Too Bad for Sympathy
When Frank Greystock left Bobsborough to go to Scotland, he had not
said that he would return, nor had he at that time made up his mind
whether he would do so or no. He had promised to go and shoot in
Norfolk, and had half undertaken to be up in London with Herriot,
working. Though it was holiday-time, still there was plenty of work
for him to do,--various heavy cases to get up, and papers to be read,
if only he could settle himself down to the doing of it. But the
scenes down in Scotland had been of a nature to make him unfit for
steady labour. How was he to sail his bark through the rocks by which
his present voyage was rendered so dangerous? Of course, to the
reader, the way to do so seems to be clear enough. To work hard at
his profession; to explain to his cousin that she had altogether
mistaken his feelings; and to be true to Lucy Morris was so
manifestly his duty, that to no reader will it appear possible that
to any gentleman there could be a doubt. Instead of the existence
of a difficulty, there was a flood of light upon his path,--so the
reader will think;--a flood so clear that not to see his way was
impossible. A man carried away by abnormal appetites, and wickedness,
and the devil, may of course commit murder, or forge bills, or become
a fraudulent director of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be
untrue to his troth,--and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and
beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell
the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in
gutters, or breathe fetid atmospheres, or live upon garbage. If we
are to deal with heroes and heroines, let us, at any rate, have
heroes and heroines who are above such meanness as falsehood in love.
This Frank Greystock must be little better than a mean villain, if he
allows himself to be turned from his allegiance to Lucy Morris for an
hour by the seductions and money of such a one as Lizzie Eustace.
We know the dear old rhyme:--
"It is good to be merry and wise,
It is good to be honest and true,
It is good to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new."
There was never better truth spoken than this, and if all men and
women could follow the advice here given, there would be very little
sorrow in the world. But men and women do not follow it. They are no
more able to do so than they are to use a spear, the staff of which
is like a weaver's beam, or to fight with the sword Excalibur. The
more they exercise their arms, the nearer will they get to using the
giant's weapon,--or even the weapon that is divine. But as things
are at present, their limbs are limp and their muscles soft, and
over-feeding impedes their breath. They attempt to be merry without
being wise, and have theories about truth and honesty with which they
desire to shackle others, thinking that freedom from such trammels
may be good for themselves. And in that matter of love,--though love
is very potent,--treachery will sometimes seem to be prudence, and a
hankering after new delights will often interfere with real devotion.
It is very easy to depict a hero,--a man absolutely stainless,
perfect as an Arthur,--a man honest in all his dealings, equal to all
trials, true in all his speech, indifferent to his own prosperity,
struggling for the general good, and, above all, faithful in love.
At any rate, it is as easy to do that as to tell of the man who is
one hour good and the next bad, who aspires greatly but fails in
practice, who sees the higher but too often follows the lower course.
There arose at one time a school of art, which delighted to paint
the human face as perfect in beauty; and from that time to this we
are discontented unless every woman is drawn for us as a Venus, or,
at least, a Madonna. I do not know that we have gained much by this
untrue portraiture, either in beauty or in art. There may be made
for us a pretty thing to look at, no doubt;--but we know that that
pretty thing is not really visaged as the mistress whom we serve, and
whose lineaments we desire to perpetuate on the canvas. The winds of
heaven, or the flesh-pots of Egypt, or the midnight gas,--passions,
pains, and, perhaps, rouge and powder, have made her something
different. But there still is the fire of her eye, and the eager
eloquence of her mouth, and something, too, perhaps, left of the
departing innocence of youth, which the painter might give us without
the Venus or the Madonna touches. But the painter does not dare to
do it. Indeed, he has painted so long after the other fashion that
he would hate the canvas before him, were he to give way to the
rouge-begotten roughness or to the flesh-pots,--or even to the winds.
And how, my lord, would you, who are giving hundreds, more than
hundreds, for this portrait of your dear one, like to see it in print
from the art critic of the day, that she is a brazen-faced hoyden who
seems to have had a glass of wine too much, or to have been making
hay?
