MISS BRETHERTON
BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
1888
PREFATORY NOTE
It ought to be stated that the account of the play _Elvira_, given in
Chapter VII. of the present story, is based upon an existing play, the
work of a little known writer of the Romantic time, whose short,
brilliant life came to a tragical end in 1836.
M. A. W.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
So many criticisms, not of a literary but of a personal kind, have been
made on this little book since its appearance, that I may perhaps be
allowed a few words of answer to them in the shape of a short preface to
this new edition. It has been supposed that because the book describes a
London world, which is a central and conspicuous world with interests and
activities of a public and prominent kind, therefore all the characters
in it are drawn from real persons who may be identified if the seeker is
only clever enough. This charge of portraiture is constantly brought
against the novelist, and it is always a difficult one to meet; but one
may begin by pointing out that, in general, it implies a radical
misconception of the story-teller's methods of procedure. An idea, a
situation, is suggested to him by real life, he takes traits and
peculiarities from this or that person whom he has known or seen, but
this is all. When he comes to write--unless, of course, it is a case of
malice and bad faith--the mere necessities of an imaginative effort
oblige him to cut himself adrift from reality. His characters become to
him the creatures of a dream, as vivid often as his waking life, but
still a dream. And the only portraits he is drawing are portraits of
phantoms, of which the germs were present in reality, but to which he
himself has given voice, garb, and action.
So the present little sketch was suggested by real life; the first hint
for it was taken from one of the lines of criticism--not that of the
author--adopted towards the earliest performances of an actress who,
coming among us as a stranger a year and a half ago, has won the respect
and admiration of us all. The share in dramatic success which, in this
country at any rate, belongs to physical gift and personal charm; the
effect of the public sensitiveness to both, upon the artist and upon art;
the difference between French and English dramatic ideals; these were the
various thoughts suggested by the dramatic interests of the time. They
were not new, they had been brought into prominence on more than one
occasion during the last few years, and, in a general sense, they are
common to the whole history of dramatic art. In dealing with them the
problem of the story-teller was twofold--on the one hand, to describe the
public in its two divisions of those who know or think they know, and
those whose only wish is to feel and to enjoy; and on the other hand, to
draw such an artist as should embody at once all the weakness and all the
strength involved in the general situation. To do this, it was necessary
to exaggerate and emphasise all the criticisms that had ever been brought
against beauty in high dramatic place, while, at the same time, charm and
loveliness were inseparable from the main conception. And further, it was
sought to show that, although the English susceptibility to physical
charm--susceptibility greater here, in matters of art, than it is in
France--may have, and often does have, a hindering effect upon the
artist, still, there are other influences in a great society which are
constantly tending to neutralise this effect; in other words, that even
in England an actress may win her way by youth and beauty, and still
achieve by labour and desert another and a greater fame.
These were the ideas on which this little sketch was based, and in
working them out the writer has not been conscious of any portraiture of
individuals. Whatever attractiveness she may have succeeded in giving to
her heroine is no doubt the shadow, so to speak, of a real influence so
strong that no one writing of the English stage at the present moment can
easily escape it; but otherwise everything is fanciful, the outcome, and
indeed, too much the outcome, of certain critical ideas. And in the
details of the story there has been no chronicling of persons; all the
minor and subsidiary figures are imaginary, devised so as to illustrate
to the best of the writer's ability the various influences which are
continually brought to bear upon the artist in the London of to-day.
There are traits and reminiscences of actual experience in the
book,--what story was ever without them? But no living person has been
drawn, and no living person has any just reason to think himself or
herself aggrieved by any sentence which it contains.
CHAPTER I
It was the day of the private view at the Royal Academy. The great
courtyard of Burlington House was full of carriages, and a continuous
stream of guests was pressing up the red-carpeted stairs, over which
presided some of the most imposing individuals known to the eyes of
Londoners, second only to Her Majesty's beefeaters in glory of scarlet
apparel. Inside, however, as it was not yet luncheon-time, the rooms were
but moderately filled. It was possible to see the pictures, to appreciate
the spring dresses, and to single out a friend even across the Long
Gallery. The usual people were there: Academicians of the old school and
Academicians of the new; R.A.'s coming from Kensington and the 'regions
of culture,' and R.A.'s coming from more northerly and provincial
neighbourhoods where art lives a little desolately and barely, in want of
the graces and adornings with which 'culture' professes to provide her.
