_From Mr. Clive Newcome to Mr. Arthur Pendennis_.
Mr. Newcome, a married man and an exile at Boulogne, sends Mr. Arthur
Pendennis a poem on his undying affection for his cousin, Miss Ethel
Newcome. He desires that it may be published in a journal with which Mr.
Pendennis is connected. He adds a few remarks on his pictures for the
Academy.
Boulogne, March 28.
DEAR PEN,—I have finished Belisarius, and he has gone to face the
Academicians. There is another little thing I sent—“Blondel” I call it—a
troubadour playing under a castle wall. They have not much chance; but
there is always the little print-shop in Long Acre. My sketches of
mail-coaches continue to please the public; they have raised the price to
a guinea.
Here we are not happier than when you visited us. My poor wife is no
better. It is something to have put my father out of hearing of her
mother’s tongue: that cannot cross the Channel. Perhaps I am as well
here as in town. There I always hope, I always fear to meet _her_ . . .
my cousin, you know. I think I see her face under every bonnet. God
knows I don’t go where she is likely to be met. Oh, Pen, _hæret lethalis
arundo_; it is always right—the Latin Delectus! Everything I see is full
of her, everything I do is done for her. “Perhaps she’ll see it and know
the hand, and remember,” I think, even when I do the mail-coaches and the
milestones. I used to draw for her at Brighton when she was a child. My
sketches, my pictures, are always making that silent piteous appeal to
her, _Won’t you look at us_? _won’t you remember_? I dare say she has
quite forgotten. Here I send you a little set of rhymes; my picture of
Blondel and this old story brought them into my mind. They are _gazés_,
as the drunk painter says in “Gerfaut;” they are veiled, a mystery. I
know she’s not in a castle or a tower or a cloistered cell anywhere; she
is in Park Lane. Don’t I read it in the “Morning Post?” But I can’t, I
won’t, go and sing at the area-gate, you know. Try if F. B. will put the
rhymes into the paper. Do they take it in in Park Lane? See whether you
can get me a guinea for these tears of mine: “Mes Larmes,” Pen, do you
remember?—Yours ever,