NEW VIEWS OF A PRIVILEGED ORDER.--THE DEATH-BED OF AUGUSTUS SAVILLE.
This event might indeed have been an era in the life of Percy Godolphin,
had that life been spared to a more extended limit than it was; and
yet, so long had his ambition been smoothed and polished away by his
peculiarities of thought, and so little was his calm and indifferent
tone of mind suited to the hot contests and nightly warfare of
parliamentary politics, that it is not probable he would ever have won
a continuous and solid distinction in a career which requires either
obtuseness of mind or enthusiasm of purpose to encounter the repeated
mortifications and failures which the most brilliant debutant ordinarily
endures. As it was, however, it produced a grave and solemn train of
thought in Godolphin’s breast. He mused much over his past life, and
the musing did not satisfy him. He felt like one of those recorded
in physiological history who have been in a trance for years: and now
slowly awakening, he acknowledged the stir and rush of revived but
confused emotions. Nature, perhaps, had intended Godolphin for a
poet; for, with the exception of the love of glory, the poetical
characteristics were rife within him; and over his whole past existence
the dimness of unexpressed poetical sensation had clung and hovered. It
was this which had deadened his soul to the active world, and wrapped
him in the land of dreams; it was this which had induced that vague and
restless dissatisfaction with the Actual which had brought the thirst
for the Ideal; it was this which had made him fastidious in love,
repining in pleasure, magnificent in luxury, seeking and despising all
things in the same breath. There are many, perhaps, of this sort,
who, having the poet’s nature, have never found the poet’s vent to his
emotions; have wandered over the visionary world without chancing to
discover the magic wand that was stored within the dark chamber of their
mind, and would have reduced the visions into shape and substance. Alas!
what existence can be more unfulfilled than that of one who has the
soul of the poet and not the skill? who has the susceptibility and the
craving, not the consolation or the reward?
But if this cloud of dreamlike emotion had so long hung over Godolphin,
it began now to melt away from his heart; a clearer and distincter view
of the large objects of life lay before him; and he felt that he was
standing, half stunned and passive, in the great crisis of his fate.
The day was now fixed for their departure to Wendover, when Saville was
taken alarmingly ill; Godolphin was sent for, late one evening. He
found the soi-disant Epicurean at the point of death, but in perfect
possession of his senses. The scene around him was emblematic of his
life: save Godolphin, not a friend was by. Saville had some dozen or
two of natural children--where were they? He had abandoned them to their
fate: he knew not of their existence, nor they of his death. Lonely in
his selfishness was he left to breathe out the small soul of a man
of bon-ton! But I must do Saville the justice to say, that if he was
without the mourners and the attendants that belonged to natural ties,
he did not require them. His was no whimpering exit from life: the
champagne was drained to the last drop; and Death, like the true boon
companion, was about to shatter the empty glass.
“Well, my friend,” said Saville, feebly, but pressing with weak fingers
Godolphin’s hand--“well, the game is up, the lights are going out, and
presently the last guest will depart, and all be darkness!” here the
doctor came to the bedside with a cordial. The dying man, before he
took it, fixed upon the leech an eye which, although fast glazing, still
retained something of its keen, searching shrewdness.
“Now tell me, my good sir, how many hours more can you keep in
this--this breath?”
The doctor looked at Godolphin.
“I understand you,” said Saville; “you are shy on these points. Never
be shy, my good fellow; it is inexcusable after twenty: besides, it is
a bad compliment to my nerves--a gentleman is prepared for every event.
Sir, it is only a roturier whom death, or anything else, takes by
surprise. How many hours, then, can I live?”
“Not many, I fear, sir: perhaps until daybreak.”
“My day breaks about twelve o’clock, p.m.,” said Saville, as drily as
his gasps would let him. “Very well;--give me the cordial;--don’t let me
go to sleep--I don’t want to be cheated out of a minute. So, so--! I
am better. You may withdraw, doctor. Let my spaniel come up. Bustle,
Bustle!--poor fellow! poor fellow! Lie down, sir! be quiet! And now,
Godolphin, a few words in farewell. I always liked you greatly; you know
you were my protege, and you have turned out well. You have not been led
away by the vulgar passions of politics, and place, and power. You have
had power over power itself; you have not office, but you have fashion.
You have made the greatest match in England; very prudently not marrying
Constance Vernon, very prudently marrying Lady Erpingham. You are at
the head and front of society; you have excellent taste, and spend your
wealth properly. All this must make your conscience clear--a wonderful
consolation! Always keep a sound conscience; it is a great blessing on
one’s death-bed--it is a great blessing to me in this hour, for I have
played my part decently--eh?--I have enjoyed life, as much as so dull a
possession can be enjoyed; I have loved, gamed, drunk, but I have never
lost my character as a gentleman: thank Heaven, I have no remorse of
that sort! Follow my example to the last and you will die as easily. I
have left you my correspondence and my journal; you may publish them if
you like; if not, burn them. They are full of amusing anecdotes; but I
don’t care for fame, as you well know--especially posthumous fame. Do as
you please then, with my literary remains. Take care of my dog--‘tis
a good creature; and let me be quietly buried. No bad taste--no
ostentation--no epitaph. I am very glad I die before the d--d Revolution
that must come; I don’t want to take wine with the Member for Holborn
Bars. I am a type of a system; I expire before the system; my death is
the herald of its fall.”
With these expressions--not continuously uttered, but at short
intervals--Saville turned away his face: his breathing became thick:
he fell into the slumber he had deprecated; and, after about an hour’s
silence, died away as insensibly as an infant. Sic transit glories
mundi!
The first living countenance beside the death-bed on which Godolphin’s
eye fell was that of Fanny Millinger; she (who had been much with
Saville during his latter days, for her talk amused him, and her
good-nature made her willing to amuse any one) had been, at his request,
summoned also with Godolphin at the sudden turn of his disease. She was
at the theatre at the time, and had only just arrived when the deceased
had fallen into his last sleep. There, silent and shocked, she stood
by the bed, opposite Godolphin. She had not stayed to change her
stage-dress; and the tinsel and mock jewels glittered on the revolted
eye of her quondam lover. What a type of the life just extinguished!
What a satire on its mountebank artificialities!
Some little time after, she joined Godolphin in the desolate
apartment below. She put her hand in his, and her tears--for she wept
easily--flowed fast down her cheeks, washing away the lavish rouge which
imperfectly masked the wrinkles that Time had lately begun to sow on a
surface Godolphin had remembered so fair and smooth.
“Poor Saville!” said she, falteringly; “he died without a pang. Ah! he
had the best temper possible.”
Godolphin sat by the writing-table of the deceased, shading his brow
with the hand which the actress left disengaged.
“Fanny,” said he, bitterly, after a pause, “the world is indeed a stage.
It has lost a consummate actor, though in a small part.”
The saying was wrung from Godolphin--and was not said unkindly, though
it seemed so--for he too had tears in his eyes.
“Ah,” said she, “the play-house has indeed taught us, in our youth, many
things which the real world could not teach us better.”
“Life differs from the play only in this,” said Godolphin, some time
afterwards; “it has no plot--all is vague, desultory, unconnected--till
the curtain drops with the mystery unsolved.”
Those were the last words that Godolphin ever addressed to the actress.