There were politicians still capable--as it was only the first week of
May--of throwing some zest into their amusements. There were art-critics
who, accustomed as they were by profession to take their art in large and
rapid draughts, had yet been unable to content themselves with the one
meagre day allowed by the Academy for the examination of some 800 works,
and were now eking out their notes of the day before by a few
supplementary jottings taken in the intervals of conversation with their
lady friends. There were the great dealers betraying in look and gait
their profound, yet modest, consciousness that upon them rested the
foundations of the artistic order, and that if, in a superficial
conception of things, the star of an Academician differs from that of the
man who buys his pictures in glory, the truly philosophic mind assesses
matters differently. And, most important of all, there were the women,
old and young, some in the full freshness of spring cottons, as if the
east wind outside were not mocking the efforts of the May sun, and others
still wrapped in furs, which showed a juster sense of the caprices of the
English climate. Among them one might distinguish the usual shades and
species: the familiar country cousin, gathering material for the
over-awing of such of her neighbours as were unable to dip themselves
every year in the stream of London; the women folk of the artist world,
presenting greater varieties of type than the women of any other class
can boast; and lastly, a sprinkling of the women of what calls itself
'London Society,' as well dressed, as well mannered, and as well provided
with acquaintance as is the custom of their kind.
In one of the farther rooms, more scantily peopled as yet than the rest,
a tall thin man was strolling listlessly from picture to picture, making
every now and then hasty references to his catalogue, but in general
eyeing all he saw with the look of one in whom familiarity with the sight
before him had bred weariness, if not contempt. He was a handsome man,
with a broad brow and a pleasant gentleness of expression. The eyes were
fine and thoughtful, and there was a combination of intellectual force
with great delicacy of line in the contour of the head and face which was
particularly attractive, especially to women of the more cultivated and
impressionable sort. His thin grayish hair was rather long--not of that
pronounced length which inevitably challenges the decision of the
bystander as to whether the wearer be fool or poet, but still long enough
to fall a little carelessly round the head and so take off from the
spruce conventional effect of the owner's irreproachable dress and
general London air.
Mr. Eustace Kendal--to give the person we have been describing his
name--was not apparently in a good temper with his surroundings. He was
standing with a dissatisfied expression before a Venetian scene drawn by
a brilliant member of a group of English artists settled on foreign soil
and trained in foreign methods.
'Not so good as last year,' he was remarking to himself. 'Vulgar drawing,
vulgar composition, hasty work everywhere. It is success spoils all these
men--success and the amount of money there is going. The man who painted
this didn't get any pleasure out of it. But it's the same all round. It
is money and luxury and the struggle to live which are driving us all on
and killing the artist's natural joy in his work. And presently, as that
odd little Frenchman said to me last year, we shall have dropped
irretrievably into the "lowest depth of mediocrity."'
'Kendal!' said an eager voice close to his ear, while a hand was laid on
his arm, 'do you know that girl?'
Kendal turned in astonishment and saw a short oldish man, in whom he
recognised a famous artist, standing by, his keen mobile face wearing an
expression of strong interest and inquiry.
'What girl?' he asked, with a smile, shaking his questioner by the hand.
'That girl in black, standing by Orchardson's picture. Why, you must know
her by sight! It's Miss Bretherton, the actress. Did you ever see such
beauty? I must get somebody to introduce me to her. There's nothing worth
looking at since she came in. But, by ill luck, nobody here seems to know
her.'
Eustace Kendal, to whom the warm artist's temperament of his friend was
well known, turned with some amusement towards the picture named, and
noticed that flutter in the room which shows that something or some one
of interest is present. People trying to look unconcerned, and catalogue
in hand, were edging towards the spot where the lady in black stood,
glancing alternately at her and at the pictures, in the manner of those
equally determined to satisfy their curiosity and their sense of
politeness. The lady in question, meanwhile, conscious that she was being
looked at, but not apparently disturbed by it, was talking to another
lady, the only person with her, a tall, gaunt woman, also dressed in
black and gifted abundantly with the forbidding aspect which beauty
requires in its duenna.
