for Jason: she had got him the toison d'or from the Queen Mother, and now
had to meet him every day with his little blonde bride on his arm! J. J.
compared Ethel, moving in the midst of these folks, to the Lady amidst
the rout of Comus. There they were the Fauns and Satyrs: there they were,
the merry Pagans: drinking and dancing, dicing and sporting; laughing out
jests that never should be spoken; whispering rendezvous to be written in
midnight calendars; jeering at honest people who passed under their
palace windows--jolly rebels and repealers of the law. Ah, if Mrs. Brown,
whose children are gone to bed at the hotel, knew but the history of that
calm dignified-looking gentleman who sits under her, and over whose
patient back she frantically advances and withdraws her two-franc piece,
whilst his own columns of louis d'or are offering battle to fortune--how
she would shrink away from the shoulder which she pushes! That man so
calm and well bred, with a string of orders on his breast, so well
dressed, with such white hands, has stabbed trusting hearts; severed
family ties; written lying vows; signed false oaths; torn up pitilessly
tender appeals for redress, and tossed away into the fire supplications
blistered with tears; packed cards and cogged dice; or used pistol or
sword as calmly and dexterously as he now ranges his battalions of gold
pieces.
Ridley shrank away from such lawless people with the delicacy belonging
to his timid and retiring nature, but it must be owned that Mr. Clive was
by no means so squeamish. He did not know, in the first place, the
mystery of their iniquities; and his sunny kindly spirit, undimmed by any
of the cares which clouded it subsequently, was disposed to shine upon
all people alike. The world was welcome to him: the day a pleasure: all
nature a gay feast: scarce any dispositions discordant with his own (for
pretension only made him laugh, and hypocrisy he will never be able to
understand if he lives to be a hundred years old): the night brought him
a long sleep, and the morning a glad waking. To those privileges of youth
what enjoyments of age are comparable? what achievements of ambition?
what rewards of money and fame? Clive's happy friendly nature shone out
of his face; and almost all who beheld it felt kindly towards him. As
those guileless virgins of romance and ballad, who walk smiling through
dark forests charming off dragons and confronting lions, the young man as
yet went through the world harmless; no giant waylaid him as yet; no
robbing ogre fed on him: and (greatest danger of all for one of his
ardent nature) no winning enchantress or artful siren coaxed him to her
cave, or lured him into her waters--haunts into which we know so many
young simpletons are drawn, where their silly bones are picked and their
tender flesh devoured.
The time was short which Clive spent at Baden, for it has been said the
winter was approaching, and the destination of our young artists was
Rome; but he may have passed some score of days here, to which he and
another person in that pretty watering-place possibly looked back
afterwards, as not the unhappiest period of their lives. Among Colonel
Newcome's papers to which the family biographer has had subsequent
access, there are a couple of letters from Clive, dated Baden, at this
time, and full of happiness, gaiety, and affection. Letter No. 1 says,
"Ethel is the prettiest girl here. At the assemblies all the princes,
counts, dukes, Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, are dying to dance with
her. She sends her dearest love to her uncle." By the side of the words
"prettiest girl," was written in a frank female hand the monosyllable
"Stuff;" and as a note to the expression "dearest love," with a star to
mark the text and the note, are squeezed, in the same feminine
characters, at the bottom of Clive's page, the words, "That I do. E. N."