And so also has the reading world taught itself to like best the
characters of all but divine men and women. Let the man who paints
with pen and ink give the gas-light, and the flesh-pots, the passions
and pains, the prurient prudence and the rouge-pots and pounce-boxes
of the world as it is, and he will be told that no one can care a
straw for his creations. With whom are we to sympathise? says the
reader, who not unnaturally imagines that a hero should be heroic.
Oh, thou, my reader, whose sympathies are in truth the great and only
aim of my work, when you have called the dearest of your friends
round you to your hospitable table, how many heroes are there sitting
at the board? Your bosom friend,--even if he be a knight without
fear, is he a knight without reproach? The Ivanhoe that you know, did
he not press Rebecca's hand? Your Lord Evandale,--did he not bring
his coronet into play when he strove to win his Edith Bellenden?
Was your Tresilian still true and still forbearing when truth and
forbearance could avail him nothing? And those sweet girls whom you
know, do they never doubt between the poor man they think they love,
and the rich man whose riches they know they covet?
Go into the market, either to buy or sell, and name the thing you
desire to part with or to get, as it is, and the market is closed
against you. Middling oats are the sweepings of the granaries. A
useful horse is a jade gone at every point. Good sound port is sloe
juice. No assurance short of A 1 betokens even a pretence to merit.
And yet in real life we are content with oats that are really
middling, are very glad to have a useful horse, and know that if we
drink port at all we must drink some that is neither good nor sound.
In those delineations of life and character which we call novels a
similarly superlative vein is desired. Our own friends around us are
not always merry and wise, nor, alas! always honest and true. They
are often cross and foolish, and sometimes treacherous and false.
They are so, and we are angry. Then we forgive them, not without a
consciousness of imperfection on our own part. And we know--or, at
least, believe,--that though they be sometimes treacherous and false,
there is a balance of good. We cannot have heroes to dine with us.
There are none. And were these heroes to be had, we should not like
them. But neither are our friends villains,--whose every aspiration
is for evil, and whose every moment is a struggle for some
achievement worthy of the devil.
The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so
bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because
they are so good. To make them and ourselves somewhat better,--not by
one spring heavenwards to perfection, because we cannot so use our
legs,--but by slow climbing, is, we may presume, the object of all
teachers, leaders, legislators, spiritual pastors, and masters. He
who writes tales such as this, probably also has, very humbly, some
such object distantly before him. A picture of surpassing godlike
nobleness,--a picture of a King Arthur among men, may perhaps do
much. But such pictures cannot do all. When such a picture is
painted, as intending to show what a man should be, it is true. If
painted to show what men are, it is false. The true picture of life
as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they
are, and how they might rise, not, indeed, to perfection, but one
step first, and then another, on the ladder.
Our hero, Frank Greystock, falling lamentably short in his heroism,
was not in a happy state of mind when he reached Bobsborough. It
may be that he returned to his own borough and to his mother's arms
because he felt, that were he to determine to be false to Lucy, he
would there receive sympathy in his treachery. His mother would, at
any rate, think that it was well, and his father would acknowledge
that the fault committed was in the original engagement with poor
Lucy, and not in the treachery. He had written that letter to her in
his chambers one night in a fit of ecstasy; and could it be right
that the ruin of a whole life should be the consequence?
