Pelham, Volume 2.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Pelham, Volume 2.
Meanwhile, to return to myself--from which dear little person, I very
seldom, even in imagination, digress--I found Lord Vincent at
Galignani's, carefully looking over "Choice Extracts from the best
English Authors."
"Ah, my good fellow!" said he, "I am delighted to see you; I made such a
capital quotation just now: the young Benningtons were drowning a poor
devil of a puppy; the youngest (to whom the mother belonged) looked on
with a grave earnest face, till the last kick was over, and then burst
into tears. 'Why do you cry so?' said I. 'Because it was so cruel in us
to drown the poor puppy!' replied the juvenile Philocunos. 'Pooh," said
I, "'Quid juvat errores mersa jam puppe fateri.'" Was it not good?--you
remember it in Claudian, eh, Pelham? Think of its being thrown away on
those Latinless young lubbers! Have you seen any thing of Mr. Thornton
lately?"
"No," said I, "I've not, but I am determined to have that pleasure soon."
"You will do as you please," said Vincent, "but you will be like the
child playing with edged tools."
"I am not a child," said I, "so the simile is not good. He must be the
devil himself, or a Scotchman at least, to take me in."
Vincent shook his head. "Come and dine with me at the Rocher," said he;
"we are a party of six--choice spirits all."
"Volontiers; but we can stroll in the Tuileries first, if you have no
other engagement."
"None," said Vincent, putting his arm in mine.
As we passed up the Rue de la Paix, we met Sir Henry Millington, mounted
on a bay horse, as stiff as himself, and cantering down the street as if
he and his steed had been cut out of pasteboard together.
"I wish," said Vincent, (to borrow Luttrel's quotation,) "that that
master of arts would 'cleanse his bosom of that perilous stuff.' I should
like to know in what recess of that immense mass now cantering round the
corner is the real body of Sir Henry Millington. I could fancy the poor
snug little thing shrinking within, like a guilty conscience. Ah, well
says Juvenal,
"'Mors sola fatetur Quantula sint hominum corpuscula.'"
"He has a superb head, though," I replied. I like to allow that other
people are handsome now and then--it looks generous."
"Yes," said Vincent, "for a barber's block: but here comes Mrs. C--me,
and her beautiful daughter--those are people you ought to know, if you
wish to see human nature a little relieved from the frivolities which
make it in society so like a man milliner. Mrs. C--has considerable
genius, combined with great common sense."
"A rare union," said I.
"By no means," replied Vincent. "It is a cant antithesis in opinion to
oppose them to one another; but, so far as mere theoretical common sense
is concerned, I would much sooner apply to a great poet or a great orator
for advice on matter of business, than any dull plodder who has passed
his whole life in a counting-house. Common sense is only a modification
of talent--genius is an exaltation of it: the difference is, therefore,
in the degree, not nature. But to return to Mrs. C--; she writes
beautiful poetry--almost impromptu; draws excellent caricatures;
possesses a laugh for whatever is ridiculous, but never loses a smile for
whatever is good. Placed in very peculiar situations, she has passed
through each with a grace and credit which make her best eulogium. If she
possesses one quality higher than intellect, it is her kindness of heart:
no wonder indeed, that she is so really clever--those trees which are the
soundest at the core produce the finest fruits, and the most beautiful
blossoms."
"Lord Vincent grows poetical," thought I--"how very different he really
is to that which he affects to be in the world; but so it is with every
one--we are all like the ancient actors: let our faces be ever so
beautiful, we must still wear a mask."
After an hour's walk, Vincent suddenly recollected that he had a
commission of a very important nature in the Rue J. J. Rousseau. This
was--to buy a monkey. "It is for Wormwood," said he, "who has written me
a long letter, describing its' qualities and qualifications. I suppose he
wants it for some practical joke--some embodied bitterness--God forbid I
should thwart him in so charitable a design!"
"Amen," said I; and we proceeded together to the monkey-fancier. After
much deliberation we at last decided upon the most hideous animal I ever
beheld--it was of a--no, I will not attempt to describe it--it would be
quite impossible! Vincent was so delighted with our choice that he
insisted upon carrying it away immediately.
"Is it quite quiet?" I asked.
"Comme un oiseau," said the man.
We called a fiacre--paid for monsieur Jocko, and drove to Vincent's
apartments; there we found, however, that his valet had gone out and
taken the key.
"Hang it," said Vincent, "it does not signify! We'll carry le petit
monsieur with us to the Rocher."
