The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family Part 31

That cool old operator, who had taken Mr. Clive's case in hand, now produced her shining knife, and executed the first cut with perfect neatness and precision. "We are come here, as I suppose you know, Mr.

Newcome, upon family matters, and I frankly tell you that I think, for your own sake, you would be much better away. I wrote my daughter a great scolding when I heard that you were in this place."

"But it was by the merest chance, mamma, indeed it was," cries Lady Anne.

"Of course, by the merest chance, and by the merest chance I heard of it too. A little bird came and told me at Kissingen. You have no more sense, Anne, than a goose. I have told you so a hundred times. Lady Anne requested you to stay, and I, my good young friend, request you to go away."

"I needed no request," said Clive. "My going, Lady Kew, is my own act. I was going without requiring any guide to show me to the door."

"No doubt you were, and my arrival is the signal for Mr. Newcome's bon jour. I am Bogey, and I frighten everybody away. By the scene which you witnessed yesterday, my good young friend, and all that painful esclandre on the promenade, you must see how absurd, and dangerous, and wicked--yes, wicked it is for parents to allow intimacies to spring up between young people, which can only lead to disgrace and unhappiness.

Lady Dorking was another good-natured goose. I had not arrived yesterday ten minutes, when my maid came running in to tell me of what had occurred on the promenade; and, tired as I was, I went that instant to Jane Dorking and pa.s.sed the evening with her, and that poor little creature to whom Captain Belsize behaved so cruelly. She does not care a fig for him--not one fig. Her childish inclination is pa.s.sed away these two years, whilst Mr. Jack was performing his feats in prison; and if the wretch flatters himself that it was on his account she was agitated yesterday, he is perfectly mistaken, and you may tell him Lady Kew said so. She is subject to fainting fits. Dr. Finck has been attending her ever since she has been here. She fainted only last Tuesday at the sight of a rat walking about their lodgings (they have dreadful lodgings, the Dorkings), and no wonder she was frightened at the sight of that great coa.r.s.e tipsy wretch! She is engaged, as you know, to your connexion, my grandson, Barnes:--in all respects a most eligible union. The rank of life of the parties suits them to one another. She is a good young woman, and Barnes has experienced from persons of another sort such horrors, that he will know the blessing of domestic virtue. It was high time he should. I say all this in perfect frankness to you.

"Go back again and play in the garden, little brats" (this to the innocents who came frisking in from the lawn in front of the windows).

"You have been? And Barnes sent you in here? Go up to Miss Quigley. No, stop. Go and tell Ethel to come down; bring her down with you. Do you understand?"

The unconscious infants toddle upstairs to their sister; and Lady Kew blandly says, "Ethel's engagement to my grandson, Lord Kew, has long been settled in our family, though these things are best not talked about until they are quite determined, you know, my dear Mr. Newcome.

When we saw you and your father in London, we heard that you too-that you too were engaged to a young lady in your own rank of life, a Miss--what was her name?--Miss MacPherson, Miss Mackenzie. Your aunt, Mrs. Hobson Newcome, who I must say is a most blundering silly person, had set about this story. It appears there is no truth in it. Do not look surprised that I know about your affairs. I am an old witch, and know numbers of things."

And, indeed, how Lady Kew came to know this fact, whether her maid corresponded with Lady Anne's maid, what her ladyship's means of information were, avowed or occult, this biographer has never been able to ascertain. Very likely Ethel, who in these last three weeks had been made aware of that interesting circ.u.mstance, had announced it to Lady Kew in the course of a cross-examination, and there may have been a battle between the granddaughter and the grandmother, of which the family chronicler of the Newcomes has had no precise knowledge.

That there were many such I know--skirmishes, sieges, and general engagements. When we hear the guns, and see the wounded, we know there has been a fight. Who knows had there been a battle-royal, and was Miss Newcome having her wounds dressed upstairs?

