“I don’t know that,” said my father.
“What is it my father does not know? My father does not know that
happiness is our being’s end and aim.”
And pertinent to what does my father reply, by words so sceptical, to an
assertion so little disputed?
Reader, Mr Trevanion has been half-an-hour seated in our little
drawing-room. He has received two cups of tea from my mother’s fair
hand; he has made himself at home. With Mr Trevanion has come another
old friend of my father’s, whom he has not seen since he left
college—Sir Sedley Beaudesert.
Now, you must understand that it is a warm night, a little after nine
o’clock—a night between departing summer and approaching autumn—the
windows are open—we have a balcony, which my mother has taken care to
fill with flowers—the air, though we are in London, is sweet and
fresh—the street quiet, except that an occasional carriage or hackney
cabriolet rolls rapidly by—a few stealthy passengers pass to and fro
noiselessly on their way homeward. We are on classic ground—near that
old and venerable Museum, the dark monastic pile, with its learned
treasures, which the taste of the age had spared then—and the quiet of
the temple seems to hallow the precincts; Captain Roland is seated by
the fireplace, and though there is no fire, he is shading his face with
a handscreen; my father and Mr Trevanion have drawn their chairs close
to each other in the middle of the room; Sir Sedley Beaudesert leans
against the wall near the window, and behind my mother, who looks
prettier and more pleased than usual, since her Austin has his old
friends about him; and I, leaning my elbow on the table, and my chin
upon my hand, am gazing with great admiration on Sir Sedley Beaudesert.
O rare specimen of a race fast decaying!—specimen of the true fine
gentleman, ere the word dandy was known, and before exquisite became a
noun substantive—let me here pause to describe thee! Sir Sedley
Beaudesert was the contemporary of Trevanion and my father; but, without
affecting to be young, he still seemed so. Dress, tone, look, manner—all
were young—yet all had a certain dignity which does not belong to youth.
At the age of five-and-twenty, he had won what would have been fame to a
French marquis of the old regime, viz.—he was “the most charming man of
his day”—the most popular with our sex—the most favoured, my dear lady
reader, with yours. It is a mistake, I believe, to suppose that it does
not require talent to become the fashion; at all events, Sir Sedley was
the fashion, and he had talent. He had travelled much, he had read
much—especially in memoirs, history, and belles-lettres—he made verses
with grace and a certain originality of easy wit and courtly
sentiment—he conversed delightfully—he was polished and urbane in
manner—he was brave and honourable in conduct; in words he could
flatter—in deeds he was sincere.
Sir Sedley Beaudesert had never married. Whatever his years, he was
still young enough in looks to be married for love. He was high-born, he
was rich; he was, as I have said, popular; yet on his fair features
there was an expression of melancholy; and on that forehead—pure from
the lines of ambition, and free from the weight of study—there was the
shadow of unmistakeable regret.
“I don’t know that,” said my father; “I have never yet found in life one
man who made happiness his end and aim. One wants to gain a fortune,
another to spend it—one to get a place, another to build a name; but
they all know very well that it is not happiness they search for. No
Utilitarian was ever actuated by self-interest, poor man, when he sate
down to scribble his unpopular crochets to prove self-interest
universal. And as to that notable distinction—between self-interest
vulgar and self-interest enlightened—the more the self-interest is
enlightened, the less we are influenced by it. If you tell the young man
who has just written a fine book or made a fine speech, that he will not
be any happier if he attains to the fame of Milton, or the power of
Pitt, and that, for the sake of his own happiness, he had much better
cultivate a farm, live in the country, and postpone to the last the days
of dyspepsia and gout, he will answer you fairly,—‘I am quite as
sensible of that as you are. But I am not thinking whether or not I
shall be happy. I have made up my mind to be, if I can, a great author
or a prime minister.’ So it is with all the active sons of the world. To
push on is the law of nature. And you can no more say to men and to
nations than to children,—‘Sit still, and don’t wear out your shoes!’”
“Then,” said Trevanion, “if I tell you I am not happy, your only answer
is, that I obey an inevitable law.”
“No! I don’t say that it is an inevitable law that man should not be
happy; but it is an inevitable law that a man, in spite of himself,
should live for something higher than his own happiness. He cannot live
in himself or for himself, however egotistical he may try to be. Every
desire he has links him with others. Man is not a machine—he is a part
of one.”
“True, brother, he is a soldier, not an army,” said Captain Roland.
