Good Mr. Knave, give me my due, I like a tart as well as you; But I
would starve on good roast beef, Ere I would look so like a thief.--The
Queen of Hearts.
Nune vino pellite curas; Cras ingens iterabimus aequor. Horace.
The next morning I received a note from Guloseton, asking me to dine
with him at eight, to meet his chevreuil. I sent back an answer in the
affirmative, and then gave myself wholly up to considering what was the
best line of conduct to pursue with regard to Lord Dawton. “It would be
pleasant enough,” said Anger, “to go to him, to ask him boldly for
the borough so often pledged to you, and in case of his refusal, to
confront, to taunt, and to break with him.”
“True,” replied that more homely and less stage effect arguer, which
we term Knowledge of the world; “but this would be neither useful nor
dignified--common sense never quarrels with any one. Call upon Lord
Dawton, if you will--ask him for his promise, with your second best
smile, and receive his excuses with your very best. Then do as you
please--break with him or not--you can do either with grace and quiet;
never make a scene about any thing--reproach and anger always do make
a scene.” “Very true,” said I, in answer to the latter suggestion--and
having made up my mind, I repaired a quarter before three to Lord
Dawton’s House.
“Ah, Pelham,” said the little minister; “delighted to see you look so
much the better from the country air; you will stay in town now, I hope,
till the end of the season?”
“Certainly,” my lord, “or, at all events, till the prorogation of
parliament; how, indeed, could I do otherwise with your lordship’s kind
promise before my eyes. Mr.--, the member for your borough of--, has, I
believe, accepted the Chiltern Hundreds? I feel truly obliged to you for
so promptly fulfilling your promise to me.”
“Hem! my dear Pelham, hem!” murmured Lord Dawton. I bent forward as if
in the attitude of listening respect, but really the more clearly to
perceive, and closely to enjoy his confusion. He looked up and caught my
eye, and not being too much gratified with its involuntary expression,
he grew more and more embarrassed; at last he summoned courage.
“Why, my dear Sir,” he said, “I did, it is true, promise you that
borough; but individual friendship must frequently be sacrificed to the
public good. All our party insisted upon returning Mr. V--in place of
the late member: what could I do? I mentioned your claims, they all, to
a man, enlarged upon your rival’s: to be sure, he is an older person,
and his family is very powerful in the Lower House; in short, you
perceive, my dear Pelham--that is, you are aware--you can feel for the
delicacy of my situation--one could not appear too eager for one’s own
friends at first, and I was forced to concede.”
Lord Dawton was now fairly delivered of his speech; it was, therefore,
only left me to congratulate him on his offspring.
“My dear lord,” I began, “you could not have pleased me better: Mr. V.
is a most estimable man, and I would not, for the world, have had
you suspected of placing such a trifle as your own honour--that is
to say--your promise to me, before the commands--that is to say, the
interests--of your party; but no more of this now. Was your lordship at
the Duke of--‘s last night?”
Dawton seized joyfully the opportunity of changing the conversation, and
we talked and laughed on indifferent matters till I thought it time
to withdraw; this I did with the most cordial appearance of regard and
esteem; nor was it till I had fairly set my foot out of his door, that
I suffered myself to indulge the “black bile,” at my breast. I turned
towards the Green Park, and was walking slowly along the principal mall
with my hands behind me, and my eyes on the ground, when I heard my own
name uttered. On looking back, I perceived Lord Vincent on horseback; he
stopped, and conversed with me. In the humour I was in with Lord Dawton,
I received him with greater warmth than I had done of late; and he also,
being in a social mood, seemed so well satisfied with our rencontre, and
my behaviour, that he dismounted to walk with me.
“This park is a very different scene now,” said Vincent, “from what it
was in the times of ‘The Merry Monarch;’ yet it is still, a spot much
more to my taste, than its more gaudy and less classical brother of
Hyde. There is something pleasingly melancholy, in walking over places
haunted by history; for all of us live more in the past than the
present.”
“And how exactly alike in all ages,” said I, “men have been. On the very
spot we are on now, how many have been actuated by the same feelings
that now actuate us--how many have made perhaps exactly the same remark
just made by you. It is this universal identity, which forms our most
powerful link with those that have been--there is a satisfaction in
seeing how closely we resemble the Agamemnons of gone times, and we take
care to lose none of it, by thinking how closely we also resemble the
sordidi Thersites.”
“True,” replied Vincent, “if wise and great men did but know, how little
difference there is between them and the foolish or the mean, they would
not take such pains to be wise and great; to use the Chinese proverb,
‘they sacrifice a picture to get possession of its ashes.’ It is almost
a pity that the desire to progress should be so necessary to our being;
ambition is often a fine, but never a felicitous feeling. Cyprian, in a
beautiful passage on envy, calls it ‘the moth of the soul:’ but perhaps,
even that passion is less gnawing, less a ‘tabes pectoris,’ than
ambition. You are surprised at my heat--the fact is, I am enraged
at thinking how much we forfeit, when we look up only, and trample
unconsciously, in the blindness of our aspiration, on the affections
which strew our path. Now, you and I have been utterly estranged
from each other of late. Why?--for any dispute--any disagreement in
private--any discovery of meanness--treachery, unworthiness in the
other? No! merely because I dine with Lord Lincoln, and you with Lord
Dawton, voila tout. Well say the Jesuits, that they who live for the
public, must renounce all private ties; the very day we become citizens,
we are to cease to be men. Our privacy is like Leo Decimus; [Note: See
Jovius.] directly it dies, all peace, comfort, joy, and sociality are
to die with it; and an iron age, ‘barbara vis et dira malorum omnium
incommoda’ [Note: See Jovius.] to succeed.”
