She’ll get thrown; she reels in the saddle,” jumping excitedly on a
seat. “She’s a brick. She’s pulling the brute. Yes—no—it’s Miss Lindsay.
She can do nothing. She’ll be killed if she loses her seat. The pace is
awful. She’s lost her head. She’s done for.”
Such were the exclamations rapidly uttered by Eugene Percival as the
fainting form of Miss Lindsay was borne past him like a flash.
“Magnificently done!” shouted Pommery. “That fellow is a man, whoever he
is.”
Just as the young girl was swaying heavily from side to side in her
saddle, and about to sink fainting to the earth, one of the onlookers
plunged forward, and, seizing the reins of the maddened horse in a grasp
of steel, brought the animal almost to his haunches. The swooning girl
was thrown violently forward, to be received in his arms as though she
were a down pillow cast at him in play.
Percival and Pommery forced their way through the crowd.
“Make way, please; we are friends of this lady,” cried Percival. “Let
her have air. Carry her into the shade.”
Miss Lindsay was borne to the pathway and placed upon one of the
benches, while some cold water was dashed in her face.
“How splendidly she behaved!” cried one of the bystanders.
“Such nerve!”
“Such English pluck!”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed the gentleman who had been the means of rescuing her,
“I know twenty Irish girls who would have brought that brute to his
senses without any of this sort of fuss.”
At this juncture Fred Lindsay galloped up.
“Is she much hurt?” he anxiously demanded.
“She’s not hurt at all; she’s frightened.” And half a dozen persons
volunteered a statement of the occurrence, all speaking together.
“How _can_ I thank you?” said Lindsay, turning to the stranger. “Let me
have your name and address. By Jove! I must do something to express our
gratitude.”
“I stop twenty horses a day in the fields at home, and wickeder brutes
than that, so don’t say one word.” And ere Lindsay could interpose the
other had mingled with the crowd.
“Did you see him?” asked Percival of Pommery.
“Who?”
“The young fellow who rescued Miss Lindsay.”
“Not particularly.”
“Why, it’s our Irishman.”
“So it is. I’m awfully sorry not to have spoken to him. What a fellow he
is, to be sure!”
* * * * *
Eugene Percival, amongst other invitations, received a card for a
dinner-party at the Lindsays’ for the following Tuesday.
“We’ve been sadly put about,” said Miss Lindsay as he arrived, “groomed
to a hair.” “Our party was made up, fitting oh! so nicely. I had my old
man and my old lady, and the man who can talk opera, and the girl who
can talk Tennyson, and my M. P. who can talk politics. I had the
agricultural element and the lawn-tennis element, and a man who can talk
across the table, and the man who knows everything—yourself—and lo! a
wicked fairy _bon gré mal gré_ adds two unexpected guests to my party by
a wave of her wand, and spoils it. Isn’t it awful?” cries the hostess
piteously, elevating a superb bouquet to her dainty nose.
“What did she give you?”
“Only fancy—two Irish people!”
“This is ironical of destiny,” laughed Percival.
“I won’t know what to say to them, what to do with them. I want you to
stand in the gap, Mr. Percival, to see me through this miserable
_contretemps_.”
“Put me down for anything, from the _Annals of the Four Masters_ to
dancing an Irish jig. I haven’t the faintest idea who the Four Masters
are, and I’ve never seen the jig danced, but ’shure I’ll troy,’”
endeavoring to imitate the Irish brogue, and failing dismally, as does
every cockney rash enough to venture upon the experiment.
“I’ve never seen these people. I called at their hotel yesterday, but
they were out doing St. Paul’s, or the Tower, or the Houses of
Parliament, or the Thames Tunnel, as is the habit of tourists proper.”
“How did you drop into this trap, Miss Lindsay?”
“This wise: My uncle, Sir Winifred, spent some weeks last autumn with
them in Ireland. He is a man who is ever anxious to repay a courtesy
twofold.”
“I wonder, if I lent him ten sovereigns, would he return me twenty?”
laughed Percival.
“If it was _en règle_, he would most decidedly. He, it appears, met
them—wherever do you think?”
“I’m sure I cannot say.”
“At Madame Tussaud’s.”
“Sir Winifred at such a place! What an old wax-work it is!”
“He loves that Chamber of Horrors, and every time a murderer’s head is
added to it my uncle potters off directly to have a look at it. He
encountered his Irish friends in this Chamber last Saturday, and
instantly takes them to the Star and Garter at Richmond to dine. He had
them at the Zoo on Sunday, last night at the opera, and to-night he has
foisted them on me; so you won’t mind roughing it a little, will you?”
“Certainly not. Is there anything Irish in the house? One must talk
Ireland, you know.”
“Nothing except a genuine Ulster that never crossed the Channel in its
life. We bought it last year at the Robber of the North’s, McDougal, at
Inverness.”
“Were you in Scotland lawst year?” drawled a pink-faced young man,
lounging up.
“Oh! yes; we did the Kyles of Bute, and the Crenan Canal, and Oban, and
on by Ballachullish to the Pass of Glencoe, and we slept at Bannavic,
and went up the Caledonian Canal.” And Miss Lindsay went off into a gush
of rapture over the glorious scenery of the land o’cakes.
A powdered-headed flunky announced Mr. and Miss Devereux, but in such a
manner that the name might as well have been Smith. Miss Lindsay
courteously advanced to receive her guests with “So pleased to see you!
Called at your hotel yesterday. How long have you been in London? How do
you like Babylon? Your first visit?”
Charley Devereux—for ’tis he—gazes very hard at his hostess. Could he be
mistaken, or is not this the young lady whom he “chucked off” the
runaway horse?
“Are you fond of riding?” he abruptly asked.
“Oh! passionately. I ride every day.”
“Did you ride in the park on Friday?”
“Yes, and was nearly killed. My horse, a thoroughbred, bolted. I fought
him as long as I could. I got giddy, and I can recollect nothing till I
found myself stretched on a bench beneath one of the trees on the side
path.”
“Were you thrown?” asked Miss Devereux, of whom more anon.
“Well, yes and no. A man in the crowd—a young mechanic, my brother
says—stopped the horse and caught me as I was flying through the air.”
“Charley, don’t _you_ know something—”
A look from her brother silenced Miss Devereux.
“Were you present?” asked Miss Lindsay.
“I should rather say he was,” interposed Lindsay, who had just entered,
giving a finishing touch to his toilette as he bounded down the stairs.
“Why, hang it, Alice, don’t you know that it is to this gentleman you
probably owe your life?”
Miss Lindsay opened her blue eyes very wide.
“Is this possible?” she cried.
“Why, of course it is. My dear fellow,” exclaimed Lindsay, seizing
Charley Devereux by both hands, “need I say what intense pleasure it is
to find my sister’s rescuer in the person of a friend of my uncle?”
“Mr. Devereux,” added Alice, presenting two dainty hands in gloves of
many buttons, and impulsively flinging away her brother’s hands, “this
_is_ a joyous surprise. Why, Fred told me you were a mechanic—that is,”
she added with a blush—“you see he is awfully near-sighted.”
“Don’t apologize, Miss Lindsay. My old home-spun suit is becoming very
dingy, but I like it so well that I wouldn’t part with it for one of
Smallpage’s marvellous frocks.”
The pompous flunky announced dinner.
“You will take _me_ down, Mr. Devereux. I shall jilt Lord Jocelyn for
the _preux chevalier_ who has so charmingly proved that the age of
chivalry is not yet dead. By the way, I must do _my devoirs_.” And
summoning Percival from a distant corner of the room, she presented him
to Miss Devereux.
He did not catch the name, but, offering that young lady his arm, he
moved towards the door.
“Now for pigs and potatoes,” he thought.
He took a good look at the young girl on his arm, and he beheld a very
charming form, soft brown wavy hair in a glorious luxuriance, tastefully
and neatly bound up in plaits, a fair skin slightly freckled, a nose a
little tip-tilted like the petal of a flower, a rich red mouth, and
earnest gray eyes shaded by long, sweeping lashes.
“Your first visit to London?”
“My first.”
She turned her face to him, and then he perceived its delicate oval, its
low, straight forehead, its pencilled brows, its charming innocence and
purity of expression. This was not the brogue he expected to hear. This
was not the face or form he had so dreaded to meet. Why, he could get on
with this charming bit of Emerald without any reference to the Isle,
save what it might please her Serene Greenship to indulge in.
“And how do you like London?” he asked, after the gentle fuss of
seat-taking had subsided, and every person had opened his or her napkin
after his or her own particular fashion.
“It oppresses me.”
“In what way?”
“It is too vast, too grand, too colossal. It wearies. I have had more
headache since I came here than ever I earned over my Latin grammar.”
“Latin grammar! Are you so deep as Latin?”
“I have taught Latin,” and, seeing his puzzled expression, “to my _very_
young brothers.”
“By Jove!” It’s all Percival has to say, and he says it.
Miss Devereux indulged in a low, musical laugh at her cavalier’s
expense.
“You’re laughing at me?” said the bureaucrat, giving a tremendous tug to
his moustache.
“I am,” was her reply.
“Why?”
“It’s singularly amusing to hear an Englishman focus all his energies
upon his favorite exclamation.”
“And what do you say in Ireland?” he retorted, somewhat nettled.
“You must ask my brother.”
“If he waits till I ask him,” thought Percival, “he’ll be as gray as a
badger.”
Mr. Percival indulged in another gaze at his fair companion, who was
engaged in the unromantic task of enjoying her dinner, while he found
himself _hors de combat_ after a spoonful of soup and a devilled
whitebait. He discovered a certain magnetism about her that irresistibly
attracted him. The charm of her beauty was not in her golden hair, whose
wavelets threw up the brilliancy of her rich color; not in the pure
cream-tinted skin, not in the exquisitely delicate curve of the chin and
cheek, nor in the sauciness of her _retroussé_ nose; it was the
unconscious pleasure in her face, a joy that positively breathed
happiness from every feature.
