^ A UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN BOOKSTACKS CECIL, A PEEE, A SEQUEL TO CECIL, OR THE ADVENTURES OF A COXCOMB. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. "LOCUS EST ET PLUHIBUS UMBRIS,'' A frame containing sketches of the world and its wife. 1 Horace. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: T. AND W. BOONE, 29, NEW BOND STREET. 1841. A3 PREFACE It is impossible to be sure that, in these days of general mistrust, the atheism of the Public may not extend to a doubt of my identity. — Let the perusal of a few pages suffice to prove that if Ulysses alone could bend the bow of Ulysses, there is but one Cecil to wield the peacock's" quill of Cecil! — I have a great deal more to say for myself; but it has been so charmingly said of late by the most brilliant of modern French writers, in a review of my memoirs, that I presume to wind up my Preface with his judicious periods. — " ' Cecil' est en efTet une composition dont le ^ genre n'etait indique dans aucune rhetorique; c'etait une bizarrerie nouvelle, meme comme bizarrerie ; c'etait le plus singulier pele-mele de bon sens et de paradoxes, de probite et d'esprit d'enthousiasme et d'ironie, qui fut jamais. Cette fois, les caprices d'Arioste, lorsqu'il brise d'une facon si charmante les divers episodes de son poeme pour les reprendre a mille lieues plus loin IV PREFACE. quand reviendra leur tour, etaient completement depasses. " Dans cette histoire, pas un recit n'est entier, pas un dialogue ; tout se brise tout a la fois ; le fil de l'histoire echappe a chaque instant aux mains du lectern* le plus attentif a le saisir. Pour ecrire un pareil livre, il a fallu oublier toutes les regies etablies, donner un dementi a tous les usages recus, affronter tous les perils, toutes les hardiesses, et meme quelque chose an dela. "A voir tout d'abord cet amoncellement de materiaux sans consistanee,— a, suivre cette reve- rie flottante 9a et la dans le plus nebuleux des hasards, a se rappeler ces caprices infinis d'une imagination que rien n'arrete, ni les fleuves, ni les montagnes, on reste ebloui, confondu, hebete, et Ton es demande si l'on n'est pas la dupe de quelque bouffon. " Oui ! — mais au fond de cet abime, dans ce chaos tourmente, vous voyez surgir de temps a autre d'utiles enseignements, de nobles pensees, des drames touchants et simples, d'eloquentes protes- tations en faveurde l'espece humaine, trop souvent accusee. Le nuage, sans nul doute, le nuage vous fatigue ; lamontagne est rude a gravir; rnais aussi, une fois arrive sur les hauteurs, le nuage s'abaisse a vos pieds, et, du haut de la montagne, vous decouvrez tout le paysage d'alentour. Ce livre vous produit l'effet de ces conversations tumultu- PREFACE. V euses qui n'ont ni commencement ni fin, mais dont le milieu est souvent rempli d'agrements et d' in- struction. D'abord chacun dit son mot au hasard, selon sa nature ou son emotion personnelle ; bient6t on se debat a outrance, on replique a son voisin sans l'avoir entendu ; toutes les opinions contradic- toires se heurtent et s'entrechoquent ; mais enfln arrive l'homme sage de la bande ; il parle avec plus de moderation et de simplicity que les autres, et, par cela meme, on Pecoute. Apres quoi, lorsque celui-la a parle, les tumultueux out de nouveau leur tour, et la conversation s'acheve aussi follementqu'elle a commence. Tel fut 1'erTet produit a la premiere apparition de " Cecil." On commence par n'y rien comprendre ; on y trouva ensuite un grand charme, parce qu'on y compre- nait quelque chose ; apres quoi, en finit par dire qu'on n'y comprenait plus rien. Les critiques furent violentes, les eloges furent passionnes ; une veritable bataille litteraire se livra autour de cette espeoe d'apocalypse romanesque. Les uns disaient que c'etait un livre charmant, d'une finesse et d'une grace accomplies ; les autres, que c'etait un livre pedantesque, lourd, difFus et difforme. Ceux- ci se recriaient sur la folle gaiete, sur l'admirable bonne humeur de ce bouffon j les autres soute- naient, au contraire, que ce livre valait surtout par le pathetique des situations, par rinteret tout- VI PREFACE. puissant du drame, par les larmes qu'il faisait re- pandre. — C'est un vil bouffbn, disaient les graves ecclesiastiques, c'est un drole adorable, s'ecriaient les jeunes beaux esprits de la cour. — Eh bien ! les ecclesiastiques et les courtisans, les critiques et les defenseurs, ils avaient tous raison, les uns et les autres : car ce livre etait tout cela, bouffon jusqu'a la folie, satirique jusqu'a la folie, pathetique jusqu'aux larmes." The Edinburgh Review did me noble justice. — The above extract contains the tribute of the Debats. — It remains to be proved who next, among the Judges' Trumpeters, will immortalize himself by becoming sponsor for the immortality of ORMINGTON. CECIL. CHAPTER I. II y a fagots et fagots; et pour ceux que je fais ! — Moltere. Somnia sunt non docentis, sed optantis. — Cic. It is a trying situation for a fellow who has contented himself for the first fifty years of his life with the slender honours of coterie renown, the fame dispensed through a flageolet rather than a trumpet, to wake one morning, like Byron after the puhlication of Childe Harold, " and find himself famous." When 1 took compassion on the dulness of the British public so far as to confide to it the adventures of my days of coxcombry, I enjoyed VOL. I. B 2 CECIL. only the reputation of being an expert pyro- technist of those flashy squibs and crackers which irradiate the dulness of White's bay- window on a rainy day; a dining-out man, good enough to fill a place when Alvanley or Rokeby, — Sydney or Sneyd, — were not to be had; and was then a wit among lords, as I am now a lord among wits. My name, however, has become European, The critics, astounded by the vigour of my style and universality of my knowledge, have decided me to be, like Mrs. Malapropos Cer- berus, il three gentlemen in one ;" — while the prattlers of May Fair, having been assured that I wear a gown, hail me as of epicene gender. Sinking under the weight of such commen- dations, dear Public, I appear before you co- vered with blushes. Like some popular dancer summoned to the front of the stage by the thunders of your applause, I advance trembling lest the grace of my three bows of acknowledg- ment should be deteriorated by the pitiless CECIL. storm of bouquets pelting over my head ; placing my hand on the spot where hearts are said to be, to abide your verdict. Once fairly before you, however, the foot- lights of publicity blazing at my feet, — the chandeliers gleaming above, — and three tiers of beauty and fashion cheering me by their plau- dits, — the gods waiving their handkerchiefs, the pit its scruples, — I feel the divinity stir within me ! — My blushes subside ! — Cis Danby is himself again! — " my foot is on my native heath, and my name is Macgregor !" Meanwhile I trust others are not as sick as myself of the sound of my name. The way in which society has been be-Cecilled for the last six months, is really overpowering. Multiform as the cloud of Polonius, I have been pointed out to myself at all the parties of the season, Wearing strange shapes, and bearing many names ! Methinks there have been ten Cecils in the field ; and had I much faith in the doctrine 4 CECIL. of wraiths and fetches, must long ago have died of consternation, under the influence of appa- ritions of " the Author of Cecil." Some week ago, I sat by myself at a Greenwich dinner which my other self was invited to amuse; — and a deuced stupid fellow I was! On the other hand, if proof against terrors of the Bodach Glas, I have run some risk of being bored to death by disclaimers of the authorship in question. Scarcely a scribbler about town but has essayed to prove to me, in nineteen sections of prose, that he was incapable of producing so silly a book as " Cecil," and that his Club accused him wrongfully ; — that " if he had stooped to write a novel, he trusted it would not have turned out quite so inartis- tical a production ; A mighty maze, and all without a plan ! without plot, — design, — arrangement, — and with very little moral !" One and all, in short, pride themselves on the conviction that they should have produced a Paternoster Row Iegi- CECIL. 5 timate, in the style of James;— -while my dis- cursive illegitimate was avowedly a loose string of pearls, in the style of Howell and James ; — " inest sua gratia parvis!" The Gods give them joy of their taste !— There are authors enough and to spare who write books regulation-wise ; but for my part, I do not pretend to be in the regulars. I am a Guerrilla — a backwoodsman — any thing ra- ther than a gentleman who prattles belles lettres for the delectation of Grosvenor Square, and does small literature for the Annuals. As to your historical three volume novels per rule and compass, with a beginning, an end, and a middle, it strikes me that there is begin- ning to be no end to them, and they are all middling. I shall consequently continue to tell my story as I think proper. I consider myself a sort of Moor of Venice, relating my adven- tures ; and the Public, my gentle Desdemona, " giving me for my pains a world of sighs," 6 CECIL. besides a smile or two pretty particularly well worth having. But it is time, as the man observed who went to see the School for Scandal, that we " should stop talking and begin the play." And now, as the Princess Scheherazade used to say, "Where did I leave off?"— I think, I told you, Beloved Public, — yes, I certainly told you, that I had deigned to accept an ap- pointment in the household of George IV., and become a bullion tassel on the garment of royalty. It was an auspicious moment for that sort of gold-lace existence. As in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump all bodies possess equal weight, and a feather has the same im- portance as a guinea, in the factitious atmos- phere of the court of Carlton House, Cecil Danby and Castlereagh, — (great Cas. bien en- tendu) — Jack Harris and the Duke of Wel- lington—maintained pretty nearly the same specific gravity. I know not whether my colleagues regarded CECIL. 7 the affair in so philosophical a point of view as myself: for we kept up the same plau- sibilities towards each other in public as monks of a confraternity when they meet in the street, or as the fellows who *• honourable gentleman" each other in a place where they are " all honourable men." — From the Lord Chamberlain down to the smallest equerry, we were well-padded, well-spoken, individuals; who went through the Ko-Too of courtly life with the decent gravity of office; — exhibiting the same arduous zeal about the shaping of a waistcoat or gilding of a console, as Burleigh for the signature of a treaty, or Marlborough for the opening of a campaign ; — for when the Sovereign is a man of fashion, it is manifestly the duty of his Courtiers to be fribbles. We bored ourselves however very little with London. Having scarcely a house over our royal heads in the capital, we took refuge from " vulgar Pall Mall's oratorio of hisses" and the rotten apples of Charing Cross, in the 8 CECIL. happy privacy of our royal country seat; by which judicious retirement, George IV. esta- blished himself high in the list of philosophical King's. It is clearly the duty of every enlightened monarch to concentrate and display in the highest degree, in his proper person, the na- tional characteristics of his realm. In Spain, it is the business of His most Catholic Majesty to embroider petticoats for the Virgin, like Ferdinand ; and suffer himself to be stifled by a brazier rather than violate the laws of etiquette by having it removed by hands not officially qualified for the task. In France, where " what seems its head the like- ness of a kingly crown has on," the citizen King should wear worsted epaulettes and assume the contour of a Marylebone Volunteer, good-humoured, hearty, and family-mannish, — while agitating in secret a thousand far- sighted plans, — joining in the chorus of the Marseillaise, and keeping a spiked iron-collar round the neck of his house dog. CECIL. y In Turkey, — but it is scarcely safe to talk about concentrated essence of Mussulmaun ; and without further prolixities, I hasten to conclude that, in a country where every man's house is his castle, — where exclusion and exclusiveness form the general principle, — where the public monuments are shut up, — the churches closed, — and the grand object of every landed pro- prietor is to wall out or plant out all possibility of being overlooked by the public, it is the dis- tinctive virtue of the throne to be mysteriously unapproachable. A king of England should possess the ring of Gyges ; — a queen should be the Invisible Girl. Their voices should reach the public, like faint and winged echoes ; and when laid in the tomb, it should be in the heart of some Cheopsian pyramid, where it would require the lapse of centuries to make out their remains. This would be strictly in accordance with the spirit of the national character of a me- tropolis where next door neighbours, so far b2 10 CECIL. from loving each other as themselves, put patent locks upon their street doors; and in whose suburbs every rus in urbe is mouldy with an overgrowth of sallows and poplars to secure itself from observation ; — and I maintain therefore that the dignified self-seclusion of George IV. was the first of kingly virtues in a man who writes himself upon his penny pieces " D. G. Brit. Rex." But the caprices of the English public are the most capricious in the world. When once it is pleased to get up a storm, it blows like a Typhoon from every quarter at once; — and bitter were its gusts and disgusts against its anointed sovereign. The public, and the press which is its organ, a barrel organ, wherewith it grinds reasonable people out of patience, chose to declaim against the luxurious indolence of a prince, who was nevertheless undergoing the hard labour of trying to appear young at three- score ; and though it was evidently in deference to the whims of the populace who at twenty CECIL. 13 had adored him as a beau, that forty years long he grieved himself with the vocation, they were strangely out of conceit with the firmness of his Majesty's principles. But this was no affair of mine. It was not I who fixed the Court at Windsor. I was not accountable for the good taste which caused the mountain to come to Mahomet instead of letting Mahomet toil to the mountain : and if a con- siderable waste of ministerial post horses and privy counciliatory patent axles attested that the sign manual was oftener times affixed in the county of Berks than the county of Middle- sex, so much the worse for the Cabinet, — so much the better for the Household. — Since I had ceased to be a denizen of St. James's Street, familiar to its view and disregarded as the old fashioned face of the palace clock, I had begun to think better of myself. Now and then, I glanced meteor-wise across the surface of London society ; and as the brilliancy of a shooting star attracts aftj 12 CECIL. million of times more attention than your matter of fact planet, whose phenomena are duly set down in the ephemeris, I gained much by the rapidity of my transit. When I did appear, it was to some purpose ; and I must confess that Mrs. Brettingham had been often in company with Cecil the Coxcomb without dreaming of soliciting the introduction that marked her deference towards the inscrip- tion of his name in the ennobling pages of the Red Book. So conscious was I of this, that I had half a mind to refuse. Kindness, however, is often only refined cruelty ; and I resolved to punish her by compliance. Like Tarpeia, she did not know what she had asked for, till she felt the fatal influence of the golden buckler cast at her head. I approached my victim, however, with a smiling countenance. As the claw of the cat is concealed under the softest fur, I recommend all heroes of romance intent upon lording it over CECIL. 13 ladies, to remember that Sultanas are strangled with a silken bowstring. I accosted Mrs. Bret- ting-ham as Richard the Third the Princess Anne, — all Chesterfield concentrated in my bow, — all Hybla distilling from my lips. She had taken me for a man of straw, — she found me a man of eider-down. My countenance was sunshiny as a Midsummer day, — or a Cuyp, — or a solar lamp. Sans amies, comrae l'innocence, sans ailes comme la Constance, I submitted to be tied to her side like a King Charles's spaniel to the girdle of a court beauty, or a bunch of keys to that of a parsonic housewife. The consequence was that, vain of her ascend- ancy, Mariana was thoroughly off her guard. Secure from offence, defence was superfluous. A shield was useless against " Vinnocence sans arm.es;" a cage unnecessary for " la Constance sans ailes."— There are more ways in heaven and earth of establishing an absolute monarchy 14 CECIL. than are dreamt of by any one but Cecil Danby or Louis Philippe. I should have given myself less trouble had I been quite certain of the nature and inten- tions of pretty Mrs. Brettingham. It is easy to describe a woman in an offhand way, as marked for conquest, like a tree for the axe by a white cross on the bark. But the policy of female nature envelopes itself in ever-fluc- tuating robes of gauze, which render it impos- sible to define the exact outline, or Catch 'ere she glance the Cynthia of the minute. The retrospective eye* unpuzzled by such nebulous delusions, sees accurately, and deter- mines safely whether the angel have cloven feet, or the demon silver wings. But so long as the spell be upon one, perpetual misgivings, perpetual recantation of our mistrusts, serve alternately to fan the flickering flame of in- clination. Every schoolboy, p re-admonished that the Syrens were scaly monsters with soft CECIL. 15 faces and sweet voices, is enabled to jest upon the folly of their victims. But the danger of the temptation consisted in the glassy waters, which, concealing their deformities, allowed them to be perceived only as the fairest of the fair. Sometimes when, recalling to mind hints I had heard hazarded concerning Mrs. Bretting- ham, I prepared myself to accost her with the easy superiority which a man under such cir- cumstances is sometimes ungenerous enough to assume, I used to be startled and shamed by the childlike simplicity of her countenance. To attribute guile to those clear blue eyes, to connect the idea of duplicity with those mantling blushes, seemed profanation. I felt guilty as if fighting with concealed armour or concealed weapons ; and shrunk back, as Pan may have done, when he first beheld his un- sightly features reflected in some pure and glassy stream. — At such moments, there was no sacrifice Mariana might not have demanded of me in atonement of my vile mistrust !— 16 CECIL. Still, my doubts recurred. She was young, beautiful, accomplished, sprung from a family attached to the decencies of life, — a wife, a mother, rich, healthy, happy. What could induce her to hazard the esteem of society by adventuring a decided flirtation with a man of my notorious laxity of principle ? My sagacious public, — you have guessed it! — "Caesar was ambitious." Mr. Bretting- ham was a simple gentleman with his half- dozen thousands a year,- — a position conferring all the happiness this world can compass if enjoyed with greatness, that is, contentedness of mind. But Mariana's mind was not con- tented. She was covetous of the pomps and vanities of life. She loved place and prece- dence, and could not bear to be confounded in the mob of Thompsons and Johnsons. She wanted to be specific. She knew all the dis- tinctions between the definite and indefinite article prefixed to a name. She was eager to be something — that is, to be somebody ; and CECIL. 17 since, according to the proverb, " il vaut mieux avoir affaire a Dieu qu'a ses Saints," conceived it pleasanter to be helped up the steps of the Temple of Fashion by the King, than by those jealous priestesses, the Exclusives, who, how- ever indulgent now, were then as exacting concerning the sixteen quarterings of an aspi- rant, as a Herald of the Empire examining the claims of a pretendant to some German Chap- ter or the Golden Fleece. To reach those recondite shades of Windsor was, however, a difficult matter. I was con- sidered a favourite, — nay, I was a favourite ; and Mariana rightly conjectured that the Mrs. Brettingham smiled upon by Cecil Danby had only to engage a house on the Steyne the following winter, to be invited to the Pavilion. So paltry are the objects of coterie ambition ! — Alas ! the typical apple of the Judaical Para- dise was no unseemly emblem of all subse- quent motives of female temptation !— CHAPTER II. Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays, Those painted clouds that beautify our days j Each want of happiness by Hope supplied, And each vacuity of sense, by Pride ; Then build as fast as knowledge can destroy ; In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble, Joy. Pope. Nugis addere pondus. — Hor. Ep. 19. I have perhaps observed before (but truisms cannot be too often repeated, or what would become of parliamentary eloquence ?) — that we prize the objects of our affections rather accord- ing to the value set upon them by others, than according to our own. In love, as in all else, we must spell by the book ; and our passions, like our milestones, are measured from the standard on Cornhill. Mrs. Brettingham was considered just then, CECIL. 19 the prettiest woman about town. When her carriage glanced through the park, people stood still to gaze. Her face was limned by Law- rence, and stared at in the Exhibition ; and I appeal to Boyle Farm, whether it had any thing half so pretty at its breakfast ? — It was perhaps because conscious the metal was sterling, that she was so eager to have it stamped with the King's countenance. That she was desirous of royal notice, I knew : for by attaining it, she was secure of double the portion of my society. Such at least was the light in which she represented the matter to me, or in which I represented it to myself, — and for my own share, felt of course that it would be far from unsatisfactory to have my brilliancy thrown out into relief, in those Pavilion soirees, by such a shadow as the beautiful Mrs. Bret- tingham constantly attached to my precious person. But it is no such easy matter to effect inno- vations in a royal circle. A new star among 20 CECIL. the Pleiades, or a new fleuron in the crown* were less difficult to account for, than a new face ; nor are the beefeaters keeping guard over the crown jewels more vigilant than the doorkeepers of royal favour ! — Still, I determined to do my best, in hopes of Mariana's worst ; and flattering her vanity and my own, went on accepting Brettingham's invitations to dinner and his wife's smiles, whenever I derogated by a sojourn in town. Those were mighty pleasant days ! — as one usually says of days that are certain never to recur. Throughout Europe, it was holiday time for people intent upon promoting the greatest happiness of the smallest number. While the fashionable world of London, un- checked by the influence of a female court, did as it listed, in Paris, the person of the new King, Charles X., was so surrounded by Jesuits, both in and out of the Order, that he was unable to perceive what was going on at Court ; and the Pavilion de Marsan, secure from his paternal CECIL. 21 surveillance, was playing its fantastic tricks be- fore high Heaven in a style which if it made the angels weep, made mortals smile. Nothing could exceed the brilliancy of the fetes offered to the young Duchessede Berri, — that is, not to the young Duchesse de Berri, but to the mother of the heir presumptive of the throne of France. Like the sunshine glaring on the beautiful vineyards of Portici, where the blue sky smiles above and the purple sea gleams beyond, while volcanic fires glow and redden in unsuspected fury below, — all was fair at the Tuileries, — all fair at the Palais Royal. In England, a standing army — in France, a brigade of priests, — the rouge et noir janissaries of modern despots, — enabled that venerable dowager Toryism to smooth the locks and pamper the pride of her spoiled child, Con- servatism ; — and Intolerance to adapt the keys of St. Peter to the locks of a new Bastille. Nevertheless, Vesuvius was preparing for 22 CECIL. an outburst. I know very little about the cote droit or the cote gauche of Paris politics ; inas- much as it occurs to the place-mongers to an- nounce every now and then, as the Medecin Malgre lui did of the human organization, that they have change tout cela. But this I remem- ber, that Villele was the most unpopular mi- nister against whom the cry of impeachment had been raised since the Restoration. As to English politics, they were pretty much in the state of vicissitude that the human viscera may have been, when changing sides at the in- stigation of the said Medecin. Canning was recently deceased ;— a great man who accom- plished little, — a Damascus blade that came to hand when a tomahawk was wanted, — a temple of polished marble, when the wants of the times demanded a structure of unhewn granite. But now that he was gone, neither granite nor marble remained. Then came a coalition mi- nistry, — the wretchedest thing in nature ; like a spliced mast, sure to give way in a storm. Each CECIL. 