Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger
SANDRA BELLONI
By George Meredith
CONTENTS
BOOK 1
I. THE POLES PRELUDE
II. THE EXPEDITION BY MOONLIGHT
III. WILFRID'S DIPLOMACY
IV. EMILIA'S FIRST TRIAL IN PUBLIC
V. EMILIA PLAYS ON THE CORNET
VI. EMILIA SUPPLIES THE KEY TO HERSELF AND CONTINUES HER
PERFORMANCE ON THE CORNET
VII. THREATS OF A CRISIS IN THE GOVERNMENT OF BROOKFIELD:
AND OF THE VIRTUE RESIDENT IN A TAIL-COAT
VIII. IN WHICH A BIG DRUM SPEEDS THE MARCH OF
EMILIA'S HISTORY
IX. THE RIVAL CLUBS
X. THE LADIES OF BROOKFIELD AT SCHOOL
BOOK 2
XI. IN WHICH WE SEE THE MAGNANIMITY THAT IS IN BEER.
XII. SHOWING HOW SENTIMENT AND PASSION TAKE
THE DISEASE OF LOVE
XIII. CONTAINS A SHORT DISCOURSE ON PUPPETS
XIV. THE BESWORTH QUESTION
XV. WILFRID'S EXHIBITION OF TREACHERY
XVI. HOW THE LADIES OF BROOKFIELD CAME TO THEIR RESOLVE
XVII. IN THE WOODS
BOOK 3
XVIII. RETURN OF THE SENTIMENTALIST INTO BONDAGE
XIX. LIFE AT BROOKFIELD.
XX. BY WILMING WEIR
XXI. RETURN OF MR. PERICLES
XXII. THE PITFALL OF SENTIMENT
XXIII. WILFRID DIPLOMATIZES
XXIV. EMILIA MAKES A MOVE
XXV. A FARCE WITHIN A FARCE
BOOK 4
XXVI. SUGGESTS THAT THE COMIC MASK HAS SOME KINSHIP WITH A SKULL
XXVII. SMALL LIFE AT BROOKFIELD
XXVIII. GEORGIANA FORD
XXIX. FIRST SCOURGING OF THE FINE SHADES
XXX. OF THE DOUBLE-MAN IN US, AND THE GREAT FIGHT
WHEN THESE ARE FULL-GROWN
XXXI. BESWORTH LAWN
XXXII. THE SUPPER
XXXIII. DEFEAT AND FLIGHT OF MRS. CHUMP
BOOK 5
XXXIV. INDICATES THE DEGRADATION OF BROOKFIELD, TOGETHER
WITH CERTAIN PROCEEDINGS OF THE YACHT
XXXV. MRS. CHUMP'S EPISTLE
XXXVI. ANOTHER PITFALL OF SENTIMENT
XXXVII. EMILIA'S FLIGHT.
XXXVIII. SHE CLINGS TO HER VOICE
XXXIX. HER VOICE FAILS
BOOK 6
XL. SHE TASTES DESPAIR
XLI. SHE IS FOUND
XLII. DEFECTION OF MR. PERICLES FROM THE BROOKFIELD CIRCLE
XLIII. IN WHICH WE SEE WILFRID KINDLING
XLIV. ON THE HIPPOGRIFF IN AIR: IN WHICH THE
PHILOSOPHER HAS A SHORT SPELL.
