Godolphin Part 21

Two nights before their departure, Lady Erpingham gave a farewell party to her more intimate acquaintance. Saville, who always contrived to be well with every one who was worth the trouble it cost him, was of course among the guests. Years had somewhat scathed him since he last appeared on our stage. Women had ceased to possess much attraction for his jaded eyes: gaming and speculation had gradually spread over the tastes once directed to other pursuits. His vivacity had deserted him in great measure, as years and infirmity began to stagnate and knot up the current of his veins; but conversation still possessed for and derived from him its wonted attraction. The sparkling jeu d'esprit had only sobered down into the quiet sarcasm; and if his wit rippled less freshly to the breeze of the present moment, it was coloured more richly by the glittering sands which rolled down from the experience that over shadowed the current. For the wisdom of the worldly is like the mountains that, sterile without, conceal within them unprofitable ore: only the filings and particles escape to the daylight and sparkle in the wave; the rest wastes idly within. The Pactolus takes but the sand-drifts from the h.o.a.rds lost to use in the Tmolus.

"And how," said Saville, seating himself by Lady Erpingham, "how shall we bear London when you are gone? When society--the everlasting draught--had begun to pall upon us, you threw your pearl into the cup; and now we are grown so luxurious, that we shall never bear the wine without the pearl."

"But the pearl gave no taste to the wine: it only dissolved itself--idly, and in vain."

"Ah, my dear Lady Erpingham, the dullest of us, having once seen the pearl, could at least imagine that we were able to appreciate the subtleties of its influence. Where, in this little world of tedious realities, can we find anything even to imagine about, when you abandon us?"

"Nay! do you conceive that I am so ignorant of the framework of society as to suppose that I shall not be easily replaced? King succeeds king, without reference to the merits of either: so, in London, idol follows idol, though one be of jewels and the other of bra.s.s. Perhaps, when I return, I shall find you kneeling to the dull Lady A----, or worshipping the hideous Lady Z----."

"'Le temps a.s.sez souvent a rendu legitime Ce qui sembloit d'abord ne se pouvoir sans crime;"'

answered Saville with a mock heroic air. "The fact is, that we are an indolent people; the person who succeeds the most with us has but to push the most. You know how Mrs. ----, in spite of her red arms, her red gown, her city p.r.o.nunciation, and her city connexions, managed--by dint of perseverance alone--to become a dispenser of consequence to the very countesses whom she at first could scarcely coax into a courtesy. The person who can stand ridicule and rudeness has only to desire to become the fashion--she or he must be so sooner or later."

"Of the immutability of one thing among all the changes I may witness on my return, at least I am certain no one still will dare to think for himself. The great want of each individual is, the want of an opinion!

For instance, who judges of a picture from his own knowledge of painting? Who does not wait to hear what Mr. ----, or Lord ---- (one of the six or seven privileged connoisseurs), says of it? Nay, not only the fate of a single picture, but of a whole school of painting, depends upon the caprice of some one of the self-elected dictators. The King, or the Duke of ----, has but to love the Dutch school and ridicule the Italian, and behold a Raphael will not sell, and a Teniers rises into infinite value! Dutch representations of candlesticks and boors are sought after with the most rapturous delight; the most disagreeable objects of nature become the most worshipped treasures of art; and we emulate each other in testifying our exaltation of taste by contending for the pictured vulgarities by which taste itself is the most essentially degraded. In fact, too, the meaner the object, the more certain it is with us of becoming the rage. In the theatre, we run after the farce; in painting, we worship the Dutch school; in----"

"Literature?" said Saville.

"No!--our literature still breathes of something n.o.ble; but why? Because books do not always depend upon a clique. A book, in order to succeed, does not require the opinion of Mr. Saville or Lady Erpingham so much as a picture or a ballet."

"I am not sure of that," answered Saville, as he withdrew presently afterwards to a card-table, to share in the premeditated plunder of a young banker, who was proud of the honour of being ruined by persons of rank.