“How does it come that you have no brogue?” he abruptly asked.
“Oh! dear, yes I have. I would shame the bogs of Ballynashaughnagaun if
I did not fairly represent them in the land of the Saxon.”
“Do pronounce that jaw-breaker again.”
“Ballynashaughnagaun.”
“How dreadful!”
“We have longer names than that.” And Miss Devereux, to Percival’s
intense amusement, proceeded to run over the townlands surrounding her
wild Connemara home.
“Only fancy if a man got lost in Knocka-what-you-may-call-um; why, he’d
perish by the wayside ere he could ask his way to the place from whence
he came.”
“I am quite prepared to think that you would,” she laughed.
“I’m rather a dab at languages,” he said, with a certain tinge of
self-satisfaction in his tone.
“I beg your pardon—a what?”
“A dab.”
“May I ask which of your languages is that word borrowed from, Mr.
Percival?”
“It’s supposed to be English,” he laughed.
“Oh! I am so relieved. I was afraid you were going to attach it to
Ireland, and then—”
“And then?”
“_Guerra al cuchillo_—war to the knife.”
“Are you a dab?—I beg pardon; do you speak Spanish?”
“I do; we are quite an Irish-Spanish colony.”
“An Irish-Spanish colony! In the name of wonder what is that?”
“I’ll tell you. The _Infanta_, one of the largest of the vessels
attached to the Spanish Armada, was wrecked on the coast of Mayo. The
survivors settled along the coast as far as Galway. My great, great,
great, ever so great-grand-mamma was a daughter of one of the officers.”
“How is it that you come to have such glorious gray eyes?” This was said
enthusiastically.
“Do not let that iced _soufflet_ pass, Mr. Percival; it is too good to
snub so unmercifully.”
“What a facer!” thought the Foreign Office clerk as he called back the
servant with the _entrée_ in question.
Miss Devereux did not understand any gentleman’s gushing in this manner
upon an acquaintance of twenty minutes. If young ladies would only ice
menkind occasionally, instead of permitting them to say what they will,
their sway would be absolutely without limit; but, alas! the girls of
to-day are too—but I will not be cynical.
“What part of Ireland do you come from, Miss ——?” He has not heard her
name, and mumbles something unintelligible to fill up the gap.
“Connemara.”
“I know some people living out there.”
“Indeed! As I know everybody living _out there_, I am quite sure we
shall discover mutual friends.”
Now, Mr. Eugene Percival, not having the remotest idea of who Miss
Devereux might be, imagines that this is a very good opportunity for
being very amusing, and he accordingly plunges _in medias res_ without
more ado.
“The name is Devereux,” he said.
“Devereux?” she repeated. “There is but one family of that name in
Mayo.”
“Of Bally—something.”
“Ballybo?”
“That’s it. Ballybo. Do you know them?”
She gave one short, sharp glance at him. Was this Englishman about to
amuse himself at her expense? Was he going to exercise his English
stupidity in a practical joke? No; she instinctively felt that Percival
was a gentleman and would not _dare_ take a liberty; and she perceived
him so full of suppressed mirth that she resolved upon letting him have
it all his own way.
“Yes, I know them,” she replied.
“What sort of people are they?”
“Oh! very commonplace, and somewhat old-fashioned in their ways,” hardly
able to keep back a burst of laughter.
“I thought as much. I’ll tell you a capital thing that has occurred
within the last week.” Here he indulged in a series of gentlemanly
chuckles. “I had a letter from Ballyporeen.”
“Ballybo? _You_, Mr. Percival?” she exclaimed in a surprised way.
“Yes, from an excellent lady, who addresses me as her cousin, and signs
herself Martha Mary Grace Devereux, and who informed me that her son and
daughter were coming to town, and begged of me to take care of them.”
Miss Devereux, dropping her knife and fork, gazed steadily at Percival.
She became very white, while a sudden anger flamed in her expressive
eyes.
“You, then, are Mr. Eugene Percival?” she said, a harshness in her
voice.
“Yaas.”
“Of the Foreign Office?”
“I have the honor to be attached to that blundering institution.”
“If I do not mistake, Mr. Percival, you received more than _one_ letter
from Ballybo.”
“Yaas, I got one from a sulky young Irishman who—”
“Have you met him?” she interrupted.
“No, thank Heaven! and I hope I never shall.”
This was uttered so fervently that Miss Devereux, yielding to an
ungovernable impulse, rang out a peal of musical laughter so bright, so
joyous, so contagious that the remainder of the company ceased their
colorless prattle in order firstly to listen and then to join in it.
“You are having all the fun to yourself,” cried Lindsay, addressing
Geraldine Devereux. “What is the _mot_? Do send it round; we want
something more _piquante_ than an _entrée_ at this stage of the
proceedings.”
Geraldine, all blushes at this unlooked-for notoriety and isolation,
declared that her laughter arose from a story that was being narrated to
her by Mr. Percival.
“It’s the first time Percival ever succeeded in making anybody laugh
_with_ him,” exclaimed a sour-looking old gentleman who wore the red
ribbon of a C. B. round his neck.
“Let us have it, Percival, _pro bono publico_.”
“Is it any secret of the office, Mr. Percival?” demanded Miss Lindsay.
“Because if it is there’s ’a chiel amang ye takin’ notes.’ Eh, Lord
Jocelyn?”
“Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, I am forbid to tell the secrets of
my prison-house,” was Percival’s retort.
“Is it worth hearing?—that is the question.”
“Very well worth hearing,” said Geraldine.
“It’s merely an Irish adventure,” observed Percival.
“Merely? Why, where is adventure to be achieved, if not in Ireland?
Come, Percival, let us have it,” urged his host.
This was too good a chance for the member of Parliament. “I was in the
House the night the Home-Rulers—” And he commenced an anecdote under
cover of which the Foreign Office clerk was enabled to beat a retreat.
“It’s an awfully funny story, but some of the people here wouldn’t see
it, you know.”
“I can’t see it yet, Mr. Percival; you have only just commenced. Pray
proceed.”
“Well, you see, I got this letter raking me up, you know, and the other
letter from the young Irish wolf-dog, who wouldn’t have me at any price.
How awfully emerald these people must be to imagine that _I_ could—may I
use an Irish word?”
“No,” hotly.
“Bother myself about them, especially in the height of the season.” And
Mr. Percival emptied a glass of champagne to his own sentiment.
“Poor things! And you don’t intend taking any notice of them?”
“No more than if they never existed.”
“And are you their kinsman?”
“I believe so, now that I have looked into the matter.”
“Don’t you think you are acting rather shabbily?”
“So Jack Pommery says.”
“And Jack Pommery is right,” exclaimed Geraldine, clinching her little
left hand and bringing it down into the rosy palm of her right.
“Do you know Jack Pommery?” asked Percival.
“I—I have met him.”
“Here?”
“No.”
“It must have been in Ireland, then,” earnestly.
“It was.”
“By Jove!”
This exclamation caused Geraldine to observe Percival. There was a
mysterious knowingness on his face that sent the mercury of her
curiosity up into the nineties.
“Is Mr. Pommery an acquaintance of yours, Mr. Percival?”
“He is my _alter ego_, my better man; and I think I have got at his
secret.”
“Surely such strong friends have no secrets from one another.”
“Jack kept one bottled up ever so tight, wired down like the bitter beer
they send to India. May I ask you a question?” turning abruptly to
Geraldine.
“You have asked so many that usage has almost become a right, Mr.
Percival.”
“Are you fond of violets?”
A red, red rose-blush spread itself over the young Irish girl’s face and
neck and shell-like ears—a blush that came and glowed and refused to be
put down—a blush that wooed and caressed and fondled.
“Why do you ask me?” she palpitated.
At this moment Miss Lindsay telegraphed for the ladies to retire, and
the usual uprising, and rustle and removal of chairs, and grim punctilio
of menkind, and saucy _insouciance_ of womenkind took place. When the
gentlemen had reseated themselves the host cried:
“Close quarters, _mes braves_. Approach to the attack of this fortress
of Château Lafitte. Get up here, Percival; you were lost to me for the
last two hours.”
In obedience to the mandate of his host the bureaucrat moved more above
the salt, and, casting his eyes across the table, he was astonished and
delighted to discover the young Irishman who had so pluckily
distinguished himself upon the two occasions already detailed in this
truthful narrative.
“I am awfully glad to meet you,” he said, taking up his glass and moving
to a vacant chair beside Charley Devereux.
Charley bowed stiffly and awkwardly.
“I was at the Albion with a friend last Thursday when you dropped upon
that disgusting cad.”
Devereux blushed like a schoolgirl.
“He was a low, swaggering blackguard, and, only I had an appointment
with my sister, I’d have kicked him into Covent Garden among the
cabbages,” he warmly exclaimed.
“He wanted my friend and I to witness what he called the assault, but we
gave him scant encouragement. I also saw you the very same day do a very
plucky thing in Hyde Park.”
“Oh! I know what you mean. Pshaw! it’s not worth mentioning.”
“Isn’t it? The eyes of our fair hostess tell another story.”
Charley Devereux drained a glass of claret and remained silent.
“As you announced your nationality at the Albion, I know that you are
Irish.”
“To the backbone, I hope.”
“Do you reside here?”
“No; I’ve only run over for a few days.”
“I shall be glad to make you an honorary member of my club.”
“What club is it?” asked Charley.
“I belong to two, the Garrick and the Reform. I can make you an honorary
member of the Reform; at the Garrick we are powerless.”
“Thanks. I won’t trouble you, my stay is so short. I know, at least I do
not know, a member of the Garrick.”
“What’s his name?”
“Well, he’s not worth naming. He’s what you call in this country a cad.”
“We don’t patronize cads in Garrick Street, Covent Garden,” said
Percival, somewhat coldly.
“Well, you’ve got one full-blossomed cad amongst you at all events—what
we would call in my country a _shoneen_.”
“Of course, as there’s a black sheep in every flock, there’s a shady man
in every club. May I ask who this _shoneen_ is?”