23 moiety of the party was waiting for a favourable opportunity to throw over the others; — and Hus- kisson, the Ministre malgrt lui } was the victim. In Ireland? too, I must admit that the sun- shine was overclouded. St. Patrick seemed no longer satisfied to lie still on his gridiron, like the blessed martyr, St. Lawrence ; and was be- ginning to make an outcry. But after all, the outcries of Ireland have never availed her more than the sputtering of an apple while being roasted ! — Some there were who saw clearly that though no ostensible change had been accomplished, the first stone of a temple of Liberalism had been laid by Canning, which must eventually find a superstructure. Whenever I was able to escape from the golden fetters of my royal servitude, or the silken meshes of my piu dolce servitu, so as to snatch a dinner with my brother in Connaught Place, I clearly discerned, though more from his silence than his words, that Danby contem- 24 CECIL. plated the growing irritability of Europe as that of a long overgorged boa constrictor, be- ginning to rouse itself for action ; and that the long calm we had enjoyed was only the deadly stillness preceding a storm. The sobriety of mind with which my brother refrained from taking any part in an adminis- tration, whose measures, feeble as they were, he had not sufficient ascendancy to fortify, was characteristic of his usual forecast. Again and again, did he refuse high office; for it was useless to lend the influence of his name, where the influence of his mind was ineffectual. Herries was sometimes of our party : confi- dent and jactant with all the official self-suffi- ciency that seems to await, like a wedding garment, the privileged banqueters upon Down- ing: Street loaves and fishes. His reserve of former days was giving way under the influence of a long* series of ministerial turtle and Veni- ce son; and the marrow and fatness of prosperity had opened the heart of the shy man, and the CECIL. 25 lips of the dumb. He was now a great speaker in the House, and a great talker out of it : but? alas ! he would persist in speechifying where he was only wanted to talk ! I know not what he did when wanted to speak, except draw down the cheers of the ministerial benches, as the newspapers daily reported ; — but in company he was a bore. Having once assumed the ministerial plural, he talked Gargantuaciously, like a man talking for his party. "We think," — "we intend" — " our policy in the East''—" our South Ame- rican negociations"— sounded in the mouth of Herries as multi vocal as the " Marchons — Combattons V of the chorus at the French opera, or the " Qual orror !" of Otello. I never liked him when he was singular, — I hated him in the plural; and had hardly pa- tience to hear him dogmatizing at my brothers table, — giving out his platitudes as if decisive as Papal Bulls, because the " we" by which they were fulminated had the authority of the vol. i. c 26 CECIL. Gazette ; while Danby sat by, a patient auditor, with those wise meanings reflected in his quiet eye, which his dictatorial brother-in-law allowed no opportunity to issue from his lips. For Danby was one, in all the events of life, too wise to contend against the force of circum- stances. The secret of true greatness consists in the power of so calculating the concomitants of our position, as to attempt nothing where defeat is probable. — Where is the use of arguing against a man who silences your logic with the thunders of Government authority ? — as well attempt to answer the fire of a battery of four and twenty pounders, with a discharge of Ori- ental pearls ! My brother seldom rose now in Parliament ; and the Tory party regarded him as, if not a traitor, an unavailable adherent. On all major points, he voted with the party ; and now and then, on the agitation of a question regarding the maintenance of the constitution, upheld the venerable banner with all the vigour of his CECIL. 27 powerful arm, by one of those mild and expos- tulate speeches which are the eloquence of the wise. — It was "la raison avec son filet de voix'' — but the golden thread is of firmer tex- ture than the hempen cable. Notwithstanding my esteem for Danby, how- ever, there was so little in common between us, that I resorted to his society almost as rarely as to the dreary old house in Hanover Square. He was what is called "lost to the world," that is, too much absorbed by the world to come. His daughter was growing up. Jane had now attained the age when the dawn of human character casts its golden light before ; and Danby saw, or fancied he saw, in the soil turned up by the plough and harrow of the governess, a field worthy of higher cultivation. Such was thenceforward the object of his life. I often noticed to him that Jane was strikingly pretty : but if her father saw in her the making of an angel, it was not an angel of the species which St. James's Street calls angelic. 28 CECIL. All philosophers, they say, have an Utopia, in which they invest the romance (which they call wisdom) of their minds. Danby's Utopia was concentrated in the nature of his child. In her, he hoped to exemplify his idea of ex- cellence and good government ; and of a surety, the feminine virtues of her mother, the manly sense of her father, if combined in due proportions, were likely to produce a woman such as these our times have rarely worshipped. My angels, meanwhile, were of a very diffe- rent calibre ; and it was like emerging out of the solemn aisles of Westminster Abbey on a sunshiny afternoon into the stir and bustle of Palace Yard, whenever I quitted the argu- mentative dinner table in Connauiovric evi — All this was a sad bore — but I bore it as heroically as she inflicted it heroinically. — She next carried me off into a corner, as a kitten is carried off in the mouth of an old cat ; and began congratulating me upon my success in public life, as gravely as if I had been achieving European renown, or civilizing wigwams on the Gambia. It was in vain I assured her that my functions were limited to shining forth on galas and levee days — that I was a mere piece of state furniture, without political influence. She chose to know better, — she chose to see in me that object of odium to the multitude and adoration to the select few, — a favourite ; 134 CECIL. — and forthwith set about proposing to me an interchange of national archives, state papers, duplicates of the royal libraries, and the arts and sciences know what beside. I had no words to answer her. — I knew not what the deuce she was talking about ; and took refuge in the manoeuvre I have usually seen Frenchmen adopt towards women who talk about the deuce knows what,— by exe- cuting a series of profound bows of acquiescence. Positively, these Frenchwomen are wonder- ful creatures !— There are plenty of clever Englishwomen, — but they are to the manner born. The discreet damsels who write about Political Economy have been swaddled in foolscap and dieted from their youth upwards on printer's ink ; while the astronomeress of forty was made to play with baby-house orre- ries at four years old. Miss Burney and Miss Edgeworth were the wise daughters of learned fathers ; and the charming Mrs. Norton is the daughter, and grand-daughter, and sister of wits. CECIL. 135 But snatch a Frenchwoman from whatever station of life you think proper, — take aravau- deuse from her joint stool or a Duchess from her tabouret, and such is their instinctive tact for les convenances, that each will assume the tone and bearing becoming her new station. — What sovereign born, ever queened it better than Josephine ? — What pedant born, ever prosed it better than my Therese of the boudoir, — my aerial love, — once mystical as a melody of Schubert and vapourish as an Ossianism of Scheffer, — but now, as matter of fact as a problem of Euclid. I own I trembled as I listened. Had Madame Necker risen from the grave with one of her rectangular dissertations a la Pere Nicole in her stony mouth, 1 could not have felt more paralyzed. Fortunately, the ko-too of life is easier to assume than its softer emotions. Respectful as if in presence of the Schah of Persia, I promised myself "the honour of taking the . earliest opportunity to offer my most humble homage 136 CECIL. to Madame la Comtesse de St. Gratien :" — then, with a bow worthy of a grand Chambellan, glided through an open door into the adjoining gallery, where the ladies of Madame were waiting the issue of a colloquy between their royal mistress and the King. ■ * Degelez moi, par pitie !" — whispered I, to a charming woman, to whom 1 had been that morning presented by the Duchesse de Raguse. And I forthwith proceeded to do into French for her William Spenser's graceful poem of " Love and Reason ;" describing myself as little Love, (a charming little love of six and thirty!) — shivering under the shadow of the marble figure of la Raison severe, as exempli- fied in the lady of Monsieur le Ministre de l'instruction publique. " Ah! cette femme /" — was all I could elicit in reply, from the pretty fluttering creature, who would not trouble herself to bestow more than a shrug of the shoulders and an inter- jection upon a being so antithetical to her- CECIL. 137 self, that she seemed afraid of disorganizing her mind by allowing it to dwell on such an object. Nevertheless, I observed that Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse de St. Gratien, occupied a highly honourable position in those formal salons, — the temperature of which was considerably refrigerated since my last visit. The official couple possessed in a supreme de- gree the decent gravity of office. Their bow and curtsey, — their exits and entrances, — were per- fect as if studied under Baptiste and M elle Mars. If they had been carved in wood to order, to fill for the satisfaction of the public eye the administration of public instruction, they could not have looked more soberly wise, more severely rational. — What a well assorted couple, — que de dignitt — que de raison! — Voild en effet, des gens de Men ! — One was tempted to exclaim when one saw them engaged in sober palaver with Charles X., "qui, ut rationem nullam afferrent, ipsa auctoritate me frange- 138 CECIL. rent!" Yet this was once the bon vivant Prefet of the empire ; — and that, the languid, fantas- tical femme incomprlse ! — Madame de la Belinaye, the graceful woman to whom I had applied for release from my night- mare, was one of those charming creatures one seldom meets out of Paris, content to shine as an exquisite component segment of a circle, without ever seeking to detach herself from the canvas as a prominent feature. — The ambi- tion of a French beauty is to be " belle parmi les belles' — of an English beauty, to make other women look ugly. — An English beauty likes to eclipse, and longs to astonish. — Madame de la Belinaye and others of her kind, would have been shocked at the idea of astonishing. A woman parfaitement comme ilfaut, should never appear where she is not too well assorted with the time and place, the season and the scene, to produce or wish to produce so vulgar a sensation. On makingher acquaintance, it never occurred CECIL. 1 39 to me to ask myself what might be her age, — what her position in the world. She was so admirably dressed, her gauze turban so light, so fresh, si Men pose, — and the ringlets accom- panying it were so silken, — her form was so exquisitely moulded, her hand so slender and so well-gloved, that I was too enchanted with her tournure as a whole, to analyze its parts. — She was thoroughly " charmante !" After all, why should not dress have its charm as well as any other acomplishment? People fall in love with a woman's singing or drawing ; — purely artificial acquirements, — addressing themselves to the eye or ear, and not a whit more indicative of refinement of taste than the fastidiousness which produces a chef d'ceuvre of Vart de la toilette ! It is absurd to underrate an instinct so essen- tial to the garnish of society. Look at the result of such contempt, in those figures of fun which disgrace the public places of England ; — consolidated rainbows, — moving flower gar- 140 CECIL. dens, — masses of flowers and feathers, heavy trinkets and dirty finery, — who expend fortunes in haberdashers' shops for the express purpose of making themselves ridiculous. Madame de la Belinaye, 1 am convinced, had never been in a haberdasher's shop in her life ! — The few ornaments of her dress were so simple, so subdued, and owed their merit so entirely to their appropriateness to her compact figure and well-turned head, that one could not fancy her otherwise than one saw her at the moment. — Her dress appeared intrinsically a portion of herself.— It was im- possible to say, as one often does of English women, " how much better she would have been with,— or without, — so and so !" — It was the same with her conversation. No wonder the fable of the little Princess who dropped pearls and diamonds from her lips, had its origin in France ! — Every thing that fell from her lips was either sparkling with liveliness, or Men arrondi,—bien perle, — by its CECIL. 141 polite and gracious form. — After talking with her a whole evening, it would have been diffi- cult to recall a single sentence she had uttered. Yet at the time, every phrase seemed so dis- tinct, every sentiment so graceful, that one fancied one must remember them for ever. — She was, in short, a creation of four centuries of civilization ; — one of those fleet, sleek, slender products of the racing stud of refinement, — the Newmarket founded by Francis I., with a king's plate for elegance of costume, manners, and conversation ! — I am almost afraid that the night of my presentation to Madame de la Belinaye, the face which haunted my sleepless pillow was adorned by an aerial turban, and looked at me through two hazel eyes rather than through the grey orbs of my Sophronia. — But it could not be helped ! — My attention, however, was not wholly ab- sorbed by this attractive woman. — There was a great deal to interest one at the Tuileries. — 142 CECIL. The game of courtiership is always more ex- citing when there are combinations to be made; and the rival camps of the two daughters-in- law of the King, — the childless Dauphine and the young mother of the heir presumptive, was highly diverting. — The severe prudery of the former, the thoughtless Italian gaiety of the latter, produced incessant disgusts, and endless jealousies ; not the less irritating for the harness of family affection by which they were yoked together. — I sometimes fancied I could discover in the two royal sisters-in-law, the Elizabeth and Mary of other times. But Madame was wanting in the beauty, and the Dauphiness in the en- lightenment, forming the best characteristics of the two queens ; though I believe the same motive lay at the bottom of their antipathy : — i. e. that the son of the one was to inherit the dominions of the other. I cannot say that, either as Madame d'An- goul^me or Dauphiness, I ever fancied the lady CECIL. 143 whom Louis XVIII. used to call on state occa- sions his Antigone. — She appeared to me a hard disagreeable woman ; and though willing, in compliance with the exhortations of the Faubourg St. Germain, to " respecter ses mal- heurs," I never could help feeling that to be so remarkably ugly was the greatest malheur of them all. — It is as unpardonable a fault in a woman to be unsightly, as in a queen to have given no heirs to the throne. — That I should espouse the cause of the Princess who had the advantage of numbering Madame de la Belinaye in her household, was inevitable ; — a partizanship soon discovered, — for under such circumstances, the different members of the royal circle were as definitely ranged to a discerning eye, as the different pieces on a chess board : — the two colours, — the two parties, — being utterly distinct, though inextricably mingled together by the chances of the game. Madame la Comtesse de St. Gratien was of 144 CECIL. course a rigid Delphinian. — Stiff in the farthingale of prudery as whalebone could make her, Therese had no longer a monitor in her heart to bespeak indulgence for the frailties of her sex. — I swear I believe that women, like official men, have the faculty of dismissing every thing from their minds which they do not wish to remember; and that she had really forgotten there was ever a moment when she had fancied the bulbous Prefet a monster and Cecil Danby her better half. And yet, there is no saying ! — It was perhaps because conscious of a vulnerable heel that she had invested her- self in such a tremendous pair of jackboots ! — Of all those who bristled up against the pleasures of the little coterie of Madame, she was the fiercest. — Too loyal to conceive a fault in any royally descended personage, Madame de St. Gratien took refuge in pitying the Princess whom she could not presume to blame. — She pitied her for having such bad advisers, — for being surrounded with men without heads CECIL. 145 and women without hearts ; she pitied her for not being amenable to the prayers of the con- gregation or the good example of her illustrious sister-in-law ; — and above all, she pitied her for having such a frivolous woman in her con- fidence as that Madame de la Belinaye. And the way in which Therese uttered the words *' frivolous " and "that Madame de la Beli- naye," — would have been a study for any actress intent upon distinguishing herself in the part of Lady Sneerwell. One favourite gesture of Therese indeed, still lingered with Madame la Comtesse de St. Gratien ; — she had possessed a wonderful knack of raising her eyes to heaven, in the paroxysms of morbid sensibility of the femme incomprise ; and a very slight variation of expression enabled her to turn this to account in the paroxysms of prudery becoming the lady of V Instruction pub - lique. — It was wonderful how piously she up- lifted her eyes, every time she mentioned the name of that Madame de la Belinaye. VOL. I. h 146 CECIL. One is obliged to sit patient under the weight of many a powerful exhibition of human hypo- crisy. But to me, one of the vilest crocodile's eggs which the corruptions of society have hatched into existence, is the plausibility with which the unconvicted Magdalens of the world shake their heads and point their fingers at those who, " for example sake," they consider ought to be invested in sackcloth and ashes, or exhibited in a white sheet! — More than once, have I been almost moved to an outburst of bitter irony, by the severe morality poured forth upon me by such women as Madame la Comtesse de St. Gratien. — " If it be any object to you to stand well at the Tuileries," whispered Madame de la Beli- naye — on the other hand, — at a charming soiree the following night at Madame de Rim- bault's, reviving all I had fancied of the brighter days of Parisian gaiety and grace, — " do not forget your promise of offering your respects to Madame de St. Gratien. — She is a person whom it is not safe to offend." — CECIL. 147 " I have no ambition here which she is likely to forward," replied I, gazing upon my fair ad- monitress with an expression of countenance intending to be as eloquent as Mirabeau. — " If you have any friends then, whom you do not wish to expose to her virulence of tongue," resumed Madame de la Belinaye, " for their sake, be not wanting in the common ceremonies of politeness." " I will call upon her to-morrow morning," cried I, eagerly accepting what I trusted was a personal allusion. " Call upon her to-morrow morning V — eja- culated Madame de la Belinaye, — with one of those expressive gestures by which French- women concentrate volumes into an elevation of the eyebrow or movement of the hand. — " Si- donie, ma belle /" — said she, turning towards a pretty Russian who sat beside her — " Mon- sieur Danby est il impayable I — He talks of paying a morning visit to Madame de St. Gratien I" — J 48 CECIL. " If she could only hear that any living man contemplated so terrible a breach of decorum !" cried her friend. "But Monsieur Danby is excusable. He is a foreigner. Every thing is permitted to foreigners. He cannot be expected to be aware of the strictness of etiquette that prevails in the Hotel of the Ministre de V In- struction Publique." " You are to know," resumed Madame de la Belinaye, " that Madame de St. Gratien, who is honoured with the friendship and esteem of the Dauphiness, is one of the most exemplary women of the day. — She goes to confession every third day ; and would not touch the claw of a shrimp on Fridays. — Nothing is too rigid for her. — Her life is a series of macerations.- — I know not whether it be by way of penance, but she would not receive a morning visit from one of your abandoned sex, to conquer an Em- pire. — If you wish to pay your respects, it must be at her official soiree. Monday nights are appointed for the receptions of Monsieur le CECIL. 149 Ministre de V Instruction Pnblique ; and you cannot do better than go and kiss the footstool of the throne of our Aspasia." " I cannot do better than obey any com- mands with which you are pleased to honour me," said I. And I could all the better endure the pros- pect of this solemn visitation? because I was engaged to a ball on the following Monday at the Austrian Embassy, which would take the taste of the bitter pill out of my mouth. — I detest all parties where men predominate. — Shrubberies are invariably the better for the introduction of a few roses and lilies amid their solemn verdure ; and the better qualities of manly nature are not called into play, when there are no petticoats in the case. It was from a little family party at the Duchesse de Dijon's, the mother of Madame de la Belinaye, a circle exhibiting all the agremens derivable from a group of lovely women, beheld in the easy negligence of 150 CECIL. domestic life, that I proceeded to the awful Hotel of the Ministre de V Instruction Publique, in whose court-yard a variety of official equi- pages were drawn up ; while, outside the porte cochere, waited a long string of citadines and cabriolets, which I conjectured to belong to the Savans, forming the pit and gallery of the auditory. Two huissiers de service wearing silver chains over their customary suits of solemn black, ushered me through two chambers exceedingly hot and stuffy, crowded with the worst looking and worst smelling men with whom it was ever my fortune to be in company in Paris ; — the ex- hibition of oddly shaped heads, and still more oddly made wigs, being worthy of a perukial museum. I conclude I had never before beheld developed any really intellectual phrenological bumps ! — These men, who were hooked together in groups of two or more, by process of button- holding and for the process of prosification, CECIL. 151 made a line respectfully for the grooms of the chambers and contemptuously for me ; for I give my readers to conceive what must have been the effect produced by an essenced beau of the court of George IV. with shapely waist, curled whiskers, and all Delcroix distilling from his cambric, amid those greasy rogues, — artists, men of letters, men of syllables, — academicians, members of the Institute, and all the dirty-doggerv of literature. Every body knows the retort of the Duke of Richelieu toRestautthegrammarian, when they met at the French Academy. " Moi, je suis ici pour ma grammaire^ said the learned man. u Et moi, pour mon grandplre" — replied the wit. Biot, the first man I met at the Ministire de l' Instruction publique, was there for the longi- tude, — I, clearly, as a latitudinarian. — But Magis magnos clericos non sunt majjis magnos sapientes, or, as the bitter Regnier writes Les plus grands clercs ne sont pas les plus fins ! 