Kendal could see nothing more at first than a tall, slender figure, a
beautiful head, and a delicate white profile, in flashing contrast with
its black surroundings, and with lines of golden brown hair. But in
profile and figure there was an extraordinary distinction and grace which
reconciled him to his friend's eagerness and made him wish for the
beauty's next movement. Presently she turned and caught the gaze of the
two men full upon her. Her eyes dropped a little, but there was nothing
ill-bred or excessive in her self-consciousness. She took her companion's
arm with a quiet movement, and drew her towards one of the striking
pictures of the year, some little way off. The two men also turned and
walked away.
'I never saw such beauty as that before,' said the artist, with emphasis.
'I must find some one who knows her, and get the chance of seeing that
face light up, else I shall go home--one may as well. These daubs are not
worth the trouble of considering now!'
'See what it is to be an "ideal painter,"' said Kendal, laughing. 'At
home one paints river goddesses, and tree-nymphs, and such like remote
creatures, and abroad one falls a victim to the first well-dressed,
healthy-looking girl--chaperone, bonnet, and all.'
'Show me another like her,' said his friend warmly. 'I tell you they're
not to be met with like that every day. _Je me connais en beauté_, my
dear fellow, and I never saw such perfection, both of line and colour, as
that. It is extraordinary; it excites one as an artist. Look, is that
Wallace now going up to her?'
Kendal turned and saw a short fair man, with a dry keen American face,
walk up to the beauty and speak to her. She greeted him cordially, with a
beaming smile and bright emphatic movements of the head, and the three
strolled on.
'Yes, that is Edward Wallace,--very much in it, apparently. That is the
way Americans have. They always know everybody it's desirable to know.
But now's your chance, Forbes. Stroll carelessly past them, catch
Wallace's eye, and the thing is done.'
Mr. Forbes had already dropped Kendal's arm, and was sauntering across
the room towards the chatting trio. Kendal watched the scene from a
distance with some amusement; saw his friend brush carelessly past the
American, look back, smile, stop, and hold out his hand; evidently a
whisper passed between them, for the next moment Mr. Forbes was making a
low bow to the beauty, and immediately afterwards Kendal saw his fine
gray head and stooping shoulders disappear into the next room, side by
side with Miss Bretherton's erect and graceful figure.
Kendal betook himself once more to the pictures, and, presently finding
some acquaintances, made a rapid tour of the rooms with them, parting
with them at the entrance that he might himself go back and look at two
or three things in the sculpture room which he had been told were
important and promising. There he came across the American, Edward
Wallace, who at once took him by the arm with the manner of an old friend
and a little burst of laughter.
'So you saw the introduction? What a man is Forbes! He is as young still
as he was at eighteen. I envy him. He took Miss Bretherton right round,
talked to her of all his favourite hobbies, looked at her in a way which
would have been awkward if it had been anybody else but such a
gentlemanly maniac as Forbes, and has almost made her promise to sit to
him. Miss Bretherton was a little bewildered, I think. She is so new to
London that she doesn't know who's who yet in the least. I had to take
her aside and explain to her Forbes's honours; then she fired up--there
is a naïve hero-worship about her just now that she is fresh from a
colony--and made herself as pleasant to him as a girl could be. I
prophesy Forbes will think of nothing else for the season.'
'Well, she's a brilliant creature,' said Kendal. 'It's extraordinary how
she shone out beside the pretty English girls about her. It is an
intoxicating possession for a woman, such beauty as that; it's like
royalty; it places the individual under conditions quite unlike those of
common mortals. I suppose it's that rather than any real ability as an
actress that has made her a success? I noticed the papers said as
much--some more politely than others.'