Charley Devereux was on the point of uttering the two words “Eugene
Percival” when Lindsay burst in.
“I say, you two fellows, you’re snubbing my cellar most awfully. You
remind me of two pashas whom I met at a dinner-party at Constantinople,
who—”
“Speaking of Constantinople,” interrupted the member of Parliament, “Sir
Stafford Northcote on Tuesday night—” commencing a sing-song, Dryasdust
House of Commons story which lasted until coffee was announced.
As the gentlemen were ascending the stairs Percival observed to
Devereux:
“I took a countrywoman of yours down to dinner.”
“You took my sister.”
“Indeed! You do not resemble one another.”
“There is just a family likeness, that’s all.”
“Do you reside in Dublin?”
“Not exactly; we live in the wildest portion of Connemara.”
“Will you permit me to exchange cards with you?”
“I haven’t got a card, but my name is Devereux.”
“Devereux!” exclaimed Percival, staggering against the wall.
“Yes, Charley Devereux.”
“Of Ballybo, County Mayo?” turning red and white by turns.
“Quite right.”
“And—and—the girl I took down to dinner is _your_ sister?”
“You took Miss Devereux into dinner,” said Charley proudly.
Percival said nothing. The situation revealed itself in a lurid flash.
It was too ghastly. Miss Devereux had listened to his miserable story,
and, while he imagined he had been amusing her, he had been engaged in
digging a pitfall in which it were well he had broken his neck. He had
been constructing a pillory wherein he had sat to be pelted with
contumely and ridicule. And Devereux, this lion-hearted young Irishman,
whose pluck was of the age of chivalry—this splendid specimen of an
Irish gentleman whom he had disowned—had written him down a cad. What
should he do? What _could_ he do? What could he say? All the water in
the Irish Channel were not sufficient to wash him clean of the stains
imprinted by his own bovine ignorance. What idiotic folly tempted him to
rush into the details of that wretched episode? Why had he not acted as
a gentleman? Why had he not replied to the letter of Mrs. Devereux and
left his card on his kinsfolk? The affair would have died out then and
there, and he would have done his _devoir_. He felt sick and giddy. The
worst impeachment is that which comes from one’s self. No sentence so
stern, no torture so severe. He felt that, blinded by prejudice, he had
acted a mean, unmanly part, and was now hoist on his own petard. Nemesis
had followed him, and the sword of Damocles descended how unexpectedly!
Of course Miss Devereux despised him. She was civil because
conventionality demanded it and because true blood always tells. To her
brother he should reveal himself, cost what it would. All that a
gentleman can do is to apologize, and the _amende honorable_ was already
an overdue draft.
To do Eugene Percival justice, he was not a bad sort of fellow. He was
only thoroughly English; and, whilst the English love the Irish
individually, collectively they despise them. This farcical ignorance of
Ireland and the Irish leads to a deal of misconception, and there are
thousands of Saxons who would travel across Central Africa sooner than
undertake the four hours between Holyhead and Kingstown, the sixty-three
miles separating North Wales from the county of Dublin.
They had reached the drawing-room landing. At the open door Miss
Devereux was chatting with considerable animation to Miss Lindsay.
“Mr. Devereux,” said Percival, “will you oblige me by stepping this
way?” advancing to where the ladies stood.
“Well, Mr. Percival,” exclaimed Alice Lindsay, “when are we to have your
Irish story?”
“Now.”
There was something in the tone that compelled attention. Miss Devereux,
with a woman’s quick perception, felt the approaching _dénouement_, and,
like a true woman, endeavored to spare this man his utter humiliation.
“Irish stories should be told in Ireland,” she cried.
“There is one Irish story that must be told _here_, Miss Lindsay,” said
Percival gravely, “and I would beg your attention for a very brief
moment.”
“Why, it must be a very tragic one,” cried the hostess. “You are as
grave as the entire senate when Othello addressed them,” to Percival.
“_You_, my dear little Irish girl, from being as joyous as Nora Creina,
are as sad as poor suffering Erin herself; and you, _caballero mio_,” to
Devereux, “have summoned a winter cloud of frown to your brow, behind it
thunder. If Mr. Percival insists let us hear his horrible tale in
comfort. _Messieurs et mesdames, asseyez vous._”
No one took a seat but the hostess, and she sought a coigne of vantage
upon the stairs.
“I hardly know how to begin,” said Percival very slowly. “I can make no
_amende_ beyond the utter humiliation the narration of the story will
inflict, and no ordeal that I could be put to could possibly prove more
bitter. Until five minutes ago I was in utter ignorance that to Miss
Devereux and her brother I could claim relationship.”
“Relationship! How awfully jolly!” exclaimed Miss Lindsay, fanning
herself violently.
“You, then, are Eugene Percival?” cried Charley Devereux, surveying him
with a glance in which scorn and anger struggled for mastery.
“I am Eugene Percival, your kinsman. Stay,” he added as Charley was
about to interrupt him. “I ask to be heard—that is all. To err is human,
to forgive divine. I have made a ghastly mistake; I now eat the humblest
of pie. I can urge nothing in extenuation for my silly small-talk. It
was weak, it was shabby. I pillory myself. I beg to assure you, my
cousins, that within the last five minutes I have passed through a
bitter agony. I did not catch your name, Miss Devereux, when the honor
was conferred upon me of taking you down to dinner. I had not the
faintest conception who you were whilst my stupid tongue babbled. I was
not aware that this gentleman was your brother. I did not know who he
was until within five minutes. Fate has been playing at cross purposes
with me. I offer no apology for my bad form in not replying to the
letters I received. There is none that could be accepted. A chain of
circumstances has woven itself which ties me to the earth. I can only
say that I earnestly hope some chance may be granted me of showing how
anxious I am to redeem myself with my Irish cousins.” And making a deep
bow, Eugene Percival hurried down the stairs and from the house.
* * * * *
Upon the day following this _dénouement_ Percival called upon Jack
Pommery at the lodgings of the latter in New Bond Street.
“Have you been appointed secretary of legation at Ujiji?” laughed Jack.
“You look about as cheerful as if you were in for the yellow fever.”
“Drop chaff, Jack; I want to have a long talk with you.”
“Take that chair, old fellow, and out with it, whatever it is,” cried
Pommery, rolling a luxurious arm-chair to his companion and flinging
himself upon a sofa.
“Jack, go and call at the Charing Cross Hotel to-day.”
“What to do?”
“Miss Geraldine Devereux is stopping there.”
“Miss who?” demanded the other, springing like an acrobat to his feet.
“Miss Geraldine Devereux, of Ballybo, County Mayo.”
“You don’t mean it, Percival!” a great wave of joy passing over his
handsome face.
“I do indeed.”
“How did you come by this?”
“I met her at dinner yesterday at the Lindsays’.”
“What!”
Percival repeated his reply.
“And I was asked there, and refused for a vile whitebait dinner at
Greenwich,” said Pommery with a dismal groan.
“She is absolutely charming, Jack—so naïve, so frank, so coquettish, and
so pure.”
“Are you hit?”
“I would be if my proof-armor had not been buckled on by my friend
Pommery. No, Jack, I want to ask you all about these people, and I’ll
tell you why: they are my Irish cousins.”
“Not the—”
“Yes, the writer of one of those fatal letters was Mrs. Devereux; of the
other, Charley.”
“This is a bad business, Percival,” observed Pommery after a silence.
“It is a bad business. I am written down a cad, and, by George! I
deserve the appellation,” cried Percival, smiting the arm of the chair a
severe blow.
“Giving those letters to that ass Minniver was bad form, and I said so.”
“I have got them here. Luckily, Minniver has been down with Bertie
Baging for the Ascot week, and, except to old Fladgate, he has never
shown them to mortal. Do you know who Devereux turns out to be?”
“Who?”
“The young fellow who so pluckily sat upon the rowdy at the Albion.”
“By Jove!”
“And only fancy, he did not know who Alice Lindsay was until he came to
dinner at Curzen Street.”
“By Jove!” repeated Jack Pommery.
Impart a piece of startling intelligence to an Englishman, and he will
always exclaim, “By Jove!”
“Now, Jack, tell me all about the Devereux—all that you know. She has
younger brothers. Has she a sister?”
“She has.”
“Younger?”
“Yes.”
“Anything like your girl?”
“She is _not_ MY girl, Percival. I only wish that she was,” he added
with fierce energy.
“You should have seen how she blushed when I asked her if she liked
violets.”
“Percival!” exclaimed Pommery, “that was hardly fair.”
“Don’t agitate yourself, old fellow; the subject was handled, as we say
at the office, ‘delicately.’ How old are the younger brothers?”
“One is about eighteen.”
“Bright?”
“Very. He showed me one of Browning’s poems done into Latin, French, and
some other language—I think German.”
“You are certain of this, Jack?” cried Percival earnestly.
“I am certain the lad showed them to me, and that he said they were his
own translations. He’s in Trinity College at Dublin.”
“What are they going to do with him?”
“They were speaking of the civil service or the Irish bar. _Entre nous_,
they haven’t much money, and it’s a wonder they have a stiver, they are
so recklessly hospitable. Why, my dear fellow, there were fifteen guests
stopping at Ballybo while I was there, and we met a whole caravan
traversing the beautiful road that runs from Westport along the Atlantic
when _en route_ for the train.”
“This is admirable,” muttered Percival, half thinking aloud.
“What is admirable?”
“Never mind. Is Ballybo a handsome place?”
“It’s a fine old mansion of that order of architecture so much in vogue
when Queen Anne was busying herself in distributing largess to
Marlborough. It is surrounded by superb trees, in which ten thousand
rooks keep up a cawing that is almost deafening. An inlet of the
Atlantic almost brings the seaweed to the hall door-steps. The stables
are fit for the Duke of Beaufort, and I can tell you there are horses in
the stalls that would bring their five hundred guineas at Tattersall’s.”