Accordingly we all three once more entered the fiacre, and drove to the
celebrated restaurateur's of the Rue Mont Orgueil. O, blissful
recollections of that dinner! how at this moment you crowd upon my
delighted remembrance! Lonely and sorrowful as I now sit, digesting with
many a throe the iron thews of a British beef-steak--more anglico--
immeasurably tough--I see the grateful apparitions of Escallopes de
Saumon and Laitances de Carps rise in a gentle vapour before my eyes!
breathing a sweet and pleasant odour, and contrasting the dream-like
delicacies of their hue and aspect, with the dire and dure realities
which now weigh so heavily on the region below my heart! And thou, most
beautiful of all--thou evening star of entremets--thou that delightest in
truffles, and gloriest in a dark cloud of sauces--exquisite foie-gras!--
Have I forgotten thee? Do I not, on the contrary, see thee--smell thee--
taste thee--and almost die with rapture of thy possession? What, though
the goose, of which thou art a part, has, indeed, been roasted alive by a
slow fire, in order to increase thy divine proportions--yet has not our
Almanach--the Almanach des Gourmands--truly declared that the goose
rejoiced amid all her tortures--because of the glory that awaited her?
Did she not, in prophetic vision, behold her enlarged and ennobled foie
dilate into pates and steam into sautees--the companion of truffles--the
glory of dishes--the delight--the treasure--the transport of gourmands!
O, exalted among birds--apotheosised goose, did not thy heart exult even
when thy liver parched and swelled within thee, from that most agonizing
death; and didst thou not, like the Indian at the stake, triumph in the
very torments which alone could render thee illustrious?
After dinner we grew exceedingly merry. Vincent punned and quoted; we
laughed and applauded; and our Burgundy went round with an alacrity, to
which every new joke gave an additional impetus. Monsieur Jocko was by no
means the dullest in the party; he cracked his nuts with as much grace as
we did our jests, and grinned and chatted as facetiously as the best of
us. After coffee we were all so pleased with one another, that we
resolved not to separate, and accordingly we adjourned to my rooms, Jocko
and all, to find new revelries and grow brilliant over Curacoa punch.
We entered my salon with a roar, and set Bedos to work at the punch
forthwith. Bedos, that Ganymede of a valet, had himself but just arrived,
and was unlocking the door as we entered. We soon blew up a glorious
fire, and our spirits brightened in proportion. Monsieur Jocko sate on
Vincent's knee--Ne monstrum, as he classically termed it. One of our
compotatores was playing with it. Jocko grew suddenly in earnest--a grin-
-a scratch and a bite, were the work of a moment.
"Ne quid nimis--now," said Vincent, gravely, instead of endeavouring to
soothe the afflicted party, who grew into a towering passion. Nothing but
Jocko's absolute disgrace could indeed have saved his life from the
vengeance of the sufferer.
"Where shall we banish him?" said Vincent.
"Oh," I replied, "put him out in that back passage; the outer door is
shut; he'll be quite safe;" and to the passage he was therefore
immediately consigned.
It was in this place, the reader will remember, that the hapless Dame du
Chateau was at that very instant in "durance vile." Bedos, who took the
condemned monkey, opened the door, thrust Jocko in, and closed it again.
Meanwhile we resumed our merriment.
"Nunc est bibendum," said Vincent, as Bedos placed the punch on the
table. "Give us a toast, Dartmore."
Lord Dartmore was a young man, with tremendous spirits, which made up for
wit. He was just about to reply, when a loud shriek was heard from
Jocko's place of banishment: a sort of scramble ensued, and the next
moment the door was thrown violently open, and in rushed the terrified
landlady, screaming like a sea-gull, and bearing Jocko aloft upon her
shoulders, from which "bad eminence" he was grinning and chattering with
the fury of fifty devils. She ran twice round the room, and then sunk on
the floor in hysterics. We lost no time in hastening to her assistance;
but the warlike Jocko, still sitting upon her, refused to permit one of
us to approach. There he sat, turning from side to side, showing his
sharp, white teeth, and uttering from time to time the most menacing and
diabolical sounds.
"What the deuce shall we do?" cried Dartmore.
"Do?" said Vincent, who was convulsed with laughter, and yet endeavouring
to speak gravely; "why, watch like L. Opimius, 'ne quid respublica
detrimenti caperet.'"
