language. But I will have no profanation, Arthur;--to your pen again,
and write. We'll suppose our hero to have retired from the crowded
festivities of a ball-room at some lordly mansion in the country, and to
have wandered into a churchyard, damp and dreary with a thick London
fog. In the light dress of fashion, he throws himself on a tombstone.
"Ye dead!" exclaims the hero, "where are ye? Do your disembodied spirits
now float around me, and, shrouded in this horrible veil of nature,
glare unseen upon vitality? Float ye upon this intolerable mist, in
yourselves still more misty and intolerable? Hold ye high jubilee
to-night? or do ye crouch behind these monitorial stones, gibbering and
chattering at one who dares thus to invade your precincts? Here may I
hold communion with my soul, and, in the invisible presence of those who
could, but dare not to reveal. Away! it must not be."
_A._ What mustn't be?
_B._ That is the mystery which gives the point to his soliloquy. Leave
it to the reader's imagination.
_A._ I understand. But still the Honourable Augustus cannot lie in bed
much longer, and I really shall not be able to get him out without your
assistance. I do not comprehend how a man can get out of bed
_gracefully_; he must show his bare legs, and the alteration of position
is in itself awkward.
_B._ Not half so awkward as you are. Do you not feel that he must not be
got out of bed at all--that is, by description.
_A._ How then?
_B._ By saying nothing about it. Re-commence as follows:--"'I should
like the bath at seventy-six and a half, Coridon,' observed the
Honourable Augustus Bouverie, as he wrapped his embroidered
dressing-gown round his elegant form, and sank into a _chaise longue_,
wheeled by his faithful attendant to the fire." There, you observe, he
is out of bed, and nothing said about it.
_A._ Go on, I pray thee.
_B._ "'How is the bath perfumed?' '_Eau de mille fleurs._' '_Eau de
mille fleurs!_ Did not I tell you last week that I was tired of that
villanous compound? It has been adulterated till nothing remains but its
name. Get me another bath immediately _au violet_; and, Coridon, you may
use that other scent, if there is any left, for the poodle; but observe,
only when _you_ take him an airing, not when he goes with _me_.'"
_A._ Excellent! I now feel the real merits of an exclusive; but you
said something about dressing-room, or in-door philosophy.
_B._ I did; and now is a good opportunity to introduce it. Coridon goes
into the ante-chamber to renew the bath, and of course your hero has met
with a disappointment in not having the bath to his immediate pleasure.
He must press his hands to his forehead. By-the-bye, recollect that his
forehead, when you describe it, must be high and white as snow: all
aristocratical foreheads are--at least, are in a fashionable novel.
_A._ What! the women's and all?
_B._ The heroine's must be; the others you may lower as a contrast. But
to resume with the philosophy. He strikes his forehead, lifts his eyes
slowly up to the ceiling, and drops his right arm as slowly down by the
side of the _chaise longue_; and then in a voice so low that it might
have been considered a whisper, were it not for its clear and brilliant
intonation, he exclaims----
_A._ Exclaims in a whisper!
_B._ To be sure; you exclaim mentally,--why should you not in a whisper?
_A._ I perceive--your argument is unanswerable.
_B._ Stop a moment; it will run better thus:--"The Honourable Augustus
Bouverie no sooner perceived himself alone, than he felt the dark shades
of melancholy ascending and brooding over his mind, and enveloping his
throbbing heart in their--their _adamantine_ chains. Yielding to the
overwhelming force, he thus exclaimed, 'Such is life--we require but one
flower, and we are offered noisome thousands--refused that we wish, we
live in loathing of that not worthy to be received--mourners from our
cradle to our grave, we utter the shrill cry at our birth, and we sink
in oblivion with the faint wail of terror. Why should we, then, ever
commit the folly to be happy?'"
_A._ Hang me, but that's a poser!
_B._ Nonsense! hold your tongue; it is only preparatory to the end.
"Conviction astonishes and torments--destiny prescribes and
falsifies--attraction drives us away--humiliation supports our
energies. Thus do we recede into the present, and shudder at the Elysium
of posterity."
_A._ I have written all that down, Barnstaple; but I cannot understand
it, upon my soul!
_B._ If you had understood one particle, that particle I would have
erased. This is your true philosophy of a fashionable novel, the extreme
interest of which consists in its being unintelligible. People have such
an opinion of their own abilities, that if they understood you, they
would despise you; but a dose like this strikes them with veneration for
your talents.
