proceed to put the question. It is carried that Parliamentary Reform
would not be beneficial, by a majority of 77 to 13. (Hear! hear! hear!)
There is a motion on the boards, ‘That an adequate supply of chairs for
the reading-room be provided--proposed by Mr. Moore, of Caius.’”
[19]“Mr. President,--It is not often that I rise to address this
society; nor should I on the present occasion, but that I see so strong
a necessity for interference, that I should deem it a dereliction of my
duty were I to remain silent. In those things which regard our
intellectual and moral improvement, this society should be more
especially attentive to its interests; but I have observed with regret
and concern that there is by no means an adequate supply of chairs in
our reading-room, and I therefore move that a fit supply be immediately
procured.”
[20]“Mr. President,--I have observed with great satisfaction the
interest which the honourable gentleman takes in the welfare of this
society; but as in an inn, where there are nine beds, and ten travellers
to sleep in them, one bed must carry double or one traveller must go
without; so, in the present case, if upon any occasion the honourable
gentleman should find ten chairs in the reading-room occupied by ten
individuals, I should recommend him to make them determine by lot which
of them shall hold him on his knees!”
“Well, Sir, what do you think of the Union?”--“Why, Sir, I think it’s
all
Bow, wow,
What a row,
Money lost, and laurels earned;
Constitution,
Elocution,
Whig and Tory,
Oratory,
Hauling, bawling,
‘Order’ calling,
Headache, dizziness,
No more business--
Sirs, the meeting is adjourned.”
MY FIRST FOLLY.
“L’imagination grossit souvent les plus petits objets par une
estimation fantastique jusqu’à remplir notre âme.”--PENSÉES DE
PASCAL.
“I have spent all my golden time,
In writing many a loving rime:
I have consumed all my youth
In vowing of my faith and trueth;
Ο willow, willow, willow tree,
Yet can I not beleeved bee.”--OLD BALLAD.
“Do you take trifle?” said Lady Olivia to my poor friend Halloran.
“No, Ma’am, I am reading philosophy,” said Halloran; waking from a fit
of abstraction, with about as much consciousness and perception as
exists in a petrified oyster, or an alderman dying of a surfeit.
Halloran is a fool.
A trifle is the one good thing, the sole and surpassing enjoyment. He
only is happy who can fix his thoughts, and his hopes, and his feelings,
and his affections, upon those fickle and fading pleasures, which are
tenderly cherished and easily forgotten, alike acute in their excitement
and brief in their regret. Trifles constitute my _summum bonum_. Sages
may crush them with the heavy train of argument and syllogism;
schoolboys may assail them with the light artillery of essay and of
theme; Members of Parliament may loathe, doctors of divinity may
contemn--bag wigs and big wigs, blue devils and blue stockings,
sophistry and sermons, reasonings and wrinkles, Solon, Thales, Newton’s
“Principia,” Mr. Walker’s “Eidouranion,” the King’s Bench, the bench of
Bishops--all these are serious antagonists; very serious! But I care
not; I defy them; I dote upon trifles; my name is Vyvyan Joyeuse, and my
motto is “Vive la Bagatelle!”
There are many persons who, while they have a tolerable taste for the
frivolous, yet profess remorse and penitence for their indulgence of it;
and continually court and embrace new day-dreams, while they shrink
from the retrospect of those which have already faded. Peace be to their
everlasting laments and their ever-broken resolutions! Your true
trifler, meaning your humble servant, is a being of a very different
order. The luxury which I renew in the recollection of the past is equal
to that which I feel in the enjoyment of the present, or create in the
anticipation of the future. I love to count and recount every treasure I
have flung away, every bubble I have broken; I love to dream again the
dreams of my boyhood, and to see the visions of departed pleasures
flitting, like Ossian’s ghosts, around me, “with stars dim twinkling
through their forms.” I look back with delight to a youth which has been
idled away, to tastes which have been perverted, to talents which have
been misemployed; and while in imagination I wander back through the
haunts of my old idlesse, for all the learning of a Greek professor, for
all the morality of Sir John Sewell, I would not lose one single point
of that which has been ridiculous and grotesque, nor one single tint of
that which has been beautiful and beloved.
