Part 5 (1/2)
Pause a moment, dear reader, and observe Mr. John Hopkins, _alias_ Sylvius, set out with all the artillery of ornament to storm the heart of Amasia. Notice his embroidered silken coat, his splendid lace cravat, the languishment of his large foolish eyes, the indubitable touch of Spanish red on those smooth cheeks. But, above all contemplate the wonders of his vast peruke. He has a name, be sure, for every portion of that killing structure. Those sausage-shaped curls, close to the ears, are _confidants_; those that dangle round the temples, _favorites_; the sparkling lock that descends alone over the right eyebrow is the _pa.s.sagere_; and, above all, the gorgeous knot that unites the curls and descends on the left breast, is aptly named the _meurtriere_. If he would but turn his head, we should see his _creves-coeur_, the two delicate curled locks at the nape of his neck. The escutcheon below his portrait bears, very suitably, three loaded muskets rampant. Such was Sylvius, conquering but, alas! not to conquer.
The youth of John Hopkins was pa.s.sed in the best Irish society. His father, the Bishop, married--apparently in second nuptials, for John speaks not of her as a man speaks of his mother--the daughter of the Earl of Radnor. Lady Araminta Hopkins seems to have been a friend of Isabella, d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton, the exquisite girl who, at the age of five, had married a bridegroom of nine, and at twenty-three was left a widow, to be the first toast in English society. The poems of John Hopkins are dedicated to this Dowager-d.u.c.h.ess, who, when they were published, had already for two years been the wife of Sir Thomas Hanmer. At the age of twelve, and probably in Dublin, Hopkins met the mysterious lady who animates these volumes under the name of Amasia.
Who was Amasia? That, alas! even the volubility of her lover does not reveal. But she was Irish, the daughter of a wealthy and perhaps t.i.tled personage, and the intimate companion for many years of the beautiful d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton.
Love did not begin at first sight. Sylvius played with Amasia when they both were children, and neither thought of love. Later on, in early youth, the poet was devoted only to a male friend, one Martin.
To him ecstatic verses are inscribed:
_O Martin! Martin! let the grateful sound Reach to that Heav'n which has our Friends.h.i.+p crown'd, And, like our endless Friends.h.i.+p, meet no bound_.
But alas! one day Martin came back, after a long absence, and, although he still
_With generous, kind, continu'd Friends.h.i.+p burn'd_,
he found Sylvius entirely absorbed by Amasia. Martin knew better than to show temper; he accepted the situation, and
_the lov'd Amasia's Health flew round, Amasia's Health the Golden Goblets crown'd_.
Now began the first and happiest portion of the story. Amasia had no suspicion of the feelings of the poet, and he was only too happy to be permitted to watch her movements. He records, in successive copies of verses, the various things she did. He seems to have been on terms of delightful intimacy with the lady, and he calls all sorts of people of the highest position to witness how he suffered. To Lady Sandwich are dedicated poems on ”Amasia, drawing her own Picture,” on ”Amasia, playing with a Clouded Fan,” on ”Amasia, singing, and sticking pins in a Red Silk Pincus.h.i.+on.” We are told how Amasia ”looked at me through a Multiplying-Gla.s.s,” how she was troubled with a redness in her eyes, how she danced before a looking-gla.s.s, how her flowered muslin nightgown (or ”night-rail,” as he calls it) took fire, and how, though she promised to sing, yet she never performed. We have a poem on the circ.u.mstance that Amasia, ”having p.r.i.c.k'd me with a Pin, accidentally scratched herself with it;” and another on her ”asking me if I slept well after so tempestuous a night.” But perhaps the most intimate of all is a poem ”To Amasia, tickling a Gentleman.” It was no perfunctory tickling that Amasia administered:
_While round his sides your nimble Fingers played, With pleasing softness did they swiftly rove, While, at each touch, they made his Heart-strings move.
As round his Breast, his ravish'd Breast they crowd, We hear their Musick when he laughs aloud_.
This is probably the only instance in literature in which a gentleman has complacently celebrated in verse the fact that his lady-love has tickled some other gentleman.
But this generous simplicity was not long to last. In 1690 Hopkins's father, the Bishop, had died. We may conjecture that Lady Araminta took charge of the boy, and that his home, in vacation time, was with her in Dublin or London. He writes like a youth who has always been petted; the _frou-frou_ of fine ladies' petticoats is heard in all his verses. But he had no fortune and no prospects; he was utterly, he confesses, without ambition. The stern papa of Amasia had no notion of bestowing her on the penniless Sylvius, and when the latter began to court her in earnest, she rebuffed him. She tore up his love-letters, she teased him by sending her black page to the window when he was ogling for her in the street below, she told him he was too young for her, and although she had no objection to his addressing verses to her, she gave him no serious encouragement. She was to be married, he hints, to some one of her own rank--some rich ”country b.o.o.by.”
