Book: Godolphin, Volume 2.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Godolphin, Volume 2.
But he was born poor; and yet he had lived for nearly thirty years as a
rich man! What was his secret?--he had lived upon others. At all games
of science, he played with a masterly skill; and in those wherein luck
preponderates, there are always chances for a cool and systematic
calculation. He had been, indeed, suspected of unfair play; but the
charge had never cooled the eagerness with which he had been courted.
With far better taste, and in far higher estimation than Brummell, he
obtained an equal, though a more secret sway. Every one was desirious to
know him: without his acquaintance, the young debutant felt that he wanted
the qualification to social success: by his intimacy, even vulgarity
became the rage. It was true that, as no woman's disgrace was confessedly
traced to him, so neither was any man's ruin--save only in the doubtful
instance of the unfortunate Johnstone. He never won of any person,
however ardent, more than a certain portion of his fortune--the rest of
his undoing Saville left to his satellites; nay, even those who had in
reality most reason to complain of him, never perceived his due share in
their impoverishment. It was common enough to hear men say, "Ah! Saville,
I wish I had taken your advice, and left off while I had yet half my
fortune!" They did not accurately heed that the first half was Saville's;
because the first half had excited, not ruined them.
Besides this method of making money, so strictly social, Saville had also
applied his keen intellect and shrewd sense to other speculations. Cheap
houses, cheap horses, fluctuations in the funds, all descriptions of
property (except perhaps stolen goods), had passed under his earnest
attention; and in most cases, such speculations had eminently succeeded.
He was therefore now, in his middle age, and still unmarried, a man
decidedly wealthy; having, without ever playing miser, without ever
stinting a luxury, or denying a wish, turned nothing into something,
poverty into opulence.
It was noon; and Saville was slowly finishing his morning repast, and
conversing with a young man stretched on a sofa opposite in a listless
attitude. The room was in perfect keeping with the owner: there was
neither velvet, nor gilding, nor buhl, nor marquetrie--all of which would
have been inconsistent with the moderate size of the apartment. But the
furniture was new, massive, costly, and luxurious without the ostentation
of luxury. A few good pictures, and several exquisite busts and figures
in bronze, upon marble pedestals, gave something classic and graceful to
the aspect of the room. Annexed to the back drawing-room, looking over
Lord Chesterfield's gardens, a small conservatory, filled with rich
exotics, made the only feature in the apartment that might have seemed, to
a fastidious person, effeminate or unduly voluptuous.
Saville himself was about forty-seven years of age: of a person slight and
thin, without being emaciated: a not ungraceful, though habitual stoop,
diminished his height, which might be a little above the ordinary
standard. In his youth he had been handsome; but in his person there was
now little trace of any attraction beyond that of a manner remarkably soft
and insinuating: yet in his narrow though high forehead--his sharp
aquiline nose, grey eye, and slightly sarcastic curve of lip, something of
his character betrayed itself. You saw, or fancied you saw in them the
shrewdness, the delicacy of tact; the consciousness of duping others; the
subtle and intuitive, yet bland and noiseless penetration into the
characters around him, which made the prominent features of his mind.
And, indeed, of all qualities, dissimulation is that which betrays itself
the most often in the physiognomy. A fortunate thing, that the long habit
of betraying should find at times the index in which to betray itself.
"But you don't tell me, my dear Godolphin," said Saville, as he broke the
toast into his chocolate,--"you don't tell me how the world employed
itself at Rome. Were there any of the true calibre there? steady fellows,
yet ardent, like myself?--men who make us feel our strength and put it
forth--with whom we cannot dally nor idle--who require our coolness of
head, clearness of memory, ingenuity of stratagem--in a word, men of my
art--the art of play:--were there any such?"
"Not many, but enough for honour," said Godolphin: "for myself, I have
long forsworn gambling for profit."
"Ah! I always thought you wanted that perseverance which belongs to
strength of character. And how stand your resources now? Sufficient to
recommence the world here with credit and eclat?"
"Ay, were I so disposed, Saville. But I shall return to Italy. Within a
month hence, I shall depart."
"What! and only just arrived in town! An heir in possession!"
"Of what?"
"The reputation of having succeeded to a property, the extent of which, if
wise, you will tell to no one! Are you so young, Godolphin, as to imagine
that it signifies one crumb of this bread what be the rent-roll of your
estate, so long as you can obtain credit for any sum to which you are
pleased to extend it? Credit! beautiful invention!--the moral new world
to which we fly when banished from the old. Credit!--the true charity of
Providence, by which they who otherwise would starve live in plenty, and
despise the indigent rich. Credit!--admirable system, alike for those who
live on it and the wiser few who live by it. Will you borrow some money
of me, Godolphin?"