It can hardly be too strongly asserted that Lizzie Greystock did not
appear to Frank as she has been made to appear to the reader. In all
this affair of the necklace he was beginning to believe that she
was really an ill-used woman; and as to other traits in Lizzie's
character,--traits which he had seen, and which were not of a nature
to attract,--it must be remembered that beauty reclining in a man's
arms does go far towards washing white the lovely blackamoor. Lady
Linlithgow, upon whom Lizzie's beauty could have no effect of that
kind, had nevertheless declared her to be very beautiful. And this
loveliness was of a nature that was altogether pleasing, if once the
beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly
Lizzie's eye was apt to convey to the beholder. There was no unclean
horse's tail. There was no get-up of flounces, and padding, and
paint, and hair, with a dorsal excrescence appended with the object
surely of showing in triumph how much absurd ugliness women can force
men to endure. She was lithe, and active, and bright,--and was at
this moment of her life at her best. Her growing charms had as yet
hardly reached the limits of full feminine loveliness,--which, when
reached, have been surpassed. Luxuriant beauty had with her not as
yet become comeliness; nor had age or the good things of the world
added a pound to the fairy lightness of her footstep. All this had
been tendered to Frank,--and with it that worldly wealth which was
so absolutely necessary to his career. For though Greystock would
not have said to any man or woman that nature had intended him to
be a spender of much money and a consumer of many good things, he
did undoubtedly so think of himself. He was a Greystock, and to
what miseries would he not reduce his Lucy if, burthened by such
propensities, he were to marry her and then become an aristocratic
pauper!
The offer of herself by a woman to a man is, to us all, a thing
so distasteful that we at once declare that the woman must be
abominable. There shall be no whitewashing of Lizzie Eustace. She
was abominable. But the man to whom the offer is made hardly sees
the thing in the same light. He is disposed to believe that, in his
peculiar case, there are circumstances by which the woman is, if not
justified, at least excused. Frank did put faith in his cousin's
love for himself. He did credit her when she told him that she had
accepted Lord Fawn's offer in pique, because he had not come to her
when he had promised that he would come. It did seem natural to him
that she should have desired to adhere to her engagement when he
would not advise her to depart from it. And then her jealousy about
Lucy's ring, and her abuse of Lucy, were proofs to him of her love.
Unless she loved him, why should she care to marry him? What was his
position that she should desire to share it;--unless she so desired
because he was dearer to her than aught beside? He had not eyes
clear enough to perceive that his cousin was a witch whistling for a
wind, and ready to take the first blast that would carry her and her
broomstick somewhere into the sky. And then, in that matter of the
offer, which in ordinary circumstances certainly should not have
come from her to him, did not the fact of her wealth and of his
comparative poverty cleanse her from such stain as would, in usual
circumstances, attach to a woman who is so forward? He had not
acceded to her proposition. He had not denied his engagement to Lucy.
He had left her presence without a word of encouragement, because
of that engagement. But he believed that Lizzie was sincere. He
believed, now, that she was genuine; though he had previously been
all but sure that falsehood and artifice were second nature to her.
At Bobsborough he met his constituents, and made them the normal
autumn speech. The men of Bobsborough were well pleased and gave him
a vote of confidence. As none but those of his own party attended
the meeting, it was not wonderful that the vote was unanimous. His
father, mother, and sister all heard his speech, and there was a
strong family feeling that Frank was born to set the Greystocks once
more upon their legs. When a man can say what he likes with the
certainty that every word will be reported, and can speak to those
around him as one manifestly their superior, he always looms large.
When the Conservatives should return to their proper place at the
head of affairs, there could be no doubt that Frank Greystock would
be made Solicitor-General. There were not wanting even ardent
admirers who conceived that, with such claims and such talents as
his, the ordinary steps in political promotion would not be needed,
and that he would become Attorney-General at once. All men began to
say all good things to the dean, and to Mrs. Greystock it seemed
that the woolsack, or at least the Queen's Bench with a peerage, was
hardly an uncertainty. But then,--there must be no marriage with a
penniless governess. If he would only marry his cousin one might say
that the woolsack was won.
Then came Lucy's letter; the pretty, dear, joking letter about
the "duchess," and broken hearts. "I would break my heart,
only--only--only--" Yes, he knew very well what she meant. I shall
never be called upon to break my heart, because you are not a false
scoundrel. If you were a false scoundrel,--instead of being, as you
are, a pearl among men,--then I should break my heart. That was what
Lucy meant. She could not have been much clearer, and he understood
it perfectly. It is very nice to walk about one's own borough and be
voted unanimously worthy of confidence, and be a great man; but if
you are a scoundrel, and not used to being a scoundrel, black care
is apt to sit very close behind you as you go caracoling along the
streets.
