Book: My Novel, Volume 3.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 3.



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BOOK THIRD.


INITIAL CHAPTER.

SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE CALLED "MY NOVEL."

"I am not displeased with your novel, so far as it has gone," said my
father, graciously; "though as for the Sermon--" Here I trembled; but
the ladies, Heaven bless them! had taken Parson Dale under their special
protection; and observing that my father was puckering up his brows
critically, they rushed forward boldly in defence of The Sermon, and Mr.
Caxton was forced to beat a retreat. However, like a skilful general,
he renewed the assault upon outposts less gallantly guarded. But as it
is not my business to betray my weak points, I leave it to the ingenuity
of cavillers to discover the places at which the Author of "Human Error"
directed his great guns.

"But," said the captain, "you are a lad of too much spirit, Pisistratus,
to keep us always in the obscure country quarters of Hazeldean,--you will
march us out into open service before you have done with us?"

PISISTRATUS (magisterially, for he has been somewhat nettled by Mr.
Caxton's remarks, and he puts on an air of dignity in order to awe away
minor assailants).--"Yes, Captain Roland; not yet a while, but all in
good time. I have not stinted myself in canvas, and behind my foreground
of the Hall and the Parsonage I propose hereafter to open some lengthened
perspective of the varieties of English life--"

MR. CAXTON.--"Hum!"

BLANCHE (putting her hand on my father's lip).--"We shall know better the
design, perhaps, when we know the title. Pray, Mr. Author, what is the
title?"

MY MOTHER (with more animation than usual).--"Ay, Sisty, the title!"

PISISTRATUS (startled).--"The title! By the soul of Cervantes! I have
never yet thought of a title!"

CAPTAIN ROLAND (solemnly).--"There is a great deal in a good title. As a
novel reader, I know that by experience."

MR. SQUILLS.--"Certainly; there is not a catchpenny in the world but what
goes down, if the title be apt and seductive. Witness 'Old Parr's Life
Pills.' Sell by the thousand, Sir, when my 'Pills for Weak Stomachs,'
which I believe to be just the same compound, never paid for the
advertising."

MR. CAXTON.--"Parr's Life Pills! a fine stroke of genius. It is not
every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to it if he have.
But who would not swallow a pill to live to a hundred and fifty-two?"

PISISTRATUS (stirring the fire in great excitement).--"My title! my
title!--what shall be my title?"

MR. CAXTON (thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most
didactic of tones).--"From a remote period, the choice of a title has
perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their
invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced. To
begin with the Hebrews. 'The Lips of the Sleeping' (Labia Dormientium)--
what book did you suppose that title to designate?--A Catalogue of
Rabbinical Writers! Again, imagine some young lady of old captivated by
the sentimental title of 'The Pomegranate with its Flower,' and opening
on a Treatise on the Jewish Ceremonials! Let us turn to the Romans.
Aulus Gellius commences his pleasant gossipping 'Noctes' with a list of
the titles in fashion in his day. For instance, 'The Muses' and 'The
Veil,' 'The Cornucopia,' 'The Beehive,' and 'The Meadow.' Some titles,
indeed, were more truculent, and promised food to those who love to sup
upon horrors,--such as 'The Torch,' 'The Poniard,' 'The Stiletto'--"

PISISTRATUS (impatiently).--"Yes, sir, but to come to My Novel."

MR. CAXTON (unheeding the interruption).--"You see you have a fine choice
here, and of a nature pleasing, and not unfamiliar, to a classical
reader; or you may borrow a hint from the early dramatic writers."

PISISTRATUS (more hopefully).--"Ay, there is something in the Drama akin
to the Novel. Now, perhaps, I may catch an idea."

MR. CAXTON.--"For instance, the author of the 'Curiosities of Literature'
(from whom, by the way, I am plagiarizing much of the information I
bestow upon you) tells us of a Spanish gentleman who wrote a Comedy, by
which he intended to serve what he took for Moral Philosophy."

PISISTRATUS (eagerly).--"Well, sir?"

MR. CAXTON.---"And called it 'The Pain of the Sleep of the World.'"

PISISTRATUS.--"Very comic, indeed, sir."

MR. CAXTON.--"Grave things were then called Comedies, as old things are
now called Novels. Then there are all the titles of early Romance itself
at your disposal,--'Theagenes and Chariclea' or 'The Ass' of Longus, or
'The Golden Ass' of Apuleius, or the titles of Gothic Romance, such as
'The most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful History of
Perceforest, King of Great Britain.'" And therewith my father ran over a
list of names as long as the Directory, and about as amusing.

