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Tag: J.F. Smith

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Twenty-second Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Twenty-second Instalment

    We find a slight mix-up in the text this week, but one that involves a significant issue of plot and theme. It is where the young Lord Bury appears about to take Lady Montague’s side against William, in her confrontation with the two girls. Lady Kate draws up her slight, ‘scarcely fifteen’-year-old figure in a heroic stance and denies that Bury possesses any authority over her, or any right to judge her.

    Pre-prepared, Cousin Clara follows up with a disclosure that completely neutralizes him:

    ‘Especially … as in the event of her cousin’s death, unmarried, Lord Bury becomes heir to her estates.’

    Lord Bury promptly takes the point: that he may be perceived as having an interest in whether or not Kate marries at all, let alone to William, whom he considers her — and their — social inferior.

    Even at first glance, Clara’s comment seems illogical: Lord Bury is himself her cousin (as is Clara both his and her cousin, by the way). Obviously, if he dies, he cannot become heir to her estates. Clearly the statement should read:

    ‘Especially … as in the event of his cousin’s death, unmarried, Lord Bury becomes heir to her estates.’

    Put simply, if Kate dies unmarried, Bury will become her heir. Keep in mind that Kate is an orphan. She is already wealthy, having inherited her fortune from the Kepple family line.

    How might it stand that Clara and Kate are cousins? Sir George Meredith’s wife is not mentioned; we we assume her to be deceased (Ch. 4). Might it be that she is Kate’s late mother and the viscount’s late sister? Probably not, since in that case, Sir George would have been heir — and her surname is Kepple. 

    The reader is able to sketch out the family tree from various given bits of information, such as:

    • Kate is Viscount Allworth’s ‘orphan ward and niece’ (Ch. 4), and ‘the last descendant of one of the best families in the kingdom’ (Ch. 6)
    • Lady Montague is Kate’s aunt and joint guardian (Ch. 4), presumably Kepple’s sister
    • Sir George is Lord Bury’s uncle (Ch. 10)
    • Clara (daughter of Sir George Meredith the baronet) and Kate are cousins; as are Lord Bury and Kate; and Lord Bury and Clara

    We may infer that, probably:

    • Viscount Allworth (Lord Bury’s father) had two sisters, who are both deceased.
    • One of them married Kepple (Kate’s father).
    • The other married Sir George Meredith (Clara’s father)

    This makes Kate Kepple, Clara Meredith and Lord Bury (Egbert) all first-cousins.

    All these cousins …

    In the Victorian era, marriages between first-cousins were by no means uncommon, particularly among the nobility, as a mechanism for shoring up wealth, alongside various intangible assets — hallmarks of class. Keeping it all in the family, so to speak. At the top of the pyramid, Queen Victoria and her husband, Albert, were first-cousins.

    Wedding of Queen Victoria and Albert, Prince Consort, 1840

    In 1875, Charles Darwin had his son George devise some ingenious studies to estimate the incidence of first-cousin marriage across class. He arrived at the results:

      • 4.5% of marriages in the aristocracy were with first cousins (or about one out of twenty)
      • 3.5% in the landed gentry and upper-middle classes
      • 2.25% among the rural population
      • 1.15% among all classes in London

    (Kuper 722)

    Why were the Darwins so interested in the topic? Because Charles Darwin was himself married to his first-cousin, and his research into the processes of natural selection had caused him to become concerned about the possibly deleterious health effects of such close unions. Further compounding the issue for the Darwins was their complex intermarital connection with the famous Wedgewood family, whose dynastic pottery business was reinforced by a tradition of endogamy.

    First-cousin inter-marriages between Darwin and Wedgeworth families (Kuper 729)

    The Rothschild banking dynasty further attests to the competitive advantage secured by the tradition. Between 1824 and 1877, as part of a planned strategy to consolidate the partnership of the five fraternal branches of the bank, thirty of the thirty-six patrilineal descendants of the founder of the House of Rothschild married first-cousins. Seventy-eight percent of marriages were “with a father’s brother’s daughter or a father’s brother’s son’s daughter”. The practice terminated when “the institution of joint-stock companies changed the banking environment” (Kuper 728):

    Cousin marriage and sister exchange reinforced new social, political, and economic networks that came to the fore in Victorian England, and which provided the country with a new elite.

    (Kuper 731)

    Incidentally, Darwin revised what were his initial concerns about the severity of health effects. Genetists in the present day believe that the risk of birth defects or infant mortality is approximately doubled, which is not considered to be significantly high. Relevant attitudes changed, however, particularly those pertaining to the conception of incest, and the incidence of first-cousin marriage diminished, falling, by the 1930s, to a rate of 1 in 6,000.