_A._ Your argument is unanswerable; but you said that I must describe
the dressing-room.
_B._ Nothing more easy; as a simile, compare it to the shrine of some
favoured saint in a richly-endowed Catholic church. Three tables at
least, full of materials in methodised confusion--all tending to the
beautification of the human form divine. Tinted perfumes in every
variety of cut crystal receivers, gold and silver. If at a loss, call at
Bayley's and Blew's, or Smith's in Bond Street. Take an accurate survey
of all you see, and introduce your whole catalogue. You cannot be too
minute. But, Arthur, you must not expect me to write the whole book for
you.
_A._ Indeed I am not so exorbitant in my demands upon your good-nature;
but observe, I may get up four or five chapters already with the hints
you have given me, but I do not know how to move such a creation of the
brain--so ethereal, that I fear he will melt away; and so fragile, that
I am in terror lest he fall to pieces. Now only get him into the
breakfast-room for me, and then I ask no more for the present. Only
dress him, and bring him _down stairs_.
_B._ There again you prove your incapability. Bring him down stairs!
Your hero of a fashionable novel never ascends to the first floor.
Bed-room, dressing-room, breakfast-room, library, and boudoir, all are
upon a level. As for his dressing, you must only describe it as perfect
when finished; but not enter into a regular detail, except that, in
conversation with his valet, he occasionally asks for something
unheard-of, or fastidious to a degree. You must not walk him from one
chamber to another, but manage it as follows:--"It was not until the
beautiful airs of the French clock that decorated the mantel-piece had
been thrice played, with all their variations, that the Honourable
Augustus Bouverie entered his library, where he found his assiduous
Coridon burning an aromatic pastile to disperse the compound of
villanous exhalations arising from the condensed metropolitan
atmosphere. Once more in a state of repose, to the repeated and almost
affecting solicitations of his faithful attendant, who alternately
presented to him the hyson of Pekoe, the bohea of Twankay, the fragrant
berry from the Asiatic shore, and the frothing and perfumed decoction of
the Indian nut, our hero shook his head in denial, until he at last was
prevailed upon to sip a small liqueur glass of _eau sucree_." The fact
is, Arthur, he is in love--don't you perceive? Now introduce a friend,
who rallies him--then a resolution to think no more of the heroine--a
billet on a golden salver--a counter resolution--a debate which equipage
to order--a decision at last--hat, gloves, and furred great-coat--and by
that time you will have arrived to the middle of the first volume.
_A._ I perceive; but I shall certainly stick there without your
assistance.
_B._ You shall have it, my dear fellow. In a week I will call again, and
see how you get on. Then we'll introduce the heroine; that, I can tell
you, requires some tact--_au revoir._
_A._ Thanks, many thanks, my dear Barnstaple. Fare you well.
[_Exit Barnstaple._
_A._ (_Looking over his memoranda._)--It will do! (_Hopping and dancing
about the room._) Hurrah! my tailor's bill will be paid after all!
PART II
[_Mr Arthur Ansard's Chambers as before. Mr Ansard, with his eyes fixed
upon the wig block, gnawing the feather end of his pen. The table,
covered with sundry sheets of foolscap, shows strong symptoms of the
Novel progressing._]
_Ansard_ (_solus_).
Where is Barnstaple? If he do not come soon, I shall have finished my
novel without a heroine. Well, I'm not the first person who has been
foiled by a woman. (_Continues to gnaw his pen in a brown study._)
_Barnstaple enters unperceived, and slaps Ansard on the shoulder. The
latter starts up._
_B._ So, friend Ansard, making your dinner off your pen: it is not every
novel writer who can contrive to do that even in anticipation. Have you
profited by my instructions?
_A._ I wish I had. I assure you that this light diet has not
contributed, as might be expected, to assist a heavy head; and one
feather is not sufficient to enable my genius to take wing. If the
public knew what dull work it is to write a novel, they would not be
surprised at finding them dull reading. _Ex nihilo nihil fit._
Barnstaple, I am at the very bathos of stupidity.
_B._ You certainly were absorbed when I entered, for I introduced
myself.
_A._ I wish you had introduced another personage with you--you would
have been doubly welcome.
_B._ Who is that?
