Romance and Reality (Landon)/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX.
"I trust I may be permitted to have an opinion of my own."
Commonplace in Domestic Dialogue.
"He who judges of other days by the feelings of his own, is like one who would adapt a Polar dress to the climate of the Tropics."
James's History of Chivalry.
"Were you entertained at the play last night?" said Lady Mandeville, who, apart from the other callers, had formed a little circle of Emily, Lorraine, and Mr. Morland.
Edward Lorraine.—"Allow me to answer for you; Miss Arundel was delighted, for she was superlatively miserable—and the pleasure of a tragedy is to be measured by its sorrow."
Emily.—"I never saw a tragedy before, and, to use one of Mr. Lorraine's own expressions, novelty is the secret of enjoyment; and I liked Miss Fanny Kemble so much."
Mr. Morland.—"Excepting as matter of pedigree, our ancestors are exceedingly in the way: we go to see a young, rising, inexperienced girl, and we keep talking about Mrs. Siddons. I think it just a debatable point, whether Miss Kemble be most indebted to the attraction flung over her by memories of other days, or injured by the comparison."
Emily.—"I cannot offer an opinion, but I must express my delight; there is something in her voice that fills my eyes with tears, even before I know the sense; and her face is to my taste beautiful,—the finely arched and expressive brow, and the dark, passionate eyes,—what a world of thought and feeling lie in their shadowy depths! She gave to me, at least, an interest in Juliet I never felt before."
Lady Mandeville.—"I agree with you in not placing Juliet among my favourite creations of Shakespeare; her love is too sudden, too openly avowed—it is merely taking a fancy to the first handsome young man she sees; even to her lover she has to say,
'If thou thinkest I am too quickly won.'
Now, among all Shakespeare's heroines, give me Viola. I have always formed a beautiful vision of the lonely and enthusiastic Italian, nursing a wild dream of the noble duke, whose perfections had been the subject of their fireside talk—
'I have heard my father name him'—
cherishing the vision of her girlhood in silence and hopelessness. Viola seems to me the very poetry of love. Satisfactory as is the ending of Twelfth Night, I always feel a fanciful anxiety for the fate of her who is henceforth to be
'Orsino's mistress, and his fancy's queen.'
I have a great idea of a lover having some trouble,—it is the effort we make to attain an object that teaches us its value."
Edward Lorraine.—"I think you judge Juliet unfairly, because you judge her by rules to which she is not amenable—by those of our present time. You forget how differently love affairs are now arranged to what they were in the time of the fair Veronese. It was an age when love lived, as Byron says, more in the eyes than the heart. A kind wind blew back a veil, and showed a rose-touched cheek; or a dark eye flashed over a blind—this was enough to make an enamoured youth desperate. The lady herself just glanced over her lattice, and a stately step, or a well-mounted steed, henceforth haunted her dreams. The only communication between lovers was the handing the holy water in the cathedral, a guitar softly touched at night, or perhaps the rare occurrence of meeting at a festival. In all the old novelists and poets, love at first sight is a common event, because it was such in actual life. Our modern easiness of manners, and freedom of intercourse, develope the same feeling, though in a different manner,—we no longer lose our hearts so suddenly, because there is no necessity for such haste; we talk of answering tastes, our ancestors thought of answering eyes,—we require a certain number of quadrilles, and a certain quantity of conversation, before the young pair can be supposed to form an attachment; but allow me to say, I do not see why it is so much more rational to talk than to look oneself into love. No: judge Juliet according to the manners of a time of masks, veils, serenades, and seclusion, and you will find the picture worked out in colours as delicate as they are natural."
The defence of one woman is a man's best flattery to the whole sex, even as the abuse of them in general is but a bad compliment to any individual.
Lady Mandeville.—"I cannot but think the commonplace and sweeping satire he bestows on us a great fault in the clever and original author of Sydenham. However, I hold it but as the ingenious vanity of a young man: had he praised people would only have said, 'very interesting, but so romantic;' but he censures, and the remark is, 'he must know a great deal to know so much evil.' Perhaps this is the cause why the judgments of the young are generally so severe,—censure has to them somewhat the seeming of experience; and in reason as in fashion, we doubly affect what we have not."
Mr. Morland.—"it puts me in mind of a little speech of his to a lady who reproached him for praising her young friend's style of wreath and ringlet, when he knew it was not becoming.—'Could you suspect me of speaking the truth to a young lady?'"