"At what percentage?"
"Why, let me see: funds are low; I'll be moderate. But stay; be it with
you as I did with George Sinclair. You shall have all you want, and pay
me with a premium, when you marry an heiress. Why, roan, you wince at the
word 'marry!'"
"'Tis a sore subject, Saville: one that makes a man think of halters."
"You are right--I recognise my young pupil. Your old play-writers talked
nonsense when they said men lost liberty of person by marriage. Men lose
liberty, but it is the liberty of the mind. We cease to be independent of
the world's word, when we grow respectable with a wife, a fat butler, two
children, and a family coach. It makes a gentleman little better than a
grocer or a king! But you have seen Constance Vernon. Why, out on this
folly, Godolphin! You turn away. Do you fancy that I did not penetrate
your weakness the moment you mentioned her name?--still less, do you
fancy, my dear young friend, that I, who have lived through nearly half a
century, and know our nature, and the whole thermometer of our blood,
think one jot the worse of you for forming a caprice, or a passion, if you
will--for a woman who would set an anchoret, or, what is still colder, a
worn out debauchee, on fire? Bah! Godolphin, I am wiser than you take me
for. And I will tell you more. For your sake, I am _happy_ that you have
incurred already this, our common folly (which we all have once in a
life), and that the fit is over. I do not pry into your secrets; I know
their delicacy, I do not ask which of you drew back; for, to have gone
forward, to have married, would have been madness in both. Nay, it was an
_impossibility_: it could not have happened to my pupil; the ablest, the
subtlest, the wisest of my pupils. But, however it was broken off, I
repeat that I am glad it happened. One is never sure of a man's wisdom,
till he has been really and vainly in love. You know what that moralizing
lump of absurdity, Lord Edouard, has said in the Julie--'the path of the
passions conducts us to philosophy!' It is true, very true; and now that
the path has been fairly trod, the goal is at hand. _Now,_ I can confide
in your steadiness; now, I can feel that you will run no chance in future,
of over-appreciating that bauble, Woman. You will beg, borrow, steal, and
exchange or lose the jewel, with the same delicious excitement, coupled
with the same steady indifference, with which we play at a more scientific
game, and for a more comprehensive reward. I say more comprehensive
reward: for how many women may we be able to buy by a judicious bet on the
odd trick!"
"Your turn is sudden," said Godolphin, smiling; "and there is some justice
in your reasoning. The fit _is_ over; and if ever I can be wise, I have
entered on wisdom now. But talk of this no more."
"I will not," said Saville, whose unerring tact had reached just the point
where to stop, and who had led Godolphin through just that vein of
conversation, half sentimentalising, half sensible, all profligate, which
seldom fails to win the ear of a man both of imagination and of the world.
"I will not; and, to vary the topic, I will turn egoist, and tell you
_my_ adventures."
With this, Saville began a light and amusing recital of his various and
singular life for the last three years. Anecdote, jest, maxim, remark,
interspersed, gave a zest and piquancy to the narration. An accomplished
roue always affects to moralise; it is a part of his character. There is
a vague and shrewd sentiment that pervades his morale and his system.
Frequent excitement, and its attendant relaxation; the conviction of the
folly of all pursuits; the insipidity of all life; the hollowness of all
love; the faithlessness in all ties; the disbelief in all worth; these
consequences of a dissipated existence on a thoughtful mind, produce some
remarkable, while they make so many wretched, characters. They coloured
some of the most attractive prose among the French, and the most
fascinating verse in the pages of Byron. It might be asked, by a profane
inquirer (and I have touched on this before), what effect a life nearly
similar--a life of luxury, indolence, lassitude, profuse, but heartless
love, imparted to the deep and touching wisdom in his page, whom we
consider the wisest of men, and who has left us the most melancholy of
doctrines?
It was this turn of mind that made Savill's conversation peculiarly
agreeable to Godolphin in his present humour; and the latter invested it,
from his own mood, with a charm which in reality it wanted. For, as I
shall show, in Godolphin, what deterioration the habits of frivolous and
worldly life produce on the mind of a man of genius, I show only in
Saville the effect they produce on a man of sense.
