Part 2

Perhaps, after all, this theory explains why it is so very hard to recall with vividness the persons of our later fiction. Humour is not the strong point of novelists to-day. There may be amateurs who know Mr. Howells’s characters as their elders know Sophia and Amelia and Catherine Seyton—there may be. To the old reader of romance, however earnestly he keeps up with modern fiction, the salt of life seems often lacking in its puppets or its persons. Among the creations of living men and women I, for one, feel that I have two friends at least across the sea, Master Thomas Sawyer and his companion, Huckleberry Finn. If these are not real boys, then Dr. Farrar’s Eric is a real boy; I cannot put it stronger. There is a lady on those distant shores (for she never died of Roman fever) who I may venture to believe is not unfriendly—Miss Annie P. Miller—and there is a daughter of Mr. Silas Lapham whom one cannot readily forget, and there is a beery journalist in a “Modern Instance,” an acquaintance, a distant professional acquaintance, not a friend. The rest of the fictitious white population of the States are shadowy to myself; I have often followed their fortunes with interest, but the details slip my aging memory, which recalls Topsy and Uncle Remus.

To speak of new friends at home is a more delicate matter. A man may have an undue partiality for the airy children of his friends’ fancy. Mr. Meredith has introduced me to an amiable Countess, to a strange country girl named Rhoda, to a wonderful old Æschylean nurse, to some genuine boys, to a wise Youth,—but that society grows as numerous as brilliant. Mr. Besant has made us friends with twins of literary and artistic genius, with a very highly-cultured Fellow of Lothian, with a Son of Vulcan, with a bevy of fair but rather indistinguishable damsels, like a group of agreeable-looking girls at a dance. But they are too busy with their partners to be friendly. We admire them, but they are unconcerned with us. In Mr. Black’s large family the Whaup seems most congenial to some strangers; the name of one of Mr. Payn’s friendly lads is Legion, and Miss Broughton’s dogs, with their friend Sara, and Mrs. Moberley, welcome the casual visitor with hospitable care. Among the kindly children of a later generation one may number a sailor man with a wooden leg; a Highland gentleman, who, though landless, bears a king’s name; an Irish chevalier who was out in the ’45; a Zulu chief who plied the axe well; a private named Mulvaney in Her Majesty’s Indian army; an elderly sportsman of agile imagination or unparalleled experience in remote adventure. {20} All these a person who had once encountered them would recognise, perhaps, when he was fortunate enough to find himself in their company.

There are children, too, of a dead author, an author seldom lauded by critics, who, possibly, have as many living friends as any modern characters can claim. A very large company of Christian people are fond of Lord Welter, Charles Ravenshoe, Flora and Gus, Lady Ascot, the boy who played fives with a brass button, and a dozen others of Henry Kingsley’s men, women, and children, whom we have laughed with often, and very nearly cried with. For Henry Kingsley had humour, and his children are dear to us; while which of Charles Kingsley’s far more famous offspring would be welcome—unless it were Salvation Yeo—if we met them all in the Paradise of Fiction?

It is not very safe, in literature as in life, to speak well of our friends or of their families. Other readers, other people, have theirs, whom we may not care much for, whom we may even chance never to have met. In the following Letters from Old Friends (mainly reprinted from the “St. James’s Gazette”), a few of the writers may, to some who glance at the sketches, be unfamiliar. When Dugald Dalgetty’s epistle on his duel with Aramis was written, a man of letters proposed to write a reply from Aramis in a certain journal. But his Editor had never heard of any of the gentlemen concerned in that affair of honour; had never heard of Dugald, of Athos, Porthos, Aramis, nor D’Artagnan. He had not been introduced to them. This little book will be fortunate far beyond its deserts if it tempts a few readers to extend the circle of their visionary acquaintances, of friends who, like Brahma, know not birth, nor decay, “sleep, waking, nor trance.”