'Oh, she's not much of an actress; she has no training, no _finesse_. But
you'll see, she'll be the great success of the season. She has wonderful
grace on the stage, and a fine voice in spite of tricks. And then her
_Wesen_ is so attractive; she is such a frank, unspoilt, good-hearted
creature. Her audience falls in love with her, and that goes a long way.
But I wish she had had a trifle more education and something worth
calling a training. Her manager, Robinson, talks of her attempting all
the great parts; but it's absurd. She talks very naïvely and prettily
about "her art"; but really she knows no more about it than a baby, and
it is perhaps part of her charm that she is so unconscious of her
ignorance.'
'It is strange how little critical English audiences are,' said Kendal.
'I believe we are the simplest people in the world. All that we ask is
that our feelings should be touched a little, but whether by the art or
the artist doesn't matter. She has not been long playing in London, has
she?'
'Only a few weeks. It's only about two months since she landed from
Jamaica. She has a curious history, if you care to hear it; I don't think
I've seen you at all since I made friends with her?'
'No,' said Kendal; 'I was beginning to suspect that something absorbing
had got hold of you. I've looked for you two or three times at the club,
and could not find you.'
'Oh, it's not Miss Bretherton that has taken up my time. She's so busy
that nobody can see much of her. But I have taken her and her people out,
two or three times, sight-seeing, since they came--Westminster Abbey, the
National Gallery, and so forth. She is very keen about everything, and
the Worralls--her uncle and aunt--stick to her pretty closely.'
'Where does she come from?'
'Well, her father was the Scotch overseer of a sugar plantation not far
from Kingston, and he married an Italian, one of your fair Venetian
type--a strange race-combination; I suppose it's the secret of the
brilliancy and out-of-the-wayness of the girl's beauty. Her mother died
when she was small, and the child grew up alone. Her father, however,
seems to have been a good sort of man, and to have looked after her.
Presently she drew the attention of an uncle, a shopkeeper in Kingston,
and a shrewd, hard, money-making fellow, who saw there was something to
be made out of her. She had already shown a turn for reciting, and had
performed at various places--in the schoolroom belonging to the estate,
and so on. The father didn't encourage her fancy for it, naturally, being
Scotch and Presbyterian. However, he died of fever, and then the child at
sixteen fell into her uncle's charge. He seems to have seen at once
exactly what line to take. To put it cynically, I imagine he argued
something like this: "Beauty extraordinary--character everything that
could be desired--talent not much. So that the things to stake on are the
beauty and the character, and let the talent take care of itself."
Anyhow, he got her on to the Kingston theatre--a poor little place
enough--and he and the aunt, that sour-looking creature you saw with her,
looked after her like dragons. Naturally, she was soon the talk of
Kingston: what with her looks and her grace and the difficulty of coming
near her, the whole European society, the garrison, Government House, and
all, were at her feet. Then the uncle played his cards for a European
engagement. You remember that Governor Rutherford they had a little time
ago? the writer of that little set of drawing-room plays--_Nineteenth
Century Interludes_, I think he called them? It was his last year, and he
started for home while Isabel Bretherton was acting at Kingston. He came
home full of her, and, knowing all the theatrical people here, he was
able to place her at once. Robinson decided to speculate in her,
telegraphed out for her, and here she is, uncle, aunt, and invalid sister
into the bargain.'
'Oh, she has a sister?'
'Yes; a little, white, crippled thing, peevish--cripples generally
are--but full of a curious force of some hidden kind. Isabel is very good
to her, and rather afraid of her. It seems to me that she is afraid of
all her belongings. I believe they put upon her, and she has as much
capacity as anybody I ever knew for letting herself be trampled upon.'
'What, that splendid, vivacious creature!' said Kendal incredulously. 'I
think I'd back her for holding her own.'
'Ah, well, you see,' said the American, with the quiet superiority of a
three weeks' acquaintance, 'I know something of her by now, and she's not
quite what you might think her at first sight. However, whether she is
afraid of them or not, it's to be hoped they will take care of her.
Naturally, she has a splendid physique, but it seems to me that London
tries her. The piece they have chosen for her is a heavy one, and then of
course society is down upon her, and in a few weeks she'll be the rage.'
