A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Ernest Maltravers, Book 1

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Ernest Maltravers, Book 1




Cleveland was indeed, if not a man of high and original genius, at least
very superior to the generality of patrician authors. In retiring,
himself, from frequent exercise in the arena, he gave up his mind with
renewed zest to the thoughts and masterpieces of others. From a
well-read man, he became a deeply instructed one. Metaphysics, and some
of the material sciences, added new treasures to information more light
and miscellaneous, and contributed to impart weight and dignity to a
mind that might otherwise have become somewhat effeminate and frivolous.
His social habits, his clear sense, and benevolence of judgment, made
him also an exquisite judge of all those indefinable nothings, or little
things, that, formed into a total, become knowledge of the Great World.
I say the Great World--for of the world without the circle of the great,
Cleveland naturally knew but little. But of all that related to that
subtle orbit in which gentlemen and ladies move in elevated and ethereal
order, Cleveland was a profound philosopher. It was the mode with many
of his admirers to style him the Horace Walpole of the day. But though
in some of the more external and superficial points of character they
were alike, Cleveland had considerably less cleverness, and infinitely
more heart.

The late Mr. Maltravers, a man not indeed of literary habits but an
admirer of those who were--an elegant, high-bred, hospitable /seigneur
de province/--had been one of the earliest of Cleveland's
friends--Cleveland had been his fag at Eton--and he found Hal
Maltravers--(Handsome Hal!) had become the darling of the clubs, when he
made his own /debut/ in society. They were inseparable for a season or
two--and when Mr. Maltravers married, and enamoured of country pursuits,
proud of his old hall, and sensibly enough conceiving that he was a
greater man in his own broad lands than in the republican aristocracy of
London, settled peaceably at Lisle Court, Cleveland corresponded with
him regularly, and visited him twice a year. Mrs. Maltravers died in
giving birth to Ernest, her second son. Her husband loved her tenderly,
and was long inconsolable for her loss. He could not bear the sight of
the child that had cost him so dear a sacrifice. Cleveland and his
sister, Lady Julia Danvers, were residing with him at the time of this
melancholy event; and with judicious and delicate kindness, Lady Julia
proposed to place the unconscious offender amongst her own children for
some months. The proposition was accepted, and it was two years before
the infant Ernest was restored to the paternal mansion. During the
greater part of that time, he had gone through all the events and
revolutions of baby life under the bachelor roof of Frederick Cleveland.

The result of this was, that the latter loved the child like a father.
Ernest's first intelligible word hailed Cleveland as "papa;" and when
the urchin was at length deposited at Lisle Court, Cleveland talked all
the nurses out of breath with admonitions, and cautions, and
injunctions, and promises, and threats, which might have put many a
careful mother to the blush. This circumstance formed a new tie between
Cleveland and his friend. Cleveland's visits were now three times a
year instead of twice. Nothing was done for Ernest without Cleveland's
advice. He was not even breeched till Cleveland gave his grave consent.
Cleveland chose his school, and took him to it,--and he spent a week of
every vacation in Cleveland's house. The boy never got into a scrape,
or won a prize, or wanted /a tip/, or coveted a book, but what Cleveland
was the first to know of it. Fortunately, too, Ernest manifested by
times tastes which the graceful author thought similar to his own. He
early developed very remarkable talents, and a love for learning--though
these were accompanied with a vigour of life and soul--an energy--a
daring--which gave Cleveland some uneasiness, and which did not appear
to him at all congenial with the moody shyness of an embryo genius, or
the regular placidity of a precocious scholar. Meanwhile the relation
between father and son was rather a singular one. Mr. Maltravers had
overcome his first, not unnatural, repugnance to the innocent cause of
his irremediable loss. He was now fond and proud of his boy--as he was
of all things that belonged to him. He spoiled and petted him even more
than Cleveland did. But he interfered very little with his education or
pursuits. His eldest son, Cuthbert, did not engross all his heart, but
occupied all his care. With Cuthbert he connected the heritage of his
ancient name, and the succession of his ancestral estates. Cuthbert was
not a genius, nor intended to be one; he was to be an accomplished
gentleman, and a great proprietor. The father understood Cuthbert, and
could see clearly both his character and career. He had no scruple in
managing his education, and forming his growing mind. But Ernest
puzzled him. Mr. Maltravers was even a little embarrassed in the boy's
society; he never quite overcame that feeling of strangeness towards him
which he had experienced when he first received him back from Cleveland,
and took Cleveland's directions about his health and so forth. It
always seemed to him as if his friend shared his right to the child; and
he thought it a sort of presumption to scold Ernest, though he very
often swore at Cuthbert. As the younger son grew up, it certainly was
evident that Cleveland did understand him better than his own father
did; and so, as I have before said, on Cleveland the father was not
displeased passively to shift the responsibility of the rearing.

