Book: Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI
E >>
Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI
Profoundly versed in the mechanism and elements of those masterpieces of
Germany and England, from which the French have borrowed so largely while
pretending to be original, Maltravers was shocked to see the monsters
which these Frankensteins had created from the relics and the offal of
the holiest sepulchres. The head of a giant on the limbs of a dwarf,
incongruous members jumbled together, parts fair and beautiful,--the
whole a hideous distortion!
"It may be possible," said he to De Montaigne, "that these works are
admired and extolled; but how they can be vindicated by the examples of
Shakspeare and Goethe, or even of Byron, who redeemed poor and
melodramatic conceptions with a manly vigour of execution, an energy and
completeness of purpose, that Dryden himself never surpassed, is to me
utterly inconceivable."
"I allow that there is a strange mixture of fustian and maudlin in all
these things," answered De Montaigne; "but they are but the windfalls of
trees that may bear rich fruit in due season; meanwhile, any new school
is better than eternal imitations of the old. As for critical
vindications of the works themselves, the age that produces the phenomena
is never the age to classify and analyze them. We have had a deluge, and
now new creatures spring from the new soil."
"An excellent simile: they come forth from slime and mud,--fetid and
crawling, unformed and monstrous. I grant exceptions; and even in the
New School, as it is called, I can admire the real genius, the vital and
creative power of Victor Hugo. But oh, that a nation which has known a
Corneille should ever spawn forth a -----! And with these rickety and
drivelling abortions--all having followers and adulators--your Public can
still bear to be told that they have improved wonderfully on the day when
they gave laws and models to the literature of Europe; they can bear to
hear ----- proclaimed a sublime genius in the same circles which sneer
down Voltaire!"
Voltaire is out of fashion in France, but Rousseau still maintains his
influence, and boasts his imitators. Rousseau was the worse man of the
two; perhaps he was also the more dangerous writer. But his reputation
is more durable, and sinks deeper into the heart of his nation; and the
danger of his unstable and capricious doctrines has passed away. In
Voltaire we behold the fate of all writers purely destructive; their uses
cease with the evils they denounce. But Rousseau sought to construct as
well as to destroy; and though nothing could well be more absurd than his
constructions, still man loves to look back and see even delusive
images--castles in the air--reared above the waste where cities have
been. Rather than leave even a burial-ground to solitude, we populate it
with ghosts.
By degrees, however, as he mastered all the features of the French
literature, Maltravers become more tolerant of the present defects, and
more hopeful of the future results. He saw in one respect that that
literature carried with it its own ultimate redemption.
Its general characteristic--contradistinguished from the literature of
the old French classic school--is to take the _heart_ for its study; to
bring the passions and feelings into action, and let the Within have its
record and history as well as the Without. In all this our contemplative
analyst began to allow that the French were not far wrong when they
contended that Shakspeare made the fountain of their inspiration,--a
fountain which the majority of our later English Fictionists have
neglected. It is not by a story woven of interesting incidents, relieved
by delineations of the externals and surface of character, humorous
phraseology, and every-day ethics, that Fiction achieves its grandest
ends.
In the French literature, thus characterized, there is much false
morality, much depraved sentiment, and much hollow rant; but still it
carries within it the germ of an excellence, which, sooner or later, must
in the progress of national genius arrive at its full development.
Meanwhile, it is a consolation to know that nothing really immoral is
ever permanently popular, or ever, therefore, long deleterious; what is
dangerous in a work of genius cures itself in a few years. We can now
read "Werther," and instruct our hearts by its exposition of weakness and
passion, our taste by its exquisite and unrivalled simplicity of
construction and detail, without any fear that we shall shoot ourselves
in top-boots! We can feel ourselves elevated by the noble sentiments of
"The Robbers," and our penetration sharpened as to the wholesale
immorality of conventional cant and hypocrisy, without any danger of
turning banditti and becoming cutthroats from the love of virtue.
Providence, that has made the genius of the few in all times and
countries the guide and prophet of the many, and appointed Literature as
the sublime agent of Civilization, of Opinion, and of Law, has endowed
the elements it employs with a divine power of self-purification. The
stream settles of itself by rest and time; the impure particles fly off,
or are neutralized by the healthful. It is only fools that call the
works of a master-spirit immoral. There does not exist in the literature
of the world one _popular_ book that is immoral two centuries after it is
produced. For, in the heart of nations, the False does not live so long;
and the True is the Ethical to the end of time.
