Part 27 (2/2)

Deep under ashes lies the Life of Youth,--the careless Sport, the Pleasure and Pa.s.sion, the darling Joy. You open an old letter-box and look at your own childish scrawls, or your mother's letters to you when you were at school; and excavate your heart. Oh me, for the day when the whole city shall be bare and the chambers unroofed--and every cranny visible to the Light above, from the Forum to the Lupanar!

Ethel takes up the pen. ”My dear uncle,” she says, ”while Clive is sketching out of window, let me write you a line or two on his paper, though I know you like to hear no one speak but him. I wish I could draw him for you as he stands yonder, looking the picture of good health, good spirits, and good humour. Everybody likes him. He is quite unaffected; always gay; always pleased. He draws more and more beautifully every day; and his affection for young Mr. Ridley, who is really a most excellent and astonis.h.i.+ng young man, and actually a better artist than Clive himself, is most romantic, and does your son the greatest credit. You will order Clive not to sell his pictures, won't you? I know it is not wrong, but your son might look higher than to be an artist. It is a rise for Mr. Ridley, but a fall for him. An artist, an organist, a pianist, all these are very good people, but you know not de notre monde, and Clive ought to belong to it.

”We met him at Bonn on our way to a great family gathering here; where, I must tell you, we are a.s.sembled for what I call the Congress of Baden!

The chief of the house of Kew is here, and what time he does not devote to skittles, to smoking cigars, to the jeu in the evenings, to Madame d'Ivry, to Madame de Crucheca.s.see, and the foreign people (of whom there are a host here of the worst kind, as usual), he graciously bestows on me. Lord and Lady Dorking are here, with their meek little daughter, Clara Pulleyn; and Barnes is coming. Uncle Hobson has returned to Lombard Street to relieve guard. I think you will hear before very long of Lady Clara Newcome. Grandmamma, who was to have presided at the Congress of Baden, and still, you know, reigns over the house of Kew, has been stopped at Kissingen with an attack of rheumatism; I pity poor Aunt Julia, who can never leave her. Here are all our news. I declare I have filled the whole page; men write closer than we do. I wear the dear brooch you gave me, often and often; I think of you always, dear, kind uncle, as your affectionate Ethel.”

Besides roulette and trente-et-quarante, a number of amusing games are played at Baden, which are not performed, so to speak, sur table. These little diversions and jeux de societe can go on anywhere; in an alley in the park; in a picnic to this old schloss, or that pretty hunting-lodge; at a tea-table in a lodging-house or hotel; in a ball at the Redoute; in the play-rooms behind the backs of the gamblers, whose eyes are only cast upon rakes and rouleaux, and red and black; or on the broad walk in front of the conversation rooms, where thousands of people are drinking and chattering, lounging and smoking, whilst the Austrian bra.s.s band, in the little music pavilion, plays the most delightful mazurkas and waltzes. Here the widow plays her black suit and sets her bright eyes against the rich bachelor, elderly or young as may be. Here the artful pract.i.tioner, who has dealt in a thousand such games, engages the young simpleton with more money than wit; and knowing his weakness and her skill, we may safely take the odds, and back rouge et couleur to win.