* * * * *
The “Wild Irishman,” as the express from London to Holyhead has been
termed, on account of the almost reckless speed at which it travels, was
about to start from Euston Square when Mr. Eugene Percival made his
appearance upon the platform, and, walking along the line of carriages,
suddenly stopped opposite a first-class _coupé_. The compartment was
occupied by a young lady and gentleman. The lady was Miss Geraldine
Devereux, the gentleman her brother.
Percival had called at the Charing Cross Hotel, merely leaving cards.
His visit was not returned. He sent Miss Devereux a box for the opera,
with a superb bouquet from Covent Garden. The box voucher was sent back
with the compliments of Mr. Devereux; the flowers Miss Devereux
retained. For the few days that his Irish cousins remained in London
Eugene Percival made no sign.
Removing his hat, he respectfully bowed to the occupants of the _coupé_.
Miss Devereux sat nearest the window at which he stood.
“I have come to beg forgiveness,” he said. “Do not go back to Ireland
without uttering my pardon.”
Now, it so happened that Charley Devereux, who had been dining with an
old college chum, was in very good humor, all his war-paint having been
removed under the pleasurable influences of a renewed friendship. So,
thrusting forth his hand, he exclaimed:
“Don’t say anything more about it, Percival. I’m sure you’re sorry.
You’ll do better next time, and won’t let your English prejudice bolt
across country with you.”
“And you, Miss Devereux?”
“I may forgive you, and perhaps call you cousin, when you shall have
made a lengthened tour in my own sweet land.”
“Am I to avoid Ballybo?”
“And commit another mistake?” she archly exclaimed.
“I have done with mistakes for ever.” And as he uttered the words the
train moved silently but swiftly away.
About three weeks after Miss Devereux had regained her wild mountain
home she was considerably astonished one morning upon receiving from out
the post-bag a large, important-looking document with the words, “On Her
Majesty’s Service,” in front, and an enormous seal on the back, with the
royal arms of England stamped upon the red sealing-wax and “Foreign
Office” underneath them.
“Can this be from Eugene Percival?” she thought, as she tore it open and
read:
“FOREIGN OFFICE, July 26, 187—.
“DEAR COUSIN GERALDINE DEVEREUX: I enclose a nomination for the
Foreign Office for my cousin, Patrick Sarsfield Devereux, your
brother. From the correspondence which has taken place between my
dear friend Jack Pommery and my kinsman on the subject of his
future, I trust that this opening is one that will prove suitable to
his tastes and his talents. It is not impossible that I may visit
your ‘impossible country’ when Mr. Pommery runs over for the
grouse-shooting. With kindest regards to all my kinsfolk, I remain,
dear Cousin Geraldine Devereux, your friend and cousin,
“EUGENE PERCIVAL.”
“He’s a good fellow after all,” cried Geraldine with streaming eyes,
“and has made more than the _amende honorable_ to his Irish cousins.”
ENGLISH STATESMEN IN UNDRESS.
LORD CARLINGFORD AND JOHN FRANCIS MAGUIRE.
The English statesman whose personal acquaintance I first made was the
present Lord Carlingford, who was at that time the Hon. Chichester
Fortescue, Secretary of State for Ireland in the cabinet of Mr.
Gladstone. I had in my possession a letter of introduction to him, but I
was unwilling to use it as a means of “interviewing” Mr. Fortescue. I
desired to obtain certain information from him which he might not be
willing to give; and I did not wish that my possible indiscretion in
asking for the information should reflect at all upon the friend who had
given me the letter. I wrote to Mr. Fortescue, telling him simply who I
was and what I wanted, and asking whether he would permit me to call
upon him. I received a note from his secretary, informing me that at a
certain hour Mr. Fortescue would receive me at his office in Great
George Street, Westminster. This was before the new government offices
in Whitehall were completed, and when the various governmental bureaus
were scattered about, hither and thither, in houses that were not
altogether magnificent or imposing. By an error of my own in estimating
the time necessary for a drive from Bayswater to Great George Street, I
was some minutes behind the appointed hour; and when I gave my card to
the servant in waiting he regarded me with a reproachful air. “You have
been asked for, sir,” he said, as he conducted me up-stairs and ushered
me into an ante-room very plainly, almost poorly, furnished. In a few
moments he reappeared, and, leading me through a narrow hall, opened the
door of a larger room, and I found myself in the presence of the Irish
secretary: a tall, slim, thin-faced, handsome man, dressed with
scrupulous neatness, rather starched and stiff, not unlike Fernando Wood
in his prim correctness. Motioning me to a chair in front of his table,
he resumed his seat behind it, and the conversation began. Cold and calm
at first, he soon warmed with the subject, and spoke with earnestness
and freedom, at times with enthusiasm. Her majesty’s government, he
assured me, were earnestly anxious to do justice to Ireland; he thought
they had proved this by their past acts. If they remained in power they
would convince all the world of their sincere desire to remove every
legitimate grievance of which Ireland could complain. He appreciated the
force of my suggestion that the reflex action of public opinion in
America upon public opinion in Ireland was not to be despised. He
questioned me closely upon the extent to which the American press was
influenced by Irish thought; were there many Irish writers in the New
York newspaper offices? who were they? what were their opinions? were
the adverse criticisms upon the Irish policy of the imperial government
inspired by them, or were these the spontaneous thoughts of American
observers?
I began to think I was the interviewed and not the interviewer; but Mr.
Fortescue was ready enough to answer questions in his turn. It was quite
true, he said, that the land question and the question of higher
education in Ireland bristled all over with difficulties. If the demands
of the tenant-farmers in Ireland were granted, a precedent would be set
up that might be attended with most inconvenient consequences in
England; if Mr. Gladstone were to propose a measure for university
education in Ireland that would be satisfactory to Cardinal Cullen, he
would encounter a storm of opposition from the Irish and English
Protestants, and from the even then rapidly-growing secularist party in
England, that might overwhelm him. I remember the earnestness with which
Mr. Fortescue refuted a chance suggestion of mine that Mr. Gladstone was
at heart a foe to the Catholic Church. The very contrary was the case;
he leaned, if anything, too much the other way. Archbishop Manning was
his near and dear friend. He incurred the suspicion and the latent
enmity of the ultra-Protestants, and especially of the Nonconformists,
by his unconcealed anxiety to compensate the Irish Catholics for the
wrongs they had suffered in the past, and to make the future equable and
pleasant for them. In Mr. Fortescue’s belief, an American having it in
his power to influence and enlighten American opinion, and especially
Irish-American opinion, respecting the real wishes of the leaders of the
Liberal party regarding Ireland, could not do a better work than to
impress upon the minds of his countrymen the fact that England—at least
the England of that day—was heartily and sincerely anxious to do justice
to Ireland. The success of the then contemplated measures of the
government would depend very much upon the spirit in which the Irish
people received them.
Mr. Fortescue was evidently not thoroughly satisfied with the state of
feeling in Ireland, and he made some remarks concerning the Irish press
that it is not necessary to repeat. He returned again, however, to the
subject of the influence that Americans, and Irish-Americans in
particular, had upon Irish opinion; and his observations upon this point
convinced me that the secret-service department of his bureau was not
badly conducted. Towards the end of our conversation I mentioned that I
had a letter of introduction to him from ——, and presented it,
explaining why I had not done so in the first instance. We had a laugh
over what he called my “un-American scrupulousness,” and we parted very
good friends. Mr. Fortescue is the possessor of very enviable qualities.
I was quite convinced of his sincerity; but I reflected that the
fascination of his manner when he was aroused and anxious to make a
point might easily blind the judgment. We met occasionally after this
from time to time; and I last saw him at his residence at Strawberry
Hill, where his wife, the Countess Frances Waldegrave (whose own history
is a romance), is the centre of a circle of no small political and
social importance. The future of which we had talked in our first
interview had become the past: Mr. Gladstone had played his trump cards
and had lost his game, Mr. Disraeli reigned in his stead, while Mr.
Fortescue had become Lord Carlingford and was not unhappy. But Ireland
was not happy yet; and I ventured to say so to his lordship. “What would
you have?” he asked—“Catholic university education on Cardinal Cullen’s
plan; a tenant-right law that would make the landlord the slave of the
occupier; and Home Rule, under which the tragedy of the Kilkenny cats
would be enacted all over Ireland until none were left to tell the tale,
or tails. _Ce n’est pas possible, mon ami._”
The words “Home Rule” recall the memory of a very dear friend whose
acquaintance I made in London, and who has now gone to rest. With sad
but pleasant reminiscences I rummage through my letter-cases, filled
with cherished epistles, until I come upon a packet tied with black tape
and labelled “John Francis Maguire.” He was a splendid man, impulsive
and quick, but with a sound judgment that held his emotions under
sufficient control; full of lofty and poetic aspirations for his
country’s future, but guided in his actions by the most sober and
practical common sense. In the midst of arduous political and
professional labors, all the more severe from the pressure of a constant
struggle with inadequate pecuniary resources, from the demands of an
exacting constituency, and from the burning passion of his soul for the
happiness of Ireland, he found time for literary work that was at once a
source of profit and of pleasure to him. Every one will remember his
_Irish in America_ and his _Pontificate of Pius IX._; but it is with a
pang that I remember the pages of manuscript that he read to me on my
last visit to him. They were portions of a novel he was writing—and it
was to be a Jesuitical novel. What Eugene Sue had done to vilify and
traduce the Society of Jesus he would do to vindicate and exalt it. He
described to me the plot; disputed with me over the proposed
_dénouement_; laughed over the skill with which he had introduced
well-known personages into the story; and asked me if, under the
disguise of Sir Guichet de Nouvelle, I recognized that Don Quixote of
Protestantism, Mr. Newdegate.