"You will like to say good-bye to your cousin, I know," Lady Kew continued, with imperturbable placidity. "Ethel, my dear, here is Mr.

Clive Newcome, who has come to bid us all good-bye." The little girls came trotting down at this moment, each holding a skirt of their elder sister. She looked rather pale, but her expression was haughty--almost fierce.

Clive rose up as she entered, from the sofa by the old Countess's side, which place she had pointed him to take during the amputation. He rose up and put his hair back off his face, and said very calmly, "Yes, I'm come to say good-bye. My holidays are over, and Ridley and I are off for Rome; good-bye, and G.o.d bless you, Ethel."

She gave him her hand and said, "Good-bye, Clive," but her hand did not return his pressure, and dropped to her side, when he let it go.

Hearing the words good-bye, little Alice burst into a howl, and little Maude, who was an impetuous little thing, stamped her little red shoes and said, "It san't be good-bye. Tlive san't go." Alice, roaring, clung hold of Clive's trousers. He took them up gaily, each on an arm, as he had done a hundred times, and tossed the children on to his shoulders, where they used to like to pull his yellow mustachios. He kissed the little hands and faces, and a moment after was gone.

"Qu'as-tu?" says M. de Florac, meeting him going over the bridge to his own hotel. "Qu'as-tu, mon pet.i.t Claive? Est-ce qu'on vient de t'arracher une dent?"

"C'est ca," says Clive, and walked into the Hotel de France. "Hulloh!

J. J.! Ridley!" he sang out. "Order the trap out and let's be off."

"I thought we were not to march till to-morrow," says J. J., divining perhaps that some catastrophe had occurred. Indeed, Mr. Clive was going a day sooner than he had intended. He woke at Fribourg the next morning.

It was the grand old cathedral he looked at, not Baden of the pine-clad hills, of the pretty walks and the lime-tree avenues. Not Baden, the prettiest booth of all Vanity Fair. The crowds and the music, the gambling-tables and the cadaverous croupiers and c.h.i.n.king gold, were far out of sight and hearing. There was one window in the Hotel de Hollande that he thought of, how a fair arm used to open it in the early morning, how the muslin curtain in the morning air swayed to and fro. He would have given how much to see it once more! Walking about at Fribourg in the night, away from his companions, he had thought of ordering horses, galloping back to Baden, and once again under that window, calling Ethel, Ethel. But he came back to his room and the quiet J. J., and to poor Jack Belsize, who had had his tooth taken out too.

We had almost forgotten Jack, who took a back seat in Clive's carriage, as befits a secondary personage in this history, and Clive in truth had almost forgotten him too. But Jack having his own cares and business, and having rammed his own carpet-bag, brought it down without a word, and Clive found him environed in smoke when he came down to take his place in the little britzska. I wonder whether the window at the Hotel de Hollande saw him go? There are some curtains behind which no historian, however prying, is allowed to peep.

"Tiens, le pet.i.t part," says Florac of the cigar, who was always sauntering. "Yes, we go," says Clive. "There is a fourth place, Viscount; will you come too?"

"I would love it well," replies Florac, "but I am here in faction. My cousin and seigneur M. le Duc d'Ivry is coming all the way from Bagneres de Bigorre. He says he counts on me:--affaires mon cher, affaires d'etat."

"How pleased the d.u.c.h.ess will be! Easy with that bag!" shouts Clive.

"How pleased the princess will be!" In truth he hardly knew what he was saying.

"Vous croyez; vous croyez," says M. de Florac. "As you have a fourth place, I know who had best take it."

"And who is that?" asked the young traveller.

Lord Kew and Barnes, Esq., of Newcome, came out of the Hotel de Hollande at this moment. Barnes slunk back, seeing Jack Belsize's hairy face. Kew ran over the bridge. "Good-bye, Clive. Good-bye, Jack." "Good-bye, Kew."

It was a great handshake. Away goes the postillion blowing his horn, and young Hannibal has left Capua behind him.