Perhaps Mr. Maltravers might not have been so indifferent, had Ernest's
prospects been those of a younger son in general. If a profession had
been necessary for him, Mr. Maltravers would have been naturally anxious
to see him duly fitted for it. But from a maternal relation Ernest
inherited an estate of about four thousand pounds a year; and he was
thus made independent of his father. This loosened another tie between
them; and so by degrees Mr. Maltravers learned to consider Ernest less
as his own son, to be advised or rebuked, praised or controlled, than as
a very affectionate, promising, engaging boy, who, somehow or other,
without any trouble on his part, was very likely to do great credit to
his family, and indulge his eccentricities upon four thousand pounds a
year. The first time that Mr. Maltravers was seriously perplexed about
him was when the boy, at the age of sixteen, having taught himself
German, and intoxicated his wild fancies with /Werter/ and /The
Robbers/, announced his desire, which sounded very like a demand, of
going to Gottingen instead of to Oxford. Never were Mr. Maltravers's
notions of a proper and gentlemanlike finish to education more
completely and rudely assaulted. He stammered out a negative, and
hurried to his study to write a long letter to Cleveland, who, himself
an Oxford prize-man, would, he was persuaded, see the matter in the same
light. Cleveland answered the letter in person: listened in silence to
all the father had to say, and then strolled through the park with the
young man. The result of the latter conference was, that Cleveland
declared in favour of Ernest.

"But, my dear Frederick," said the astonished father, "I thought the boy
was to carry off all the prizes at Oxford?"

"I carried off some, Maltravers; but I don't see what good they did me."

"Oh, Cleveland!"

"I am serious."

"But it is such a very odd fancy."

"Your son is a very odd young man."

"I fear he is so--I fear he is, poor fellow! But what will he learn at
Gottingen?"

"Languages and Independence," said Cleveland.

"And the classics--the classics--you are such an excellent Grecian!"

"There are great Grecians in Germany," answered Cleveland; "and Ernest
cannot well unlearn what he knows already. My dear Maltravers, the boy
is not like most clever young men. He must either go through action,
and adventure, and excitement in his own way, or he will be an idle
dreamer, or an impracticable enthusiast all his life. Let him
alone.--So Cuthbert is gone into the Guards?"

"But he went first to Oxford."

"Humph! What a fine young man he is!"

"Not so tall as Ernest, but--"

"A handsome face," said Cleveland. "He is a son to be proud of in one
way, as I hope Ernest will be in another. Will you show me your new
hunter?"

* * * * *

It was to the house of this gentleman, so judiciously made his guardian,
that the student of Gottingen now took his melancholy way.



CHAPTER XIII.

"But if a little exercise you choose,
Some zest for ease, 'tis not forbidden here;
Amid the groves you may indulge the Muse,
Or tend the blooms and deck the vernal year."
/Castle of Indolence/.

THE house of Mr. Cleveland was an Italian villa adapted to an English
climate. Through an Ionic arch you entered a domain of some eighty or a
hundred acres in extent, but so well planted and so artfully disposed,
that you could not have supposed the unseen boundaries inclosed no
ampler a space. The road wound through the greenest sward, in which
trees of venerable growth were relieved by a profusion of shrubs, and
flowers gathered into baskets intertwined with creepers, or blooming
from classic vases, placed with a tasteful care in such spots as
required the /filling up/, and harmonised well with the object chosen.
Not an old ivy-grown pollard, not a modest and bending willow, but was
brought out, as it were, into a peculiar feature by the art of the
owner. Without being overloaded, or too minutely elaborate (the common
fault of the rich man's villa), the whole place seemed one diversified
and cultivated garden; even the air almost took a different odour from
different vegetation, with each winding of the road; and the colours of
the flowers and foliage varied with every view.