"Well, Godolphin," said Saville, as he saw the former rise to depart; "you
will at least dine with me to-day--a punctual eight. I think I can
promise you an agreeable evening. The Linettini, and that dear little
Fanny Millinger (your old flame), are coming; and I have asked old
Stracey, the poet, to say bons mots for them. Poor old Stracey! He goes
about to all his former friends and fellow-liberals, boasting of his
favour with the Great, and does not see that we only use him as we would a
puppet-show or a dancing-dog."
"What folly," said Godolphin, "it is in any man of genius (not also of
birth) to think the Great of this country can possibly esteem him!
Nothing can equal the secret enmity with which dull men regard an
intellect above their comprehension. Party politics, and the tact, the
shifting, the commonplace that Party politics alone require; these they
can appreciate; and they feel respect for an orator, even though he be not
a county member; for he can assist them in their paltry ambition for place
and pension: but an author, or a man of science, the rogues positively
jeer at him!"
"And yet," said Saville, "how few men of letters perceive a truth so
evident to us, so hackneyed even in the conversations of society! For a
little reputation at a dinner table, for a coaxing nobe from some titled
demirep affecting the De Stael, they forget not only to be glorious but
even to be respectable. And this, too, not only for so petty a
gratification, but for one that rarely lasts above a London season. We
allow the low-born author to be the lion this year; but we dub him a bore
the next. We shut our doors upon his twice-told jests, and send for the
Prague minstrels to sing to us after dinner instead."
"However," said Godolphin, "it is only poets you find so foolish as to be
deceived by you. There is not a single prose writer of real genius so
absurd."
"And why is that?"
"Because," replied Godolphin, philosophising, "poets address themselves
more to women than men; and insensibly they acquire the weaknesses which
they are accustomed to address. A poet whose verses delight the women
will be found, if we closely analyse his character, to be very like a
woman himself."
"You don't love poets?" said Saville.
"The glory of old has departed from them. I mean less from their pages
than their minds. We have plenty of beautiful poets, but how little
poetry breathing of a great soul!"
Here the door opened, and a Mr. Glosson was announced. There entered a
little, smirking, neat-dressed man, prim as a lawyer or a house-agent.
"Ah, Glosson, is that you?" said Saville, with something like animation:
"sit down, my good sir,--sit down. Well! well! (rubbing his bands); what
news? what news?"
"Why, Mr. Saville, I think we may get the land from old ----. He has the
right of the job. I have been with him all this morning. He asks six
thousand pounds for it.
"The unconscionable dog! He got it from the crown for two."
"Ah, very true,--very true: but you don't see, sir,--you don't see, that
it is well worth nine. Sad times,--sad times: jobs from the crown are
growing scarcer every day, Mr. Saville."
"Humph! that's all a chance, a speculation. Times are bad indeed, as you
say: no money in the market; go, Glosson; offer him five; your percentage
shall be one per cent. higher than if I pay six thousand, and shall be
counted up to the latter sum."
"He! he! he! sir!" grinned Glosson; "you are fond of your joke, Mr.
Saville."
"Well, now; what else in the market? never mind my friend: Mr.
Godolphin--Mr. Glosson; now all gene is over; proceed,--proceed."
Glosson hummed, and bowed, and hummed again, and then glided on to speak
of houses, and crown lands, and properties in Wales, and places at court
(for some of the subordinate posts at the palace were then--perhaps are
now--regular matter of barter); and Saville, bending over the table, with
his thin delicate hands clasped intently, and his brow denoting his
interest, and his sharp shrewd eye fixed on the agent, furnished to the
contemplative Godolphin a picture which he did not fail to note, to
moralise on, to despise!
What a spectacle is that of the prodigal rake, hardening and sharpening
into the grasping speculator!
CHAPTER XX.
FANNY MILLINGER ONCE MORE.--LOVE.--WOMAN.--BOOKS.--A HUNDRED TOPICS
TOUCHED ON THE SURFACE.--GODOLPHIN'S STATE OF MIND MORE MINUTELY
EXAMINED.--THE DINNER AT SAVILLE'S.
Godolphin went to see and converse with Fanny Millinger.
She was still unmarried, and still the fashion. There was a sort of
allegory of real life, in the manner in which, at certain epochs, our
Idealist was brought into contact with the fair actress of ideal
creations. There was, in short, something of a moral in the way these two
streams of existence--the one belonging to the Actual, the other to the
Imaginary--flowed on, crossing each other at stated times. Which was the
more really imaginative--the life of the stage, or that of the world's
stage? The gay Fanny was rejoiced to welcome back again her early lover.
She ran on, talking of a thousand topics, without remarking the absent
mind and musing eye of Godolphin, till he himself stopped her somewhat
abruptly:--
"Well, Fanny, well, and what do you know of Saville? You have grown
intimate with him, eh? We shall meet at his house this evening."
