“THE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF DION.”
THE secretary went out into the park, and down to the neglected
shrubbery-walk that wound along the river bank. This was the loneliest
and wildest part of Mr. Jerningham’s domain, and solitude was what
Eustace Thorburn wanted to-day. He had brought with him, not his own
poem, but those two slender volumes which contained the history of his
mother’s youth, and in the composition whereof he beheld the hand of
his unknown father. He wanted to read this book a second time, even
more slowly and thoughtfully than he had read it the first time. He
wanted, if it were possible, to plumb the very depths of his father’s
heart.
The still summer day and the woodland solitude were well fitted
for meditation. Eustace walked about a mile and a half from M. de
Bergerac’s cottage before he opened his book. The seat which he chose
was a rude rustic bench, in a hollow of the bank, close to the edge of
the river--a seat which at high tide was half covered by the water. The
rugged sloping bank rose behind the rough wooden bench. The young man
leaned lazily against the short burnt grass of the bank as he read.
The portion of the book most interesting to this one reader was that
which told, in terms half cynical, half playful, of the writer’s brief
delusion--the little Arcadian comedy of rustic life with the girl whose
heart he had broken, and the bitter tragedy in which it ended.
The scene depicted in this portion of the story was wild and
mountainous; snow-crowned hills formed the background of the landscape.
The sea was close at hand; all was gigantic, rugged, uncivilized. Yet
there was no mention of foreign customs or foreign people. There was a
certain familiarity in everything, that was scarcely compatible with
the idea that this rustic dwelling-place of Dion’s was remote from
England; and Eustace decided that the scene of the story must have lain
within the British dominions. The description of the landscape might
apply to many spots in Scotland, in Wales, or even in Ireland. Clue to
the exact locality there seemed, on first consideration, none; so faint
were the indications, so general the features of the scene. The record
had been evidently written long after the occurrences described. Only
the cold light of memory illumined the pages; after-disappointments
had embittered the spirit of the writer, and lent bitterness even to
memory. It was, in very truth, the confession of a man infinitely worse
than the author of _Dion_.
The following were the pages which told Eustace how rudely his mother’s
brief dream had been broken:
“I think we had scarcely been a month at H. H. before I began to
discover how profound was my mistake. Tenderness and affection,
a fond admiration of my mental attributes that approached
idolatry--these my poor C. gave me in liberal measure. But the higher
tribute of self-abnegation she could not give me. Hers was one of
those natures which are not made for sacrifice. The grandeur of heroic
souls was wanting in this gentle breast. In the haven of a domestic
circle, safely sheltered from the storms of fate, to a man whose days
were occupied in that hard struggle for life which the world calls
business, and who asked of the gods nothing brighter than a household
angel, this dear girl would have seemed the sweetest of wives. I
think of her always with supreme tenderness; but I cannot forget the
weariness that crept upon me when I found how little sympathy there
was between us.
“From all loud reproaches, even from the appearance of grief, she for
a long time refrained. But I could see that she was not happy; and
this fact was in itself a torture to a man of sensitive nature and
irritable nerves. A look, a half-stifled sigh, ever and anon told
me that I had not found a companion, but a victim. The smile whose
angelic sweetness had charmed me in the bookseller’s lovely daughter
had faded, nay almost vanished. It was like some mediæval legend:
the supernal beauty met by the knight in the haunted darkness of an
enchanted forest is transformed into a dull, earthly spouse; and the
foolish knight, who had ridden home to his castle with a divinity,
awakens to find himself mated to a peasant-girl.
“This was my first and most bitter disappointment. I look back now and
ask myself what it was that I had hoped, and what substantial ground
there had been for my hopes. Because this poor girl had a face like
Guido’s Beatrice Cenci, because she praised my book in her low musical
voice and simple commonplace phrases, I must needs fancy that I had
found the Ægeria of my dreams, the companion-spirit, the inspiring and
elevating influence which every poet seeks in the object of his love!
“I used to think my own thoughts very grand in those days. There were
moments in which I yearned and hungered for some sharer in my dreams.
I was steeped to the lips in Shelley’s poetry; I wanted to find a
Cynthia,--
‘A second self, far dearer and more fair.
