GODOLPHIN’S COURSE OF LIFE.--INFLUENCE OF OPINION AND OF RIDICULE ON THE
MINDS OF PRIVILEGED ORDERS.--LADY ERPINGITAM’S FRIENDSHIP WITH GEORGE
THE FOURTH.--HIS MANNER OF LIVING.
The course of life which Godolphin now led, was exactly that which it
is natural for a very rich intellectual man to indulge--voluptuous
but refined. He was arriving at that age when the poetry of the heart
necessarily decays. Wealth almost unlimited was at his command; he had
no motive for exertion; and he now sought in pleasure that which he had
formerly asked from romance. As his faculties and talents had no
other circle for display than that which “society” affords; so by slow
degrees, society--its applause and its regard--became to him of greater
importance than his “philosophy dreamt of.” Whatever the circle we live
amongst, the public opinion of that circle will, sooner or later, obtain
a control over us. This is the reason why a life of pleasure makes even
the strongest mind frivolous at last. The lawyer, the senator, the magi
of letters, all are insensibly guided--moulded--formed--by the judgment
of the tribe they belong to, and the circle in which they move. Still
more is it the case with the idlers of the great world, amongst whom the
only main staple of talk is “themselves.”
And in the last-named set, Ridicule being more strong and fearful a
deity than she is amongst the cultivators of the graver occupations
of life, reduces the inmates, by a constant dread of incurring her
displeasure, to a more monotonous and regular subjection to the judgment
of others. Ridicule is the stifler of all energy amongst those she
controls. After man’s position in society is once established--after
he has arrived at a certain age--he does not like to hazard any
intellectual enterprise which may endanger the quantum of respect
or popularity at present allotted to him. He does not like to risk a
failure in parliament--a caustic criticism in literature: he does not
like to excite new jealousies, and provoke angry rivals where he
now finds complaisant inferiors. The most admired authors, the most
respected members of either house, now looked up to Godolphin as a man
of wit and genius; a man whose house, whose wealth, whose wife, gave
him an influence few individuals enjoy. Why risk all this respect by
provoking comparison? Among the first in one line, why sink into the
probability of being second-rate in another?
This motive, which secretly governs half the aristocracy--the cleverer
half, viz., the more diffident and the more esteemed; which leaves to
the obtuse and the vain, a despised and unenviable notoriety; added new
force to Godolphin’s philosophical indifference to ambition. Perhaps,
had his situation been less brilliant, or had he persevered in that
early affection for solitude which youth loves as the best nurse to
its dreams, he might now, in attaining an age when ambition, often dumb
before, usually begins to make itself heard, have awakened to a more
resolute and aspiring temperament of mind. But, as it was, courted and
surrounded by all the enjoyments which are generally the reward to which
exertion looks, even an ambitious man might have forgotten his nature.
No wound to his vanity, no feeling that he was underrated (that great
spur to proud minds) excited him to those exertions we undertake in
order to belie calumny. He was “the glass of fashion,” at once popular
and admired; and his good fortune in marrying the celebrated, the
wealthy, the beautiful Countess of Erpingham was, as success always is,
considered the proof of his genius, and the token of his merits.
It was certainly true, that a secret and mutual disappointment rankled
beneath the brilliant lot of the husband and wife. Godolphin exacted
from Constance more softness, more devotion, more compliance than
belonged to her nature; and Constance, on the other hand, ceased not to
repine that she found in Godolphin no sympathy with her objects, and
no feeling for her enthusiasm. As there was little congenial in their
pursuits, the one living for pleasure, the other for ambition, so there
could be no congeniality in their intercourse. They loved each other
still; they loved each other warmly; they never quarrelled; for the
temper of Constance was mild, and that of Godolphin generous: but
neither believed there was much love on the other side; and both sought
abroad that fellowship and those objects they had not in common at home.
Constance was a great favourite with the reigning king; she was
constantly invited to the narrow circle of festivities at Windsor.
Godolphin, who avoided the being bored as the greatest of earthly evils,
could not bow down his tastes and habits to any exact and precise order
of life, however distinguished the circle in which it became the rule.
Thirsting to be amused, he could not conjugate the active verb “to
amuse.” No man was more fitted to adorn a court, yet no man could less
play the courtier. He admired the manners of the sovereign,--he did
homage to the natural acuteness of his understanding; but, accustomed
as he was to lay down the law in society, he was too proud to receive
it from another,--a common case among those who live with the great
by right and not through sufferance. His pride made him fear to seem a
parasite; and, too chivalrous to be disloyal, he was too haughty to
be subservient. In fact, he was thoroughly formed to be the Great
Aristocrat,--a career utterly distinct from that of the hanger-on upon a
still greater man; and against his success at court, he had an obstacle
no less in the inherent fierte of his nature, than in the acquired
philosophy of his cynicism.
The king, at first, was civil enough to Lady Erpingham’s husband; but he
had penetration enough to see that he was not adequately admired: and on
the first demonstration of royal coolness, Godolphin, glad of an excuse,
forswore Castle and Pavilion for ever, and left Constance to enjoy alone
the honours of the regal hospitality. The world would have insinuated
scandal; but there was that about Constance’s beauty which there is said
by one of the poets to belong to an angel’s--it struck the heart, but
awed the senses.