“It is a pity, that we struck into different paths,” said I; “no
pleasure would have been to me greater, than making our political
interests the same; but--” “Perhaps there is no but,” interrupted
Vincent; “perhaps, like the two knights in the hacknied story, we are
only giving different names to the same shield, because we view it on
different sides; let us also imitate them in their reconciliation, as
well as their quarrel, and since we have already run our lances against
each other, be convinced of our error, and make up our difference.”
I was silent; indeed, I did not like to trust myself to speak. Vincent
continued:
“I know,” said he, “and it is in vain for you to conceal it, that you
have been ill-used by Dawton. Mr. V. is my first cousin; he came to
me the day after the borough was given to him, and told me all that
Clandonald and Dawton had said to him at the time. Believe me, they did
not spare you;--the former, you have grievously offended; you know that
he has quarrelled irremediably with his son Dartmore, and he insists
that you are the friend and abettor of that ingenuous youth, in all his
debaucheries and extravagance--tu illum corrumpi sinis. I tell you this
without hesitation, for I know you are less vain than ambitious, and I
do not care about hurting you in the one point, if I advance you in the
other. As for me, I own to you candidly and frankly, that there is no
pains I would spare to secure you to our party. Join us, and you shall,
as I have often said, be on the parliamentary benches of our corps,
without a moment of unnecessary delay. More I cannot promise you,
because I cannot promise more to myself; but from that instant your
fortune, if I augur aught aright from your ability, will be in your own
hands. You shake your head--surely you must see, that there is not a
difference between two vehemently opposite parties to be reconciled--aut
numen aut Nebuchadrezar. There is but a verbal disagreement between us,
and we must own the wisdom of the sentence recorded in Aulus Gellius,
that ‘he is but a madman, who splits the weight of things upon the
hair-breadths of words.’ You laugh at the quaintness of the quotation;
quaint proverbs are often the truest.”
If my reader should think lightly of me, when I own that I felt wavering
and irresolute at the end of this speech, let him for a moment place
himself in my situation--let him feel indignant at the treachery, the
injustice, the ingratitude of one man; and, at the very height of his
resentment, let him be soothed, flattered, courted, by the offered
friendship and favour of another. Let him personally despise the former,
and esteem the latter; and let him, above all, be convinced as well as
persuaded of the truth of Vincent’s remark, viz. that no sacrifice
of principle, nor of measures, was required--nothing but an alliance
against men, not measures. And who were those men? bound to me by a
single tie--meriting from my gratitude a single consideration? No! the
men, above all others, who had offered me the greatest affront, and
deserved from me the smallest esteem.
But, however human feelings might induce me to waver, I felt that it was
not by them only I was to decide. I am not a man whose vices or virtues
are regulated by the impulse and passion of the moment; if I am quick
to act, I am habitually slow to deliberate. I turned to Vincent, and
pressed his hand: “I dare not trust myself to answer you now,” said
I: “give me till to-morrow; I shall then have both considered and
determined.”
I did not wait for his reply. I sprung from him, turned down the passage
which leads to Pall Mall, and hastened home once more to commune with my
own heart, and--not to be still.
In these confessions I have made no scruple of owning my errors and my
foibles; all that could occasion mirth, or benefit to the reader were
his own. I have kept a veil over the darker and stormier emotions of my
soul; all that could neither amuse nor instruct him, are mine!
Hours passed on--it became time to dress--I rung for Bedos--dressed with
my usual elaborateness of pains--great emotions interfere little with
the mechanical operations of life--and drove to Guloseton’s.
He was unusually entertaining; the dinner too was unusually good; but,
thinking that I was sufficiently intimate with my host not to be obliged
to belie my feelings, I remained distrait, absent, and dull.
“What is the matter with you, my friend?” said the good natured epicure;
“you have neither applauded my jokes, nor tasted my escallopes; and your
behaviour has trifled alike with my chevreuil, and my feelings.” The
proverb is right, in saying “Grief is communicative.” I confess that I
was eager to unbosom myself to one upon whose confidence I could depend.
Guloseton heard me with great attention and interest--“Little,” said he,
kindly, “little as I care for these matters myself, I can feel for those
who do: I wish I could serve you better than by advice. However, you
cannot, I imagine, hesitate to accept Vincent’s offer. What matters it
whether you sit on one bench or on another, so that you do not sit in a
thorough draught--or dine at Lord Lincoln’s, or Lord Dawton’s, so long
as the cooks are equally good? As for Dawton, I always thought him a
shuffling, mean fellow, who buys his wines at the second price, and
sells his offices at the first. Come, my dear fellow, let us drink to
his confusion.”
So saying, Guloseton filled my glass to the brim. He had sympathized
with me--I thought it, therefore, my duty to sympathize with him; nor
did we part till the eyes of the bon vivant saw more things in heaven
and earth, than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the sober.
VOLUME VII.