Moralists and misanthropists, maidens with starched morals and matrons
with starched frills, ancient adorers of Bohea and scandal, venerable
votaries of whispering and of whist, learned professors of the
compassionate sneer and the innocent innuendo, eternal pillars of
gravity and good order, of stupidity and decorum--come not near me with
your spare and spectacled features, your candid and considerate
criticism. In you I have no hope, in me you have no interest. I am to
speak of stories you will not believe, of beings you cannot love; of
foibles for which you have no compassion, of feelings in which you have
no share.
Fortunate and unfortunate couples, belles in silks and beaux in
sentimentals, ye who have wept and sighed, ye who have been wept for and
sighed for, victims of vapours and coiners of vows, makers and marrers
of intrigue, readers and writers of songs--come to me with your
attention and your salts, your sympathy and your cambric; your griefs,
your raptures, your anxieties, all have been mine; I know your blushing
and your paleness, your self-deceiving and your self-tormenting.
so com’è inconstanta e vaga
Timida, ardita vita degli amanti,
Ch’un poco dolce molto amaro appoggia;
Ε so i costumi, e i lor sospiri, e i canti
E’l parlar rotto, e’l subito silenzio,
E’l brevissimo riso, e i lunghi pianti;
E qual è ’l mel temprato con l’assenzio.
All these things are so beautiful in Italian! But I need not have
borrowed a syllable from Petrarch, for shapes of shadowy beauty, smiles
of cherished loveliness, glances of reviving lustre, are coming in the
mist of memory around me! I am writing “an ower true tale!”
I never fell seriously in love till I was seventeen. Long before that
period I had learned to talk nonsense and tell lies, and had established
the important points that a delicate figure is equivalent to a thousand
pounds, a pretty mouth better than the Bank of England, and a pair of
bright eyes worth all Mexico. But at seventeen a more intricate branch
of study awaited me.
I was lounging away my June at a pretty village in Kent, with little
occupation beyond my own meditations, and no company but my horse and
dogs. My sisters were both in the South of France; and my uncle, at
whose seat I had pitched my camp, was attending to the interests of his
constituents and the wishes of his patron in Parliament. I began after
the lapse of a week to be immensely bored; I felt a considerable dislike
of an agricultural life, and an incipient inclination for laudanum. I
took to playing backgammon with the rector. He was more than a match for
me, and used to grow most unclerically hot when the dice, as was their
duty, befriended the weaker side. At last, at the conclusion of a very
long hit, which had kept Mrs. Penn’s tea waiting full an hour, my worthy
and wigged friend flung deuce-ace three times in succession, put the
board in the fire, overturned Mrs. Penn’s best china, and hurried to his
study to compose a sermon on patience.
Then I took up reading. My uncle had a delightful library, where a
reasonable man might have lived and died. But I confess I never could
endure a long hour of lonely reading. It is a very pretty thing to take
down a volume of Tasso or Racine, and study accent and cadence for the
benefit of half a dozen listening belles, all dividing their attention
between the work and the work-basket, their feelings and their flounces,
their tears and their trimmings, with becoming and laudable
perseverance. It is a far prettier thing to read Petrarch or Rousseau
with a single companion, in some sheltered spot so full of passion and
of beauty that you may sit whole days in its fragrance and dream of
Laura and Julie. If these are out of the way, it is endurable to be tied
down to the moth-eaten marvels of antiquity, poring to-day that you may
pore again to-morrow, and labouring for the nine days’ wonder of some
temporary distinction, with an ambition which is almost frenzy, and an
emulation which speaks the language of animosity. But to sit down to a
novel or a philosopher, with no companion to participate in the
enjoyment and no object to reward the toil, this indeed--oh! I never
could endure a long hour of lonely reading; and so I deserted Sir
Roger’s library, and left his Marmontel and his Aristotle to the
slumbers from which I had unthinkingly awakened them.
