Book: Godolphin, Volume 5.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Godolphin, Volume 5.
Cora was now on the stage: a transport of applause shook the house.
"How well she acts!" said Radclyffe warmly.
"Yes," answered Godolphin, as with folded arms he looked quietly on; "but
what a lesson in the human heart does good acting teach us! Mark that
glancing eye--that heaving breast--that burst of passion--that agonised
voice: the spectators are in tears! The woman's whole soul is in her
child! Not a bit of it! She feels no more than the boards we tread on:
she is probably thinking of the lively supper we shall have; and when she
comes off the stage, she will cry, 'Did I not act it well?'"
"Nay," said Radclyffe, "she probably feels while she depicts the feeling."
"Not she: years ago she told me the whole science of acting was trick; and
trick--trick--trick it is, on the stage or off. The noble art of
oratory--(noble forsooth!)--is just the same: philosophy, poetry--all, all
hypocrisy. 'Damn the moon!' said B---- to me, as we once stood gazing on
it at Venice; 'it always gives me the ague: but I have described it well
in my poetry, Godolphin--eh?'"
"But--," began Radclyffe.
"But me no buts," interrupted Godolphin, with the playful pertinacity
which he made so graceful: "you are younger than I am; when you have lived
as long, you shall have a right to contradict my system--not before."
Godolphin joined the supper party. Like Godolphin's, Fanny's life was the
pursuit of pleasure: she lavished on it, in proportion to her means, the
same cost and expense, though she wanted the same taste and refinement.
Generous and profuse, like all her tribe--like all persons who win money
easily--she was charitable to all and luxurious in herself. The supper
was attended by four male guests--Godolphin, Saville, Lord Falconer; and
Mr. Windsor.
It was early summer: the curtains were undrawn, the windows were half
opened, and the moonlight slept on the little grassplot that surrounded
the house. The guests were in high spirits. "Fill me this goblet," cried
Godolphin; "champagne is the boy's liquor; I will return to it con amore.
Fanny, let us pledge each other: stay: a toast!--What shall it be?"
"Hope till old age, and Memory afterwards," said Fanny, smiling.
"Pshaw! theatricals still, Fan?" growled Saville, who had placed a large
screen between himself and the window; "no sentiment between friends."
"Out on you, Saville," said Godolphin; "as well might you say no music out
of the opera; these verbal prettinesses colour conversation. But your
roues are so d----d prosaic, you want us to walk to Vice without a flower
by the way."
"Vice indeed!" cried Saville. "I abjure your villanous appellatives. It
was in your companionship that I lost my character, and now you turn
king's evidence against the poor devil you seduced."
"Humph!" cried Godolphin gaily; "you remind me of the advice of the
Spanish hidalgo to a servant: always choose a master with a good memory:
for 'if he does not pay, he will at least remember that he owes you.' In
future, I shall take care to herd only with those who recollect, after
they are finally debauched, all the good advice I gave them beforehand."
"Meanwhile," said the pretty Fanny, with her arch mouth half-full of
chicken, "I shall recollect that Mr. Saville drinks his wine without
toasts--as being a useless delay."
"Wine," said Mr. Windsor, sententiously, "wine is just the reverse of
love. Your old topers are all for coming at once, to the bottle, and your
old lovers for ever mumbling the toast."
"See what you have' brought on yourself, Saville, by affecting a joke upon
me," said Godolphin. "Come, let us make it up: we fell out with the
toast--let us be reconciled by the glass.--Champagne?"
"Ay, anything for a quiet life,--even champagne," said Saville, with a
mock air of patience, and dropping his sharp features into a state of the
most placid repose. "Your wits are so very severe. Yes, champagne if you
please. Fanny, my love," and Saville made a wry face as he put down the
scarce-tasted glass; "go on--another joke, if you please; I now find I can
bear your satire better, at least, than your wine."
Fanny was all bustle: it is in these things that the actress differs from
the lady--there is no quiet in her. "Another bottle of champagne:--what
can have happened to this?" Poor Fanny was absolutely pained. Saville
enjoyed it, for he always revenged a jest by an impertinence.
"Nay," said Godolphin, "our friend does but joke. Your champagne is
excellent, Fanny. Well, Saville, and where is young Greenhough? He is
vanished. Report says he was marked down in your company, and has not
risen since."