XLV. ON THE HIPPOGRIFF ON EARTH.
XLVI. RAPE OF THE BLACK-BRIONY WREATH
XLVII. THE CALL TO ACTION
XLVIII. CONTAINS A FURTHER VIEW OF SENTIMENT
XLIX. BETWEEN EMILIA AND GEORGIANA
BOOK 7
L. EMILIA BEGINS TO FEEL MERTHYR'S POWER
LI. A CHAPTER INTERRUPTED BY THE PHILOSOPHER
LII. A FRESH DUETT BETWEEN WILFRID AND EMILIA
LIII. ALDERMAN'S BOUQUET
LIV. THE EXPLOSION AT BROOKFIELD
LV. THE TRAGEDY OF SENTIMENT
LVI. AN ADVANCE AND A CHECK.
LVII. CONTAINS A FURTHER ANATOMY OF WILFRID
LVIII. FROST ON THE MAY NIGHT.
LIX. EMILIA'S GOOD-BYE
SANDRA BELLONI
[ORIGINALLY EMILIA IN ENGLAND]
CHAPTER I
We are to make acquaintance with some serious damsels, as this English
generation knows them, and at a season verging upon May. The ladies
of Brookfield, Arabella, Cornelia, and Adela Pole, daughters of a
flourishing City-of-London merchant, had been told of a singular thing:
that in the neighbouring fir-wood a voice was to be heard by night, so
wonderfully sweet and richly toned, that it required their strong sense
to correct strange imaginings concerning it. Adela was herself the chief
witness to its unearthly sweetness, and her testimony was confirmed by
Edward Buxley, whose ear had likewise taken in the notes, though not on
the same night, as the pair publicly proved by dates. Both declared
that the voice belonged to an opera-singer or a spirit. The ladies
of Brookfield, declining the alternative, perceived that this was a
surprise furnished for their amusement by the latest celebrity of
their circle, Mr. Pericles, their father's business ally and
fellow-speculator; Mr. Pericles, the Greek, the man who held millions
of money as dust compared to a human voice. Fortified by this exquisite
supposition, their strong sense at once dismissed with scorn the idea
of anything unearthly, however divine, being heard at night, in the
nineteenth century, within sixteen miles of London City. They agreed
that Mr. Pericles had hired some charming cantatrice to draw them into
the woods and delightfully bewilder them. It was to be expected of his
princely nature, they said. The Tinleys, of Bloxholme, worshipped him
for his wealth; the ladies of Brookfield assured their friends that
the fact of his being a money-maker was redeemed in their sight by his
devotion to music. Music was now the Art in the ascendant at Brookfield.
The ladies (for it is as well to know at once that they were not of
that poor order of women who yield their admiration to a thing for its
abstract virtue only)--the ladies were scaling society by the help of
the Arts. To this laudable end sacrifices were now made to Euterpe to
assist them. As mere daughters of a merchant, they were compelled to
make their house not simply attractive, but enticing; and, seeing that
they liked music, it seemed a very agreeable device. The Tinleys of
Bloxholme still kept to dancing, and had effectually driven away Mr.
Pericles from their gatherings. For Mr. Pericles said: “If that they
will go 'so,' I will be amused.” He presented a top-like triangular
appearance for one staggering second. The Tinleys did not go `so' at
all, and consequently they lost the satirical man, and were called 'the
ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny scoff her sisters permitted to
pass about for a single day, and no more. The Tinleys were their match
at epithets, and any low contention of this kind obscured for them the
social summit they hoped to attain; the dream whereof was their prime
nourishment.
That the Tinleys really were their match, they acknowledged, upon the
admission of the despicable nature of the game. The Tinleys had winged a
dreadful shaft at them; not in itself to be dreaded, but that it struck
a weak point; it was a common shot that exploded a magazine; and for a
time it quite upset their social policy, causing them to act like simple
young ladies who feel things and resent them. The ladies of Brookfield
had let it be known that, in their privacy together, they were Pole,
Polar, and North Pole. Pole, Polar, and North Pole were designations of
the three shades of distance which they could convey in a bow: a form of
salute they cherished as peculiarly their own; being a method they had
invented to rebuke the intrusiveness of the outer world, and hold away
all strangers until approved worthy. Even friends had occasionally to
submit to it in a softened form. Arabella, the eldest, and Adela,
the youngest, alternated Pole and Polar; but North Pole was shared by
Cornelia with none. She was the fairest of the three; a nobly-built
person; her eyes not vacant of tenderness when she put off her armour.
In her war-panoply before unhappy strangers, she was a Britomart.
They bowed to an iceberg, which replied to them with the freezing
indifference of the floating colossus, when the Winter sun despatches
a feeble greeting messenger-beam from his miserable Arctic wallet. The
simile must be accepted in its might, for no lesser one will express
the scornfulness toward men displayed by this strikingly well-favoured,
formal lady, whose heart of hearts demanded for her as spouse, a lord,
a philosopher, and a Christian, in one: and he must be a member of
Parliament. Hence her isolated air.
Now, when the ladies of Brookfield heard that their Pole, Polar, and
North Pole, the splendid image of themselves, had been transformed by
the Tinleys, and defiled by them to Pole, Polony, and Maypole, they
should have laughed contemptuously; but the terrible nerve of ridicule
quivered in witness against them, and was not to be stilled. They could
not understand why so coarse a thing should affect them. It stuck in
their flesh. It gave them the idea that they saw their features hideous,
but real, in a magnifying mirror.