* * * * *
Hers too were all my thoughts: ere yet endowed
With music and with light, their fountains flowed
In poesy; and her still, earnest face,
Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed
Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace
Watching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace.
In me, communion with this purest being
Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise
In knowledge, which in hers mine own mind seeing,
Left in the human world few mysteries:
How without fear of evil or disguise
Was Cynthia! What a spirit, strong and mild,
Which death, or pain, or peril could despise,
Yet melt in tenderness!’
This was the bright ideal of my dream; and instead of this, what had
I found? A gentle girl, whose education had scarcely outstepped the
boundary-line of the all-abridging Pinnock, and who consumed hours
in secret weeping because she had offended her father, a small trader
in a small country town, and had forfeited her social position in
that miserably narrow world which was the beginning and end of her
universe. Alas for my fond delusions! Where was the
‘spirit strong and mild,
Which death, or pain, or peril could despise?’
“There were, indeed, moments in which some pretty poetical thought
slipped between my poor girl’s ‘scarlet-threaded lips;’ but she was
too timid by nature to give voice to her brightest fancies, and I
saw noble thoughts in her deep eyes which her lips never learned to
translate. Sometimes, in the solemn stillness of a moonlight night,
when we had wandered along some rugged mountain-path, and reached a
spot whence we could look down upon the pathless waste of waters,
which of all spectacles in Nature’s great theatre most affected this
untaught girl, I could see that her mind took a kind of inspiration
from the grandeur of the scene, and that the littleness of self was
for the moment put away from her. Are there not, indeed, brief pauses
of mental intoxication, in which the spirit releases itself from its
dull mortal bondage, and floats starward on the wings of inspiration?
‘If we could stay here for ever,’ she said to me one night, when we
sat in the little classic temple on D. P., looking down from that
craggy headland upon the barren sea; ‘if this light could shine
always, with those deep, solemn shadows sleeping under the shelter of
the rocks, I think that one might forget all that is hardest in the
world. Here I remember nothing except that you and I are together in
the moonlight. Past, present, and future seem to melt into this hour.
I can almost fancy the rocks and the waves feeling a sort of happiness
like this--a sense of delight when the moon shines upon them. It is
difficult to think that the waves feel _nothing_ when they come
creeping along the sands with that half-stealthy, half-joyous motion,
like the nymphs you talk of, dancing in secret, afraid to awaken the
sea-god.’
‘If you had lived in the days when there were gods upon the earth, C.,
I think you would have fallen in love with Poseidon.’
“She was looking out across the sea, with a dreamy light in her
eyes, and her lips half parted, as if she had indeed seen a band of
snowy-kirtled nymphs dancing on the broad stretch of sand in the
shadow of the headland.
‘Poss--who?’ she asked, wonderingly.
‘Poseidon; one of the elder sons of Time and the Great Mother, the
sea-god of whom you spoke just now. I think if you had lived in the
Golden Age, you would have met Tyro’s lover, and loved him, as she
did. I never saw such a passionate fondness for the sea as you betray
in every look and word.’
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘I have always loved the sea with a feeling that I
have been unable to express, as if there were indeed a human heart in
all that wide ocean. When I am--when you have been away longer than
usual, and I feel lonely, I come here, and sit for hours watching the
waves roll slowly in, and thinking.’
“And here her voice trembled a little, and I knew that the thoughts
of which she spoke were gloomy ones. Thus it was with us ever. For
a moment she seemed a companion, a kindred spirit; but in the next
we were back again in the old wearisome channel, and I felt myself
stifled by the atmosphere of B.
“Her utter want of education made a gulf between us which even love
could not span. The fact that she was intelligent, appreciative, was
not sufficient to render companionship possible between us. Those
regions which for me were densely peopled with bright and wondrous
images were for her blank and empty as the desert plains of Central
Africa. Pretty poetical fancies--the wild flowers of the intellectual
world--took quick root in her shallow mind; but the basis for deep
thoughts was wanting. I grew weary of conversation in which my part
was almost a monologue, weary of long _tête-à-têtes_ which left
me no richer by one wise thought or amusing paradox. Day by day I
fell back more completely upon my books for company. The poor child
perceived this with evident distress. One day she asked me, with
tones and looks most piteous, why I no longer talked to her, as I had
once talked, about the books I was reading, the subjects that I had
chosen for future poetic treatment. I told her frankly that it was
tiresome to me to talk to her of things with which she had evidently
no sympathy.