"Report is the civilest jade in the world. According to her all the
pigeons disappear in my fields. But, seriously speaking, Greenhough is
off--gone to America--over head and ears in debt--debts of honor. Now,"
said Saville, very slowly, "there's the difference between the gentleman
and the parvenu; the gentleman, when all is lost, cuts his throat: the
parvenu only cuts his creditors. I am really very angry with Greenhough
that he did not destroy himself. A young man under my protection and all:
so d----d ungrateful in him."
"He was not much in your debt--eh?" said Lord Falconer, speaking for the
first time as the wine began to get into his head.
Saville looked hard at the speaker.
"Lord Falconer, a pinch of snuff: there is something singularly happy in
your question; so much to the point: you have great knowledge of the
world--great. He was very much in my debt. I introduced the vulgar dog
into the world, and he owes me all the thousands he had the Honor to lose
in good society!"
"Do you know, Percy," continued Saville, "do you know, by the way, that my
poor dear friend Jasmin is dead? died after a hearty game of whist. He
had just time to cry 'four by honours' when death trumped him. It was a
great shock to me: he was the second best player at Graham's. Those
sudden deaths are very awful--especially with the game in one's hands."
"Very mortifying, indeed," seriously said Lord Falconer, who had just been
initiated into whist.
"'Tis droll," said Saville, "to see how often the last words of a man
tally with his life; 'tis like the moral to the fable. The best instance
I know is in Lord Chesterfield, whose fine soul went out in that sublime
and inimitable sentence--`Give Mr. Darrell a chair.'"
"Capital," cried Lord Falconer. "Saville, a game at ecarte."
As the lion in the Tower looked at the lapdog, so in all the compassion
of contempt looked Saville on Lord Falconer.
"Infelix puer!" muttered Godolphin; "Infelix puer atque, impar congressus
Achilli."
"With all my heart," said Saville at last. "Yet, no--we've been talking
of death--such topics waken a man's conscience, Falconer, I never play for
less than----"
"Ponies!--I know it!" cried Falconer, triumphantly.
"Ponies--less than chargers!"
"Chargers--what are chargers?"
"The whole receipts of an Irish peer, Lord Falconer; and I make it a point
never to lose the first game."
"Such men are dangerous," said Mr. Windsor, with his eyes shut.
"O Night!" cried Godolphin, springing up theatrically, "thou wert made for
song, and moonlight, and laughter--but woman's laughter. Fanny, a
song--the pretty quaint song you sang me, years ago, in praise of a town
love and an easy life."
Fanny, who had been in the pouts ever since Saville had blamed the
champagne--for she was very anxious to be of bon ton in her own little
way--now began to smile once more; and, as the moon played on her arch
face, she seated herself at the piano, and, glancing at Godolphin, sang
the following song:--
LOVE COURTS THE PLEASURES.
I.
Believe me, Love was never made
In deserts to abide;
Leave Age to take the sober shade,
And Youth the sunny side.
II.
Love dozes by the purling brook,
No friend to lonely places;
Or, if he toy with Strephon's crook,
His Chloes are the Graces.
III.
Forsake 'The Flaunting Town!' Alas!
Be cells for saints, my own love!
The wine of life's a social glass,
Nor may be quaffed alone, love.
IV.
Behold the dead and solemn sea,
To which our beings flow;
Let waves that soon so dark must be
Catch every glory now.
V.
I would not chain that heart to this
To sicken at the rest;
The cage we close a prison is,
The open cage a nest.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE CAREER OF CONSTANCE.--REAL STATE OF HER FEELINGS TOWARDS
GODOLPHIN.--RAPID SUCCESSION OF POLITICAL EVENTS.--CANNING'S
ADMINISTRATION.--CATHOLIC QUESTION.--LORD GREY'S SPEECH.--CANNING'S DEATH.