CHAPTER x.x.xI. Madame la d.u.c.h.esse

In one of Clive Newcome's letters from Baden, the young man described to me, with considerable humour and numerous ill.u.s.trations as his wont was, a great lady to whom he was presented at that watering-place by his friend Lord Kew. Lord Kew had travelled in the East with Monsieur le Duc and Madame la d.u.c.h.esse d'Ivry--the prince being an old friend of his lordship's family. He is the "Q" of Madame d'Ivry's book of travels, Footprints of the Gazelles, by a daughter of the Crusaders, in which she prays so fervently for Lord Kew's conversion. He is the "Q" who rescued the princess from the Arabs, and performed many a feat which lives in her glowing pages. He persists in saying that he never rescued Madame la Princesse from any Arabs at all, except from one beggar who was bawling out for bucksheesh, and whom Kew drove away with a stick. They made pilgrimages to all the holy places, and a piteous sight it was, said Lord Kew, to see the old prince in the Jerusalem processions at Easter pacing with bare feet and a candle. Here Lord Kew separated from the prince's party. His name does not occur in the last part of the Footprints; which, in truth, are filled full of strange rhapsodies, adventures which n.o.body was but the princess, and mystic disquisitions.

She hesitates at nothing, like other poets of her nation: not profoundly learned, she invents where she has not acquired: mingles together religion and the opera; and performs Parisian pas-de-ballet before the gates of monasteries and the cells of anchorites. She describes, as if she had herself witnessed the catastrophe, the pa.s.sage of the Red Sea: and, as if there were no doubt of the transaction, an unhappy love-affair between Pharaoh's eldest son and Moses's daughter. At Cairo, apropos of Joseph's granaries, she enters into a furious tirade against Putiphar, whom she paints as an old savage, suspicious and a tyrant.

They generally have a copy of the Footprints of the Gazelles at the Circulating Library at Baden, as Madame d'Ivry constantly visits that watering-place. M. le Duc was not pleased with the book, which was published entirely without his concurrence, and which he described as one of the ten thousand follies of Madame la d.u.c.h.esse.

This n.o.bleman was five-and-forty years older than his d.u.c.h.ess. France is the country where that sweet Christian inst.i.tution of mariages de convenance (which so many folks of the family about which this story treats are engaged in arranging) is most in vogue. There the newspapers daily announce that M. de Foy has a bureau de confiance, where families may arrange marriages for their sons and daughters in perfect comfort and security. It is but a question of money on one side and the other.

Mademoiselle has so many francs of dot; Monsieur has such and such rentes or lands in possession or reversion, an etude d'avoue, a shop with a certain clientele bringing him such and such an income, which may be doubled by the judicious addition of so much capital, and the pretty little matrimonial arrangement is concluded (the agent touching his percentage), or broken off, and n.o.body unhappy, and the world none the wiser. The consequences of the system I do not pretend personally to know; but if the light literature of a country is a reflex of its manners, and French novels are a picture of French life, a pretty society must that be into the midst of which the London reader may walk in twelve hours from this time of perusal, and from which only twenty miles of sea separate us.