_A._ My heroine. I have followed your instructions to the letter. My
hero is as listless as I fear my readers will be, and he is not yet in
love. In fact, he is only captivated with himself. I have made him
dismiss Coridon.
_B._ Hah! how did you manage that?
_A._ He was sent to ascertain the arms on the panel of a carriage. In
his eagerness to execute his master's wishes, he came home with a
considerable degree of perspiration on his brow, for which offence he
was immediately put out of doors.
_B._ Bravo--it was unpardonable--but still----
_A._ O! I know what you mean--that is all arranged; he has an annuity of
one hundred pounds per annum.
_B._ My dear Ansard, you have exceeded my expectations; but now for the
heroine.
_A._ Yes, indeed; help me--for I have exhausted all my powers.
_B._ It certainly requires much tact to present your heroine to your
readers. We are unfortunately denied what the ancients were so happy to
possess--a whole _cortege_ of divinities that might be summoned to help
any great personage in, or the author out of, a difficulty; but since we
cannot command their assistance, like the man in the play who forgot his
part, we will do without it. Now, have you thought of nothing new, for
we must not plagiarise even from fashionable novels?
_A._ I have thought--and thought--and can find nothing new, unless we
bring her in in a whirlwind: that has not yet been attempted.
_B._ A whirlwind! I don't know--that's hazardous. Nevertheless, if she
were placed on a beetling cliff, overhanging the tempestuous ocean,
lashing the rocks with its wild surge; of a sudden, after she has been
permitted to finish her soliloquy, a white cloud rising rapidly and
unnoticed--the sudden vacuum--the rush of mighty winds through the
majestic and alpine scenery--the vortex gathering round her--first
admiring the vast efforts of nature; then astonished; and, lastly,
alarmed, as she finds herself compelled to perform involuntary
gyrations, till at length she spins round like a well-whipped top,
nearing the dangerous edge of the precipice. It is bold, and certainly
quite novel--I think it will do. Portray her delicate little feet,
peeping out, pointing downwards, the force of the elements raising her
on her tip toes, now touching, now disdaining the earth. Her dress
expanded wide like that of Herbele in her last and best
pirouette--round, round she goes--her white arms are tossed frantically
in the air. Corinne never threw herself into more graceful attitudes.
Now is seen her diminishing ankle--now the rounded symmetry--mustn't go
too high up though--the wind increases--her distance from the edge of
the precipice decreases--she has no breath left to shriek--no power to
fall--threatened to be ravished by the wild and powerful god of the
elements--she is discovered by the Honourable Augustus Bouverie, who has
just finished his soliloquy upon another adjacent hill. He delights in
her danger--before he rushes to her rescue, makes one pause for the
purpose of admiration, and another for the purpose of adjusting his
shirt collar.
_A._ The devil he does!
_B._ To be sure. The hero of a fashionable novel never loses caste.
Whether in a storm, a whirlwind, up to his neck in the foaming ocean, or
tumbling down a precipice, he is still the elegant and correct
Honourable Augustus Bouverie. To punish you for your interruption, I
have a great mind to make him take a pinch of snuff before he starts.
Well--he flies to her assistance--is himself caught in the rushing
vortex, which prevents him from getting nearer to the lady, and, despite
of himself, takes to whirling in the opposite direction. They
approach--they recede--she shrieks without being heard--holds out her
arms for help--she would drop them in despair, but cannot, for they are
twisted over her head by the tremendous force of the element. One moment
they are near to each other, and the next they are separated; at one
instant they are close to the abyss, and the waters below roar in
delight of their anticipated victims, and in the next a favouring change
of the vortex increases their distance from the danger--there they
spin--and there you may leave them, and commence a new chapter.
_A._ But is not all this naturally and physically impossible?
_B._ By no means; there is nothing supernatural in a whirlwind, and the
effect of a whirlwind is to twist everything round. Why should the
heroine and the Honourable Augustus Bouverie not be submitted to the
laws of nature? besides, we are writing a fashionable novel. Wild and
improbable as this whirlwind may appear, it is within the range of
probability; whereas, that is not at all adhered to in many
novels--witness the drinking-scene in ----, and others equally _outrees_,
in which the author, having turned probability out of doors, ends by
throwing possibility out of the window--leaving folly and madness to
usurp their place--and play a thousand antics for the admiration of the
public, who, pleased with novelty, cry out "How fine!"
