Book: Godolphin, Volume 2.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Godolphin, Volume 2.
Alas!--either in letters or in politics, how utterly poor, barren, and
untempting, is every path that points upward to the mockery of public
eminence, when looked upon by a soul that has any real elements of wise or
noble; unless we have an impulse within, which mortification chills not--a
reward without, which selfish defeat does not destroy.
But, unblest by one friend really wise or good, spoilt by the world,
soured by disappointment, Godolphin's very faculties made him inert, and
his very wisdom taught him to be useless. Again and again--as the spider
in some cell where no winged insect ever wanders, builds and rebuilds his
mesh,--the scheming heart of the Idealist was doomed to weave net after
net for those visions of the Lovely and the Perfect which can never
descend to the gloomy regions wherein mortality is cast. The most common
disease to genius is nympholepsy--the saddening for a spirit that the
world knows not. Ah! how those outward disappointments which should cure,
only feed the disease!
The dinner at Saville's was gay and lively, as such entertainments with
such participators usually are. If nothing in the world is more heavy
than your formal banquet,--nothing, on the other hand, is more agreeable
than those well-chosen laissez aller feasts at which the guests are as
happily selected as the wines; where there is no form, no reserve, no
effort; and people having met to sit still for a few hours are willing to
be as pleasant to each other as if they were never to meet again. Yet the
conversation in all companies not literary turns upon persons rather than
things; and your wits learn their art only in the School for Scandal.
"Only think, Fanny," said Saville, "of Clavers turning beau in his old
age! He commenced with being a jockey; then he became an electioneerer;
then a Methodist parson; then a builder of houses; and now be has dashed
suddenly up to London, rushed into the clubs, mounted a wig, studied an
ogle, and walks about the Opera House swinging a cane, and, at the age of
fifty-six, punching young minors in the side, and saying tremulously,
"_We_ young fellows!"
"He hires pages to come to him in the Park with three-cornered notes,"
said Fanny, "he opens each with affected nonchalance; looks full at the
bearer; and cries aloud-'Tell your mistress I cannot refuse her:'--then
canters off, with the air of a man persecuted to death!"
"But did you see what an immense pair of whiskers Chester has mounted?"
"Yes," answered a Mr. De Lacy; "A---- says he has cultivated them in order
to 'plant out' his ugliness."
"But vy _you_ no talk, Monsieur de Dauphin?" said the Linettini gently,
turning to Percy; "you ver silent."
"Unhappily, I have been so long out of town that these anecdotes of the
day are caviare to me."
"But so," cried Saville, "would a volume of French Memoirs be to any one
that took it up for the first time; yet the French Memoirs amuse one
exactly as much as if one had lived with the persons written of. Now that
ought to be the case with conversations upon persons. I flatter myself,
Fanny, that you and I hit off characters so well by a word or two, that no
one who hears us wants to know anything more about them."
"I believe you," said Godolphin; "and that is the reason you never talk of
yourselves."
"Bah! Apropos of egoism, did you meet Jack Barabel in Rome?"
"Yes, writing his travels. 'Pray,' said he to me (seizing me by the
button) in the Coliseum, 'What do you think is the highest order of
literary composition?' 'Why, an epic, I fancy,' said I; 'or perhaps a
tragedy, or a great history, or a novel like Don Quixote.' 'Pooh!' quoth
Barabel, looking important, 'there's nothing so high in literature as a
good book of travels;' then sinking his voice into a whisper and laying
his finger wisely on his nose, he hissed out, 'I have a quarto, sir, in
the press!'"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Stracey, the old wit, picking his teeth, and speaking
for the first time; "if you tell Barabel you have seen a handsome woman,
he says, mysteriously frowning, 'Handsome, sir! has she travelled?--answer
me that!'"
"But have you seen Paulton's new equipage? Brown carriage, brown
liveries, brown harness, brown horses, while Paulton and his wife sit
within dressed in brown cap-a-pie. The best of it is that Paulton went to
his coachmaker, to order his carriage, saying, 'Mr. Houlditch, I am
growing old--too old to be eccentric any longer; I must have something
remarkably plain;' and to this hour Paulton goes _brown_-ing about the
town, crying out to every one, 'Nothing like simplicity, believe me.'"
"He discharged his coachman for wearing white gloves instead of brown,"
said Stracey. "'What do you mean, sir,' cried he, 'with your d--d showy
vulgarities?--don't you see me toiling my soul out to be plain and quiet,
and you must spoil all, by not being _brown_ enough!'"
"Ah, Godolphin, you seem pensive," whispered Fanny; "yet we are tolerably
amusing, too."
"My dear Fanny," answered Godolphin, rousing himself, "the dialogue is
gay, the actors know their parts, the lights are brilliant; but--the
scene--the scene cannot shift for me! Call it what you will, I am not
deceived. I see the paint and the canvas, but--and yet, away these
thoughts! Shall I fill your glass, Fanny?"