152 CECIL. I would not have recommended any body to talk about latitudinarians to the woman who rose to perform her three official curtseys to my three bows of ceremony, as I was ushered to the foot of her arm-chair ! — She had a little moyen age fan of peacock's feathers in her hand, which formed a truly appropriate adornment ; for never did I see a woman so conceitedly self-absorbed. Severe as a statue of Nemesis, I had done injustice to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, by instituting a parallel between them. Queen Bess in her ruff and far- thingale was light and easy by comparison ; and Madame la Comtesse de St. Gratien, doing the honours of her Ministere to half a dozen women who looked as if dug out of the Escurial, and two hundred men who might have been de-mummified out of the Pyramids, assumed a rigidity of form and feature, re- minding one far more of the print of Bloody Mary in the school editions of Hume's History of England. CECIL, 153 How naturally one begins to talk of editions in such company! — I began to beat my brains for something square and solid enough to utter, in the audible tone wherewith I found it was now necessary to accost the stately Minerva to whom I had so often whispered trifles light as air; but whose present device was Singula quseque locum teneant sortita decenter. Before I had time, however, to rake up in my memory some of the musty truisms of old Votefilch, (for I was afraid to have recourse to the casket of jewels I had pilfered from Danby, — as thieves after prigging a pocket-book at- tempt to pass the five pound flimsies rather than the hundred pound notes,) the new Queen of Sheba fastened upon me with her project for an investigation of the archives contained in the White Tower of London ; among which, she protested, were certain State Papers of the first race, carried off from Vincennes during the Regency of the Duke of Bedford. — h2 154 CECIL. I hardly knew, (Eton and Oxford forgive me!) that there had been a Duke of Bedford antecedent to him who invented long-tailed sheep and short-horned cattle, or something of that description, whose bronze effigy affords roosting place to the sparrows somewhere about: the North- West passage of Bloomsbury. I was scarcely aware of any other Regency than that of Carlton House; — or that Vin- cennes had existed prior to the time when it was rendered the Golgotha of the Duke d'Enghien, clearly by the hand of Providence, for every single human being concerned in the execution has made it distinctly apparent, per memoirs or protestation, that he had nothing to do with the matter. However, I recalled to mind as well as I could, for imitation, the sapient countenances of the owls exhibited at Arundel Castle ; — screwed up my mouth, and listened, — which I take to be one of the most admirable exercises of wit, of which the human or owlish understanding is susceptible. CECIL. 155 For twenty minutes, did Madame la Com- tesse de St. Gratien hold forth on matters connected with English history, which I am certain she had been cramming from Lingard ever since our encounter at the chateau ; and for twenty minutes, did T continue to bow affirmatively or shake my head mistrustfully, with an air capable ; — poor Therese little sus- pecting that she was never more thoroughly a femme incomprise than at that moment ! The men of Gotham surrounding us, were in ecstasies, 6< Quelle femme! — -que de prof ondeur ! — que d'erudition!" resounded on all sides; while the half dozen terrible women, wives of candidates for place or riband-hunting men of letters, uttered suppressed groans of admira- tion. — Here and there, an Abbe, — a race resuscitated with the Bourbons, — looked ear- nestly among the jostling crowd of old women in broadcloth surrounding the Minister, to- wards the formal circle of old women in brocade surrounding his lady, fancying per- 156 CECIL. haps that of two doses they might be the less bitter to swallow; but so great was the privi- lege of approaching the Madame Necker of the day, — the Queen of the Classicists, — the peda- gogue in official petticoats, — that not a soul or body of them presumed to infringe on the magic circle of ^Instruction Publique: — risum teneatis ! — CHAPTER VII. Une femme qui ne vent s'apercevoir de rien, s'est aper9u de tout : il faut terriblement se tenir sur ses gardes avec elle. Brucker. Liberius si Dixere quid, si forte jocosius, hoc mini juris Cum venia dubis. — Hon. Sat. 4. Absence is said to extinguish slight predi- lections and stimulate great passions, as the wind which fans a fire, puts out a candle. — I do not recommend people who wish to main- tain the brightness of their affections untar- nished, whether little loves or great ones, to expose themselves to the temptations of Paris. It is true I made a compromise with my conscience, by treating my sojourn in the gay city as a species of carnival, preparatory to the sacred solemnities of Lent ; and as I was fully 158 CECIL. determined to offer my hand and heart to Miss Vavasour immediately on my return, resolved to hold a sort of wake over the interment of my bachelorhood. To avoid contaminating the pure and bright affection of my soul by admixture with the follies of the hour, I ac- cordingly sealed it up in a packet, and laid it on the shelf, till wanted. — And after all, plau- sibility apart, is not this the logic of the infi- delities of most absent lovers and husbands'? The season of the year, — for it was all the world's carnival as well as mine, — was highly propitious to the brief madness of any wise man intent upon playing the fool. Folly is epidemic at Paris during the epoch of bals masques. — The mousse of Champagne and the effervescence of the human spirit, are perpetually on the froth ; — and mitres and bonnets de magis- tral, — nay, even kingly crowns, are laid aside in favour of the cap and bells. French people appear to hold their passions in command, by the turning of a peg, like the Tatar horse CECIL. 159 of the fairy tale — which one moment dashed through the air at the rate of a thousand fur- longs an hour, and the next, stood motionless as the Caucasus ; — for the cap and bells once laid aside, the bonnet de magistrat is resumed without any sensible diminution of wisdom or authority. — It is not so with the English. — An Englishman who knows he has been making an ass of himself, is so uncommonly ashamed of his long ears, that he thinks it necessary to herd with asses for the remainder of his days. — He does not understand the privilege of desipere in loco ; — and though ready enough to drink, cannot acquire the art of getting sober, — by far the greater feat of the two. My Public will infer, 1 fear, from my in- creasing prosiness, that the Minister e de V In- struction Publique was doing its worst upon me. Yet I flung off the leaden chain and resumed my garland of flowers as speedily as possible : for not a moment was to be lost amid the thick-coming fetes of that joyous season. 160 CECIL. Ever since Helena's time, I had given up London ball-rooms. — Unless on some very especial temptation, I could perceive no ad- vantage in being crushed, as in a drum of Smyrna figs, for the sake of looking at crowds of Misses as monotonous as flocks of sheep, yet inwardly ravening wolves as regarded their projects upon the lives and liberties of mankind. But the ball-rooms of Paris, — the ball- rooms of the present day, — parlez moi de cat — Instead of the monotony of those moutonnieres creatures (as La Fontaine calls them,) the variety of a case of colibris, at the Jardin du Roi ! — Every countenance bright with intel- ligence ; — every face indicating by the bloom of its roses and lilies que Vamour, — printemps de Fame, — avait passe par la ! — a purpose in every existence, — a specific attachment, — preventing those pouts and frowns, those peevishnesses and sullennesses, arising from the contentions of London young ladies, all resolved to draw CECIL. 161 the great prize, — to marry the Marquis, or flirt with the Cecil Danby of the day. The doors of such a temple revolve on golden hinges to the invisible breathing of flutes! — No cross chaperons, — no Saracenic papas, ready to hurl defiance at the mustachios of the killing captain ; — no grumbling, — no sympathy with horses waiting at the door! — The only object of the women is to please ; the only object of the men to show them they are successful. I trust Madame de la Belinaye had wit enough to perceive that she was perfectly suc- cessful in fascinating the man so long success- ful in fascinating others; for I must plead guilty to inability to lay aside my John Bullism sufficiently to become quite a lady's lap-dog on such occasions. Par trente-six printemps sur ma tete amasses Mes modestes appas n'etaient point effaces : and I still chose to poser en vainqueur. 162 CECIL. I had been too badly brought up, in the factitious atmosphere of London clubs, to un- derstand that there are more agreeable modes of enslaving a woman than by trying to prove you are her master. — It was not easy to emerge at once from the fastidiousness, finery, and impertinence, all but brutal, of a thorough-going London man ; who thinks that a kick inflicted by the toe of a highly-varnished Hoby, amounts almost to a caress. — I adventured, in short, the little gusts of caprice with which I had amused myself by blowing hot and cold upon Mrs. Brettingham ; — satisfied that my genuine ad- miration of the charming Clementine must penetrate through the varnish of my mask. I was not sufficiently versed in the artifi- cialities of Parisian nature, to understand how my conduct affected her. — I have since disco- vered that it was not partiality for the offender, as I then imagined which induced her to over- look the offence. — But the novelty of the thing was voted highly amusing in her coterie. — CECIL. 163 They looked upon my strange style of making the agreeable as characteristic, national, and grotesque. The French are worshippers of novelty. — They adore the Giraffe or Chimpanzee, so long as it is neat as imported. — They fell in love with the Cossacks who invaded them, and the Be- douins whom they invaded ; and were now charmed with the originality of the man so curled, perfumed, so admirably got up, who affected the sauvageries of a New Zealander. — I permitted myself to be jealous. — I chose to give the law where the law was usually taken. — How charming, — how refreshing! — I was worth my weight in gold, or vinaigre des quatre voleurs ! — "Ah! fa ma chere, quas tu fais de ton brutal?" was sometimes whispered into the ear of my charming friend, by lips which accosted me only with gracious words, and which I fan- cied moulded to permanent laudation ! — Igno- rance is bliss ! — I was quite satisfied that I was ] 64 CECIL. the hero of the Carnival. And so I was. — Every puppy has its day. — The loathsome ugli- ness of Mirabeau, the bearishness of Jean Jacques, were furiously the fashion long before the pretentious impertinence of Cecil Danby. — The favour of the Tuileries, too, counted for something among my merits. — Is it because crowned heads are peculiarly aware of the potency of royal favouritism, that they receive with such marked distinctions the royal pet of a brother sovereign ? — I have often noticed that the claims of even an Ambassador Extraordinary, are waived in honour of the man, however ignoble, on whom his brother King's countenance is for the moment supposed to shine, — apothecary or corncutter, — Farinelli or ; a misplaced calculation, for if really a favourite, he is pretty sure to be kept at home. — I was amazingly noticed by Charles X. — His Majesty even took me pheasant shooting in the woods of St. Cloud, — a diversion, com- pared with which attacking the barnyard at CECIL. 165 Ormington Hall would have been lively sport ; — and handed me his own gun to shoot at a chevreuil in a Fontainebleau battue. I would not have taken twenty such for my own Man- ton ; — but the honour availed me the worth of as many Mantons as would fill the small armoury of the Tower. — But alas ! for my patience, — the more I was honoured by the King, the more I was noticed by the wife of the King's minister ; and that horrible partie de chasse brought upon my shoulders cwt. upon cwt. of civilities from the ponderous couple of the Rue de Grenelle ! — Therese chose to see and surmise nothing of my more agreeable engagements. — She would not conceive it possible that I could be enlisted in the enemy's camp. — A man who had seen the light in the Chateau de Boulainvilliers, could not be otherwise than the faithful humble servant of the daughter of Marie Antoinette, and of her faithful humble servants.— - I have abstained from all mention of Mon- 166 CECIL. sieur de la Belinaye, because he was one of those of whom, by tacit consent of society, it was the custom to make no mention ; — an inof- fensive little man, who had been married to his first cousin by his papa and mamma, his uncle and aunt; — and because from infancy accustomed to treat his cousin as his wife, he now treated his wife as his cousin. — All the time he could abstract from his duties as a royal aide de camp, the little Count devoted to the Societe pour encourager V amelioration de la race des animaux domestiques ; without surmising that its benefits might be extended to himself, as well as to the flocks and herds of his Berri estates. — But there really was very little occa- sion for him to trouble himself with the care of his wife. — Madame la Duchesse de Dijon, her mother, was always at hand to keep her in charge, — frequenting the same society, and cul- tivating the same pleasures ; — and Madame de la Belinaye, in consequence perhaps of this perpetual maternal surveillance, enjoyed a re- CECIL. 167 putation of irreproachability worthy of the days when "lareine Berthefilait" — I was a great favourite with the Duchess, — formerly an intimate friend of Lady Ormington at the Chateau de Boulainvilliers, and, in her emigration days, a frequent guest at Ormington Hall.— I was always vastly amused, by the way, to hear the emigrants de haute volee perjuring their precious souls by attestations of their love and gratitude towards England ; when, in fact, not one of them but feels entitled to expurgatorial droits of Paradise, from the martyrdom endured among us. Many, who from sheer starvation ate of our venison and drank of our port wine, protest that their constitutions were ruined for life by such coarse diet ; — and those who made themselves most familiar with the bank notes of John Bull, despised him as a close-fisted fel- low, for not pouring the contents of his purse into their lap in the form of louis d'ors. — Among themselves, they make no secret of 168 CECIL. these things ; and it was diverting enough to see such people as Madame de Dijon recant and screw up their mouths, for a little civility to a man so smiled upon as myself by royal- ties, on either side the Channel. — u Et ce cher Prince, how does he wear ?" — she used to enquire of me, alluding to the King. " How good he was to us! — Shall T ever forget his enticing us down to that terrible fishing- village, which he has since coaxed into a great town; — but of which it may fairly be said, as of Louis XIV. and Versailles, quil rten ferait jamais qu un favori sans merite. — Your darling Lady Clermont told him I said so: — hut, her French had luckily the merit of being incom- prehensible. Did you ever hear the story of her begging Madame Victoire to notice l'Abb6 de Westminster during her visit to London, and Her Royal Highness desiring in consequence that, at whatever hour of the day or night Lady Clermont's favourite Abbe pre- sented himself, he might be shown up ? — little CECIL. 169 did she suspect poor soul that our dear Vi- corntesse alluded to an Abbaye some hundred feet long with towers like les tours de Notre Dame, instead of a petit collet. 1 ' " A tour deforce, certainly !" said I, laughing. " He was always charming, your dear King !" resumed the Duchess. " I recollect his calling Otto, the Ambassador of Bwonaparte" (accenting the Italian u in the name of the Emperor) " a vulgar fellow, for having blunder- ingly addressed him as i mon Prince.'' — He had such a delicate sense of les convenances ! — By the way, is it true that, some years ago, when playing the part of a somewhat superannuated Orosmane to an equally superannuated Zaire, each of them used to devote five hours a day to getting up a toilette for a visit of twenty minutes, in which both were satisfied that instead of threescore, they appeared only five and twenty? — II faudroit etre nee Anglaise pour s' engager en pareille corvee !" — [ ventured to assure her that there was no VOL. I. I 170 CECIL. such thing in England as a woman of three- score. — "True — 1 had forgotten that they all die of the spleen before they attain half that age !" — cried she, humouring my extravagance. ^ — "And who can wonder ! — Oh ! their vie de chateau ! their what they call ' sociability ! ' — I lost two little griffons, in the flower of their age, {mais des creatures a peindre !) during my stay at Ormington Hall ; and I am sure they died only of sympathy, from seeing your dear mother and I sit yawning at each other ! — What is the use of such domestic life, 1 only ask you ? — Look at my daughter and Monsieur de la Belinaye, for instance. Where will you ever find in England a more domestic couple 1 — What unanimity ! — What mutual confidence ! Though absent from each other for months and months at a time (for the air of Berri does not agree with Clementine and it is indispensable to the interests of Monsieur de la Belinaye's property that he should reside there a consider- CECIL. 171 able portion of the year, — during which my daughter remains in Paris or the environs, with her family,) not a feeling of mistrust, — not a jealous inquiry on either side ! — They are tranquil, — they are happy, — they are incapable of the vulgar tracasseries, which I so often witnessed in England. By the way, Madame votre chlre mere was not the happiest woman in the world en fait de menage." A hint to the Duchess that I was wearing mourning for Madame ma chfre mere, silenced her indiscreet revelations ; and I satisfied her meanwhile by assurances of my high respect for the domestic felicity of her daughter and nephew. — To my great surprise 1 soon afterwards discovered that I had never yet seen Monsieur de la Belinaye : for one fine day, there arrived a little gentleman from the country, — who figured as master at the Hotel de la Belinaye, and at the Tuileries Vepee aucote and a chapeau plume, as Aide de Camp ;— whom the 172 CECIL. Dauphin called mon cher, and Madame de la Belinaye mon ami, and I, a great bore. — The little insignificant fellow I had hitherto seen accompany Clementine in public, and often found on the stairs of her Hotel, turned out to be only another cousin, a sort of souffre douleur, to call carriages and write notes for her, — a better kind of upper servant. — Monsieur le Comte, however, was very little more in my way than Monsieur le cousin. — My delight in the society of Clementine con- sisted in the interchange of those pleasant nothings and devoted looks which, in England, are classed under the comprehensive though incomprehensible name of flirtation : — and we looked and talked very much the same, whether Monsieur le Comte were tyrannizing over his regisseurs in Berri, or tyrannized over by his roynl master of the Pavilion de Flore. — On the contrary, I felt more at my ease after Belinaye's arrival. — I had sometimes fancied myself in the way at the Hotel de la Belinaye, CECIL. 173 while mistaking the Vicomte de Clainville for the husband of Clementine. But now that I found it the custom of the house to tolerate the loungery of morning visits, I made myself completely at home ; more particularly because, thanks to a proposal I hazarded to Monsieur de la Belinaye, in the style of Madame de St. Gratien's to myself, to effect an interchange of Merinos and South Downs, Norman cows and Suffolk punches, between Ormington Hall and Le Berri, I became an immense favourite with . the model of marital happiness of the Duchesse de Dijon. — It was a wonderfully brilliant carnival. — Our Ambassadress gave a ball, and Madame de Goutaut another, the fame of which remains proverbial to the present day , and I enjoyed myself, in that brief interval between the house of mourning from which 1 had escaped, and the house of matrimony to which I was hasten- ing, much as a school -boy enjoys himself on a Sunday holiday. 1 74 CECIL. It is amazing how one rejuvenizes in Paris. I felt almost a boy again. I seemed to tread on air. " My bosom's lady sat lightly on her throne." — Clementine was such an airy, cheery, sunshiny creature ! — Like Perdita, she "turned all to prettiness and favour." — Mariana, like most London beauties, subjected her friends to so tight a rein, that she would have hardened the mouth of an Arabian. Half my inter- views with her used to be absorbed by peevish chidings, — reproaches for having stayed too long away, or kept her waiting, or neglected to answer a note ; except indeed when, after my acquaintance with Sophronia, she had real cause for displeasure, and consequently dared not betray it. But Madame de la Belinaye, was like the summer's day that wakes us with sunshine and the carol of the lark, and brightens our path with flowers. " Mere want of sensibility !" will urge some sullen femme incomprise. — Perhaps so ! — But now that I have enjoyed a CECIL. 175 certain experience of black, brown, and fair, whether of temper or complexion, I am de- cidedly of opinion that the sensibility which, like an Andalusian, carries a dague en jarretihe to stab a rival to the heart, or which smashes looking-glasses, like Byron's Margarita Cogni, is a horrible nuisance. — I never saw a cloud on the brow of Clemen- tine. I could as easily fancy one upon the pink cheeks of a Dresden shepherdess, whose transparent apron has been full of flowers, and whose glossy smiles and dimples unchanged, for more than a century. — If I sent her one of Madame Prevost's pretty bouquets, the most banal compliment you can offer to a Frenchwoman, she was sure to ac- knowledge it by a petit mot full of grace and graciousness. If I claimed her hand for a waltz, she granted it with a smile that made a common form of society, a concession. Her sweetness and elegance rendered her. really an ornament to a ball-room ; and it is the multi- 1 76 CECIL. tude of such ornaments which constitute the unequalled charm of the Parisian fetes. One morning, after one of these charming balls, 1 was sauntering on horseback at an early hour towards the Bois de Boulogne ; when, in the new route de Charles X., coming from the royal stud-house, I met my friend Monsieur de la Belinaye. As I was at that very moment meditating treasons against him too heinous to be recapitulated, it bored me immensely that he chose to turn his horse's head and accompany me in my ride. — He was mounted on a fine animal of his own breeding ; and every body knows the vexation of riding with an ass who is riding on a horse, the points of which he prides himself on exhibiting. — For the sake of Clementine, however, I bore patiently both with the horse and ass ; and was hypocrite enough to coincide in his opinion that, in a few years, the palm of jockeyship would be conceded by Newmarket to the Champs de Mars. — Ahem ! CECIL. 177 By this disgraceful concession, I brought him into so charming a humour, that I was in hopes he would ride off and leave me to the enjoyment of my previous cogitations. But the ass was obstinate as a mule, and chose to bear me company. — " Apropos, mon cher Danby," — cried he, — as 1 was preparing, when we reached the gates of Bagatelle to gallop off and get rid of him, — " sais tu que tu as des torts graves envers ce pauvre Vicomte /" " What Viscount, — and what have I done to him V — said I, with affected carelessness. " Le petit Clainville ! — I found him dread- fully out of spirits on my return from the country. — It seems you have been infringing his privileges as the cavalier of Clementine and her mother. — During my absence, Madame de la Belinaye very prudently selects my nearest relative as her escort in public ; and Clainville and my mother-in-law get on ad- mirably together ; which, entre nous soit dit, 178 CECIL. is not so easy a matter, — for the Duchess though a charming woman, is the very devil." — I bowed as acquiescingly as he seemed to expect, — and on recovering his breath, he proceeded. — " Since your arrival, however, I find that Madame de Dijon has become horribly capri- cious with poor Clainville, and that even Cle- mentine has to reproach herself with some in- consistency in her conduct. Reflect upon this, my dear Danby ! — You are here but for a short time, — for a moment, as one might say ; — and you will perhaps compromise the happiness of a liaison likely to last for life. Clainville is the most obliging amiable fellow in the world. — He was fixed in my house like one of the chairs or tables — ready to come or go at a moment's notice ; and in leaving Clementine to his care during my absence, it was like confiding her to the Banque de France. — It would really give me pain should any little misunderstanding arise on your account, capable of overclouding our domestic happiness." — CECIL . J 79 * c Why not say their domestic happiness at once V thought I, — for I was exasperated by his imbecility. However, the despair of Mon- sieur le Vicomte was good encouragement for me; and I could scarcely restrain myself from giving a cut with my whip to the spirited horse which poor little La Belinaye found it no easy matter to manage, and, galloping off while he lay prostrate in the mud, profit by the intelligence he had unwittingly afforded. I was to meet Clementine that night at a ball given by Monsieur de Chabrol, the Prefet de la Seine, at the Hotel de Ville ; and never shall I forget how my heart throbbed when I saw her enter the gallery in her simple white dress, trimmed with natural bouquets of Parma violets, the same delicious flowers being inter- spersed among the diamond leaves ornamenting her hair. She was leaning, as usual, on her mother's arm, the Vicomte obsequiously follow- ing with her fan and flacon — an assiduity which had obtained for him the sobriquet of le joorte- manteau de Madame de la Belinaye. 