Here mamma, not having money, perhaps, but metal more attractive, stakes her virgin daughter against Count Fettacker's forests and meadows; or Lord Lackland plays his coronet, of which the jewels have long since been in p.a.w.n, against Miss Bags' three-per-cents. And so two or three funny little games were going on at Baden amongst our immediate acquaintance; besides that vulgar sport round the green table, at which the mob, with whom we have little to do, was elbowing each other. A hint of these domestic prolusions has been given to the reader in the foregoing extract from Miss Ethel Newcome's letter: likewise some pa.s.sions have been in play, of which a modest young English maiden could not be aware. Do not, however, let us be too prematurely proud of our virtue. That tariff of British virtue is wonderfully organised. Heaven help the society which made its laws! Gnats are shut out of its ports, or not admitted without scrutiny and repugnance, whilst herds of camels are let in. The law professes to exclude some goods (or bads shall we call them?)--well, some articles of baggage, which are yet smuggled openly under the eyes of winking officers, and worn every day without shame. Shame! What is shame? Virtue is very often shameful according to the English social const.i.tution, and shame honourable. Truth, if yours happens to differ from your neighbour's, provokes your friend's coldness, your mother's tears, the world's persecution. Love is not to be dealt in, save under restrictions which kill its sweet, healthy, free commerce. Sin in man is so light, that scarce the fine of a penny is imposed; while for woman it is so heavy that no repentance can wash it out. Ah! yes; all stories are old. You proud matrons in your Mayfair markets, have you never seen a virgin sold, or sold one? Have you never heard of a poor wayfarer fallen among robbers, and not a Pharisee to help him? of a poor woman fallen more sadly yet, abject in repentance and tears, and a crowd to stone her? I pace this broad Baden walk as the sunset is gilding the hills round about, as the orchestra blows its merry tunes, as the happy children laugh and sport in the alleys, as the lamps of the gambling-palace are lighted up, as the throngs of pleasure-hunters stroll, and smoke, and flirt, and hum: and wonder sometimes, is it the sinners who are the most sinful? Is it poor Prodigal yonder amongst the bad company, calling black and red and tossing the champagne; or brother Straitlace that grudges his repentance? Is it downcast Hagar that slinks away with poor little Ishmael in her hand; or bitter old virtuous Sarah, who scowls at her from my demure Lord Abraham's arm?

One day of the previous May, when of course everybody went to visit the Water-colour Exhibitions, Ethel Newcome was taken to see the pictures by her grandmother, that rigorous old Lady Kew, who still proposed to reign over all her family. The girl had high spirit, and very likely hot words had pa.s.sed between the elder and the younger lady; such as I am given to understand will be uttered in the most polite families. They came to a piece by Mr. Hunt, representing one of those figures which he knows how to paint with such consummate truth and pathos--a friendless young girl cowering in a doorway, evidently without home or shelter. The exquisite fidelity of the details, and the plaintive beauty of the expression of the child, attracted old Lady Kew's admiration, who was an excellent judge of works of art; and she stood for some time looking at the drawing, with Ethel by her side. Nothing, in truth, could be more simple or pathetic; Ethel laughed, and her grandmother looking up from her stick on which she hobbled about, saw a very sarcastic expression in the girl's eyes.

”You have no taste for pictures, only for painters, I suppose,” said Lady Kew.

”I was not looking at the picture,” said Ethel, still with a smile, ”but at the little green ticket in the corner.”

”Sold,” said Lady Kew. ”Of course it is sold; all Mr. Hunt's pictures are sold. There is not one of them here on which you won't see the green ticket. He is a most admirable artist. I don't know whether his comedy or tragedy are the most excellent.”

”I think, grandmamma,” Ethel said, ”we young ladies in the world, when we are exhibiting, ought to have little green tickets pinned on our backs, with 'Sold' written on them; it would prevent trouble and any future haggling, you know. Then at the end of the season the owner would come to carry us home.”

Grandmamma only said, ”Ethel, you are a fool,” and hobbled on to Mr.

Cattermole's picture hard by. ”What splendid colour; what a romantic gloom; what a flowing pencil and dexterous hand!” Lady Kew could delight in pictures, applaud good poetry, and squeeze out a tear over a good novel too. That afternoon, young Dawkins, the rising water-colour artist, who used to come daily to the gallery and stand delighted before his own piece, was aghast to perceive that there was no green ticket in the corner of his frame, and he pointed out the deficiency to the keeper of the pictures. His landscape, however, was sold and paid for, so no great mischief occurred. On that same evening, when the Newcome family a.s.sembled at dinner in Park Lane, Ethel appeared with a bright green ticket pinned in the front of her white muslin frock, and when asked what this queer fancy meant, she made Lady Kew a curtsey, looking her full in the face, and turning round to her father, said, ”I am a tableau-vivant, papa. I am Number 46 in the Exhibition of the Gallery of Painters in Water-colours.”

