Olla Podrida Part 51

_A._ (_Looking over his memoranda._)--It will do! (_Hopping and dancing about the room._) Hurrah! my tailor's bill will be paid after all!

PART II

[_Mr Arthur Ansard's Chambers as before. Mr Ansard, with his eyes fixed upon the wig block, gnawing the feather end of his pen. The table, covered with sundry sheets of foolscap, shows strong symptoms of the Novel progressing._]

_Ansard_ (_solus_).

Where is Barnstaple? If he do not come soon, I shall have finished my novel without a heroine. Well, I'm not the first person who has been foiled by a woman. (_Continues to gnaw his pen in a brown study._)

_Barnstaple enters unperceived, and slaps Ansard on the shoulder. The latter starts up._

_B._ So, friend Ansard, making your dinner off your pen: it is not every novel writer who can contrive to do that even in antic.i.p.ation. Have you profited by my instructions?

_A._ I wish I had. I a.s.sure you that this light diet has not contributed, as might be expected, to a.s.sist a heavy head; and one feather is not sufficient to enable my genius to take wing. If the public knew what dull work it is to write a novel, they would not be surprised at finding them dull reading. _Ex nihilo nihil fit._ Barnstaple, I am at the very bathos of stupidity.

_B._ You certainly were absorbed when I entered, for I introduced myself.

_A._ I wish you had introduced another personage with you--you would have been doubly welcome.

_B._ Who is that?

_A._ My heroine. I have followed your instructions to the letter. My hero is as listless as I fear my readers will be, and he is not yet in love. In fact, he is only captivated with himself. I have made him dismiss Coridon.

_B._ Hah! how did you manage that?

_A._ He was sent to ascertain the arms on the panel of a carriage. In his eagerness to execute his master's wishes, he came home with a considerable degree of perspiration on his brow, for which offence he was immediately put out of doors.

_B._ Bravo--it was unpardonable--but still----

_A._ O! I know what you mean--that is all arranged; he has an annuity of one hundred pounds per annum.

_B._ My dear Ansard, you have exceeded my expectations; but now for the heroine.

_A._ Yes, indeed; help me--for I have exhausted all my powers.

_B._ It certainly requires much tact to present your heroine to your readers. We are unfortunately denied what the ancients were so happy to possess--a whole _cortege_ of divinities that might be summoned to help any great personage in, or the author out of, a difficulty; but since we cannot command their a.s.sistance, like the man in the play who forgot his part, we will do without it. Now, have you thought of nothing new, for we must not plagiarise even from fashionable novels?

_A._ I have thought--and thought--and can find nothing new, unless we bring her in in a whirlwind: that has not yet been attempted.

_B._ A whirlwind! I don't know--that's hazardous. Nevertheless, if she were placed on a beetling cliff, overhanging the tempestuous ocean, lashing the rocks with its wild surge; of a sudden, after she has been permitted to finish her soliloquy, a white cloud rising rapidly and unnoticed--the sudden vacuum--the rush of mighty winds through the majestic and alpine scenery--the vortex gathering round her--first admiring the vast efforts of nature; then astonished; and, lastly, alarmed, as she finds herself compelled to perform involuntary gyrations, till at length she spins round like a well-whipped top, nearing the dangerous edge of the precipice. It is bold, and certainly quite novel--I think it will do. Portray her delicate little feet, peeping out, pointing downwards, the force of the elements raising her on her tip toes, now touching, now disdaining the earth. Her dress expanded wide like that of Herbele in her last and best pirouette--round, round she goes--her white arms are tossed frantically in the air. Corinne never threw herself into more graceful att.i.tudes.

Now is seen her diminishing ankle--now the rounded symmetry--mustn't go too high up though--the wind increases--her distance from the edge of the precipice decreases--she has no breath left to shriek--no power to fall--threatened to be ravished by the wild and powerful G.o.d of the elements--she is discovered by the Honourable Augustus Bouverie, who has just finished his soliloquy upon another adjacent hill. He delights in her danger--before he rushes to her rescue, makes one pause for the purpose of admiration, and another for the purpose of adjusting his shirt collar.

_A._ The devil he does!

_B._ To be sure. The hero of a fashionable novel never loses caste.

