Book: Helen

M >> Maria Edgeworth >> Helen




"What will you do for the plan for these workmen in the mean time, my
dear Clarendon?" said Lady Cecilia, afraid that some long discussion
would ensue.

"Here it is!" said Helen, who had managed to get it ready while they
were talking. She gave it to the general, who thanked her, and was off
directly. Cecilia then came to divert herself with looking at
Beauclerc's scribbled plan, and she read the notes aloud for her
mother's amusement. It was a sketch of a dramatical, metaphysical,
entertainment, of which half a dozen proposed titles had been scratched
out, and there was finally left 'Tarquin the Optimist, or the Temple of
Destiny.' It was from an old story begun by Laurentius Valla, and
continued by Leibnitz;--she read,

_"Act I. Scene 1. Sextus Tarquin goes to consult the Oracle, who
foretells the crime he is to commit.'_

"And then," cried Lady Cecilia, "come measures of old and new front of
Old Forest house, wings included."--Now he goes on with his play.

_"'Tarquin's complaint to Jupiter of the Oracle--Modern Predestination
compared to Ancient Destiny.'_

"And here," continued Cecilia, "come prices of Norway deal and a great
blot, and then we have _'Jupiter's answer that Sextus may avoid his doom
if he pleases, by staying away from Rome; but he does not please to do
so, because he must then_ _renounce the crown. Good speech here on
vanity, and inconsistency of human wishes.'_

"'Kitchen 23 ft. by 21. Query with hobs?'

"I cannot conceive, my dear Helen," continued Lady Cecilia, "how you
could make the drawing out through all this," and she continued to read.

_"'Scene 3rd._

_"'High Priest of Delphi asks Jupiter why he did not give Sextus a
better WILL?--why not MAKE him choose to give up the crown, rather than
commit the crime? Jupiter refuses to answer, and sends the High Priest
to consult Minerva at Athens.'_

"'N.B. Old woman at Old Forest, promised her an oven,'--'_Leibnitz
gives_----'

"Oh! if he goes to Leibnitz," said Lady Cecilia, "he will be too grand
for me, but it will do for you, mamma.

_"'Leibnitz gives in his Temple of the Destinies a representation of
every possible universe from the worst to the best--This could not be
done on the stage.'_

"Very true indeed," said Lady Cecilia; 'but, Helen, listen, Granville
has really found an ingenious resource.

_"'By Ombres Chinoises, suppose; or a gauze curtain, as in Zemire et
Azore, the audience might be made to understand the main point, that
GOOD resulted from Tarquin's BAD choice. Brutus, Liberty, Rome's
grandeur, and the Optimist right at last. Q.E.D.'_

"Well, well," continued Lady Cecilia, "I don't understand it; but I
understand this,--'Bricks wanting.'"

Lady Davenant smiled at this curious specimen of Beauclerc's
versatility, but said, "I fear he will fritter away his powers on a
hundred different petty objects, and do nothing at last worthy of his
abilities. He will scatter and divide the light of his genius, and show
us every change of the prismatic colours--curious and beautiful to
behold, but dispersing, wasting the light he should concentrate on some
one, some noble object."

"But if he has light enough for little objects and great too?" said Lady
Cecilia, "I allow, 'qu'il faudrait plus d'un coeur pour aimer tant de
choses a la fois;' but as I really think Granville has more heart than
is necessary, he can well afford to waste some of it, even on the old
woman at Old Forest."




CHAPTER XII.


One evening, Helen was looking over a beautiful scrap-book of Lady
Cecilia's. Beauclerc, who had stood by for some time, eyeing it in
rather scornful silence, at length asked whether Miss Stanley was a
lover of albums and autographs?

Helen had no album of her own, she said, but she was curious always to
see the autographs of celebrated people.

"Why?" said Beauclerc.

"I don't know. It seems to bring one nearer to them. It gives more
reality to our imagination of them perhaps," said Helen.

"The imagination is probably in most cases better than the reality,"
replied he.

Lady Davenant stooped over Helen's shoulder to look at the handwriting
of the Earl of Essex--the writing of the gallant Earl of Essex, at sight
of which, as she observed, the hearts of queens have beat high. "What a
crowd of associated ideas rise at the sight of that autograph! who can
look at it without some emotion?"

Helen could not. Beauclerc in a tone of raillery said he was sure, from
the eager interest Miss Stanley took in these autographs, that she would
in time become a collector herself; and he did not doubt that he should
see her with a valuable museum, in which should be preserved the old
pens of great men, that of Cardinal Chigi, for instance, who boasted
that he wrote with the same pen for fifty years.