At length, when, on a lawn sloping towards a glassy lake overhung by
limes and chestnuts, and backed by a hanging wood, the house itself came
in sight, the whole prospect seemed suddenly to receive its finishing
and crowning feature. The house was long and low. A deep peristyle
that supported the roof extended the whole length, and being raised
above the basement had the appearance of a covered terrace; broad
flights of steps, with massive balustrades, supporting vases of aloes
and orange-trees, led to the lawn; and under the peristyle were ranged
statues, Roman antiquities and rare exotics. On this side the lake
another terrace, very broad, and adorned, at long intervals, with urns
and sculpture, contrasted the shadowy and sloping bank beyond; and
commanded, through unexpected openings in the trees, extensive views of
the distant landscape, with the stately Thames winding through the
midst. The interior of the house corresponded with the taste without.
All the principal rooms, even those appropriated to sleep, were on the
same floor. A small but lofty and octagonal hall conducted to a suite
of four rooms. At one extremity was a moderately-sized dining-room with
a ceiling copied from the rich and gay colours of Guido's "Hours;" and
landscapes painted by Cleveland himself, with no despicable skill, were
let into the walls. A single piece of sculpture copied from the Piping
Faun, and tinged with a flesh-like glow by purple and orange draperies
behind it, relieved without darkening the broad and arched window which
formed its niche. This communicated with a small picture-room, not
indeed rich with those immortal gems for which princes are candidates;
for Cleveland's fortune was but that of a private gentleman, though,
managed with a discreet if liberal economy, it sufficed for all his
elegant desires. But the pictures had an interest beyond that of art,
and their subjects were within the reach of a collector of ordinary
opulence. They made a series of portraits--some originals, some copies
(and the copies were often the best) of Cleveland's favourite authors.
And it was characteristic of the man, that Pope's worn and thoughtful
countenance looked down from the central place of honour. Appropriately
enough, this room led into the library, the largest room in the house,
the only one indeed that was noticeable from its size, as well as its
embellishments. It was nearly sixty feet in length. The bookcases were
crowned with bronze busts, while at intervals statues, placed in open
arches, backed with mirrors, gave the appearance of galleries, opening
from the book-lined walls, and introduced an inconceivable air of
classic lightness and repose into the apartment; with these arches the
windows harmonised so well, opening on the peristyle, and bringing into
delightful view the sculpture, the flowers, the terraces, and the lake
without, that the actual prospects half seduced you into the belief that
they were designs by some master-hand of the poetical gardens that yet
crown the hills of Rome. Even the colouring of the prospects on a sunny
day favoured the delusion, owing to the deep, rich hues of the simple
draperies, and the stained glass of which the upper panes of the windows
were composed. Cleveland was especially fond of sculpture; he was
sensible, too, of the mighty impulse which that art has received in
Europe within the last half century. He was even capable of asserting
the doctrine, not yet sufficiently acknowledged in this country, that
Flaxman surpassed Canova. He loved sculpture, too, not only for its own
beauty, but for the beautifying and intellectual effect that it produces
wherever it is admitted. It is a great mistake, he was wont to say, in
collectors of statues, to arrange them /pele mele/ in one long
monotonous gallery. The single relief, or statue, or bust, or simple
urn, introduced appropriately in the smallest apartment we inhabit,
charms us infinitely more than those gigantic museums, crowded into
rooms never entered but for show, and without a chill, uncomfortable
shiver. Besides, this practice of galleries, which the herd consider
orthodox, places sculpture out of the patronage of the public. There
are not a dozen people who can afford galleries. But very moderately
affluent gentlemen can afford a statue or a bust. The influence, too,
upon a man's mind and taste, created by the constant and habitual view
of monuments of the only imperishable art which resorts to physical
materials, is unspeakable. Looking upon the Greek marble, we become
acquainted, almost insensibly, with the character of the Greek life and
literature. That Aristides, that Genius of Death, that fragment of the
unrivalled Psyche, are worth a thousand Scaligers!

"Do you ever look at the Latin translation when you read Aeschylus?"
said a schoolboy once to Cleveland.

"That is my Latin translation," said Cleveland, pointing to the Laocoon.