_A._ Buy the book, and laud the author.
_B._ Exactly. Now, having left your hero and heroine in a situation
peculiarly interesting, with the greatest nonchalance, pass over to the
continent, rave on the summit of Mont Blanc, and descant upon the strata
which compose the mountains of the Moon in central Africa. You have been
philosophical, now you must be geological. No one can then say that your
book is light reading.
_A._ That can be said of few novels. In most of them even smoke assumes
the ponderosity of lead.
_B._ There is a metal still heavier, which they have the power of
creating--gold--to pay a dunning tailor's bill.
_A._ But after having been philosophical and geological, ought one not
to be a little moral?
_B._ Pshaw! I thought you had more sense. The great art of novel writing
is to make the vices glorious, by placing them in close alliance with
redeeming qualities. Depend upon it, Ansard, there is a deeper, more
heartfelt satisfaction than mere amusement in novel reading; a
satisfaction no less real, because we will not own it to ourselves; the
satisfaction of seeing all our favourite and selfish ideas dressed up in
a garb so becoming, that we persuade ourselves that our false pride is
proper dignity, our ferocity courage, our cowardice prudence, our
irreligion liberality, and our baser appetites mere gallantry.
_A._ Very true, Barnstaple; but really I do not like this whirlwind.
_B._ Well, well, I give it up then; it was your own idea. We'll try
again. Cannot you create some difficulty or dilemma, in which to throw
her, so that the hero may come to her rescue with _eclat_?
_A._ Her grey palfrey takes fright.
_B._ So will your readers; stale--quite stale!
_A._ A wild bull has his horns close to her, and is about to toss her.
_B._ As your book would be--away with contempt. Vapid--quite vapid!
_A._ A shipwreck--the waves are about to close over her.
_B._ Your book would be closed at the same moment--worn out--quite worn
out.
_A._ In the dead of the night, a fire breaks out--she is already in the
midst of the flames----
_B._ Where your book would also be, by the disgusted reader--worse and
worse.
_A._ Confound it--you will not allow me to expose her to earth, air,
fire or water. I have a great mind to hang her in her garters, and make
the hero come and cut her down.
_B._ You might do worse--and better.
_A._ What--hang myself?
_B._ That certainly would put an end to all your difficulties. But,
Ansard, I think I can put your heroine in a situation really critical
and eminently distressing, and the hero shall come to her relief, like
the descent of a god to the rescue of a Greek or Trojan warrior.
_A._ Or of Bacchus to Ariadne in her distress.
_B._ Perhaps a better simile. The consequence will be, that eternal
gratitude in the bosom of the maiden will prove the parent of eternal
love, which eternity of passion will, of course, last until they are
married.
_A._ I'm all attention.
_B._ Get up a splendid dinner party for their first casual meeting.
Place the company at table.
_A._ Surely you are not going to choke her with the bone of a chicken.
_B._ You surely are about to murder me, as Samson did the
Philistines----
_A._ With the jaw-bone of a fashionable novel writer, you mean.
_B._ Exactly. But to proceed:--they are seated at table; can you
describe a grand dinner?
_A._ Certainly, I have partaken of more than one.
_B._ Where?
_A._ I once sat down three hundred strong at the Freemasons' Tavern.
_B._ Pshaw! a mere hog feed.
_A._ Well, then, I dined with the late lord mayor.
_B._ Still worse. My dear Ansard, it is however of no consequence.
Nothing is more difficult to attain, yet nothing is more easy to
describe, than a good dinner. I was once reading a very fashionable
novel by a very fashionable bookseller, for the author is a mere
nonentity, and was very much surprised at the accuracy with which a good
dinner was described. The mystery was explained a short time afterwards,
when casually taking up Eustache Eude's book in Sams's library, I found,
that the author had copied it out exactly from the injunctions of that
celebrated gastronome. You can borrow the book.
_A._ Well, we will suppose that done; but I am all anxiety to know what
is the danger from which the heroine is to be rescued.