A theme more delicate and intimate than that of our Friends in fiction awaits a more passionate writer than the present parodist. Our Loves in fiction are probably numerous, and our choice depends on age and temperament. In romance, if not in life, we can be in love with a number of ladies at once. It is probable that Beatrix Esmond has not fewer knights than Marie Antoinette or Mary Stuart. These ladies have been the marks of scandal. Unkind things are said of all three, but our hearts do not believe the evil reports. Sir Walter Scott refused to write a life of Mary Stuart because his opinion was not on the popular side, nor on the side of his feelings. The reasoning and judicial faculties may be convinced that Beatrix was “other than a guid ane,” but reason does not touch the affections; we see her with the eyes of Harry Esmond, and, like him, “remember a paragon.” With similar lack of logic we believe that Mrs. Wenham really had one of her headaches, and that Becky was guiltless on a notorious occasion. Bad or not so bad, what lady would we so gladly meet as Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, whose kindness was so great that she even condescended to be amusing to her own husband? For a more serious and life-long affection there are few heroines so satisfactory as Sophia Western and Amelia Booth (née Harris). Never before nor since did a man’s ideal put on flesh and blood—out of poetry, that is,—and apart from the ladies of Shakspeare. Fielding’s women have a manly honour, tolerance, greatness, in addition to their tenderness and kindness. Literature has not their peers, and life has never had many to compare with them. They are not “superior” like Romola, nor flighty and destitute of taste like Maggie Tulliver; among Fielding’s crowd of fribbles and sots and oafs they carry that pure moly of the Lady in “Comus.” It is curious, indeed, that men have drawn women more true and charming than women themselves have invented, and the heroines of George Eliot, of George Sand (except Consuelo), and even of Miss Austen, do not subdue us like Di Vernon, nor win our sympathies like Rebecca of York. They may please and charm for their hour, but they have not the immortality of the first heroines of all—of Helen, or of that Alcmena who makes even comedy grave when she enters, and even Plautus chivalrous. Poetry, rather than prose fiction, is the proper home of our spiritual mistresses; they dwell where Rosalind and Imogen are, with women perhaps as unreal or as ideal as themselves, men’s lost loves and unforgotten, in a Paradise apart.

From Mr. Clive Newcome to Mr. Arthur Pendennis.

Mr. Newcome, a married man and an exile at Boulogne, sends Mr. Arthur Pendennis a poem on his undying affection for his cousin, Miss Ethel Newcome. He desires that it may be published in a journal with which Mr. Pendennis is connected. He adds a few remarks on his pictures for the Academy.

Boulogne, March 28.

DEAR PEN,—I have finished Belisarius, and he has gone to face the Academicians. There is another little thing I sent—“Blondel” I call it—a troubadour playing under a castle wall. They have not much chance; but there is always the little print-shop in Long Acre. My sketches of mail-coaches continue to please the public; they have raised the price to a guinea.

Here we are not happier than when you visited us. My poor wife is no better. It is something to have put my father out of hearing of her mother’s tongue: that cannot cross the Channel. Perhaps I am as well here as in town. There I always hope, I always fear to meet her . . . my cousin, you know. I think I see her face under every bonnet. God knows I don’t go where she is likely to be met. Oh, Pen, hæret lethalis arundo; it is always right—the Latin Delectus! Everything I see is full of her, everything I do is done for her. “Perhaps she’ll see it and know the hand, and remember,” I think, even when I do the mail-coaches and the milestones. I used to draw for her at Brighton when she was a child. My sketches, my pictures, are always making that silent piteous appeal to her, Won’t you look at us? won’t you remember? I dare say she has quite forgotten. Here I send you a little set of rhymes; my picture of Blondel and this old story brought them into my mind. They are gazés, as the drunk painter says in “Gerfaut;” they are veiled, a mystery. I know she’s not in a castle or a tower or a cloistered cell anywhere; she is in Park Lane. Don’t I read it in the “Morning Post?” But I can’t, I won’t, go and sing at the area-gate, you know. Try if F. B. will put the rhymes into the paper. Do they take it in in Park Lane? See whether you can get me a guinea for these tears of mine: “Mes Larmes,” Pen, do you remember?—Yours ever,

C. N.

The verses are enclosed.

THE NEW BLONDEL.

O ma Reine!