Lucy's letter required an answer, and how should he answer it? He
certainly did not wish her to tell Lady Linlithgow of her engagement,
but Lucy clearly wished to be allowed to tell, and on what ground
could he enjoin her to be silent? He knew, or he thought he knew,
that till he answered the letter, she would not tell his secret,--and
therefore from day to day he put off the answer. A man does not write
a love-letter easily when he is in doubt himself whether he does or
does not mean to be a scoundrel.
Then there came a letter to "Dame" Greystock from Lady Linlithgow,
which filled them all with amazement.
MY DEAR MADAM,--[began the letter]
Seeing that your son is engaged to marry Miss Morris,--at
least she says so,--you ought not to have sent her here
without telling me all about it. She says you know of the
match, and she says that I can write to you if I please.
Of course, I can do that without her leave. But it seems
to me that if you know all about it, and approve the
marriage, your house and not mine would be the proper
place for her.
I'm told that Mr. Greystock is a great man. Any lady
being with me as my companion can't be a great woman. But
perhaps you wanted to break it off;--else you would have
told me. She shall stay here six months, but then she must
go.
Yours truly,
SUSANNA LINLITHGOW.
It was considered absolutely necessary that this letter should be
shown to Frank. "You see," said his mother, "she told the old lady at
once."
"I don't see why she shouldn't." Nevertheless Frank was annoyed.
Having asked for permission, Lucy should at least have waited for a
reply.
"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Greystock. "It is generally
considered that young ladies are more reticent about such things. She
has blurted it out and boasted about it at once."
"I thought girls always told of their engagements," said Frank, "and
I can't for the life of me see that there was any boasting in it."
Then he was silent for a moment. "The truth is, we are, all of us,
treating Lucy very badly."
"I cannot say that I see it," said his mother.
"We ought to have had her here."
"For how long, Frank?"
"For as long as a home was needed by her."
"Had you demanded it, Frank, she should have come, of course. But
neither I nor your father could have had pleasure in receiving her as
your future wife. You, yourself, say that it cannot be for two years
at least."
"I said one year."
"I think, Frank, you said two. And we all know that such a marriage
would be ruinous to you. How could we make her welcome? Can you see
your way to having a house for her to live in within twelve months?"
"Why not a house? I could have a house to-morrow."
"Such a house as would suit you in your position? And, Frank, would
it be a kindness to marry her and then let her find that you were in
debt?"
"I don't believe she'd care if she had nothing but a crust to eat."
"She ought to care, Frank."
"I think," said the dean to his son, on the next day, "that in our
class of life an imprudent marriage is the one thing that should be
avoided. My marriage has been very happy, God knows; but I have
always been a poor man, and feel it now when I am quite unable
to help you. And yet your mother had some fortune. Nobody, I
think, cares less for wealth than I do. I am content almost with
nothing."--The nothing with which the dean had hitherto been
contented had always included every comfort of life, a well-kept
table, good wine, new books, and canonical habiliments with the gloss
still on; but as the Bobsborough tradesmen had, through the agency of
Mrs. Greystock, always supplied him with these things as though they
came from the clouds, he really did believe that he had never asked
for anything.--"I am content almost with nothing. But I do feel that
marriage cannot be adopted as the ordinary form of life by men in our
class as it can be by the rich or by the poor. You, for instance, are
called upon to live with the rich, but are not rich. That can only
be done by wary walking, and is hardly consistent with a wife and
children."
"But men in my position do marry, sir."
"After a certain age,--or else they marry ladies with money. You see,
Frank, there are not many men who go into Parliament with means so
moderate as yours; and they who do perhaps have stricter ideas of
economy." The dean did not say a word about Lucy Morris, and dealt
entirely with generalities.
In compliance with her son's advice,--or almost command,--Mrs.
Greystock did not answer Lady Linlithgow's letter. He was going back
to London, and would give personally, or by letter written there,
what answer might be necessary. "You will then see Miss Morris?"
asked his mother.
"I shall certainly see Lucy. Something must be settled." There was
a tone in his voice as he said this which gave some comfort to his
mother.