"Oh, yes, he is a charming person in his little way; and the only man who
allows me to be a friend without dreaming of becoming a lover. Now that's
what I like. We poor actresses have so much would-be love in the course
of our lives, that a little friendship now and then is a novelty which
other and soberer people can never appreciate. On reading Gil Blas the
other day--I am no great reader, as you may remember--I was struck by that
part in which the dear Santillane assures us that there was never any love
between him and Laura the actress. I thought it so true to nature, so
probable, that they should have formed so strong an intimacy for each
other, lived in the same house, had every opportunity for love, yet never
loved. And it was exactly because she was an actress, and a light
good-for-nothing creature that it so happened; the very multiplicity of
lovers prevented her falling in love; the very carelessness of her life,
poor girl, rendered a friend so charming to her. It would have spoiled
the friend to have made him an adorer; it would have turned the rarity
into the every-day character. Now, so it is with me and Saville; I like
his wit, he likes my good temper. We see each other as often as if we
were in love; and yet I do not believe it even possible that he should
ever kiss my hand. After all," continued Fanny, laughing, "love is not so
necessary to us women as people think. Fine writers say, 'Oh, men have a
thousand objects, women but one!' That's nonsense, dear Percy; women have
their thousand objects too. They have not the bar, but they have the
milliner's shop; they can't fight, but they can sit by the window and
embroider a work-bag; they don't rush into politics, but they plunge their
souls into love for a parrot or a lap-dog. Don't let men flatter
themselves; Providence has been just as kind in that respect to one sex as
to the other; our objects are small, yours great; but a small object may
occupy the mind just as much as the loftiest."
"Ours great! pshaw!" said Godolphin, who was rather struck with Fanny's
remarks; "there is nothing great in those professions which man is pleased
to extol. Is selfishness great? Are the low trickery, the organised lies
of the bar, a great calling? Is the mechanical slavery of the
soldier--fighting because he is in the way of fighting, without knowing
the cause, without an object, save a dim, foolish vanity which he calls
glory, and cannot analyse--is that a great aim and vocation? Well: the
senate! look at the outcry which wise men make against the loathsome
corruption of that arena; then look at the dull hours,--the tedious talk,
the empty boasts, the poor and flat rewards, and tell me where is the
greatness? No, Fanny! the embroidered work-bag, and the petted parrot,
afford just as great--morally great--occupations as those of the bar, the
army, the senate. It is only the frivolous who talk of frivolities; there
is nothing frivolous; all earthly occupations are on a par--alike
important if they alike occupy; for to the wise all are poor and
valueless."
"I fancy you are very wrong," said the actress, pressing her pretty
fingers to her forehead, as if to understand him; "but I cannot tell you
why, and I never argue. I ramble on in my odd way, casting out my shrewd
things without defending them if any one chooses to quarrel with them.
What I do I let others do. My maxim in talk is my maxim in life. I claim
liberty for myself, and give indulgence to others."
"I see," said Godolphin, "that you have plenty of books about you, though
you plead not guilty to reading. Do you learn your philosophy from them?
for I think you have contracted a vein of reflection since we parted which
I scarcely recognise as an old characteristic."
"Why," answered Fanny, "though I don't read, I skim. Sometimes I canter
through a dozen novels in a morning. I am disappointed, I confess, in all
these works; I want to see more real knowledge of the world than they ever
display. They tell us how Lord Arthur looked, and Lady Lucy dressed, and
what was the colour of those curtains, and these eyes, and so forth; and
then the better sort, perhaps, do also tell us what the heroine felt as
well as wore, and try with might and main to pull some string of the
internal machine; but still I am not enlightened, not touched. I don't
recognise men and women; they are puppets with holiday phrases: and I tell
you what, Percy, these novelists make the last mistake you would suppose
them guilty of; they have not romance enough in them to paint the truths
of society. Old gentlemen say novels are bad teachers of life, because
they make it too ideal; quite the reverse: novels are too trite! too
superficial! Their very talk about love, and the fuss they make about it,
show how shallow real romance is with them; for they say nothing new on
it, and real romance is for ever striking out new thoughts. Am I not
right, Percy?--No! life, be it worldly as it may, has a vast deal of
romance in it. Every one of us (even poor I) have a mine of thoughts, and
fancies, and wishes, that books are too dull and commonplace to reach the
heart is a romance in itself."
"A philosophical romance, my Fanny; full of mysteries and conceits, and
refinements, mixed up with its deeper passages. But how came you so
wise?"