In letter No. 2, the first two pages are closely written in Clive's
handwriting, describing his pursuits and studies, and giving amusing
details of the life at Baden, and the company whom he met there--
narrating his rencontre with their Paris friend, M. de Florac, and the
arrival of the Duchesse d'Ivry, Florac's cousin, whose titles the Vicomte
will probably inherit. Not a word about Florac's gambling propensities
are mentioned in the letter; but Clive honestly confesses that he has
staked five Napoleons, doubled them, quadrupled them, won ever so much,
lost it all back again, and come away from the table with his original
five pounds in his pocket--proposing never to play any more. "Ethel," he
concluded, "is looking over my shoulder. She thinks me such a delightful
creature that she is never easy without me. She bids me to say that I am
the best of sons and cousins, and am, in a word, a darling du--" The rest
of this important word is not given, but goose is added in the female
hand. In the faded ink, on the yellow paper that may have crossed and
recrossed oceans, that has lain locked in chests for years, and buried
under piles of family archives, while your friends have been dying and
your head has grown white--who has not disinterred mementos like these--
from which the past smiles at you so sadly, shimmering out of Hades an
instant but to sink back again into the cold shades, perhaps with a
faint, faint sound as of a remembered tone--a ghostly echo of a once
familiar laughter? I was looking of late at a wall in the Naples Museum,
whereon a boy of Herculaneum eighteen hundred years ago had scratched
with a nail the figure of a soldier. I could fancy the child turning
round and smiling on me after having done his etching. Which of us that
is thirty years old has not had his Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the
Life of Youth,--the careless Sport, the Pleasure and Passion, the darling
Joy. You open an old letter-box and look at your own childish scrawls, or
your mother's letters to you when you were at school; and excavate your
heart. Oh me, for the day when the whole city shall be bare and the
chambers unroofed--and every cranny visible to the Light above, from the
Forum to the Lupanar!
Ethel takes up the pen. "My dear uncle," she says, "while Clive is
sketching out of window, let me write you a line or two on his paper,
though I know you like to hear no one speak but him. I wish I could draw
him for you as he stands yonder, looking the picture of good health, good
spirits, and good humour. Everybody likes him. He is quite unaffected;
always gay; always pleased. He draws more and more beautifully every day;
and his affection for young Mr. Ridley, who is really a most excellent
and astonishing young man, and actually a better artist than Clive
himself, is most romantic, and does your son the greatest credit. You
will order Clive not to sell his pictures, won't you? I know it is not
wrong, but your son might look higher than to be an artist. It is a rise
for Mr. Ridley, but a fall for him. An artist, an organist, a pianist,
all these are very good people, but you know not de notre monde, and
Clive ought to belong to it.
"We met him at
Bonn on our way to a great family gathering here; where, I
must tell you, we are assembled for what I call the Congress of Baden!
The chief of the house of Kew is here, and what time he does not devote
to skittles, to smoking cigars, to the jeu in the evenings, to Madame
d'Ivry, to Madame de Cruchecassee, and the foreign people (of whom there
are a host here of the worst kind, as usual), he graciously bestows on
me. Lord and Lady Dorking are here, with their meek little daughter,
Clara Pulleyn; and Barnes is coming. Uncle Hobson has returned to Lombard
Street to relieve guard. I think you will hear before very long of Lady
Clara Newcome. Grandmamma, who was to have presided at the Congress of
Baden, and still, you know, reigns over the house of Kew, has been
stopped at Kissingen with an attack of rheumatism; I pity poor Aunt
Julia, who can never leave her. Here are all our news. I declare I have
filled the whole page; men write closer than we do. I wear the dear
brooch you gave me, often and often; I think of you always, dear, kind
uncle, as your affectionate Ethel."
Besides roulette and trente-et-quarante, a number of amusing games are
played at Baden, which are not performed, so to speak, sur table. These
little diversions and jeux de societe can go on anywhere; in an alley in
the park; in a picnic to this old schloss, or that pretty hunting-lodge;
at a tea-table in a lodging-house or hotel; in a ball at the Redoute; in
the play-rooms behind the backs of the gamblers, whose eyes are only cast
upon rakes and rouleaux, and red and black; or on the broad walk in front
of the conversation rooms, where thousands of people are drinking and
chattering, lounging and smoking, whilst the Austrian brass band, in the
little music pavilion, plays the most delightful mazurkas and waltzes.
