Pelham — Volume 04

"C. Roseville."

I wonder, thought I, as I made my toilet, whether or not Lady Roseville is enamoured with her new correspondent? I went very early, and before I retired, my vanity was undeceived. Lady Roseville was playing at ecarte, when I entered. She beckoned to me to approach. I did. Her antagonist was Mr. Bedford, a natural son of the Duke of Shrewsbury, and one of the best natured and best looking dandies about town: there was, of course, a great crowd round the table. Lady Roseville played incomparably; bets were high in her favour. Suddenly her countenance changed—her hand trembled—her presence of mind forsook her. She lost the game. I looked up and saw just opposite to her, but apparently quite careless and unmoved, Reginald Glanville. We had only time to exchange nods, for Lady Roseville rose from the table, took my arm, and walked to the other end of the room, in order to introduce me to my hostess.

I spoke to her a few words, but she was absent and inattentive; my penetration required no farther proof to convince me that she was not wholly insensible to the attentions of Glanville. Lady—was as civil and silly as the generality of Lady Blanks are: and feeling very much bored, I soon retired to an obscurer corner of the room. Here Glanville joined me.

"It is but seldom," said he, "that I come to these places; to-night my sister persuaded me to venture forth."

"Is she here?" said I.

"She is," answered he; "she has just gone into the refreshment room with my mother, and when she returns, I will introduce you."

While Glanville was yet speaking, three middle-aged ladies, who had been talking together with great vehemence for the last ten minutes, approached us.

"Which is he?—which is he?" said two of them, in no inaudible accents.

"This," replied the third; and coming up to Glanville, she addressed him, to my great astonishment, in terms of the most hyperbolical panegyric.

"Your work is wonderful! wonderful!" said she.

"Oh! quite—quite!" echoed the other two.

"I can't say," recommenced the Coryphoea, "that I like the moral—at least not quite; no, not quite."

"Not quite," repeated her coadjutrices.

Glanville drew himself up with his most stately air, and after three profound bows, accompanied by a smile of the most unequivocal contempt, he turned on his heel, and sauntered away.

"Did your grace ever see such a bear?" said one of the echoes.

"Never," said the duchess, with a mortified air; "but I will have him yet. How handsome he is for an author!"

I was descending the stairs in the last state of ennui, when Glanville laid his hand on my shoulder.

"Shall I take you home?" said he: "my carriage has just drawn up."

I was too glad to answer in the affirmative.

"How long have you been an author?" said I, when we were seated in Glanville's carriage.

"Not many days," he replied. "I have tried one resource after another— all—all in vain. Oh, God! that for me there could exist such a blessing as fiction! Must I be ever the martyr of one burning, lasting, indelible truth!"

Glanville uttered these words with a peculiar wildness and energy of tone: he then paused abruptly for a minute, and continued, with an altered voice—"Never, my dear Pelham, be tempted by any inducement into the pleasing errors of print; from that moment you are public property; and the last monster at Exeter 'Change has more liberty than you; but here we are at Mivart's. Addio—I will call on you to-morrow, if my wretched state of health will allow me."

And with these words we parted.

CHAPTER XLVII

Ambition is a lottery, where, however uneven the chances, there are some prizes; but in dissipation, every one draws a blank.

    —Letters of Stephen Montague.

The season was not far advanced before I grew heartily tired of what are nicknamed its gaieties; I shrunk, by rapid degrees, into a very small orbit, from which I rarely moved. I had already established a certain reputation for eccentricity, coxcombry, and, to my great astonishment, also for talent; and my pride was satisfied with finding myself universally recherche, whilst I indulged my inclinations by rendering myself universally scarce. I saw much of Vincent, whose varied acquirements and great talents became more and more perceptible, both as my own acquaintance with him increased, and as the political events with which that year was pregnant, called forth their exertion and display. I went occasionally to Lady Roseville's, and was always treated rather as a long-known friend, than an ordinary acquaintance; nor did I undervalue this distinction, for it was part of her pride to render her house not only as splendid, but as agreeable, as her command over society enabled her to effect.