180 CECIL. Clementine was engaged to begin the ball with one of the Neapolitan princes just then visiting Paris. But when I advanced to re- quest her hand for the second quadrille or a waltz, I found myself interrupted by Madame de Dijon, who, on pretence of wanting a glass of eau sucree, sent me off; and when I re- turned, Madame de la Belinaye had taken her place among the dancers. " My dear friend," said the Duchess, lead- ing me off towards the pillars, from which we commanded a view of the adjoining room where Clementine was dancing, with the Vicomte posted behind her close as her shadow, — " this really must not go on ! — Con- sider, mon cher Danby, what you are about. You are going away, next week, — pas vrai ? — and for eight days' amusement, you would actually sacrifice the peace of mind of a very estimable man. — Clainville is a worthy crea- ture, — un homme d'honneur, who would give his life for Clementine or her husband ; and CECIL. 181 my daughter is a woman perfectly well brought up, and incapable de manquer a ses devoirs. The world views their friendship with appro- bation. — In your case it would be otherwise. Society, so rigid in its principles, would feel that your attentions were of a different nature. You are here en passant. — Your love for Cle- mentine might inflict a lasting injury. Croyez moi ! desist from assiduities that are beginning to be noticed ; and prove yourself worthy to be the son of Lady Ormington, and an object of esteem to the august family of the Bourbons." I could scarcely maintain a grave counte- nance at this absurd adjuration. — I had often been assured that la morale of Paris was " affreuse ;" I had not expected to find it ridi- culous. But stranger far than the appeal of the hus- band and mother, — or if not stranger, far more marvellous, — was Clementine's hint in the course of the evening, that, finding my civilities 182 CECIL. a source of inquietude to her family — (includ- ing, I suppose, Monsieur le Vicomte de Clain- ville — little brute! — ) she should be really obliged to me to refrain from further visits — further nosegay-sending, — and so forth; — and on my proceeding to accuse her in no mea- sured terms of a preference for the porte- manteau, she quietly replied, with her usual charming smile, that she and Gustave de Clain- ville had been brought up together, and that for worlds she would not give him pain ! I wonder I did not kill her — or him! — I killed nothing however but a pair of post- horses, in my haste to reach Calais. — I was in a state of indignation impossible to describe. I fancied that the whole society in which we had been flirting was aware of the hopes I had entertained, and would become aware of the rebuffs I had received. I might have spared the poor post-horses. — Society recognized in Madame de la Belinaye a woman, as she was styled by the Duchess, CECIL. 183 parfaitement bien elevee et incapable de manquer a ses devoirs — surtout envers son portemanteau. — The only fault they found with me was my having quitted Paris (on pretence of business) without soliciting an audience of adieu from the King. — For they settled it that I only went because the Carnival was at an end and Car6me beginning : and in the time of Charles X., Car£me was indeed a season of sackcloth and ashes! — That I could be so little a man of the world as to resent the prudent conduct of Madame de la Belinaye, was a charge not to be lightly brought against a man born in the Chateau de Boulainvilliers, and bred in the Castle of Windsor. But I had not reached the heart of the mystery. Many a long year afterwards, I discovered from one of the confidential of the Carlist Court whom I met in exile at Pera, that the anti-climax of my romance was the work of Madame la Comtesse de St. Gratien ! 184 CECIL. In the interests of la morale publique, she had insinuated such scandals into the ear of Madame la Dauphine, as produced a royal sermon to the poor Duchess, and a maternal sermon to poor Clementine ; and even the aid of a conjugal sermon had been ultimately called in, much to the injury of his Majesty Charles the Tenth's contractor for post-horses of Mon- treuil-sur-Mer. The gods are just and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us ! How glad I am that, absorbed by other interests, I stirred not so much as my little finger in behalf of the most unpopular minis- try in Europe, or the private satisfaction of the most revengeful woman, — by obtaining an order to ransack the Record Office of the White Tower, for the archives carried off from Vincennes, during the Regency of the Duke of Bedford ! CHAPTER VIII. Qu' on ne s'attende pas aux matieres, mais a la facon que j'y donne: qu'on voye, en ce que j'emprunte, si j'ai sceu choisir de quoy rehaulser mon propos. Je ne compte pas mes emprunts,je les poise. lis sont tous, ou peut s'en fault, de noms si fameux et si anciens, qu'ils me semblent se nommer assez sans moy. — Montaigne. I dream'd, 'twas on a birth-day night A sumptuous palace rose to sight, The builder had through every part Observed the chastest rules of art, Raphael and Titian there display'd All the full force of light and shade. Around, the liveried servants wait, And the First life-guards kept the gate. — Cotton. The ancient ballads of Spain, England, and France have put on record instances, too numerous to be included in this advertisement, of the fatal results of long absence between lovers and even married people, when Christian knights used to go and fight in Palestine, and 186 CECIL. Christian ladies to remain twirling their spindles at home. — Even then, fidelity was a rare virtue ; and from the days of the Crusades till now, little has been done I fear to cultivate its propagation. — I am not saying this to excuse my own enormities; but I appeal to the fine gentlemen of the day whether the strongest passion recognized at Crockford's be capable of stand- ing out a long day's journey on the rail, with some new fair face immediately opposite, — or a week's tour on the Continent among multi- tudes of faces less fair than piquant. — It is absurd to think of it ! — Constancy is a purely pastoral virtue ; and exists for the great world only in gilt edged tomes of select poetry, and Italian canzonets. — A beautiful landscape excites our fervent admiration. We gaze upon it with enthusiasm till we fancy its outlines indelibly impressed on our memory, — leave it with regret, — and for a time, recall its beauties to mind with delight CECIL. 187 and truth. — At the end of a few days, we should he uncommonly puzzled to sketch even a faint resemblance of our favourite scene. — We cannot remember whether the church tower appeared above the wood, or whether the ruins were above or below the bridge. Our re- collections become perplexed. We grow angry with ourselves and our picture. We resolve to try again another time. We never do try. The whole thing has become a bore. It is better to enjoy the new view before us, than harass our mind with unavailing and bewilder- ing reminiscences. — Thus is it that most human passions, unless stereotyped by positive engagements, stand the test of absence. I address myself on this occasion, with sentiments truly paternal, to the younger and fairer portion of my readers ; for it grieves me to see the dear little souls deluded by themselves and others into confidence in the fidelity of those who go shooting on the moors, or masquing at the Carnival, or yachting in 188 CECIL. the Mediterranean ; and who are pretty sure to be forsworn before they attain Calais or Berwick upon Tweed. — In these days of che- mical substitutes and general adulteration, there is no such thing in the market as genuine love. — It may be shown about in samples, but the lot will not stand the test of purchase and possession. — Try ! — My Public will perceive what was passing in my mind as I sat pensively down to a Maintenon cutlet, that looked hugeously like a shoulder of mutton wrapt in the mainsail of a man of war, at the new and fashionized edition of the Ship Inn, Dover, which now called itself Hotel. — Heartily ashamed of myself, I sought out all the sophistries within reach, to ex- cuse my frailty. — The truth was that my love or esteem ior Sophronia Vavasour formed a species of pastoral interlude in my noisy, heart- less life ; and the bray of the trumpet of worlclliness had drowned the faintly remem- bered echoes of that still small music. — CECIL. 189 The less said and the less thought about it, the better. — I had not pledged myself to return. The court was in London ; and unless com- pelled to visit Windsor, there was no absolute occasion for me to present myself at Sunning Hill. — Such separations without further expla- nation, are matters of daily occurrence. Miss Vavasour had no more to complain of than hundreds of others — From the moment 1 set foot in London, however, all thought on the subject was banished from my mind. — I found Society in an uproar, as for an O. P. riot. — Such out- cries, — such outfallings, — such tattling, — such battling, — such rows, — such vows, — such a coming together by the ears of Gorgons, Hydras, and Chimeras dire ! It was a long time since the plague of party spirit had visited London ; — and all the long repressed raging and storming of the Pittite and Foxite factions, were out-stormed and out- raged by the frenzy of the Philo-Catholics and 190 CECIL. Anti-Catholics. — There had been two or three duels, there were likely to be a dozen more ; and certain Countesses were calling names and pulling caps in the gallery of the House, in a style that recalled to mind the viragos in the tribunes of the National Assembly. It is indispensable I suppose that every great political crisis should afford an outlet for the escape of human folly ; as the hurricane that stirs up the majesty of the waves produces also a superabundance of froth and foam. — But it strikes me that there are quite men enough in the world to talk the nonsense required, with- out calling in the aid of those so much better occupied in threading beads and wearing them afterwards. Oh ! those women of what are called masculine understandings ! — Give me to listen to an orchestra of kettle drums, or a sym- phony of corntes a pistons, or a Chinese Tom- Tom-ing of the Evil spirits, rather than the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals of their empty argumentations : — whereof, as Cicero says,— CECIL. 191 harum sententiarum quae vera sit, deus aliquis viderit! The whole frame of the beau monde was broken up. — No more large parties ! — The solu- tion of the Catholic Question served at least to relieve society from the curse of crammed assemblies, for half the world no longer chose to meet the other half.— The consequence was that people who wanted to distinguish them- selves by partizanship, set up in their houses des bureaux de politique, somewhat resembling the bureaux d' esprit of Paris in the olden time. — It was a pretext for selection, — a new order of exclusivism ; —and among those who rose cent per cent by their promptitude on the occa- sion, was Mrs. Brettingham ; who not only turned to account the vote of her husband, but became the centre of a circle, by giving inces- sant dinners to the more industrious cultivators of the graft of Liberalism which had budded out of the decayed old trunk of Tory Intolerance.— Never having visited the land of tabinets and Orange lodges, I was not prepared for the 192 CECIL. hubbub creatable by a sufficient vociferation of the words " Protestant succession," and " Ca- tholic disabilities ;" — and I confess my own prejudices were so far enlisted under the old banner, that I was glad to escape hearing the speech of Danby, which his party pronounced so fine a one, (and which will probably be in- cluded in the 150th edition of Enfield's Speaker published in the year 1941,) setting forth his progressive change of opinions on this strife- stirring question. Howbeit, my brother was not one of those who committed himself by recanting in February his profession of faith of the July preceding, - for his enlightenment on the subject was the growth of years, — I should not have cared to witness any variation of prin- ciple in one who to me appeared oracular as the Gods. — It was supposed, (one always says it was supposed when afraid of being called to account for one's sayings,) that the arguments of Danby were not without effect in converting, during CECIL. 193 the recess, those two great pillars of Protes- tantism who had found that the only means of keeping the fabric still aloft, was by the admis- sion of their insufficiency and the extension of their bases. — My brother's rejection of place, and superiority to party influence or press re- putation, imparted the utmost force to his opi- nions : and the Commanders in Chief saw that if heh&d given up the dilapidated old fortress as untenable, it was time to evacuate.- — I had no reason to infer from any boast of his own that his influence had effected these marvels. But I could entertain little doubt of it after listening for half an hour to the patient eloquence with which, in our own family party, he attempted to mollify the obstinacy of Lord Ormington — His lordship was a most mulish Anti-Catholic ; — his lordship was an Irish tithe owner, and English boroughholder ; and his lordship rightly conjectured that the light of day once admitted into the old lumber-room of parliamentary prejudices, a general clearance vol. I. k 194 CECIL. must ensue, — the cobwebs be swept out, — the reptiles ejected. — He consequently refused to hear the voice of the charmer, long after the other deaf adders had opened their ears ; and to me it was a spectacle almost affecting, to see the forbearing and respectful patience with which Danby lis- tened to the platitudes of that foolish fond old man, ere he attempted to make himself heard in his turn. — Even when the attempt was made, it was so tenderly and deprecatingly effected, that a mother soothing the impatience of a fretful child could not have evinced greater consideration. — He did not try to cajole the old man out of his opinions. His arguments were as manfully arrayed as they were softly spoken; — like Lear's soldiers, they were shod with felt. But how potent were their arms ! — This was indeed the filial piety of the stork, bearing the superannuated parent aloft on his powerful pinion. Submissive to Lord Orming- CECIL. 195 ton's starts of temper, heedless of his taunts, long-suffering with his arrant ^comprehensive- ness, — Danby renewed, and recapitulated, and re- arranged his arguments, till, like a stupid child over its primer, by mere force of iteration, Lord Ormington was made to understand that though c, a, t, might spell cat, when people found it necessary to spell dog, they must look about them for other letters. — I could perceive by the expression of Danby 's eye, the heartfelt delight with which he at length discovered that his eloquence was tri- umphant. It would have been a severe morti- fication to him to find the vote of his father recorded against a measure, to which he had lent the support of his voice. Another person besides myself was often present at these family discussions, whose coun- tenance was scarcely a less interesting study than that of my brother, — his pupil, Jane. Without presuming to open her lips upon a subject of so grave a nature, it was plain to 196 CECIL. perceive from her variations of complexion, how thoroughly the young girl entered into all that was going on. — To her, her father's voice was as a divine manifestation ; and she drank in its sounds, as the sands of the East imbibe a shower, — rendering back instantaneous ver- dure. — No need of argument to convince Jane. My brother's decree was her law. She listened to his flowing eloquence as to a strain of solemn music, and, recognizing the being of a brighter sphere, wondered how the obduracy of the incredulous apostle could so long hold out! — Danby did not seem even to wonder. No- thing was perceptible in his deportment save earnest desire for the conversion of his expected proselyte. — Only once did I see him out of temper, on the occasion, —and that was with myself. — Irritated by the obtuseness of the old man, I allowed myself to exclaim in a tone of irritation — " Good God ! my lord — surely you must have sense enough to perceive that " CECIL. 197 I forget what ; — but I do not forget the look of dignity with which my brother turned towards me. — I had not seen him assume such an air since, nearly twenty years before, he had sur- veyed me from the hearth rug of Lady Orming- ton's drawing-room, on the day of our dining together at Votefilch's froggery. — It was plain to perceive, at that moment, which of us stood in the presence of his father : a singular exemplification of the Judgment of the wisest of kings ! — Thanks to his gentle prudence, meanwhile, my brother succeeded. — Ut hymettia sole Cera rernollescit, tractataque pollice multas, Vertitur in fades, ipsoque fit utilis usu, — the old gentleman voted in the end after his son's own heart. There was a person meanwhile, — or rather a personage, who, I suspect, was almost as grievously tormented by the political exigencies of the time, as my Lord Ormington ; a per- 198 CECIL. sonage who, though, like Lord Ormington, he ceded to the force of circumstances, ceded not without bitter reluctance : — the King ! — George IV. had embraced Toryism as a man in terror of the violence of the waves, embraces the spar to which he entrusts his life, — with a sort of spasmodic clutch. — To relinquish his hold by even a single finger, was a sacrifice ; — more especially considering the John Knoxiades to which he was subjected by having to appear in public, like King Henry in Shakspeare's play, between two reverend divines. — His con- stitution was already deeply shaken. — He was ill. He was nervous. His defeats were be- ginning;. — Like Louis XIV. in the decline of his years and fortunes, he began to fear that Providence was ungrateful for his support ! # — I was really sorry for him. — Between infir- mity of body and tenderness of conscience, * Louis le Grand is said to have exclaimed on hearing of one of the victories of the Allies, — " Dieu a done oublU tout ce que fai fait pour lui ?" CECIL. 199 which are perhaps more closely correspondent than one cares to allow, the King was sorely ill at ease. — We kept Easter at Windsor ; and scarcely had I travelled a mile upon the Hounslow road, when my conscience became almost as fidgetty as if I too had taken a coro- nation oath, and been subjected to the exhor- tations of my royal chaplain ! — So accustomed had I been, a few months before, to regard every milestone upon that road as an obstacle dividing me from Sophronia and happiness, that the one marked From Hyde Park Corner I MILE. seemed to stand forth upon the highway and reprove me, like a second Nathan. Villain that I was! — what a traitor had I been to all that was good and fair, since last I paid toll at the Kensington turnpike ! — I swear I blushed to think of myself. I had so com- 200 CECIL. pletely razed poor Silwood and all its asso- ciations from the tablets of my brain for the last two months, that there now rushed upon me, as if after the lapse of years, a torrent of overwhelming reminiscences. — I began to won- der how I had ever found courage to break the ties of such a connexion. — All the claims of Miss Vavasour began to reconcentrate them- selves into a shape terribly palpable. — 1 had been her all but declared lover ; yet a few days' inevitable absence, had tempted me to an absence of months at my own good liking.— I had acted at the instigation of a caprice, — caring little whose happiness might suffer, so my own pleasure were secure ! — It was a balmy April day, — a wondrous re- storative to the human frame and to the animal spirits it exhales, — which some call the soul and some the heart, to the great confusion of metaphysics. Green leaflets were emerging from the little brown shells which form the first curious vege- tation of spring ; and green feelings began to CECIL. 201 peep out of my own somewhat hardened na- ture. — By the time we reached the turn after leaving Egham, where I had been often in the habit of diverging from the Windsor road towards Sunning Hill, I grew very spoony indeed ; — and had not the carriage on whose cushions of yellow silk I was reposing, borne on its panel a royal crown, methinks I should have cut off at once to the feet of my Nea ; pleaded guilty to all of which she might see n't to accuse me, and implored permission to rein- state myself in the position I had abandoned. The spot where this sudden perception of my unworthiness rushed into my mind, was pre- cisely the place where, three months before, I had been so oppressed by evil omens touching the illness of my poor mother. There were no howling winds now, — no pitiless sleety showers; yet I swear that the weather, sunshiny as it was, appeared fifty times more cheerless. — To me, no season of the year is so disagreeable as the moment when a glaring spring sunshine makes k 2 202 CECIL. one pant after the shade and refreshment of verdure, while the branches are still as naked as an Irish beggar. — The turf which has not yet resumed its healthy smoothness, is fresh in one place and withered in another, like the cheeks of a lady of a certain age. — Even the violets breathing from every hedge, seem a sort of premature and misplaced concession.— The eglantine and honeysuckle vouchsafe their gentle odours only when there are gentle hands astir to pluck them from their obscurity ; while those rash harbingers of spring but I am getting Shenstonian!— I humbly ask pardon; — for though I fancied myself in love just then, I am under no such illusion now. — On arriving at the Castle, I was beset by duties of office which fortunately occupied my attention so much as to give my conscience a respite. — It was not till a late hour the follow- ing afternoon, when all the phaeton work was past and over, and the sun gone in, and the weather getting chilly, that I managed to make CECIL. 203 my way across the park to Sunning Hill.— Saladin pricked up bis ears as he took the well- known road. — I am afraid he was far less a brute of the two ! — I had gone a slapping pace till I reached the gates of Silwood Park, on the confines of which domain the cottage was situated. But no sooner did I attain the belt of scraggy firs, marking where the last enclosure had sub tracted the waste lands of Bagshot from heath and honey-bee, than I drew in my rein. — I was beginning to feel uncomfortable, — to settle my collar, — blow my nose, — clear my throat, and perform all the little manoeuvres of a gen- tleman embarrassed in his feelings. It was many years since Cecil Danby had been so thoroughly discountenanced. One of the peculiar graces of Annie and Sophronia, in my estimation, was the delicate niceness of their habits of life, — a niceness wholly apart from finery or affectation. Every thing about them was in its place, — every thing 204 CECIL. appropriate, — every thing lady-like : and the cottage, albeit really a cottage, might, from its orderliness of array, have formed a beautiful rustic ornament for a table in one of the state rooms of Windsor Castle. The first thing that struck me as I now ap- proached it from the brow of the hill command- ing a view of the garden, was a spread of clothes drying upon the grass ! — That lawn where I had so often looked unutterable things into the eyes of Sophronia, now looked unmen- tionables at me ! — As I live by bread, nankin shorts and Bandana handkerchiefs seemed to have grown like mushrooms out of the soil. "These men are come, then !" — thought I. — 41 Beasts that they must be, to have intro- duced such habits into the family.'' I had half a mind to hurry away from the little Eden thus vilely desecrated : but Saladin seemed determined to push on. "Are the ladies at home?" said I to a frightened maid in curl-papers, who, after CECIL. 205 much ringing, opened the gate ; — and on her giving a sort of shuffle and murmur in the affirmative, I followed her into the house. The dining-room, which formed a sort of vestibule to the large drawing-room, — smelt fearfully of beer and cheese, as I passed through it; and lo ! on the chintz sofa, whereon I had so often rested side by side with my charming friends, was seated a rotund gentleman in gaiters, who stared at me through his spectacles till my heart quailed within me ; Mr. Vavasour, of course, — the first fat or rubicund West Indian I had ever seen. " You're a sharp hand at a bell-wire, young man ! — What's your business V said he — with- out rising, as brutally as if addressing a tax- gatherer. " I have done myself the honour of calling, Sir, to enquire after the health of your daugh- ters," I replied, calling up my utmost graces of person and manner, to reprove this insolent familiarity. 