_Coke Clifton to Guy Fairfax_
_Paris, Hotel de l'Université_
I have found it, Fairfax! The pearl of pearls! The inestimable jewel!
The unique! The world contains but one!--And what?--A woman! The woman
of whom I told you!--Anna St. Ives! You have seen the Venus de
Medicis?--Pshaw!--Stone! Inanimate marble! But she!--The very sight of
her is the height of luxury! The pure blood is seen to circulate!
Transparent is the complexion which it illuminates!--And for symmetry,
for motion, for grace, sculptor, painter, nor poet ever yet imagined
such! Desire languishes to behold her! The passions all are in arms,
and the mere enjoyment of her presence is superior to all that her sex
beside can give!
Do not suppose me in my altitudes: all I can say, all you can imagine,
are far short of the reality.
Then how unlike is her candour to the petty arts, the shallow cunning
of her sex! Her heart is as open as her countenance; her thoughts flow,
fearless, to her lips. Original ideas, expressed in words so select,
phrases so happy, as to astonish and delight; a brilliancy and a
strength of fancy that disdain limitation, and wit rapid and fatal as
lightning to all opposition; these and a thousand other undescribable
excellencies are hers.
I love her Love?--I adore her! Ay--Be not surprised--Even to madness
and marriage!--No matter for what I have beforetime said, or what I
have thought, my mind is changed. I have discovered perfection which I
did not imagine could exist. I renounce my former opinions; which
applied to the sex in general were orthodox, but to her were blasphemy.
I would not be too sudden; I have not yet made any direct proposal. But
could I exist and forbear giving intimations? No. And how were they
received? Why with all that unaffected frankness which did not pretend
to misunderstand but to meet them, to cherish hope, and to give a
prospect of bliss which mortal man can never merit.
She is all benevolence! Nay she is too much so. There is that youngster
here; that upstart; he who bolted upon us and mouthed his Pindarics in
the Elysian Fields; the surly groom of the chamber. This fellow has
insinuated himself into her favour, and the benignity of her soul
induces her to treat him with as much respect as if he were a
gentleman.
The youth has some parts, some ideas: at least he has plenty of words.
But his arrogance is insufferable. He does not scruple to interfere in
the discourse, either with me, Sir Arthur, or the angelic Anna! Nay
sets up for a reformer; and pretends to an insolent superiority of
understanding and wisdom. Yet he was never so long from home before in
his life; has seen nothing, but has read a few books, and has been
permitted to converse with this all intelligent deity.
I cannot deny but that the pedagogue sometimes surprises me, with the
novelty of his opinions; but they are extravagant. I have condescended,
oftener than became me, to shew how full of hyperbole and paradox they
were. Still he as constantly maintained them, with a kind of congruity
that astonished me, and even rendered many of them plausible.
But, exclusive of his obstinacy, the rude, pot companion loquacity of
the fellow is highly offensive. He has no sense of inferiority. He
stands as erect, and speaks with as little embarrassment and as loudly
as the best of us: nay boldly asserts that neither riches, rank, nor
birth have any claim. I have offered to buy him a beard, if he would
but turn heathen philosopher. I have several times indeed bestowed no
small portion of ridicule upon him; but in vain. His retorts are always
ready; and his intrepidity, in this kind of impertinence, is
unexampled.
From some anecdotes which are told of him, I find he does not want
personal courage; but he has no claim to chastisement from a gentleman.
Petty insults he disregards; and has several times put me almost beyond
the power of forbearance, by his cool and cutting replies. His oratory
is always ready; cut, dry, and fit for use; and damned insolent oratory
it frequently is.
The absurdity of his tenets can only be equalled by the effrontery with
which they are maintained. Among the most ridiculous of what he calls
first principles is that of the equality of mankind. He is one of your
levellers! Marry! His superior! Who is he? On what proud eminence can
he be found? On some Welsh mountain, or the pike of Teneriffe?
Certainly not in any of the nether regions! What! Was not he the ass
that brayed to Balaam? And is he not now Mufti to the mules? He will if
he please! And if he please he will let it alone! Dispute his
prerogative who dare! He derives from Adam; what time the world was all
hail fellow well met! The savage, the wild man o' the woods is his true
liberty boy; and the orang outang his first cousin. A Lord is a merry
andrew, a Duke a jack pudding, and a King a tom fool: his name is man!