_B._ I will explain. There are two species of existence--that of mere
mortal existence, which is of little consequence, provided, like Caesar,
the hero and heroine die decently: the other is of much greater
consequence, which is fashionable existence. Let them once lose caste in
that respect, and they are virtually dead, and one mistake, one
oversight, is a death-blow for which there is no remedy, and from which
there is no recovery. For instance, we will suppose our heroine to be
quite confounded with the appearance of our hero--to have become
_distraite, reveuse_--and, in short, to have lost her recollection and
presence of mind. She has been assisted to _fillet de soles_. Say that
the only sauce ever taken with them is _au macedoine_--this is offered
to her, and, at the same time, another, which to eat with the above dish
would be unheard of. In her distraction she is about to take the wrong
sauce--actually at the point of ruining herself for ever and committing
suicide upon her fashionable existence, while the keen grey eyes of Sir
Antinous Antibes, the arbiter of fashion, are fixed upon her. At this
awful moment, which is for ever to terminate her fashionable existence,
the Honourable Augustus Bouverie, who sits next to her, gently touches
her _seduisante_ sleeve--blandly smiling, he whispers to her that the
_other_ is the sauce _macedoine_. She perceives her mistake, trembles at
her danger, rewards him with a smile, which penetrates into the deepest
recesses of his heart, helps herself to the right sauce, darts a look of
contemptuous triumph upon Sir Antinous Antibes, and, while she is
dipping her sole into the sauce, her soul expands with gratitude and
love.
_A._ I see, I see. Many thanks; my heroine is now a fair counterpart of
my hero.
"Ah, sure a pair were never seen,
So justly form'd to meet by nature."
_B._ And now I'll give you another hint, since you appear grateful. It
is a species of claptrap in a novel, which always takes--to wit, a rich
old uncle or misanthrope, who, at the very time that he is bitterly
offended and disgusted with the hero, who is in awkward circumstances,
pulls out a pocket-book and counts down, say fifteen or twenty thousand
pounds in bank notes, to relieve him from his difficulties. An old coat
and monosyllables will increase the interest.
_A._ True (_sighing._) Alas! there are no such uncles in real life; I
wish there were.
_B._ I beg your pardon; I know no time in which _my uncle_ forks out
more bank notes than at the present.
_A._ Yes, but it is for value, or more than value, received.
_B._ That I grant; but I'm afraid it is the only _uncle_ left now;
except in a fashionable novel. But you comprehend the value of this new
auxiliary.
_A._ Nothing can be better. Barnstaple, you are really----, but I say no
more. If a truly great man cannot be flattered with delicacy, it must
not be attempted at all; silence then becomes the best tribute. Your
advice proves you to be truly great. I am _silent_, therefore you
understand the full force of the oratory of my thanks.
_B._ (_bowing._) Well, Ansard, you have found out the cheapest way of
paying off your bills of gratitude I ever heard of. "Poor, even in
thanks," was well said by Shakespeare; but you, it appears, are rich, in
having nothing at all wherewith to pay. If you could transfer the same
doctrine to your tradesmen, you need not write novels.
_A._ Alas! my dear fellow, mine is not yet written. There is one
important feature, nay, the most important feature of all--the style of
language, the diction--on that, Barnstaple, you have not yet
doctrinated.
_B._ (_pompously._) When Demosthenes was asked what were the three
principal attributes of eloquence, he answered, that the first was
action; on being asked which was the second, he replied, action; and the
third, action; and such is the idea of the Irish _mimbers_ in the House
of Commons. Now there are three important requisites in the diction of a
fashionable novel. The first, my dear fellow, is--flippancy; the second,
flippancy; and flippancy is also the third. With the dull it will pass
for wit, with some it will pass for scorn, and even the witty will not
be enabled to point out the difference, without running the risk of
being considered invidious. It will cover every defect with a defect
still greater; for who can call small beer tasteless when it is sour, or
dull when it is bottled and has a froth upon it?
_A._ The advice is excellent; but I fear that this flippancy is as
difficult to acquire as the tone of true eloquence.
_B._ Difficult! I defy the writers of the silver-fork school to write
out of the style flippant. Read but one volume of ----, and you will be
saturated with it; but if you wish to go to the fountain-head, do as
have done most of the late fashionable novel writers, repair to their
instructors--the lady's-maid, for flippancy in the vein _spirituelle_;
to a London footman for the vein critical; but, if you wish a flippancy
of a still higher order, at once more solemn and more empty, which I
would call the vein political, read the speeches of some of our members
of Parliament. Only read them; I wish no man so ill as to inflict upon
him the torture of hearing them--read them, I say, and you will have
taken the very highest degree in the order of inane flippancy.