206 CECIL. " I'll just trouble you, Sir, to take yourself out of this, and not be putting off your sauce upon me!" — cried my host, half rising, and letting fall a violent thump upon the table before him, whereon the sketch-books of Sophronia had been used to lie, and where now steamed in their place a tumbler of mahogany- coloured brandy and water. Imperturbable in ordinary emergencies, I own I stood aghast ! — A sworn enemy how- ever to attempts after scenic effect in simple narratives like the present, I shall content myself with concluding that my Public has been more sagacious than myself, in divining that the gentleman of nankins and strong Cheshire was not my future father-in-law ; — though I can scarcely hope that its clairvoyance will extend to the discovery that the Greys dales had given up the cottage, three weeks before ; and that the landlord, a retired grocer of Staines, was enjoying himself in his Tus- culum for the remainder of their term, while waiting a summer tenant. CECIL. 207 To such a man, when a few more insolences had elicited these explanations, I judged it better to announce myself specifically ; and the hereditary and official honours of a Cecil Danby had more than the effect I antici- pated in reducing the savage to a state of pacification. — I verily believe he would have ended by offering me a tumbler similar to his own, had I not stopped short his civilities by an interrogatory concerning his recent tenants. He had little to relate ; but that little was not disadvantageous. — " Mr. Vavasour was a thick-and-through gentleman ; — had booked up forty pounds for breakage, without so much as looking over the inventory; and it would be a great pleasure to him to get such another tenant if so be as I knowed of any one with an eye to the premises. — He had hoped to keep the Westingens on through the summer. But the young lady had been so much worse since her father's arrival, that they left at last at a minute's notice." 208 CECIL. I began to tremble. The departure of the family and my bitter disappointment, so strangely brought to my mind the sudden de- parture of poor Emily that — " Miss Vavasour was not seriously indis- posed, I hope ?" — faltered I, determined to know the worst. f Miss ? — Why, bless your heart, 'twere the married sister as was nigh going off the perch," replied my facetious acquaintance. " I am afraid there was some kind of little unpleasant- ness betwixt her and her good gentleman, — as is oftentimes the case where married folks has been living apart. — Between friends, Sir, a ter- rible scuffle afore getting off! — However, it doesn't become me to talk, to whom the family behaved so handsome ; and so, Sir, you'll please to excuse me." I tried again— but it would not do. When I attempted to worm further particulars out of him, he renewed Ms endeavours to make a house-agent of me ; — and I was forced to re- treat. CECIL. 209 As I went out, the frightened maid, divested of her curl-papers, was making the agreeable to Saladin over the garden palings, to which I had tied him ; — and never shall I forget the snuff of indignation with which he received her advances! — It was a sunless April evening ; and on mounting him, I buttoned up my coat to my chin, with an indescribable sense of ill-usage. I was almost determined to take cold, to revenge myself upon these people. What did they mean by this abrupt depar- ture ? — It seemed almost a fatality that I could never fall in love in a regular way ! — With all the young ladyships regularly entered for matri- mony in the peerage, — with all the stationary Misses to be found in Grosvenor square and its environs, — I seemed destined to be perpetually mocked by accouplement with fleeting and un- substantial things ! Hard matter was it that day to listen to a great deal about nothing that interested me, 210 CECIL. and say nothing about a great deal that inte- rested me, which forms a chief duty of courtier- ship. — However I got through the evening, — I got through the night, — I got through the morrow; and while seeming to sympathize in the rejoicings of all about me at having got rid for a time of London and its political dissensions, I felt impatient as a child of the isolation of that gorgeous retreat, — that stately mockery, — that wilderness of marble and gild- ing, set up in the midst of the fields, as if to render its tawdry glare more contemptible by contrast with the majesty of nature. — To own the truth, I was a little out of sorts with England as well as with Silwood cottage, Windsor Castle, and myself. — The Tuileries and Louvre had not tended to enhance the dignities of English Nash-ionality. — Every thing seemed diminished to a meaner scale. — The proportions of our domestic architecture ap- peared vilely contracted, the furniture mis- matched, the colours inharmonious, the gold CECIL. 211 lustreless, the very light of day saddened by the overclouded humidity of atmosphere. And then the human groups, — how ponde- rously in accordance with the overloaded heaviness of a scene, fine rather than rich, — solemn rather than dignified ! — No play of spirits, — nothing exciting to the mind or cordial to the heart ! — How I missed the playful finesse of the society of Clementine. How 1 longed for the dash of that aerial car of pleasure, without drag or drawback ; — secure from collision on a road where all are proceed- ing towards the same object and at the same pace ! — At Paris, I should not have had to surrender myself to the dumps, because I had quarrelled with Cecil Danby ! — Next day, I contrived to obtain a royal commission for town; not as my co-mates were in the habit of contriving it, because I wanted a pretext for an hour at White's to brighten up my small talk for the royal dinner table. My object was to seek out at Egham, 212 CECIL. the medical man who had attended Mrs. Greys- dale, and obtain, if possible, some insight into the movements of the family. — The said Dr. L. was a pet aversion of mine, as a man I had never been able to keep at a proper distance. He was one of those who presume upon the sort of favour that attends the assuager of tor- ment in the house of sickness ; and I have heard him jest with Sophronia in a tone of familiarity that tempted me to set my foot upon him. Nay he once patted me patronizingly on the back, in approval of some opinion I was expressing to Mrs. Greysdale when he entered the room in the discharge of his daily, pulse- feeling, pill-driving errand. No surer feeler of a man's time of life, by the way, than his estimate of physicians. While young and vigorous, and what Blair defines as "complexionally-pleasant men of health," we despise them as cobblers of the human frame, and pity the patients whom they cobble; — nor, till our own stitches begin to drop, do we CECIL. 213 learn to respect the awl that is to reunite our soles with our bodies ; and admit that, for want of them Millions have died of medicable wounds. Now that gout and dyspepsia have screwed me in their vices, or rather, now that my vices have screwed me into gout and dyspepsia, in- stead of wondering that a country doctor should have presumed to slap a satellite of majesty on the shoulder, I wonder only how any man so professionally cognizant of the levelling infirmities of human nature, — a man in whose note-book the pitiful accidents of royal, gentle, and simple pathology are written down,— can find it in his powers of gravity ever to become a respecter of persons. A fantastical French writer, one of those cracked fellows through the fissures of whose brain strange lights have penetrated, observes that lawyers, doctors, and confessors, beholding human nature in all its naked truth, are widowed of all illusions ; which is the reason 214 CECIL. custom has assigned them a perpetual suit of solemn black, by way of permanent mourning for the better half of existence. — I reached Egham ; and Dr. L received me at his dinner table, — apologizing for the liberty — but he could only snatch half an hour out of his day's work for rest and refreshment; and guessed, perhaps, that my visit was ex- professional. — I was rather indignant to find him take me so easy, — more particularly as I thought I discerned a sneer upon his lip when I began to enquire after Mrs. Greysdale. — His answers were short, dry, and unsatisfactory as an autumnal cough. — 4< The family was gone — sailed for the West Indies he concluded, — he was sorry to be unable to afford me the intelligence I desired/' I saw that he pointedly avoided meeting my eye, while vouchsafing even this scanty infor- mation ; and, rendered more anxious than ever by his reserve, persevered. — Not a word, how- ever, of Sophronia! — 1 asked only after the CECIL. 215 health of Mrs. Greysdale, and so pertinaciously, that, at length, being in a hurry and near the end of his apple pasty, he spoke out. — " I have already told you, Sir, that Mrs. Greysdale quitted this neighbourhood in a very precarious state," said he; " and you are placing me in a disagreeable situation, look ye, by this sort of under hand application." I began to protest and look fierce ; but being in his own dining-room, the plain-spoken man had the best of it. — " Excuse my straightfor'ardness, Mr. Dan- by," said he ; — " but betwixt ourselves, you have done mischief enough in the family, and it seems to me that the less you meddle or make further in their affairs, the better." " Mischief V I exclaimed. — " You are under some strange delusion. I can assure you, Dr. L., that, up to the moment of leaving Eng- land, I was received on the most friendly footing by Mrs. Greysdale." " Ay, ay, ay !" — interrupted the Doctor, 216 CECIL. helping himself to a clean plate from the dumb waiter, like a man to whom moments are pre- cious ; — "the old story — the old story! — too friendly by half it seems. — However, all's well that ends well. You are too fine a gentleman to be a novice in such matters. You contrived to get off to France before the husband and father arrived ; and to keep out of the way so long as they remained in England. — You es- caped a broken head : and if that poor gentle patient of mine should escape a broken heart — " "What in the name of heaven are you talk- ing about?" — said I, in utter surprise. — " About what is so little my business, my good Sir," was his cool reply — " that unless you had pestered me with questions, look ye, I should not have annoyed you by my obser- vations." — And the Doctor pursed up his mouth as closely as if I had proposed administering to him one of his own doses. — I was afraid that, like Timon, or Zanga, he had resolved to hold his tongue for the remainder of his days. — CECIL. 217 " My dear Doctor," said I, hoping to soften him, — " believe me, you are talking riddles to me. I am not aware of ever having inflicted a moment's pain on Mrs. Greysdale." — Dr. L. uttered an impatient, grunt. — " Un- less, indeed, she felt annoyed by my having quitted England without so express a decla- ration of attachment to Sophronia — to Miss Vavasour, — as might justify me from the charge of trifling with her affections." " Miss Vavasour !" — muttered the Doctor, shrugging his shoulders. — " But my fortunes are precarious," I re- sumed, — not choosing to notice his discourteous interruptions, — " and I judged it more ho- nourable to wait the arrival of her father before " " Come, come, come !" — said the Doctor, almost angrily. — " What need of all this rig- marole to me? — you are not accountable to me, look ye, for your conduct in the family. Spare yourself the trouble and shame of disin- VOL. I. L 218 CECIL. genuousness, Mr. Danby, — for I have neither inclination or leisure to prescribe for my neigh- bours' affairs. From all I saw and knew of Mrs. Greysdale, I have reason to believe that the intemperance of a jealous temper decided too severely upon her conduct ; and that even so far as you did succeed in estranging her affections from her husband, was effected by a prodigious exercise of those powers of seduction which But I must wish you good evening, Sir," cried he, interrupting himself by a sudden glance at his watch, — " I have an appointment, look ye, at Shrub's Hill, for seven o'clock." — " For the love of mercy, Dr. L." — cried I, — almost distracted, — " do not leave me in this state of uncertainty. Ten minutes' conver- sation, — just to satisfy me that " "Ten minutes' delay, Sir, would worry the nervous patient who is expecting me, into a high fever. — At a more convenient season I shall be happy to enter further into your case ; and " CECIL. 219 A servant now entered to announce his gig. Without respect for my august presence, the Doctor began to button on his driving coat. — " If you would be good enough to get into my carriage and allow me to take you as far as Shrub's Hill ?" cried I, in despair, — " we might discuss the business on our way !'' — " I should be happy to oblige you," he re- plied, — (holding open the dining-room door, a plain gesticulation of " not a word more, but get out!") — "but I am so accustomed to my drive in the open air after dinner, that your close carriage would give me a splitting head- ache. " — " Will you then permit me," said T, in utter desperation, " to accompany you ?" — u But my servant, my dear Sir,— my ser- vant!— Who would have a care of my horse and gig while 1 visit my patients ?— I have nine visits, look ye, to pay before I get home again ; and " '' He might easily get into the rumble of my 220 CECIL. carriage, which shall follow us," — said I, be- seechingly,—" and resume his place when our conversation is at an end." And I suppose there was unusual earnestness depicted in my looks and manner ; — for after stopping short on his own door steps and sur- veying me from head to foot, the Doctor gave a sudden jerk of the head, and altered his " get out!" to " get in !" — " We may discuss the whole history in a couple of miles," said he, as I obeyed his word of command ; " as well now, perhaps, as another time." Now that 1 reconsider the matter, I wish I had noticed the air of my attendant, — for I was travelling in one of the royal carriages, — on finding the Doctor's nondescript in an oil- skin hat and cape, insinuate his leathern gaiters into the rumble beside the varnished boots adorning his own civilized extremities. — As to me, all Cecil Danby as 1 was, never did I feel more grateful than for the concession that en- titled me to take my place on the greasy CECIL. 22 1 cushions of a shandrydan, worthy to have graced the travels of an Welch curate of the last century, or Dr. Syntax in his Tour in search of the Picturesque. " Well, Sir," — said the Doctor, as soon as we had rattled off the stones, (the easy chariot gliding noiselessly as a shadow behind us)— as if waiting impatiently for the interrogations which had encumbered him with so adhesive a visitor. " I was in hopes you would be good enough to explain to me, Sir," said I somewhat em- barrassed, " what had given rise to your sup- position that Mr. Greysdale entertained any unpleasant impression of the object of my attentions to his wife ?" " You had better ask me to explain what gave rise to the general idea of the neighbours, and servants, and other tittle-tattlers of a place, which, abounding like all court neighbourhoods in cottages of gentility, is especially addicted to tittle-tattle," said the Doctor, dwelling em- 222 ceoil. phatically upon every word, " that you were taking unfair advantage of Mrs. Greysdale's unprotected situation." " Confound them all, individually and col- lectively, for a pack of the most officious blockheads that ever invented a tale of scan- dal !" — cried I, losing all patience in my turn. " Hey day — hey day ! — you are breaking bounds with a vengeance !" cried the Doctor — " There wanted only such a burst of fury to convince me that you know yourself to be in the wrong ! — As to resenting that people should notice the pertinacity with which so fine a gentleman condescended to sink into eclipse three mornings per week, in an obscure humdrum retreat like Silwood Cottage, you might as well be angry with me at this mo- ment, look ye, for perceiving that nothing short of a love affair would induce you to put up with poor Peggy's paces and the company of a country apot'ecary, in order to get at news of his pretty patient." cecil. 223 " You are a plain spoken and fair dealing man, Dr. L.," cried I, with sudden resolution ; " and plain speaking and fair dealing will consequently go further with you than all the fine protestations 1 could devise. I am making a sacrifice to obtain information interesting to my feelings; and earnestly hope you will not withhold it. — But I swear to you as a gentleman, — do not smile — not as a fine gen- tleman, but as an honest man, — that Mrs. Greysdale never for a second interested my feelings otherwise than as a gentle pleasing woman, sister to the object of my affections." — " Honour bright ?" — cried the Doctor, evi- dently much surprised; " then upon my life, I'm both glad and sorry to hear it ! But if you have nothing to reproach yourself with, that poor soul has been shamefully used. Greys- dale, it seems, is a peppery fellow. — On finding that a man of your age and condition had been spending hours a day in his house, he naturally made inquiries I believe I may congratulate 224 cecil. you, Mr. Danby, on a charming reputation. — You are supposed, look ye, to be one of the most accomplished roues about town." " Which might be resented by old Vavasour, to whose daughter I had been paying atten- tion, but was clearly no affair of Mr. Greys- dale's," said I. " Pho, pho, pho ! —Old Vavasour, as you call him, had only to interrogate the young lady, to know that you had made no proposals of marriage to her, — that your attentions to her had been no greater than to her sister ; and the mere fact of your making off, just as the husband was expected, explained all. — You can't deny it, Sir; you can't deny it. — You were always there, — I met you there a dozen times or so, myself." " And were it a dozen dozen," said I, in a rage, — " how are you or how is any one to prove that I am speaking falsely, in my asseve- ration that my visits were addressed solely and exclusively to the unmarried sister?" — cecil . 225 "Then why the deuce didn't you explain your intentions?" — Again I condescended to expound my scruples of conscience : to which the Doctor responded by a most provoking laugh. — " All I can say in reply is," said he, checking himself at last, " that it is a thousand pities so conscientious a young gentleman should not enjoy the full benefit of his virtues, in the estimation of the world, — Mrs. Greysdale's servants thought the worst of you ; — and, either bribed or threatened by her husband, owned it. I was sent for, late one night. The poor creature had ruptured a blood-vessel. Her husband was gone off to town in search of you, — her father and sister were weeping over her : — and" — " But surely," said I, profoundly indignant — " surely Miss Vavasour came forward with an avowal of my attachment to her ?" — " Greysdale felt that most sisters would have avowed as much, in such an emergency, what- l2 226 cecil. ever might be the state of the case. A few plain questions settled his opinion. Are you going to be married to that fellow, Soph? — said he. — No. — Are you engaged to him? — No ! — Did he ever propose marriage to you ? No ! — Then it is clear he was making a blind of you, a fool of your sister, and a wretch of me /" " But you do not mean to say that on such inconclusive grounds, the brute presumed to ill-use his poor, innocent, infirm wife 1" cried I, with bitter indignation. " Considering how little you profess to care for his poor, innocent, infirm wife, my dear Sir, you are tolerably zealous in her behalf !" — said the Doctor, with a sneer. — "I do not affect to be savage," replied I. "The idea of any woman being exposed to injury on my account, would excite me as warmly." " I do not mean to tell you that he threshed her, (if that be what you understand by ill- usage.) But some women are as tender in their feelings, as others in their frames ; and cecil. 227 that dear soft-hearted soul sank under the harsh language and cruel imputations of her husband ! I had a hard matter, I can promise you, to get her round. — The first moment she was able to move, Greysdale made it a sine qua non of their reconciliation, that she should un- dertake never to see you again, — that she should instantly quit the neighbourhood of Windsor, — nay ! that she should prepare to sail for Jamaica by the first packet." — " And they are literally gone, — and I have no means of vindicating myself and her !" cried I, leaning back in the detestable old gig — over- come by my feelings. — " Unless your niceness of conscience should determine you to undertake a sea-voyage and follow them !" chuckled the Doctor, who, I could see, had very little faith in my protesta- tions. "If you really want to marry Miss Vavasour, you can't do better ! Even if you only want to secure a pretty young woman from getting her head or heart broken for your sake, 228 cecil. it would be no great sacrifice to marry Miss Sophronia : — for her father told me himself he would down with fifty thousand pounds on the nail, to any suitable husband ! — And now Mr. Danby, 1 must trouble you to change places with John ; for yonder green gate, look ye, is the end of my journey. — And so I wish you a very good evening." I suppose it would have been hardly worth one's while to dirty one's fingers by killing an apothecary ! — CHAPTER IX. A limitation de Fontenelle, il economisait le mouvement vital, et concentrait tous les sentimens humains dans le moi. Aussi sa vie s'ecoulait elle sans faire plus de bruit que le sable d'une horloge antique. Quelquefois ses victimes criaient beaucoup, — s'emportaient; — puis, il se faisait chez lui un grand silence, comme dans une cuisine ou l'on egorge un canard.— Balzac. I appeal to the sympathies of every gentle- man even moderately versed in the pains and penalties of a lady-killer's career, where Vegnan li vaghi Amori Senza fiammelle 6 strali Scherzando insieme pargoletti e nudi, whether he ever heard of a fellow more un- lucky in such matters than myself! — I admit that in my more sunny springtide of Cecilian gallantry, as the Anacreon of Teos 230 CECIL. and Anacreon of Ireland have united to phrase it,— I had a pulse for every dart That love could scatter from his quiver, While every woman found in me a heart Which I with all my heart and soul did give her. Maisje valais mieux que ma reputation ; — and though I frankly admit that, at the triumph of Catholic emancipation, my heart like the British Empire was divided into three kingdoms, — that of Sophronia in the country, — Mariana in town, and Clementine in Paris, — to say nothing of an unmentionable plurality of colo- nies, — I was utterly incapable of the heinous- ness of entertaining views upon two sisters at once.— Mrs. Greysdale never presented her- self to my wildest imagination in other than the most sacred point of view ! — I had respected her as she deserved, — with what result the Public has been apprised. — And yet the copy book morality of this specious world of plausibilities persists in asserting that " Virtue is its own reward !" — CECIL. 231 For the facts jolted out of the blunt lips of Dr. L , by the rough pace of Peggy and rough questioning of his companion, were strictly correct. The family were gone, — were by this time half-way to Jamaica ;— rendered miserable for life by that reckless spirit of trifling with other people's happiness, which seemed fated to characterize my proceedings through life ! — As to following them, according to the cool suggestion of the man of gallipots, I would not have undertaken such a sea-voyage to discover another New World, or lose sight of the Old one, — I scarcely know which were the stronger temptation ! — But I wrote, — I wrote a long and eloquent epistle, — nay, two long and eloquent epistles ; — one addressed to the husband, the other to the father,— enclosing each a billet, neither long nor eloquent — but I flattered myself much to the purpose, entreat- ing forgiveness of Annie and the hand of Sophronia, in terms expressive of the utmost penitence and passion. — I very much doubt 232 cecil. whether the Right Honourable Secretary of State for the Colonies, ever affixed his official frank to a packet containing so vast a quantity of inflammatory matter. — All I hoped was that Greysdale might take my Epistle for Gospel. Meanwhile, as two months at least must elapse ere I obtained an answer, it was unnecessary to harass my feelings by continually dwelling on a subject so painful. — Confiding in the justice of Provi- dence to enlighten Greysdale to his wife's merits and Sophronia to mine, I occupied myself with my official duties ; and in the little family- circle in Connaught Place, found occasion for the cultivation of those domestic virtues of which I might shortly stand in need. As poor people provide themselves with tea- cups and bedsteads, by gradual provision, from the time they have matrimony in view, 1 thought it advisable to accustom myself to roast mutton and domestic table talk. My brother seemed as anxious as myself that cecil. 