Mr. Maguire died before his novel was completed—at least, I never heard
of its completion. When I first knew him he lived in pleasant apartments
in Bessborough Gardens, and there it was I last parted from him. The
presentation of my letter of introduction resulted in an invitation to
dine with him the next day; and this was the first of a long series of
little banquets that we had together, alternately at his apartments and
in a cosey room on the third floor of the London Tavern, Fleet Street,
where I played the host. Charming were these symposiums, generally held
on Saturday nights, because the House was not then in session, and
sometimes lasting far beyond midnight. I remember one of these
occasions, on a lovely night in June, when, having sat together until
two o’clock in the morning, I proposed that we should walk to Pimlico
together, where I would leave him at his door. Our route took us through
Temple Bar, up the Strand, down Parliament Street, past the Parliament
houses and Westminster Abbey, and through St. James Park. The morning
air was delicious. At this season of the year the night in London is
very short; one can see to read without gaslight as late as nine
o’clock, and the stars begin to pale as early as two o’clock in the
morning. They were beginning to pale as we left the tavern and began our
walk. The moon, hastening to hide itself before the sun arose, threw a
soft light over the scene; all that was ugly and commonplace in the
glare of day was hidden or disguised; all that was beautiful was arrayed
in new and seductive splendor. The Strand was almost deserted; here and
there a policeman paced his beat; here and there the form of some poor
wretch glided out of the shade of an archway, lingered a moment, and
disappeared. Trafalgar Square was glorious; the fountains made music for
Marochetti’s lions at the base of Nelson’s pillar, and the little lion
on the top of Northumberland House seemed to wag his tail as if beating
time to the melody. Presently the grand vista of the Abbey and the
Parliament houses opened before us; but scarcely had I glanced at it ere
Mr. Maguire hurried me through a narrow passage to the left. “Come,”
said he, “let us see where a king’s head fell.” I had seen it before—the
little square in Whitehall where Charles I. was beheaded, and where the
statue of James II. stands, the king pointing with his sceptre to the
spot where the head of his father fell. In the daytime the place has a
mean and squalid appearance, although the Crescent and gardens around it
are handsome and trim enough. At this moment the surroundings of the
place were bathed in a light that hid their deformities and enhanced
their beauties, and the memories of the tragic scene enacted there had
nothing to disturb them. The ghastly drama re-enacted itself before our
mental vision. There was the window of Whitehall Palace in front of
which the scaffold had been erected. From this window the king emerged;
he stood on the scaffold, with his head erect, wishing to address the
people; but the troops filled the place, and the populace were kept at a
distance. “I can be heard only by you,” said the king to the soldiers;
“I will therefore address to you a few words.” And he repeated to them a
little speech which he had prepared. A curious discourse it was—grave
and calm, “even to coldness,” as Guizot has it. He had been in the
right, he said; every one else was in the wrong; the deprivation of the
rights of the sovereign was the true cause of the unhappiness of the
people; the people should have no voice in government; it was only on
this condition that the kingdom could regain peace and liberty! While he
was speaking some one touched the axe. “Do not dull the axe,” he
exclaimed; “if it is dull it will hurt me.” The executioner directed him
to gather up his long hair under a silk cap which he wore, and the
Protestant Bishop Juxon assisted him to arrange it.
“I have,” said the king, “a good cause and a clement God.”
“Yes, sire,” replied Juxon. “There is only one more step before you; it
is full of agony, but it is short, although it will transport you from
earth to heaven.”
The king replied: “I pass from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown;
there I shall fear no sorrow.” Then, after asking the executioner if the
block was firmly fixed, and saying to Juxon the mysterious word
“Remember!” he knelt down and extended his head upon the block. “I shall
say a short prayer,” said he, “and when I extend my hands, then—” In a
few moments the king stretched out his hands; the executioner struck,
and the head fell directly over the spot where we were then standing.
“It was a wretched piece of work,” said Mr. Maguire as we walked away;
“but the men who did it had the courage of their opinions. Who has the
courage of his opinions now?”
“Mr. Gladstone, perhaps,” I suggested.
“Yes, no doubt; but what are his opinions? Those of to-day will be
discarded to-morrow. He is all on our side now; there is nothing he
would not do for us to-day; but to-morrow, if affairs go wrong, he will
throw us over, and Ireland and the church may find in him their worst
foe. The man wants a balance-wheel,” continued Maguire, warming with his
theme as we walked on, “and only the grace of God can give it him. I
think sometimes that he will have it yet. I admire him, I esteem him. If
he were only a Catholic he would have a guide that would keep him from
mischief. There,” said he, as we came to the end of Whitehall—“there is
Westminster Hall, where Charles I. received his sentence; and there is
Westminster Abbey, where his body was carried in the face of a blinding
snow-storm and buried with maimed rites. There, too, is the door through
which they carried the body of his murderer, Cromwell, to bury it among
the kings. But the ashes of the kings are yet there, while Cromwell’s
grave was broken open, his body dragged out and hung upon a gallows in
Tyburn. He deserved it, the brute! Do you know the story of how, after
his post-mortem execution, his head was cut off and stuck upon a spike
on the top of Westminster Hall, just there in front of us, and how it
remained there, blackening and withering in the air, until one stormy
night it was blown down and picked up by the sentry on guard, who was an
old Cromwellian himself? He hid the precious relic under his jacket, and
afterwards sold it to a gentleman in Kent, in whose family the skull
still remains.”
Had Mr. Maguire lived a few years longer it is probable that the
Home-Rule movement would have taken a somewhat different shape, and
possibly might have been brought to a successful realization. When I
first met him he was engrossed in developing and shaping his ideas on
the subject; and I spent a whole night with him in explaining, in all
its minutiæ, our own system of duplex government, State and federal, and
showing how State rights and federal sovereignty were both preserved. He
was the real father of the Home-Rule movement, and to his untimely death
must be ascribed, in a great measure, the present apparent collapse of
the party. No member of the House of Commons was more generally
respected and esteemed than he; Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli alike
regarded him with admiration. Uncompromising in principle, he knew how
to be firm without being offensive; and he did not commit the too common
error of insisting upon impossibilities. Even Mr. Newdegate cherished a
sneaking liking for the man; and Mr. Maguire once happened to let me
into the secret of that strange affection. “I can turn the laugh on him
any day,” said he, “and if it comes to serious work he gets the worst of
it; but often it is best to let him have his fling. Occasionally I give
him a lift over a stile, knowing quite well that if he goes on a little
farther he will tumble into the ditch and scramble out all covered with
mud.”
Respecting Home Rule, Mr. Maguire’s favorite idea was a confederation of
the three kingdoms, England, Ireland, and Scotland, upon such a basis as
that of our Union, with a written constitution defining with exactness
the limits of provincial autonomy and of imperial sovereignty. It was to
perfect this plan that he made me expound to him, in the most minute
detail, the workings of our own duplex system of government; and among
his papers should have been found an elaborate scheme for the British
Confederation, the joint result of our deliberations. I was summoned to
these momentous conferences by such notes as these—and I select with a
sad heart the last I received from him, a few months before his death:
“I shall be at home this evening altogether, and would be glad to
see you, and we could spend an hour or two over wine or
whiskey-punch. Or I shall be at home to-morrow after seven o’clock.
Send me a line quick to say when you will come.”
“Wine” and “whiskey-punch” had an esoteric meaning as well as their
ordinary significance; for “wine” meant mere gossip, while
“whiskey-punch” was understood to be the accompaniment of very serious
political discussions.
THE CREATED WISDOM.[163]
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
III.
My flowers are flowers of gladness: mine
The boughs of honor and of grace:
Pure as the first bud of the vine
My fragrance freshens all the place.
The mother of fair Love am I:
With me is Wisdom’s name and praise:
With me are Hope, and Knowledge high,
And sacred Fear, and peaceful days.
Be strong all ye that love your God:
He maketh Wisdom to abound
Like Tigris swollen with vernal flood,
Like broad Euphrates harvest-crowned.
Through garden-plots my course I took
To bathe the beds of herb and tree:
Then to a river swelled my brook:—
Ere long my river was a sea.
More high that sea shall rise, and shine
Far off, a prophet-beam of morn,
Because my doctrine is not mine,
But light of God for seers unborn.
Footnote 163:
Ecclesiasticus xxiv.
LOPE DE VEGA.
A prolific playwright, a popular poet, a voluminous romance writer, an
author whose fecundity is equalled only by the elder Dumas, the
contemporary of Shakspere, the friend of Cervantes, the intimate and
guide of Calderon, the founder of the Spanish national drama—Lope de
Vega was all these, and yet today he is carefully forgotten. His
biography even remains unwritten. The attempt, it is true, has been
made, with more or less success, in England by Lord Holland, in America
by Mr. Ticknor, and in France by M. Damas-Hinard. None is fully
satisfactory; all three are too prejudiced, the first two against him,
the last in his favor. Mr. Ticknor’s is the fairest and the ablest. But
the space in a history of literature which can be assigned to any one
author is necessarily too limited to permit the introduction of a
full-length portrait; with a slight sketch, or a kit-cat at best, we
must content ourselves. The articles in the various encyclopædias and
biographical dictionaries are either scant or in great part taken from
Lord Holland’s book. Much biographical material exists, scattered here
and there, and needing only judicious gleaning. But a few months after
his death _La Fama Postuma_, a eulogy containing many curious details of
his manner of life, was published by his friend and follower, Montalvan,
whom Valdivielso calls the “first-born of Lope de Vega’s genius.” The
allusions to him in the works of his contemporaries are copious; but his
bare biography can be condensed into a few lines.
Lope Felix de Vega Carpio was born at Madrid, November 25, 1562. He was
a precocious child, reading Latin as well as Spanish at the age of five,
and at eleven he wrote his first plays. Left alone in the world at the
age of fourteen by the death of his father, also a poet, he travelled as
far as Segovia with a school-fellow. Their money gave out, and when they
attempted to sell a gold chain to pay their way back they were arrested.
The _corregidor_ before whom they were brought, seeing that they were
but school-boys, kindly sent them back to Madrid in care of an
_alguacil_. At fifteen Lope was a soldier warring in Portugal and
Africa. At sixteen he was the page and secretary of Geronimo Manrique,
Bishop of Avila, and also studied and took the degree of Bachelor at the
University of Alcala. While in the bishop’s house he wrote a few
eclogues and a pastoral comedy. Then he became the secretary of Antonio,
the grandson of the great Duke of Alva; his _Arcadia_, written then, is
more or less an account of the gallant adventures of his patron.