‘Indeed,’ she cried, ‘you are mistaken. I sympathize with all your
thoughts. I can picture to myself all your fancies. The worlds which
you tell me of, and the people--the strange, wild worship of those
strange people--I can fancy them and see them. They are a little dim
and shadowy to me; but I _do_ see them. And I so dearly love to
hear you talk. I cannot discuss these things with you as a clever
person would, and I cannot tell you half I think and feel about them;
but to sit by you as you read or write, to watch you till you grow
tired of your books, and look up and talk to me, is perfect happiness
for me--my only happiness now.’
“Here her voice grew tremulous, and she broke down in the usual
hopeless manner.
‘If you would only teach me to understand the things that interest
you, if you would let me read your books, I should be a fitter
companion for you,’ she said, presently.
“I groaned aloud at the hopelessness of this idea. I was to teach this
poor child to be my second self, to train her into sympathy--to grow
my own Cynthia! I envied Shelley his happier fate, and that bright
spirit which
‘Walked as free as light the clouds among.’
But Shelley had made his mistake, and had drained the bitter cup of
disappointment before he found his fair ideal.
“I know there are men who have educated their wives, but I never
could understand this idea of the lover lined with the pedagogue. C.
asked to read the books I was reading; _id est_, K. O. Müller,
in the original German; the _Orestea_, in the original Greek;
_A Course of Hindoo Tradition_, published by the Society for
the Propagation of Arianism; De Barante’s _Dukes of Burgundy_;
and the _Old Ballads of France_, with an occasional dip into
Catullus, Juvenal, Lucretius, or Horace. These were the books which
I was reading, in a very desultory, unprofitable manner; for the
weakness of my life has been inconstancy, even in the matter of books.
A few pages of one, a random peep between the leaves of another, a
hop, skip, and a jump between Oriental legend and Platonic philosophy,
finding everywhere some point of comparison, some forced resemblance.
I told my poor dear C. that anything like teaching on my part would
be an impossibility. However, by way of satisfying the poor child’s
thirst for knowledge, I sent a list of books to a London bookseller,
including a few simple elementary works and my favourite English
poets; and this little collection I presented to C. I found she had
read all the poets, in her father’s library, and was indeed as
familiar with them as I myself; but she received the books from me
with an appearance of real delight. This was the first present I made
her. It would have been a pleasure to me to lavish costly gifts upon
her; but it was a pleasure more exquisite to withhold them, and to be
sure that no adventitious aid had assisted me in the winning of her
love.
“I think that most wearisome institution, the honeymoon, must have
been inaugurated by some sworn foe to matrimony, some vile misogamist,
who took to himself a wife in order to discover, by experience, the
best mode of rendering married life a martyrdom.
“Enlightened by experience, this miserable wretch said to himself,
‘I will introduce a practice which, in the space of one short month,
shall transform the doating bridegroom into the indifferent husband,
the idolatrous lover into the submissive expiator of a fatal mistake.
For one month I, by my invisible agent, Fashion, will bind together
bride and bridegroom in dread imprisonment. Impalpable shall be their
fetters; fair and luxurious shall be their prison; complacent and
respectful shall be the valet and abigail, the lackeys and grooms who
act as their gaolers; and in that awful bondage they shall have no
worse chastisement than each other’s society. Chained together like
the wretched convicts of Toulon, they shall pace to and fro their
lonely exercise-ground, until the bright sky above and the bright
earth around them shall seem alike hateful. They shall be for ever
plumbing each other’s souls, and for ever finding shallows; for ever
gauging each other’s minds, to be for ever disappointed by the result.
And not till they have learned thoroughly to detest each other shall
the order of release be granted, and the fiat pronounced: You know
each other’s emptiness of mind and shallowness of heart; go forth and
begin your new existence, profoundly wretched in the knowledge that
your miserable lives must be spent together.’