"Well, to my taste," said my mother, "the novels I used to read when a
girl (for I have not read many since, I am ashamed to say)--"

MR. CAXTON.--"No, you need not be at all ashamed of it, Kitty."

MY MOTHER (proceeding).--"Were much more inviting than any you mention,
Austin."

THE CAPTAIN.--"True."

MR. SQUILLS.--"Certainly. Nothing like them nowadays!"

MY MOTHER.--"'Says she to her Neighbour, What?'"

THE CAPTAIN.--"'The Unknown, or the Northern Gallery'--"

MR. SQUILLS.--"'There is a Secret; Find it out!'"

PISISTRATUS (pushed to the verge of human endurance, and upsetting tongs,
poker, and fire-shovel).--" What nonsense you are talking, all of you!
For Heaven's sake consider what an important matter we are called upon to
decide. It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which
issued from the Minerva Press that I ask you to remember,--it is to
invent a title for mine,--My Novel!"

MR. CAXTON (clapping his hands gently).--"Excellent! capital! Nothing
can be better; simple, natural, pertinent, concise--"

PISISTRATUS.--"What is it, sir, what is it? Have you really thought of a
title to My Novel?"

MR. CAXTON.--"You have hit it yourself,--'My Novel.' It is your Novel;
people will know it is your Novel. Turn and twist the English language
as you will, be as allegorical as Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Fabulist, or
Puritan, still, after all, it is your Novel, and nothing more nor less
than your Novel."

PISISTRATUS (thoughtfully, and sounding the words various ways).--"'My
Novel!'--um-um! 'My Novel!' rather bold--and curt, eh?"

MR. CAXTON.--"Add what you say you intend it to depict,--Varieties in
English Life."

MY MOTHER.--"'My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life'--I don't think it
sounds amiss. What say you, Roland? Would it attract you in a
catalogue?"

My uncle hesitates, when Mr. Caxton exclaims imperiously.--"The thing is
settled! Don't disturb Camarina."

SQUILLS.--"If it be not too great a liberty, pray who or what is
Camarina?"

MR. CAXTON.--"Camarina, Mr. Squills, was a lake, apt to be low, and then
liable to be muddy; and 'Don't disturb Camarina' was a Greek proverb
derived from an oracle of Apollo; and from that Greek proverb, no doubt,
comes the origin of the injunction, 'Quieta non movere,' which became the
favourite maxim of Sir Robert Walpole and Parson Dale. The Greek line,
Mr. Squills" (here my father's memory began to warm), "is preserved by
Stephanus Byzantinus, 'De Urbibus,'

[Greek proverb]

Zenobius explains it in his proverbs; Suidas repeats Zenobius; Lucian
alludes to it; so does Virgil in the Third Book of the AEneid; and Silius
Italicus imitates Virgil,--

"'Et cui non licitum fatis Camarina moveri.'

"Parson Dale, as a clergyman and a scholar, had, no doubt, these
authorities at his fingers' end. And I wonder he did not quote them,"
quoth my father; "but to be sure he is represented as a mild man, and so
might not wish to humble the squire over-much in the presence of his
family. Meanwhile, My Novel is My Novel; and now that, that matter is
settled, perhaps the tongs, poker, and shovel may be picked up, the
children may go to bed, Blanche and Kitty may speculate apart upon the
future dignities of the Neogilos,--taking care, nevertheless, to finish
the new pinbefores he requires for the present; Roland may cast up his
account book, Mr. Squills have his brandy and water, and all the world be
comfortable, each in his own way. Blanche, come away from the screen,
get me my slippers, and leave Pisistratus to himself. [Greek line]--don't
disturb Camarina. You see, my dear," added my father kindly, as, after
settling himself into his slippers, he detained Blanche's hand in his
own,--"you see, my dear, every house has its Camarina. Alan, who is a
lazy animal, is quite content to let it alone; but woman, being the more
active, bustling, curious creature, is always for giving it a sly stir."

BLANCHE (with female dignity).--"I assure you, that if Pisistratus had
not called me, I should not have--"

MR. CAXTON (interrupting her, without lifting his eyes from the book he
had already taken).--"Certainly you would not. I am now in the midst of
the great Oxford Controversy. [The same Greek proverb]--don't disturb
Camarina."

A dead silence for half-an-hour, at the end of which--

PISISTRATUS (from behind the screen).--"Blanche, my dear, I want to
consult you."