    The complexity of relations in Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh appears beyond doubt to be informed by the late nineteenth-century controversy surrounding first-cousin marriage. Indeed, part of the ‘mystery’ lies in piecing together the family relationships between key characters, within contextual themes of class structure, dynastic continuity, and the importance of inheritance to the independence of women.

    Hence, we may note variations on the theme, such as:

    1. Lord Bury’s nascent romantic interest in his cousin Clara, who is the present heir to the country estate of Chellston, to which he himself had been heir, until his father Viscount Allworth sold it to Sir George Marsham, her father. Both the viscount and Sir George mention the possibility that a marriage between Bury and Clara would enable him to regain the estate.
    2. Goliah’s previous concern that William may have been interested in his cousin Susan, which is varied so as to distinguish the issue in terms of social class
    3. The Allworths’ plot to foist their son Clarence Marsham onto Kate. He is her first cousin by marriage only, but not by blood, being the issue of Viscountess Allworth’s earlier marriage. (Her shadowy past, however, is sure to contain some uncomfortable surprises.)
    4. Kate’s being fourteen years of age makes Clarence’s attempted physical assault on his step-cousin particularly nasty, and perhaps relevant to changing historical conceptions of the child.

    CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

    A Love Confidence — Lady Kate Relates her Experience to her Cousin Clara — The Vow of Mutual Assistance — Lady Montague and Lord Bury Attempt to put a Spoke in Cupid’s Wheels

    Lady Kate was far too ingenuous a person to keep the fact of her engagement to our hero a secret from those who, by kindness and affection, possessed a right to her confidence. Her Cousin Clara, as was only natural, was the first to whom she imparted it. The warm-hearted girl did not betray an extraordinary amount of surprise when she heard it. The last six or eight months had considerably modified her views of life, society, and what the world calls happiness; still she could not help looking a little grave at the intelligence, and for several instants remained silent.

    ‘You disapprove of my conduct?’ whispered the blushing girl.

    ‘I have no right to do so.’

    ‘Yes, but you have,’ replied her cousin. ‘The right which sisterly affection gives. I never intended to come to an explanation, and I feel certain he did not with me; and yet, somehow, I shall never understand exactly how it happened. The secret of his love broke forth despite of him.’

    ‘And you?’

    ‘I would have died rather than have confessed it unasked, although I have loved him almost from the hour we first met; but he looked.so wretched, so hopeless, spoke so pitifully, that I found myself in his arms without knowing how I came there.’

    ‘That unfortunate duet,’ thought Clara. ‘I foresaw it all. What will Bury say?’

    ‘Do speak to me,’ sobbed her cousin, ‘if only to tell me how weak I have been.’

    Miss Meredith felt touched; possibly she had her own little secret in some sly corner of her heart.

    ‘No, Kate, darling,’ she replied, throwing her arms around her neck and kissing her. ‘With the same feelings — had I been placed in a similar position — I should have acted just as you have done. Have you informed Lady Montague?’

    ‘Not yet,’ was the reply. ‘I suppose I ought to have confessed it to her first; but it seemed so much easier to come to you. I thought you would help me.’

    ‘Thought I would help you!’ repeated Clara, in a slight accent of reproof.

    ‘Knew you would. I am still so confused that I scarcely know how to express myself,’ added the pretty culprit. ‘I did not mean to be ungrateful.’

    And the eyes of the speaker filled with tears.

    ‘I am sure you did not,’ observed her cousin. ‘I did not even suspect it; but friendship is sometimes jealous of its rights. You must tell her at once. She will be angry at first, no doubt — very angry — and scold.  It is the privilege of aunts to scold; but it will not last long, especially when she sees how wretched it makes you.’

    ‘It is not my dear, kind guardian’s displeasure that I most dread,’ answered Kate. ‘I knew her warmth of heart too well to fear it greatly. It is Bury that I fear. You know how Lady Montague is guided by his opinions. His pride of birth — dread of the world’s censure — will incline them against me.’

    ‘Not against you, dearest.’

    ‘Against William, then; it is the same thing.’

    ‘How she must love him!’ thought Clara, struck by the simplicity of the avowal.

    ‘It is there,’ added the speaker, ‘that I require your assistance.’

    ‘Why, what influence can I exercise over him?’ exclaimed her cousin.