233 our circle should be re-united. It did not then occur to me, when I saw him so much more punctual than during Lady Ormington's life- time, in his visits to Hanover Square, and so much more eager in his invitations to Lord Ormington to Connaught Place, that he had any fear of a mother-in-law ; for the idea of Lord Ormington's marrying again was to me too preposterous to be entertained. But Danby, aware that the world is made up of absurdities, was really anxious ; for it appeared that Lady Harriet Vandeleur, on pretence of long friendship for the deceased, was besetting the widowerhood of his father much as she had beset his own ; only that instead of attacking the old lord with treatises on education, and yearnings after the matronly duties of a chaperon, she besieged him with pamphlets on the Catholic Question, and little three-cornered notes containing specifics for the rheumatism, — to say nothing of cadeaux of Angora flannel, and bottles of cajuput oil, 234 cecil. and divers other delicate attentions adapted to a Corydon of three-score and twelve. — It was not, I am sure, that Danby enter- tained any interested impatience of a dowager on the estate ; and had Lord Ormington chosen to choose wisely, would probably have advised him to comfort his declining years by the com- panionship of a suitable Abishag. But Lady Harriet who, after a couleur de rose flirtation with me had tried to get up a blue one with him, and was now attempting a quaker-coloured one with the head of the family ; — Lady Harriet, who would allow him to call neither soul nor body his own; — Lady Harriet, who would quack him to death and elsewhere by her mounte- bankeries, moral, physical, and medical ; — Lady Harriet, always in a fuss herself or the cause of fusses in others; — Lady Harriet, who chose to chop the chaff of life with a forty horse power engine, — and go sparrow-shooting with Perkins's steam gun, — Lady Harriet was not to be borne. Danby was quite right to cecil. 235 dine with Lord Ormington, or invite him to dinner, three days in the week. There would not have been three months' life in the poor old gentleman after the honeymoon of such a waspish marriage. — Danby was careful to assemble at his table the old man's contemporaries for his recreation ; and in this, I think, he was wrong. — It was very well for Alexander Pope to cling to the society of Martha Blount, because " his life was written in her mind," and vice versa; or for Montaigne to say of Boethius, " je l'aimai parceque c'etait lui — il m'aimait par- ceque c'etait moi." But that which is good in love and friendship, is decidedly bad in ac- quaintanceship ; — and all that came of Lord Votefilch, Lord Ormington, and Lord Falkirk meeting together to talk over old times was, that each said of the other in private after dinner, to any third person to whose button he could harpoon himself,—" Poor Ormington ! 'Tis a melancholy thing to see him so broken !" 236 cecil. — or " Poor Falkirk ! you will scarcely believe it, but I remember him a remarkably intelligent man !" — or " Poor Votefilch ! how strange it is he should remember the most trivial thing that ever befell him, yet not recollect how many thousand times he has told one the same story !" — Each saw that the other was beginning to twaddle- Sometimes, indeed, after a particularly good bottle of claret, the three old souls would grow jocular,— recur to old times, — talk of the chimes at midnight, — and poke each other in the ribs a propos to Grassini or Mara, just as Sir Moulton Drewe, Lord Mereworth and I, were doing t'other night a, propos to Fodor. — But the truth was that poor Votefilch was getting rather the worse for wear and tear; — or at least, his style of boring was more boring than that of the other two.— He had always the pretension of being a wiseacre, and seeing further than his neighbours ; and when a man who wears the pretentious beard of a Sage cecil. 237 begins to drivel, the spectacle is disagree- able. — Poor old Votefilch had been ruined by too good an education, and college honours. — Learning had been beaten into his head so very hard, that his head was as hard as a stone. It had taken at eighteen the shape it was to wear for life. His degree was a final measure. — Thenceforward, nothing was to be learned, — nothing wralearned ; and he judged mankind at seventy, after wearing for years the mighty spectacles of office, just as he had judged them (after the most approved classical authorities) at Eton. There are various ways of being a pedant, — his was the most pernicious kind ; for the man who has always a quotation from the ancients on his lips, expends his pedantry on others ; whereas the man whose every idea is Patavinian, the whole form and pressure of his mind being shaped from the dead lan- guages, inflicts his pedantry on himself. — Poor old Votefilch ! He never could allow himself 238 cecil. to laugh at Mercutio or Falstaff, for thinking of Aristophanes or Terence. — And now that this Temple of the Muses was cracking and giving way, the effect was ludicrous. He talked politics in the vein of Justice Shallow, and literature in that of Holo- phernes ; snuffled about the destinies of Europe, and pomposed about invariable principles. — Yet in spite of Votefilch's senility, his name was one of the props of the Tory party. He was brought out on field days, as one of their great guns ; though they knew his condition to be such that, in case of a discharge, the can- noneers must be blown to atoms. I must say that for the Tories, — they did make it a point of conscience to support their aged and infirm. Their Anchises was not left to be roasted alive. — They were pious sons to a superannuated father. The Whigs are very gentlemanly gentlemen ; but one never saw them play the stork with their political grand- papas. cecil. 239 I should not have taken much heed of Vote- filch's prosing, — though I confess that the decadence of a manly mind has a much more powerful effect upon my sympathies than the decay of a fair face, — but that he would pounce upon me as his victim. — The King knew better than to admit so decided a bore within miles of his august person ; and could he have helped it, would never have had Voltefilch nearer to Windsor than Staines. — But presuming upon having lorded it, that is secretary-of-stated it, over my youthful inexperience, he felt privi- leged to make me his speaking trumpet of communication with the royal ear. " If you would take an opportunity, my dear Cecil, of impressing upon His Majesty's mind, that,"— or " if you would seize some auspicious moment, my dear Danby, for making it clear to the King, that'' — was sure to prelude some wrong-headed theory of his devising. — I, to be impressing things upon His Majesty's mind !— I, to be making them clear ! 240 CECIL. Why the only merit my conversation could possess in the estimation of a man like George IV., entitled to assemble round him the arch- wiseacres of his time, must have been its exemption from all connection with public business. — I was a passetemps, — a relaxation, — an interlude, — a rattle to please him, — a straw to tickle ; and by pretending to be nothing more than the thing I was good for, continued to the last to tickle and to please. Ridentem dicere verum Quid setat ? The great fault of favourites is presumption on their favouritism. Phsedrus, iEsop, Pilpay, (which of them was it ?) bequeathed us a clever example in the donkey who, jealous of his master's lap-dog, made himself disagreeable by jumping spaniel-wise upon his knee. — But if ever I write a string of apologues, not for the use of schools, but for the enlightenment of those dunces of second childhood, so much sillier than the dunces of the first, — I will CECIL. 241 essay to prove that the petted lap-dog who pre- tends to utilize himself by wanting to carry panniers, is as great an ass as the other. — Every favourite has his specific purpose in his master's eye ; and George the Fourth was quite as little in want of the political counsel of a Cis Danby as he desired to see the carrots and turnips of his Julienne figure at his dessert, or slices of pine-apple floating in his spring- soup. It was the want of perception to discover this, that finally sent Jack Harris to Coventry, by means of place and a peerage.— -People are apt to blame the caprices of royalty, and talk of King this or Queen that throwing off their friends. — But no one takes into account the blunders and impertinences by which favourites — (for between ourselves, dear Public, to talk of friendship between sovereign and subject is every bit as absurd as for the Emperor of the Celestial Empire to call cousins with the sun and moon), the molestations and impertinences, VOL. I. M 242 cecil. I say, by which favourites cause themselves to be thrown over; — and it is not more unfair to find fault with a man for dismissing a drunken coachman, or a footman who chooses to give his notions upon parish rates instead of cleaning his plate, than to pass sentence of ingratitude upon a Prince who will not be flippantly answered, or bored with the political opinions of a Sir John Harris, K. A.B.C.D.E. F.G. &c. &c. &c. One of those numskulls who presume to talk to the cobbler, and even the king of the cob- blers, of his last, once congratulated Sir Walter Scott that he was about to visit Rome previous to the composition of a work embodying de- scriptions of the Eternal City. " I shall finish it before I set out," was the reply of the mighty master ; — " I can describe nothing on the spot." The man of master-strokes, was aware that life and landscapes require to be viewed at a certain distance, in order to reduce the objects they cecil. 243 contain to relative importance. — A fly crawling over one of the vast frescoes of Paul Veronese, might just as well attempt to play the critic upon its design, as A. or B. or C. to play the philosopher upon the event of yesterday. Time is the distance of moral life, — the perspective of the mind. — Tt is only now, seated in my easy corner at Crockey's, or by my fireside in St. James's Place, that groupings come out before my mind's eye, and trifles combine them- selves into events which, when passing before me, were mere dots and lines, scratching^ and daubings. Provehimur portu, terrseque urbesque recedunt. My brethren of the Household were then only men who came in or went out of waiting, at certain epochs. I forgot that they were historical personages. — It did not occur to me that all the finished finicality of that golden clockwork constituted an epoch ; — a polished corner of the mighty temple of European civilization. 244 cecil. The first time it did occur to me was on noting the horror of the King at the prospect of finding a half-baked brick, or mass of unhewn stone placed next to it in the fabric. — Imme- diately after the Catholic Question, came Lord Blandford's notice of a motion for the consi- deration of Parliamentary Reform ; — and though half the world seemed inclined to play Festus with the noble Marquis, accusing him of infirmity of mind or purpose, the other half trembled with the conviction that, within forty days, Nineveh would be destroyed. — We were at the beginning of the end ! " Aprhnous, le deluge!" is said to have been a favourite ejaculation of Louis XV., when ad- monished of the political reaction likely to occur in the times of his grandsons ; — but let us not think so hardly of even one of the worst of the Lord's anointed, as to believe in the tra- dition. — Egotism, (or to write it puristically) Egoism, in individuals a pitiful weakness, be- comes a crime by regalization. The hardness cecil. 245 of a royal h^art must accumulate the impene- trability of thirty millions of nether millstones ; and an Aldgate pump for the dispensation of Hydroscyanic acid, or an Epping Forest of Upas trees for public recreation, would scarcely afford a bitterer source of national calamity. My august Master contemplated, I am con- vinced, with profound sympathy, the downfall of the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. Court physicians are not always soothsayers or sayers of sooth ; — and while bleeding and blistering, or whispering hints of this symptom or of that, seldom perceive the worm at the root which causeth the branches of the royal oak to wax yellow and wither. — I shall go to my own grave with the conviction that the King I had the honour to serve, was chilled to death by the shadow cast before by the coming event of the Reform Bill; and that. Sir Thomas Lawrence, the most loyal of royal limners, preceded him to the tomb on the principle invented by 246 cecil. George Colman, who proved himself to be younger than the Prince because too polite a man to come into the world before His Royal Highness. But I must not anticipate. — I was talking, if I remember, of the little importance I then assigned to my brethren of the Red Book, — whom, with the short-sightedness of human vanity and blindness of office, I regarded as permanent in their places as the giants in Guildhall ; steady at their posts, albeit wooden giants, as the stone walls against which they are posted. — I liked most of them, — some to laugh at — some to laugh with: — I suppose no deeper motive need be adduced for the predi- lections of a coxcomb. For one of them, for both these reasons, I entertained especial regard. — He was a plea- sant sunshiny creature, equally ready to laugh or be laughed at, — some dozen years my junior, whom I remembered aforetime a page, and Cecil. 247 now recognized as a legitimate inheritor of the honours of Cecil Danbyism. Frank Walsingham, — for though the Red Book and his tailor recorded him in their pages as the Honourable Francis Walsingham, I trust I may be excused from such nauseous particularity, — was one of those unhappy in- dividuals born ruined, as one may say,— a nobleman's younger son ! Like myself, he had been Etonized, — though not like myself, Christchurched and rusticated ;— and was con- sequently as useless and expensive in his habits as his elder brother, the heir in tail to forty thousand per annum. In his case, unluckily, half a dozen young Walsinghams intervened between the eldest son Lord Rotherhitheand my friend Frank: — so that an Honourable Charles was in the Foreign office, an Honourable Edward in the Church, and the others hiving up knowledge in the Temple, and elsewhere, learning to spell their own name, previous to introduction into 248 cecil. official life. Frank, the ornamental one of the family, had literally nothing to trust to, in order to maintain the extravagant habits he was acquiring in his present appointment. Neither he nor I, however, judged it neces- sary to be further sighted than his family and friends — He was the pet of the court while in waiting, and the darling of the Exclusives when out of waiting ; and never did I see a young fellow so general a favourite. He was merry without being noisy. A gleam of per- petual sunshine brightened his joyous eye ; or if clouded by the moisture of a passing tear, the rainbow created by that rare refraction was indeed an emblem of peace. Man, woman, or child,— no one was proof against the fascina- tions of Frank ! — He had but one fault, the consequence of this happy temperament and universal favour ; — he was a Cupidon dechaine. People talk of a hard drinker, or desperate gambler, — Frank Walsingham was a hard flirter. It was no cecil. 249 fault of his, — he was to the manner horn. I have shown that I reached Oxford without any thing amounting to an affaire de cceur. But I am convinced that Walsingham must have coquetted with his nurse, and scribbled billet doux on the blank leaves of his Barbauld's Lessons. Frank was as well qualified for his vocation by nature, as I, by art. — His long black lashes and large grey eyes acquired, when he chose, a look so sentimental, that in accompanying his sixpence to a beggar at the crossing with — il poor woman !" or a pitiful glance, — he seemed to be giving utterance to one of those exquisite sentiments seldom emitted in real life, or any where else, but the well-gilt pages of an octavo volume. — Even in the days of courtship which preceded my days of courtiership, I wanted, I fear, the charming laissez alter of Walsingham. — He appeared to love for the sake only of the woman he loved, — I, for my own; — and so fervent was his ordinary manner, that he m 2 250 CECIL. could make the agreeable quite as agreeably to half a dozen charmers in succession, as other men to the one idol at whose feet they exhale the whole incense of their soul. — Like a portrait whose eyes appear to follow the person who gazes upon it, his heart seemed always at the service of those who wished it. Because never in earnest, he always seemed so. His gallantry was purely superficial, — the result of good spirits and good humour; and thus secure from the variabilities of deeper seated emotions, was ever ready for a flight. I wonder, now, how I could be so fond of Frank, who was a phenominal reduplication of myself. — Perhaps I fancied myself divested of a dozen of my superfluous years, by associating with a young fellow of twenty-two : — for I was arrived at the time of life when one shrinks from the company of one's contemporaries ; — and the round shoulders of Sir Moulton Drewe, or the bald crown of Mereworth, were disa- greeable remembrancers of our progress in a CECIL. fc >51 career, of which it cannot be said that it leaves not a wreck behind. — Mereworth, by the way, attempted, after the fashion of the Caesars, to disguise his baldness by a crown of laurels. — His speeches had almost as much influence in the Upper House as my brother's in the Lower ; not as being of the same quality or calibre, — but because the sober, fluent, expositious manner with which long habits of official life endowed the Earl, answered better with such an auditory than more impressive bursts of eloquence. — For the Peers of our time were not as the Peers of Chatham's: — and the country-gentleman aris- tocracy looked to Mereworth as its Solon. — His speeches I knew only by report,— the re- port of the Clubs, not reporters' report, for I am no speller of debates. — But it was by expe- rience I found that a hogshead of heady port, such as Mereworth's light conversation, was the very thing to make one thirst for the high-flavoured Rhenish of Danby, or a glass of Frank Walsingham's sparkling Champagne. — 252 cecil. Not to speak it profanely, it was poor Mere- worth's small talk which enlightened me to the truth of the three St. James's Street degrees of comparative dulness, — "stupid, — damned stupid, and a Boodle."— Now, Lord Mereworth was of Boodle's ! — CHAPTER X. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the public streets; Stars shone with trains of fire, dews of blood fell, Disasters veil'd the sun, and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. Shakespeare. Ut in vita, sic in studiis, pulcherrimum et humanissimum existimo, severitatem comitatemque miscere, ne ilia in tris- titiam, hsec in petulantiam excedat. — Plin. Epist. There is no moment in the history of a country, when, if a man with lungs strong enough to make himself heard, or diction vigo- rous enough to make himself read, — choose to announce by speech or pamphlet, that the "Constitution is in danger/' he may not terrify a considerable number of old women out 254 cecil. of their wits, so as to obtain a vote of want of confidence in ministers, — or a shower of dutiful addresses from cathedral towns, acquainting the Sovereign that he has lost his head, or that the premier deserves to lose his'n. — But in every crisis thus arising, whether from the emancipation of Catholics or Niggers, — enfranchisements of Commerce or Conscience, — a strife of words, or a strife of Croesuses, —whether Swing or O'Connell be the bug- bear, or starvation or riot the order of the day,— the politenesses of London life proceed unmolested. — Like a passing breath on any other surface of polished steel, society shines the brighter for that momentary obscurement. Let whatever seditious meetings distract the kingdom, those of Epsom, Ascot, and New- market are true to their day; — and though the military be called out to save Bristol from burn- ing, Wormwood Scrubs must have its field days, and Hounslow its reviews. — Exhibitions open, and Caledonian balls cut capers, let the cecil. 255 Session rave as it listeth :— and even the autumn of that unquiet year was as diversified as usual by the petty pleasures which, by their agglome- ration, render the lives of the great as distinctly brilliant on earth, as the Via Lactea in the sky. — But that decency required the Danby family to wear its broad hems with discretion, neither Lord Ormington who had lost a wife, nor Cecil who was in expectation of obtaining one, need have looked graver than usual. — I had judged it necessary to place my confi- dence in my brother previous to despatching my formal proposals to Jamaica; and by him had been dissuaded from consulting his father. — In case of acceptance, Danby undertook to make such arrangements as would place the principal of the fortune secured to me by my mother's settlements, at my disposal ; — in case of non-acceptance, there could be no occasion to annoy Lord Ormington. For, to my great surprise, Danby, though approving my conduct under circumstances so 256 cecil. peculiar, disapproved of the connection. He, so liberal in feeling, so enlightened in mind, encrusted by the prejudices of birth as a noble frigate by barnacles, repudiated the idea of the marriage of the heir presumptive of his family, with a nameless West-Indian, almost as much as that of his father with a canting intrigante. I plead guilty to the weakness of finding my passion increase, in exact proportion to his disparagement of its object. I was proud of rising superior in liberality of views, to a man whose superiority I was forced to admit in all beside. Now that I am entitled to walk at a coronation, I think, as Danby thought then, — that providence purported the pairing of human pairs after their degree, as much as the pairing of inferior creatures after their kind; — and firmly believe the union of disproportional couples to be as unproductive of happiness, as those of the animal and vegetable creations are infertile of increase. cecil. 257 I am by no means ashamed of this natural progress of my opinions; for the human mind, like a Stilton cheese, ripens as it decays, and is valuable in proportion to its corruption. But I do blush to own how very tedious I found that autumn at Windsor, now that the ride to Sunning Hill had lost its attraction. I even grew impatient of my splendid slavery, to a degree that no one but the camarera Mayor of a Queen of Spain, after six months in the Escurial, could be made to understand. A gold fish panting in a glass bowl in the sun-shine, must lead a pleasanter life than mine ; heart- sick as I was of abiding among those who neither spoke, looked, nor acted in a natural way : — for " six weeks of varnished faces" is a state of primitive simplicity, compared with the falsi- fications of people, plus royaliste que le roi performing four and twenty hours of the twenty four, a concert of falsettos, a never-ending menuet de la cour ! — Our usual measure of mutual hypocrisies 258 cecil. was just then out-Judassed by the antipathies arising from political dissensions ; which we were obliged to conceal like the Spartan's fox under our cloaks, smiling only the more graciously for that inward begnawing. — At such periods as that last gasp of the expiring institutions of feudalism, the news- papers of the day suddenly start up in stature like Jack's beanstalk, or Jack in the box. Like sea-birds, roosting quietly in crannies of the rocks in quiet weather, no sooner is the political sky overcast, than one finds the air beaten by sudden flights of gulls ; which, inno- cuous though they be, at such a moment appal like an omen, portentous of raging waves and the wreck of some gallant vessel. — To fellows enjoying, like ourselves, the ut- most beatitude of boredom, with only the vista of the Long Walk, and the flapping of the Royal Standard on the Round Tower to vary the daily scene, the leading articles of the day were so many field-pieces, through whose cecil. 259 brazen mouths we made upon each other the war we dared not make through our own. The puffing influence of newspapers upon the public mind, in modern times, somewhat resembles the closing and opening of the Tem- ple of Janus in times of old. — We pin our faith in the country, in the month of January, upon an oracle we derided, in St. James's Street, in the month of June. While domiciled in the centre of the Clubs, we split our sides at the inaccuracy of intelligence which, after the fifth milestone , out of town, acquire an air of solemn authenticity : and at Windsor, not only believed in the lists of Departures and Arrivals, Bankruptcies and Insolvencies, but in the declarations of the Post that Britannia was smiling on a bed of roses, or of the Times that she was weeping over a bed of onions. — By the way, — T forget whether the Times were just then black or white, — Whig or Tory ; — the only fact indelible in my memory concern- ing the good old Times, being a certain 260 CECIL. entry of one thousand pounds, much to its credit, in the account book of the Committee of Drury Lane Theatre, simultaneous with the debut of the Times-honoured Edmund Kean. " If any branch of the public administration were as infamously jobbed as the reviews," wrote the late Earl of Dudley to the Bishop of LlandafF, — " it must soon fall a victim to the just indignation of the world." — How could Dudley say so ? — He who had been Foreign Secretary, — he, who had dabbled with the public journals, knew how well the world is pleased to be bamboozled by plausible print, or led by its long nose with the red hot pincers of editorial exaggeration ! — 1 am sadly afraid this bald disjointed chat of mine purports only to disguise from myself and my readers, the mortifying suspense which caused the contemplation of my private affairs to be just then more distasteful than is usually the case with what concerns that personal pro- noun, which ought, according to Pascal, to be CECIL. 