Book: Falkland, Book 1.
E >>
Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Falkland, Book 1.
Why was I disgusted, when I had but to put forth my hand and grasp
whatever object my ambition might desire? Alas! there was in my heart
always something too soft for the aims and cravings of my mind. I felt
that I was wasting the young years of my life in a barren and wearisome
pursuit. What to me, who had outlived vanity, would have been the
admiration of the crowd! I sighed for the sympathy of the one! and I
shrunk in sadness from the prospect of renown to ask my heart for the
reality of love! For what purpose, too, had I devoted myself to the
service of men? As I grew more sensible of the labour of pursuing, I saw
more of the inutility of accomplishing, individual measures. There is
one great and moving order of events which we may retard, but we cannot
arrest, and to which, if we endeavour to hasten them, we only give a
dangerous and unnatural impetus. Often, when in the fever of the
midnight, I have paused from my unshared and unsoftened studies, to
listen to the deadly pulsation of my heart,--[Falkland suffered much,
from very early youth, from a complaint in his heart]--when I have felt
in its painful and tumultuous beating the very life waning and wasting
within me, I have sickened to my inmost soul to remember that, amongst
all those whom I was exhausting the health and enjoyment of youth to
benefit, there was not one for whom my life had an interest, or by whom
my death would be honoured by a tear. There is a beautiful passage in
Chalmers on the want of sympathy we experience in the world. From my
earliest childhood I had one deep, engrossing, yearning desire,--and that
was to love and to be loved. I found, too young, the realisation of that
dream--it passed! and I have never known it again. The experience of
long and bitter years teaches me to look with suspicion on that far
recollection of the past, and to doubt if this earth could indeed produce
a living form to satisfy the visions of one who has dwelt among the
boyish creations of fancy--who has shaped out in his heart an imaginary
idol, arrayed it in whatever is most beautiful in nature, and breathed
into the image the pure but burning spirit of that innate love from which
it sprung! It is true that my manhood has been the undeceiver of my
youth, and that the meditation upon the facts has disenthralled me from
the visionary broodings over fiction; but what remuneration have I found
in reality? If the line of the satirist be not true, "Souvent de tous
nos maux la raison est le pire," [Boileau]--at least, like the madman of
whom he speaks, I owe but little gratitude to the act which, "in drawing
me from my error, has robbed me also of a paradise."
I am approaching the conclusion of my confessions. Men who have no ties
in the world, and who have been accustomed to solitude, find, with every
disappointment in the former, a greater yearning for the enjoyments which
the latter can afford. Day by day I relapsed more into myself; "man
delighted me not, nor women either." In my ambition, it was not in the
means, but the end, that I was disappointed. In my friends, I complained
not of treachery, but insipidity; and it was not because I was deserted,
but wearied by more tender connections, that I ceased to find either
excitement in seeking, or triumph in obtaining, their love. It was not,
then, in a momentary disgust, but rather in the calm of satiety, that I
formed that resolution of retirement which I have adopted now.
Shrinking from my kind, but too young to live wholly for myself, I have
made a new tie with nature; I have come to cement it here. I am like a
bird which has wandered, afar, but has returned home to its nest at last.
But there is one feeling which had its origin in the world, and which
accompanies me still; which consecrates my recollections of the past;
which contributes to take its gloom from the solitude of the present:-Do
you ask me its nature, Monkton? It is my friendship for you.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I wish that I could convey to you, dear Monkton, the faintest idea of the
pleasures of indolence. You belong to that class which is of all the
most busy, though the least active. Men of pleasure never have time for
anything. No lawyer, no statesman, no bustling, hurrying, restless
underling of the counter or the Exchange, is so eternally occupied as a
lounger "about town." He is linked to labour by a series of undefinable
nothings. His independence and idleness only serve to fetter and engross
him, and his leisure seems held upon the condition of never having a
moment to himself. Would that you could see me at this instant in the
luxury of my summer retreat, surrounded by the trees, the waters, the
wild birds, and the hum, the glow, the exultation which teem visibly and
audibly through creation in the noon of a summer's day! I am undisturbed
by a single intruder. I am unoccupied by a single pursuit. I suffer one
moment to glide into another, without the remembrance that the next must
be filled up by some laborious pleasure, or some wearisome enjoyment.