At last I was roused from a state of most Persian torpor by a note from
an old lady, whose hall, for so an indifferent country-house was by
courtesy denominated, stood at the distance of a few miles. She was
about to give a ball. Such a thing had not been seen for ten years
within ten miles of us. From the sensation produced by the intimation
you might have deemed the world at an end. Prayers and entreaties were
offered up to all the guardians and all the milliners; and the old
gentlemen rose in a passion, and the old lace rose in price. Everything
was everywhere in a flurry; kitchen, and parlour, and boudoir and
garret--Babel all! _Ackermann’s Fashionable Repository_, the _Ladies’
Magazine_, the _New Pocket-book_--all these, and all other publications
whose frontispieces presented the “fashions for 1817,” personified in a
thin lady with kid gloves and a formidable obliquity of vision, were in
earnest and immediate requisition. Needles and pins were flying right
and left; dinner was ill-dressed that dancers might be well-dressed;
mutton was marred that misses might be married. There was not a
schoolboy who did not cut Homer and capers; nor a boarding-school beauty
who did not try on a score of dancing shoes, and talk for a fortnight
of Angiolini. Every occupation was laid down, every carpet was taken up;
every combination of hands-across and down the middle was committed most
laudably to memory; and nothing was talked, nothing was meditated,
nothing was dreamed, but love and romance, fiddles and flirtation, warm
negus and handsome partners, dyed feathers and chalked floors.
In all the pride and condescension of an inmate of Grosvenor Square, I
looked upon Lady Motley’s “At Home.” “Yes,” I said, flinging away the
card with a tragedy twist of the fingers, “yes: I will be there. For one
evening I will encounter the tedium and the taste of a village ball. For
one evening I will doom myself to figures that are out of date, and
fiddles that are out of tune; dowagers who make embroidery by wholesale,
and demoiselles who make conquests by profession: for one evening I will
endure the inquiries about Almack’s and St. Paul’s, the tales of the
weddings that have been and the weddings that are to be, the round of
courtesies in the ball-room and the round of beef at the supper-table:
for one evening I will not complain of the everlasting hostess and the
everlasting Boulanger, of the double duty and the double bass, of the
great heiress and the great plum-pudding:
Come one, come all,
Come dance in Sir Roger’s great hall.”
And thus, by dint of civility, indolence, quotation, and antithesis, I
bent up each corporal agent to the terrible feat, and “would have the
honour of waiting upon her ladyship,”--in due form.
I went: turned my uncle’s one-horse chaise into the long old avenue
about an hour after the time specified, and perceived by the lights
flashing from all the windows, and the crash of chairs and carriages
returning from the door, that the room was most punctually full, and the
performers most pastorally impatient. The first face I encountered on my
entrance was that of my old friend Villars; I was delighted to meet him,
and expressed my astonishment at finding him in a situation for which
his inclination, one would have supposed, was so little adapted.
“By Mercury,” he exclaimed, “I am metamorphosed--fairly metamorphosed,
my good Vyvyan; I have been detained here three months by a fall from
Sir Peter, and have amused myself most indefatigably by humming tunes
and reading newspapers, winding silk and guessing conundrums. I have
made myself the admiration, the adoration, the very worship of all the
coteries in the place; am reckoned very clever at cross purposes, and
very apt at ‘What’s my thought like?’ The squires have discovered I can
carve, and the matrons hold me indispensable at loo. Come! I am of
little service to-night, but my popularity may be of use to you. You
don’t know a soul! I thought so--read it in your face the moment you
came in. Never saw such a---- There, Vyvyan, look there! I will
introduce you.” And so saying my companion half limped, half danced with
me up to Miss Amelia Mesnil, and presented me in due form.
When I look back to any particular scene of my existence, I can never
keep the stage clear of second-rate characters. I never think of Mr.
Kean’s Othello without an intrusive reflection upon the subject of Mr.
Cooper’s Cassio; I never call to mind a gorgeous scattering forth of
roses from Mr. Canning, without a painful idea of some contemporary
effusion of poppies from Mr. Hume. And thus, beautiful Margaret, it is
in vain that I endeavour to separate your fascination from the group
which was collected around you. Perhaps that dominion, which at this
moment I feel almost revived, recurs more vividly to my imagination,
when the forms and figures of all by whom it was contested are
associated in its renewal.
First comes Amelia the magnificent, the acknowledged belle of the
county, very stiff and very dumb in her unheeded and uncontested
supremacy; and next, the most black-browed of fox-hunters, Augusta,
enumerating the names of her father’s stud, and dancing as if she
imitated them; and then the most accomplished Jane, vowing that for the
last month she had endured immense _ennui_, that she thinks Lady Olivia
prodigiously _fade_, that her cousin Sophy is quite _brillante_
to-night, and that Mr. Peters plays the violin _à merveille_.