"By Jove, Pelham, he will scratch out the lady's beaux yeux," cried the
good-natured Dartmore, endeavouring to seize the monkey by the tail, for
which he very narrowly escaped with an unmutilated visage. But the man
who had before suffered by Jocko's ferocity, and whose breast was still
swelling with revenge, was glad of so favourable an opportunity and
excuse for wreaking it. He seized the poker, made three strides to Jocko,
who set up an ineffable cry of defiance, and with a single blow split the
skull of the unhappy monkey in twain. It fell with one convulsion on the
ground, and gave up the ghost.
We then raised the unfortunate landlady, placed her on the sofa, and
Dartmore administered a plentiful potation of the Curacoa punch. By slow
degrees she revived, gave three most doleful suspirations, and then,
starting up, gazed wildly around her. Half of us were still laughing--my
unfortunate self among the number; this the enraged landlady no sooner
perceived than she imagined herself the victim of some preconcerted
villainy. Her lips trembled with passion--she uttered the most dreadful
imprecations; and had I not retired into a corner, and armed myself with
the dead body of Jocko, which I wielded with exceeding valour, she might,
with the simple weapons with which nature had provided her hands, have
for ever demolished the loves and graces that abide in the face of Henry
Pelham.
When at last she saw that nothing hostile was at present to be effected,
she drew herself up, and giving Bedos a tremendous box on the ear, as he
stood grinning beside her, marched out of the room.
We then again rallied around the table, more than ever disposed to be
brilliant, and kept up till day break a continued fire of jests upon the
heroine of the passage. "Cum qua (as Vincent observed) clauditur adversis
innoxia simia fatis!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
Show me not thy painted beauties,
These impostures I defy.
--George Withers.
The cave of Falri smelt not more delicately--on every side appeared
the marks of drunkenness and gluttony. At the upper end of the cave
the sorcerer lay extended, etc.
--Mirglip the Persian, in the "Tales of the Genii."
I woke the next morning with an aching head and feverish frame. Ah, those
midnight carousals, how glorious they would be if there was no next
morning! I took my sauterne and sodawater in my dressing-room; and, as
indisposition always makes me meditative, I thought over all I had done
since my arrival at Paris. I had become (that, God knows, I soon manage
to do) rather a talked of and noted character. It is true that I was
every where abused--one found fault with my neckcloth--another with my
mind--the lank Mr. Aberton declared that I put my hair in papers, and the
stuffed Sir Henry Millington said I was a thread-paper myself. One blamed
my riding--a second my dancing--a third wondered how any woman could like
me, and a fourth said that no woman ever could.
On one point, however, all--friends and foes--were alike agreed; viz.
that I was a consummate puppy, and excessively well satisfied with
myself. A la verite, they were not much mistaken there. Why is it, by the
by, that to be pleased with one's-self is the surest way of offending
every body else? If any one, male or female, an evident admirer of his or
her own perfections, enter a room, how perturbed, restless, and unhappy
every individual of the offender's sex instantly becomes: for them not
only enjoyment but tranquillity is over, and if they could annihilate the
unconscious victim of their spleen, I fully believe no Christian
toleration would come in the way of that last extreme of animosity. For a
coxcomb there is no mercy--for a coquet no pardon. They are, as it were,
the dissenters of society--no crime is too bad to be imputed to them;
they do not believe the religion of others--they set up a deity of their
own vanity--all the orthodox vanities of others are offended. Then comes
the bigotry--the stake--the auto-da-fe of scandal. What, alas! is so
implacable as the rage of vanity? What so restless as its persecution?
Take from a man his fortune, his house, his reputation, but flatter his
vanity in each, and he will forgive you. Heap upon him benefits, fill him
with blessings: but irritate his self-love, and you have made the very
best man an ingrat. He will sting you if he can: you cannot blame him;
you yourself have instilled the venom. This is one reason why you must
not always reckon upon gratitude in conferring an obligation. It is a
very high mind to which gratitude is not a painful sensation. If you wish
to please, you will find it wiser to receive--solicit even--favours, than
accord them; for the vanity of the obliger is always flattered--that of
the obligee rarely.
Well, this is an unforeseen digression: let me return! I had mixed, of
late, very little with the English. My mother's introductions had
procured me the entree of the best French houses; and to them, therefore,
my evenings were usually devoted. Alas! that was a happy time, when my
carriage used to await me at the door of the Rocher de Cancale, and then
whirl me to a succession of visits, varying in their degree and nature as
the whim prompted: now to the brilliant soirees of Madame De--, or to the
appartemens au troisieme of some less celebrated daughter of dissipation
and ecarte;--now to the literary conversaziones of the Duchesse de D--s,
or the Vicomte d'A--, and then to the feverish excitement of the gambling
house. Passing from each with the appetite for amusement kept alive by
variety; finding in none a disappointment, and in every one a welcome;
full of the health which supports, and the youth which colours all excess
or excitation, I drained, with an unsparing lip, whatever that enchanting
metropolis could afford.