Blanche does not stir.

PISISTRATUS.--"Blanche, I say." Blanche glances in triumph towards Mr.
Caxton.

MR. CAXTON (laying down his theological tract, and rubbing his spectacles
mournfully).--"I hear him, child; I hear him. I retract my vindication
of man. Oracles warn in vain: so long as there is a woman on the other
side of the screen, it is all up with Camarina."




CHAPTER II.

It is greatly to be regretted that Mr. Stirn was not present at the
parson's Discourse; but that valuable functionary was far otherwise
engaged,--indeed, during the summer months he was rarely seen at the
afternoon service. Not that he cared for being preached at,--not he;
Mr. Stirn would have snapped his fingers at the thunders of the Vatican.
But the fact was, that Mr. Stirn chose to do a great deal of gratuitous
business upon the day of rest. The squire allowed all persons who chose
to walk about the park on a Sunday; and many came from a distance to
stroll by the lake, or recline under the elms. These visitors were
objects of great suspicion, nay, of positive annoyance, to Mr. Stirn--
and, indeed, not altogether without reason, for we English have a natural
love of liberty, which we are even more apt to display in the grounds of
other people than in those which we cultivate ourselves. Sometimes, to
his inexpressible and fierce satisfaction, Mr. Stirn fell upon a knot of
boys pelting the swans; sometimes he missed a young sapling, and found it
in felonious hands, converted into a walking-stick; sometimes he caught a
hulking fellow scrambling up the ha-ha to gather a nosegay for his
sweetheart from one of poor Mrs. Hazeldean's pet parterres; not
infrequently, indeed, when all the family were fairly at church, some
curious impertinents forced or sneaked their way into the gardens, in
order to peep in at the windows. For these, and various other offences
of like magnitude, Mr. Stirn had long, but vainly, sought to induce the
squire to withdraw a permission so villanously abused. But though there
were times when Mr. Hazeldean grunted and growled, and swore "that he
would shut up the park, and fill it [illegally] with mantraps and spring-
guns," his anger always evaporated in words. The park was still open to
all the world on a Sunday; and that blessed day was therefore converted
into a day of travail and wrath to Mr. Stirn. But it was from the last
chime of the afternoon-service bell until dusk that the spirit of this
vigilant functionary was most perturbed; for, amidst the flocks that
gathered from the little hamlets round to the voice of the pastor, there
were always some stray sheep, or rather climbing, desultory, vagabond
goats, who struck off in all perverse directions, as if for the special
purpose of distracting the energetic watchfulness of Mr. Stirn. As soon
as church was over, if the day were fine, the whole park became a scene
animated with red cloaks or lively shawls, Sunday waistcoats and hats
stuck full of wildflowers--which last Mr. Stirn often stoutly maintained
to be Mrs. Hazeldean's newest geraniums. Now, on this Sunday,
especially, there was an imperative call upon an extra exertion of
vigilance on the part of the superintendent,--he had not only to detect
ordinary depredators and trespassers; but, first, to discover the authors
of the conspiracy against the stocks; and, secondly, to "make an
example."

He had begun his rounds, therefore, from the early morning; and just as
the afternoon bell was sounding its final peal, he emerged upon the
village green from a hedgerow, behind which he had been at watch to
observe who had the most suspiciously gathered round the stocks. At that
moment the place was deserted. At a distance, the superintendent saw the
fast disappearing forms of some belated groups hastening towards the
church; in front, the stocks stood staring at him mournfully from its
four great eyes, which had been cleansed from the mud, but still looked
bleared and stained with the inarks of the recent outrage. Here Mr.
Stirn paused, took off his hat, and wiped his brows.

"If I had sum 'un to watch here," thought he, "while I takes a turn by
the water-side, p'r'aps summat might come out; p'r'aps them as did it
ben't gone to church, but will come sneaking round to look on their
willany! as they says murderers are always led back to the place where
they ha' left the body. But in this here willage there ben't a man,
woman, or child as has any consarn for squire or parish, barring myself."
It was just as he arrived at that misanthropical conclusion that Mr.
Stirn beheld Leonard Fairfield walking very fast from his own home. The
superintendent clapped on his hat, and stuck his right arm akimbo.
"Hollo, you, sir," said he, as Lenny now came in hearing, "where be you
going at that rate?"

"Please, sir, I be going to church."

"Stop, sir,--stop, Master Lenny. Going to church!---why, the bell's
done; and you knows the parson is very angry at them as comes in late,
disturbing the congregation. You can't go to church now!"