“I am bored, my dear Villars--positively bored! The light is bad and the
music abominable; there is no spring in the boards and less in the
conversation; it is a lovely moonlight night, and there is nothing worth
looking at in the room.”
I shook hands with my friend, bowed to three or four people, and was
moving off. As I passed to the door I met two ladies in conversation.
“Don’t you dance any more, Margaret?” said one. “Oh no,” replied the
other, “I am bored, my dear Louisa--positively bored! The light is bad
and the music abominable; there is no spring in the boards and less in
the conversation; it is a lovely moonlight night, and there is nothing
worth looking at in the room.”
I never was distanced in a jest. I put on the look of a ten years’
acquaintance and commenced parley. “Surely you are not going away yet!
You have not danced with me, Margaret: it is impossible you can be so
cruel!” The lady behaved with wonderful intrepidity. “She would allow me
the honour--but I was very late; really I had not deserved it.” And so
we stood up together.
“Are you not very impertinent?”
“Very; but you are very handsome. Nay, you are not to be angry; it was a
fair challenge and fairly received.”
“And you will not even ask my pardon?”
“No! it is out of my way! I never do those things; it would embarrass me
beyond measure. Pray let us accomplish an introduction: not altogether a
usual one, but that matters little. Vyvyan Joyeuse--rather impertinent,
and very fortunate--at your service.”
“Margaret Orleans--very handsome, and rather foolish--at your service!”
Margaret danced like an angel. I knew she would. I could not conceive by
what blindness I had passed four hours without being struck. We talked
of all things that are, and a few beside. She was something of a
botanist, so we began with flowers; a digression upon China
roses carried us to China--the Mandarins with little brains,
and the ladies with little feet--the Emperor--the Orphan of
China--Voltaire--Zayre--criticism--Dr. Johnson--the Great
Bear--the system of Copernicus--stars--ribbons--garters--the
Order of the Bath--sea-bathing--Dawlish--- Sidmouth--Lord
Sidmouth--Cicero--Rome--Italy--Alfieri--Metastasio--fountains--groves--gardens;
and so, as the dancing concluded, we contrived to end as we began, with
Margaret Orleans and botany.
Margaret talked well on all subjects and wittily on many. I had expected
to find nothing but a romping girl, somewhat amusing, and very vain. But
I was out of my latitude in the first five minutes, and out of my senses
in the next. She left the room very early, and I drove home, more
astonished than I had been for many years.
Several weeks passed away, and I was about to leave England to join my
sisters on the Continent. I determined to look once more on that
enslaving smile, whose recollection had haunted me more than once. I had
ascertained that she resided with an old lady who took two pupils, and
taught French and Italian, and music and manners, at an establishment
called Vine House. Two days before I left the country, I had been till a
late hour shooting at a mark with a duelling pistol, an entertainment,
of which, perhaps from a lurking presentiment, I was very fond. I was
returning alone when I perceived, by the light of an enormous lamp, a
board by the wayside bearing the welcome inscription, “Vine House.”
“Enough,” I exclaimed, “enough! One more scene before the curtain drops.
Romeo and Juliet by lamplight!” I roamed about the dwelling-place of all
I held dear, till I saw a figure at one of the windows in the back of
the house, which it was quite impossible to doubt. I leaned against a
tree in a sentimental position, and began to chant my own rhymes thus:--
Pretty coquette, the ceaseless play
Of thine unstudied wit,
And thy dark eye’s remembered ray
By buoyant fancy lit,
And thy young forehead’s clear expanse,
Where the locks slept, as through the dance,
Dreamlike, I saw thee flit,
Are far too warm, and far too fair,
To mix with aught of earthly care;
But the vision shall come when my day is done,
A frail and a fair and a fleeting one!
And if the many boldly gaze
On that bright brow of thine,
And if thine eye’s undying rays
On countless coxcombs shine
And if thy wit flings out its mirth,
Which echoes more of air than earth,
For other ears than mine,
I heed not this; ye are fickle things,
And I like your very wanderings;
I gaze, and if thousands share the bliss,
Pretty capricious! I heed not this.
