A PROMENADE IN BATH
I found my father at his hotel, sitting with his friend Jorian DeWitt,
whom I had met once before, and thought clever. He was an ex-captain of
dragoons, a martyr to gout, and addicted to Burgundy, which
necessitated his resorting to the waters, causing him, as he said,
between his appetites and the penance he paid for them, to lead the
life of a pendulum. My father was in a tempered gay mood, examining a
couple of the county newspapers. One abused him virulently; he was
supported by the other. After embracing me, he desired me to listen
while he read out opposing sentences from the columns of these eminent
journals:
'The person calling himself “Roy,” whose monstrously absurd pretensions
are supposed to be embodied in this self-dubbed surname...'
'—The celebrated and courtly Mr. Richmond Roy, known no less by the
fascination of his manners than by his romantic history...'
'—has very soon succeeded in making himself the talk of the town...'
'—has latterly become the theme of our tea-tables...'
'—which is always the adventurer's privilege...'
'—through no fault of his own...'
'—That we may throw light on the blushing aspirations of a crow-sconced
Cupid, it will be as well to recall the antecedents of this (if no
worse) preposterous imitation buck of the old school...'
'—Suffice it, without seeking to draw the veil from those affecting
chapters of his earlier career which kindled for him the enthusiastic
sympathy of all classes of his countrymen, that he is not yet free from
a tender form of persecution...'
'—We think we are justified in entitling him the Perkin Warbeck of
society...'
'—Reference might be made to mythological heroes...'
Hereat I cried out mercy.
Captain DeWitt (stretched nursing a leg) removed his silk handkerchief
from his face to murmur,
'The bass stedfastly drowns the treble, if this is meant for harmony.'
My father rang up the landlord, and said to him,
'The choicest of your cellar at dinner to-day, Mr. Lumley; and, mind
you, I am your guest, and I exercise my right of compelling you to sit
down with us and assist in consuming a doubtful quality of wine. We
dine four. Lay for five, if your conscience is bad, and I excuse you.'
The man smirked. He ventured to say he had never been so tempted to
supply an inferior article.
My father smiled on him.
'You invite our editorial advocate?' said Captain DeWitt.
'Our adversary,' said my father.
I protested I would not sit at table with him. But he assured me he
believed his advocate and his adversary to be one and the same, and
referred me to the collated sentences.
'The man must earn his bread, Richie, boy! To tell truth, it is the
advocate I wish to rebuke, and to praise the adversary. It will
confound him.'
'It does me,' said DeWitt.
'You perceive, Jorian, a policy in dining these men of the Press now
and occasionally, considering their growing power, do you not?'
'Ay, ay! it's a great gossiping machine, mon Roy. I prefer to let it
spout.'
'I crave your permission to invite him in complimentary terms, cousin
Jorian. He is in the town; remember, it is for the good of the nation
that he and his like should have the opportunity of studying good
society. As to myself personally, I give him carte blanche to fire his
shots at me.'
Near the fashionable hour of the afternoon my father took my arm,
Captain DeWitt a stick, and we walked into the throng and buzz.
'Whenever you are, to quote our advocate, the theme of tea-tables,
Richie,' said my father, 'walk through the crowd: it will wash you. It
is doing us the honour to observe us. We in turn discover an interest
in its general countenance.'
He was received, as we passed, with much staring; here and there a
lifting of hats, and some blunt nodding that incensed me, but he,
feeling me bristle, squeezed my hand and talked of the scene, and ever
and anon gathered a line of heads and shed an indulgent bow along them;
so on to the Casino. Not once did he offend my taste and make my acute
sense of self-respect shiver by appearing grateful for a recognition,
or anxious to court it, though the curtest salute met his
acknowledgement.
The interior of the Casino seemed more hostile. I remarked it to him.
'A trifle more eye-glassy,' he murmured. He was quite at his easy
there.
'We walk up and down, my son,' he said, in answer to a question of
mine, 'because there are very few who can; even walking is an art; and
if nobody does, the place is dull.'
'The place is pretty well supplied with newspapers,' said Captain
DeWitt.
'And dowagers, friend Jorian. They are cousins. 'Tis the fashion to
have our tattle done by machinery. They have their opportunity to
compare the portrait with the original. Come, invent some scandal for
us; let us make this place our social Exchange. I warrant a good bold
piece of invention will fit them, too, some of them. Madam,'—my father
bowed low to the beckoning of a fan, 'I trust your ladyship did not
chance to overhear that last remark I made?'