”My love, what do you mean?” says mamma; and Lady Kew, jumping up on her crooked stick with immense agility, tore the card out of Ethel's bosom, and very likely would have boxed her ears, but that her parents were present and Lord Kew announced.

Ethel talked about pictures the whole evening, and would talk of nothing else. Grandmamma went away furious. ”She told Barnes, and when everybody was gone there was a pretty row in the building,” said Madam Ethel, with an arch look, when she narrated the story. ”Barnes was ready to kill me and eat me; but I never was afraid of Barnes.” And the biographer gathers from this little anecdote, narrated to him, never mind by whom, at a long subsequent period, that there had been great disputes in Sir Brian Newcome's establishment, fierce drawing-room battles, whereof certain pictures of a certain painter might have furnished the cause, and in which Miss Newcome had the whole of the family forces against her. That such battles take place in other domestic establishments, who shall say or shall not say? Who, when he goes out to dinner, and is received by a bland host with a gay shake of the hand, and a pretty hostess with a gracious smile of welcome, dares to think that Mr.

Johnson upstairs, half an hour before, was swearing out of his dressing-room at Mrs. Johnson, for having ordered a turbot instead of a salmon, or that Mrs. Johnson now talking to Lady Jones so nicely about their mutual darling children, was crying her eyes out as her maid was fastening her gown, as the carriages were actually driving up? The servants know these things, but not we in the dining-room. Hark with what a respectful tone Johnson begs the clergyman present to say grace!

Whatever these family quarrels may have been, let bygones be bygones, and let us be perfectly sure, that to whatever purpose Miss Ethel Newcome, for good or for evil, might make her mind up, she had quite spirit enough to hold her own. She chose to be Countess of Kew because she chose to be Countess of Kew; had she set her heart on marrying Mr.

Kuhn, she would have had her way, and made the family adopt it, and called him dear Fritz, as by his G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers, in his baptism, Mr. Kuhn was called. Clive was but a fancy, if he had even been so much as that, not a pa.s.sion, and she fancied a pretty four-p.r.o.nged coronet still more.

So that the diatribe wherein we lately indulged, about the selling of virgins, by no means applies to Lady Anne Newcome, who signed the address to Mrs Stowe, the other day, along with thousands more virtuous British matrons; but should the reader haply say, ”Is thy fable, O Poet, narrated concerning Tancred Pulleyn, Earl of Dorking, and Sigismunda, his wife?” the reluctant moralist is obliged to own that the cap does fit those n.o.ble personages, of whose lofty society you will, however, see but little.

For though I would like to go into an Indian Brahmin's house, and see the punkahs, and the purdahs and tattys, and the pretty brown maidens with great eyes, and great nose-rings, and painted foreheads, and slim waists cased in Cashmir shawls, Kincob scarfs, curly slippers, gilt trousers, precious anklets and bangles; and have the mystery of Eastern existence revealed to me (as who would not who has read the Arabian Nights in his youth?), yet I would not choose the moment when the Brahmin of the house was dead, his women howling, his priests doctoring his child of a widow, now frightening her with sermons, now drugging her with bang, so as to push her on his funeral pile at last, and into the arms of that carcase, stupefied, but obedient and decorous. And though I like to walk, even in fancy, in an earl's house, splendid, well ordered, where there are feasts and fine pictures and fair ladies and endless books and good company; yet there are times when the visit is not pleasant; and when the parents in that fine house are getting ready their daughter for sale, and frightening away her tears with threats, and stupefying her grief with narcotics, praying her and imploring her, and dramming her and coaxing her, and blessing her, and cursing her perhaps, till they have brought her into such a state as shall fit the poor young thing for that deadly couch upon which they are about to thrust her. When my lord and lady are so engaged I prefer not to call at their mansion, Number 1000 in Grosvenor Square, but to partake of a dinner of herbs rather than of that stalled ox which their cook is roasting whole. There are some people who are not so squeamish. The family comes, of course; the Most Reverend the Lord Arch-Brahmin of Benares will attend the ceremony; there will be flowers and lights and white favours; and quite a string of carriages up to the paG.o.da; and such a breakfast afterwards; and music in the street and little parish boys hurrahing; and no end of speeches within and tears shed (no doubt), and His Grace the Arch-Brahmin will make a highly appropriate speech, just with a faint scent of incense about it as such a speech ought to have; and the young person will slip away unperceived, and take off her veils, wreaths, orange-flowers, bangles and finery, and will put on a plain dress more suited for the occasion, and the house-door will open--and there comes the SUTTEE in company of the body: yonder the pile is waiting on four wheels with four horses, the crowd hurrahs and the deed is done.