Lady Mandeville.—"Now the knowledge of our sex that speech supposed. Nothing is so disparaging as vanity. It seems, like the Tartar, to suppose it acquires the qualities of the individual it destroys."
Edward Lorraine.—"To return to our theatricals; I was delighted with Miss Kemble's Portia; her rich melancholy voice gives such effect to poetry. I missed her when she was not on the stage, in spite of the absorbing interest of that most calumniated and ill-used person, the Jew."
Emily.—"A most amiable person you have chosen for your object of interest."
Edward Lorraine.—"I do think him so ill used: his riches matter of mingled envy and reproach—himself insulted,—his daughter, to whom, at least, he softens into affection—otherwise so chilled and checked—deserts, nay, robs him,—I am sure he has most sufficient cause of resentment against 'these Christians;' only I cannot forgive his craven conduct in the last scene: had I been Shylock, I would have exacted my penalty at its utmost peril,—my life should have cheaply bought Antonio's."
Mr. Morland.—"That would have been carrying revenge sufficiently far."
Edward Lorraine.—"Truly, I hold revenge to be a moral duty. To permit ourselves to be injured with impunity, is to give an encouragement to evil, which may afterwards turn against others as well as ourselves. Some one says, revenge is such a luxury, the gods keep it to themselves; when they do permit us to participate in the enjoyment, by placing it in our power, it is downright ingratitude not to partake."
Lady Mandeville.—"A most amiable and peaceful doctrine! "
Mr. Morland.—"I, for one, do not wish those days to return, when a man's forefathers left him a feud by way of inheritance, or a quarrel as a legacy."
Edward Lorraine.—"Well, well, we can still have a suit in chancery; and I do not see but that, when
'Your lawyers are met, a terrible show,'
the redress will be about as destructive to both sides as when you faced your opponent at the head of your armed retainers; though, for myself, I am free to confess, I never ride up the avenue where I first catch sight of the towers of Etheringhame without regret for the days when our banner floated over five hundred horseman, and the crested helmets on the wall were not, as now, a vain show for the antiquary."
Lady Mandeville.—"Yes—you have cause to regret those days, when, as a younger brother, you would have been put into a monastery or a dungeon! You must confess that our modern days of clubs, cabriolets, and comfort, is somewhat more advanced towards perfection."
Edward Lorraine.—"Why comfort is a very comparative term: it is true, I prefer the crimson carpet under my feet to the rushes with which my ancestors would have strewed my floor; but if I had never seen the carpet, I could not have missed it—as Cibber, in his beautiful poem of the Blind Boy, says—
'I do not feel
The want I do not know.'"
Mr. Morland.—"The hope of improvement is a quality at once so strong and so excellent in the human mind, that I, for one, disapprove of any sophism—or, if you will, argument—that tends to repress it. It is certain that nothing ever produces either the evil or the good prognosticated; circumstances always occur which no one could have foreseen, and which always both alter and ameliorate. Our age is a little self-important—so was its predecessor—so will be its follower: it is a curious fact, but the worst and the best is always said and thought of the existing time. For my part, I neither think that our present day is all but perfection, nor do I quite hold with those who only put my gardener's belief into different words, 'that learning and good roads will ruin the kingdom.'"
Lady Mandeville.—"One of the manias of the present day, which especially excites my spleen, is the locomotive rage which seems to possess all ranks—that necessity of going out of town in the summer—people, for example, in the middle classes, who have a comfortable and well-furnished house—to live in some small cottage or miserable lodgings, the chief of whose recommendation seems to be, that they are either damp or windy; they give up regular habits and comforts, an innovation on the least of which would have occasioned a fortnight's grumbling at any other time; but now 'the lady's health required change of air,' or 'it would do the children so much good.'"
Edward Lorraine.—"You have forgotten the genteel sound of 'we passed the summer at Worthing,' or 'the autumn at Hastings.'"
Mr. Morland.—"Nothing appears to me so absurd as placing our happiness in the opinion others entertain of our enjoyments, not in our own sense of them. The fear of being thought vulgar, is the moral hydrophobia of the day; our weaknesses cost us a thousand times more regret and shame than our faults."