When the old Duke d'Ivry, of the ancient ancient n.o.bility of France, an emigrant with Artois, a warrior with Conde, an exile during the reign of the Corsican usurper, a grand prince, a great n.o.bleman afterwards, though shorn of nineteen-twentieths of his wealth by the Revolution,--when the Duke d'Ivry lost his two sons, and his son's son likewise died, as if fate had determined to end the direct line of that n.o.ble house, which had furnished queens to Europe, and renowned chiefs to the Crusaders--being of an intrepid spirit, the Duke was ill disposed to yield to his redoubtable energy, in spite of the cruel blows which the latter had inflicted upon him, and when he was more than sixty years of age, three months before the July Revolution broke out, a young lady of a sufficient n.o.bility, a virgin of sixteen, was brought out of the convent of the Sacre Coeur at Paris, and married with immense splendour and ceremony to this princely widower. The most august names signed the book of the civil marriage. Madame la Dauphine and Madame la d.u.c.h.esse de Berri complimented the young bride with royal favours. Her portrait by Dubufe was in the Exhibition next year, a charming young d.u.c.h.ess indeed, with black eyes, and black ringlets, pearls on her neck, and diamonds in her hair, as beautiful as a princess of a fairy tale. M. d'Ivry, whose early life may have been rather oragious, was yet a gentleman perfectly well conserved. Resolute against fate his enemy (one would fancy fate was of an aristocratic turn, and took especial delight in combats with princely houses; the Atridae, the Borbonidae, the Ivrys,--the Browns and Joneses being of no account), the prince seemed to be determined not only to secure a progeny, but to defy age. At sixty he was still young, or seemed to be so. His hair was as black as the princess's own, his teeth as white. If you saw him on the Boulevard de Gand, sunning among the youthful exquisites there, or riding au Bois, with a grace worthy of old Franconi himself, you would take him for one of the young men, of whom indeed up to his marriage he retained a number of the graceful follies and amus.e.m.e.nts, though his manners had a dignity acquired in old days of Versailles and the Trianon, which the moderns cannot hope to imitate. He was as a.s.siduous behind the scenes of the opera as any journalist, or any young dandy of twenty years. He "ranged himself," as the French phrase is, shortly before his marriage, just like any other young bachelor: took leave of Phryne and Aspasie in the coulisses, and proposed to devote himself henceforth to his charming young wife.

The affreux catastrophe of July arrived. The ancient Bourbons were once more on the road to exile (save one wily old remnant of the race, who rode grinning over the barricades, and distributing poignees de main to the stout fists that had pummelled his family out of France). M. le Duc d'Ivry, who lost his place at court, his appointments which helped his income very much, and his peerage would no more acknowledge the usurper of Neuilly, than him of Elba. The ex-peer retired to his terres. He barricaded his house in Paris against all supporters of the citizen king; his nearest kinsman, M. de Florac, among the rest, who for his part cheerfully took his oath of fidelity, and his seat in Louis Philippe's house of peers, having indeed been accustomed to swear to all dynasties for some years past.

In due time Madame la d.u.c.h.esse d'Ivry gave birth to a child, a daughter, whom her n.o.ble father received with but small pleasure. What the Duke desired, was an heir to his name, a Prince of Moncontour, to fill the place of the sons and grandsons gone before him, to join their ancestors in the tomb. No more children, however, blessed the old Duke's union.

Madame d'Ivry went the round of all the watering-places: pilgrimages were tried: vows and gifts to all saints supposed to be favourable to the d'Ivry family, or to families in general:--but the saints turned a deaf ear; they were inexorable since the true religion and the elder Bourbons were banished from France.

Living by themselves in their ancient castles, or their dreary mansion of the Faubourg St. Germain, I suppose the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess grew tried of one another, as persons who enter into a mariage de convenance sometimes, nay, as those who light a flaming love-match, and run away with one another, will be found to do. A lady of one-and-twenty, and a gentleman of sixty-six, alone in a great castle, have not unfrequently a third guest at their table, who comes without a card, and whom they cannot shut out, though they keep their doors closed ever so. His name is Ennui, and many a long hour and weary night must such folks pa.s.s in the unbidden society of this Old Man of the Sea; this daily guest at the board; this watchful attendant at the fireside; this a.s.siduous companion who will walk out with you; this sleepless restless bedfellow.