From the literary Maltravers turned to the political state of France his
curious and thoughtful eye. He was struck by the resemblance which this
nation--so civilized, so thoroughly European--bears in one respect to the
despotisms of the East: the convulsions of the capital decide the fate of
the country; Paris is the tyrant of France. He saw in this inflammable
concentration of power, which must ever be pregnant with great evils, one
of the causes why the revolutions of that powerful and polished people
are so incomplete and unsatisfactory, why, like Cardinal Fleury, system
after system, and Government after Government--
. . . "floruit sine fructu,
Defloruit sine luctu."*
* "Flourished without fruit, and was destroyed without regret."
Maltravers regarded it as a singular instance of perverse ratiocination,
that, unwarned by experience, the French should still persist in
perpetuating this political vice; that all their policy should still be
the policy of Centralization,--a principle which secures the momentary
strength, but ever ends in the abrupt destruction of States. It is, in
fact, the perilous tonic, which seems to brace the system, but drives the
blood to the head,--thus come apoplexy and madness. By centralization
the provinces are weakened, it is true,--but weak to assist as well as to
oppose a government, weak to withstand a mob. Nowhere, nowadays, is a
mob so powerful as in Paris: the political history of Paris is the
history of snobs. Centralization is an excellent quackery for a despot
who desires power to last only his own life, and who has but a
life-interest in the State; but to true liberty and permanent order
centralization is a deadly poison. The more the provinces govern their
own affairs, the more we find everything, even to roads and post-horses,
are left to the people; the more the Municipal Spirit pervades every vein
of the vast body, the more certain may we be that reform and change must
come from universal opinion, which is slow, and constructs ere it
destroys,--not from public clamour, which is sudden, and not only pulls
down the edifice but sells the bricks!
Another peculiarity in the French Constitution struck and perplexed
Maltravers. This people so pervaded by the republican sentiment; this
people, who had sacrificed so much for Freedom; this people, who, in the
name of Freedom, had perpetrated so much crime with Robespierre, and
achieved so much glory with Napoleon,--this people were, as a people,
contented to be utterly excluded from all power and voice in the State!
Out of thirty-three millions of subjects, less than two hundred thousand
electors! Where was there ever an oligarchy equal to this? What a
strange infatuation, to demolish an aristocracy and yet to exclude a
people! What an anomaly in political architecture, to build an inverted
pyramid! Where was the safety-valve of governments, where the natural
vents of excitement in a population so inflammable? The people itself
were left a mob,--no stake in the State, no action in its affairs, no
legislative interest in its security.*
* Has not all this proved prophetic?
On the other hand, it was singular to see how--the aristocracy of birth
broken down--the aristocracy of letters had arisen. A Peerage, half
composed of journalists, philosophers, and authors! This was the
beau-ideal of Algernon Sidney's Aristocratic Republic, of the Helvetian
vision of what ought to be the dispensation of public distinctions; yet
was it, after all, a desirable aristocracy? Did society gain; did
literature lose? Was the priesthood of Genius made more sacred and more
pure by these worldly decorations and hollow titles; or was aristocracy
itself thus rendered a more disinterested, a more powerful, or a more
sagacious element in the administration of law, or the elevation of
opinion? These questions, not lightly to be answered, could not fail to
arouse the speculation and curiosity of a man who had been familiar with
the closet and the forum; and in proportion as he found his interest
excited in these problems to be solved by a foreign nation, did the
thoughtful Englishman feel the old instinct--which binds the citizen to
the fatherland--begin to stir once more earnestly and vividly within him.
"You, yourself individually, are passing like us," said De Montaigne one
day to Maltravers, "through a state of transition. You have forever left
the Ideal, and you are carrying your cargo of experience over to the
Practical. When you reach that haven, you will have completed the
development of your forces."
"You mistake me,--I am but a spectator."
"Yes; but you desire to go behind the scenes; and he who once grows
familiar with the green-room, longs to be an actor."
With Madame de Ventadour and the De Montaignes Maltravers passed the
chief part of his time. They knew how to appreciate his nobler and to
love his gentler attributes and qualities; they united in a warm interest
for his future fate; they combated his Philosophy of Inaction; and they
felt that it was because he was not happy that he was not wise.
Experience was to him what ignorance had been to Alice. His faculties
were chilled and dormant. As affection to those who are unskilled in all
things, so is affection to those who despair of all things. The mind of
Maltravers was a world without a sun!
CHAPTER III.