“I had planned and plotted this residence at H. H., hoping to find
a glimpse of Eden in this loneliness amid Nature’s splendour, ‘with
one fair spirit for my minister.’ If I had been fond of sport, I
might have found amusement for my days, and might have returned at
night to my nest to meet an all-sufficient welcome in my love’s happy
smile. But I was at this time a student, still suffering from the
effects of over-work at O----, and a little from the disappointments
of my career, hyper-sensitive, _tant soit peu_ irritable; and
C.’s companionship bored me. This was a crisis of my life, in which
I needed the sustaining influence of a stronger mind than my own.
Even her affection became a kind of torment. She was too anxious to
please me, too painfully conscious of my slightest show of weariness,
too apprehensive of losing my regard. I could almost have said with
Bussy Rabutin, “_Je ne pouvais plus souffrir ma maîtresse, tant elle
m’aimait_.”
“It is needless to dwell upon this story of disappointment, that
was so keen as to verge upon remorse. I hated myself for my folly;
I was angry with this poor girl because she could neither be happy
nor render me so. If there were any breach of honour involved in my
broken promise, I paid dearly for my dishonour. And _that_ kind
of promise is never intended to be believed: it is the easy excuse
which a faithful knight provides for his lady-love. Let me be guilty
of perjury, that you may still be perfect, he says; and the damsel
accepts the chivalrous pretence.
“With this poor child, unhappily, there was no such thing as reason.
Worldly wisdom, the necessities of position, the ties of family, were
unknown in her vocabulary.
‘I have broken my father’s heart,’ she said, in that _larmoyante_
tone which became almost habitual to her. And thereupon, of course,
I felt myself a wretch. At this period of my life I sometimes
caught myself wondering what would have become of Faust if he and
Gretchen had spent six months in a rustic cottage amongst the Hartz
mountains. Surely he would have languished to return to his books,
to his parchments, to his crucibles and mathematical instruments, his
Nostradamus, and his prosy, insufferable Wagner; anything to escape
that lugubrious maiden.
“And yet what can be a prettier picture than Gretchen plucking the
petals of her rose, or my poor C., as I first saw her, bending with
rapt countenance over my own book? Oh, fatal book, that brought sorrow
to her, weariness unspeakable to me!
“If C. had been reasonable, she could have found little cause to
complain of me. I had no intention of breaking the tie so lightly
made. That I was responsible for that step, which must colour the
remainder of _her_ existence, I never for a moment forgot. All
I rebelled against was the notion that my future life was to be
overshadowed by the funereal tint which her melancholy vision imparted
to everything she looked upon. At one time I conceived the idea that
she was disquieted by the uncertainty of the future, and I hastened to
relieve her mind upon this point.
‘My darling girl,’ I said, with real earnestness, ‘you cannot surely
doubt that your future will be my first care. Come what may, your
prosperity, your happiness indeed,--so far as mortal man can command
happiness,--shall be assured. I hope you do not doubt this.’
“She looked at me with that dull despair which of late I had more than
once remarked in her countenance.
‘H.,’ she said, ‘shall I ever be your wife?’
“I turned my face away from her in silence, wrung her poor little cold
hands in my own, and left her without a word. This was a question
which I could not answer, a question which she should not have asked.
“That evening, as I walked alone in the dreary solitude under the
cliffs, a sudden thought flashed into my mind.
‘Good heavens,’ I thought, ‘how completely I have put myself into this
girl’s power by my folly; and what a hold she has upon me, if she knew
how to use it, or were base enough to trade upon the advantages of her
position!’
“Reflection told me that it was not in C. to make a mean use of power
which I had so unwittingly placed in her hands. But I laughed aloud
when I considered my shortsighted folly in allowing myself to drop
into such a dangerous position.
“When we next met, C. was pallid as death, and I could see that she
had devoted the interval to tears. I keenly felt her silent woe, and
with my whole heart pitied her childish disappointment. Until this
occasion I had not for a moment supposed that she cherished any hope
of such folly on my part as an utter sacrifice of my liberty. It was
this of which I thought, and not my position in the world. Had I
been inclined for matrimony, I would as willingly have married this
tradesman’s daughter as a countess. It was the hateful tie, the utter
abnegation of man’s divinest gift of freedom, the mortgage of my
future, from which I shrank with abhorrence.