    ‘You best can answer that question,’ observed Kate. ‘Forgive me,’ she continued, struck by the sudden paleness which overspread the countenance of her confidant. I fancied — that is, I believed — that he loved you.’

    Miss Meredith tried to force a smile.

    ‘Because you love me, darling,’ she replied. ‘You must not imagine that every one sees me with your partial eyes. Egbert never uttered a word of love to me; his conduct has been most kind; a brother’s regard for a sister — nothing more.’

    ‘Then he is more blind than I –‘

    ‘Hush!’ whispered Clara, as she bent over the head reclining upon her shoulder, and kissed it softly.

    Was it to conceal a tear?

    Lady Kate respected the delicacy of her cousin too much to allude to it again.

    Before seeking the dressing-room of their venerable but somewhat weak relative, Clara contrived to have a brief conversation with her father, in which she explained the difficulties of her cousin’s position, and begged him to use his influence with Lord Bury to soften his opposition to the engagement.

    ‘Why, what can I do?’ demanded the baronet, half testily, half playfully.

    ‘Reason with him, papa.’

    ‘And a great deal of use that would be,’ continued the former. ‘He is as obstinate in his opinions as a year-old pointer, and harder to break. When once he has taken one up, he thinks it a point of honour to adhere to it.’

    His daughter sighed. She felt that it was but too true.

    ‘Honour!’ repeated the speaker, musingly. Then he paused, and a smile stole over his good-natured countenance.

    ‘After all, perhaps,’ he said, ‘it is just possible that I may be of some service to Kate — a sensible girl. I cannot see anything so very preposterous in her choice. I like Whiston. He has acted honourably, and I should not think — not that I would choose it — the alliance a disgrace. We are not in the peerage, Clara,’ he added, ‘but we might have been. Refused it twice. The Merediths can count quarterings with the Montagues and the Allworths.’

    ‘Never mind our quarterings. I have them all by heart. The point is to help Kate.’

    ‘If Bury becomes very obstinate and makes a strong fight,’ said Sir George, ‘put the following question to him. It may not convert, but I think it will silence him.’

    He whispered the rest in her ear.

    ‘Does be know that?’

    ‘No!’ exclaimed.her father. ‘If he did, I should entertain a very different opinion of him.’

    It would be superfluous to describe the manner or repeat the words in which Lady Kate informed her aunt of her engagement. As Clara Meredith predicted, the storm proved a violent one, yet strange to say, her wrath fell chiefly on our hero.

    ‘The villain!’ she exclaimed, as soon as she had recovered sufficiently from her surprise to speak. ‘So artless and unassuming as he seemed! I have been terribly deceived. But there is no trusting to men. The best of them are crocodiles, or something worse, You must break it off. Mind, I say must. Then perhaps I may forgive you. The young man will threaten scandal, no doubt, or require money,’ added her ladyship. ‘I will provide that. I must pay for my folly in receiving him here.’

    ‘Money!’ repeated Kate, her niece, indignantly. ‘Do not insult him, aunt.’

    ‘Indeed, you wrong him,’ observed Clara.

    ‘You, too, in the plot?’ said Lady Montague, despairingly. ‘But I might have expected as much. No use, Clara. I am rock — adamant — this time. It cannot be. It shall not be. Nature and heraldry are alike opposed to it.’

    The last argument appeared to the speaker unanswerable, but the true friend of the lovers was not so easily silenced. Throwing her arms around the neck of her angry relative, who did not very much resist her caress, she continued:

    ‘I cannot see the force of your objections. Nature is to blame more than poor, dear Kate. Why has it given us hearts to love? Sense — not that girls always use it — to admire true worth and manhood. Recollect how nobly William protected her, when yet a mere boy, from the machinations of that villain, Clarence, She can’t help loving him.’

    The old lady wrung her hands despairingly.

    ‘That dreadful scandal will be revived again,’ she murmured to herself.

    ‘As for her heraldry,’ added the fair advocate, ‘I really cannot see what that has to do with the affair.’

    Here the aunt felt herself on firm ground.

    ‘Are you not aware, Miss Meredith,’ she demanded solemnly, ‘that the crest of the Kepples is an eagle?’

    ‘Perfectly, aunt, I have seen it on her carriage a hundred times.’

    ‘And that the crest of this young man, if he has such a thing, is probably a goose, a sparrow, or some such ignoble bird, possible a sucking pig,’ she added, in a tone of lofty indignation, which was completely thrown away upon her hearer, who could not repress a smile.’