Whether in a storm, a whirlwind, up to his neck in the foaming ocean, or tumbling down a precipice, he is still the elegant and correct Honourable Augustus Bouverie. To punish you for your interruption, I have a great mind to make him take a pinch of snuff before he starts.

Well--he flies to her a.s.sistance--is himself caught in the rushing vortex, which prevents him from getting nearer to the lady, and, despite of himself, takes to whirling in the opposite direction. They approach--they recede--she shrieks without being heard--holds out her arms for help--she would drop them in despair, but cannot, for they are twisted over her head by the tremendous force of the element. One moment they are near to each other, and the next they are separated; at one instant they are close to the abyss, and the waters below roar in delight of their antic.i.p.ated victims, and in the next a favouring change of the vortex increases their distance from the danger--there they spin--and there you may leave them, and commence a new chapter.

_A._ But is not all this naturally and physically impossible?

_B._ By no means; there is nothing supernatural in a whirlwind, and the effect of a whirlwind is to twist everything round. Why should the heroine and the Honourable Augustus Bouverie not be submitted to the laws of nature? besides, we are writing a fashionable novel. Wild and improbable as this whirlwind may appear, it is within the range of probability; whereas, that is not at all adhered to in many novels--witness the drinking-scene in ----, and others equally _outrees_, in which the author, having turned probability out of doors, ends by throwing possibility out of the window--leaving folly and madness to usurp their place--and play a thousand antics for the admiration of the public, who, pleased with novelty, cry out "How fine!"

_A._ Buy the book, and laud the author.

_B._ Exactly. Now, having left your hero and heroine in a situation peculiarly interesting, with the greatest nonchalance, pa.s.s over to the continent, rave on the summit of Mont Blanc, and descant upon the strata which compose the mountains of the Moon in central Africa. You have been philosophical, now you must be geological. No one can then say that your book is light reading.

_A._ That can be said of few novels. In most of them even smoke a.s.sumes the ponderosity of lead.

_B._ There is a metal still heavier, which they have the power of creating--gold--to pay a dunning tailor's bill.

_A._ But after having been philosophical and geological, ought one not to be a little moral?

_B._ Pshaw! I thought you had more sense. The great art of novel writing is to make the vices glorious, by placing them in close alliance with redeeming qualities. Depend upon it, Ansard, there is a deeper, more heartfelt satisfaction than mere amus.e.m.e.nt in novel reading; a satisfaction no less real, because we will not own it to ourselves; the satisfaction of seeing all our favourite and selfish ideas dressed up in a garb so becoming, that we persuade ourselves that our false pride is proper dignity, our ferocity courage, our cowardice prudence, our irreligion liberality, and our baser appet.i.tes mere gallantry.

_A._ Very true, Barnstaple; but really I do not like this whirlwind.

_B._ Well, well, I give it up then; it was your own idea. We'll try again. Cannot you create some difficulty or dilemma, in which to throw her, so that the hero may come to her rescue with _eclat_?

_A._ Her grey palfrey takes fright.

_B._ So will your readers; stale--quite stale!

_A._ A wild bull has his horns close to her, and is about to toss her.

_B._ As your book would be--away with contempt. Vapid--quite vapid!

_A._ A shipwreck--the waves are about to close over her.

_B._ Your book would be closed at the same moment--worn out--quite worn out.

_A._ In the dead of the night, a fire breaks out--she is already in the midst of the flames----

_B._ Where your book would also be, by the disgusted reader--worse and worse.

_A._ Confound it--you will not allow me to expose her to earth, air, fire or water. I have a great mind to hang her in her garters, and make the hero come and cut her down.

_B._ You might do worse--and better.

_A._ What--hang myself?

_B._ That certainly would put an end to all your difficulties. But, Ansard, I think I can put your heroine in a situation really critical and eminently distressing, and the hero shall come to her relief, like the descent of a G.o.d to the rescue of a Greek or Trojan warrior.

_A._ Or of Bacchus to Ariadne in her distress.

_B._ Perhaps a better simile. The consequence will be, that eternal grat.i.tude in the bosom of the maiden will prove the parent of eternal love, which eternity of pa.s.sion will, of course, last until they are married.