At first, M. d'Ivry, that well-conserved n.o.bleman who never would allow that he was not young, exhibited no sign of doubt regarding his own youth except an extreme jealousy and avoidance of all other young fellows. Very likely Madame la d.u.c.h.esse may have thought men in general dyed their hair, wore stays, and had the rheumatism. Coming out of the convent of the Sacre Coeur, how was the innocent young lady to know better? You see, in these mariages de convenance, though a coronet may be convenient to a beautiful young creature, and a beautiful young creature may be convenient to an old gentleman, there are articles which the marriage-monger cannot make to convene at all: tempers over which M.

de Foy and his like have no control; and tastes which cannot be put into the marriage settlements. So this couple were unhappy, and the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess quarrelled with one another like the most vulgar pair who ever fought across a table.

In this unhappy state of home affairs, madame took to literature, monsieur to politics. She discovered that she was a great unappreciated soul, and when a woman finds that treasure in her bosom of course she sets her own price on the article. Did you ever see the first poems of Madame la d.u.c.h.esse d'Ivry, Les Cris de l'Ame? She used to read them to her very intimate friends, in white, with her hair a good deal down her back. They had some success. Dubufe having painted her as a d.u.c.h.ess, Scheffer depicted her as a Muse. That was in the third year of her marriage, when she rebelled against the Duke her husband, insisted on opening her saloons to art and literature, and, a fervent devotee still, proposed to unite genius and religion. Poets had interviews with her.

Musicians came and tw.a.n.ged guitars to her.

Her husband, entering her room, would fall over the sabre and spurs of Count Almaviva from the boulevard, or Don Basilio with his great sombrero and shoe-buckles. The old gentleman was breathless and bewildered in following her through all her vagaries. He was of old France, she of new. What did he know of the Ecole Romantique, and these jeunes gens with their Marie Tudors and Tours de Nesle, and sanguineous histories of queens who sewed their lovers into sacks, emperors who had interviews with robber captains in Charlemagne's tomb, Buridans and Hernanis, and stuff? Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand was a man of genius as a writer, certainly immortal; and M. de Lamartine was a young man extremely bien pensant, but, ma foi, give him Crebillon fils, or a bonne farce of M. Vade to make laugh; for the great sentiments, for the beautiful style, give him M. de Lormian (although Bonapartist) or the Abbe de Lille. And for the new school! bah! these little Duma.s.s, and Hugos, and Mussets, what is all that? "M. de Lormian shall be immortal, monsieur," he would say, "when all these freluquets are forgotten."

After his marriage he frequented the coulisses of the opera no more; but he was a pretty constant attendant at the Theatre Francais, where you might hear him snoring over the chefs-d'oeuvres of French tragedy.

For some little time after 1830, the d.u.c.h.esse was as great a Carlist as her husband could wish; and they conspired together very comfortably at first. Of an adventurous turn, eager for excitement of all kinds, nothing would have better pleased the d.u.c.h.esse than to follow MADAME in her adventurous courses in La Vendee, disguised as a boy above all. She was persuaded to stay at home, however, and aid the good cause at Paris; while Monsieur le Duc went off to Brittany to offer his old sword to the mother of his king. But MADAME was discovered up the chimney at Rennes, and all sorts of things were discovered afterwards. The world said that our silly little d.u.c.h.ess of Paris was partly the cause of the discovery.

Spies were put upon her, and to some people she would tell anything. M.

le Duc, on paying his annual visit to august exiles at Goritz, was very badly received: Madame la Dauphine gave him a sermon. He had an awful quarrel with Madame la d.u.c.h.esse on returning to Paris. He provoked Monsieur le Comte Tiercelin, le beau Tiercelin, an officer of ordonnance of the Duke of Orleans, into a duel, a propos of a cup of coffee in a salon; he actually wounded the beau Tiercelin--he sixty-five years of age! his nephew, M. de Florac, was loud in praise of his kinsman's bravery.

That pretty figure and complexion which still appear so captivating in M. Dubufe's portrait of Madame la d.u.c.h.esse d'Ivry, have long existed--it must be owned only in paint. "Je la prefere a l'huile," the Vicomte de Florac said of his cousin. "She should get her blushes from Monsieur Dubufe--those of her present furnishers are not near so natural."