COELEBS, quid agam?*--HORACE.
* "What shall I do, a bachelor?"
IN a room at Fenton's Hotel sat Lord Vargrave and Caroline Lady
Doltimore,--two months after the marriage of the latter.
"Doltimore has positively fixed, then, to go abroad on your return from
Cornwall?"
"Positively,--to Paris. You can join us at Christmas, I trust?"
"I have no doubt of it; and before then I hope that I shall have arranged
certain public matters, which at present harass and absorb me even more
than my private affairs."
"You have managed to obtain terms with Mr. Douce, and to delay the
repayment of your debt to him?"
"Yes, I hope so, till I touch Miss Cameron's income; which will be mine,
I trust, by the time she is eighteen."
"You mean the forfeit money of thirty thousand pounds?"
"Not I; I mean what I said!"
"Can you really imagine she will still accept your hand?"
"With your aid, I do imagine it! Hear me. You must take Evelyn with you
to Paris. I have no doubt but that she will be delighted to accompany
you; nay, I have paved the way so far. For, of course, as a friend of
the family, and guardian to Evelyn, I have maintained a correspondence
with Lady Vargrave. She informs me that Evelyn has been unwell and
low-spirited; that she fears Brook-Green is dull for her, etc. I wrote,
in reply, to say that the more my ward saw of the world, prior to her
accession, when of age, to the position she would occupy in it, the more
she would fulfil my late uncle's wishes with respect to her education and
so forth. I added that as you were going to Paris, and as you loved her
so much, there could not be a better opportunity for her entrance into
life under the most favourable auspices. Lady Vargrave's answer to this
letter arrived this morning: she will consent to such an arrangement
should you propose it."
"But what good will result to yourself in this project? At Paris you
will be sure of rivals, and--"
"Caroline," interrupted Lord Vargrave, "I know very well what you would
say: I also know all the danger I must incur. But it is a choice of
evils, and I choose the least. You see that while she is at Brook-Green,
and under the eye of that sly old curate, I can effect nothing with her.
There, she is entirely removed from my influence: not so abroad; not so
under your roof. Listen to me still further. In this country, and
especially in the seclusion and shelter of Brook-Green, I have no scope
for any of those means which I shall be compelled to resort to, in
failure of all else."
"What can you intend?" said Caroline, with a slight shudder.
"I don't know what I intend yet. But this, at least, I can tell
you,--that Miss Cameron's fortune I must and will have. I am a desperate
man; and I can play a desperate game, if need be."
"And do you think that _I_ will aid, will abet?"
"Hush, not so loud! Yes, Caroline, you will, and you must aid and abet
me in any project I may form."
"Must! Lord Vargrave?"
"Ay," said Lumley, with a smile, and sinking his voice into a
whisper,--"ay! _you are in my power_!"
"Traitor!--you cannot dare! you cannot mean--"
"I mean nothing more than to remind you of the ties that exist between
us,--ties which ought to render us the firmest and most confidential of
friends. Come, Caroline, recollect all the benefit must not lie on one
side. I have obtained for you rank and wealth; I have procured you a
husband,--you must help me to a wife!"
Caroline sank back, and covered her face with her hands.
"I allow," continued Vargrave, coldly,--"I allow that your beauty and
talent were sufficient of themselves to charm a wiser man than Doltimore;
but had I not suppressed jealousy, sacrificed love, had I dropped a hint
to your liege lord,--nay, had I not fed his lap-dog vanity by all the
cream and sugar of flattering falsehoods,--you would be Caroline Merton
still!"
"Oh, would that I were! Oh that I were anything but your tool, your
victim! Fool that I was! wretch that I am! I am rightly punished!"
"Forgive me, forgive me, dearest," said Vargrave, soothingly; "I was to
blame, forgive me: but you irritated, you maddened me, by your seeming
indifference to my prosperity, my fate. I tell you again and again,
pride of my soul, I tell you, that you are the only being I love! and if
you will allow me, if you will rise superior, as I once fondly hoped, to
all the cant and prejudice of convention and education, the only woman I
could ever respect, as well as love. Oh, hereafter, when you see me at
that height to which I feel that I am born to climb, let me think that to
your generosity, your affection, your zeal, I owed the ascent. At
present I am on the precipice; without your hand I fall forever. My own
fortune is gone; the miserable forfeit due to me, if Evelyn continues to
reject my suit, when she has arrived at the age of eighteen, is deeply
mortgaged. I am engaged in vast and daring schemes, in which I may
either rise to the highest station or lose that which I now hold. In
either case, how necessary to me is wealth: in the one instance, to
maintain my advancement; in the other, to redeem my fall."