"And by that boast you know," said Lady Davenant, "convinced the
Cardinal de Retz that he was not a great, but a very little man. We will
not have that pen in Helen's museum."

"Why not?" Beauclerc asked, "it was full as well worth having as many of
the relics to be found in most young ladies' and even old gentlemen's
museums. It was quite sufficient whether a man had been great or little
that he had been talked of,--that he had been something of a _lion_--to
make any thing belonging to him valuable to collectors, who preserve and
worship even 'the parings of lions' claws.'"

That class of indiscriminate collectors Helen gave up to his ridicule;
still he was not satisfied. He went on to the whole class of 'lion-
hunters,' as he called them, condemning indiscriminately all those who
were anxious to see celebrated people; he hoped Miss Stanley was not one
of that class.

"No, not a lion-hunter," said Helen; she hoped she never should be one
of that set, but she confessed she had a great desire to see and to know
distinguished persons, and she hoped that this sort of curiosity, or as
she would rather call it enthusiasm, was not ridiculous, and did not
deserve to be confounded with the mere trifling vulgar taste for sight-
seeing and lion-hunting.

Beauclerc half smiled, but, not answering immediately, Lady Davenant
said, that for her part she did not consider such enthusiasm as
ridiculous; on the contrary, she liked it, especially in young people.
"I consider the warm admiration of talent and virtue in youth as a
promise of future excellence in maturer age."

"And yet," said Beauclerc, "the maxim 'not to admire,' is, I believe,
the most approved in philosophy, and in practice is the great secret of
happiness in this world."

"In the _fine_ world, it is a fine air, I know," said Lady Davenant.
"Among a set of fashionable young somnambulists it is doubtless the only
art they know to make men happy or to keep them so; but this has nothing
to do with philosophy, Beauclerc, though it has to do with conceit or
affectation."

Mr. Beauclerc, now piqued, with a look and voice of repressed feeling,
said, that he hoped her ladyship did not include him among that set of
fashionable somnambulists.

"I hope you will not include yourself in it," answered Lady Davenant:
"it is contrary to your nature, and if you join the _nil admirari_
coxcombs, it can be only for fashion's sake--mere affectation."

Beauclerc made no reply, and Lady Davenant, turning to Helen, told her
that several celebrated people were soon to come to Clarendon Park, and
congratulated her upon the pleasure she would have in seeing them.
"Besides being a great pleasure, it is a real advantage," continued she,
"to see and be acquainted early in life with superior people. It enables
one to form a standard of excellence, and raises that standard high and
bright. In men, the enthusiasm becomes glorious ambition to excel in
arts or arms; in women, it refines and elevates the taste, and is so far
a preventive against frivolous, vulgar company, and all their train of
follies and vices. I can speak from my own recollection, of the great
happiness it was to me, when I early in life became acquainted with some
of the illustrious of my day."

"And may I ask," said Beauclerc, "if any of them equalled the
expectations you had formed of them?"

"Some far exceeded them," said Lady Davenant.

"You were fortunate. Every body cannot expect to be so happy," said
Beauclerc. "I believe, in general it is found that few great men of any
times stand the test of near acquaintance. No man----"

"Spare me!" cried Lady Davenant, interrupting him, for she imagined she
knew what he was going to say; "Oh! spare me that old sentence, 'No man
is a hero to his valet de chambre.' I cannot endure to hear that for the
thousandth time; I heartily wish it had never been said at all."

"So do I," replied Beauclerc; but Lady Davenant had turned away, and he
now spoke in so low a voice, that only Helen heard him. "So do I detest
that quotation, not only for being hackneyed, but for having been these
hundred years the comfort both of lean-jawed envy and fat mediocrity."

He took up one of Helen's pencils and began to cut it--he looked vexed,
and low to her observed, "Lady Davenant did not do me the honour to let
me finish my sentence."

"Then," said Helen, "if Lady Davenant misunderstood you, why do not you
explain?"

"No, no it is not worth while, if she could so mistake me."

"But any body may be mistaken; do explain."

"No, no," said he, very diligently cutting the pencil to pieces; "she is
engaged, you see, with somebody--something else."

"But now she has done listening."

"No, no, not now; there are too many people, and it's of no
consequence."

By this time the company were all eagerly talking of every remarkable
person they had seen, or that they regretted not having seen. Lady
Cecilia now called upon each to name the man among the celebrated of
modern days, whom they should most liked to have seen. By acclamation
they all named Sir Walter Scott, 'The Ariosto of the North!'