"Please, sir--"

"I says you can't go to church now. You must learn to think a little of
others, lad. You sees how I sweats to serve the squire! and you must
serve him too. Why, your mother's got the house and premishes almost
rent-free; you ought to have a grateful heart, Leonard Fairfield, and
feel for his honour! Poor man! his heart is well-nigh bruk, I am sure,
with the goings on."

Leonard opened his innocent blue eyes, while Mr. Stirn dolorously wiped
his own.

"Look at that 'ere dumb cretur," said Stirn, suddenly, pointing to the
stocks,--" look at it. If it could speak, what would it say, Leonard
Fairfield? Answer me that! 'Damn the stocks,' indeed!"

"It was very bad in them to write such naughty words," said Lenny,
gravely. "Mother was quite shocked when she heard of it this morning."

MR. STIRN.--"I dare say she was, considering what she pays for the
premishes;" (insinuatingly) "you does not know who did it,--eh, Lenny?"

LENNY.--"No, sir; indeed I does not!"

MR. STIRN.--"Well, you see, you can't go to church,--prayers half over
by this time. You recollex that I put them stocks under your
'sponsibility,' and see the way you's done your duty by 'em! I've half a
mind to--"

Mr. Stirn cast his eyes on the eyes of the stocks. "Please, sir," began
Lenny again, rather frightened.

"No, I won't please; it ben't pleasing at all. But I forgives you this
time, only keep a sharp lookout, lad, in future. Now you must stay here
--no, there--under the hedge, and you watches if any persons comes to
loiter about, or looks at the stocks, or laughs to hisself, while I go my
rounds. I shall be back either afore church is over or just arter; so
you stay till I comes, and give me your report. Be sharp, boy, or it
will be worse for you and your mother; I can let the premishes for L4 a
year more to-morrow."

Concluding with that somewhat menacing and very significant remark, and
not staying for an answer, Mr. Stirn waved his hand and walked off.

Poor Lenny remained by the stocks, very much dejected, and greatly
disliking the neighbourhood to which the was consigned. At length he
slowly crept off to the hedge, and sat himself down in the place of
espionage pointed out to him. Now, philosophers tell us that what is
called the point of honour is a barbarous feudal prejudice. Amongst the
higher classes, wherein those feudal prejudices may be supposed to
prevail, Lenny Fairfield's occupation would not have been considered
peculiarly honourable; neither would it have seemed so to the more
turbulent spirits among the humbler orders, who have a point of honour of
their own, which consists in the adherence to each other in defiance of
all lawful authority. But to Lenny Fairfield, brought up much apart from
other boys, and with a profound and grateful reverence for the squire
instilled into all his habits of thought, notions of honour bounded
themselves to simple honesty and straightforward truth; and as he
cherished an unquestioning awe of order and constitutional authority, so
it did not appear to him that there was anything derogatory and debasing
in being thus set to watch for an offender. On the contrary, as he began
to reconcile himself to the loss of the church service, and to enjoy the
cool of the summer shade and the occasional chirp of the birds, he got to
look on the bright side of the commission to which he was deputed. In
youth, at least, everything has its bright side,--even the appointment of
Protector to the Parish Stocks. For the stocks itself Leonard had no
affection, it is true; but he had no sympathy with its aggressors, and he
could well conceive that the squire would be very much hurt at the
revolutionary event of the night. "So," thought poor Leonard in his
simple heart,--"so, if I can serve his honour, by keeping off mischievous
boys, or letting him know who did the thing, I'm sure it would be a proud
day for Mother." Then he began to consider that, however ungraciously
Mr. Stirn had bestowed on him the appointment, still it was a compliment
to him,--showed trust and confidence in him, picked him out from his
contemporaries as the sober, moral, pattern boy; and Lenny had a great
deal of pride in him, especially in matters of repute and character.

All these things considered, I say, Leonard Fairfield reclined on his
lurking-place, if not with positive delight and intoxicating rapture, at
least with tolerable content and some complacency.

Mr. Stirn might have been gone a quarter of an hour, when a boy came
through a little gate in the park, just opposite to Lenny's retreat in
the hedge, and, as if fatigued with walking, or oppressed by the heat of
the day, paused on the green for a moment or so, and then advanced under
the shade of the great tree which overhung the stocks.

Lenny pricked up his ears, and peeped out jealously.

He had never seen the boy before: it was a strange face to him.

