Reddere person ae scit convenientia cuique.--Horace: Ars Poetica.
I was loitering over my breakfast the next morning, and thinking of the
last night’s scene, when Lord Vincent was announced.
“How fares the gallant Pelham?” said he, as he entered the room.
“Why, to say the truth,” I replied, “I am rather under the influence
of blue devils this morning, and your visit is like a sun-beam in
November.”
“A bright thought,” said Vincent, “and I shall make you a very pretty
little poet soon; publish you in a neat octavo, and dedicate you to Lady
D--e. Pray, by the by, have you ever read her plays? You know they were
only privately printed?”
“No,” said I, (for in good truth, had his lordship interrogated me
touching any other literary production, I should have esteemed it a part
of my present character to return the same answer.)
“No!” repeated Vincent; “permit me to tell you, that you must never seem
ignorant of any work not published. To be recherche, one must always
know what other people don’t--and then one has full liberty to sneer
at the value of what other people do know. Renounce the threshold
of knowledge. There every new proselyte can meet you. Boast of your
acquaintance with the sanctum, and not one in ten thousand can dispute
it with you. Have you read Monsieur de C--‘s pamphlet?”
“Really,” said I, “I have been so busy.”
“Ah, mon ami!” cried Vincent, “the greatest sign of an idle man is to
complain of being busy. But you have had a loss: the pamphlet is good.
C--, by the way, has an extraordinary, though not an expanded mind; it
is like a citizen’s garden near London: a pretty parterre here, and a
Chinese pagoda there; an oak tree in one corner, and a mushroom bed
in the other. You may traverse the whole in a stride; it is the four
quarters of the globe in a mole-hill. Yet every thing is good in its
kind; and is neither without elegance nor design in its arrangement.”
“What do you think,” said I, “of the Baron de--, the minister of--?”
“Of him!” replied Vincent--
“‘His soul Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole.’”
“It is dark and bewildered--full of dim visions of the ancient
regime;--it is a bat hovering about the chambers of an old ruin. Poor,
antique little soul! but I will say nothing more about it,--
“‘For who would be satirical Upon a thing so very small’ as the soul of
the Baron de ------?”
Finding Lord Vincent so disposed to the biting mood, I immediately
directed his rabies towards Mr. Aberton, for whom I had a most
inexpressible contempt.
“Aberton,” said Vincent, in answer to my question, if he knew that
aimable attache--“Yes! a sort of man who, speaking of the English
embassy, says we--who sticks his best cards on his chimney-piece, and
writes himself billets-doux from duchesses. A duodecimo of ‘precious
conceits,’ bound in calf-skin--I know the man well; does he not dress
decently, Pelham?”
“His clothes are well made,” said I; “but no man can dress well with
those hands and feet!”
“Ah!” said Vincent, “I should think he went to the best tailor, and
said, ‘give me a collar like Lord So and So’s’; one who would not dare
to have a new waistcoat till it had been authoritatively patronized, and
who took his fashions, like his follies, from the best proficients. Such
fellows are always too ashamed of themselves not to be proud of their
clothes--like the Chinese mariners, they burn incense before the
needle!”
“And Mr. Howard de Howard,” said I, laughing, “what do you think of
him?”
“What! the thin secretary?” cried Vincent.
“He is the mathematical definition of a straight line--length without
breadth. His inseparable friend, Mr. Aberton, was running up the Rue St.
Honore yesterday in order to catch him.”
“Running!” cried I, “just like common people--when were you or I ever
seen running?”
“True,” continued Vincent; “but when I saw him chasing that meagre
apparition, I said to Bennington, ‘I have found out the real Peter
Schlemil!’ ‘Who?’ (asked his grave lordship, with serious naivete) ‘Mr.
Aberton,’ said I; ‘don’t you see him running after his shadow?’ But the
pride of the lean thing is so amusing! He is fifteenth cousin to the
duke, and so his favourite exordium is, ‘Whenever I succeed to the
titles of my ancestors.’It was but the other day, that he heard two or
three silly young men discussing church and state, and they began by
talking irreligion--(Mr. Howard de Howard is too unsubstantial not to be
spiritually inclined)--however he only fidgeted in his chair. They then
proceeded to be exceedingly disloyal. Mr. Howard de Howard fidgeted
again;--they then passed to vituperations on the aristocracy--this the
attenuated pomposity (magni nominis umbra) could brook no longer. He
rose up, cast a severe look on the abashed youths, and thus addressed
them--‘Gentlemen, I have sate by in silence, and heard my King derided,
and my God blasphemed; but now in attacking the aristocracy, I can no
longer refrain from noticing so obviously intentional an insult. You
have become personal.’ But did you know, Pelham, that he is going to be
married?”
“No,” said I. “I can’t say that I thought such an event likely. Who is
the intended?”
“A Miss--, a girl with some fortune. ‘I can bring her none,’ said he to
the father, ‘but I can make her Mrs. Howard de Howard.’”
“Alas, poor girl!” said I, “I fear that her happiness will hang upon a
slender thread. But suppose we change the conversation: first, because
the subject is so meagre, that we might easily wear it out, and
secondly, because such jests may come home. I am not very corpulent
myself.”
“Bah!” said Vincent, “but at least you have bones and muscles. If you
were to pound the poor secretary in a mortar, you might take him all up
in a pinch of snuff.”
“Pray, Vincent,” said I, after a short pause, “did you ever meet with a
Mr. Thornton, at Paris?”
“Thornton, Thornton,” said Vincent, musingly; “what, Tom Thornton?”
“I should think, very likely,” I replied; “just the sort of man who
would be Tom Thornton--has a broad face, with a colour, and wears a
spotted neckcloth; Tom--what could his name be but Tom?”
“Is he about five-and-thirty?” asked Vincent, “rather short, and with
reddish coloured hair and whiskers?”
“Precisely,” said I; “are not all Toms alike?”
“Ah,” said Vincent, “I know him well: he is a clever, shrewd fellow, but
a most unmitigated rascal. He is the son of a steward in Lancashire, and
received an attorney’s education; but being a humorous, noisy fellow, he
became a great favourite with his father’s employer, who was a sort of
Mecaenas to cudgel players, boxers, and horse jockies. At his house,
Thornton met many persons of rank, but of a taste similar to their
host’s: and they, mistaking his vulgar coarseness for honesty, and his
quaint proverbs for wit, admitted him into their society. It was with
one of them that I have seen him. I believe of late, that his character
has been of a very indifferent odour: and whatever has brought him among
the English at Paris--those white-washed abominations--those ‘innocent
blacknesses,’ as Charles Lamb calls chimney sweepers, it does not argue
well for his professional occupations. I should think, however, that he
manages to live here; for wherever there are English fools, there are
fine pickings for an English rogue.”
“Ay,” said I, “but are there enough fools here, to feed the rogues?”
“Yes, because rogues are like spiders, and eat each other, when there is
nothing else to catch; and Tom Thornton is safe, as long as the ordinary
law of nature lasts, that the greater knave preys on the lesser, for
there cannot possibly be a greater knave than he is. If you have made
his acquaintance, my dear Pelham, I advise you most soberly to look to
yourself, for if he doth not steal, beg, or borrow of you, Mr. Howard de
Howard will grow fat, and even Mr. Aberton cease to be a fool. And
now, most noble Pelham, farewell. Il est plus aise d’etre sage pour les
autres que de l’etre pour soi-meme.”