Returning to the bishop, he was about to become a priest when he fell in
love, and in 1584 he married Doña Isabella d’Urbina. Quarrelling with a
_hidalgo_ of little reputation, he was arrested, by the aid of Claudio
Conde released from prison, and exiled; he lived two years in Valencia,
and there he first regularly wrote for the stage. Shortly after his
return to Madrid his wife died, and in conjugal despair he embarked on
the famous Armada, finding time to write a poem, “The Beauty of
Angelica,” a continuation of the _Orlando Furioso_, before the
dispersion and destruction of the great fleet by Drake. After travelling
in Italy he returned to Spain and became the secretary of the Marquis of
Sarria. In 1597 he married Doña Juana de Guardio. For nearly ten years
Lope de Vega seems to have been quietly happy, devoting himself to the
care of his son Carlos, but in 1607 or 1608 both his wife and his son
died, leaving him an infant daughter. During these years he had been
writing steadily for the stage; in 1609 he delivered his _Arte Nuevo de
Hacer Comedias_, and in the same year he became a priest. He was also a
Familiar of the Inquisition—an honorary distinction, attesting the
purity of his Catholic blood, and conferring the privilege of being
called into the service of the institution. In 1625, according to Mr.
Ticknor, “he entered the congregation of the native priesthood of
Madrid, and was so faithful and exact in the performance of his duties
that in 1628 he was elected to be its chief chaplain.” After working for
the theatre for forty years, in 1630 he definitely renounced dramatic
authorship. In 1628 the pope, Urban VIII., wrote him an autograph
letter, conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity and naming
him a Knight of the Order of Malta. For more than twenty-five years he
daily devoted some portion of his time to the service of the church; on
the title-page of his plays he calls himself Frey Lope de Vega, Familiar
of the Inquisition, and the last important work he published was
_Dorotea_, a long prose romance in dialogue, probably slightly
autobiographical. Finally, on August 27, 1635, at the age of
seventy-three, Lope Felix de Vega Carpio died. The funeral ceremonies,
lasting nine days, were magnificent; the eulogistic poems published in
Spain and Italy would fill several volumes; and “most solemn of all,”
says Mr. Ticknor, generally disposed to underrate Lope de Vega’s
popularity and ability, “was the mourning of the multitude, from whose
dense mass audible sobs burst forth as his remains slowly descended from
their sight into the house appointed for all living.”
For forty years the works of Lope de Vega had filled the theatres not
only of Spain but of all Europe. There were but two dramatic companies
in Madrid when he began to write; there were forty when he ceased. He
composed over fifteen hundred dramas and an unknown number of lighter
pieces, in addition to his non-theatrical works. He was as popular as he
was prolific. Not only in Europe but in America were his plays
performed. One of his comedies, the _Fuerza Lastimosa_, was even
exhibited within the seraglio at Constantinople. His merit was so
universally recognized that to call anything a _Lope_ was to stamp it as
being sterling; it was sufficient to say _es de Lope_. When the king and
queen of Spain met him in the street they caused their carriage to stop,
that they might better see the illustrious man. The Spanish dramatists
of his own and the succeeding age did not hesitate to call him their
master. Tirso de Molina, Alarcon, Calderon, and Guillen de Castro hail
him as their chief. And he was as popular a man as he was an author; he
was personally beloved by nearly all his contemporaries; he had few
enemies and many friends. A gentleman by birth, breeding, and education,
he had a kind word for all. He was handsome and agile. He wittily
declared that he disliked only those who ask a person’s age without
matrimonial intentions, those who take snuff in the presence of their
superiors, those old men who dye their locks, those churchmen who
consult gypsies, and those men who, though born of woman, yet speak ill
of the sex.
Although it is as a playwright that he is best known, yet he was the
author of many other works. He wrote two heroic, four mythological, four
historical poems (among which was _La Dragontea_, devoted to the abuse
of Sir Francis Drake), one burlesque (_La Gatomachia_, describing the
loves and rivalries of two cats), many descriptive and didactic verses,
and a multitude of sonnets and epistles. He was also the author of eight
almost interminable prose novels. His plays, however, are the noblest
monument of his genius, although he himself thought otherwise. He
declared that his _autos_ (a sort of revival of the mysteries and
moralities of the middle ages) were his best works, and regretted that
he had not devoted his whole life to religious poetry.
His dramas (the Spanish word _comedias_ meaning merely plays) may be
roughly divided into three classes:
1. Comedies of common life, or domestic dramas;
2. Heroic dramas, which perhaps might sometimes be called tragedies; and
3. Comedies of intrigue, or _comedias de capa y espada_ (comedies of
Cloak and Sword, as the Spanish call them, from those frequently-used
“properties”).
He also wrote religious plays, some, like the _autos_, resembling the
mysteries and moralities, others more infused with a modern and secular
spirit. He often chose Scriptural subjects for his plays, and in some of
his heroic dramas the heroes are holy men and saints. But it is
especially in the _comedias de capa y espada_ that he excelled. They
were interesting stories thrown into dramatic shape and written with the
view of exciting surprise and curiosity. Only those ignorant of the
Spanish habits and the Spanish customs of that day will reproach him for
his frequent use of duels and disguises. He faithfully transcribed the
romantic existence of the time. A rigid examiner may declare that his
most successful pieces were comedies of intrigue rather than comedies of
manners. They please by their plot, always ingenious and almost always
original; by their interest, always sustained and exciting. Lope de Vega
was a thorough master of stage effect. He weaves and reweaves the web
and woof of his story, gaining and retaining the attention of the
spectator by the growing interest. We are carried rapidly along by the
skill of the dramatist, sometimes in spite of ourselves. Even in the
best of his plays the incidents are often improbable, but in our
enjoyment we can readily pardon this. When Shakspere has called Bohemia
a desert country by the sea, and Beaumont and Fletcher speak of Naples
as though it were an island, it would indeed be strange if Lope were
exempt from such errors. In one play we find Adam and Eve “dressed very
gallantly after the French fashion”; in another Nero sings a serenade in
the streets of Rome. The American Indians discourse of Diana and Phœbus;
Cyrus the Great, after his ascension to the throne, marries a
shepherdess; Job, David, Jeremias, and St. John the Baptist are
introduced in one play; and in “The New World Discovered by Christopher
Columbus,” among the _dramatis personæ_ are Providence, Imagination, The
Christian Religion, Idolatry, and a Demon. Haste is hardly an excuse for
this, and De Vega worked in haste. The elder Dumas wrote a novel in
seventy-six consecutive hours. For fifteen days De Vega wrote an act a
day, and more than one hundred of his plays were written within
twenty-four hours each. At least this seems to be the meaning of
“Pues mas de ciento en horas veinticuatro
Pasaron de las musas al teatro.”
Mr. Ticknor, however, reads these lines to mean that more than a hundred
were performed within twenty-four hours after their completion. Perhaps
this interpretation is accurate, but to any one acquainted with the
difficulties attending the mounting and rehearsing of a modern comedy it
seems, to say the least, improbable; and, at any rate, De Vega’s
facility of composition was so great that many writers rashly assert
that he could compose a play in three or four hours! Montalvan tells a
pleasant anecdote illustrating the rapidity of his work. To oblige a
manager Lope and Montalvan agreed to write a piece together. The first
two acts of the _Tercera Orden de San Francisco_ were divided between
them, each writing an act a day. The third act was to be halved into
eight leaves each. Montalvan continues, to quote Lord Holland’s version:
“As it was bad weather, I remained in his house that night, and, knowing
that I could not equal him in the execution, I had a fancy to beat him
in the despatch of the business. For this purpose I got up at two
o’clock, and at eleven had completed my share of the work. I immediately
went out to look for him, and found him very deeply occupied with an
orange-tree that had been frost-bitten in the night. Upon my asking him
how he had gone on with his task he answered: ‘I set about it at five,
but I finished the act an hour ago, took a bit of ham for breakfast,
wrote an epistle of fifty triplets, and have watered the whole of the
garden—which has not a little fatigued me.’ Then, taking out the papers,
he read me the eight leaves and the triplets—a circumstance that would
have astonished me had I not known the fertility of his genius and the
dominion he had over the rhymes of our language.” At this period Lope
was nearly seventy years old, or such a trifle would scarcely have tired
him.
Schlegel draws a brilliant comparison between Lope de Vega and
Shakspere, or rather between the Spanish and the English stage. Any such
method of measurement injures the Spaniard; it is only in the management
of his plots that he is able to rival the Englishman. It is curious,
however, to note that each great writer was surrounded by minor
lights—set, as it were, with glittering but inferior gems. Shakspere
shone in the midst of a glorious company containing Jonson, Ford,
Fletcher, Beaumont, Greene, Nash, Marlowe, Massinger, and Webster. Lope
de Vega, following Lope de Rueda, was surrounded by a brilliant throng
of friendly rivals—Cervantes, Calderon, Montalvan, Moreto, Alarcon,
Matos-Fragoso, and Guillen de Castro. It is also remarkable to find that
England and Spain, then the possessors of a great drama, are now barren
fields; while France, once but the empty echo of the classic muse, is
to-day the chief country in possession of a living dramatic literature.
For this literature France owes largely to England and Spain; French
tragedy and French comedy are directly indebted to Lope’s influence.
From a play of Guillen de Castro, one of Lope’s followers, Corneille
derived his _Cid_, the greatest French tragedy; and from a play of
Alarcon, another of Lope’s followers (and the first of American dramatic
authors, for by birth and education he was a Mexican), Corneille took
his _Menteur_, the earliest of French comedies. In a letter to Boileau
Molière said: “I owe much to the _Menteur_. At the time it appeared I
desired to write, but I was uncertain as to what I should write. My
ideas were confused; this work came and defined them. Without the
_Menteur_, no doubt, I should have written some such comedies of
intrigue as the _Etourdi_ and the _Dépit Amoureux_, but perhaps I should
never have written the _Misanthrope_.”