Lady Mandeville.—"Ah, if we could but keep a little for our own use of the wisdom we so liberally bestow on others! Nothing can be more entire than my conviction of the truth of what we have been saying—but I wish you good morning, for I must tease—I mean persuade—Lord Mandeville to go to Lady Falcondale's fête—not that I have myself the least wish to go,—but every body will be there."
"I wonder," said Lorraine, as she departed, "whether any thing can be more musical than Lady Mandeville's laugh. What a risk it is to laugh! Laughter may be generally classed under three heads,—forced, silly, or vulgar; but hers is the most sweet, real, spirituelle sound possible—it so appreciates the wit, which it increases as it catches—it speaks of spirits so fresh, so youthful! I think Weld is the traveller who says he loved to sit of an evening in the shade where he could hear the laughter of the Indian women—that it had on him the effect of music: I say the same of Lady Mandeville's."
Mr. Morland.—"The author of Paul Clifford is the first who has made open war, and turned his ridicule against the sombre followers of Lord Byron; but I think he goes too far in the close alliance he supposes between good spirits and genius. The favourite topic of our philosophers is the weakness, that of the poets the sorrows of human nature—its fears also, and its crimes. These are not very enlivening subjects, and yet they are universally chosen; and for one great reason—in some or other of their shapes they come home to every one's experience. It is very true that Homer's general tone is exciting, warlike, and glad, like the sound of a trumpet; still his most popular passages are those touched with sorrow and affection: the parting of Hector and Andromache is uppermost in the minds of the great body of his readers; and the grief of Priam touches the many much more than the godlike attributes of Achilles. I believe genius to be acute feeling gifted with the power of expression, and with that keen observation which early leads to reflection; and few can feel much of, or think much on, the various lessons of life, and not say, in the sorrowful language of the Psalmist, 'My soul is heavy within me.' But as the once beautifully-moulded figures, that pass through the various casts taken in plaster of Paris, till scarce a trace remains of their original symmetry and grace in the base copies hawked about the streets—so an idea, or a feeling, once true and beautiful, becomes garbled and absurd by passing through the hands of awkward imitators. I have not the slightest intention of taking up the defence of 'young gentlemen who make frowns in the glass;' in truth, their laments and regrets are about as just as those of an old gentleman of my acquaintance, blessed—I believe that is the proper phrase—with a more than ordinary portion of children and grandchildren, but who kept dying off, and being buried in the family vault, to the great sorrow of the grandfather, who, equally vexed and indignant, complained, 'there will not be a bit of room for me in my own vault.'"
Edward Lorraine.—"A hard case, truly, to outlive one's very grave; though, to me at least, there is something very revolting in our system of burial—something very contrary to the essentially cheerful spirit of our religion. I can conceive no scene more chilling and more revolting than a London burying-ground; haste, oblivion, selfishness are its outward signs. I love not this desire to loose the ties between the living and the dead; the sorrowful affection which lingers over the departed is too sacred, too purifying a feeling, to be thus hurriedly put aside. With all that is false and affected about Père la Chaise, the feeling which founded it, and which it still keeps alive, is a good one; for no solitary moment passed in thoughtfulness beside the deceased was ever yet without its price to the survivor."
Mr. Morland.—"They say that every age has its ruling vice—I think impatience is that of our present—we live in such a hurry that we have not time to be sorry."
Edward Lorraine.—"And we shall have no time to be charitable—we have to attend the Ladies' Bazaar; we are destined to fall victims to-day to smiles, pincushions, and compassion: to my certain knowledge, Miss Arundel, the other morning, despatched a whole regiment of dolls."
Moore says,
Lightly falls the foot of Time,
Which only treads on flowers.
Pleasantly did the day pass to Emily—one gets so soon accustomed to the society of a beloved object. Habit is a second nature, and what was at first pleasure is next necessity. Words, such nothings in themselves—trifles, so unimportant—walks, where there is nothing to see—amusements, where there is nothing to do—how delightful they become under some circumstances! Well, it would not do to be always in love; as a travelling merchant observed to his wife, who had indulged somewhat too liberally, for nearly a whole week, in the fascinating fluid called "mountain dew,"—"What! to-day again?—this won't do every day—you wouldn't be an angel, would you?"
Though we differ in the gentleman's estimate of angelic nature, we will apply his words, and say to the enamoured—"This won't do every day—you wouldn't be an angel, would you?"