The lady replied: 'I should have shut my eyes if I had. I called you to
tell me, who is the young man?'
'For twenty years I have lived in the proud belief that he is my son!'
'I would not disturb it for the world.' She did me the honour to
inspect me from the lowest waistcoat button to the eyebrows. 'Bring him
to me to-night. Captain DeWitt, you have forsaken my whist-tables.'
'Purely temporary fits of unworthiness, my lady.'
'In English, gout?'
'Not gout in the conscience, I trust,' said my father.
'Oh! that's curable,' laughed the captain.
'You men of repartee would be nothing without your wickedness,' the
lady observed.
'Man was supposed to be incomplete—' Captain DeWitt affected a murmur.
She nodded 'Yes, yes,' and lifted eyes on my father. 'So you have not
given up going to church?'
He bent and spoke low.
She humphed her lips. 'Very well, I will see. It must be a night in the
early part of the week after next, then: I really don't know why I
should serve you; but I like your courage.'
'I cannot consent to accept your ladyship's favour on account of one
single virtue,' said he, drooping.
She waved him to move forward.
During this frothy dialogue, I could see that the ear of the assembly
had been caught by the sound of it.
'That,' my father informed me, 'is the great Lady Wilts. Now you will
notice a curious thing. Lady Wilts is not so old but that, as our
Jorian here says of her, she is marriageable. Hence, Richie, she is a
queen to make the masculine knee knock the ground. I fear the same is
not to be said of her rival, Lady Denewdney, whom our good Jorian
compares to an antiquated fledgeling emerging with effort from a nest
of ill construction and worse cement. She is rich, she is sharp, she
uses her quill; she is emphatically not marriageable. Bath might still
accept her as a rival queen, only she is always behindhand in seizing
an occasion. Now you will catch sight of her fan working in a minute.
She is envious and imitative. It would be undoubtedly better policy on
her part to continue to cut me: she cannot, she is beginning to rustle
like December's oaks. If Lady Wilts has me, why, she must. We refrain
from noticing her until we have turned twice. Ay, Richie, there is this
use in adversity; it teaches one to play sword and target with
etiquette and retenue better than any crowned king in Europe. For me
now to cross to her summons immediately would be a gross breach of
homage to Lady Wilts, who was inspired to be the first to break through
the fence of scandal environing me. But I must still show that I am
independent. These people must not suppose that I have to cling to a
party. Let them take sides; I am on fair terms with both the rivals. I
show just such a nuance of a distinction in my treatment of them just
such—enough, I mean, to make the flattered one warm to me, and t' other
be jealous of her. Ay, Richie, these things are trivial things beyond
the grave; but here are we, my boy; and, by the way, I suspect the
great campaign of my life is opening.'
Captain DeWitt said that if so it would be the tenth, to his certain
knowledge.
'Not great campaign!' my father insisted: 'mere skirmishes before
this.'
They conversed in humorous undertones, each in turn seeming to turn
over the earth of some amusing reminiscence, so rapt, that as far as
regarded their perception of it, the assembly might have been nowhere.
Perhaps, consequently, they became observed with all but undivided
attention. My father's hand was on my shoulder, his head toward Captain
DeWitt; instead of subduing his voice, he gave it a moderate pitch, at
which it was not intrusive, and was musical, to my ear charming,
especially when he continued talking through his soft laughter, like a
hunter that would in good humour press for his game through links of
water-nymphs.
Lady Denewdney's fan took to beating time meditatively. Two or three
times she kept it elevated, and in vain: the flow of their
interchangeing speech was uninterrupted. At last my father bowed to her
from a distance. She signalled: his eyelids pleaded short sight,
awakening to the apprehension of a pleasant fact: the fan tapped, and
he halted his march, leaning scarce perceptibly in her direction. The
fan showed distress. Thereupon, his voice subsided in his conversation,
with a concluding flash of animation across his features, like a brook
that comes to the leap on a descent, and he left us.
Captain DeWitt and I were led by a common attraction to the portico,
the truth being that we neither of us could pace easily nor talk with
perfect abandonment under eye-fire any longer.
'Look,' said he to me, pointing at the equipages and equestrians:
'you'll see a sight like this in dozens—dozens of our cities and towns!
The wealth of this country is frightful.'
My reply, addressed at the same time mentally to Temple at sea, was:
'Well, as long as we have the handsomest women, I don't care.'