All but Beauclerc; he did not join the general voice; he said low to
Helen with an air of disgust--"How tired I am of hearing him called 'The
Ariosto of the North!'"

"But by whatever name," said Helen, "surely you join in that general
wish to have seen him?"

"Yes, yes, I am sure of your vote," cried Lady Cecilia, coming up to
them, "You, Granville, would rather have seen Sir Walter Scott than any
author since Shakespeare--would not you?"

"Pardon me, on the contrary, I am glad that I have never seen him."

"Glad not to have seen him!--_not_?"

The word _not_ was repeated with astonished incredulous emphasis by all
voices. "Glad not to have seen Sir Walter Scott! How extraordinary! What
can Mr. Beauclerc mean?"

"To make us all stare," said Lady Davenant, "so do not gratify him. Do
not wonder at him; we cannot believe what is impossible, you know, only
because it is impossible. But," continued she, laughing, "I know how it
is. The spirit of contradiction--the spirit of singularity--two of your
familiars, Granville, have got possession of you again, and we must have
patience while the fit is on."

"But I have not, and will not have patience," said Lord Davenant, whose
good-nature seldom failed, but who was now quite indignant.

"I wonder you are surprised, my dear Lord," said Lady Davenant, "for Mr.
Beauclerc likes so much better to go wrong by himself than to go right
with all the world, that you could not expect that he would join the
loud voice of universal praise."

"I hear the loud voice of universal execration," said Beauclerc; "you
have all abused me, but whom have I abused? What have I said?"

"Nothing." replied Lady Cecilia; "that is what we complain of. I could
have better borne any abuse than indifference to Sir Walter Scott."

"Indifference!" exclaimed Beauclerc--"what did I say Lady Cecilia, from
which you could infer that I felt indifference? Indifferent to him
whose name I cannot pronounce without emotion! I alone, of all the
world, indifferent to that genius, pre-eminent and unrivalled, who has
so long commanded the attention of the whole reading public, arrested at
will the instant order of the day by tales of other times, and in this
commonplace, this every-day existence of ours, created a holiday world,
where, undisturbed by vulgar cares, we may revel in a fancy region of
felicity, peopled with men of other times--shades of the historic dead,
more illustrious and brighter than in life!"

"Yes, the great Enchanter," cried Cecilia.

"Great and good Enchanter," continued Beauclerc, "for in his magic there
is no dealing with unlawful means. To work his ends, there is never aid
from any one of the bad passions of our nature. In his writings there is
no private scandal--no personal satire--no bribe to human frailty--no
libel upon human nature. And among the lonely, the sad, and the
suffering, how has he medicined to repose the disturbed mind, or
elevated the dejected spirit!--perhaps fanned to a flame the unquenched
spark, in souls not wholly lost to virtue. His morality is not in purple
patches, ostentatiously obtrusive, but woven in through the very texture
of the stuff. He paints man as he is, with all his faults, but with his
redeeming virtues--the world as it goes, with all its compensating good
and evil, yet making each man better contented with his lot. Without our
well knowing how, the whole tone of our minds is raised--for, thinking
nobly of our kind, he makes us think more nobly of ourselves!"

Helen, who had sympathised with Beauclerc in every word he had said,
felt how true it is that

"----Next to genius, is the power Of feeling where true genius lies."

"Yet after all this, Granville," said Lady Cecilia, "you would make us
believe you never wished to have seen this great man?"

Beauclerc made no answer.

"Oh! how I wish I had seen him!" said Helen to Lady Davenant, the only
person present who had had that happiness.

"If you have seen Raeburn's admirable pictures, or Chantrey's speaking
bust," replied Lady Davenant, "you have as complete an idea of Sir Walter
Scott as painting or sculpture can give. The first impression of his
appearance and manner was surprising to me, I recollect, from its quiet,
unpretending good nature; but scarcely had that impression been made before
I was struck with something of the chivalrous courtesy of other times. In
his conversation you would have found all that is most delightful in all
his works--the combined talent and knowledge of the historian, novelist,
antiquary, and poet. He recited poetry admirably, his whole face and figure
kindling as he spoke: but whether talking, reading, or reciting, he never
tired me, even with admiring; and it is curious that, in conversing with
him, I frequently found myself forgetting that I was speaking to Sir Walter
Scott; and, what is even more extraordinary, forgetting that Sir Walter
Scott was speaking to me, till I was awakened to the conviction by his
saying something which no one else could have said. Altogether he was
certainly the most perfectly agreeable and perfectly amiable great man I
ever knew."