At the House of Commons my visits would have been duly paid, but for one trifling occurrence, upon which, as it is a very sore subject, I shall dwell as briefly as possible. I had scarcely taken my seat, before I was forced to relinquish it. My unsuccessful opponent, Mr. Lufton, preferred a petition against me, for what he called undue means. God knows what he meant; I am sure the House did not, for they turned me out, and declared Mr. Lufton duly elected.

Never was there such a commotion in the Glenmorris family before. My uncle was seized with the gout in his stomach, and my mother shut herself up with Tremaine, and one China monster, for a whole week. As for me, though I writhed at heart, I bore the calamity philosophically enough in external appearance, nor did I the less busy myself in political matters: with what address and success, good or bad, I endeavoured to supply the loss of my parliamentary influence, the reader will see, when it suits the plot of this history to touch upon such topics.

Glanville I saw continually. When in tolerable spirits, he was an entertaining, though never a frank nor a communicative companion. His conversation then was lively, yet without wit, and sarcastic, though without bitterness. It abounded also in philosophical reflections and terse maxims, which always brought improvement, or, at the worst, allowed discussion. He was a man of even vast powers—of deep thought—of luxuriant, though dark imagination, and of great miscellaneous, though, perhaps, ill arranged erudition. He was fond of paradoxes in reasoning, and supported them with a subtlety and strength of mind, which Vincent, who admired him greatly, told me he had never seen surpassed. He was subject, at times, to a gloom and despondency, which seemed almost like aberration of intellect. At those hours he would remain perfectly silent, and apparently forgetful of my presence, and of every object around him.

It was only then, when the play of his countenance was vanished, and his features were still and set, that you saw in their full extent, the dark and deep traces of premature decay. His cheek was hollow and hueless; his eye dim, and of that visionary and glassy aspect, which is never seen but in great mental or bodily disease, and which, according to the superstitions of some nations, implies a mysterious and unearthly communion of the soul with the beings of another world. From these trances he would sometimes start abruptly, and renew any conversation broken off before, as if wholly unconscious of the length of his reverie. At others, he would rise slowly from his seat, and retire into his own apartment, from which he never emerged during the rest of the day.

But the reader must bear in mind that there was nothing artificial or affected in his musings, of whatever complexion they might be. Nothing like the dramatic brown studies, and quick starts, which young gentlemen, in love with Lara and Lord Byron, are apt to practise. There never, indeed, was a character that possessed less cant of any description. His work, which was a singular, wild tale—of mingled passion and reflection- -was, perhaps, of too original, certainly of too abstract a nature, to suit the ordinary novel readers of the day. It did not acquire popularity for itself, but it gained great reputation for the author. It also inspired every one who read it, with a vague and indescribable interest to see and know the person who had composed so singular a work.

This interest he was the first to laugh at, and to disappoint. He shrunk from all admiration, and from all sympathy. At the moment when a crowd assembled round him, and every ear was bent to catch the words, which came alike from so beautiful a lip, and so strange and imaginative a mind, it was his pleasure to utter some sentiment totally different from his written opinion, and utterly destructive of the sensation he had excited. But it was very rarely that he exposed himself to these "trials of an author." He went out little to any other house but Lady Roseville's, and it was seldom more than once a week that he was seen even there. Lonely, and singular in mind and habits, he lived in the world like a person occupied by a separate object, and possessed of a separate existence, from that of his fellow-beings. He was luxurious and splendid, beyond all men, in his habits, rather than his tastes. His table groaned beneath a weight of gold, too costly for the daily service even of a prince; but he had no pleasure in surveying it. His wines and viands were of the most exquisite description; but he scarcely tasted them. Yet, what may seem inconsistent, he was averse to all ostentation and show in the eyes of others. He admitted very few into his society—no one so intimately as myself. I never once saw more than three persons at his table. He seemed, in his taste for furniture, in his love of literature, and his pursuit after fame, to be, as he himself said, eternally endeavouring to forget and eternally brought back to remembrance.