'I haven't seen her at all,' said Kendal, beginning perhaps to be a
little bored with the subject of Miss Bretherton, and turning, eye-glass
in hand, towards the sculpture. 'Come and take me some evening.'
'By all means. But you must come and meet the girl herself at my sister's
next Friday. She will be there at afternoon tea. I told Agnes I should
ask anybody I liked. I warned her--you know her little weaknesses!--that
she had better be first in the field: a month hence, it will be
impossible to get hold of Miss Bretherton at all.'
'Then I'll certainly come, and do my worshipping before the crowd
collects,' said Kendal, adding, as he half-curiously shifted his
eye-glass so as to take in Wallace's bronzed, alert countenance, 'How did
you happen to know her?'
'Rutherford introduced me. He's an old friend of mine.'
'Well,' said Kendal, moving off, 'Friday, then. I shall be very glad to
see Mrs. Stuart; it's ages since I saw her last.'
The American nodded cordially to him, and walked away. He was one of
those pleasant, ubiquitous people who know every one and find time for
everything--a well-known journalist, something of an artist, and still
more of a man of the world, who went through his London season with some
outward grumbling, but with a real inward zest such as few popular
diners-out are blessed with. That he should have attached himself to the
latest star was natural enough. He was the most discreet and profitable
of cicerones, with a real talent for making himself useful to nice
people. His friendship for Miss Bretherton gave her a certain stamp in
Kendal's eyes, for Wallace had a fastidious taste in personalities and
seldom made a mistake.
Kendal himself walked home, busy with very different thoughts, and was
soon established at his writing-table in his high chambers overlooking an
inner court of the Temple. It was a bright afternoon; the spring sunshine
on the red roofs opposite was clear and gay; the old chimney-stacks,
towering into the pale blue sky, threw sharp shadows on the rich red and
orange surface of the tiles. Below, the court was half in shadow, and
utterly quiet and deserted. To the left there was a gleam of green,
atoning for its spring thinness and scantiness by a vivid energy of
colour; while straight across the court, beyond the rich patchwork of the
roofs and the picturesque outlines of the chimneys, a delicate piece of
white stone-work rose into air--the spire of one of Wren's churches, as
dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as the hand of man could
leave it.
Inside, the room was such as fitted a studious bachelor of means. The
book-cases on the walls held old college classics and law-books
underneath, and above a miscellaneous literary library, of which the
main bulk was French, while the side-wings, so to speak, had that
tempting miscellaneous air--here a patch of German, there an island
of Italian; on this side rows of English poets, on the other an
abundance of novels of all languages--which delights the fond heart of
the book-lover. The pictures were mostly autotypes and photographs from
subjects of Italian art, except in one corner, where a fine little
collection of French historical engravings completely covered the wall,
and drew a visitor's attention by the brilliancy of their black and
white. On the writing-table were piles of paper-covered French books,
representing for the most part the palmy days of the Romantics, though
every here and there were intervening strata of naturalism, balanced in
their turn by recurrent volumes of Sainte-Beuve. The whole had a studious
air. The books were evidently collected with a purpose, and the piles of
orderly MSS. lying on the writing-table seemed to sum up and explain
their surroundings.
The only personal ornament of the room was a group of photographs on the
mantelpiece. Two were faded and brown, and represented Kendal's parents,
both of whom had been dead some years. The other was a large cabinet
photograph of a woman no longer very young--a striking-looking woman,
with a fine worn face and a general air of distinction and character.
There was a strong resemblance between her features and those of Eustace
Kendal, and she was indeed his elder and only sister, the wife of a
French senator, and her brother's chief friend and counsellor. Madame de
Châteauvieux was a very noticeable person, and her influence over Eustace
had been strong ever since their childish days. She was a woman who would
have justified a repetition in the present day of Sismondi's enthusiastic
estimate of the women of the First Empire. She had that _mélange du
meilleur ton_, 'with the purest elegance of manner, and a store of varied
information, with vivacity of impression and delicacy of feeling, which,'
as he declared to Madame d'Albany, 'belongs only to your sex, and is
found in its perfection only in the best society of France.'