In sooth I am a wayward youth,
As fickle as the sea,
And very apt to speak the truth,
Unpleasing though it be;
I am no lover; yet, as long
As I have heart for jest or song,
An image, sweet, of thee,
Locked in my heart’s remotest treasures,
Shall ever be one of its hoarded pleasures;
This from the scoffer thou hast won,
And more than this he gives to none.
“Are they your own verses?” said my idol at the window.
“They are yours, Margaret! I was only the versifier; you were the muse
herself.”
“The muse herself is obliged to you. And now what is your errand? For it
grows late, and you must be sensible--no, that you never will be--but
you must be aware that this is very indecorous.”
“I am come to see you, dear Margaret--which I cannot without candles--to
see you, and to tell you that it is impossible I can forget----”
“Bless me! what a memory you have. But you must take another opportunity
for your tale; for----”
“Alas! I leave England immediately.”
“A pleasant voyage to you! There, not a word more; I must run down to
coffee.”
“Now may I never laugh more,” I said, “if I am baffled thus.” So I
strolled back to the front of the house and proceeded to reconnoitre. A
bay-window was half open, and in a small neat drawing-room I perceived a
group assembled: an old lady, with a high muslin cap and red ribbons,
was pouring out the coffee; her nephew, a tall awkward young gentleman,
silting on one chair and resting his legs on another, was occupied in
the study of Sir Charles Grandison; and my fair Margaret was leaning on
a sofa, and laughing immoderately. “Indeed, miss,” said the matron, “you
should learn to govern your mirth; people will think you came out of
Bedlam.”
I lifted the window gently, and stepped into the room. “Bedlam, madam!”
quoth I, “I bring intelligence from Bedlam; I arrived last week.”
The tall awkward young gentleman stared; and the aunt half said, half
shrieked, “What in the name of wonder are you?”
“Mad, madam! very particularly mad! Mad as a hare in March or a
Cheapside blood on Sunday morning. Look at me! do I not foam? Listen to
me! do I not rave? Coffee, my dear madam, coffee; there is no animal so
thirsty as your madman in the dog-days.”
“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman.
“My good sir,” I began. But my original insanity began to fail me, and I
drew forthwith upon Ossian’s. “Fly! receive the wind and fly; the blasts
are in the hollow of my hand, the course of the storm is mine!”
“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman.
“I look on the nations and they vanish; my nostrils pour the blast of
death; I come abroad on the winds; the tempest is before my face; but my
dwelling is calm, above the clouds; the fields of my rest are pleasant.”
“Do you mean to insult us?” said the old lady.
“Ay! do you mean to insult my aunt?--really!” said the tall awkward
young gentleman.
“I shall call in my servants,” said the old lady.
“I am the humblest of them,” said I, bowing.
“I shall teach you a different tune,” said the tall awkward young
gentleman, “really!”
“Very well, my dear sir; my instrument is the barrel-organ;” and I
cocked my sweet little pocket companion in his face, “Vanish, little
Kastril; for by Hannibal, Heliogabalus, and Holophernes, time is
valuable, madness is precipitate, and hair-triggers are the word!
Vanish!”
“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman, and performed an
_entrechat_ which carried him to the door: the old lady had disappeared
at the first note of the barrel-organ. I locked the door, and found
Margaret in a paroxysm of laughter. “I wish you had shot him,” she said,
when she recovered; “I wish you had shot him: he is a sad fool.”
“Do not talk of him; I am speaking to you, beautiful Margaret, possibly
for the last time! Will you ever think of me? Perhaps you will. But let
me receive from you some token that I may dote upon in other years;
something that may be a hope to me in my happiness, and a consolation in
calamity; something--nay! I never could talk romance; but give me one
lock of your hair, and I will leave England with resignation.”
“You have earned it like a true knight,” said Margaret; and she severed
from her head a long glossy ringlet. “Look!” she continued, “you must to
horse, the country has risen for your apprehension.” I turned towards
the window. The country had indeed risen. Nothing was to be seen but
gossoons in the van and gossips in the rear, red faces and white
jackets, gallants in smock-frocks and gay damsels in grogram. Bludgeons
were waving, and torches were flashing, as far as the gaze could reach.
All the chivalry of the place was arming and chafing, and loading for a
volley of pebbles and oaths together.
I kneeled down and kissed her hand. It was the happiest moment of my
life! “Now,” said I, “_au revoir_, my sweet Margaret!” and in a moment I
was in the lane.