While in scenes like these, alternated with more refined and polished
dissipation, Godolphin lavished away his life, Constance, became more and
more powerful as one of the ornaments of a great political party. Few
women in England ever mixed more actively in politics than Lady Erpingham,
or with more remarkable ability. Her friends were out of office, it is
true; but she saw the time approaching rapidly when their opinions must
come into power. She bad begun to love, for itself, the scheming of
political ambition, and in any country but England she would have been a
conspirator, and in old times might have risen to be a queen; but as it
was, she was only a proud, discontented woman. She knew, too, that it was
all she could be--all that her sex allowed her to be--yet did she not the
less straggle and toil on. The fate of her father still haunted her; her
promise and his death-bed still rose oft and solemnly before leer; the
humiliations she had known in her early condition--the homage that had
attended her later career--still cherished in her haughty soul indignation
at the faction he had execrated, and little less of the mighty class which
that faction represented. The system of "fashion" she had so mainly
contributed to strengthen, and which was originally by her intended to
build up a standard of opinion, independent of mere rank, and in defiance
of mere wealth, she saw polluted and debased by the nature of its
followers, into a vulgar effrontery, which was worse than the more quiet
dulness it had attempted to supplant. Yet still she was comforted by the
thought that through this system lay the way to more wholesome changes.
The idols of rank and wealth once broken, she believed that a pure and
sane worship must ultimately be established. Doubtless in the old French
regime there were many women who thought like her, but there were none who
acted like her--deliberately, and with an end. What an excellent, what a
warning picture is contained in the entertaining Memoirs of Count Segur!
how admirably that agreeable gossip develops the state of mind among the
nobility of France!--"merry censurers of the old customs"--"enchanted by
the pbilosophy of Voltaire"--"ridiculing the old system"--"embracing
liberality as a fashion," and "gaily treading a soil bedecked with
flowers, which concealed a precipice from their view!" In England, there
are fewer flowers, and the precipice will be less fearful.
A certain disappointment which had attended her marriage with Godolphin,
and the disdainful resentment she felt at the pleasures that allured him
from her, tended yet more to deepen at once her distaste for the habits of
a frivolous society, and to nerve and concentrate her powers of political
intrigue. Her mind grew more and more masculine; her dark eye burnt with
a sterner fire; the sweet mouth was less prodigal of its smiles; and that
air of dignity which she had always possessed, grew harder in its
character, and became command.
This change did not tend to draw Godolphin nearer to her. He, so
susceptible to coldness, so refining, so exacting, believed fully that she
loved him no more--that she repented the marriage she had contracted. His
pride was armed against her; and he sought more eagerly those scenes where
all, for the admired, the gallant, the sparkling Godolphin, wore smiles
and sunshine.
There was another matter that rankled in his breast with peculiar
bitterness. He had wished to raise a large sum of money (in the purchase
of some celebrated works of art), which could only be raised with Lady
Erpingham's consent. When he had touched upon the point to her, she had
not refused, but she had hesitated. She seemed embarrassed, and, he
thought, discontented. His delicacy took alarm, and he never referred to
the question again; but he was secretly much displeased with her reluctant
manner on that occasion. Nothing the proud so little forget as a coolness
conceived upon money matters: In this instance, Godolphin afterwards
discovered that he had wronged Constance, and misinterpreted the cause of
her reluctance.
Yet as time flew on for both, both felt a yearning of the heart towards
each other; and had they been thrown upon a desert island--had there been
full leisure, full opportunity, for a frank unfettered interchange and
confession of thought--they would have been mutually astonished to find
themselves still so beloved, and each would have been dearer to the other
than in their warmest hour of earlier attachment. But when once, in a
very gay and occupied life, a husband and wife have admitted a seeming
indifference to creep in between them, the chances are a thousand to one
against its after-removal. How much more so with a wife so proud as
Constance, and a husband so refining as Godolphin! Fortunately, however,
as I said before, the temper of each was excellent; they never quarrelled;
and the indifference, therefore, lay on the surface, not at the depth.
They seemed to the world an affectionate couple, as couples go; and their
union would have been classed by Rochefoucauld among those marriages that
are very happy--il n'y a point de delicieux.
Meanwhile, as Constance had predicted, the political history of the
country was marked by a perpetual progress towards liberal opinions. Mr.
Canning was now in office; the Catholic Question was in every one's mouth.
There was a brilliant meeting at Erpingham House; those who composed it
were of the heads of the party: but there were divisions amongst
themselves; some were secretly for joining Mr. Canning's administration;
some had openly done so; others remained in stubborn and jealous
opposition. With these last was the heart of Constance. "Well, well,
Lady Erpingham," said Lord Paul Plympton, a young nobleman, who had
written a dull history, and was therefore considered likely to succeed in
parliamentary life--"well, I cannot help thinking you are too severe upon
Canning: he is certainly very liberal in his views."
"Is there one law he ever caused to pass for the benefit of the working
classes? No, Lord Paul, his Whiggism is for peers, and his Toryism for
peasants. With the same zeal he advocates the Catholic Question and the
Manchester Massacre."
