"My only books
Were woman's looks,
And folly all they taught me."
The Count bore his honors very calmly, though every week some fresh feat
of bodily strength or daring kept adding to his popularity. It was no
slight temptation to his vanity; for, as some one has said truly, no
successful adventurer in after-life ever wins such undivided admiration
and hearty partisans as a school hero. The _prestige_ of the liberator
among the Irish peasantry comes nearest to it, I think; or the feeling
of a clan, a hundred years ago, toward their chief. It must be very
pleasant to be quoted so incessantly and believed in so implicitly, and
to know that your decisions are so absolutely without appeal. From that
first day when he interfered in my favor, Guy never ceased to accord me
the ægis of his protection, and it served me well; for, then as now, I
was strong neither in body nor nerve. Yet our tastes, save in one
respect, were as dissimilar as can be imagined. The solitary conformity
was, that we were both, in a desultory way, fond of reading, and our
favorite books were the same. Neither would do more school-work than was
absolutely necessary, but at light literature of a certain class we read
hard.
I don't think Guy's was what is usually called a poetical temperament,
for his taste in this line was quite one-sided. He was no admirer of
the picturesque, certainly. I have heard him say that his idea of a
country to live in was where there was no hill steep enough to wind a
horse in good condition, and no wood that hounds could not run through
in fifteen minutes; therein following the fancy of that eminent French
philosopher, who, being invited to climb Ben Lomond to enjoy the most
magnificent of views, responded meekly, "_Aimez-vous les beautés de la
Nature? Pour moi, je les abhorre_." Can you not fancy the strident
emphasis on the last syllable, revealing how often the poor materialist
had been victimized before he made a stand at last?
All through Livingstone's life the real was to predominate over the
ideal; and so it was at this period of it. He had a great dislike to
purely sentimental or descriptive poetry, preferring to all others those
battle-ballads, like the _Lays of Rome_, which stir the blood like a
trumpet, or those love-songs which heat it like rough strong wine.
He was very fond of Homer, too. He liked the diapason of those sonorous
hexameters, that roll on, sinking and swelling with the ebb and flow of
a stormy sea. I hear his voice--deep-toned and powerful even at that
early age--finishing the story of Poseidon and his beautiful
prize--their bridal-bed laid in the hollow of a curling wave--
_"Porphureon d' ara kuma peristathê, oureï ison,
Kurtôthen, krupsen de Theon thnêtên te gunaika."_
And yet they say that the glorious old Sciote was a myth, and the
Odyssey a magazine worked out by clever contributors. They might as well
assert that all his marshals would have made up one Napoleon.
I remember how we used to pass in review the beauties of old time, for
whom "many drew swords and died," whose charms convulsed kingdoms and
ruined cities, who called the stars after their own names.
Ah! Gyneth and Ida, peerless queens of beauty, it was exciting,
doubtless, to gaze down from your velveted gallery on the mad tilting
below, to see ever and anon through the yellow dust a kind, handsome
face looking up at you, pale but scarcely reproachful, just before the
horse-hoofs trod it down; ah! fairest Ninons and Dianas--prizes that,
like the Whip at Newmarket, were always to be challenged for--you were
proud when your reckless lover came to woo, with the blood of last
night's favorite not dry on his blade; but what were your fatal honors
compared to those of a reigning toast in the rough, ancient days? The
demigods and heroes that were suitors did not stand upon trifles, and
the contest often ended in the extermination of all the lady's male
relatives to the third and fourth generation. People then took it quite
as a matter of course--rather a credit to the family than otherwise.
Guy and I discussed, often and gravely, the relative merits of Evadne
the violet-haired, Helen, Cleopatra, and a hundred others, just as, on
the steps of White's, or in the smoking-room at the "Rag," men compare
the points of the _débutantes_ of the season.
His knowledge of feminine psychology--it _must_ have been theoretical,
for he was not seventeen--implied a study and depth of research that was
quite surprising; but I am bound to state that his estimate of the
strength of character and principle inherent in the weaker sex was any
thing but high; nearly, indeed, identical with that formed by the
learned lady who, to the question, "Did she think the virtue of any
single one of her sisterhood impregnable?" replied "_C'est selon_." He
often used to astonish my weak mind by his observations on this head. I
did not know till afterward that Sir Henry Fallowfield, the Bassompierre
of his day, came for the Christmas pheasant-shooting every year into
Guy's neighborhood, and that he had already imbibed lessons of
questionable morality, sitting at the gouty feet of that evil Gamaliel.