Captain DeWitt was not so sure that we had. The Provençal women, the
women of a part of South Germany, and certain favoured spots of Italy,
might challenge us, he thought. This was a point I could argue on, or,
I should rather say, take up the cudgels, for I deemed such opinions
treason to one's country and an outrage to common sense, and I embarked
in controversy with the single-minded intention of knocking down the
man who held them.
He accepted his thrashing complacently.
'Now here comes a young lady on horseback,' he said; 'do you spy her?
dark hair, thick eyebrows, rides well, followed by a groom. Is she a
Beauty?'
In the heat of patriotism I declared she was handsome, and repeated it,
though I experienced a twinge of remorse, like what I should have felt
had I given Minerva the apple instead of Venus.
'Oh!' he commented, and stepped down to the road to meet her,
beginning, in my hearing, 'I am the bearer of a compliment—' Her thick
eyebrows stood in a knot, then she glanced at me and hung pensive. She
had not to wait a minute before my father came to her side.
'I knew you would face them,' she said.
He threw back his head like a swimmer tossing spray from his locks.
'You have read the paper?' he asked.
'You have horsewhipped the writer?' she rejoined.
'Oh! the poor penster!'
'Nay, we can't pretend to pity him!'
'Could we condescend to offer him satisfaction?'
'Would he dare to demand it?'
'We will lay the case before Lady Wilts to-night.'
'You are there to-night?'
'At Lady Denewdney's to-morrow night—if I may indulge a hope?'
'Both? Oh! bravo, bravo! Tell me nothing more just now. How did you
manage it? I must have a gallop. Yes, I shall be at both, be sure of
that.'
My father introduced me.
'Let me present to your notice my son, Harry Lepel Richmond, Miss
Penrhys.'
She touched my fingers, and nodded at me; speaking to him:
'He has a boy's taste: I hear he esteems me moderately well-favoured.'
'An inherited error certain to increase with age!'
'Now you have started me!' she exclaimed, and lashed the flanks of her
horse.
We had evidently been enacting a part deeply interesting to the
population of Bath, for the heads of all the strolling groups were bent
on us; and when Miss Penrhys cantered away, down dropped eyeglasses,
and the promenade returned to activity. I fancied I perceived that my
father was greeted more cordially on his way back to the hotel.
'You do well, Richie,' he observed, 'in preserving your composure until
you have something to say. Wait for your opening; it will come, and the
right word will come with it. The main things are to be able to stand
well, walk well, and look with an eye at home in its socket: I put you
my hand on any man or woman born of high blood.—Not a brazen eye!—of
the two extremes, I prefer the beaten spaniel sort.—Blindfold me, but I
put you my hand on them. As to repartee, you must have it. Wait for
that, too. Do not,' he groaned, 'do not force it! Bless my soul, what
is there in the world so bad?' And rising to the upper notes of his
groan: 'Ignorance, density, total imbecility, is better; I would rather
any day of my life sit and carve for guests—the grossest of human
trials—a detestable dinner, than be doomed to hear some wretched
fellow—and you hear the old as well as the young—excruciate feelings
which, where they exist, cannot but be exquisitely delicate. Goodness
gracious me! to see the man pumping up his wit! For me, my visage is of
an unalterable gravity whenever I am present at one of these
exhibitions. I care not if I offend. Let them say I wish to
revolutionize society—I declare to you, Richie boy, delightful to my
heart though I find your keen stroke of repartee, still your fellow who
takes the thrust gracefully, knows when he's traversed by a
master-stroke, and yields sign of it, instead of plunging like a
spitted buffalo and asking us to admire his agility—you follow me?—I
say I hold that man—and I delight vastly in ready wit; it is the wine
of language!—I regard that man as the superior being. True, he is not
so entertaining.'
My father pressed on my arm to intimate, with a cavernous significance
of eyebrow, that Captain DeWitt had the gift of repartee in perfection.
'Jorian,' said he, 'will you wager our editor declines to dine with
us?'
The answer struck me as only passable. I think it was:
'When rats smell death in toasted cheese.'
Captain DeWitt sprang up the staircase of our hotel to his bedroom.
