Dexterously as Wilfrid has turned Tracy to his uses by means of the
foregoing correspondence, in doing so he had exposed himself to the
retributive poison administered by that cunning youth. And now the
Hippogriff seized him, and mounted with him into mid-air; not as when
the idle boy Ganymede was caught up to act as cup-bearer in celestial
Courts, but to plunge about on yielding vapours, with nothing near him
save the voice of his desire.
The Philosopher here peremptorily demands the pulpit. We are subject,
he says, to fantastic moods, and shall dry ready-minted phrases picture
them forth? As, for example, can the words 'delirium,' or 'frenzy,'
convey an image of Wilfrid's state, when his heart began to covet Emilia
again, and his sentiment not only interposed no obstacle, but trumpeted
her charms and fawned for her, and he thought her lost, remembered that
she had been his own, and was ready to do any madness to obtain her?
'Madness' is the word that hits the mark, but it does not fully embrace
the meaning. To be in this state, says the Philosopher, is to be 'On The
Hippogriff;' and to this, as he explains, the persons who travel to Love
by the road of sentiment will come, if they have any stuff in them, and
if the one who kindles them is mighty. He distinguishes being on the
Hippogriff from being possessed by passion. Passion, he says, is noble
strength on fire, and points to Emilia as a representation of passion.
She asks for what she thinks she may have; she claims what she imagines
to be her own. She has no shame, and thus, believing in, she never
violates, nature, and offends no law, wild as she may seem. Passion does
not turn on her and rend her when it is thwarted. She was never carried
out of the limit of her own intelligent force, seeing that it directed
her always, with the simple mandate to seek that which belonged to
her. She was perfectly sane, and constantly just to herself, until the
failure of her voice, telling her that she was a beggar in the world,
came as a second blow, and partly scared her reason. Constantly just
to herself, mind! This is the quality of true passion. Those who make a
noise, and are not thus distinguishable, are on Hippogriff. --By which
it is clear to me that my fantastic Philosopher means to indicate the
lover mounted in this wise, as a creature bestriding an extraneous
power. “The sentimentalist,” he says, “goes on accumulating images
and hiving sensations, till such time as (if the stuff be in him) they
assume a form of vitality, and hurry him headlong. This is not passion,
though it amazes men, and does the madder thing.”
In fine, it is Hippogriff. And right loath am I to continue my
partnership with a fellow who will not see things on the surface, and
is, as a necessary consequence, blind to the fact that the public detest
him. I mean, this garrulous, super-subtle, so-called Philosopher, who
first set me upon the building of 'The Three Volumes,' it is true, but
whose stipulation that he should occupy so large a portion of them
has made them rock top-heavy, to the forfeit of their stability. He
maintains that a story should not always flow, or, at least, not to
a given measure. When we are knapsack on back, he says, we come
to eminences where a survey of our journey past and in advance is
desireable, as is a distinct pause in any business, here and there.
He points proudly to the fact that our people in this comedy move
themselves,--are moved from their own impulsion,--and that no arbitrary
hand has posted them to bring about any event and heap the catastrophe.
In vain I tell him that he is meantime making tatters of the puppets'
golden robe illusion: that he is sucking the blood of their warm
humanity out of them. He promises that when Emilia is in Italy he
will retire altogether; for there is a field of action, of battles and
conspiracies, nerve and muscle, where life fights for plain issues, and
he can but sum results. Let us, he entreats, be true to time and place.
In our fat England, the gardener Time is playing all sorts of delicate
freaks in the lines and traceries of the flower of life, and shall
we not note them? If we are to understand our species, and mark the
progress of civilization at all, we must. Thus the Philosopher. Our
partner is our master, and I submit, hopefully looking for release with
my Emilia, in the day when Italy reddens the sky with the banners of a
land revived.
I hear Wilfrid singing out that he is aloft, burning to rush ahead,
while his beast capers in one spot, abominably ludicrous. This trick of
Hippogriff is peculiar, viz., that when he loses all faith in himself,
he sinks--in other words, goes to excesses of absurd humility to regain
it. Passion has likewise its panting intervals, but does nothing so
preposterous. The wreath of black briony, spoken of by Tracy as the
crown of Emilia's forehead, had begun to glow with a furnace-colour in
Wilfrid's fancy. It worked a Satanic distraction in him. The girl sat
before him swathed in a darkness, with the edges of the briony leaves
shining deadly--radiant above--young Hecate! The next instant he was
bleeding with pity for her, aching with remorse, and again stung to
intense jealousy of all who might behold her (amid a reserve of angry
sensations at her present happiness).
Why had she not made allowance for his miserable situation that night
in Devon? Why did she not comprehend his difficulties in relation to his
father's affairs? Why did she not know that he could not fail to love
her for ever?
Interrogations such as these were so many switches of the whip in the
flanks of Hippogriff.
Another peculiarity of the animal gifted with wings is, that around the
height he soars to he can see no barriers nor any of the fences raised
by men. And here again he differs from Passion, which may tug against
common sense but is never, in a great nature, divorced from it: In air
on Hippogriff, desires wax boundless, obstacles are hidden. It seemed
nothing to Wilfrid (after several tremendous descents of humility) that
he should hurry for Monmouth away, to gaze on Emilia under her fair,
infernal, bewitching wreath; nothing that he should put an arm round
her; nothing that he should forthwith carry her off, though he died for
it. Forming no design beyond that of setting his eyes on her, he turned
the head of Hippogriff due Westward.