"But did you not tell me," said Caroline, "that Evelyn proposed and
promised to place her fortune at your disposal, even while rejecting your
hand?"
"Absurd mockery!" exclaimed Vargrave; "the foolish boast of a girl,--an
impulse liable to every caprice. Can you suppose that when she launches
into the extravagance natural to her age and necessary to her position,
she will not find a thousand demands upon her rent-roll not dreamed of
now; a thousand vanities and baubles that will soon erase my poor and
hollow claim from her recollection? Can you suppose that, if she marry
another, her husband will ever consent to a child's romance? And even
were all this possible, were it possible that girls were not extravagant,
and that husbands had no common-sense, is it for me, Lord Vargrave, to be
a mendicant upon reluctant bounty,--a poor cousin, a pensioned
led-captain? Heaven knows I have as little false pride as any man, but
still this is a degradation I cannot stoop to. Besides, Caroline, I am
no miser, no Harpagon: I do not want wealth for wealth's sake, but for
the advantages it bestows,--respect, honour, position; and these I get as
the husband of the great heiress. Should I get them as her dependant?
No: for more than six years I have built my schemes and shaped my conduct
according to one assured and definite object; and that object I shall not
now, at the eleventh hour, let slip from my hands. Enough of this: you
will pass Brook-Green in returning from Cornwall; you will take Evelyn
with you to Paris,--leave the rest to me. Fear no folly, no violence,
from my plans, whatever they may be: I work in the dark. Nor do I
despair that Evelyn will love, that Evelyn will voluntarily accept me
yet: my disposition is sanguine; I look to the bright side of things; do
the same!"
Here their conference was interrupted by Lord Doltimore, who lounged
carelessly into the room, with his hat on one side. "Ah, Vargrave, how
are you? You will not forget the letters of introduction? Where are you
going, Caroline?"
"Only to my own room, to put on my bonnet; the carriage will be here in a
few minutes." And Caroline escaped.
"So you go to Cornwall to-morrow, Doltimore?"
"Yes; cursed bore! but Lady Elizabeth insists on seeing us, and I don't
object to a week's good shooting. The old lady, too, has something to
leave, and Caroline had no dowry,--not that I care for it; but still
marriage is expensive."
"By the by, you will want the five thousand pounds you lent me?"
"Why, whenever it is convenient."
Say no more,--it shall be seen to. Doltimore, I am very anxious that
Lady Doltimore's _debut_ at Paris should be brilliant: everything depends
on falling into the right set. For myself, I don't care about fashion,
and never did; but if I were married, and an idle man like you, it might
be different."
"Oh, you will be very useful to us when we return to London. Meanwhile,
you know, you have my proxy in the Lords. I dare say there will be some
sharp work the first week or two after the recess."
"Very likely; and depend on one thing, my dear Doltimore, that when I am
in the Cabinet, a certain friend of mine shall be an earl. Adieu."
"Good-by, my dear Vargrave, good-by; and, I say,--I say, don't distress
yourself about that trifle; a few months hence it will suit me just as
well."
"Thanks. I will just look into my accounts, and use you without
ceremony. Well, I dare say we shall meet at Paris. Oh, I forgot,--I
observe that you have renewed your intimacy with Legard. Now, he is a
very good fellow, and I gave him that place to oblige you; still, as you
are no longer a _garcon_--but perhaps I shall offend you?"
"Not at all. What is there against Legard?"
"Nothing in the world,--but he is a bit of a boaster. I dare say his
ancestor was a Gascon, poor fellow!--and he affects to say that you can't
choose a coat, or buy a horse, without his approval and advice,--that he
can turn you round his finger. Now this hurts your consequence in the
world,--you don't get credit for your own excellent sense and taste.
Take my advice, avoid these young hangers-on of fashion, these club-room
lions. Having no importance of their own, they steal the importance of
their friends. _Verbum sap_."
"You are very right,--Legard _is_ a coxcomb; and now I see why he talked
of joining us at Paris."
"Don't let him do any such thing! He will be telling the Frenchmen that
her ladyship is in love with him, ha, ha!"
"Ha, ha!--a very good joke--poor Caroline!--very good joke!"
"Well, good-by, once more." And Vargrave closed the door.
"Legard go to Paris--not if Evelyn goes there!" muttered Lumley.