The library opened at the extreme end to a small cabinet for curiosities
and medals, which, still in a straight line, conducted to a long
belvidere, terminating in a little circular summer-house, that, by a
sudden wind of the lake below, hung perpendicularly over its transparent
tide, and, seen from the distance, appeared almost suspended on air, so
light were its slender columns and arching dome. Another door from the
library opened upon a corridor which conducted to the principal
sleeping-chambers; the nearest door was that of Cleveland's private
study communicating with his bedroom and dressing-closet. The other
rooms were appropriated to, and named after, his several friends.

Mr. Cleveland had been advised by a hasty line of the movements of his
ward, and he received the young man with a smile of welcome, though his
eyes were moist and his lips trembled--for the boy was like his
father!--a new generation had commenced for Cleveland!

"Welcome, my dear Ernest," said he; "I am so glad to see you, that I
will not scold you for your mysterious absence. This is your room, you
see your name over the door; it is a larger one than you used to have,
for you are a man now; and there is your German sanctum adjoining--for
Schiller and the meerschaum!--a bad habit that, the meerschaum! but not
worse than the Schiller, perhaps. You see you are in the peristyle
immediately. The meerschaum is good for flowers, I fancy, so have no
scruple. Why, my dear boy, how pale you are! Be cheered--be cheered.
Well, I must go myself, or you will infect me."

Cleveland hurried away; he thought of his lost friend. Ernest sank upon
the first chair, and buried his face in his hands. Cleveland's valet
entered, and bustled about and unpacked the portmanteau, and arranged
the evening dress. But Ernest did not look up nor speak; the first bell
sounded; the second tolled unheard upon his ear. He was thoroughly
overcome by his emotions. The first notes of Cleveland's kind voice had
touched upon a soft chord, that months of anxiety and excitement had
strained to anguish, but had never woke to tears. His nerves were
shattered--those strong young nerves! He thought of his dead father
when he first saw Cleveland; but when he glanced round the room prepared
for him, and observed the care for his comfort, and the tender
recollection of his most trifling peculiarities everywhere visible,
Alice, the watchful, the humble, the loving, the lost Alice rose before
him. Surprised at his ward's delay, Cleveland entered the room; there
sat Ernest still, his face buried in his hands. Cleveland drew them
gently away, and Maltravers sobbed like an infant. It was an easy
matter to bring tears to the eyes of that young man: a generous or a
tender thought, an old song, the simplest air of music, sufficed for
that touch of the mother's nature. But the vehement and awful passion
which belongs to manhood when thoroughly unmanned--this was the first
time in which the relief of that stormy bitterness was known to him!



CHAPTER XIV.

"Musing full sadly in his sullen mind."--SPENSER.

"There forth issued from under the altar-smoke
A dreadful fiend."--/Ibid. on Superstition/.

NINE times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the
narrow gulf from Youth to Manhood. That interval is usually occupied by
an ill-placed or disappointed affection. We recover, and we find
ourselves a new being. The intellect has been hardened by the fire
through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every
passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have
undergone.