‘My dear love,’ I said to C., as I tried to kiss away the traces of
her tears, ‘I mean to love you all my life, if you will let me. And
do you think I shall love you any less because I have not asked the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s permission to adore you? And then I was
guilty of that customary commonplace about ‘a marriage in the sight of
Heaven,’ which has been especially invented for such occasions.
“After this I tried to indoctrinate her with the philosophy of the
purest of men and most lawless of poets. I entreated her to rend
custom’s mortal chain,
‘And walk as free as light the clouds among.’
But the exalted mind which can rise superior to the bondage of custom
had not been given to this poor girl. She always went back to the one
inevitable argument, ‘I have broken my father’s heart.’
“It was quite in vain that I endeavoured to make her see the ethics of
life from a nobler stand-point. Her thoughts revolved always in the
same narrow circle--B----, that odious watering-place, and the humdrum
set of shopkeepers whom she had known from her childhood.
‘You do not know how my father is respected in the town,’ she said,
piteously, when I reminded her of the insignificance of such a place
as B---- when weighed against the rest of the universe, and ventured
to suggest that the esteem and approbation of B---- did not constitute
the greatest sacrifice ever made by woman.
‘As for the respect which these good people feel for your father, what
does it amount to, my dear love?’ I asked. ‘A man lives in some sleepy
country town twenty years or so, and pays his debts, and attends the
services of his parish church with unbroken regularity, and dies in
the odour of sanctity; or else suddenly throws the mental powers of
his fellow-townsmen off their balance by forging a bill of exchange,
or murdering his wife and children, or setting his house on fire
with a view to cheating the insurance companies. What is the respect
of such people worth? It is given to the man who pays his tradesmen
and goes to church. He may be the veriest tyrant, or hypocrite, or
fool in the universe, and they respect him all the same. He may have
squared the circle, or solved the problem of perpetual motion, or
invented the steam-engine, or originated the process of vaccination,
and if he fails to pay his butcher and baker, and to attend his
church, they will withhold their respect. Greatness of intellect, or
of conduct, is utterly beyond their comprehension. They would consider
Columbus a doubtful character, and Raleigh a disreputable one.’
“Upon this I saw symptoms of tears, and timeously departed. The dear
child took everything _au grand sérieux_. Oh! how I languished
for the graceful badinage of Kensington Gore, the careless talk of my
clubs--anything rather than this too poetical loneliness!
“I planned my future that night. Some pretty rustic cottage for C. in
the hilly country between Hampstead and Barnet, within an easy ride
of town, where my own headquarters must needs be when not abroad. I
had fancied that C. and I could have travelled together, but I found
her far too _triste_ a companion for Continental wanderings. She
was too ignorant to appreciate scenes which owe their best charm to
association, and thus utterly unable to sympathize with the emotions
which those scenes might excite in the breast of her fellow-traveller;
nor had she the animal spirits which render the ignorance of some
women amusing. She was, in short, the genius of home rather than the
goddess of poetry; and I resolved to establish a home over which she
might preside, a haven from the storms of life, whither I might go to
have oil poured into my wounds, and whence I might return to the world
refreshed and comforted.
“I pictured to myself this home, as fair as taste and wealth could
make it. No flowers that my hand could lavish would have been wanting
to adorn this poor girl’s pathway. I have no reproach to make against
myself here. There are few lives happier than hers would have been,
if she had been content to entrust herself to my guidance. But my
liberty was a treasure which I could not bring myself to resign.
“All might, perhaps, have gone well with us but for one unlucky turn
of affairs; an accident in which a fatalist would have recognized
the hand of Destiny, but in which I saw only one of those foolish
_contretemps_ which assist the further entanglement of that
tangled skein called Life.
“One day, in a sudden fit of disgust with myself, my books, my
companion, and the universe, I left the house, and went on foot in
search of some wandering Mephistopheles with whom to barter my soul
for a fresh sensation.