'I should not have forced him,' my father mused. 'Jorian DeWitt has at
times brilliant genius, Richie—in the way of rejoinders, I mean. This
is his happy moment—his one hour's dressing for dinner. I have watched
him; he most thoroughly enjoys it! I am myself a quick or slow dresser,
as the case may be. But to watch Jorian you cannot help entering into
his enjoyment of it. He will have his window with a view of the sunset;
there is his fire, his warmed linen, and his shirt-studs; his bath, his
choice of a dozen things he will or will not wear; the landlord's or
host's menu is up against the looking-glass, and the extremely handsome
miniature likeness of his wife, who is in the madhouse, by a celebrated
painter, I forget his name. Jorian calls this, new birth—you catch his
idea? He throws off the old and is on with the new with a highly
hopeful anticipation. His valet is a scoundrel, but never fails in
extracting the menu from the cook, wherever he may be, and, in fine, is
too attentive to the hour's devotion to be discarded! Poor Jorian. I
know no man I pity so much.'
I conceived him, I confessed, hardly pitiable, though not enviable.
'He has but six hundred a year, and a passion for Burgundy,' said my
father.
We were four at table. The editor came, and his timidity soon wore off
in the warmth of hospitality. He appeared a kind exciteable little man,
glad of his dinner from the first, and in due time proud of his
entertainer. His response to the toast of the Fourth Estate was an
apology for its behaviour to my father. He regretted it; he regretted
it. A vinous speech.
My father heard him out. Addressing him subsequently,
'I would not interrupt you in the delivery of your sentiments,' he
said. 'I must, however, man to man, candidly tell you I should have
wished to arrest your expressions of regret. They convey to my mind an
idea, that on receipt of my letter of invitation, you attributed to me
a design to corrupt you. Protest nothing, I beg. Editors are human,
after all. Now, my object is, that as you write of me, you should have
some knowledge of me; and I naturally am interested in one who does me
so much honour. The facts of my life are at your disposal for
publication and comment. Simply, I entreat you, say this one thing of
me: I seek for justice, but I never complain of my fortunes. Providence
decides:—that might be the motto engraven on my heart. Nay, I may risk
declaring it is! In the end I shall be righted. Meanwhile you
contribute to my happiness by favouring me with your society.'
'Ah, sir,' replied the little man, 'were all our great people like you!
In the country—the provinces—they treat the representatives of the
Fourth Estate as the squires a couple of generations back used to treat
the parsons.'
'What! Have you got a place at their tables?' inquired Captain DeWitt.
'No, I cannot say that—not even below the salt. Mr. Richmond—Mr. Roy,
you may not be aware of it: I am the proprietor of the opposition
journals in this county. I tell you in confidence, one by itself would
not pay; and I am a printer, sir, and it is on my conscience to tell
you I have, in the course of business, been compelled this very morning
to receive orders for the printing of various squibs and, I much fear,
scurrilous things.'
My father pacified him.
'You will do your duty to your family, Mr. Hickson.'
Deeply moved, the little man pulled out proof-sheets and slips.
'Even now, at the eleventh hour,' he urged, 'there is time to correct
any glaring falsehoods, insults, what not!'
My father accepted the copy of proofs.
'Not a word,—not a line! You spoke of the eleventh hour, Mr. Hickson.
If we are at all near the eleventh, I must be on my way to make my bow
to Lady Wilts; or is it Lady Denewdney's to-night? No, to-morrow
night.'
A light of satisfaction came over Mr. Hickson's face at the mention of
my father's visiting both these sovereign ladies.
As soon as we were rid of him, Captain DeWitt exclaimed,
'If that's the Fourth Estate, what's the Realm?'
'The Estate,' pleaded my father, 'is here in its infancy—on all fours—'
'Prehensile! Egad, it has the vices of the other three besides its own.
Do you mean that by putting it on all fours?'
'Jorian, I have noticed that when you are malignant you are not witty.
We have to thank the man for not subjecting us to a pledge of secresy.
My Lady Wilts will find the proofs amusing. And mark, I do not examine
their contents before submitting them to her inspection. You will
testify to the fact.'
I was unaware that my father played a master-stroke in handing these
proof-sheets publicly to Lady Wilts for her perusal. The incident of
the evening was the display of her character shown by Miss Penrhys in
positively declining to quit the house until she likewise had cast her
eye on them. One of her aunts wept. Their carriage was kept waiting an
hour.
'You ask too much of me: I cannot turn her out', Lady Wilts said to her
uncle. And aside to my father, 'You will have to marry her.'
'In heaven's name keep me from marriage, my lady!' I heard him reply.
There was sincerity in his tone when he said that.