It is here that I feel all the powers, and gather together all the
resources, of my mind. I recall my recollections of men; and, unbiassed
by the passions and prejudices which we do not experience alone, because
their very existence depends upon others, I endeavour to perfect my
knowledge of the human heart. He who would acquire that better science
must arrange and analyse in private the experience he has collected in
the crowd. Alas, Monkton, when you have expressed surprise at the gloom
which is so habitual to my temper, did it never occur to you that my
acquaintance--with the world would alone be sufficient to account for
it?--that knowledge is neither for the good nor the happy. Who can touch
pitch, and not be defiled? Who can look upon the workings of grief and
rejoice, or associate with guilt and be pure? It has been by mingling
with men, not only in their haunts but their emotions, that I have
learned to know them. I have descended into the receptacles of vice; I
have taken lessons from the brothel and the hell; I have watched feeling
in its unguarded sallies, and drawn from the impulse of the moment
conclusions which gave the lie to the previous conduct of years. But all
knowledge brings us disappointment, and this knowledge the most--the
satiety of good, the suspicion of evil, the decay of our young dreams,
the premature iciness of age, the reckless, aimless, joyless indifference
which follows an overwrought and feverish excitation--These constitute
the lot of men who have renounced _hope_ in the acquisition of _thought_,
and who, in learning the motives of human actions, learn only to despise
the persons and the things which enchanted them like divinities before.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I told you, dear Monkton, in my first letter, of my favorite retreat in
Mr. Mandeville's grounds. I have grown so attached to it, that I spend
the greater part of the day there.
I am not one of those persons who always perambulate with a book in their
hands, as if neither nature nor their own reflections could afford them
any rational amusement. I go there more frequently _en paresseux_ than
_en savant_: a small brooklet which runs through the grounds broadens at
last into a deep, clear, transparent lake. Here fir and elm and oak
fling their branches over the margin and beneath their shade I pass all
the hours of noon-day in the luxuries of a dreamer's reverie. It is
true, however, that I am never less idle than when I appear the most so.
I am like Prospero in his desert island, and surround myself with
spirits. A spell trembles upon the leaves; every wave comes fraught to
me with its peculiar music: and an Ariel seems to whisper the secrets of
every breeze, which comes to my forehead laden with the perfumes of the
West. But do not think, Mounton, that it is only good spirits which
haunt the recesses of my solitude. To push the metaphor to
exaggeration--Memory is my Sycorax, and Gloom is the Caliban she
conceives. But let me digress from myself to my less idle occupations;--
I have of late diverted my thoughts in some measure by a recurrence to a
study to which I once was particularly devoted--history. Have you ever
remarked, that people who live the most by themselves reflect the most
upon others; and that he who lives surrounded by the million never thinks
of any but the one individual--himself?
Philosophers--moralists-historians, whose thoughts, labours, lives, have
been devoted to the consideration of mankind, or the analysis of public
events, have usually been remarkably attached to solitude and seclusion.
We are indeed so linked to our fellow-beings, that, where we are not
chained to them by action, we are carried to and connected with them by
thought.
I have just quitted the observations of my favourite Bolingbroke upon
history. I cannot agree with him as to its utility. The more I
consider, the more I am convinced that its study has been upon the whole
pernicious to mankind. It is by those details, which are always as
unfair in their inference as they must evidently be doubtful in their
facts, that party animosity and general prejudice are supported and
sustained. There is not one abuse--one intolerance--one remnant of
ancient barbarity and ignorance existing at the present day, which is not
advocated, and actually confirmed, by some vague deduction from the
bigotry of an illiterate chronicler, or the obscurity of an uncertain
legend. It is through the constant appeal to our ancestors that we
transmit wretchedness and wrong to our posterity: we should require, to
corroborate an evil originating in the present day, the clearest and most
satisfactory proof; but the minutest defence is sufficient for an evil
handed down to us by the barbarism of antiquity. We reason from what
even in old tunes was dubious, as if we were adducing what was certain in
those in which we live. And thus we have made no sanction to abuses so
powerful as history, and no enemy to the present like the past.
FROM THE LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO MRS. ST. JOHN.
At last, my dear Julia, I am settled in my beautiful retreat. Mrs.
