

the thing is done; and all that remains to be done is to dilate (as the Rev. Dionysius...o...b..areaway would do at this stage of the process) upon the moral question which has been so cunningly raised, and to inquire, firstly,--how the virtues of meekness and humility could be predicated of Frederick Augustus St. Just, Viscount Scoutbush and Baron Torytown, in the peerage of Ireland; and secondly,--how those virtues were called into special action by his questionably wise attachment to a new actress, to whom he had never spoken a word in his life.

First, then, "Little Freddy Scoutbush," as his compeers irreverently termed him, was, by common consent of her Majesty's Guards, a "good fellow." Whether the St. James' Street definition of that adjective be the perfect one or not, we will not stay to inquire; but in the Guards' club-house it meant this: that Scoutbush had not an enemy in the world, because he deserved none; that he lent, and borrowed not; gave, and asked not again; envied not; hustled not; slandered not; never bore malice, never said a cruel word, never played a dirty trick, would hear a fellow's troubles out to the end, and if he could not counsel, at least would not laugh at them, and at all times and in all places lived and let live, and was accordingly a general favourite. His morality was neither better nor worse than the average of his companions; but if he was sensual, he was at least not base; and there were frail women who blessed "little Freddy," and his shy and secret generosity, from having saved them from the lowest pit.

_Au reste_, he was idle, frivolous, useless; but with these two palliating facts, that he knew it and regretted it; and that he never had a chance of being aught else. His father and mother had died when he was a child. He had been sent to Eton at seven, where he learnt nothing, and into the Guards at seventeen, where he learnt less than nothing. His aunt, old Lady Knockdown, who was a kind old Irish woman, an ex-blue and ex-beauty, now a high Evangelical professor, but as worldly as her neighbours in practice, had tried to make him a good boy in old times: but she had given him up, long before he left Eton, as a "vessel of wrath" (which he certainly was, with his hot Irish temper); and since then she had only spoken of him with moans, and to him just as if he and she had made a compact to be as worldly as they could, and as if the fact that he was going, as she used to tell her private friends, straight to the wrong place, was to be utterly ignored before the pressing reality of getting him and his sisters well married. And so it befell, that Lady Knockdown, like many more, having begun with too high (or at least precise) a spiritual standard, was forced to end practically in having no standard at all; and that for ten years of Scoutbush's life, neither she nor any other human being had spoken to him as if he had a soul to be saved, or any duty on earth save to eat, drink, and be merry.

And all the while there was a quaint and pathetic consciousness in the little man's heart that he was meant for something better; that he was no fool, and was not intended to be one. He would thrust his head into lectures at the Polytechnic and the British Inst.i.tution, with a dim endeavour to guess what they were all about, and a good-natured envy of the clever fellows who knew about "science, and all that." He would sit and listen, puzzled and admiring, to the talk of statesmen, and confide his woe afterwards to some chum.--"Ah, if I had had the chance now that my cousin Chalkclere has! If I had had two or three tutors, and a good mother, too, keeping me in a coop, and cramming me with learning, as they cram chickens for the market, I fancy I could have shown my comb and hackles in the House as well as some of them. I fancy I could make a speech in parliament now, with the help of a little Irish impudence, if I only knew anything to speak about."

So Scoutbush clung, in a childish way, to any superior man who would take notice of him, and not treat him as the fribble which he seemed.

He had taken to that well-known artist, Claude Mellot, of late, simply from admiration of his brilliant talk about art and poetry; and boldly confessed that he preferred one of Mellot's orations on the sublime and beautiful, though he didn't understand a word of them, to the songs and jokes (very excellent ones in their way) of Mr. Hector Harkaway, the distinguished Irish novelist, and boon companion of her Majesty's Life Guards Green. His special intimate and Mentor, however, was a certain Major Campbell, of whom more hereafter; who, however, being a lofty-minded and perhaps somewhat Pharisaic person, made heavier demands on Scoutbush's conscience than he had yet been able to meet; for fully as he agreed that Hercules' choice between pleasure and virtue was the right one, still he could not yet follow that ancient hero along the th.o.r.n.y path, and confined his conception of "duty" to the minimum guard and drill. He had estates in Ireland, which had almost cleared themselves during his long minority, but which, since the famine, had cost him about as much as they brought him in; and estates in the West, which, with a Welsh slate-quarry, brought him in some seven or eight thousand a-year; and so kept his poor little head above water, to look pitifully round the universe, longing for the life of him to make out what it all meant, and hoping that somebody would come and tell him.