The _dramatis personæ_ of Lope’s plays are not character studies, finely
and fully polished, like those of Molière; they are rather off-hand
sketches, fresh and original. Although they often disclose haste, they
always show the firm though rapid touch of a master; and however wanting
in completeness of detail, they never lack boldness of outline. The
people who walk and talk in Lope de Vega’s comedies are living men and
women, speaking and acting like human beings, and true to human nature
as it was in Spain in those adventurous times; they were not lay
figures, mere puppets, pulled hither and thither by visible wires. He
rarely created an eccentric character, never an impossible one.
He did not allow himself Molière’s privilege of taking his material
wherever he found it. Only once is it known that he used the work of
another: his _Esclavos in Argel_ is based on Cervantes’ _Trato de
Argel_. He was an originator—copied, not copying; and if at times his
characters seem to lack novelty, it is perhaps in part because we live
in the nineteenth century and he wrote in the sixteenth. For two
centuries and a half the playwrights of the world have been pillaging
him until his people and his plots have become public property. Calderon
copied him; Molière and Corneille carried Calderon to France; the
English stole from all three; so it is small wonder that what Lope de
Vega transcribed from nature is now typical and traditional. He was
first in the field; others have stolen his pressed flowers.
A full exposition of De Vega’s ideas of dramatic art can best be found
in his own essay on the subject, the _Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_. It
would seem from this essay that in Lope’s time Spain was slowly freeing
herself from the fetters of the unities, first riveted by Aristotle.
England had set the example; Spain was fast following. In these two
countries the fierce fight was then fought that two centuries and a half
later was to agitate France. Spain then had her battle between the
Romantics and the Classics, and Lope de Vega, while ironically
deferential to the ancient laws, fought foremost on the side of freedom.
As in France Victor Hugo in 1830, so in Spain Lope de Vega in 1600. Both
were leaders; both have written essays on dramatic art. It is curious to
compare the Spanish writer’s _Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_ with the
French author’s elaborate and scientific discussion of dramatic effect
contained in the celebrated preface to his never-acted _Cromwell_.
The _Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias_ was written in 1609 at the request of
one of those numerous academies then existing in Spain, and founded in
imitation of the Italian Della Cruscans. It contains internal evidence
of haste in its construction; although he knew better, Lope carelessly
mistakes Terence for Plautus. Capable of composing a comedy in a day, he
may easily have dashed off this little essay in a very few hours. It is
written in blank verse, only the last two lines of each stanza rhyming.
The stanzas, also, are of unequal length. Although the essay seems
almost an improvisation, it is extremely interesting not only to the
student of his plays but also to the casual reader, as it gives a view
of the state of the Spanish stage at the time not elsewhere to be found.
The following unabridged English rendering of the essay has been made
from the excellent French version of M. Damas-Hinard:
“ARTE NUEVO DE HACER COMEDIAS.
(_The New Art of Writing Plays._)
“Noble minds, flower of Spain, who, in this illustrious academy,
will soon have surpassed not only those academies of Italy which
Cicero, emulating Greece, established in the land where sleep the
waters of Avernus, but even that school of Plato in which Athens saw
so rare an assembly of philosophers come together, you order me to
write you an essay on dramatic art in accordance with the public
taste to-day. This task seems easy, and, indeed, it would be to him
among you who has worked the least for the stage, and who therefore
better knows the rules; but it must be done by me, who have never
composed except contrary to the rules of the art. It is not, thank
Heaven! that I do not know them: these theories were familiar to me
when I was yet a school-boy, and when the sun had not ten times
passed from Taurus to Pisces; but at the time when I chose this
career I found the stage filled with works very different from those
which the first inventors of the art left as models, and such,
indeed, as were composed by the barbarians, who had accustomed the
vulgar to their crudities. And they have so thoroughly established
themselves in this fashion that he who would now write for the
theatre according to the precepts of the art dies without glory and
without reward; for among those who lack the enlightenment of a
superior mind custom always carries the day.
“Several times, it is true, I have written following these
principles, which but few people know; but as soon as I see these
monstrous compositions appear, full of magical apparitions, to which
rush the crowds and the women, always worshipping such absurdities,
then I return to my barbarian habits. And when I have a comedy to
write I lock up the rules behind triple bolts; I cast Plautus and
Terence out of my study for fear of hearing their cries, for truth
calls aloud in these dumb books; and I then write according to the
art invented by those who wished to gain the applause of the crowd.
After all, as it is the public who pays for these absurdities, ’tis
but just that it be served to its taste.
“True comedy has one aim, as has every kind of poem, and this aim is
to imitate the action of men and to paint the manners of the age in
which they lived. Now, every poetical imitation is composed of three
things: dialogue, versification, harmony or melody. Comedy and
tragedy agree in this; but they differ, inasmuch as the former
represents the action of the lower orders, and the latter only
concerns itself with kings and high personages. Judge from that how
much may be said against our comedies.
“At first our pieces were called _autos_, because they confined
themselves to the imitation of common actions and interests. Among
us Lope de Rueda was the model of this style; his comedies, which
have been printed, are in prose, and of an order so low that he has
introduced artisans and traces the loves of a blacksmith’s daughter.
To-day we call them _interludes_, these antique works in which the
rules of art are carefully observed, in which the action is simple
and takes place among the middle classes—for an interlude was never
seen in which kings figured. And this explains how plays little by
little fell into deep discredit because of the lowness of style, and
how they put kings and princes into comedy, to the great
satisfaction of the ignorant.
“In the beginning of his _Ars Poetica_ Aristotle relates, in a
manner quite obscure, it is true, the debate which took place
between Athens and Megara touching the originator of the theatre—the
Megarians attributing this glory to Epicharmus, while the Athenians
claimed it for Magnes. Donat traces back the first attempts to the
ancient sacrifices, and, in this respect following Horace, he
attributes the origin of tragedy to Thespis, and that of comedy to
Aristophanes. The _Odyssey_ of Homer is the result of a comic
inspiration, but the _Iliad_ was the noble model of tragedy. It is
in imitation of this poem that is composed my _Jerusalem_, which I
have called a tragic epic. They commonly call by the name of comedy
the _Inferno_, _Purgatorio_, and _Paradiso_ of the celebrated poet
Dante Alighieri, and Manetti gives the reasons for this in the
preface to that poem.
“All the world knows that comedy, falling into disrepute, was
condemned to silence for a time; that after that came the _satyres_,
which, being still more cruel, passed away more promptly; and that
then the new comedy was born.
“In the beginning dramatic works consisted but of choruses. Soon
there was added a certain number of characters. But Menander,
followed in this by Terence, rejected the choruses as tedious. This
latter was a most scrupulous observer of the precepts; never did he
raise the style of comedy to a tragic loftiness, wiser in that
respect than Plautus, whom they have so much reproached for this
fault.
“Tragedy is founded on fact, comedy on fiction, and the latter was
called ‘flat-footed’ because it was played without _cothurnus_ or
scenery, and because it took its plots from the humblest classes.
Yet then, as now, there were several kinds of comedy: there were
_pallium_ comedies and _toga_ comedies, and pantomimes, and _fabulæ
atellanæ_ and _tabernariæ_.
“The Athenians, who gave prizes to their dramatic poets and to their
actors, in their comedies rebuked wickedness and vice with antique
elegance. This is why Cicero called comedy the mirror of manners,
the image of truth—sublime attribute which raises Thalia to the rank
of history, and which shows us how much she merits esteem and honor.
“But already it seems to me that you draw back, saying: ‘What use is
this translating of books and this fatiguing show of erudition?’
Believe me, it is not without motive that I recalled to your memory
all these things; I wished to let you see that you have asked me for
an essay on dramatic art in Spain, where all plays are written
contrary to art, and I wished to declare that our pieces are not
according to right or the ancient rules. But let us leave this; you
have recourse to my experience, and not to what I may have been able
to learn of an art which tells us the truth, but to which the vulgar
prefer the false.
“If, then, you asked me for the rules of the art, I should refer you
to the wise and learned Rebortelo, and you would see explained in
his book on Aristotle or on comedy what otherwise is scattered in a
crowd of works without order and without light. But since you ask
the opinion of those now in possession of the stage, acknowledging
that the public has the right to establish the incongruous laws of
our dramatic prodigy, I will tell you my idea, and your command must
excuse my temerity. I should like, since the public is in error, to
deck this error with agreeable colors; I should like, since it is no
longer possible to follow the ancient rules, to find a mean between
the two extremes.
“First choose the subject of your comedy, and, in spite of the old
precepts, do not disquiet yourself whether there be or be not kings
among your characters. I ought not to conceal, however, that our
king and lord, Philip the Prudent, was angry every time he beheld a
king on the stage, either because he saw in that a violation of the
rules of the art, or because he thought that even in fiction the
royal authority should not be presented too near the gaze of the
people.
“Besides, in this we draw near to the ancient comedy, in which
Plautus did not fear to place even gods, as the part he gives
Jupiter in the _Amphitryon_ proves. Heaven knows it is difficult for
me to approve of this. Even Plutarch, in speaking of Menander,
formally blames ancient comedy; but since we in Spain have renounced
the rules of the art and treat it cavalierly, this time the
classicists are silenced.
“In mingling the tragic and the comic, and Terence with Seneca (from
which results a species of monster like the Minotaur), you will have
one part of the piece serious and the other farcical. But this
variety pleases very much. Nature herself gives us the example of
it, and it is from such contrasts that she gains her beauty.
“Take care only that your subject presents but one action; take care
that your story is not overcharged with episodes (that is to say,
with things which lead away from the main idea), and that no part
can be detached without overthrowing the whole edifice. Do not
trouble yourself about confining all the action within the space of
one day, although it is the rule of Aristotle; we have already
rejected his authority in mingling tragedy and comedy. Let us
content ourselves with reducing the time as much as may be possible,
unless the poet composes a story the action of which extends over
several years, and in this case he could place the intervals of time
in the ‘waits’—as, for instance, if one of his characters has a
journey to take. These liberties, I know, disgust the critics. Well,
the critics may stay away from our pieces.