Then, as to property, 'tis a tragic farce; 'tis his sovereign pleasure
to eat nectarines, grow them who will. Another Alexander, he; the world
is all his own! Ay, and he will govern it as he best knows how! He will
legislate, dictate, dogmatize; for who so infallible? What! Cannot
Goliah crack a walnut?
As for arguments, it is but ask and have: a peck at a bidding, and a
good double handful over. I own I thought I knew something; but no, I
must to my horn book. Then, for a simile, it is sacrilege; and must be
kicked out of the high court of logic! Sarcasm too is an ignoramus, and
cannot solve a problem: Wit a pert puppy, who can only flash and
bounce. The heavy walls of wisdom are not to be battered down by such
popguns and pellets. He will waste you wind enough to set up twenty
millers, in proving an apple is not an egg-shell; and that _homo_ is
Greek for a goose. Dun Scotus was a school boy to him. I confess, he
has more than once dumbfounded me by his subtleties.--Pshaw!--It is a
mortal murder of words and time to bestow them on him.
My sister is in correspondence with my new divinity. I thought proper
to bestow a few gentle lashes on her, for a letter which she wrote to
me, and which I mentioned in my first from Paris, insinuating her own
superiority, and giving me to understand how fortunate it would be for
the world should I but prove as consummate a paragon as herself. She
richly deserved it, and yet I now wish I had forborne; for, if she have
her sex's love of vengeance in her, she may injure me in the tenderest
part. Never was woman so devoted to woman as Anna St. Ives is to
Louisa. I should suspect any other of her sex of extravagant
affectation; but her it is impossible to suspect: her manner is so
peculiarly her own: and it comes with such unsought for energy, that
there is no resisting conviction.
I have two or three times been inclined to write and ask Louisa's
pardon. But, no; that pride forbids. She dare not openly profess
herself my enemy? She may insinuate, and countermine; but I have a
tolerably strong dependance on my own power over Anna. She is not
blind. She is the first to feel and to acknowledge superior merit; and
I think I have no reason to fear repulse from any woman, whose hand I
can bring myself to ask.
One of Anna's greatest perfections, with me, is the ready esteem which
she entertained for me, and her not being insensible to those qualities
which I flatter myself I possess. Never yet did woman treat me with
affected disdain, who did not at last repent of her coquetry.
'Tis true that Anna has sometimes piqued me, by appearing to value me
more for my sister's sake even than for my own. I have been ready to
say dissimulation was inseparable from woman. And yet her manner is as
unlike hypocrisy as possible, I never yet could brook scorn, or
neglect. I know no sensation more delicious than that of inflicting
punishment for insult or for injury; 'tis in our nature.
That youngster of whom I have prated so much, his name is Frank Henley,
denies this, and says that what the world calls nature is habit. He
added, with some degree of sarcasm as I thought, that it was as
natural, or in his sense as habitual, for some men to pardon, and to
seek the good even of those by whom they were wronged, as it was for
others to resent and endeavour to revenge. But, as I have said, he
continually makes pretensions to an offensive superiority. You may
think I do not fail to humble the youth, whenever opportunity offers.
But no! Humble him, indeed! Shew him boiling ice! Stew a whale in an
oyster-shell! Make mount Caucasus into a bag pudding! But do not
imagine he may be moved! The legitimate son of Cato's eldest bastard,
he! A petrified Possidonius, in high preservation!
There is another thing which astonishes me more than all I have
mentioned. Curse me, Fairfax, if I do not believe that [God confound
the fellow!] he has the impudence to be in love with Anna St. Ives! Nay
that he braves me, defies me, and, in the insufferable frothy
fermentation of his vanity, persuades himself that he looks down upon
me!
I must finish, for I cannot think of his intolerable insolence with
common patience; and I know not what right I have to tease you,
concerning my paltry disputes with a plebeian pedant, and my still more
paltry jealousies. But let him beware! If he really have the arrogance
to place himself in my way, I will presently trample him into his
original nonentity. I only forbear because he has had the cunning to
make himself so great a favourite.
This must be horribly stupid stuff to you, Fairfax: therefore pay me in
my own coin; be as dull as you sometimes know how, and bid me complain
if I dare.