Leonard Fairfield was not fond of strangers; moreover, he had a vague
belief that strangers were at the bottom of that desecration of the
stocks. The boy, then, was a stranger; but what was his rank? Was he of
that grade in society in which the natural offences are or are not
consonant to, or harmonious with, outrages upon stocks? On that Lenny
Fairfield did not feel quite assured. According to all the experience of
the villager, the boy was not dressed like a young gentleman. Leonard's
notions of such aristocratic costume were naturally fashioned upon the
model of Frank Hazeldean. They represented to him a dazzling vision of
snow-white trousers and beautiful blue coats and incomparable cravats.
Now the dress of this stranger, though not that of a peasant or of a
farmer, did not in any way correspond with Lenny's notion of the costume
of a young gentleman. It looked to him highly disreputable: the coat was
covered with mud, and the hat was all manner of shapes, with a gap
between the side and crown.

Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the gate through
which the boy had passed was in the direct path across the park from a
small town, the inhabitants of which were in very bad odour at the Hall,
--they had immemorially furnished the most daring poachers to the
preserves, the most troublesome trespassers on the park, the most
unprincipled orchard robbers, and the most disputatious asserters of
various problematical rights of way, which, according to the Town, were
public, and, according to the Hall, had been private since the Conquest.
It was true that the same path led also directly from the squire's house,
but it was not probable that the wearer of attire so equivocal had been
visiting there. All things considered, Lenny had no doubt in his mind
but that the stranger was a shop-boy or 'prentice from the town of
Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this
presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the
midnight desecrators of the stocks. As if to confirm the suspicion,
which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate
to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing
right before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with
which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it aloud, and
Lenny actually saw him smile,--such a smile! so disagreeable and
sinister! Lenny had never before seen the smile sardonic.

But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this ominous stranger
fairly seated himself on the stocks, rested his heels profanely on the
lids of two of the four round eyes, and taking out a pencil and a pocket-
book, began to write.

Was this audacious Unknown taking an inventory of the church and the Hall
for the purposes of conflagration? He looked at one and at the other,
with a strange fixed stare as he wrote,--not keeping his eyes on the
paper, as Lenny had been taught to do when he sat down to his copy-book.
The fact is, that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the
shock of his fall the more, after the few paces he had walked, so that he
was glad to rest himself a few moments; and he took that opportunity to
write a line to Frank, to excuse himself for not calling again, intending
to tear the leaf on which he wrote out of his pocket-book and leave it at
the first cottage he passed, with instructions to take it to the Hall.

While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up to him, with the
firm and measured pace of one who has resolved, cost what it may, to do
his duty. And as Lenny, though brave, was not ferocious, so the anger he
felt and the suspicions he entertained only exhibited themselves in the
following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of propriety,--"Ben't you
ashamed of yourself? Sitting on the squire's new stocks! Do get up, and
go along with you!"

Randal turned round sharply; and though, at any other moment, he would
have had sense enough to extricate himself very easily from his false
position, yet /Nemo mortalium, etc/. No one is always wise. And Randal
was in an exceedingly bad humour. The affability towards his inferiors,
for which I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for
impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian.

Therefore, eying Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered briefly,--

"You are an insolent young blackguard."

So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face. Persuaded before
that the intruder was some lawless apprentice or shop-lad, he was now
more confirmed in that judgment, not only by language so uncivil, but by
the truculent glance which accompanied it, and which certainly did not
derive any imposing dignity from the mutilated, rakish, hang-dog, ruinous
hat, under which it shot its sullen and menacing fire.

Of all the various articles of which our male attire is composed, there
is perhaps not one which has so much character and expression as the top
covering. A neat, well-brushed, short-napped, gentlemanlike hat, put on
with a certain air, gives a distinction and respectability to the whole
exterior; whereas, a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat,
such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the
stateliest gentleman who ever walked down St. James's Street into the
ideal of a ruffianly scamp.

Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic to your
peasant-boy than a shop-boy. Even on grand political occasions, the
rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into sympathy with the trading
town class. Your true English peasant is always an aristocrat.
Moreover, and irrespectively of this immemorial grudge of class, there is
something peculiarly hostile in the relationship between boy and boy when
their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit of green,--
something of the game-cock feeling; something that tends to keep alive,
in the population of this island (otherwise so lamblike and peaceful),
the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers,
and make what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these
mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the
words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger. And the stranger
seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew more pale, and his sullen
eye more fixed and more vigilant.

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