I have hitherto said but little of the Duchesse de Perpignan; I think it
necessary now to give some account of that personage. Ever since the
evening I had met her at the ambassador's, I had paid her the most
unceasing attentions. I soon discovered that she had a curious sort of
liaison with one of the attaches--a short, ill-made gentleman, with high
shoulders, and a pale face, who wore a blue coat and buff waistcoat,
wrote bad verses, and thought himself handsome. All Paris said she was
excessively enamoured of this youth. As for me, I had not known her four
days before I discovered that she could not be excessively enamoured of
any thing but an oyster pete and Lord Byron's Corsair. Her mind was the
most marvellous melange of sentiment and its opposite. In her amours she
was Lucretia herself; in her epicurism, Apicius would have yielded to
her. She was pleased with sighs, but she adored suppers. She would leave
every thing for her lover, except her dinner. The attache soon quarrelled
with her, and I was installed into the platonic honours of his office.
At first, I own that I was flattered by her choice, and though she was
terribly exigeante of my petits soins, I managed to keep up her
affection, and, what is still more wonderful, my own, for the better part
of a month. What then cooled me was the following occurrence:
I was in her boudoir one evening, when her femme de chambre came to tell
us that the duc was in the passage. Notwithstanding the innocence of our
attachment, the duchesse was in a violent fright; a small door was at the
left of the ottoman, on which we were sitting. "Oh, no, no, not there,"
cried the lady; but I, who saw no other refuge, entered it forthwith, and
before she could ferret me out, the duc was in the room.
In the meanwhile, I amused myself by examining the wonders of the new
world into which I had so abruptly immerged: on a small table before me,
was deposited a remarkably constructed night-cap; I examined it as a
curiosity: on each side was placed une petite cotelette de veau cru,
sewed on with green-coloured silk (I remember even the smallest
minutiae), a beautiful golden wig (the duchesse never liked me to play
with her hair) was on a block close by, and on another table was a set of
teeth, d'une blancheur eblouissante. In this manufactory of a beauty I
remained for a quarter of an hour; at the end of that time, the abigail
(the duchesse had the grace to disappear) released me, and I flew down
stairs like a spirit from purgatory.
From that moment the duchesse honoured me with her most deadly
abhorrence. Equally silly and wicked, her schemes of revenge were as
ludicrous in their execution as remorseless in their design: at one time
I narrowly escaped poison in a cup of coffee--at another, she endeavoured
to stab me to the heart with a paper cutter.
Notwithstanding my preservation from these attacks, this new Messalina
had resolved on my destruction, and another means of attempting it still
remained, which the reader will yet have the pleasure of learning.
Mr. Thornton had called upon me twice, and twice I had returned the
visit, but neither of us had been at home to benefit by these
reciprocities of politesse. His acquaintance with my mysterious hero of
the gambling house and the Jardin des Plantes, and the keen interest I
took, in spite of myself, in that unaccountable person, whom I was
persuaded I had seen before in some very different scene, and under very
different circumstances, made me desirous to increase a connoissance,
which, from Vincent's detail, I should otherwise have been anxious to
avoid. I therefore resolved to make another attempt to find him at home;
and my headache being somewhat better, I took my way to his apartments in
the Faubourg St. Germain.
I love that quartier--if ever I went to Paris again I should reside
there. It is quite a different world from the streets usually known to,
and tenanted by the English--there, indeed, you are among the French, the
fossilized remains of the old regime--the very houses have an air of
desolate, yet venerable grandeur--you never pass by the white and modern
mansion of a nouveau riche; all, even to the ruggedness of the pave,
breathes a haughty disdain of innovation--you cross one of the numerous
bridges, and you enter into another time--you are inhaling the atmosphere
of a past century; no flaunting boutique, French in its trumpery, English
in its prices, stares you in the face; no stiff coats and unnatural gaits
are seen anglicising up the melancholy streets. Vast hotels, with their
gloomy frontals, and magnificent contempt of comfort; shops, such as
shops might have been in the aristocratic days of Louis Quatorze, ere
British vulgarities made them insolent and dear; public edifices, still
redolent of the superb charities of le grand monarque--carriages with
their huge bodies and ample decorations; horses, with their Norman
dimensions and undocked honours; men, on whose more high though not less
courteous demeanour, the revolution seems to have wrought no democratic
plebeianism--all strike on the mind with a vague and nameless impression
of antiquity; a something solemn even in gaiety, and faded in pomp,
appear to linger over all you behold; there are the Great French people
unadulterated by change, unsullied with the commerce of the vagrant and
various tribes that throng their mighty mart of enjoyments.