26 J obliterated from the vocabulary of every pious Christian. — I, — with Pascal's permission, — was, I admit, perplexed in the extreme by Sophronia's silence. — I admitted having acted towards her in the first instance with hesitation and reserve ; but her utter disregard of my humble excuses was almost too severe a measure of retribution! — Week after week elapsed, — the arrival of two Jamaica mails was duly recorded in the ship news ; — but not a syllable from any member of the Vavasour family ! — I now began to persuade myself that my happiness was bound up in the prospect of my union with my Nea. I betook myself once more to Tommy's Bermudian odes; and on two occasions, contrived to get expresses sent off to the Colonial office, for the purpose of ascertaining not whether " sugars was ris/' but whether any packet had been received for myself. — Alas ! the answer only came too soon. — Early in January,— just as we were playing the 262 cecil. fool with New year's gifts and Twelfth cake,— a packet sealed with black was placed in my trembling hands ! — I am not sure but it might look striking and catastrophic, and am very certain that it would save me a world of pain and pains, were I to fill up the remainder of the page with ranks and files of notes of admiration, or asterisks, after the fashion of Jules Janin and other oracles of the Prose-mn-mad School; — those diminutive hippogriffs, who every now and then frighten the reading world into hysterics, like the bewildered astronomer who, with a fly in his telescope, announces that a fiery dragon is devouring the sun. — But however anxious to envelope in mystery the sorry figure I cut upon this occasion, I am afraid my strange eventful history was too widely bruited abroad by the loquacity of my friend the Egham apothecary, for the utmost hieroglyphicism of the press to avail me the redemption of my character. — cecil. 263 I will tell my tale, therefore, in the simple language of an oracle far more oracular ; pre- mising that neither Greysdale nor his father- in-law deigned to notice the communications I had addressed to them. — The portentous letter sealed with black was from Sophronia, and couched in the following terms. " Greenville Plantation, Nov. 24, 1829, " When I tell you that a week only has elapsed since I laid the head of my sister in the grave, you will understand the cause of my delay in replying to your communication. You will also, I trust, comprehend the impossibility of a single expression of gratitude on my part, for the tardy justice you have done me. — " In accusing you as the cause of my sister's untimely end, I do not pretend that we are altogether blameless. — Whenaccident brought us acquainted, thirteen months ago, we ought to have known, we ought to have felt, that no 264 cecil. good could arise from the cultivation of an intimacy, whose foundations were of sand. — Hard is it that my poor sister Annie should pay the penalty of my infatuation ! Yet when I look to the prospects of my future days, I feel that, in the end, I, who was most to blame, shall have most to suffer!— For the principles in which I was reared had inspired me with pro- found contempt for the heartlessness of your class. I had been warned of their want of principle — their want of humanity. Yet with all my boasted wisdom, it needed only for one so specious as yourself to dazzle me by refine- ment of manners and graces of person, to make me forget my father's lessons — to make me renounce my previous disdain ! — With my own hands did I blindfold my better judg- ment ;— and the result is such utter bankruptcy of the heart, as renders it difficult for me to address you even these hurried but necessary lines — s * Whether your proposals be dictated by a cecil. 265 sense of mercy towards my sister, or regard for myself, it is now useless to inquire. — In marry- ing you, I should give my hand to her mur- derer. — That you could have me, seeing, as I am persuaded you did, the sincere affection which you had spared no pains to call into existence, without one word expressive of your intentions, without one line from Paris to alleviate the affliction produced by your inex- plicable absence, is a sufficient evidence of the self-possessed hardness of your nature, to convince me that, even if the dying bed of my sister did not oppose an insuperable obstacle to our union, I could not be happy as your wife. " Oh! could you only know how much she had to suffer ! — Pure as the angels of Heaven, — Annie was exposed to all the obloquy await- ing the most infamous of her sex! — This, at least, was your doing. — You knew the habits of England, — the forms and usages of its society. — You saw our ignorance of the evil- VOL. I. N 266 cecil. interpretation to which we must be subjected by your visits. Yet you came and came again — with what intentions your own conscience can best apprize you ; then, left us without a word, — flung us aside like a worn out gar- ment; and when the brilliant Cecil Danby was heard of again, it was at the feet of another woman, — another,— and the wedded wife of another! " At that moment, Sir, my sister had been all but sacrificed by the impetuosity of a man who loved her as his life, yet less than his honour. "Pity him, and pity me! — Pity my poor heart-broken father, who is now sitting beside me, cursing the day in which he confided two daughters so young and inexperienced to the tender mercies of English society. "Farewell.— Could I hereafter permit myself to recur to days that have proved so fertile a source of misery to me and mine, I might, perhaps, dwell with regret upon the sudden blighting of illusions, which for a moment pro- cecil. 267 mised to make this barren earth a world of happiness. But for the remainder of my life, and the sake of those to whose consolation I must devote myself, I banish the past for ever from my mind. — Imitate my example. — It will need no great effort for one so worldly as your- self to forget that you were ever acquainted with two fashionless, obscure, and nameless women, — one of whom is already your victim, — while the other prays, in the utmost sincerity of heart, for release from a life you have ren- dered wretched. Again 1 say, farewell ! " S. V." I drew a very long breath after the perusal of this sad letter, — a breath so long as nearer to resemble a heavy sigh than altogether be- came the coxcombry of Cecil Danby Still, I was not weak enough to fancy myself so much to blame as Miss Vavasour harshly announced me. — No ! I was not responsible for the infirmities of Mr. Greysdale's temper 268 cecil. or Mrs. Greysdale's constitution. If the in- difference of my reputation had lent a false colour to intentions pure and holy, the calum- nious dispositions of the world had most to answer for. The brute of a husband who could so readily listen to slander of one of the most charming and chaste of women, would have found some other Cassio and some other Iago to move his detestable susceptibilities, had there been no Cecil and no gossiping Sunning Hill in the case. — Annie was evidently pre- destined to a miserable destiny, and early grave. " After life's fitful fever," and the yellow fever, " she slept well." It was clearly myself, — again begging pardon of Pascal, — who was most to be pitied. — It was / who was sacrificed on the occasion. A lovely girl, of exquisite sensibility, and the finest touch on the piano I ever heard, — a lovely girl, with sterling sense, and fifty thousand pounds sterling, admitted having been sincerely attached to me; yet now, positively rejected me as a husband, cecil. 269 because she had a monster of a brother-in-law, and a sister of hectic constitution ! — I confess I was bitterly mortified, and somewhat indig- nant;— a sincere mourner for the fate of pooi Annie Greysdale, — and a sincere mourner for my own. My sole comfort consisted in the decisive manner in which Sophronia and her family had cut short all further communication between us. — In such affairs, matters ought to be brought to a full stop. Commas and semi- colons only constitute a painful and lingering death : and colons have been voted out of the syntax of Cupid, from the days of Richard- son's novels. — Brevity, the soul of wit, should be the soul of courtship. — I like my love passages to be terse as Tacitus. All that it was necessary to explain to Danby on the occasion was, that my suit was unpros- perous. I knew he had too much delicacy to push his enquiries further : — and would natu- rally attribute my being out of spirits, to being 270 CECIL. out of humour,— the natural consequence of being- in love :- In amore hsec insunt omnia. I remember, however, having the precaution to take Frank Walsingham with me to dine in Connaught-place on the day I had to an- nounce this piece of intelligence to my brother, by way of check to any questions he might be disposed to hazard on the subject. And by the way, that was the first time, (evermore accursed be the day in the kalendar !) he ever saw my niece. I might have spared my trouble.— Danby was engrossed by the event of the day, the sudden death of his friend Lawrence. — Perceiving that I was disposed to be incom- municative concerning the manner of my rejection, he was very willing to drop the subject , — and his attention was soon after- wards as anxiously directed towards the gradual inflammation of public opinion through- CECIL. 271 out Europe, as mine was engrossed by the dangerous illness of the King. For it is not to be supposed that Danby, who, scarcely emerging from boyhood, had foreseen through the progress of European opinion the downfall of Napoleon, should have remained blind to that far more ostensible development of public feeling, which was communicating itself as by an electric chain from capital to capital, dethroning in France and Belgium the Sovereigns who attempted to repel with an iron hand the tremendous fluid which has its origin among the phenomena of Heaven ; and unseating in England an administration which had flattered itself of being able to maintain, in the open daylight of enlightenment and truth, the same hocus pocus deceptions, effective enough by the light of perfumed tapers and amid the velvet draperies of the court of an Exclusive King. Danby had been among the first to unhar- ness himself from the yoke of Toryism, the 272 cecil. moment he perceived that its iron share was about to be driven over the naked breasts of the people. Cassius from bondage did deliver Cassius. Nor 8tony tower nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron Can be retentive to the strength of spirit, which, nurtured in childhood on rightful principles, acquires in manhood the force to perceive that they may be rendered, by untime- liness and misappropriation, principles of w rong ! — But, as Seneca says, — " transcurra- mus solertissimas nugas !" CHAPTER XI. Within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of the King Keeps death his court : and there the antic sits Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp. SlIAKSPEARE- Si paulum potes, illacrimare. — Hon. Quantaque quam parvi faciant discrimina motus : Tantum est hoc regnum quod regibus imperat ipsis ! "Revenons anotre Vvintsorre!" as St. Evre- mont, in his letters to the Duchesse de Mazarin, spells the name of our country-seat of royalty. — " Pour qui les connait?' says a clever French writer, " les senders valent mieux que les grandes routes" "It is only by those wraacquainted with them," quoth Cecil Danby, (a clever English writer), " that the highways of life are preferred to its by-ways.*' Of all wearisome expositions, the existence n 2 274 cecil. of the statue on its pedestal must be the most tedious : — of all human isolations, the emi- nence of a solitary throne the most depressing — Even in health and happiness, a Sovereign, in a state of single cursedness, is but a crowned Robinson Crusoe, and without his Friday. But when sick and sorry, and he begins to perceive that the sympathy of those around him is mere grimace, — Earth's fruits grow bitter ashes in his mouth, And where he lays his head to rest, is strewed With scorpions ! — George the Fourth was exceeding sorrowful, even before the commencement of his sickness. The death of a noble member of his household, an honest man whom he loved and whose end was envolved with events inexpressibly grievous to the King, combined with the languor of coming illness to depress his spirits ; — seeing which, the melancholy frame of mind into which I had myself fallen, recommended me more than usually to his Majesty's favour. CECIL. 275 I confess I was thoroughly discomfited. — The unnatural excitement in which I had sought refuge from the shock of Lady Orming- ton's death, the worry produced by my long suspense touching the decision of the Vavasours, was giving way to a sullen consciousness that the better half of my allotted threescore years and ten had evanished, leaving me neither better nor wiser ; — the more attractive gloss of mind and body wearing away, — unattached and unattaching, — standing alone, In mezzo del cammin' della vita, like Stonehenge, — in the midst of Salisbury plain, — a temple whose worship is obsolete, — desolation before,— dreariness behind. No wonder that the King, gratified by the doleful expression of my countenance under such impressions, should prefer my attendance to that of others whom he better loved, but who for the lives and souls of them could not conceal their impatience of the dulness of the Castle under such circumstances. — 276 cecil. I was with him much,— I was with him often. The world, however, I mean the play- thing world that surrounded us, was mistaken in supposing me to be the depository of per- sonal secrets, important as regarding the wel- fare of eminent individuals and the mighty schooling of mankind. — Had it been so, I should have made no reference to the subject. — But it was not ; and I hazard the allusion only in proof that a single royal whisper is sure to be prolonged by such an endless iteration of echoes, that it might eventually come to pass for one of the orations of Demos- thenes, or the seven hours' speeches of Lord Brougham. — 1 see that the Public is beginning to look inquisitive ; but were I to gratify its curiosity at the cost of propriety and honour, all I should have to relate would amount to little : — like those hieroglyphical inscriptions of Egypt, which, after two dozen centuries have devoted their valuable time and erudition to decypher- cecil. 277 ment, and the expenditure of whole battalions of Savans and the extinction of a few hundreds of learned acaderaiesin the attempt,— are finally resolved into mysteries about as important as " Ptolemy the son of Ptolemy dedicated this temple to the worship of the goddess Isis, in the year when the waters of the Nile rose two feet and a half above their usual level." — I would fain pass over in respectful silence the illness and death of the King. — Monarchs who renounce the crown and sceptre for a hat and cane, are rarely successful in wearing their hat and cane with the ease of private life, or accomplishing its cordial friendships and do- mestic affections. The roar of the lion, though dormant, is too much an object of awe to be thoroughly forgotten ; nor can the hand entitled to sign a death-warrant or confer a pension, ever be pressed in the disinterested fervour of spontaneous attachment. — Some among us were sincerely concerned for the loss of a good master ; some, sincerely concerned for the loss 278 cecil. of a good place ; — and not a few, deeply ap- palled by the substitution of funereal draperies and escutcheons for the festoons of joy and festivity, so recently adorning St. George's Hall. — I saw them terror-struck by the startling facts of sickness, — death, — embalmment, — bu- rial. — They had not imagined that any reality so real could touch the person of Majesty. — The last Sovereign numbered with the dead under that regal roof, had long been civilly deceased ; and more than one worldly trifler among my companions was so accustomed to the deceits of bulletins, and to believe that, as the Woolsack confers infallibility in law, the Presidency of the College must confer infallibi- lity in physic, that they would not believe his Majestv to be in danger, till the proclamation of King William. With such people, Time and Death are allegorical things, good to figure in marble on a stately monument with a scythe and hour glass in their hands; and though admitting kings to be 6 * sigillatim mortales, cecil. 279 cunctim perpetui," they believe the King to be immortal. The 26th of June arrived, and George IV. was released from suffering; — the 15th of July arrived, and Cecil Dan by was released from servitude. — The vail of the temple of worldli- ness was rent in twain ! — Posterity, — who sits like Justice Midas in his arm chair, deciding upon the merits of Pol and Pan, — assigning to sovereigns the place they are to occupy in Lord Mahon's continua- tion of Smollett's continuation of Hume, and the panegyrical discourse of the waxwork show- man in Westminster Abbev, — must decide whether the hearty cheers which hailed the substitution of a flag that had braved the battle and the breeze for the embroidered folds of the purple banner of Pleasure, had any deeper origin than the enthusiasm which invariably accompanies the semi-serious cry of " Le Roi est mort — vive le Roi !" — For in the commencement of every new 280 CECIL. reign, as in the dawn of a new day, the hopes of the public rise, lark-like, warbling and ca- rolling to the skies ; — while the close of a reign resembles the evening twilight, where the me- lancholy bat, Disappointment, is alone astir; preparing to retreat to the rafters of the old barn of Time, to fold its leathern wings in darkness and the shadow of night. One thing is certain. — The domestic position of the new King threw open wide the palace gates, not alone to the pomps, and dignities, and decencies of a female court,— but to the manifestation of those domestic affections which, by uniting the sovereign and his subjects in a more intimate union, diminished the isolation of the throne. Windsor Castle became an ant- hill of Fitzclarences, and One touch of nature made the whole realm kin. The jealousies of the aristocracy had laid in a prodigious stock of contempt for the illegiti- mate family of the King. But such was the CECIL. 281 kindliness and personal merit of those pre- sentenced to unpopularity, that the moralists forgot their cut and dry cant of the mischief of precedents in such cases ; and emulated the indulgence of a Queen, whose virtues entitled her to exercise, in this instance, one of the fairest prerogatives of her sex. What a curious transition in the history of English palaces, from the hyper-refinement of the most heartless of epochs, to the cordial simplicity of the new court! — It was so long since the voices of children and glee of young mothers had resounded in those gilded galle- ries, that Nature seemed to take delight in chasing out the formal train of Art from the precincts wherein she had so glaringly pre- dominated. Never shall I forget the impression produced upon my mind when, a month or so after the decease of my royal master, on waiting upon the King to deliver up certain papers which it was indispensable should pass from my hand to 282 cecil. his own, I saw a joyous train of nurses and children disporting on the sunny slopes ; — and heard the natural intonation of human voices, with Ladies' laughter coming through the air, where formerly the hum of the honey- bee was alone audible. — People laughed and talked and walked there as elsewhere. — I could scarcely believe myself at court ! — At the close of my audience, the King asked me to " take my mutton with him !" — I stood transfixed. The ceremonial of embalming at which I had here been forced to preside, did not half so forcibly convince me that Kings were as other men, as this apostrophe. If the extreme courtliness of the last court were ex- cessive, I am not certain that this reverse of wrong was right. — But between the too much and too little pageantry of courts, let Lord Chamberlains and Lord Mayors' fools deter- mine. — That day, I made my parting bow to Windsor.— I doubt whether the Castle have cecil. 283 since beheld an obeisance executed with a thousandth part so much urbanity and grace. Already, the movement mania was beginning. — Scarcely had the echoes of the Park and Tower guns ceased over the grave of George IV., when the mitraille of Paris became audible. — The whist and shooting parties of Charles X. were strangely interrupted by an outburst of popular indignation such as might well renew the famous dialogue between Louis XVI. and the Due de Liancourt — "Monsieur leDuc, cest done une revolte?" " JVon, Sire! — cest une revolution /" — But what importance has that fearful word revolution since acquired in the ears of Kings !— However, on this occasion, Regicide France condescended to take example from Protestant England ; and Charles X. was dismissed as contemptuously as James II. — It was not, however, the fortunes or misfor- tunes of Charles X. that now distracted my attention. Nothing could exceed my embar- rassment at the coolness with which the 284 cecil. Duchesse de Dijon, on arriving in England with the La Belinayes, in the suite of the royal family, wrote to announce her intention of a visit to Ormington Hall. — To propose such a visit to Lord Ormington, even had I been in Danby's position and he in mine, would have been totally useless ; — for to own the truth, the deportment of the emigrants of the Court of Louis XVIII. towards their Eng- lish protectors, was of a nature to account for the very small number of them who judged it expe- dient to follow the royal family a second time into exile.— But for me to request the hospitality of Ormington Hall for one of the most objection- able accomplices of the levities of my unfortu- nate mother, was wholly out of the question. — I was obliged to project a new tour to the Continent to get out of the scrape of doing the honours of England to people who little de- served them. — But I must do this justice, en passant, to poor Clementine, (to whom I has- tened to offer the succours really at my dis- cecil. 285 posal,) that the most devoted of wives could not have borne her reverses more heroically. — Redoubling in respect towards the man whose name she bore, lest others in his adversity should render him conscious of his personal in- significance,— though doubtless secretly blush- ing for the incapacity which, in the recent crisis, had distinguished the conduct of the most idiotic aide de camp of the most cretin of masters, she never allowed a syllable of blame to escape her lips. —" Vive le Roi — quand meme !" — was still her device ; — exemplifying that gallant but blind and dangerous loyalty of the old aristocracy, which tended only to harden the hearts and weaken the throne of the elder race of Bourbons. — I spent a few hours with the family, facili- tating the arrangements of their journey to Holyrood ; — and among other inquiries relative to the startling events of the Three Days, which had not yet achieved the honour of being called glorious, ventured to ask whether my portly 286 cecil. friend Monsieur le Comte de St. Gratien were among the captured fugitive Ministers of the abdicated King 1 — Clementine replied by a wondering smile: — her mother, the Duchess, by an inquiry where I had been living to be thus ignorant of the state of Parisian men and things. " Are you not aware," interrupted Madame de la Belinaye, " that poor St. Gratien shares with Judas Iscariot and Prince Talleyrand the palm of arch-treachery, — and that he is sur- named the harbinger of revolutions? — Two months ago, he retired from the administra- tion : — and was one of those who proceeded the other day to Neuilly, to propose the throne of France to the Duke of Orleans." " As vicegerent of the kingdom, of course, a fid ei-co mm is for the Due de Bourdeaux," said I ; — " perhaps the best service that could be rendered by so faithful a servant of the King." Madame la Duchesse de Dijon took an im- patient pinch of snuff! cecil. 