There was therefore a feud between the Tinleys and the Poles; and when
Mr. Pericles entirely gave up the former, the latter rewarded him by
spreading abroad every possible kind interpretation of his atrocious bad
manners. He was a Greek, of Parisian gilding, whose Parisian hat flew
off at a moment's notice, and whose savage snarl was heard at the
slightest vexation. His talk of renowned prime-donne by their Christian
names, and the way that he would catalogue emperors, statesmen, and
noblemen known to him, with familiar indifference, as things below the
musical Art, gave a distinguishing tone to Brookfield, from which his
French accentuation of our tongue did not detract.
Mr. Pericles grimaced bitterly at any claim to excellence being set up
for the mysterious voice in the woods. Tapping one forefinger on the
uplifted point of the other, he observed that to sing abroad in the
night air of an English Spring month was conclusive of imbecility; and
that no imbecile sang at all. Because, to sing, involved the highest
accomplishment of which the human spirit could boast. Did the ladies
see? he asked. They thought they saw that he carried on a deception
admirably. In return, they inquired whether he would come with them and
hunt the voice, saying that they would catch it for him. “I shall catch
a cold for myself,” said Mr. Pericles, from the elevation of a shrug,
feeling that he was doomed to go forth. He acted reluctance so well
that the ladies affected a pretty imperiousness; and when at last he
consented to join the party, they thanked him with a nicely simulated
warmth, believing that they had pleased him thoroughly.
Their brother Wilfrid was at Brookfield. Six months earlier he had
returned from India, an invalided cornet of light cavalry, with a
reputation for military dash and the prospect of a medal. Then he was
their heroic brother he was now their guard. They love him tenderly,
and admired him when it was necessary; but they had exhausted their own
sensations concerning his deeds of arms, and fancied that he had served
their purpose. And besides, valour is not an intellectual quality, they
said. They were ladies so aspiring, these daughters of the merchant
Samuel Bolton Pole, that, if Napoleon had been their brother, their
imaginations would have overtopped him after his six months' inaction in
the Tuileries. They would by that time have made a stepping-stone of the
emperor. 'Mounting' was the title given to this proceeding. They went
on perpetually mounting. It is still a good way from the head of the
tallest of men to the stars; so they had their work before them; but,
as they observed, they were young. To be brief, they were very ambitious
damsels, aiming at they knew not exactly what, save that it was
something so wide that it had not a name, and so high in the air that no
one could see it. They knew assuredly that their circle did not please
them. So, therefore, they were constantly extending and refining
it: extending it perhaps for the purpose of refining it. Their
susceptibilities demanded that they should escape from a city circle.
Having no mother, they ruled their father's house and him, and were at
least commanders of whatsoever forces they could summon for the task.
It may be seen that they were sentimentalists. That is to say, they
supposed that they enjoyed exclusive possession of the Nice Feelings,
and exclusively comprehended the Fine Shades. Whereof more will be said;
but in the meantime it will explain their propensity to mount; it will
account for their irritation at the material obstructions surrounding
them; and possibly the philosopher will now have his eye on the source
of that extraordinary sense of superiority to mankind which was the
crown of their complacent brows. Eclipsed as they may be in the gross
appreciation of the world by other people, who excel in this and that
accomplishment, persons that nourish Nice Feelings and are intimate with
the Fine Shades carry their own test of intrinsic value.
Nor let the philosopher venture hastily to despise them as pipers to
dilettante life. Such persons come to us in the order of civilization.
In their way they help to civilize us. Sentimentalists are a perfectly
natural growth of a fat soil. Wealthy communities must engender them.
If with attentive minds we mark the origin of classes, we shall discern
that the Nice Feelings and the Fine Shades play a principal part in our
human development and social history. I dare not say that civilized man
is to be studied with the eye of a naturalist; but my vulgar meaning
might almost be twisted to convey: that our sentimentalists are a
variety owing their existence to a certain prolonged term of comfortable
feeding. The pig, it will be retorted, passes likewise through this
training. He does. But in him it is not combined with an indigestion of
high German romances. Here is so notable a difference, that he cannot
possibly be said to be of the family. And I maintain it against him, who
have nevertheless listened attentively to the eulogies pronounced by the
vendors of prize bacon.
After thus stating to you the vast pretensions of the ladies of
Brookfield, it would be unfair to sketch their portraits. Nothing but
comedy bordering on burlesque could issue from the contrast, though
they graced a drawing-room or a pew, and had properly elegant habits and
taste in dress, and were all fair to the sight. Moreover, Adela had not
long quitted school. Outwardly they were not unlike other young ladies
with wits alert. They were at the commencement of their labours on this
night of the expedition when they were fated to meet something greatly
confusing them.