"Besides, I want no partner in the little that one can screw out of this
blockhead."
CHAPTER IV.
MR. BUMBLECASE, a word with you--I have a little business.
Farewell, the goodly Manor of Blackacre, with all its woods,
underwoods, and appurtenances whatever.--WYCHERLEY: _Plain Dealer_.
IN quitting Fenton's Hotel, Lord Vargrave entered into one of the clubs
in St. James's Street: this was rather unusual with him, for he was not a
club man. It was not his system to spend his time for nothing. But it
was a wet December day; the House was not yet assembled, and he had done
his official business. Here, as he was munching a biscuit and reading an
article in one of the ministerial papers--the heads of which he himself
had supplied--Lord Saxingham joined and drew him to the window.
"I have reason to think," said the earl, "that your visit to Windsor did
good."
"Ah, indeed; so I fancied."
"I do not think that a certain personage will ever consent to the -----
question; and the premier, whom I saw to-day, seems chafed and
irritated."
"Nothing can be better; I know that we are in the right boat."
"I hope it is not true, Lumley, that your marriage with Miss Cameron is
broken off; such was the _on dit_ in the club, just before you entered."
"Contradict it, my dear lord,--contradict it. I hope by the spring to
introduce Lady Vargrave to you. But who broached the absurd report?"
"Why, your _protege_, Legard, says he heard so from his uncle, who heard
it from Sir John Merton."
"Legard is a puppy, and Sir John Merton a jackass. Legard had better
attend to his office, if he wants to get on; and I wish you'd tell him
so. I have heard somewhere that he talks of going to Paris,--you can
just hint to him that he must give up such idle habits. Public
functionaries are not now what they were,--people are expected to work
for the money they pocket; otherwise Legard is a cleverish fellow, and
deserves promotion. A word or two of caution from you will do him a vast
deal of good."
"Be sure I will lecture him. Will you dine with me to-day, Lumley?"
"No. I expect my co-trustee, Mr. Douce, on matters of business,--a
_tete-a-tete_ dinner."
Lord Vargrave had, as he conceived, very cleverly talked over Mr. Douce
into letting his debt to that gentleman run on for the present; and in
the meanwhile, he had overwhelmed Mr. Douce with his condescensions.
That gentleman had twice dined with Lord Vargrave, and Lord Vargrave had
twice dined with him. The occasion of the present more familiar
entertainment was in a letter from Mr. Douce, begging to see Lord
Vargrave on particular business; and Vargrave, who by no means liked the
word _business_ from a gentleman to whom he owed money, thought that it
would go off more smoothly if sprinkled with champagne.
Accordingly, he begged "My dear Mr. Douce" to excuse ceremony, and dine
with him on Thursday at seven o'clock,--he was really so busy all the
mornings.
At seven o'clock, Mr. Douce came. The moment he entered Vargrave called
out, at the top of his voice, "Dinner immediately!" And as the little
man bowed and shuffled, and fidgeted and wriggled (while Vargrave shook
him by the hand), as if he thought he was going himself to be spitted,
his host said, "With your leave, we'll postpone the budget till after
dinner. It is the fashion nowadays to postpone budgets as long as we
can,--eh? Well, and how are all at home? Devilish cold; is it not? So
you go to your villa every day? That's what keeps you in such capital
health. You know I had a villa too,--though I never had time to go
there."
"Ah, yes; I think, I remember, at Ful-Ful-Fulham!" gasped out Mr. Douce.
"Your poor uncle's--now Lady Var-Vargrave's jointure-house. So--so--"
"She don't live there!" burst in Vargrave (far too impatient to be
polite). "Too cockneyfied for her,--gave it up to me; very pretty place,
but d-----d expensive. I could not afford it, never went there, and so I
have let it to my wine-merchant; the rent just pays his bill. You will
taste some of the sofas and tables to-day in his champagne. I don't know
how it is, I always fancy my sherry smells like my poor uncle's old
leather chair: very odd smell it had,--a kind of respectable smell! I
hope you're hungry,--dinner's ready."
Vargrave thus rattled away in order to give the good banker to understand
that his affairs were in the most flourishing condition: and he continued
to keep up the ball all dinnertime, stopping Mr. Douce's little,
miserable, gasping, dacelike mouth, with "a glass of wine, Douce?" or "by
the by, Douce," whenever he saw that worthy gentleman about to make the
AEschylean improvement of a second person in the dialogue.