“I was five-and-twenty. My _première jeunesse_--the bloom on the
peach, the down on the butterfly’s wing, the fresh dews of morning,
the glory of the sunshine--had been wasted. The world called me a
young man--young because bitter thoughts had not yet set their mark
upon my brow. They were only inscribed upon my heart. I surveyed the
horizon of my life, and saw that the stars had all vanished. There
was only the dull equal gray of a sunless afternoon. It is impossible
to imagine a prospect more completely blank than that on which I
looked. There is no pleasure known to mankind that I had not tasted,
to satiety. The baser, as well as the more refined--I had tried them
all. In the records of Roman dissipation Suetonius or Gibbon could
suggest little--except some darker vices--which I had not tried, and
found wanting. I had slept under the reticulated lilies of Antinöus,
and supped upon beef-steaks and porter with the gladiators of
Commodus, in the modern guise of Tom Spring and Ben Caunt. Love had
been powerless to give me happiness. Friendship I had been too wise to
test. My friends were the friends of the rich Timon. I did not value
them so highly as to put their friendship through the crucible of
pretended poverty. I took them for what they were worth; and my sole
cause of complaint against them was that they failed to amuse me. My
life was one long yawn--and if I still lived, it was only because I
knew not what purgatory of perpetual _ennui_ might await me on
Acheron’s further shore. Could I have been certain of such an Inferno
as Dante’s--all action, passion, fever, excitement--I should gladly
have exchanged the placid wretchedness of life for the stirring
horrors of that dread under-world.
“On this one particular day, when most of all I felt the utter
weariness of my existence, I wandered purposeless along the
mountain-side--thinking of those rugged steeps of Hellas, which the
scene recalled--and scarcely knew whither my footsteps took me, till
I suddenly found myself in a scene that was very familiar, and on a
spot which, though not by any means remote from my own eyrie, I had
hitherto avoided.
“I was on the landward slope of the mountain; below me lay a lake,
and between my stand-point and the water rose curling wreaths of blue
smoke from the chimneys of a house which I knew very well.
“It was the hunting-lodge of E. T., a man who was, if not my friend,
at least one of my oldest acquaintances; a man between whom and myself
there reigned that easy-going familiarity which passes current for
friendship. We had been partners at whist, had been in love with
the same women, _de par le haut monde_ and _de par le bas
monde_. We had bought horses of each other; had cheated each other,
more or less unconsciously, in such dealing; had helped each other
to break the bank at a Palais-Royal gaming-table; had been concerned
together in an opera-ball riot one Easter with the D. of H. and
certain Parisian notabilities of the Boulevard du Gand. If this be not
friendship, I know not what is.
“The sight of those blue wreaths of smoke; the remembrance of the riot
in the Rue Lepelletier; the little suppers at the Rocher and the Trois
Frères; the wit, the wine, the fever of the blood that for the time
being is almost happiness--stirred my senses with a faint thrill of
pleasure.
‘If T. is there, I will ask him to dine with me,’ I thought; ‘C. must
accustom herself to receive my friends, or to let me receive them
without her. I am suffering from the Londoner’s nostalgie; I languish
for the air of the club-houses and the Ring. It will be something
to hear the newest scandals, fresh from the lips of E. T., who is a
notorious gossip and _mauvais diseur_.’
“I had some reason for concluding that T. was stopping at his place.
The smoke gave evidence that the house was inhabited, and I knew that
in his absence the place was generally shut up, and left in the charge
of a shepherd, who lived in a wretched shanty further down the valley.
My friend’s finances were as slender as his lineage was noble. He
claimed a direct descent from the Plantagenets, and was never out of
the hands of the Jews.
‘They are taking it out of me on account of that nasty knack of my
ancestors, who raised money by the extraction of the teeth of Israel,’
he said. ‘But we have changed all that. Isaac of York has the best of
it now-a-days, and draws the teeth of the Giaour!’
“I turned aside from the narrow path skirting the mountain, and walked
down the slope towards E. T.’s _pied-à-terre_. I was absurdly
pleased at the idea of seeing a man whose character I thoroughly
despised, and whose death I should have heard of without so much as a
passing regret.