He spoke of and to women of every class readily whenever he got the
chance, always with perfect _aplomb_ and self-possession; and I have
heard older men remark since, that in him it did not appear the
precocity of "the rising generation," but rather the confidence of one
who knew his subject well. Perhaps the fact of his father having died
when he was an infant, and his having always been suzerain among his
women at home, may have had something to do with this. An absurd
instance of what I have been saying happened just before Guy left.
By time-honored custom, four or five of the Sixth were invited every
week to dine with the head master. They were not, strictly speaking,
convivial, those solemn banquets; where the host was condescendingly
affable, and his guests cheerful, as it were, under protest; resembling
somewhat the entertainments in the captain's cabin, where the chief is
unpopular.
Our Archididascalus was a kind-hearted, honest man, albeit, by virtue
of his office, somewhat strict and stern. You could read the
_Categories_ in the wrinkles of his colorless face, and contested
passages of Thucydides in the crows'-feet round his eyes. The
everlasting grind at the educational tread-mill had worn away all he
might once have had of imagination; he translated with precisely the
same intonations the Tusculan _Disputations_ and--_Erôs anikate machan._
He had lately taken to himself a wife, his junior by a score of years.
The academic atmosphere had not had time then to freeze her into the
dignity befitting her position; when I met her ten years later, she was
steady and staid enough, poor thing, to have been the wife of Grotius.
Guy sat next to her that evening, and before the first course was over a
decided flirtation was established. The pretty hostess, albeit wife of a
doctor and daughter of a dean, had evidently a strong coquettish element
in her composition, and a very slight spark was sufficient to relight
the _veteris vestigia flammæ._
For some time her husband did not seem to realize the position; but
gradually his sentences grew rare and curt; he opened his mouth, no
longer to let fall the pearls of his wisdom, but to stop it with savory
meat; finally this last resource failed, and he sat, looking wrathfully
but helplessly on the proceedings at the other end of the table--a
lamentable instance of prostrated ecclesiastical dignity. His disgust,
however, was far exceeded by the horror of one of the party, a meek,
cadaverous-looking boy, whose parents lived in the town, and who was
wont to regard the head master as the vicegerent of all powers, civil
and sacerdotal--I am not sure he did not include military as well. I
caught him looking several times at the door and the ceiling with a
pale, guilty face, as if he expected some immediate visitation to punish
the sacrilege. However, heaven, which did not interrupt the feast of
Atreus or of Tereus (till the dessert), allowed us to finish our dinner
in peace. During the interval when we sat alone over his claret, our
host revived a little; but utterly relapsed in the drawing-room, where
things went on worse than ever. Guy leaned over the fair Penelope (such
was her classical and not inappropriate name) while she was singing, and
over her sofa afterward, evidently considering himself her legitimate
proprietor for the time, and regarding the husband, as he hovered round
them, in the light of an unauthorized intruder. The latter would have
given any thing, once or twice, to have interfered, I am sure; but,
apart from, the extreme ridicule of the thing, he was in his own house,
and as hospitable as Saladin.
It was a great scene, when, at parting, she gave Guy the camellia that
she wore at her breast; the doctor gasped thrice convulsively and said
no word; but I wonder how she accounted afterward for the smile and
blush which answered some whispered thanks? There are certain limits
that even the historian dares not transgress; a veil falls between the
profane and the thalamus of an LL.D.; but I rather imagine she had a
hard time of it that night, the poor little woman! Let us hope, in
charity, that she held her own.
When the Count was questioned as to the conversation that had passed,
he declined to give any particulars, merely remarking that "he had to
thank Dr. ---- for for a very pleasant evening, and he hoped everyone
had enjoyed themselves very much"--which was philanthropic, to say the
least of it.
I don't know if it was our imagination, but we fancied that when the
head master called up Livingstone in form after this, he did so with an
air of grave defiance, such as a duelist of the Old Régime may have worn
when, doffing his plumed hat, he said to his adversary, "_En garde!_"
There was little time to make observations, for shortly afterward Guy
went up to Oxford, whither, six months later, I followed him.