    Strong resentments are seldom very lasting with the aged. They dislike, too, seeing those they love made wretched. The tears of Kate, the wistful, imploring, though mute expression in her eyes, produced a greater effect on her aristocratic relative than even the eloquence of Clara. She was distressed, but not subdued; prejudice was still too strong.

    It was at this critical point in the interview with her nieces that Lady Montague gained an ally by the appearance of Lord Bury, who entered the dressing-room unannounced, as their near relationship permitted him.

    From the agitation of Kate and the pale countenance of her aunt, he guessed what had transpired. Most heartily did he wish the absence of both his cousins. He knew that his opinion would be asked, but although perfectly ready to express it, he disliked giving pain to any one.

    ‘Egbert! Egbert!’ cried the old lady, in a tone of almost helpless perplexity, ‘there has been such a scene, and I want your advice.’

    The young nobleman bowed gravely.

    To the astonishment of both aunt and nephew, and the delight of Clara, Kate drew up her slender form with queen-like dignity. Her eyes were still red with weeping, but her voice never for an instant faltered, as she observed:

    ‘When I am aware of his lordship’s right to interfere between us, aunt, I may perhaps be induced to listen to his opinions, but till then must decline to be swayed by them. He does not understand me, and should not presume to judge me.’

    ‘Especially,’ added Clara, ‘as in the event of her cousin’s death, unmarried, Lord Bury becomes heir to her estates.’

    With a respectful curtsey to Lady Montague, and a cold, distant bow to her nephew, the speakers quitted the apartment.

    ‘Well!’ ejaculated the old lady, in a tone of bewilderment.

    His lordship appeared greatly surprised at the intelligence, which was perfectly new to him, and struck him painfully.

    ‘Were you aware of this?’ he demanded of Lady Montague.

    ‘Of course I was,’ said his aunt. ‘The settlement was made at the time of my sister’s marriage. I am a trustee to it, or some such troublesome thing. Sir George Meredith and your father are the others. I wonder Allworth never told you.’

    ‘It would have been more strange if he had. The viscount kept the knowledge to himself as something that might one day be useful.’

    With a look of bitter reproach, which on the present occasion his relative certainty did not merit, her nephew rushed from the dressing-room.

    ‘What does it all mean?’ exclaimed her ladyship, as she sank back in her luxuriously cushioned easy-chair. ‘What can the settlement of Kate’s fortune have to do with her absurd engagement? I shall never understand it.’

    Of course the speaker, in the simple uprightness of her nature, could not comprehend it; never suspected that the motives of her nephew in opposing what the world would consider a most unequal match would be misjudged. Worldly interests, to do her justice, had not the slightest share in her own objections.

    ‘You acted admirably, Kate,’ whispered Miss Meredith, when they had regained the privacy of their own boudoir. ‘It was noble — grand.’

    ‘Do not praise,’ faltered the now trembling girl. ‘I wonder at my own courage. I could have endured the blame Bury cast upon my conduct meekly, but not the scorn he heaped upon William. It was that which roused me. ‘

    ‘How did you hear of the settlement of my fortune?’ she added.

    ‘My father told me in confidence,’ answered Clara, ‘to help you in your trials. But you must not betray the secret. Do you think Egbert knew of it?’

    Kate reflected several instants before making a reply.

    ‘No, a hundred times no!’ she exclaimed. ‘He is too honourable, too high-minded for that. Had he known or even suspected the fact it would have fettered his tongue in silence, whilst his opinions remained the same,’ she added, with a sigh.

    A look of intense satisfaction beamed on the countenance of Clara on hearing this generous vindication of Lord Bury’s delicacy and high principles from lips so truthful.

    ‘Ah! Kate,’ she sighed, ‘men rarely do us justice. We are better than they give us credit for.’

    The groom of the chambers entered the boudoir with a card on which Lord Bury had hastily written a request for an interview.

    ‘Better have it out at once,’ observed her cousin, to whom she had handed it as if for advice. ‘We are in the right, darling, and right gives strength. Tell his lordship,’ she added, ‘Lady Kate will join him in the drawing-room directly.’

    The domestic retired with the message.

    ‘One effort more, darling,’ continued the speaker, ‘and I think we shall have discomfited the enemy’s first attack. Others will doubtless follow, but we shall be prepared for them. Why, that is well; try this essence. You look calmer now. I think we may venture to descend.’

    ‘You will go with me?’ said Kate, clinging to her arm.

    ‘Allies to the death!’ answered Clara Meredith, with apparent gaiety. We say apparent, because her own heart felt anything but at ease.

    ‘I requested this interview,’ said Lord Bury, coldly but kindly, ‘to assure Lady Kate Kepple that I can no longer take an active part in opposition to her wishes.’