The strangers who fill the quartiers on this side the Seine pass not
there; between them and the Faubourg there is a gulf; the very skies seem
different--your own feelings, thoughts--nature itself--alter, when you
have passed that Styx which divides the wanderers from the habitants;
your spirits are not so much damped, as tinged, refined, ennobled by a
certain inexpressible awe--you are girt with the stateliness of Eld, and
you tread the gloomy streets with the dignity of a man, who is recalling
the splendours of an ancient court where he once did homage.
I arrived at Thornton's chambers in the Rue St. Dominique. "Monsieur,
est-il chez lui?" said I to the ancient porteress, who was reading one of
Crebillon's novels.
"Oui, Monsieur, au quatrieme," was the answer. I turned to the dark and
unclean staircase, and, after incredible exertion and fatigue, arrived,
at last, at the elevated abode of Mr. Thornton.
"Entrez," cried a voice, in answer to my rap. I obeyed the signal, and
found myself in a room of tolerable dimensions and multiplied utilities.
A decayed silk curtain of a dingy blue, drawn across a recess, separated
the chambre a coucher from the salon. It was at present only half drawn,
and did not, therefore, conceal the mysteries of the den within; the bed
was still unmade, and apparently of no very inviting cleanliness; a red
handkerchief, that served as a nightcap, hung pendant from the foot of
the bed; at a little distance from it, more towards the pillow, were a
shawl, a parasol, and an old slipper. On a table, which stood between the
two dull, filmy windows, were placed a cracked bowl, still reeking with
the less of gin-punch, two bottles half full, a mouldy cheese, and a
salad dish; on the ground beneath it lay two huge books, and a woman's
bonnet.
Thornton himself sat by a small consumptive fire, in an easy chair;
another table, still spread with the appliances of breakfast, viz. a
coffee-pot, a milk-jug, two cups, a broken loaf, and an empty dish,
mingled with a pack of cards, one dice, and an open book de mauvais gout,
stood immediately before him.
Every thing around bore some testimony of the spirit of low debauchery;
and the man himself, with his flushed and sensual countenance, his
unwashed hands, and the slovenly rakishness of his whole appearance, made
no unfitting representation of the Genius Loci.
All that I have described, together with a flitting shadow of feminine
appearance, escaping through another door, my quick eye discovered in the
same instant that I made my salutation.
Thornton rose, with an air half careless and half abashed, and expressed,
in more appropriate terms than his appearance warranted, his pleasurable
surprise at seeing me at last. There was, however, a singularity in his
conversation, which gave it an air both of shrewdness and vulgarity. This
was, as may before have been noted, a profuse intermixture of proverbs,
some stale, some new, some sensible enough, and all savouring of a
vocabulary carefully eschewed by every man of ordinary refinement in
conversation.
"I have but a small tenement," said he, smiling; "but, thank Heaven, at
Paris a man is not made by his lodgings. Small house, small care. Few
garcons have indeed a more sumptuous apartment than myself."
"True," said I; "and if I may judge by the bottles on the opposite table,
and the bonnet beneath it, you find that no abode is too humble or too
exalted for the solace of the senses."
"'Fore Gad, you are in the right, Mr. Pelham," replied Thornton, with a
loud, coarse, chuckling laugh, which, more than a year's conversation
could have done, let me into the secrets of his character. "I care not a
rush for the decorations of the table, so that the cheer be good; nor for
the gew-gaws of the head-dress, as long as the face is pretty--'the taste
of the kitchen is better than the smell.' Do you go much to Madame B--'s
ion the Rue Gretry--eh, Mr. Pelham?--ah, I'll be bound you do."
"No," said I, with a loud laugh, but internal shiver; "but you know where
to find le bon vin et les jolies filles. As for me, I am still a stranger
in Paris, and amuse myself but very indifferently."
Thornton's face brightened. "I tell you what my good fell--I beg pardon--
I mean Mr. Pelham--I can shew you the best sport in the world, if you can
only spare me a little of your time--this very evening, perhaps?"