But Maltravers was yet on the bridge, and, for a time, both mind and
body were prostrate and enfeebled. Cleveland had the sagacity to
discover that the affections had their share in the change that he
grieved to witness, but he had also the delicacy not to force himself
into the young man's confidence. But by little and little his kindness
so completely penetrated the heart of his ward, that Ernest one evening
told his whole tale. As a man of the world, Cleveland perhaps rejoiced
that it was no worse, for he had feared some existing entanglement
perhaps with a married woman. But as a man who was better than the
world in general, he sympathised with the unfortunate girl whom Ernest
pictured to him in faithful and unflattered colours, and he long forbore
consolations which he foresaw would be unavailing. He felt, indeed,
that Ernest was not a man "to betray the noon of manhood to a
myrtle-shade:"--that with so sanguine, buoyant, and hardy a temperament,
he would at length recover from a depression which, if it could bequeath
a warning, might as well not be wholly divested of remorse. And he also
knew that few become either great authors or great men (and he fancied
Ernest was born to be one or the other) without the fierce emotions and
passionate struggles, through which the Wilhelm Meister of real life
must work out his apprenticeship, and attain the Master Rank. But at
last he had serious misgivings about the health of his ward. A constant
and spectral gloom seemed bearing the young man to the grave. It was in
vain that Cleveland, who secretly desired him to thirst for a public
career, endeavoured to arouse his ambition--the boy's spirit seemed
quite broken--and the visit of a political character, the mention of a
political work, drove him at once into his solitary chamber. At length
his mental disease took a new turn. He became, of a sudden, most
morbidly and fanatically--I was about to say religious: but that is not
the word; let me call it pseudo-religious. His strong sense and
cultivated taste did not allow him to delight in the raving tracts of
illiterate fanatics--and yet out of the benign and simple elements of
the Scripture he conjured up for himself a fanaticism quite as gloomy
and intense. He lost sight of God the Father, and night and day dreamed
only of God the Avenger. His vivid imagination was perverted to raise
out of its own abyss phantoms of colossal terror. He shuddered aghast
at his own creations, and earth and heaven alike seemed black with the
everlasting wrath. These symptoms completely baffled and perplexed
Cleveland. He knew not what remedy to administer--and to his
unspeakable grief and surprise he found that Ernest, in the true spirit
of his strange bigotry, began to regard Cleveland--the amiable, the
benevolent Cleveland--as one no less out of the pale of grace than
himself. His elegant pursuits, his cheerful studies, were considered by
the young but stern enthusiast as the miserable recreations of Mammon
and the world. There seemed every probability that Ernest Maltravers
would die in a madhouse or, at best, succeed to the delusions without
the cheerful intervals of Cowper.



CHAPTER XV.

"Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless--unfixed in principles and place."--DRYDEN.

"Whoever acquires a very great number of ideas interesting to
the society in which he lives, will be regarded in that society
as a man of abilities."--HELVETIUS.

IT was just when Ernest Maltravers was so bad that he could not be worse
that a young man visited Temple Grove. The name of this young man was
Lumley Ferrers, his age was about twenty-six, his fortune about eight
hundred a year--he followed no profession. Lumley Ferrers had not what
is usually called genius; that is, he had no enthusiasm; and if the word
talent be properly interpreted as meaning the talent of doing something
better than others, Ferrers had not much to boast of on that score. He
had no talent for writing, nor for music, nor painting, nor the ordinary
round of accomplishments; neither at present had he displayed much of
the hard and useful talent for action and business. But Ferrers had
what is often better than either genius or talent; he had a powerful and
most acute mind.

He had, moreover, great animation of manner, high physical spirits, a
witty, odd, racy vein of conversation, determined assurance, and
profound confidence in his own resources. He was fond of schemes,
stratagems, and plots--they amused and excited him--his power of
sarcasm, and of argument, too, was great, and he usually obtained an
astonishing influence over those with whom he was brought in contact.
His high spirits and a most happy frankness of bearing carried off and
disguised his leading vices of character, which were callousness to
whatever was affectionate and insensibility to whatever was moral.
Though less learned than Maltravers, he was on the whole a very
instructed man. He mastered the surfaces of many sciences, became
satisfied of their general principles, and threw the study aside never
to be forgotten (for his memory was like a vice), but never to be
prosecuted any further. To this he added a general acquaintance with
whatever is most generally acknowledged as standard in ancient or modern
literature. What is admired only by a few, Lumley never took the
trouble to read. Living amongst trifles, he made them interesting and
novel by his mode of viewing and treating them. And here indeed was /a/
talent--it was the talent of social life--the talent of enjoyment to the
utmost with the least degree of trouble to himself. Lumley Ferrers was
thus exactly one of those men whom everybody calls exceedingly clever,
and yet it would puzzle one to say in what he was so clever. It was,
indeed, that nameless power which belongs to ability, and which makes
one man superior, on the whole, to another, though in many details by no
means remarkable. I think it is Goethe who says somewhere that, in
reading the life of the greatest genius, we always find that he was
acquainted with some men superior to himself, who yet never attained to
general distinction. To the class of these mystical superior men Lumley
Ferrers might have belonged; for though an ordinary journalist would
have beaten him in the arts of composition, few men of genius, however
eminent, could have felt themselves above Ferrers in the ready grasp and
plastic vigour of natural intellect. It only remains to be said of this
singular young man, whose character as yet was but half developed, that
he had seen a great deal of the world, and could live at ease and in
content with all tempers and ranks; fox-hunters or scholars, lawyers or
poets, patricians or /parvenus/, it was all one to Lumley Ferrers.

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