Dalton and Lady Margaret Leslie are all whom I could prevail upon to
accompany me. Mr. Mandeville is full of the corn-laws. He is chosen
chairman to a select committee in the House. He is murmuring
agricultural distresses in his sleep; and when I asked him occasionally
to come down here to see me, he started from a reverie, and exclaimed--
"--Never, Mr. Speaker, as a landed proprietor; never will I consent to my
own ruin."
My boy, my own, my beautiful companion, is with me. I wish you could see
how fast he can run, and how sensibly he can talk. "What a fine figure
he has for his age!" said I to Mr. Mandeville the other day. "Figure!
age!" said his father; "in the House of Commons he shall make a figure to
every age." I know that in writing to you, you will not be contented if
I do not say a great deal about myself. I shall therefore proceed to
tell you, that I feel already much better from the air and exercise! the
journey, from the conversation of my two guests, and, above all, from the
constant society of my dear boy. He was three last birthday. I think
that at the age of twenty-one, I am the least childish of the two. Pray
remember me to all in town who have not quite forgotten me. Beg Lady
------ to send Elizabeth a subscription ticket for Almack's, and--oh,
talking of Almack's, I think my boy's eyes are even more blue and
beautiful than Lady C-----'s.
Adieu, my dear Julia, Ever, &c. E. M.
Lady Emily Mandeville was the daughter of the Duke of Lindvale. She
married, at the age of sixteen, a man of large fortune, and some
parliamentary reputation. Neither in person nor in character was he much
beneath or above the ordinary standard of men. He was one of Nature's
Macadamised achievements. His great fault was his equality; and you
longed for a hill though it were to climb, or a stone though it were in
your way. Love attaches itself to something prominent, even if that
something be what others would hate. One can scarce feel extremes for
mediocrity. The few years Lady Emily had been married had but little
altered her character. Quick in feeling, though regulated in temper; gay
less from levity, than from that first _spring-tide_ of a heart which has
never yet known occasion to be sad; beautiful and pure, as an
enthusiast's dream of heaven, yet bearing within the latent and powerful
passion and tenderness of earth: she mixed with all a simplicity and
innocence which the extreme earliness of her marriage, and the ascetic
temper of her husband, had tendered less to diminish than increase. She
had much of what is termed genius--its warmth of emotion--its vividness
of conception--its admiration for the grand--its affection for the good,
and that dangerous contempt for whatever is mean and worthless, the very
indulgence of which is an offence against the habits of the world. Her
tastes were, however, too feminine and chaste ever to render her
eccentric: they were rather calculated to conceal than to publish the
deeper recesses of her nature; and it was beneath that polished surface
of manner common to those with whom she mixed, that she hid the treasures
of a mine which no human eye had beheld.
Her health, naturally delicate, had lately suffered much from the
dissipation of London, and it was by the advice of physicians that she
had now come to spend the summer at E------. Lady Margaret Leslie, who
was old enough to be tired with the caprices of society, and Mrs. Dalton,
who, having just lost her husband, was forbidden at present to partake of
its amusements, had agreed to accompany her to her retreat. Neither of
them was perhaps much suited to Emily's temper, but youth and spirits
make almost any one congenial to us: it is from the years which confirm
our habits, and the reflections which refine our taste, that it becomes
easy to revolt us, and difficult to please.
On the third day after Emily's arrival at E------, she was sitting after
breakfast with Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton. "Pray," said the former,
"did you ever meet my relation, Mr. Falkland? he is in your immediate
neighbourhood." "Never; though I have a great curiosity: that fine old
ruin beyond the village belongs to him, I believe." "It does. You ought
to know him: you would like him so!" "Like him!" repeated Mrs. Dalton,
who was one of those persons of ton who, though everything collectively,
are nothing individually: "like him? impossible!" "Why?" said Lady
Margaret, indignantly--"he has every requisite to please--youth, talent,
fascination of manner, and great knowledge of the world." "Well," said
Mrs. Dalton, "I cannot say I discovered his perfections. He seemed to me
conceited and satirical, and--and--in short, very disagreeable; but then,
to be sure, I have only seen him once." "I have heard many accounts of
him," said Emily, "all differing from each other: I think, however, that
the generality of people rather incline to Mrs. Dalton's opinion than to
yours, Lady Margaret." "I can easily believe it. It is very seldom that
he takes the trouble to please; but when he does, he is irresistible.