287 " Should you pass next winter in Paris, mon cher Monsieur Danby," interrupted Monsieur de la Belinaye, in a piteous tone, " instead of seeing the head of St. Gratien fall with those of Polignac, Peyronnet, Chantelauze, and Guernon-Ranville, you will find it crowned with a tri-coloured cockade, — and your friend Madame la Comtesse, in all probability, a lady in waiting !" V No, no ! you do her injustice !" said 1 — re- calling to mind her devoted attachment to Madame ;— adding to myself, in an under tone, — *' faut il que cette pauvre Therhe soit toujour s incomprise .' " I had but one more inquiry to make ; — and I confess it was not without the hope of discover- ing further treachery among those who ought to have rallied round, not the panache blanc, but the tri-cornered hat of the Jesuit King, instead of the tri-coloured flag of his opponents. " Et ce cher Vicomte . ? " —said I, — inferring that, as Clainville was not of their party, he was of the partie liberate. 288 CECIL. " Ah! ce pauvre Vicomte /"—cried La Be- linaye, shrugging his shoulders, *' He was very unfortunate !" " Unfortunate, indeed !" — responded the Duchess, with another pinch of snuff.- " He who might have been killed at the Trocadero, — or even the other day in the attack on the Louvre, the Carrousel, the Palais Bourbon, as others were, — he, who might have fallen en bon gentilhomme on the Place de Louis XV. by a musket ball, as his father did before him by the guillotine, — was actually slaughtered by the lowest vulgar of the populace, while leaving the Marche des Innocens with des- patches for the Hotel de Ville !" — " Despatches which he had undertaken to convey in my place, — for it was to me they were originally intrusted by the Due de Ra- g U se !" — faltered the Count in a dolorous voice. — " But he was always the most obliging fellow in the world! — He would have sacrificed his life for me or Clementine. To be sure, he cecil. 289 " Only figure to yourself, mon cher Monsieur Danby," resumed the Duchess, " that the bodies of the victims were interred indiscrimi- nately on the spot where they fell ; — and that the Vicomte de Clainville, representative of a noblesse of the first crusade, — is lying pile mile with a horde of forts de la Halle and gamins de Paris, in a common grave, over which the butterwomen of Paris will spread their filthy merchandize, for centuries to come. — Ce brave garfon, — ce pauvre Vicomte, — cet excellent Clainville! — Quel sort — quelle infamieT While listening to all this, I stole a glance towards Clementine ; and perceived that, though silent, she was much paler than usual. I had not before noticed that she was attired in family mourning. VOL. i. CHAPTER XII. Upon a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current while it serves, Or lose our ventures. Shakspeare. Finesse, artifice, mystere, Detours, vaine subtilite, — Politique en chose legere, Menagee avec gravite. Soit a parler, soit a se taire Air de suffisance affecte. St. Evremont. And thus had the prognostications of my brother been categorically fulfilled ! — The boa constrictor had roused itself from its lethargy to crush the despotism of old Europe within its coil. The stillness had given way to a storm, whereof the thunders still growled in the distance, while the foreground was encum- bered by livid heaps of dead. France was awake, — Belgium was awake, — and their sovereigns were fugitive before the CECIL. 291 face of the people. England was now awak- ing.— What was to be the result? The Tory party declared its incompetency to defend the throne, by advising the King to refrain from a promised visit to the good city of London. Riots ensued — further dangers impended ; but the good feeling of William IV. and good sense of the Duke of Wellington ceded to the pressure of the times, — and the capital was preserved from insurrection. Such was the preamble of the Reform Bill. Of the personal refinements and mental ac- quirements of the King, it would require the tongue of a Sir John Harris to speak in terms of laudation. But let the honours of a warm heart and conscientious mind abide with the memory of William IV. ; by whose concessions, the country was secured from a revolution, and the cause of Civil and Religious Liberty ad- vanced more surely than by the precipitate enfranchisements of all the revolutions in the world. 292 cecil. I hate to scribble about politics.— IN ine days in ten, one's dinner is spoiled by hearing them discussed ;— and the wisdom of parliament, (like ghosts, a thing more talked about than seen,) might really spare one the trouble of speechifying on paper. Before, however, I resign my crowquill once more for a plume plucked from the downy pinion of Cupid, let ine be permitted to say that I rejoiced heartily in the change of men and measures. Almost every change of Ministers effects some good. The Constitution, if allowed to walk always with the same leg foremost, shuffles on and makes little progress. It is only by an alternation of the right leg and the left, the Whig party and the Tory, that the body politic is held in equilibrium ! A man was now lord of the ascendant, who was accounted lordly even among lords. Lord Grey, like his royal master, was a happy acci- dent. So long as he retained the helm of Government, the baffled Tories had no plea for cecil. 293 raising an anti-democratic panic,— nor could the Exclusives whisper the damnatory epithet of " vulgar," which they applied without cere- mony to the new Court. The Earl was too fine a specimen of the liberalized noble of the nine- teenth century, to run any risk of involvement in the rabble of the radicals. — To carry the Reform Bill, it was indispensable to throw dust in the eyes of those possessed of privileges to renounce ; and the dust thrown by the hand of so well-bred a man was thrown with such' stern suavity, if one may use the expression, that they mistook the refuse of the street for sands of gold. Among those in whom this dust, whatever its quality, produced decided ophthalmia, was Lord Ormington. Thwarted through life in almost every bent of his nature, unable among the free-and-easy habits of the times he had survived to, when even the most pig-tailed of elderly gentlemen are exposed to the bantering of their coterie and badgering of their club, to maintain the moated and ramparted reserve 294 ckcil. of his earlier years, he was like some old fortified town, whose walls have been plucked down and fosses filled up and planted, — looking grimly cheerful and formally easy through the young plantations growing up under its vene- rable nose. One bv one, all the strongholds of his To- ryism had been demolished by the powerful arm of his son. — It was like the devalization of some venerable traveller in a farce. First his coat was torn away, — then his doublet, — eliciting convulsive grimaces from the victim, and laughter from the spectators. And now, to have to utter the "ay" which was to place his darling borough of Rigmarole in Schedule A !— Since the days of Abraham, no such sacrifice had been demanded of a parental heart ! — Dan by however was triumphant ; and as Ariosto says, Fu il vincer sempre raai laudabil cosa Vincasi o per fortuna o per ingegno. His father's conversion, and his own magnifi- cecil. 295 cent speech, were among the memorabilia of Parliamentary Reform ; and though Lord Ormington's old protege Droneby, who had been long mitred, passed his old patrons with a formal bow, or swept his lawn sleeves dis- dainfully past them in the House, I trust both father and son had strength of mind to survive the animosity of the Right Reverend grandfather in God. — I cannot enter into the position or sentiments of such a man as my brother. To be the head of a class, as I was, is a very different thing from being the leader of a party ; and though my inherent self-reliance never left me half a second in doubt as to the eligibility of my plans or rectitude of my principles as the first dandy of my day, — I sometimes feared that even my brother's firmness might not be alto- gether proof against the insolence of those former colleagues, who denounced him as a re- creant and a renegade. Toryism is but the principle applied to poli- 296 cecil. tics which in philosophy lighted the fagots for Galileo. — Those fellows would have burnt my brother if they could. They did burn him in effigy. But burning in effigy constitutes, I be- lieve, one of the indispensable honours of poli- tical martyrdom, preparatory to canonization. If these brewers of mischief could have had their will, they would have raised the waters of strife so high in the land, that the Ark of Reform should eventually find no peaceful Ararat whereon to anchor. I was prevented from realizing my projected trip to the Continent that winter, by the un- quiet state of England. Lord Ormington's Lancashire estates were in a most disturbed condition ; and Danby, between his attentions to his father and the exigencies of the Session, was compelled to absent himself so frequently from home, that he was desirous I should take up my residence in Connaught Place. He was aware of my objections to Hanover Square. — It was perhaps as a pretext to afford me a com- cecil. 297 fortable home, in lieu of the noble one I had lost, that he suggested the plan as an act of grace towards himself. Jane was now in her sixteenth year, and only nominally under the jurisdiction of a. governess. — She took the head of the table, unless on occasion of political dinners ; and adopted from earliest childhood as her father's companion and friend, was as conversational and well bred, as she was pretty and pleasing. — Among the frequenters of my brother's house, her prettiness and pleasingness went for little. The contemporaries of Lord Ormington culti- vated as guests by Danby for his father's sake, — the artists and men of science and letters whom he protected, — even the party men with whom he was inextricably amalgamated, took no further thought of a little girl in a white frock, than my poor mother's dowagers in Hanover Square used to take of the stuffed figure of Bihiche ; — and I remember that, one day when Frank Walsingham, having called o 2 298 cecil. to fetch me to dinner at White's, and found Jane sitting with me over the fire, made some inquiry about her age, I felt annoyed at being forced to admit that I had a niece so nearly approaching towards womanhood! — I was beginning to grow touchy on the score of age ; and though aware that young Chippen- ham, Mereworth's son, was entered at Oxford, and though, alas! certified by a still more dis- agreeable remembrancer of the follies of my Foreign office days that nearly twenty years had elapsed since I became a man of wit and fashion about town, I still chose to believe my- self, what the eyes of the more discriminating sex assured me I remained — Beau, brillant, leste et volage, Aimable et franc comme ou Test au bel age ! — I was still more angry when, at intervals, Frank chose to return to the charge. " Child, if you will," he was pleased to say, in allusion to Jane, — " but she has all the sense cecil. 299 and feeling of a woman.— It is the most highly finished miniature I ever beheld !" — 4f Jane is a good, little, quiet thing," said I, waspishly, " who, half a dozen years hence, may be worth looking after. Miniatures, my dear Frank, are at best trivial things. Come with me, and I will show you one of the finest gallery pictures of the day." And I took him with me to Lady Bretting- ham's, whose husband had been batched in the last baking of Baronets, in gratitude for his I friendliness to the Catholics and enmity to Boroughmongers, — as per haunches of venison and saddles of mutton demonstrated. Through all that stormy session, Lady Bret- tingham had been progressing into importance, by the steady support afforded to the Liberal party, by the excellency and frequency of her political dinners.— " Give me a spot to stand on," said Archimedes of old, "and I will move the world." — Give me a good dinner table to talk at twice a week, and I will per- 300 CECIL. suade any man, not of Clumber-ous extraction, out of his opinions. On entering the House of Commons, or even sitting down to a ministerial banquet, a public man puts himself on his guard, — stoppeth his ears with wax like the wise Ulysses, — and like a stock-broker in a swell mob, thrusts his notes into an inner side-pocket. — But to a well furnished, well established house, like that of Sir Julius and Lady Brettingham, he comes unarmed ; — he feels privileged to resign him- self to the enjoyment of excellent entrees, and the wine so much more likely to be meritorious when the master is his own taster, than where one lies at the mercy of a clerk of the cellar. — Smiled at by her Ladyship, — coaxed by Sir Julius, — diverted by the wit and humour of a Mr. Merriman, whom he little suspects to be the Editor of a leading journal, the country member listens without mistrust. — Spectacles are adjusted to his eyes, nay, the operation of couching is performed so pleasantly, that he is CECIL. 301 not aware of it ; nor is it till the question comes to be debated, a fortnight afterwards, and, brightened by the arguments which have been seething and fermenting in his mind, like Sir Francis Wronghead in the play, " he cries ay when he ought to have cried no," — that the influence of a Brettinghamian dinner becomes apparent. " Let who will make the laws of France, so I have the making of her songs!" — said one of those best aware of the influence of wit over a . French imagination. " Let who will give the law to London," say I_.« so I am allowed to invite her to dinner." — The stomach is her vulnerable point ; and for one measure carried at the point of the bayonet in England, fifty have been enforced at the point of the spit.— The truth is that our do- mestic cookery is so very humdrum, — and our plain cooks are so very plain, that any digres- sion into a fairer field becomes dangerously attractive. — Such viands as those of Sir Julius 302 CECIL. and Lady Brettingham were fatal to the anti- reformers, as the insane root of Egypt to the legions of Antony. — I am not sure, by the way, — for I love to dive into the root of a mystery, — whether there may not have been miching malicho in John Mur- ray's ten thousand editions of Mrs. Rundell ! — All the abominations concocted in those pep- pered and salted pages, may have been, after all, but a profound Metternichism of the Tories to expose the appetites of the nation to the temptations of official gastronomy! — An Em- peror of China would perhaps condemn the designing bibliopole to be hashed into small pieces and tossed up in a ragout, for a crime of this nature, so far more heinous than the importation of opium ; — for no one can doubt that, after going through a severe course, or three courses of Mrs. Rundell, Cincinnatus himself would sell his birth-right, or his borough, for a mess of Potage a la Reine. Danby was too apt to underrate the influence CECIL. 303 of such party accessories. Like all really great men, Danby despised that which was ingenious in action, as he avoided all that was paradoxical in discourse. — There was not a cranny in his brain,— a fibre in his heart,— for any thing but truth. — It was the simplicity of an Ionic Temple ! — Frank Walsingham, as I expected, was amazingly taken by the pleasurableness of the Brettinghams' house. — He had not yet tra- velled, and consequently was not aware that it , presented only a pale imitation of Parisian society. Luxury and grace employed as ara- besques and gilding to disguise the unsightliness of political and official life, constituted its charm.— One met cleverer men there than at other pleasant houses; and prettier women, than at other bureaux d'esprit. — I was puzzled to guess what induced Lady Brettingham to welcome my friend Frank with such very open arms ; for we were alike obso- lete as a full bottomed wig, without so much 304 CECIL. influence now at the Pavilion or in Stable Yard, as would have promoted a turnspit. — But after listening twenty minutes to the tone of her bland cajolery, — of which cypher, experience had furnished me with the key, — I saw that he was a mere vestibule to the door at which she wanted to knock ; his brother, Lord Rother- hithe, being one of the sunken rocks over which the Brothers of the Trinity House of Reform, had set up a buoy. — Rotherhithe was at present a dark horse : — no one as yet quite understood Rotherhithe. — He was one of those who are clever enough to hold their tongues; and a silent bird enjoys in the aviary the benefit of a doubt whether his notes, if he did choose to sing, would be those of the nightingale or the crow. — He was sup- posed to think the more for talking so little ; and his party were sadly afraid that all his thinking might end in having an opinion of his own. — There was a sort of cool intractability about him that excited their alarm. — A man CECIL. 305 who fancies himself wiser than his neighbours, is apt to be tempted by the charm of prohi- bition, to break out into opposition to his family politics : and whereas all the Walsingham tribe were stiff an ti- re formers, there was every pro- bability that the one word which Rotherhithe did allow himself to speak, might afford im- portant support to the Liberal interests. — Such a piece of proselytism was worthy the hands of Lady Brettingham. Rotherhithe was the sort of fellow I detested.— I hate a silent man. — Much has been said of the weariness of talking to the blind ; but what is the vacuity of a countenance irresponsive to your efforts, compared with the reserve of a soul that gives no sign of sympathy ? — I thought it right, however, to afford some hint to Frank of the nature of Mariana's pro- jects; for it is a pardonable malice to circum- vent the manoeuvres of a woman who has been insolent enough to take one for a dupe. — Walsingham was too much in conceit with 306 CECIL. himself and the world to be angry with either her or me. — " Is that her line of policy ?" said he, laugh- ing. " Then, by Heaven, I could find it in my heart to gratify her by bringing Rotherhithe (against whom I have just now a brotherly grudge for making my father preserve his pheasants against his younger sons,) to her house. — Ro. has a nervous horror of having salt dropped upon his tail, either in matters of love or politics. — He is terribly afraid of being swallowed alive as a parti, — or by a party. — It would be great fun to see the vote-hunt. — I should like to get Landseer hereto paint it:— a new edition of terrier and rat.'' " At all events, our fair friend has good white teeth to show," said I. " Do not, how- ever, punish your brother at the risk of a vote to the good cause. If you think him unde- cided, bring him rather to Connaught Place. — Danby seems to possess the magic power of solidifying a morass by planting his foot upon CECIL. 307 it. — I hardly ever saw a timid mind resist the closeness of his reasoning, or the perspicuous simplicity of his language. — Nothing vague, — nothing inconclusive. — By assigning bounds to a question, he is able to elucidate every obscure corner, so as to satisfy the misgivings of people whom the mysterious nature of an argument ending in the clouds, overpowers with nervous terror." " Your arguments, my dear fellow, are almost too cloudy for me !" cried Frank, laughing. " But if you know your own brother, you don't know mine ; and I can tell you that if I wanted to assist the Reform cause with his vote, I would tie him down for the next six weeks to the society of my father's set, — who would pro- bably argue him into opposition." — I could almost understand this myself; for I swear there were moments when the truisms of that most comu;on-place of common place- men, my old friend Lord Mereworth, inclined me to inscribe on my banner, "Let Old Sarum 308 CECIL, flourish/' — Mere worth was one of those very slow coaches who resume every question from the epoch of the deluge ; and waste one's time and attention by proving what nobody dis- putes ; a man born a century too late. Pereant qui nostra ante nos dixerunt ! — An acquaintance of some standing with my brother had luckily somewhat enlarged his political views ; and the solemn respectability of his air, diction, and condition, consequently rendered him valuable as a stone roller to smooth the surface of the noble road projected by abler engineers.— I spent a good deal of my time at his house in Grosvenor Square. — It was one of those clockwork establishments which do credit to the orderliness of the Order. — The early musical predilections of the Mereworths seemed to have trained them to habits of keeping time and tune ; -for the punctuality of their house and engagements was regulated with the exactness CECIL. 309 of crotches, quavers, and demi-semiquavers. Not a variation in their hours, or epochs of coming to town or leaving it, from the days when I yachted with them in the Mediterra- nean, till now. — It was perhaps the monotonous tranquillity of these modes of life which caused the hours, thus admirably disciplined, to pass unfelt over the head of Lady Mere worth. — The serenity of nature which had rendered her eyes so in- expressive twenty years before, at Maybush Lodge, caused them still to wear the same in- variable and mildly pleasing expression. — Mereworth was already a middle-aged man, — bald and prosy; — I, worse, — for I did not love to show myself in public without a considerable expenditure of time and Delcroix in getting up. But Lady Mereworth looked almost as young as ever ; — Time had not thinned her flowing hair j her skin was still transparent as porcelain ; — her brow still smooth as the verse of Rogers. 310 CECIL. Just then, when almost every house one entered was rabid with politics, — a porcupine's nest of contending principles or interests, — it was agreeable enough to take refuge in that sleepy drawing-room of hers ; and find her always seated on the same soft sofa, with the same soft smile, and the same soft worsted work in her lap. It was like contemplating a Calm by Vandervelde, after the billowy, foam- ing, frothing, rock-rending, pine-splitting cata- racts of Ruysdael ;— a moral lullaby, — a Riposo in a land of Canaan. — In Connaught Place, they talked too much sense for me ; elsewhere, too much nonsense. — Lady Mereworth possessed a sort of mezzo termine evenness of discourse, that called for no exercise of thought or feeling to attain its level , — the female counterpart of Mere worth's sober mediocrity. — What a charming compa- nion for an indolent man in sunny weather ! — What can a fellow desire more, after being CECIL. 311 chattered to death in the House, or at his club, — distracted by the rattle of a dice box, or drumming of an orchestra, - than to find a per- petual smile and gentle voice welcome him to a snuggery, where not a discordant sound or sight has leave to enter ! — I no longer wondered that my friend Mere- worth had turned out so domestic a man.— They had no daughters to engage the attention of the Countess ; — their sons were at school; — there was nothing to divide with him the atten- tion of The kind fair friend by nature mark'd his own. Deeply impressed by the charm of his do- mestic sanctuary, I was never weary of return- ing to the contemplation. — 1 used to make my appearance in Grosvenor Square every day, at the same hour, to enquire whether Mereworth were gone down to Boodle's or the House ; — and usually remained listening to his wife's 312 CECIL. answer in the affirmative, till, an hour or two afterwards, her carriage was announced. — It seemed a matter of course that I should come. It seemed a matter of course that every thing in that house should become a matter of course. — My daily visits were only a portion of the routine of the establishment. — The porter started up to open the door the moment my cabriolet entered the square. In a very short time, I dare say the door would have opened of itself. — I was not molested by much rivality. Lady Mereworth was too indolent and too home- staying to disturb herself with keeping up the system of morning visiting that renders many houses in London as public as a bazaar; nor was there much attraction in a gentle quiet woman of seven and thirty, to the dashing legions of guardsmen, or other idlers of the same capacity. — I had it all to myself. — I was amazingly happy ! — CECIL. 313 How different the even tenor of a gentle sentiment like this, from the distracting alter- nations of a passion the very quintessence of which resides in sighs and torments, — spasi- mando spasimar, — which finds no rhyme for heart but dart or smart : — a zephyr to a sirocco, — the Bay of Naples to the Bay of Biscay, O ! — " Ut maris tranquillitas intelli- gitur, nulla, ne minimi quidem, aura fluctus commovente : sic animi quietus et placatus status cernitur, quum pertubatio nulla est qua moveri queat." — I trust my readers are conscious of the clever circumbendibus by which I have contrived to make it manifest, without actually announcing so unpleasant a fact, that the dangerous viva- cities of Cecil the coxcomb were subsiding ; — i. e. that I had attained my fortieth year.— I shall be extremely obliged to the junior branches of my readers to refrain from a smile. —Walter Scott did not become a poet till he VOL.1. p 314 CECIL. was eight and twenty : — it would be invi- dious to specify which of the mighty con- querors of the day, became a Lovelace at forty- two ! — END OF VOL. I. G. NORMAN. PRINTER, MAIDEN LANE, COVENT GARDEN. ■ a 01 12 046406713