At last, early in 1698, in company with the d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton, and possibly on the occasion of the second marriage of the latter, Amasia was taken off to France, and Hopkins never saw her again. A year later he received news of her death, and his little romance was over. He became ill, and Dr. Gibbons, the great fas.h.i.+onable physician of the day, was called in to attend him. The third volume closes by his summoning the faithful and unupbraiding Martin back to his heart:
_Love lives in Sun-s.h.i.+ne, or that Storm, Despair, But gentler Friends.h.i.+p Breathes a Mod'rate Air_.
And so Sylvius, with all his galaxy of lovely Irish ladies, his fas.h.i.+onable Muses, and his trite and tortured fancy, disappears into thin air.
The only literary man whom he mentions as a friend is George Farquhar, himself a native of Londonderry, and about the same age as Hopkins.
This playwright seems to be sometimes alluded to as Daphnis, sometimes under his own name. Before the performance of _Love and a Bottle_, Hopkins prophesied for the author a place where
_Congreve, Vanbrook, and Wicherley must sit, The great Triumvirate of Comick Wit_,
and later on he thought that even Collier himself ought to commend the _Constant Couple, or A Trip to the Jubilee_. At the first performance of this play, towards the close of 1699, Hopkins was greatly perturbed by the presence of a lady who reminded him of Amasia, and when he visited the theatre next he was less pleased with the play. He had a vague and infelicitous scheme for turning _Paradise Lost_ into rhyme.
These are the only traces of literary bias. In other respects Hopkins is interested in nothing more serious than a lock of Amasia's hair; the china cup she had, ”round the sides of which were painted Trees, and at the bottom a Naked Woman Weeping;” her box of patches, in which she finds a silver penny; or the needlework embroidered on her gown.
When Amasia died there was no reason why Sylvius should continue to exist, and he fades out of our vision like a ghost.
LOVE AND BUSINESS
LOVE AND BUSINESS: _in a Collection of occasionary Verse and epistolary Prose not hitherto published. By Mr. George Farquhar_. En Orenge il n'y a point d'oranges. _London, printed for B. Lintott, at the Post-House, in the Middle Temple-Gate, Fleet Street_. 1702.
There are some books, like some people, of whom we form an indulgent opinion without finding it easy to justify our liking. The young man who went to the life-insurance office and reported that his father had died of no particular disease, but just of ”plain death,” would sympathise with the feeling I mention. Sometimes we like a book, not for any special merit, but just because it is what it is. The rare, and yet not celebrated, miscellany of which I am about to write has this character. It is not instructive, or very high-toned, or exceptionally clever, but if it were a man, all people that are not prigs would say that it was a very good sort of fellow. If it be, as it certainly is, a literary advantage for a nondescript collection of trifles, to reproduce minutely the personality of its writer, then _Love and Business_ has one definite merit. Wherever we dip into its pages we may use it as a telephone, and hear a young Englishman, of the year 1700, talking to himself and to his friends in the most unaffected accents.
Captain George Farquhar, in 1702, was four-and-twenty years of age.
He was a smart, soldier-like Irishman, of ”a splenetic and amorous complexion,” half an actor, a quarter a poet, and altogether a very honest and gallant gentleman. He had taken to the stage kindly enough, and at twenty-one had written _Love and a Bottle_. Since then, two other plays, _The Constant Couple_ and _Sir Harry Wildair_, had proved that he had wit and fancy, and knew how to knit them together into a rattling comedy. But he was poor, always in pursuit of that timid wild-fowl, the occasional guinea, and with no sort of disposition to settle down into a heavy citizen. In order to bring down a few brace of golden game, he shovels into Lintott's hands his stray verses of all kinds, a bundle of letters he wrote from Holland, a dignified essay or discourse upon Comedy, and, with questionable taste perhaps, a set of copies of the love-letters he had addressed to the lady who became his wife. All this is not very praiseworthy, and as a contribution to literature it is slight indeed; but, then, how genuine and sincere, how guileless and picturesque is the self-revelation of it! There is no attempt to make things better than they are, nor any pandering to a cynical taste by making them worse. Why should he conceal or falsify? The town knows what sort of a fellow George Farquhar is. Here are some letters and some verses; the beaux at White's may read them if they will, and then throw them away.