Here the widow plays her black suit and sets her bright eyes against the
rich bachelor, elderly or young as may be. Here the artful practitioner,
who has dealt in a thousand such games, engages the young simpleton with
more money than wit; and knowing his weakness and her skill, we may
safely take the odds, and back rouge et couleur to win. Here mamma, not
having money, perhaps, but metal more attractive, stakes her virgin
daughter against Count Fettacker's forests and meadows; or Lord Lackland
plays his coronet, of which the jewels have long since been in pawn,
against Miss Bags' three-per-cents. And so two or three funny little games
were going on at Baden amongst our immediate acquaintance; besides that
vulgar sport round the green table, at which the mob, with whom we have
little to do, was elbowing each other. A hint of these domestic
prolusions has been given to the reader in the foregoing extract from
Miss Ethel Newcome's letter: likewise some passions have been in play, of
which a modest young English maiden could not be aware. Do not, however,
let us be too prematurely proud of our virtue. That tariff of British
virtue is wonderfully organised. Heaven help the society which made its
laws! Gnats are shut out of its ports, or not admitted without scrutiny
and repugnance, whilst herds of camels are let in. The law professes to
exclude some goods (or bads shall we call them?)--well, some articles of
baggage, which are yet smuggled openly under the eyes of winking
officers, and worn every day without shame. Shame! What is shame? Virtue
is very often shameful according to the English social constitution, and
shame honourable. Truth, if yours happens to differ from your
neighbour's, provokes your friend's coldness, your mother's tears, the
world's persecution. Love is not to be dealt in, save under restrictions
which kill its sweet, healthy, free commerce. Sin in man is so light,
that scarce the fine of a penny is imposed; while for woman it is so
heavy that no repentance can wash it out. Ah! yes; all stories are old.
You proud matrons in your Mayfair markets, have you never seen a virgin
sold, or sold one? Have you never heard of a poor wayfarer fallen among
robbers, and not a Pharisee to help him? of a poor woman fallen more
sadly yet, abject in repentance and tears, and a crowd to stone her? I
pace this broad Baden walk as the sunset is gilding the hills round
about, as the orchestra blows its merry tunes, as the happy children
laugh and sport in the alleys, as the lamps of the gambling-palace are
lighted up, as the throngs of pleasure-hunters stroll, and smoke, and
flirt, and hum: and wonder sometimes, is it the sinners who are the most
sinful? Is it poor Prodigal yonder amongst the bad company, calling black
and red and tossing the champagne; or brother Straitlace that grudges his
repentance? Is it downcast Hagar that slinks away with poor little
Ishmael in her hand; or bitter old virtuous Sarah, who scowls at her from
my demure Lord Abraham's arm?
One day of the previous May, when of course everybody went to visit the
Water-colour Exhibitions, Ethel Newcome was taken to see the pictures by
her grandmother, that rigorous old Lady Kew, who still proposed to reign
over all her family. The girl had high spirit, and very likely hot words
had passed between the elder and the younger lady; such as I am given to
understand will be uttered in the most polite families. They came to a
piece by Mr. Hunt, representing one of those figures which he knows how
to paint with such consummate truth and pathos--a friendless young girl
cowering in a doorway, evidently without home or shelter. The exquisite
fidelity of the details, and the plaintive beauty of the expression of
the child, attracted old Lady Kew's admiration, who was an excellent
judge of works of art; and she stood for some time looking at the
drawing, with Ethel by her side. Nothing, in truth, could be more simple
or pathetic; Ethel laughed, and her grandmother looking up from her stick
on which she hobbled about, saw a very sarcastic expression in the girl's
eyes.
"You have no taste for pictures, only for painters, I suppose," said Lady
Kew.
"I was not looking at the picture," said Ethel, still with a smile, "but
at the little green ticket in the corner."
"Sold," said Lady Kew. "Of course it is sold; all Mr. Hunt's pictures are
sold. There is not one of them here on which you won't see the green
ticket. He is a most admirable artist. I don't know whether his comedy or
tragedy are the most excellent."
"I think, grandmamma," Ethel said, "we young ladies in the world, when we
are exhibiting, ought to have little green tickets pinned on our backs,
with 'Sold' written on them; it would prevent trouble and any future
haggling, you know. Then at the end of the season the owner would come to
carry us home."