"Yet, surely," cried Lord Paul, "you make a difference between the just
liberality that provides for property and intelligence, and the dangerous
liberality that would slacken the reins of an ignorant multitude."
"But," said Mr. Benson, a very powerful member of the Lower House, "true
politicians must conform to circumstances. Canning may not be all we
wish, but still he ought to be supported. I confess that I shall be
generous I care not for office, I care not for power; but Canning is
surrounded with enemies, who are enemies also to the people: for that
reason I shall support him."
"Bravo, Benson!" cried Lord Paul.
"Bravo, Benson!" echoed two or three notables, who had waited an
opportunity to declare themselves; "that's what I call handsome."
"Manly!"
"Fair!"
"Disinterested, by Jove!"
Here the Duke of Aspindale suddenly entered the room. "Ah, Lady
Erpingham, you should have been in the Lords to-night; such a speech!
Canning is crushed for ever!"
"Speech! from whom?"
"Lord Grey--terrific: it was the vengeance of a life concentrated into one
hour; it has shaken the Ministry fearfully."
"Humph!" said Benson, rising; "I shall go to Brooks's and hear more."
"And I too," said Lord Paul.
A day or two after, Benson in presenting a petition, alluded in terms of
high eulogy to the masterly speech made "in another place:" and Lord Paul
Plympton said, "it was indeed unequalled."
That's what I call handsome. Manly!
Fair!
Disinterested, by Jove!
And Canning died; his gallant soul left the field of politics broken into
a thousand petty parties. From the time of his death the two great hosts
into which the struggles for power were divided have never recovered their
former strength. The demarcation that his policy had tended to efface was
afterwards more weakened by his successor, the Duke of Wellington; and had
it not been for the question of Reform that again drew the stragglers on
either side around one determined banner, it is likely that Whig and Tory
would, among the many minute sections and shades of difference, have lost
for ever the two broad distinguishing colours of their separate factions.
Mr. Canning died; and now, with redoubled energy, went on the wheels of
political intrigue. The rapid succession of short-lived administrations,
the leisure of a prolonged peace, the pressure of debt, the writings of
philosophers, all, insensibly, yet quickly, excited that popular
temperament which found its crisis in the Reform Bill.
CHAPTER LV.
THE DEATH OF GEORGE IV.--THE POLITICAL SITUATION OF PARTIES, AND OF LADY
ERPINGHAM.
The death of George the Fourth was the birth of a new era. During the
later years of that monarch a silent spirit had been gathering over the
land, which had crept even to the very walls of his seclusion. It cannot
be denied that the various expenses of his reign,--no longer consecrated
by the youthful graces of the prince, no longer disguised beneath the
military triumphs of the people,--had contributed far more than
theoretical speculations to the desire of political change. The shortest
road to liberty lies through attenuated pockets!
Constance was much at Windsor during the king's last illness, one of the
saddest periods that ever passed within the walls of a palace. The
memorialists of the reign of the magnificent Louis XIV. will best convey
to the reader a notion of the last days of George the Fourth. For, like
that great king, he was the representation in himself of a particular
period, and he preserved much of the habits of (and much too of the
personal interest attached to) his youth, through the dreary decline of
age. It was melancholy to see one who had played, not only so exalted,
but so gallant a part, breathing his life away; nor was the gloom
diminished by the many glimpses of a fine original nature, which broke
forth amidst infirmity and disease.
George the Fourth died; his brother succeeded; and the English world began
to breathe more freely, to look around, and to feel that the change, long
coming, was come at last. The French Revolution, the new parliament,
Henry Brougham's return for Yorkshire, Mr. Hurne's return for Middlesex,
the burst of astonished indignation at the Duke of Wellington's memorable
words against reform, all betrayed, while they ripened, the signs of the
new age. The Whig Ministry was appointed, appointed amidst discontents in
the city, suspicions amongst the friends of the people, amidst fires and
insurrections in the provinces;--convulsions abroad, and turbulence at
home.