CHAPTER XXI.
AN EVENT OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO THE PRINCIPAL ACTORS IN THIS
HISTORY.--GODOLPHIN A SECOND TIME LEAVES ENGLAND.
Goldolphin was welcomed with enthusiasm by the London world. His graces,
his manners, his genius, his bon ton, and his bonnes fortunes, were the
theme of every society. Verses imputed to him,--some erroneously, some
truly,--were mysteriously circulated from hand to hand; and every one
envied the fair inspirers to whom they were supposed to be addressed.
It is not my intention to reiterate the wearisome echo of novelists, who
descant on fashion and term it life. No description of rose-coloured
curtains and buhl cabinets--no miniature paintings of boudoirs and
salons--no recital of conventional insipidities, interlarded with affected
criticisms, and honoured by the name of dramatic dialogue, shall lend
their fascination to these pages. Far other and far deeper aims are mine
in stooping to delineate the customs and springs of polite life. The
reader must give himself wholly up to me; he must prepare to go with me
through the grave as through the gay, and unresistingly to thread the dark
and subtle interest which alone I can impart to these memoirs, or--let him
close the book at once. I promise him novelty; but it is not, when duly
scanned, a novelty of a light and frivolous cast.
But throughout that routine of dissipation in which he chased the phantom
Forgetfulness, Godolphin sighed for the time he had fixed on for leaving
the scenes in which it was pursued. Of Constance's present existence he
heard nothing; of her former triumphs and conquests he heard everywhere.
And when did he ever meet one face, however fair, which could awaken a
single thought of admiration? while hers was yet all faithfully glassed in
his remembrance. I know nothing that so utterly converts society into
"the gallery of pictures," as the recollection of one loved and lost.
That recollection has but two cures--Time and the hermitage. Foreigners
impute to us the turn for sentiment; alas! there are no people who have it
less. We seek for ever after amusement; and there is not one popular
prose-book in our language in which the more tender and yearning secrets
of the heart form the subject-matter. The Corinne and the Julie weary us,
or we turn them into sorry jests!
One evening, a little before his departure from England--that a lingering
and vague hope, of which Constance was the object, had considerably
protracted beyond the allotted time--Godolphin was at a house in which the
hostess was a relation to Lord Erpingham.
"Have you heard," asked Lady G----, "that my cousin Erpingham is to be
married?"
"No, indeed; to whom?" said Godolphin, eagerly. "To Miss Vernon."
Sudden as was the shock, Godolphin heard, and changed neither hue nor
muscle.
"Are you certain of this?" asked a lady present.
"Quite: Lady Erpingham is my authority; I received the news from herself
this very day."
"And does she seem pleased with the match?"
"Why, I can scarcely say, for the letter contradicts itself in every
passage. Now, she congratulates herself on having so charming a
daughter-in-law; now, she suddenly stops short to observe what a pity it
is that young men should be so precipitate! Now, she says what a great
match it will be for her dear ward! and now, what a happy one it will be
for Erpingham! In short, she does not know whether to be pleased or
vexed; and that, pour dire vrai, is my case also."
"Why, indeed," observed the former speaker, "Miss Vernon has played her
cards well. Lord Erpingham would have been a great match in himself, with
his person and reputation. Ah! she was always an ambitious girl."
"And a proud one," said Lady G----. "Well, I suppose Erpingham House will
be the rendezvous to all the blues, and wits, and savans. Miss Vernon is
another Aspasia, I hear."
"I hate girls who are so designing," said the lady who spoke before, and
had only one daughter, very ugly, who, at the age of thirty-five, was
about to accept her first offer, and marry a younger son in the Guards.
"I think she's rather vulgar; for my part, I doubt if--I shall patronise
her."
"Well, what do _you_ think of it, Mr. Godolphin?--you have seen Miss
Vernon?"
Godolphin was gone.
It was about ten days after this conversation that Godolphin, waiting at a
hotel in Dover the hour at which the packet set sail for Calais, took up
the Morning Post; and the first passage that met his eye was the one
which I transcribe:--
"Marriage in High Life.--On Thursday last, at Wendover Castle, the Earl of
Erpingham, to Constance, only daughter of the celebrated Mr. Vernon. The
bride was dressed, &c., ----" And then followed the trite, yet pompous
pageantry of words--the sounding nothings--with which ladies who become
countesses are knelled into marriage.
"The dream is over!" said Godolphin mournfully, as the paper fell to the
ground; and, burying his face within his hands, he remained motionless
till they came to announce the moment of departure.
And thus Percy Godolphin left, for the second time, his native shores.
When we return to him, what changes will the feelings now awakened within
him, have worked in his character! The drops that trickle within the
cavern harden, yet brighten into spars as they indurate. Nothing is more
polished, nothing more cold, than that wisdom which is the work of former
tears, of former passions, and is formed within a musing and solitary
mind!