Sometimes the d.u.c.h.ess appeared with these postiches roses, sometimes of a mortal paleness. Sometimes she looked plump, on other occasions wofully thin. "When she goes into the world," said the same chronicler, "ma cousine surrounds herself with jupons--c'est pour defendre sa vertu: when she is in a devotional mood, she gives up rouge, roast meat, and crinoline, and fait maigre absolument." To spite the Duke her husband, she took up with the Vicomte de Florac, and to please herself she cast him away. She took his brother, the Abbe de Florac, for a director, and presently parted from him. "Mon frere, ce saint homme ne parle jamais de Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, maintenant," said the Vicomte. "She must have confessed to him des choses affreuses--oh, oui!--affreuses ma parole d'honneur!"

The Duke d'Ivry being archiroyaliste, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse must make herself ultra-Philippiste. "Oh, oui! tout ce qu'il y a de plus Madame Adelaide au monde!" cried Florac. "She raffoles of M. le Regent. She used to keep a fast of the day of the supplice of Philippe Egalite, Saint and Martyr. I say used, for to make to enrage her husband, and to recall the Abbe my brother, did she not advise herself to consult M. le Pasteur Grigou, and to attend the preach at his Temple? When this sheep had brought her shepherd back, she dismissed the Pasteur Grigou. Then she tired of M. l'Abbe again, and my brother is come out from her, shaking his good head. Ah! she must have put things into it which astonished the good Abbe! You know he has since taken the Dominican robe? My word of honour! I believe it was terror of her that drove him into a convent. You shall see him at Rome, Clive. Give him news of his elder, and tell him this gross prodigal is repenting amongst the swine.

My word of honour! I desire but the death of Madame la Vicomtesse de Florac, to marry and range myself!

"After being Royalist, Philippist, Catholic, Huguenot, Madame d'Ivry must take to Pantheism, to bearded philosophers who believe in nothing, not even in clean linen, eclecticism, republicanism, what know I?

All her changes have been chronicled by books of her composition. Les Demons, poem Catholic; Charles IX. is the hero and the demons are shot for the most part at the catastrophe of St. Bartholomew. My good mother, all good Catholic as she is, was startled by the boldness of this doctrine. Then there came Une Dragonnade, par Mme. la d.u.c.h.esse d'Ivry, which is all on your side. That was of the time of the Pastor Grigou, that one. The last was Les Dieux dechus, poeme en 20 chants, par Mme. la D---- d'I. Guard yourself well from this Muse! If she takes a fancy to you she will never leave you alone. If you see her often, she will fancy you are in love with her, and tell her husband. She always tells my uncle--afterwards--after she has quarrelled with you and grown tired of you! Eh, being in London once, she had the idea to make herself a Quakre; wore the costume, consulted a minister of that culte, and quarrelled with him as of rule. It appears the Quakers do not beat themselves, otherwise my poor uncle must have paid of his person.

"The turn of the philosophers then came, the chemists, the natural historians, what know I? She made a laboratory in her hotel, and rehea.r.s.ed poisons like Madame de Brinvilliers--she spent hours in the Jardin des Plantes. Since she has grown affreusenent maigre and wears mounting robes, she has taken more than ever to the idea that she resembles Mary Queen of Scots. She wears a little frill and a little cap. Every man she loves, she says, has come to misfortune. She calls her lodgings Lochleven. Eh! I pity the landlord of Lochleven! She calls ce gros Blackball, vous savez, that pillar of estaminets, that prince of mauvais-ton, her Bothwell; little Mijaud, the poor little pianist, she named her Rizzio; young Lord Greenhorn who was here with governor, a Monsieur of Oxfort, she christened her Darnley, and the Minister Anglican, her John Knox! The poor man was quite enchanted! Beware of this haggard siren, my little Clive!--mistrust her dangerous song! Her cave is jonchee with the bones of her victims. Be you not one!"