In another part of the rooms Constance found a certain old philosopher, whom I will call David Mandeville. There was something about this man that always charmed those who had sense enough to be discontented with the ordinary inhabitants of the Microcosm,--Society. The expression of his countenance was different from that of others: there was a breathing goodness in his face--an expansion of mind on his forehead. You perceived at once that he did not live among triflers, nor agitate himself with trifles. Serenity beamed from his look--but it was the serenity of thought. Constance sat down by him.

"Are you not sorry," said Mandeville, "to leave England? You, who have made yourself the centre of a circle which, for the varieties of its fascination, has never perhaps been equalled in this country?

Wealth--rank--even wit--others might a.s.semble round them: but none ever before convened into one splendid galaxy all who were eminent in art, famous in letters, wise in politics, and even (for who but you were ever above rivalship?) attractive in beauty. I should have thought it easier for us to fly from the Armida, than for the Armida to renounce the scene of her enchantment--the scene in which De Stael bowed to the charms of her conversation, and Byron celebrated those of her person."

We may conceive the spell Constance had cast around her, when even philosophy (and Mandeville of all philosophers) had learned to flatter; but his flattery was sincerity.

"Alas!" said Constance, sighing, "even if your compliment were altogether true, you have mentioned nothing that should cause me regret.

Vanity is one source of happiness, but it does not suffice to recompense us for the absence of all others. In leaving England, I leave the scene of everlasting weariness. I am the victim of a feeling of sameness, and I look with hope to the prospect of change."

"Poor thing!" said the old philosopher, gazing mournfully on a creature who, so resplendent with advantages, yet felt the crumpled rose-leaf more than the luxury of the couch. "Wherever you go the same polished society will present to you the same monotony. All courts are alike: men have change in action; but to women of your rank all scenes are alike.

You must not look without for an object--you must create one within. To be happy we must render ourselves independent of others."

"Like all philosophers, you advise the impossible," said Constance.

"How so? Have not the generality of your s.e.x their peculiar object? One has the welfare of her children; another the interest of her husband; a third makes a pa.s.sion of economy; a fourth of extravagance; a fifth of fashion; a sixth of solitude. Your friend yonder is always employed in nursing her own health: hypochondria supplies her with an object; she is really happy because she fancies herself ill. Every one you name has an object in life that drives away ennui, save yourself."

"I have one too," said Constance, smiling, "but it does not fill up all the s.p.a.ces of time. The intervals between the acts are longer than the acts themselves."

"Is your object religion?" asked Mandeville, simply. Constance was startled: the question was novel. "I fear not," said she, after a moment's hesitation, and with a downcast face.

"As I thought," returned Mandeville. "Now listen. The reason why you feel weariness more than those around you, is solely because your mind is more expansive. Small minds easily find objects: trifles amuse them; but a high soul covets things beyond its daily reach; trifles occupy its aim mechanically; the thought still wanders restless. This is the case with you. Your intellect preys upon itself. You would have been happier if your rank had been less;" Constance winced--(she thought of G.o.dolphin); "for then you would have been ambitious, and aspired to the very rank that now palls upon you." Mandeville continued--

"You women are at once debarred from public life and yet influence it.

You are the prisoners, and yet the despots of society. Have you talents?

it is criminal to indulge them in public; and thus, as talent cannot be stifled, it is misdirected in private; you seek ascendency over your own limited circle; and what should have been genius degenerates into cunning. Brought up from your cradles to dissembling your most beautiful emotions--your finest principles are always tinctured with artifice. As your talents, being stripped of their wings are driven to creep along the earth, and imbibe its mire and clay; so are your affections perpetually checked and tortured into conventional paths, and a spontaneous feeling is punished as a deliberate crime. You are untaught the broad and sound principles of life; all that you know of morals are its decencies and forms. Thus you are incapable of estimating the public virtues and the public deficiencies of a brother or a son; and one reason why _we_ have no Brutus, is because _you_ have no Portia.

