Part 50 (1/2)

_A._ But he's not coming in from a walk--he's not yet out of bed.

_B._ You don't understand it.--”Gloved left hand he applied a gentle friction to the portal of his right eye, which unclosing at the silent summons, enabled him to perceive a repeater studded with brilliants, and ascertain the exact minute of time, which we have already made known to the reader, and at which our history opens.”

_A._ A very grand opening indeed!

_B._ Not more than it ought to be for a fas.h.i.+onable novel.--”At the sound of a silver _clochette_, his faithful Swiss valet Coridon, who had for some time been unperceived at the door, waiting for some notice of his master, having thrown off the empire of Somnus, in his light pumps, covered with beaver, moved with noiseless step up to the bedside, like the advance of eve stealing over the face of nature.”

_A._ Rather an incongruous simile.

_B._ Not for a fas.h.i.+onable novel.--”There he stood, like Taciturnity bowing at the feet of proud Authority.”

_A._ Indeed, Barnstaple, that is too _outre_.

_B._ Not a whit: I am in the true ”Cambysis' vein.”--”Coridon having softly withdrawn the rose-coloured gros de Naples bed-curtains, which by some might have been thought to have been rather too extravagantly fringed with the finest Mechlin lace, exclaimed with a tone of tremulous deference and affection, '_Monsieur a bien dormi?_' 'Coridon,' said the Honourable Augustus Bouverie, raising himself on his elbow in that eminently graceful att.i.tude, for which he was so remarkable when reclining on the ottomans at Almack's----”

_A._ Are you sure they have ottamans there?

_B._ No; but your readers can't disprove it.--”'Coridon,' said he, surveying his attendant from head to foot, and ultimately a.s.suming a severity of countenance, 'Coridon, you are becoming gross, if not positively what the people call _fat_.' The Swiss attendant fell back in graceful astonishment three steps, and arching his eyebrows, extending his inverted palms forward, and raising his shoulders above the apex of his head, exclaimed, '_Pardon, mi lor, j'en aurois un horreur parfait._'

'I tell you,' replied our gracefully rec.u.mbent hero, 'that it is so, Coridon; and I ascribe it to your partiality for that detestable wine called Port. Confine yourself to Hock and Moselle, sirrah: I fear me, you have a base hankering after mutton and beef. Restrict yourself to salads, and do not sin even with an omelette more than once a week.

Coridon must be visionary and diaphanous, or he is no Coridon for me.

Remove my night-gloves, and a.s.sist me to rise: it is past four o'clock, and the sun must have, by this time, sufficiently aired this terrestrial globe.'”

_A._ I have it now; I feel I could go on for an hour.

_B._ Longer than that, before you get him out of his dressing-room. You must make at least five chapters before he is apparelled, or how can you write a fas.h.i.+onable novel, in which you cannot afford more than two incidents in the three volumes? Two are absolutely necessary for the editor of the ---- Gazette to extract as specimens, before he winds up an eulogy. Do you think that you can proceed now for a week, without my a.s.sistance?

_A._ I think so, if you will first give me some general ideas. In the first place, am I always to continue in this style?

_B._ No; I thought you knew better. You must throw in patches of philosophy every now and then.

_A._ Philosophy in a fas.h.i.+onable novel?

_B._ Most a.s.suredly, or it would be complained of as trifling; but a piece, now and then, of philosophy, as unintelligible as possible, stamps it with deep thought. In the dressing-room, or boudoir, it must be occasionally Epicurean; elsewhere, especially in the open air, more Stoical.

_A._ I'm afraid that I shall not manage that without a specimen to copy from. Now I think of it, Eugene Aram says something very beautiful on a starry night.

_B._ He does: it is one of the most splendid pieces of writing in our language. But I will have no profanation, Arthur;--to your pen again, and write. We'll suppose our hero to have retired from the crowded festivities of a ball-room at some lordly mansion in the country, and to have wandered into a churchyard, damp and dreary with a thick London fog. In the light dress of fas.h.i.+on, he throws himself on a tombstone.

”Ye dead!” exclaims the hero, ”where are ye? Do your disembodied spirits now float around me, and, shrouded in this horrible veil of nature, glare unseen upon vitality? Float ye upon this intolerable mist, in yourselves still more misty and intolerable? Hold ye high jubilee to-night? or do ye crouch behind these monitorial stones, gibbering and chattering at one who dares thus to invade your precincts? Here may I hold communion with my soul, and, in the invisible presence of those who could, but dare not to reveal. Away! it must not be.”

_A._ What mustn't be?

_B._ That is the mystery which gives the point to his soliloquy. Leave it to the reader's imagination.

_A._ I understand. But still the Honourable Augustus cannot lie in bed much longer, and I really shall not be able to get him out without your a.s.sistance. I do not comprehend how a man can get out of bed _gracefully_; he must show his bare legs, and the alteration of position is in itself awkward.

_B._ Not half so awkward as you are. Do you not feel that he must not be got out of bed at all--that is, by description.

_A._ How then?

_B._ By saying nothing about it. Re-commence as follows:--”'I should like the bath at seventy-six and a half, Coridon,' observed the Honourable Augustus Bouverie, as he wrapped his embroidered dressing-gown round his elegant form, and sank into a _chaise longue_, wheeled by his faithful attendant to the fire.” There, you observe, he is out of bed, and nothing said about it.