Grandmamma only said, "Ethel, you are a fool," and hobbled on to Mr.
Cattermole's picture hard by. "What splendid colour; what a romantic
gloom; what a flowing pencil and dexterous hand!" Lady Kew could delight
in pictures, applaud good poetry, and squeeze out a tear over a good
novel too. That afternoon, young Dawkins, the rising water-colour artist,
who used to come daily to the galler
y and stand delighted before his own
piece, was aghast to perceive that there was no green ticket in the
corner of his frame, and he pointed out the deficiency to the keeper of
the pictures. His landscape, however, was sold and paid for, so no great
mischief occurred. On that same evening, when the Newcome family
assembled at dinner in Park Lane, Ethel appeared with a bright green
ticket pinned in the front of her white muslin frock, and when asked what
this queer fancy meant, she made Lady Kew a curtsey, looking her full in
the face, and turning round to her father, said, "I am a tableau-vivant,
papa. I am Number 46 in the Exhibition of the Gallery of Painters in
Water-colours."
"My love, what do you mean?" says mamma; and Lady Kew, jumping up on her
crooked stick with immense agility, tore the card out of Ethel's bosom,
and very likely would have boxed her ears, but that her parents were
present and Lord Kew announced.
Ethel talked about pictures the whole evening, and would talk of nothing
else. Grandmamma went away furious. "She told Barnes, and when everybody
was gone there was a pretty row in the building," said Madam Ethel, with
an arch look, when she narrated the story. "Barnes was ready to kill me
and eat me; but I never was afraid of Barnes." And the biographer gathers
from this little anecdote, narrated to him, never mind by whom, at a long
subsequent period, that there had been great disputes in Sir Brian
Newcome's establishment, fierce drawing-room battles, whereof certain
pictures of a certain painter might have furnished the cause, and in
which Miss Newcome had the whole of the family forces against her. That
such battles take place in other domestic establishments, who shall say
or shall not say? Who, when he goes out to dinner, and is received by a
bland host with a gay shake of the hand, and a pretty hostess with a
gracious smile of welcome, dares to think that Mr. Johnson upstairs, half
an hour before, was swearing out of his dressing-room at Mrs. Johnson,
for having ordered a turbot instead of a salmon, or that Mrs. Johnson now
talking to Lady Jones so nicely about their mutual darling children, was
crying her eyes out as her maid was fastening her gown, as the carriages
were actually driving up? The servants know these things, but not we in
the dining-room. Hark with what a respectful tone Johnson begs the
clergyman present to say grace!
Whatever these family quarrels may have been, let bygones be bygones, and
let us be perfectly sure, that to whatever purpose Miss Ethel Newcome,
for good or for evil, might make her mind up, she had quite spirit enough
to hold her own. She chose to be Countess of Kew because she chose to be
Countess of Kew; had she set her heart on marrying Mr. Kuhn, she would
have had her way, and made the family adopt it, and called him dear
Fritz, as by his godfathers and godmothers, in his baptism, Mr. Kuhn was
called. Clive was but a fancy, if he had even been so much as that, not a
passion, and she fancied a pretty four-pronged coronet still more.
So that the diatribe wherein we lately indulged, about the selling of
virgins, by no means applies to Lady Anne Newcome, who signed the address
to Mrs Stowe, the other day, along with thousands more virtuous British
matrons; but should the reader haply say, "Is thy fable, O Poet, narrated
concerning Tancred Pulleyn, Earl of Dorking, and Sigismunda, his wife?"
the reluctant moralist is obliged to own that the cap does fit those
noble personages, of whose lofty society you will, however, see but
little.
For though I would like to go into an Indian Brahmin's house, and see the
punkahs, and the purdahs and tattys, and the pretty brown maidens with
great eyes, and great nose-rings, and painted foreheads, and slim waists
cased in Cashmir shawls, Kincob scarfs, curly slippers, gilt trousers,
precious anklets and bangles; and have the mystery of Eastern existence
The Newcomes Page 41