So much for his meekness and humility in general; as for the particular display of those virtues which he has shown to-day, it must be understood that he has given a promise to Mrs. Mellot not to make love to La Cordifiamma; and, on that only condition, has been allowed to meet her to-night at one of Claude Mellot's pet.i.ts soupers.

La Cordifiamma has been staying, ever since she came to England, with the Mellots in the wilds of Brompton; unapproachable there, as in all other places. In public, she is a very Zen.o.bia, who keeps all animals of the other s.e.x at an awful distance; and of the fifty young puppies who are raving about her beauty, her air, and her voice, not one has obtained an introduction; while Claude, whose studio used to be a favourite lounge of young Guardsmen, has, as civilly as he can, closed his doors to those magnificent personages ever since the new singer became his guest.

Claude Mellot seems to have come into a fortune of late years, large enough, at least, for his few wants. He paints no longer, save when he chooses; and has taken a little old house in one of those back lanes of Brompton, where islands of primaeval nursery garden still remain undevoured by the advancing surges of the brick and mortar deluge.

There he lives, happy in a green lawn, and windows opening thereon; in three elms, a cork, an ilex, and a mulberry, with a great standard pear, for flower and foliage the queen of all suburban trees. There he lies on the lawn, upon strange skins, the summer's day, playing with cats and dogs, and making love to his Sabina, who has not lost her beauty in the least, though she is on the wrong side of five-and-thirty. He deludes himself, too, into the belief that he is doing something, because he is writing a treatise on the "Principles of Beauty;" which will be published, probably, about the time the Thames is purified, in the season of Latter Lammas and the Greek Kalends; and the more certainly so, because he has wandered into the abyss of conic sections and curves of double curvature, of which, if the truth must be spoken, he knows no more than his friends of the Life Guards Green.

To this charming little nest has Lord Scoutbush procured an evening's admission after abject supplication to Sabina, who pets him because he is musical, and solemn promises neither to talk or look any manner of foolishness.

"My dearest Mrs. Mellot," says the poor wretch, "I will be good, indeed I will; I will not even speak to her. Only let me sit and look,--and--and--why, I thought you understood all about such things, and could pity a poor fellow who was spoony."

And Sabina, who prides herself much on understanding such things, and on having, indeed, reduced them to a science in which she gives gratuitous lessons to all young gentlemen and ladies of her acquaintance, receives him pityingly, in that delicious little back drawing-room, whither whosoever enters is in no hurry to go out again.

Claude's house is arranged with his usual defiance of all conventionalities. Dining or drawing-room proper there is none; the large front room is the studio, where he and Sabina eat and drink, as well as work and paint but out of it opens a little room, the walls of which are so covered with gems of art (where the rogue finds money to buy them is a puzzle), that the eye can turn nowhere without taking in some new beauty, and wandering on from picture to statue, from portrait to landscape, dreaming and learning afresh after every glance. At the back, a gla.s.s bay has been thrown out, and forms a little conservatory, for ever fresh and gay with tropic ferns and flowers; gaudy orchids dangle from the roof, creepers hide the framework, and you hardly see where the room ends, and the winter-garden begins; and in the centre an ottoman invites you to lounge. It costs Claude money, doubtless; but he has his excuse,--"Having once seen the tropics, I cannot live without some love-tokens from their lost paradises; and which is the wiser plan, to spend money on a horse and brougham, which we don't care to use, and on scrambling into society at the price of one great stupid party a year, or to make our little world as pretty as we can, and let those who wish to see us, take us as they find us?"

In this "nest," as Claude and Sabina call it, sacred to the everlasting billing and cooing of that sweet little pair of human love-birds who have built it, was supper set. La Cordifiamma, all the more beautiful from the languor produced by the excitement of acting, lay upon a sofa; Claude attended, talking earnestly; Sabina, according to her custom, was fluttering in and out, and arranging supper with her own hands; both husband and wife were as busy as bees; and yet any one accustomed to watch the little ins and outs of married life, could have seen that neither forgot for a moment that the other was in the room, but basked and purred, like two blissful cats, each in the suns.h.i.+ne of the other's presence; and he could have seen, too, that La Cordifiamma was divining their thoughts, and studying all their little expressions, perhaps that she might use them on the stage; perhaps, too, happy in sympathy with their happiness: and yet there was a shade of sadness on her forehead.

Scoutbush enters, is introduced, and receives a salutation from the actress haughty and cold enough to check the forwardest; puts on the air of languid nonchalance which is considered (or was before the little experiences of the Crimea) fit and proper for young gentlemen of rank and fas.h.i.+on. So he sits down, and feasts his foolish eyes upon his idol, hoping for a few words before the evening is over. Did I not say well, then, that there was as much meekness and humility under Scoutbush's white cravat as under others? But his little joy is soon dashed; for the black boy announces (seemingly much to his own pleasure) a tall personage, whom, from his dress and his moustachio, Scoutbush takes for a Frenchman, till he hears him called Stangrave.