“In my utter weariness of myself and my own thoughts, I cared not in
what cloaca I found a harbour of refuge. The gate of the small domain
swung loosely on its hinges. I pushed it open, and walked across the
small lawn, bordered by shrubberies of fir and laurel. As I neared
the porch, I saw the red glow of a fire shining in one of the lower
windows, and was welcomed by a yapping chorus of lap-dogs, whose bark
sounded shrill through the open door. There was no need for ceremony
in this wild region; and even if I had wished to stand upon punctilio,
there was neither bell nor knocker whereby I might have demanded
admittance. I walked straight into the hall, or lobby--the former
title is too grandiose for so small a chamber--and was immediately
struck by the change which had come over the scene since I had looked
upon it some twelve months before.
“It was then a rude chaos of gunnery, fishing-tackle, single-sticks,
fencers’ masks, boxing-gloves, plastrons, pipes, greatcoats, leather
gaiters, fishing-boots, mackintoshes, and horse-cloths; nauseous with
the odour of stale tobacco, and dangerous by the occupation of savage
dogs. It was now dainty as a lady’s boudoir: the floor bright with
scarlet sheepskins, the walls gay with French prints. A velvet curtain
half-shrouded the door of my friend’s dining-room, just revealing a
peep of the bright picture within--a table spread for luncheon, with
snowy linen and sparkling glass. Half a dozen little yapping dogs
issued from this room, and assailed me with shrill rancour. Not such
specimens of the canine race had I before beheld in this mountain
retreat. My friend T. ever affected the biggest and roughest of
the species. Lancashire-bred mastiffs, Danish wolfhounds--the very
Titans of the canine race from Mount St. Bernard or Newfoundland.
These little creatures were the apoplectic descendants of that royal
race which was cradled on the knees of Castlemain and Portsmouth,
swaddled in the purple of Charles. Among these appeared a couple of
russet-coated pugs, with negro features, swart visages, and short,
bandy legs.
“Amidst the clamour of these creatures my entrance was unheard. I
stooped down to examine the brutes, and was amused to perceive that
the collar of one of the spaniels was the daintiest toy of filigree
gold and mosaic.
‘Has my friend turned _petit maitre_?’ I asked myself.
“A second glance showed me a name upon the collar--Carlitz.
“Carlitz! Hast thou not read, oh! gentle reader, Eastern stories that
tell how, by a magician’s wand, a fairy palace has risen suddenly
in the midst of the barren desert, with birds singing, and fountains
dancing in the sunlight; and among the fountains, and flowers, and
birds, and barbarously-splendid colonnades, tripping across the
tesselated floors, there comes something more beautiful than tropical
bird or flower?
“The princess of the fairy tale--the Orient personified, with all its
languid loveliness, its intoxicating sweetness, its colour and music,
and sunshine and perfume--melted into one divine human creature.
“This is what the name upon the dog’s collar did for me. It was the
arch-enchanter’s wand, evoking a goddess, in that bleak valley where I
had hoped only to find a commonplace acquaintance.
“Carlitz! Shall I try to describe her--to describe the indescribable?
Thou knowest her, kind reader; on thee, too, has she shone; for not
to have seen her is to be a slave so dull that I would not think this
book should fall into such unworthy hands. I will say of her what
Lysippus said of Athens:
‘Hast not seen Carlitz, then thou art a log;
Hast seen and not been charmed, thou art an ass.’
Or if, by reason of absence in far-distant lands, thou hast not seen
her, picture to thyself the fairest princess of thy childish fairy
lore, place her on a mortal stage, the cynosure of a thousand eyes,
the idol of innumerable hearts, the topic of incalculable tongues,
the gossip of uncountable newspapers, or, in one word--THE
FASHION; endow her with a voice of the rarest power and richness;
gift her with smiles that bewitch the fancy and accents that enthrall
the soul; surround her with all the loveliest objects art ever devised
or taste selected--and thou hast some faint image of that supernal
being whom men call Carlitz.
“She lives still--still walks ‘a form of life and light,’ which, seen,
becomes ‘a part of sight;’ but the first glory of her loveliness has
departed--the rich, ripe voice has lost some touch of its old music.
She is still Carlitz, and to say this is to say that she is fairer
than all the rest of womankind; but she is no longer the Carlitz of
those days when Plancus was consul, and the Bonbonnière Opera-house
was in its glory.”