In the days when she and Eustace had been the only children of a
distinguished and wealthy father, a politician of some fame, and
son-in-law to the Tory premier of his young days, she had always led and
influenced her brother. He followed her admiringly through her London
seasons, watching the impression she made, triumphing in her triumphs,
and at home discussing every new book with her and sharing, at least in
his college vacations, the secretary's work for their father, which she
did excellently, and with a quick, keen, political sense which Eustace
had never seen in any other woman. She was handsome in her own refined
and delicate way, especially at night, when the sparkle of her white neck
and arms and the added brightness of her dress gave her the accent and
colour she was somewhat lacking in at other times. Naturally, she was in
no want of suitors, for she was rich and her father was influential, but
she said 'No' many times, and was nearly thirty before M. de
Châteauvieux, the first secretary of the French Embassy, persuaded her to
marry him. Since then she had filled an effective place in Parisian
society. Her husband had abandoned diplomacy for politics, in which his
general tendencies were Orleanist, while in literature he was well known
as a constant contributor to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. He and his wife
maintained an interesting, and in its way influential, _salon_, which
provided a meeting ground for the best English and French society, and
showed off at once the delicate quality of Madame de Châteauvieux's
intelligence and the force and kindliness of her womanly tact.
Shortly after her marriage the father and mother died, within eighteen
months of each other, and Eustace found his lot in life radically
changed. He had been his father's secretary after leaving college, which
prevented his making any serious efforts to succeed at the bar, and in
consequence his interest, both of head and heart, had been more
concentrated than is often the case with a young man within the walls of
his home. He had admired his father sincerely, and the worth of his
mother's loquacious and sometimes meddlesome tenderness he never realised
fully till he had lost it. When he was finally alone, it became necessary
for him to choose a line in life. His sister and he divided his father's
money between them, and Eustace found himself with a fortune such as in
the eyes of most of his friends constituted a leading of Providence
towards two things--marriage and a seat in Parliament. However,
fortunately, his sister, the only person to whom he applied for advice,
was in no hurry to press a decision in either case upon him. She saw that
without the stimulus of the father's presence, Eustace's interest in
politics was less real than his interest in letters, nor did the times
seem to her propitious to that philosophic conservatism which might be
said to represent the family type of mind. So she stirred him up to
return to some of the projects of his college days when he and she were
first bitten with a passion for that great, that fascinating French
literature which absorbs, generation after generation, the interests of
two-thirds of those who are sensitive to the things of letters. She
suggested a book to him which took his fancy, and in planning it
something of the old zest of life returned to him. Moreover, it was a
book which required him to spend a part of every year in Paris, and the
neighbourhood of his sister was now more delightful to him than ever.
So, after a time, he settled down contentedly in his London chambers with
his books about him, and presently found that glow of labour stealing
over him which is at once the stimulus and the reward of every true son
of knowledge. His book reconciled him to life again, and soon he was as
often seen in the common haunts of London society as before. He dined
out, he went to the theatre, he frequented his club like other men, and
every year he spent three of the winter months in Paris, living in the
best French world, talking as he never talked in London, and cultivating,
whether in the theatre or in the _salons_ of his sister's friends or in
the studios of some of the more eminent of French artists, a fastidious
critical temper, which was rapidly becoming more and more exacting, more
and more master of the man.
Now, on this May afternoon, as he settled himself down to his work, it
would have given any of those who liked Eustace Kendal--and they were
many--pleasure to see how the look of fatigue with which he had returned
from his round of the Academy faded away, how he shook back the tumbling
gray locks from his eyes with the zest and the eagerness of one setting
forth to battle, and how, as time passed on and the shadows deepened on
the white spire opposite, the contentment of successful labour showed
itself in the slow unconscious caress which fell upon the back of the
sleeping cat curled up in the chair beside him, or in the absent but
still kindly smile with which he greeted the punctual entrance of the
servant, who at five o'clock came to put tea and the evening paper beside
him and to make up the fire, which crackled on with cheery companionable
sounds through the lamp-lit evening and far into the night.