“Life is a drama, not a monologue,” pursued my father. “Drama is derived
from a Greek verb, signifying _to do_. Every actor in the drama has
something to do, which helps on the progress of the whole: that is the
object for which the Author created him. Do your part, and let the Great
Play get on.”
“Ah!” said Trevanion briskly, “but to do the part is the difficulty!
Every actor helps to the catastrophe, and yet must do his part without
knowing how all is to end. Shall he help the curtain to fall on a
tragedy or a comedy? Come, I will tell you the one secret of my public
life—that which explains all its failure (for, in spite of my position,
I have failed) and its regrets—_I want conviction!_”
“Exactly,” said my father; “because to every question there are two
sides, and you look at them both.”
“You have said it,” answered Trevanion, smiling also. “For public life a
man should be one-sided; he must act with a party; and a party insists
that the shield is silver, when, if it will take the trouble to turn the
corner, it will see that the reverse of the shield is gold. Wo to the
man who makes that discovery alone, while his party are still swearing
the shield is silver, and that not once in his life, but every night!”
“You have said quite enough to convince me that you ought not to belong
to a party, but not enough to convince me why you should not be happy,”
said my father.
“Do you remember,” said Sir Sedley Beaudesert, “an anecdote of the first
Duke of Portland? He had a gallery in the great stable of his villa in
Holland, where a concert was given once a-week, to _cheer and amuse_ his
horses! I have no doubt the horses thrived all the better for it. What
Trevanion wants is a concert once a-week. With him it is always saddle
and spur. Yet, after all, who would not envy him? If life be a drama,
his name stands high in the playbill, and is printed in capitals on the
walls.”
“Envy ME!” cried Trevanion—“ME!—no, you are the enviable man—you who
have only one grief in the world, and that so absurd a one, that I will
make you blush by disclosing it. Hear, O sage Austin!—O sturdy
Roland!—Olivares was haunted by a spectre, and Sedley Beaudesert by the
dread of old age!”
“Well,” said my mother seriously, “I do think it requires a great sense
of religion, or, at all events, children of one’s own, in whom one is
young again, to reconcile one’s-self to becoming old.”
“My dear ma’am,” said Sir Sedley, who had slightly coloured at
Trevanion’s charge, but had now recovered his easy self-possession, “you
have spoken so admirably that you give me courage to confess my
weakness. I do dread to be old. All the joys of my life have been the
joys of youth. I have had so exquisite a pleasure in the mere sense of
living, that old age, as it comes near, terrifies me by its dull eyes
and gray hairs. I have lived the life of the butterfly. Summer is over,
and I see my flowers withering; and my wings are chilled by the first
airs of winter. Yes, I envy Trevanion; for, in public life, no man is
ever young; and while he can work he is never old.”
“My dear Beaudesert,” said my father, “when St Amable, patron saint of
Riom, in Auvergne, went to Rome, the sun waited upon him as a servant,
carried his cloak and gloves for him in the heat, and kept off the rain,
if the weather changed, like an umbrella. You want to put the sun to the
same use; you are quite right; but then, you see, you must first be a
saint before you can be sure of the sun as a servant.”
Sir Sedley smiled charmingly; but the smile changed to a sigh as he
added, “I don’t think I should much mind being a saint if the sun would
be my sentinel instead of my courier. I want nothing of him but to stand
still. You see he moved even for St Amable. My dear madam, you and I
understand each other; and it is a very hard thing to grow old, do what
one will to keep young.”
“What say you, Roland, of these two malcontents?” asked my father. The
Captain turned uneasily in his chair, for the rheumatism was gnawing his
shoulder, and sharp pains were shooting through his mutilated limb.
“I say,” answered Roland, “that these men are wearied with marching from
Brentford to Windsor—that they have never known the bivouac and the
battle.”
Both the grumblers turned their eyes to the veteran: the eyes rested
first on the furrowed, care-worn lines on his eagle face—then they fell
on the stiff, outstretched cork limb—and then they turned away.
Meanwhile my mother had softly risen, and, under pretence of looking for
her work on the table near him, bent over the old soldier, and pressed
his hand.
“Gentlemen,” said my father, “I don’t think my brother ever heard of
Nichocorus, the Greek comic writer; yet he has illustrated him very
ably. Saith Nichocorus, ‘the best cure for drunkenness is a sudden
calamity.’ For chronic drunkenness, a continued course of real
misfortune must be very salutary!”
No answer came from the two complainants; and my father took up a great
book.