This ceremony amongst us is so stale and common that to be sure there is no need to describe its rites, and as women sell themselves for what you call an establishment every day; to the applause of themselves, their parents, and the world, why on earth should a man ape at originality and pretend to pity them? Never mind about the lies at the altar, the blasphemy against the G.o.dlike name of love, the sordid surrender, the smiling dishonour. What the deuce does a mariage de convenance mean but all this, and are not such sober Hymeneal torches more satisfactory often than the most brilliant love matches that ever flamed and burnt out? Of course. Let us not weep when everybody else is laughing: let us pity the agonised d.u.c.h.ess when her daughter, Lady Atalanta, runs away with the doctor--of course, that's respectable; let us pity Lady Iphigenia's father when that venerable chief is obliged to offer up his darling child; but it is over her part of the business that a decorous painter would throw the veil now. Her ladys.h.i.+p's sacrifice is performed, and the less said about it the better.

Such was the case regarding an affair which appeared in due subsequence in the newspapers not long afterwards under the fascinating t.i.tle of ”Marriage in High Life,” and which was in truth the occasion of the little family Congress of Baden which we are now chronicling. We all know--everybody at least who has the slightest acquaintance with the army list--that, at the commencement of their life, my Lord Kew, my Lord Viscount Rooster, the Earl of Dorking's eldest son, and the Honourable Charles Belsize, familiarly called Jack Belsize, were subaltern officers in one of His Majesty's regiments of cuira.s.sier guards. They heard the chimes at midnight like other young men, they enjoyed their fun and frolics as gentlemen of spirit will do; sowing their wild oats plentifully, and scattering them with boyish profusion. Lady Kew's luck had blessed him with more sacks of oats than fell to the lot of his n.o.ble young companions. Lord Dorking's house is known to have been long impoverished; an excellent informant, Major Pendennis, has entertained me with many edifying accounts of the exploits of Lord Rooster's grandfather ”with the wild Prince and Poins,” of his feats in the hunting-field, over the bottle, over the dice-box. He played two nights and two days at a sitting with Charles Fox, when they both lost sums awful to reckon. He played often with Lord Steyne, and came away, as all men did, dreadful sufferers from those midnight encounters. His descendants incurred the penalties of the progenitor's imprudence, and Chanticlere, though one of the finest castles in England, is splendid but for a month in the year. The estate is mortgaged up to the very castle windows. ”Dorking cannot cut a stick or kill a buck in his own park,” the good old Major used to tell with tragic accents, ”he lives by his cabbages, grapes, and pineapples, and the fees which people give for seeing the place and gardens, which are still the show of the county, and among the most splendid in the island. When Dorking is at Chanticlere, Ballard, who married his sister, lends him the plate and sends three men with it. Four cooks inside, and four maids and six footmen on the roof, with a butler driving, come down from London in a trap, and wait the month. And as the last carriage of the company drives away, the servants' coach is packed, and they all bowl back to town again. It's pitiable, sir, pitiable.”

In Lord Kew's youth, the names of himself and his two n.o.ble friends appeared on innumerable slips of stamped paper, conveying pecuniary a.s.surances of a promissory nature; all of which promises, my Lord Kew singly and most honourably discharged. Neither of his two companions-in-arms had the means of meeting these engagements. Ballard, Rooster's uncle, was said to make his lords.h.i.+p some allowance. As for Jack Belsize: how he lived; how he laughed; how he dressed himself so well, and looked so fat and handsome; how he got a s.h.i.+lling to pay for a cab or a cigar; what ravens fed him; was a wonder to all. The young men claimed kinsmans.h.i.+p with one another, which those who are learned in the peerage may unravel.