"And now, mamma," said Lady Cecilia, "do make Granville confess honestly he
would give the world to have seen him."

"Do, Lady Davenant," said Helen, who saw, or thought she saw, a singular
emotion in Beauclerc's countenance, and fancied he was upon the point of
yielding; but Lady Davenant, without looking at him, replied,--"No, my
dear, I will not ask him--I will not encourage him in _affectation_."

At that word dark grew the brow of Beauclerc, and he drew back, as it were,
into his shell, and out of it came no more that night, nor the next morning
at breakfast. But, as far as could be guessed, he suffered internally, and
no effort made to relieve did him any good, so every one seemed to agree
that it was much better to let him alone, or let him be moody in peace,
hoping that in time the mood would change; but it changed not till the
middle of that day, when, as Helen was sitting working in Lady Davenant's
room, while she was writing, two quick knocks were heard at the door.

"Come in!" said Lady Davenant.

Mr. Beauclerc stood pausing on the threshold----

"Do not go, Miss Stanley," said he, looking very miserable and ashamed, and
proud, and then ashamed again.

"What is the matter, Granville?" said Lady Davenant.

"I am come to have a thorn taken out of my mind," said he--"two thorns
which have sunk deep, kept me awake half the night. Perhaps, I ought to
he ashamed to own I have felt pain from such little things. But so it
is; though, after all, I am afraid they will be invisible to you, Lady
Davenant."

"I will try with a magnifying-glass," said she; "lend me that of your
imagination, Granville--a high power, and do not look so very miserable, or
Miss Stanley will laugh at you."

"Miss Stanley is too good to laugh."

"That is being too good indeed," said Lady Davenant. "Well, now to the
point."

"You were very unjust to me, Lady Davenant, yesterday, and unkind."

"Unkind is a woman's word; but go on."

"Surely man may mark 'unkindness' altered eye' as well as woman," said
Beauclerc; "and from a woman and a friend he may and must feel it, or he is
more or less than man."

"Now what can you have to say, Granville, that will not be anticlimax to
this exordium?"

"I will say no more if you talk of exordiums and anti-climaxes," cried
he. "You accused me yesterday of affectation--twice, when I was no more
affected than you are."

"Oh! is that my crime? Is that, what has hurt you so dreadfully? Here is
the thorn that has gone in so deep! I am afraid that, as is usual, the
accusation hurt the more because it was----"

"Do not say 'true,'" interrupted Beauclerc, "for you really cannot believe
it, Lady Davenant. You know me, and all my faults, and I have plenty; but
you need not accuse me of one that I have not, and which from the bottom of
my soul I despise. Whatever are my faults, they are at least real, and my
own."

"You may allow him that," said Helen.

"Well I will--I do," said Lady Davenant; "to appease you, poor injured
innocence; though anyone in the world might think you affected at this
moment. Yet I, who know you, know that it is pure real folly. Yes, yes, I
acquit you of affectation."

Beauclerc's face instantly cleared up.

"But you said two thorns had gone into your mind--one is out, now for the
other."

"I do not feel that other, now," said Beauclerc, "it was only a mistake.
When I began with 'No man,' I was not going to say, 'No man is a hero to
his valet de chambre.' If I had been allowed to finish my sentence, it
would have saved a great deal of trouble, I was going to say that no man
admires excellence more fervently than I do, and that my very reason for
wishing not to see celebrated people is, lest the illusion should be
dispelled.

"No description ever gives us an exact idea of any person, so that when any
one has been much described and talked of, before we see them we form in
our mind's eye some image, some notion of our own, which always proves to
be unlike the reality; and when we do afterwards see it, even if it be
fairer or better than our imagination, still at first there is a sort
of disappointment, from the non-agreement with our previously formed
conception. Every body is disappointed the first time they see Hamlet, or
Falstaff, as I think Dugald Stewart observes."

"True; and I remember," said Lady Davenant, "Madame de la Rochejaquelin
once said to me, 'I hate that people should come to see me. I know it
destroys the illusion.'"

"Yes," cried Beauclerc; "how much I dread to destroy any of those blessed
illusions, which make the real happiness of life. Let me preserve the
objects of my idolatry; I would not approach too near the shrine; I fear
too much light. I would not know that they were false!"

"Would you then be deceived?" said Lady Davenant.