Turkey has its seraglio for the person; but custom in Europe has also a seraglio for the mind."

Constance smiled at the philosopher's pa.s.sion; but she was a woman, and she was moved by it.

"Perhaps," said she, "in the progress of events, the state of the women may be improved as well as that of the men."

"Doubtless, at some future stage of the world. And believe me, Lady Erpingham, politician and schemer as you are, that no legislative reform alone will improve mankind: it is the social state which requires reformation."

"But you asked me some minutes since," said Constance, after a pause, "if the object of my pursuit was religion. I disappointed but not surprised you by my answer."

"Yes: you grieved me, because, in your case, religion could alone fill the dreary vacuum of your time. For, with your enlarged and cultivated mind, you would not view the grandest of earthly questions in a narrow and sectarian light. You would not think religion consisted in a sanctified demeanour, in an ostentatious almsgiving, in a harsh judgment of all without the pale of your opinions. You would behold in it a benign and harmonious system of morality, which takes from ceremony enough not to render it tedious but impressive. The school of the Bayles and Voltaires is annihilated. Men begin now to feel that to philosophise is not to sneer. In Doubt, we are stopped short at every outlet beyond the Sensual. In Belief lies the secret of all our valuable exertion.

Two sentiments are enough to preserve even the idlest temper from stagnation--a desire and a hope. What then can we say of the desire to be useful, and the hope to be immortal?"

This was language Constance had not often heard before, nor was it frequent on the lips of him who now uttered it. But an interest in the fate and happiness of one in whom he saw so much to admire, had made Mandeville anxious that she should entertain some principle which he could also esteem. And there was a fervour, a sincerity, in his voice and manner, that thrilled to the very heart of Lady Erpingham. She pressed his hand in silence. She thought afterwards over his words; but worldly life is not easily accessible to any lasting impressions save those of vanity and love. Religion has two sources; the habit of early years, or the process of after thought. But to Constance had not been fated the advantage of the first; and how can deep thought of another world be a favourite employment with the scheming woman of this?

This is the only time that Mandeville appears in this work: a type of the rarity of the intervention of religious wisdom on the scenes of real life.

"By the way," said Saville, as, in departing, he encountered Constance by the door, and made his final adieus; "by the way; you will perhaps meet, somewhere in Italy, my old young friend, Percy G.o.dolphin. He has not been pleased to prate of his whereabout to me; but I hear that he has been seen lately at Naples."

Constance coloured, and her heart beat violently; but she answered indifferently, and turned away.

The next morning they set off for Italy. But within one week from that day, what a change awaited Constance!

(1) After all, an astrologer,--nay, a cabalist--is not so monstrous a prodigy in the nineteenth century! In the year 1801, Lackingtou published a quarto, ent.i.tled _Magus: a Complete System of Occult Philosophy; treating of Alchemy, the Cabalistic Art, Natural and Celestial Magic,_ &c.--and a very impudent publication it is too. That Raphael should put forth astrological manuals is not a proof of his belief in the science he professes; but that it should _answer_ to Raphael to put them forth, shows a tendency to belief in his purchasers.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

AMBITION VINDICATED.--THE HOME OF G.o.dOLPHIN AND LUCILLA.--LUCILLA'S MIND.--THE EFFECT OF HAPPY LOVE ON FEMALE TALENT.--THE EVE OF FAREWELL.

LUCILLA ALONE.--TEST OF A WOMAN'S AFFECTION.

0 much-abused and highly-slandered pa.s.sion!--pa.s.sion rather of the soul than the heart: hateful to the pseudo-moralist, but viewed with favouring, though not undiscriminating eyes by the true philosopher: bright-winged and august ambition! It is well for fools to revile thee, because thou art liable, like other utilities, to abuse! The wind uproots the oak--but for every oak it uproots it scatters a thousand acorns. Ixion embraced the cloud, but from the embrace sprang a hero.