Very little, however, is generally known respecting him. Since he came
of age, he has been much abroad; and when in England, he never entered
with eagerness into society. He is supposed to possess very
extraordinary powers, which, added to his large fortune and ancient name,
have procured him a consideration and rank rarely enjoyed by one so
young. He had refused repeated offers to enter into public life; but he
is very intimate with one of the ministers, who, it is said, has had the
address to profit much by his abilities. All other particulars
concerning him are extremely uncertain. Of his person and manners you
had better judge yourself; for I am sure, Emily, that my petition for
inviting him here is already granted." "By all means," said Emily: "you
cannot be more anxious to see him than I am." And so the conversation
dropped. Lady Margaret went to the library; Mrs. Dalton seated herself
on the ottoman, dividing her attention between the last novel and her
Italian greyhound; and Emily left the room in order to revisit her former
and favourite haunts. Her young son was her companion, and she was not
sorry that he was her only one. To be the instructress of an infant, a
mother should be its playmate; and Emily was, perhaps, wiser than she
imagined, when she ran with a laughing eye and a light foot over the
grass, occupying herself almost with the same earnestness as her child in
the same infantine amusements. As they passed the wood which led to the
lake at the bottom of the grounds, the boy, who was before Emily,
suddenly stopped. She came hastily up to him; and scarcely two paces
before, though half hid by the steep bank of the lake beneath which he
reclined, she saw a man apparently asleep. A volume of; Shakespeare lay
beside him: the child had seized it. As she took it from him in order to
replace it, her eyes rested upon the passage the boy had accidentally
opened. How often in after days was that passage recalled as an omen!
It was the following:
Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history
The course of true love never did run smooth!
Midsummer Night's Dream.
As she laid the book gently down she caught a glimpse of the countenance
of the sleeper: never did she forget the expression which it wore,
--stern, proud, mournful even in repose!
She did not wait for him to wake. She hurried home through the trees.
All that day she was silent and abstracted; the face haunted her like a
dream. Strange as it may seem, she spoke neither to Lady Margaret nor to
Mrs. Dalton of her adventure. Why? Is there in our hearts any
prescience of their misfortunes?
On the next day, Falkland, who had received and accepted Lady Margaret's
invitation, was expected to dinner. Emily felt a strong yet excusable
curiosity to see one of whom she had heard so many and such contradictory
reports. She was alone in the saloon when he entered. At the first
glance she recognised the person she had met by the lake on the day
before, and she blushed deeply as she replied to his salutation. To her
great relief Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton entered in a few minutes, and
the conversation grew general.
Falkland had but little of what is called animation in manner; but his
wit, though it rarely led to mirth, was sarcastic, yet refined, and the
vividness of his imagination threw a brilliancy and originality over
remarks which in others might have been commonplace and tame.
The conversation turned chiefly upon society; and though Lady Margaret
had told her he had entered but little into its ordinary routine, Emily
was struck alike by his accurate acquaintance with men, and the justice
of his reflections upon manners. There also mingled with his satire an
occasional melancholy of feeling, which appeared to Emily the more
touching because it was always unexpected and unassumed. It was after
one of these remarks, that for the first time she ventured to examine
into the charm and peculiarity of the countenance of the speaker. There
was spread over it that expression of mingled energy and languor, which
betokens that much, whether of thought, sorrow, passion, or action, has
been undergone, but resisted: has wearied, but not subdued. In the broad
and noble brow, in the chiselled lip, and the melancholy depths of the
calm and thoughtful eye, there sat a resolution and a power, which,
though mournful, were not without their pride; which, if they had borne
the worst, had also defied it. Notwithstanding his mother's country, his
complexion was fair and pale; and his hair, of a light chestnut, fell in
large antique curls over his forehead. That forehead, indeed,
constituted the principal feature of his countenance. It was neither in
its height nor expansion alone that its remarkable beauty consisted; but
if ever thought to conceive and courage to execute high designs were
embodied and visible, they were imprinted there.
Falkland did not stay long after dinner; but to Lady Margaret he promised
all that she required of future length and frequency in his visits. When
he left the room, Lady Emily went instinctively to the window to watch
him depart; and all that night his low soft voice rung in her ear, like
the music of an indistinct and half-remembered dream.