"I pity that man even more than I admire him," said Vincent to me, one night when we were walking home from Glanville's house. "His is, indeed, the disease nulla medicabilis herba. Whether it is the past or the present that afflicts him—whether it is the memory of past evil, or the satiety of present good, he has taken to his heart the bitterest philosophy of life. He does not reject its blessings—he gathers them around him, but as a stone gathers moss—cold, hard, unsoftened by the freshness and the greenness which surround it. As a circle can only touch a circle in one place, every thing that life presents to him, wherever it comes from—to whatever portion of his soul it is applied—can find but one point of contact; and that is the soreness of affliction: whether it is the oblivio or the otium that he requires, he finds equally that he is for ever in want of one treasure:—'neque gemmis neque purpura venale nec auro.'"

CHAPTER XLVIII

Mons. Jourdain. Etes-vous fou de l'aller quereller' lui qui entend la tierce et la quarte, et qui sait tuer un homme par raison demonstrative?

Le Maitre a Danser. Je me moque de sa raison demonstrative, et de sa tierce et de sa quarte.

    —Moliere.

"Hollo, my good friend; how are you?—d—d glad to see you in England," vociferated a loud, clear, good-humoured voice, one cold morning, as I was shivering down Brook-street, into Bond-street. I turned, and beheld Lord Dartmore, of Rocher de Cancale memory. I returned his greeting with the same cordiality with which it was given: and I was forthwith saddled with Dartmore's arm, and dragged up Bond-street, into that borough of all noisy, riotous, unrefined, good fellows—yclept—'s Hotel.

Here we were soon plunged into a small, low apartment, which Dartmore informed me was his room. It was crowded with a score of masculine looking youths, at whose very appearance my gentler frame shuddered from head to foot. However, I put as good a face on the matter as I possibly could, and affected a freedom and frankness of manner, correspondent with the unsophisticated tempers with which I was so unexpectedly brought into contact.

Dartmore was still gloriously redolent of Oxford: his companions were all extracts from Christchurch; and his favourite occupations were boxing and hunting—scenes at the Fives' Court—nights in the Cider Cellar—and mornings at Bowstreet. Figure to yourself a fitter companion for the hero and writer of these adventures! The table was covered with boxing gloves, single sticks, two ponderous pair of dumb bells, a large pewter pot of porter, and four foils; one snapped in the middle.

"Well," cried Dartmore, to two strapping youths, with their coats off, "which was the conqueror?"

"Oh, it is not yet decided," was the answer; and forthwith the bigger one hit the lesser a blow, with his boxing glove, heavy enough to have felled Ulysses, who, if I recollect aright, was rather 'a game blood' in such encounters.

This slight salute was forthwith the prelude to an encounter, which the whole train crowded round to witness. I, among the rest, pretending an equal ardour, and an equal interest, and hiding, like many persons in a similar predicament, a most trembling spirit beneath a most valorous exterior.

When the match (which terminated in favour of the lesser champion) was over, "Come, Pelham," said Dartmore, "let me take up the gloves with you?"

"You are too good!" said I, for the first time using my drawing-room drawl. A wink and a grin went round the room.

"Well, then, will you fence with Staunton, or play at single sticks with me?" said the short, thick, bullying, impudent, vulgar Earl of Calton.

"Why," answered I, "I am a poor hand at the foils, and a still worse at the sticks; but I have no objection to exchange a cut or two at the latter with Lord Calton."

"No, no!" said the good-natured Dartmore;—"no, Calton is the best stick- player I ever knew;" and then, whispering me, he added, "and the hardest hitter—and he never spares, either."

"Really," said I aloud, in my most affected tone, "it is a great pity, for I am excessively delicate; but as I said I would engage him, I don't like to retract. Pray let me look at the hilt: I hope the basket is strong: I would not have my knuckles rapped for the world—now for it. I'm in a deuced fright, Dartmore;" and so saying, and inwardly chuckling at the universal pleasure depicted in the countenances of Calton and the by-standers, who were all rejoiced at the idea of the "dandy being drubbed," I took the stick, and pretended great awkwardness, and lack of grace in the position I chose.