When Lord Dorking's eldest daughter married the Honourable and Venerable Dennis Gallowgla.s.s, Archdeacon of Bullintubber (and at present Viscount Gallowgla.s.s and Killbrogue, and Lord Bishop of Ballyshannon), great festivities took place at Chanticlere, whither the relatives of the high contracting parties were invited. Among them came poor Jack Belsize, and hence the tears which are dropping at Baden at this present period of our history. Clara Pulleyn was then a pretty little maiden of sixteen, and Jack a handsome guardsman of six or seven and twenty. As she had been especially warned against Jack as a wicked young rogue, whose antecedents were wofully against him; as she was never allowed to sit near him at dinner, or to walk with him, or to play at billiards with him, or to waltz with him; as she was scolded if he spoke a word to her, or if he picked up her glove, or touched her hand in a round game, or caught him when they were playing at blindman's-buff; as they neither of them had a penny in the world, and were both very good-looking, of course Clara was always catching Jack at blindman's-buff; constantly lighting upon him in the shrubberies or corridors, etc. etc. etc. She fell in love (she was not the first) with Jack's broad chest and thin waist; she thought his whiskers as indeed they were, the handsomest pair in all His Majesty's Brigade of Cuira.s.siers.

We know not what tears were shed in the vast and silent halls of Chanticlere, when the company were gone, and the four cooks, and four maids, six footmen, and temporary butler had driven back in their private trap to the metropolis, which is not forty miles distant from that splendid castle. How can we tell? The guests departed, the lodge-gates shut; all is mystery:--darkness with one pair of wax candles blinking dismally in a solitary chamber; all the rest dreary vistas of brown hollands, rolled Turkey carpets, gaunt ancestors on the walls scowling out of the twilight blank. The imagination is at liberty to depict his lords.h.i.+p, with one candle, over his dreadful endless tapes and papers; her ladys.h.i.+p with the other, and an old, old novel, wherein perhaps, Mrs. Radcliffe describes a castle as dreary as her own; and poor little Clara sighing and crying in the midst of these funereal splendours, as lonely and heart-sick as Oriana in her moated grange:--poor little Clara!

Lord Kew's drag took the young men to London; his lords.h.i.+p driving, and the servants sitting inside. Jack sat behind with the two grooms, and tooted on a cornet-a-piston in the most melancholy manner. He partook of no refreshment on the road. His silence at his clubs was remarked: smoking, billiards, military duties, and this and that, roused him a little, and presently Jack was alive again. But then came the season, Lady Clara Pulleyn's first season in London, and Jack was more alive than ever. There was no ball he did not go to; no opera (that is to say, no opera of certain operas) which he did not frequent. It was easy to see by his face, two minutes after entering a room, whether the person he sought was there or absent; not difficult for those who were in the secret to watch in another pair of eyes the bright kindling signals which answered Jack's fiery glances. Ah! how beautiful he looked on his charger on the birthday, all in a blaze of scarlet, and bullion, and steel. O Jack! tear her out of yon carriage, from the side of yonder livid, feathered, painted, bony dowager! place her behind you on the black charger; cut down the policeman, and away with you! The carriage rolls in through St. James's Park; Jack sits alone with his sword dropped to the ground, or only atra cura on the crupper behind him; and Snip, the tailor, in the crowd, thinks it is for fear of him Jack's head droops. Lady Clara Pulleyn is presented by her mother, the Countess of Dorking; and Jack is arrested that night as he is going out of White's to meet her at the Opera.

Jack's little exploits are known in the Insolvent Court, where he made his appearances as Charles Belsize, commonly called the Honourable Charles Belsize, whose dealings were smartly chronicled by the indignant moralists of the press of those days. The Scourge flogged him heartily.

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