The intruder is introduced to Lord Scoutbush, which ceremony is consummated by a microscopic nod on either side; he then walks straight up to La Cordifiamma; and Scoutbush sees her cheeks flush as he does so. He takes her hand, speaks to her in a low voice, and sits down by her, Claude making room for him; and the two engage earnestly in conversation.

Scoutbush is much inclined to walk out of the room;--was he brought there to see that? Of course, however, he sits still, keeps his own counsel, and makes himself agreeable enough all the evening, like a good-natured kind-hearted little man, as he is. Whereby he is repaid; for the conversation soon becomes deep, and even too deep for him; and he is fain to drop out of the race, and leave it to his idol and to the new-comer, who seems to have seen, and done, and read everything in heaven and earth, and probably bought everything also; not to mention that he would be happy to sell the said universe again, at a very cheap price, if any one would kindly take it off his hands. Not that he boasts, or takes any undue share of the conversation; he is evidently too well bred for that; but every sentence shows an acquaintance with facts of which Eton has told Scoutbush nothing, the barrack-room less, and after which he still craves, the good little fellow, in a very honest way, and would soon have learnt, had he had a chance; for of native Irish smartness he had no lack.

"Poor Flake was half mad about you, Signora, in the stage-box to-night," said Sabina. "He says that he shall not sleep till he has painted you."

"Do let him!" cried Scoutbush: "what a picture he will make!"

"He may paint a picture, but not me; it is quite enough, Lord Scoutbush, to be some one else for two hours every night, without going down to posterity, as some one else for ever. If I am painted, I will be painted by no one who cannot represent my very self."

"You are right!" said Stangrave: "and you will do the man himself good by refusing; he has some notion still of what a portrait ought to be.

If he once begins by attempting pa.s.sing expressions of pa.s.sion, which is all stage portraits can give, he will find them so much easier than honest representations of character, that he will end, where all our moderns seem to do, in merest melodrama."

"Explain!" said she.

"Portrait painters now depend for their effect on the mere accidents of the _entourage_; on dress, on landscape, even on broad hints of a man's occupation, putting a plan on the engineer's table, and a roll in the statesman's hands, like the old Greek who wrote 'this is an ox'

under his picture. If they wish to give the face expression, though they seldom aim so high, all they can compa.s.s is a pa.s.sing emotion; and one sitter goes down to posterity with an eternal frown, another with an eternal smile."

"Or, if he be a poet," said Sabina, "rolls his eye for ever in a fine frenzy."

"But would you forbid them to paint pa.s.sion?"

"Not in its place; when the picture gives the causes of the pa.s.sion, and the scene tells its own story. But then let us not have merely Kean as Hamlet, but Hamlet's self; let the painter sit down and conceive for himself a Hamlet, such as Shakspeare conceived; not merely give us as much of him as could be pressed at a given moment into the face of Mr. Kean. He will be only unjust to both actor and character. If Flake paints Marie as Lady Macbeth, he will give us neither her nor Lady Macbeth; but only the single point at which their two characters can coincide."

"How rude!" said Sabina, laughing; "what is he doing but hinting that La Signora's conception of Lady Macbeth is a very partial and imperfect one?"

"And why should it not be?" asked the actress, humbly enough.

"I meant," he answered warmly, "that there was more, far more in her than in any character which she a.s.sumes; and I do not want a painter to copy only one aspect, and let a part go down to posterity as a representation of the whole."

"If you mean that, you shall be forgiven. No; when she is painted, she shall be painted as herself, as she is now. Claude shall paint her."

"I have not known La Signora long enough," said Claude, "to aspire to such an honour. I paint no face which I have not studied for a year."

"Faith!" said Scoutbush, "you would find no more in most faces at the year's end, than you did the first day."

"Then I would not paint them. If I paint a portrait, which I seldom do, I wish to make it such a one as the old masters aimed at,--to give the sum total of the whole character; traces of every emotion, if it were possible, and glances of every expression which have pa.s.sed over it since it was born into the world. They are all here, the whole past and future of the man; and every man, as the Mohammedans say, carries his destiny on his forehead."

"But who has eyes to see it?"

"The old masters had; some of them at least. Raphael had; Sebastian del Piombo had; and t.i.tian, and Giorgione. There are portraits painted by them which carry a whole life-history concentrated into one moment."