FROM MR. MANDEVILLE TO LADY EMILY.
DEAR, EMILY,--Business of great importance to the country has, prevented
my writing to you before. I hope you have continued well since I heard
from you last, and that you do all you can to preserve that retrenchment
of unnecessary expenses, and observe that attention to a prudent economy,
which is no less incumbent upon individuals than nations.
Thinking that you must be dull at E------, and ever anxious both to
entertain and to improve you, I send you an excellent publication by Mr.
Tooke, together with my own two last speeches, corrected by myself.
Trusting to hear from you soon, I am, with best love to Henry,
Very affectionately yours,
JOHN MANDEVILLE.
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
Well, Monkton, I have been to E-----; that important event in my monastic
life has been concluded. Lady Margaret was as talkative as usual; and a
Mrs. Dalton, who, I find, is an acquaintance of yours, asked very
tenderly after your poodle and yourself. But Lady Emily! Ay, Monkton,
I know not well how to describe her to you. Her beauty interests not
less than it dazzles. There is that deep and eloquent softness in her
every word and action, which, of all charms, is the most dangerous. Yet
she is rather of a playful than of the melancholy and pensive nature
which generally accompanies such gentleness of manner; but there is no
levity in her character; nor is that playfulness of spirit ever carried
into the exhilaration of what we call "mirth." She seems, if I may use
the antithesis, at once too feeling to be gay, and too innocent to be
sad. I remember having frequently met her husband. Cold and pompous,
without anything to interest the imagination, or engage the affections,
I am not able to conceive a person less congenial to his beautiful and
romantic wife. But she must have been exceedingly young when she married
him; and she, probably, knows not yet that she is to be pitied, because
she has not yet learned that she can love.
Le veggio in fronte amor come in suo seggio
Sul crin, negli occhi--su le labra amore
Sol d'intorno al suo cuore amor non veggio.
I have been twice to her house since my first admission there. I love to
listen to that soft and enchanting voice, and to escape from the gloom of
my own reflections to the brightness, yet simplicity, of hers. In my
earlier days this comfort would have been attended with danger; but we
grow callous from the excess of feeling. We cannot re-illumine ashes!
I can gaze upon her dream-like beauty, and not experience a single desire
which can sully the purity of my worship. I listen to her voice when it
melts in endearment over her birds, her flowers, or, in a deeper
devotion, over her child; but my heart does not thrill at the tenderness
of the sound. I touch her hand, and the pulses of my own are as calm as
before. Satiety of the past is our best safeguard from the temptations
of the future; and the perils of youth are over when it has acquired that
dulness and apathy of affection which should belong only to the
insensibility of age.
Such were Falkland's opinions at the time he wrote. Ah! what is so
delusive as our affections? Our security is our danger--our defiance our
defeat! Day after day he went to E-------. He passed the mornings in
making excursions with Emily over that wild and romantic country by which
they were surrounded; and in the dangerous but delicious stillness of the
summer twilights, they listened to the first whispers of their hearts.
In his relationship to Lady Margaret, Falkland found his excuse for the
frequency of his visits: and even Mrs. Dalton was so charmed with the
fascination of his manner, that (in spite of her previous dislike) she
forgot to inquire how far his intimacy at E------ was at variance with
the proprieties of the world she worshipped, or in what proportion it was
connected with herself.
It is needless for me to trace through all its windings the formation of
that affection, the subsequent records of which I am about to relate.
What is so unearthly, so beautiful, as the first birth of a woman's
love? The air of heaven is not purer in its wanderings--its sunshine not
more holy in its warmth. Oh! why should it deteriorate in its nature,
even while it increases in its degree? Why should the step which
prints, sully also the snow? How often, when Falkland met that
guiltless yet thrilling eye, which revealed to him those internal
secrets that Emily was yet awhile too happy to discover; when, like a
fountain among flowers, the goodness of her heart flowed over the
softness of her manner to those around her, and the benevolence of her
actions to those beneath; how often he turned away with a veneration too
deep for the selfishness of human passion, and a tenderness too sacred
for its desires! It was in this temper (the earliest and the most
fruitless prognostic of real love) that the following letter was
written.