Although the Minstrel’s lost you long, Although for bread the Minstrel sings, Ah, still for you he pipes the song, And thrums upon the crazy strings!

As Blondel sang by cot and hall, Through town and stream and forest passed, And found, at length, the dungeon wall, And freed the Lion-heart at last—

So must your hapless minstrel fare, By hill and hollow violing; He flings a ditty on the air, He wonders if you hear him sing!

For in some castle you must dwell Of this wide land he wanders through— In palace, tower, or cloistered cell— He knows not; but he sings to you!

The wind may blow it to your ear, And you, perchance, may understand; But from your lattice, though you hear, He knows you will not wave a hand.

Your eyes upon the page may fall, More like the page will miss your eyes; You may be listening after all, So goes he singing till he dies.

II.

From the Hon. Cecil Bertie to the Lady Guinevere.

Mr. Cecil Tremayne, who served “Under Two Flags,” an officer in her Majesty’s Guards, describes to the Lady Guinevere the circumstances of his encounter with Miss Annie P. (or Daisy) Miller. The incident has been omitted by Ouida and Mr. Henry James.

YOU ask me, Camarada, what I think of the little American donzella, Daisy Miller? Hesterna Rosa, I may cry with the blind old bard of Tusculum; or shall we say, Hesterna Margaritæ? Yesterday’s Daisy, yesterday’s Rose, were it of Pæstum, who values it to-day? Mais où sont les neiges d’automne? However, yesterday—the day before yesterday, rather—Miss Annie P. Miller was well enough.

We were smoking at the club windows on the Ponte Vecchio; Marmalada, Giovanelli of the Bersaglieri, young Ponto of the K.O.B.’s, and myself—men who never give a thought save to the gold embroidery of their pantoufles or the exquisite ebon laquer of their Russia leather cricket-shoes. Suddenly we heard a clatter in the streets. The riderless chargers of the Bersaglieri were racing down the Santo Croce, and just turning, with a swing and shriek of clattering spurs, into the Maremma. In the midst of the street, under our very window, was a little thing like a butterfly, with yeux de pervenche. You remember, Camarada, Voltaire’s love of the pervenche; we have plucked it, have we not? in his garden of Les Charmettes. Nous n’irons plus aux bois! Basta!

But to return. There she stood, terror-stricken, petrified, like her who of old turned her back on Zoar and beheld the incandescent hurricane of hail smite the City of the Plain! She was dressed in white muslin, joli comme un cœur, with a myriad frills and flounces and knots of pale-coloured ribbon. Open-eyed, open-mouthed, she stared at the tide of foaming steeds, like a maiden martyr gazing at the on-rushing waves of ocean! “Caramba!” said Marmalada, “voilà une jeune fille pas trop bien gardée!” Giovanelli turned pale, and, muttering Corpo di Bacco, quaffed a carafon of green Chartreuse, holding at least a quart, which stood by him in its native pewter. Young Ponto merely muttered, “Egad!” I leaped through the open window and landed at her feet.

The racing steeds were within ten yards of us. Calmly I cast my eye over their points. Far the fleetest, though he did not hold the lead, was Marmalada’s charger, the Atys gelding, by Celerima out of Sac de Nuit. With one wave of my arm I had placed her on his crupper, and, with the same action, swung myself into the saddle. Then, in a flash and thunder of flying horses, we swept like tawny lightning down the Pincian. The last words I heard from the club window, through the heliotrope-scented air, were “Thirty to one on Atys, half only if declared.” They were wagering on our lives; the slang of the paddock was on their lips.

Onward, downward, we sped, the fair stranger lifeless in my arms. Past scarlet cardinals in mufti, past brilliant έτᾶιραὶ like those who swayed the City of the Violet Crown; past pifferari dancing in front of many an albergo; through the Ghetto with its marmorine palaces, over the Fountain of Trevi, across the Cascine, down the streets of the Vatican we flew among yells of “Owner’s up,” “The gelding wins, hard held,” from the excited bourgeoisie. Heaven and earth swam before my eyes as we reached the Pons Sublicia, and heard the tawny waters of Tiber swaying to the sea.