“How many of these fellows cross themselves in horror, seeing
several years given to an action which ought to be accomplished in
the space of an artificial day—for they would not even accord us the
twenty-four hours! For my part, considering that the eager curiosity
of a Spaniard seated at the play cannot be satisfied even by showing
him all the events from Genesis to the day of the Last Judgment in
two hours, I think that, if our duty is to please the spectators, it
is right that we should do all that is necessary to gain this end.
“The subject once chosen, write your piece in prose, and divide it
into three acts, doing your best that each act, if it is possible,
embrace but the space of one day. Captain Viruès, an illustrious
writer, first put comedy in three acts, which before had gone on all
fours like a child; and truly it was then in its infancy. I myself,
at the age of from eleven to twelve years, wrote in four acts and
four sheets, for each act was contained in a sheet of paper. In
those days they played three little interludes in the intervals of
the acts, and now it is much if they play even one, which is
immediately followed by a dance. Dancing, however, fits so well into
comedy that Aristotle approves of it, and Atheneus, Plato, and
Xenophon do not blame it, except when it is not decent,[164] like
that of Callipedes. The dance seems to me to replace amongst us the
chorus of the ancients.
“The subject being treated in two ways, let them from the start be
joined and well connected together until the end of the piece, so
that one can divine the _dénouement_ but at the last scene; for when
the spectators know it they turn their faces to the door and their
backs to the actors, to whom they have listened for three hours with
interest, and of whom they think no more when they no longer need
them to know what will be the result.
“Let the stage rarely remain empty. These delays make the spectator
impatient and uselessly prolong the play; and besides being a great
fault, to avoid it is to add art and grace to the work.
“Then begin to versify, and in your language, always choice, use
neither brilliant thoughts nor witty remarks when you treat of
domestic affairs; it suffices in such a case to imitate the
conversation of two or three persons. But when you bring upon the
stage a character who exhorts, counsels, or dissuades, you can allow
yourself the use of fine language and striking ideas, and in this
you will imitate nature; for when we give advice, when we wish to
encourage or deter, we speak in a manner totally different from
familiar chat. In this regard we follow the opinion of the
rhetorician Aristides, who desires that the language of comedy
should be clear, pure, and easy, like that of ordinary conversation,
adding also that it should differ essentially from the tragic style,
where we may use expressions pompous, sonorous, and glittering.
“Never quote Scripture, and take care never to offend taste by an
affected erudition; to imitate the language of conversation you need
name neither hippogriffs nor centaurs, nor the other mythological
entities.
“If you make a king discourse, let it be with the dignity proper to
the royal majesty; let the old man express himself with sententious
gravity; let the conversation of lovers be replete with such lively
sentiments as to move those who hear. In monologues let the
character be totally changed; by this transformation let him force
the spectators to identify themselves with him; let him speak and
reply to himself in a natural manner; and if he bemoans a lover’s
lot, let him not forget the respect due to the fair sex. Under all
circumstances let the ladies preserve the modesty they ought to
have; and if they don male attire (which is always very agreeable to
the public), let this change of costume have a reasonable motive. In
short, never paint impossible things, for the first maxim is that
art can only imitate the possible.
“Let not a servant treat too lofty subjects, and take care not to
put into his mouth those witty sayings which we have seen in some
foreign comedies.
“Let your characters never forget their nature; let them remember at
the end what they have said at first, lest we make the same reproach
to them as was made to the _Œdipus_ of Sophocles—that he had
forgotten his fight with Laïus.
“Adorn the end of your scenes with some swelling phrase, with some
joke, with lines more carefully polished, so that the actor at his
exit does not leave the audience in ill-humor.
“In the first act lay the foundation; in the second let the
complications commence, and contrive in such a way that until half
through the third act no one can foresee the end. Always deceive the
curiosity of the spectator by showing him, as though possible, a
result entirely different from that to which the incidents seem to
point.
“Let the versification be tastefully appropriate to the subject you
treat. Decasyllabic lines suit lamentations; the sonnet is well
placed in a monologue; descriptions demand the romantic stanza,
although they are as brilliant as possible in octosyllabic metre.
Triple-rhymed lines are reserved for grave affairs, and the
_redondillas_[165] for lovers’ conversations.”
The sound sense of this little essay shows how thoroughly De Vega
understood his subject. Writing to please the populace, not the learned
and possibly hyper-critical, he had studied the playgoer and knew all
his peculiarities—how to please him and how to take liberties with
impunity. His comedies of Cloak and Sword are the least careless and the
most admirable of his plays, and they were the most successful. The
involved and complicated plots, the duels and disguises, the hurry and
the vigor of this class of plays are seen to best advantage in Lope de
Vega’s works. He had founded the school, and the bent of his genius
fitted him to be its master. His works and those of his scholars went at
once to all parts of Europe. In England Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Centlivre,
Farquhar, Congreve, Wycherly, Holcroft, were his followers, copyists,
plagiarists. Not only did others pillage him, but, like almost all
prolific authors, he plagiarized from himself. Over thirty or forty
times has he treated one subject: a lady and a knight forced to leave
the court in disguise because of the persecutions of the king, and
taking refuge in a village, where, after many mishaps and adventures,
they are finally married. Of course in each of these twoscore plays the
situations vary, but the central idea is the same in all. To an author
of such facility the great difficulty was in the discovery of a subject.
That was all he needed; its dramatic dressing was an easy task. Hardly
one of the picturesque points of Spanish history did he neglect. His
lighter plays were often historical. Generally they were not. His _Perro
del Hortelano_ (“Dog in the Manger”) is, for instance, an original
invention. It contains a delightful sketch of a woman absorbed by
jealousy, and yet unable to make up her mind to marry the loved one
because of his inferior birth. Both lovers are drawn with delicious
vigor—a vigor suggesting, perhaps remotely, Thackeray. This charming
comedy shows of what things Lope was capable in this line had he so
willed. It is somewhat in the style of Scribe at his best. Indeed, in
many respects he was the precursor of Scribe, who greatly resembled him
in fecundity, facility, and felicity of execution. More than one of his
plays, if modernized, might pass for the work of the brilliant French
dramatist.
But the best of Lope’s work is many degrees above the best of Scribe’s.
In ingenuity and in originality, and in the conduct of the business of
the stage, the Spaniard is at least the equal of the Frenchman, while in
the depicting of passion he is by far the superior. Scribe was incapable
of anything at all approaching the sombre and inevitable conclusion of
the _Star of Seville_, appalling with the inexorable logic of fate. Mrs.
Frances Anne Kemble has produced a spirited English play suggested by
it, of which Lord Holland has given a long analysis with translated
extracts. As he justly remarks, no mere relation of the plots of Lope’s
plays would give a sufficient idea of the attractions they possess, “nor
can they be collected from a mere perusal of detached passages. The
chief merit of his plays is a certain spirit and animation which
pervades the whole, but which is not to be preserved in disjointed limbs
of the composition.”
It is easy to find the reason for Lope de Vega’s theatrical activity. He
was poor, and play-writing was profitable. He says somewhere that
poverty and himself formed a copartnership to work for the stage. At the
close of the sixteenth century Spain was divided into several almost
independent provinces, and there was no interprovincial copyright; the
bookseller of Castile could reprint and sell for his own profit the
successful work first published in Leon. An author in those days could
not even get pay for advance-sheets. Under these circumstances
publishers naturally paid authors little or nothing. Literature was a
labor of love. The dramatic taste, however, of the Spanish people was
increasing. The two companies of actors gradually grew to forty, and the
forty audiences asked for novelty. The managers endeavoring to satisfy
this demand, the consumption of comedies was something enormous. There
was a uniform price fixed in advance: a comedy was worth five hundred
reals, equivalent to about forty or fifty dollars of our money. The
reward was not great, but the labor was light—at least to Lope. Dramatic
work paid; other literature did not. Lope would have been certainly
justified in devoting himself exclusively to the drama. He might labor
in other fields; on the stage he ruled. What is done quickly may die
quickly, and few of Lope’s plays hold the stage to-day even in Spain.
But if his plays are not seen, his influence is visible in the drama of
France, of England, of Germany, and of Spain, his own country, of the
literature of which he and Calderon and Cervantes are the greatest
glories. Calderon was his follower and Cervantes was his friend.
Although it has been said they were at enmity, it is known that Lope de
Vega praised Cervantes, and the author of _Don Quixote_ generously
eulogized his more successful rival thus: “At last appeared that prodigy
of nature, the great Lope de Vega, and established his monarchy on the
stage. He conquered and reduced under his jurisdiction every actor and
author in the kingdom.... And though there have been many who have
attempted the same career, all their works together would not equal in
quantity what this single man has composed.”
And Cervantes wrote these lines almost twenty years before Lope de
Vega’s death, almost twenty years before he had ceased composing. It is
with the following brilliant paragraph that Mr. Ticknor, always strongly
prejudiced in favor of Cervantes, begins his historical criticism of
Lope’s life and labor, and with it we end: “It is impossible to speak of
Cervantes as the great genius of the Spanish nation without recalling
Lope de Vega, the rival who far surpassed him in contemporary
popularity, and rose, during the lifetime of both, to a degree of fame
which no Spaniard had yet attained, and which has since been reached by
few of any country.”
Footnote 164:
It was recently said that there were three kinds of dancing: the
graceful, the ungraceful, and the disgraceful.
Footnote 165:
_Redondillas_ are stanzas of four short lines. This paragraph on
versification reads curiously to ears accustomed to the pentameter
blank verse of the English drama, stately at times and sprightly when
need be, and, indeed, capable of infinite variety. The Spanish plays
of to-day are written in very short metre, and French tragedies still
rhyme.