"Thank you!" answered Fanny, with a profound curtsey. "The fact
is--though you, as in duty bound, don't perceive it--that I am older than
I was when we last met. I reflect where I then felt. Besides, the stage
fills our heads with a half sort of wisdom, and gives us that strange
melange of shrewd experience and romantic notions which is, in fact, the
real representation of nine human hearts out of ten. Talking of books, I
want some one to write a novel, which shall be a metaphysical Gil Blas;
which shall deal more with the mind than Le Sage's book, and less with the
actions; which shall make its hero the creature of the world, but a
different creation, though equally true; which shall give a faithful
picture in the character of one man of the aspect and the effects of our
social system; making that man of a better sort of clay than the amusing
lacquey was, and the produce of a more artificial grade of society. The
book I mean would be a sadder one than Le Sage's but equally faithful to
life."
"And it would have more of romance, if I rightly understand what you mean?"
"Precisely: romance of idea as well as incident--natural romance. By the
way, how few know what natural romance is: so that you feel the ideas in a
book or play are true and faithful to the characters they are ascribed to,
why mind whether the incidents are probable? Yet common readers only go
by the incidents; as if the incidents in three-fourths of Shakspeare's
plays were even ordinarily possible! But people have so little nature in
them, that they don't know what is natural!"
Thus Fanny ran on, in no very connected manner; stringing together those
remarks which, unless I am mistaken, show how much better an uneducated,
clever girl, whose very nature is a quick perception of art, can play the
critic, then the pedants who assume the office.
But it was only for the moment that the heavy heart of Godolphin could
forget its load. It was in vain that he sought to be amused while yet
smarting under the freshness of regret. A great shock had been given to
his nature; he had loved against his will; and as we have seen, on his
return to the Priory, he had even resolved on curing himself of a passion
so unprofitable and unwise. But the jealousy of a night had shivered into
dust a prudence which never of right belonged to a very ardent and
generous nature: that jealousy was soothed, allayed; but how fierce, how
stunning was the blow that succeeded it! Constance had confessed love,
and yet had refused him--for ever! Clear and noble as to herself her
motives might seem in that refusal, it was impossible that they should
appear in the same light to Godolphin. Unable to penetrate into the
effect which her father's death-bed and her own oath had produced on the
mind of Constance; how indissolubly that remembrace had united itself with
all her schemes and prospects for the future; how marvellously, yet how
naturally, it had converted worldly ambition into a sacred duty;--unable,
I say, to comprehend all these various, and powerful, and governing
motives, Godolphin beheld in her refusal only the aversion to share his
slender income, and the desire for loftier station. He considered,
therefore, that sorrow was a tribute to her unworthy of himself; he deemed
it a part of his dignity to strive to forget. That hallowed sentiment
which, in some losses of the heart, makes it a duty to remember, and
preaches a soothing and soft lesson from the very text of regret, was not
for the wrung and stricken soul of Godolphin. He only strove to dissipate
his grief, and shut out from his mental sight the charmed vision of the
first, the only woman he had deeply loved.
Godolphin felt, too, that the sole impulse which could have united the
fast-expiring energy and enterprise of his youth to the ambition of life
was for ever gone. With Constance--with the proud thoughts that belonged
to her--the aspirings after earthly honours were linked, and with her were
broken. He felt his old philosophy--the love of ease, the profound
contempt for fame,--close, like the deep waters over those glittering
hosts for whose passage they had been severed for a moment--whelming the
crested and gorgeous visions for ever beneath the wave! Conscious of his
talents--nay, swayed to and fro by the unquiet stirrings of no common
genius--Godolphin yet foresaw that he was not henceforth destined to play
a shining part in the crowded drama of life. His career was already
closed; he might be contented, prosperous, happy, but never great. He had
seen enough of authors, and of the thorns that beset the paths of
literature, to experience none of those delusions which cheat the blinded
aspirer into the wilderness of publication--that mode of obtaining fame
and hatred to which those who feel unfitted for more bustling concerns are
impelled. Write he might: and he was fond (as disappointment increased
his propensities to dreaming) of brightening his solitude with the golden
palaces and winged shapes that lie glassed within the fancy--the soul's
fairy-land. But the vision with him was only evoked one hour to be
destroyed the next. Happy had it been for Godolphin, and not unfortunate
perhaps for the world, had he learned at that exact moment the true motive
for human action which he afterwards, and too late, discovered. Happy had
it been for him to have learned that there is an ambition to do good--an
ambition to raise the wretched as well as to rise.