"Yes," cried he; "sooner would I believe in all the fables of the Talmud
than be without the ecstasy of veneration. It is the curse of age to be
thus miserably disenchanted; to outlive all our illusions, all our hopes.
That may be my doom in age, but, in youth, the high spring-time of
existence, I will not be cursed with such a premature ossification of the
heart. Oh! rather, ten thousand times rather, would I die this instant!"

"Well! but there is not the least occasion for your dying," said Lady
Davenant, "and I am seriously surprised that you should suffer so much
from such slight causes; how will you ever get through the world if you
stop thus to weigh every light word?"

"The words of most people," replied he, "pass by me like the idle wind; but
I do weigh every word from the very few whom I esteem, admire, and love;
with my friends, perhaps, I am too susceptible, I love them so deeply."

This is an excuse for susceptibility of temper which flatters friends too
much to be easily rejected. Even Lady Davenant admitted it, and Helen
thought it was all natural.




CHAPTER XIII.


Lady Cecilia was now impatient to have the house filled with company. She
gave Helen a _catalogue raisonne_ of all who were expected at Clarendon
Park, some for a fashionable three days' visit; some for a week; some for a
fortnight or three weeks, be the same more or less. "I have but one fixed
principle," said she, "but I _have_ one,--never to have tiresome people
when it can possibly be avoided. Impossible, you know, it is sometimes.
One's own and one's husband's relations one must have; but, as for the
rest, it's one's own fault if one fails in the first and last maxim of
hospitality--to welcome the coming and speed the parting guest."

The first party who arrived were of Lady Davenant's particular friends, to
whom Cecilia had kindly given the precedence, if not the preference, that
her mother might have the pleasure of seeing them, and that they might have
the honour of taking leave of her, before her departure from England.

They were political, fashionable, and literary; some of ascendency
in society, some of parliamentary promise, and some of ministerial
eminence--the aristocracy of birth and talents well mixed.

The aristocracy of birth and the aristocracy of talents are words now used
more as a commonplace antithesis, than as denoting a real difference or
contrast. In many instances, among those now living, both are united in a
manner happy for themselves and glorious for their country. England may
boast of having among her young nobility

"The first in birth, the first in fame."

men distinguished in literature and science, in senatorial eloquence and
statesmanlike abilities.

But in this party at Clarendon Park there were more of the literary and
celebrated than without the presence of Lady Davenant could perhaps have
been assembled, or perhaps would have been desired by the general and Lady
Cecilia. Cecilia's beauty and grace were of all societies, and the general
was glad for Lady Davenant's sake and proud for his own part, to receive
these distinguished persons at his house.

Helen had seen some of them before at Cecilhurst and at the Deanery. By her
uncle's friends she was kindly recognised, by others of course politely
noticed; but miserably would she have been disappointed and mortified, if
she had expected to fix general attention, or excite general admiration.
Past and gone for ever are the days, if ever they were, when a young lady,
on her entrance into life, captivated by a glance, overthrew by the first
word, and led in triumph her train of admirers. These things are not to be
done now-a-days.

Yet even when unnoticed Helen was perfectly happy. Her expectations were
more than gratified in seeing and in hearing these distinguished people,
and she sat listening to their conversation in delightful enjoyment,
without even wanting to have it seen how well she understood.

There is a precious moment for young people, if taken at the prime, when
first introduced into society, yet not expected, not called upon to take a
part in it, they, as standers by, may see not only all the play, but the
characters of the players, and may learn more of life and of human nature
in a few months, than afterwards in years, when they are themselves actors
upon the stage of life, and become engrossed by their own parts. There is
a time, before the passions are awakened, when the understanding, with all
the life of nature, fresh from all that education can do to develop and
cultivate, is at once eager to observe and able to judge, for a brief space
blessed with the double advantages of youth and age. This time once gone
is lost irreparably; and how often it is lost--in premature vanity, or
premature dissipation!

Helen had been chiefly educated by a man, and a very sensible man, as Dean
Stanley certainly was in all but money matters. Under his masculine care,
while her mind had been brought forward on some points, it had been kept
back on others, and while her understanding had been cultivated, it had
been done without the aid of emulation or competition; not by touching the
springs of pride, but by opening sources of pure pleasure; and this pure
pleasure she now enjoyed, grateful to that dear uncle. For the single
inimitable grace of simplicity which she possessed, how many mothers,
governesses, and young ladies themselves, willingly, when they see how
much it charms, would too late exchange half the accomplishments, all the
acquirements, so laboriously achieved!

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