Thou, too, hast thy fits of violence and storm; but without thee, life would stagnate:---thou, too, embracest thy clouds; but even thy clouds have the demiG.o.ds for their offspring!

It was the great and prevailing misfortune of G.o.dolphin's life, that he had early taught himself to be superior to exertion. His talents, therefore, only preyed on himself; and instead of the vigorous and daring actor of the world, he was alternately the indolent sensualist or the solitary dreamer. He did not view the stir of the great Babel as a man with a wholesome mind should do; and thus from his infirmities we draw a moral. The moral is not the worse, in that it opposes the trite moralities of those who would take from action its motive: the men of genius, who are not also men of ambition, are either humourists, or visionaries, or hypochondriacs.

By the side of one of the Italian lakes, G.o.dolphin and Lucilla fixed their abode; and here the young idealist for some time imagined himself happy. Never until now so fond of nature as of cities, he gave himself up to the enchantment of the Eden around him. He spent the long sunny hours of noon on the smooth lake, or among the sheltering trees by which it was encircled. The scenes he had witnessed in the world became to him the food of quiet meditation, and for the first time in his life, thought did not weary him with its sameness.

When his steps turned homeward, the anxious form of Lucilla waited for him: her eye brightened at his approach, her spirit escaped restraint and bounded into joy: and G.o.dolphin, touched by her delight, became eager to witness it: he felt the magnet of a Home. Yet as the first enthusiasm of pa.s.sion died away, he could not but be sensible that Lucilla was scarcely a companion. Her fancy was indeed lively, and her capacity acute; but experience had set a confined limit to her ideas.

She had nothing save love, and a fitful temperament, upon which she could draw for conversation. Those whose education debars them from deriving instruction from things, have in general the power to extract amus.e.m.e.nt from persons:--they can talk of the ridiculous Mrs. So-and-so, or the absurd Mr. Blank. But our lovers saw no society: and thus their commune was thrown entirely on their internal resources.

There was always that in the peculiar mind of G.o.dolphin which was inclined towards ideas too refined and subtle even for persons of cultivated intellect. If Constance could scarcely comprehend the tone of his character, we may believe that to Lucilla he was wholly a mystery. This, perhaps, enhanced her love, but the consciousness of it disappointed his. He felt that what he considered the n.o.blest faculties he possessed were unappreciated. He was sometimes angry with Lucilla that she loved only those qualities in his character which he shared with the rest of mankind. His speculative and Hamlet-like temper--(let us here take Goethe's view of Hamlet, and combine a certain weakness with finer traits of the royal dreamer)--perpetually deserted the solid world, and flew to aerial creations. He could not appreciate the present. Had G.o.dolphin loved Lucilla as he once thought that he should love her, the beauties of her character would have blinded him to its defects; but its pa.s.sion had been too sudden to be thoroughly grounded.

It had arisen from the knowledge of her affection---not grown step by step from the natural bias of his own. Between the interval of liking and possession, love (to be durable) should pa.s.s through many stages.

The doubt, the fear, the first pressure of the hand, the first kiss, each should be an epoch for remembrance to cling to. In moments of after coolness or anger, the mind should fly from the sated present to the million tender and freshening a.s.sociations of the past. With these a.s.sociations the affection renews its youth. How vast a store of melting reflections, how countless an acc.u.mulation of the spells that preserve constancy, does that love forfeit, in which the memory only commences with possession!

And the more delicate and thoughtful our nature, the more powerful are these a.s.sociations. Do they not const.i.tute the immense difference between the love and the intrigue? All things that savour of youth make our most exquisite sensations, whether to experience, or recall:--thus, in the seasons of the year, we prize the spring; and in the effusions of the heart, the courtship.

Beautiful, too, and tender--wild and fresh in her tenderness--as Lucilla was, there was that in her character, in addition to her want of education, which did not wholly accord with G.o.dolphin's preconception of the being his fancy had conjured up. His calm and profound nature desired one in whom he could not only confide, but, as it were, repose.