The situation of Constance in these changes was rather curious; her
intimacy with the late king was no recommendation with the Whig
government of his successor. Her power, as the power of fashion always
must in stormy times, had received a shock; and as she had of late been a
little divided from the main body of the Whigs, she did not share at once
in their success, or claim to be one of their allies. She remained silent
and aloof; her parties were numerous and splendid as ever, but the small
plotting reunions of intriguers were suspended. She hinted mysteriously
at the necessity of pausing, to see what reform the new ministers would
recommend, and what economy they would effect. The Tories, especially the
more moderate tribe, began to court her: the Whigs, flushed with their
triumph, and too busy to think of women, began to neglect. This last
circumstance the high Constance felt keenly--but with the keenness rather
of scorn than indignation; years had deepened her secret disgust at all
aristocratic ordinances, and looking rather at what the Whigs had been
than what, pressed by the times, they have become, she regarded them as
only playing with democratic counters for aristocratic rewards. She
repaid their neglect with contempt, and the silent neutralist soon became
regarded by them as the secret foe.
But Constance was sufficiently the woman to feel mortified and wounded by
that which she affected to despise. No post at court had been offered to
her by her former friends; the confidant of George the Fourth had ceased
to be the confidant of Lord Grey. Arrived at that doubtful time of life
when the beauty although possessing, is no longer assured of, her charms,
she felt the decay of her personal influence as a personal affront; and
thus vexed, wounded, alarmed, in her mid-career, Constance was more than
ever sensible of the peculiar disquietudes that await female ambition, and
turned with sighs more frequent than heretofore to the recollections of
that domestic love which seemed lost to her for ever.
Mingled with the more outward and visible stream of politics there was, as
there ever is, a latent tide of more theoretic and speculative opinions.
While the practical politicians were playing their momentary parts,
schemers, and levellers, were propagating in all quarters doctrines which
they fondly imagined were addressed to immortal ends. And Constance began
to turn with some curiosity to these charlatans or sages. The bright
countess listened to their harangues, pondered over their demonstrations,
and mused over their hopes. But she had lived too much on the surface of
the actual world, her habits of thought were too essentially worldly, to
be converted, while she was attracted, by doctrines so startling in their
ultimate conclusions. She turned once more to herself, and waited, in a
sad and thoughtful stillness, the progress of things-convinced only of the
vanity of them all.
CHAPTER LVI.
THE ROUE HAS BECOME A VALETUDINARIAN.--NEWS.--A FORTUNETELLER.
Meanwhile the graced Godolphin floated down the sunny tide of his
prosperity. He lived chiefly with a knot of epicurean dalliers with the
time, whom he had selected from the wittiest and the easiest of the London
world. Dictator of theatres--patron of operas--oracle in music--mirror of
entertainments and equipage--to these conditions had his natural genius
and his once dreaming dispositions been bowed at last! A round of
dissipation, however, left him no time for reflection; and he believed
(perhaps he was not altogether wrong) that the best way to preserve the
happy equilibrium of the heart is to blunt its susceptibilities. As the
most uneven shapes, when whirled into rapid and ceaseless motion, will
appear a perfect circle, so, once impelled in a career that admits no
pause, our life loses its uneven angles, and glides on in smooth and
rounded celerity, with false aspects more symmetrical than the truth.
One day Godolphin visited Saville; who now, old, worn, and fast waning to
the grave, cropped the few flowers on the margin, and jested, but with
sourness, on his own decay. He found the actress (who had also come to
visit the Man of Pleasure) sitting by the window, and rattling away with
her usual vivacity, while she divided her attention with the labours of
knitting a purse.
"Heaven only knows," said Saville, "what all these times will produce. I
lose my head in the dizzy quickness of events. Fanny, hand me my
snuff-box. Well, I fancy my last hour is not far distant; but I hope, at
least, I shall die a gentleman. I have a great dislike to the thought of
being revolutionised into a roturier. That's the only kind of revolution
I have any notion about. What do you say to all this, Godolphin? Every
one else is turning politician; young Sunderland whirls his cab down to
the House at four o'clock every day--dines at Bellamy's on cold beef; and
talks of nothing but that d----d good speech of Sir Robert's'.
Revolution! faith, the revolution is come already. Revolutions only
change the aspect of society, is it not changed enough within the last six
months? Bah! I suppose you are bit by the mania?"
"Not I! while I live I will abjure the vulgar toil of ambition. Let
others rule or ruin the state;--like the Duc de Lauzun, while the
guillotine is preparing, I will think only of my oysters and my
champagne."
"A noble creed!" said Fanny, smiling: "let the world go to wreck, and
bring me my biscuit! That's Godolphin's motto."