    His cousin held out her hand. The speaker touched it slightly.

    ‘The opinion I have formed,’ he continued, ‘unfortunately remains unchanged; but honour and self-respect must henceforth prevent my giving utterance to it. Had I been made acquainted with certain family arrangements sooner, a great pain would have been spared me. I should not have been misjudged.’

    ‘Not a word for me,’ thought Miss Meredith, with something very like a sigh, which she instantly suppressed.

    ‘Spoken like yourself, Egbert,’ answered his cousin. ‘I know how loyally you will keep your promise. But why not call me Kate? It sounds far more kind.’

    To this his lordship only bowed.

    ‘As for the settlement you alluded to,’ he added, ‘had I only known –‘

    ‘Not a word!’ exclaimed the agitated girl, interrupting him. ‘The honour and delicacy of Lord Bury need no vindication here. Clara and I are both convinced of that. I felt as much surprise as you did when I heard it.’

    ‘I stand higher in your opinion than I hoped,’ observed his lordship.

    ‘But not higher than you deserve, does he, Clara? Promise me one thing; it will make me happy, or nearly so. Do not call me Lady Kate again. Let it be Kate and Egbert as it used to be.’

    ‘It shall be as you request.’

    ‘And you will come to see us just the same as if this dark shadow had never passed between us? Say yes, dear cousin Egbert.’

    ‘Of course he will say it,’ observed Clara Meredith, almost gayly — ‘or I shall suspect the chivalry of the Allworths has died out. We are neither of us blessed with brothers to take care of and protect us. Bury is the nearest of our kith and kin; we have almost a sister’s claim on him; besides who so fit and qualified?’

    Few young fellows, we suspect, could have resisted so flattering an appeal from such lips. Certainly his lordship did not. Seating himself between the two cousins he kissed a hand of each.

    ‘It shall be as you desire,’ he replied, ‘since you do me the honor to desire it. And from this hour all unpleasant subjects shall be tabooed between us.’

    The agreement was faithfully kept, and whether his lordship’s opinions and prejudices remained unchanged, or time gradually modified them, he never again alluded to them.

    On the morning on which the interview we have just described took place, Lawyer Whiston felt somewhat surprised by a visit from Goliah Gob. The honest fellow did not much like running the gauntlet of the clerks’ office, and generally called, when he came to London, at the house in Soho Square. The quick eye of the man of law detected at a glance that the visitor was somewhat excited.

    ‘Sit down,’ he said; ‘just ten minutes before I go to court. Anything the matter? But first let me tell you, Willie is quite well. Letter last night. Can only spare ten minutes.’

    ‘Thank goodness for that, it be more than I durst expect; for misfortunes allays come double, as folks says.’

    ‘Why, what is the matter, Goliah?’

    ‘Peter Hurst is dying, and he do want to see thee very bad. Something about his daughter, something about Willie, and something about myself.’

    ‘Yourself!’

    ‘Yes, Peter has been quite kind and sensible loike of late. Now, his wife can’t bear I, and watches Susan and I as a cat does young sparrows. So thee must spare more nor ten minutes, and come wi’ me to Deerhurst.’

    ‘Is he so bad, then?’

    ‘Three doctors wi’ him,’ answered the visitor. ‘And that sly fellow, Benoni, brings him physics from the Bittern’s Marsh.’

    These last words decided him. Lawyer Whiston put off his engagements in court, gave certain instructions to his confidential clerk, and in little over an hour was on his way to Deerhurst, driven by Goliah Gob, whose easy-going team were astonished at the hints of their young master that he was in a hurry to get home.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    References and Further Reading

    Anderson, Nancy Fix. ‘Cousin Marriage in Victorian England’. Journal of Family History, 1986.

    Bittles, A.H. ‘Background and outcomes of the first-cousin marriage controversy in Great Britain’. International Journal of Epidemiology, 2009, 38: 1453-1458.

    *Kuper, Adam. ‘Changing the subject — about cousin marriage, among other things’ (Huxley Lecture, 14 Dec. 2007; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2008, 14: 717-735.

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Twenty-first Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Twenty-first Instalment

    There is an idiosyncratic slide, moving from the omniscient narrator’s opening reflection on the parable of the “wise and foolish builders,” to Theophilus (Theo) Blackmore’s own seemingly spontaneous reflection on “Sand! sand!” in his meeting with Viscountess Allworth. It is almost as though the narrator informs as much as observes the character’s consciousness.

    To date, Smith’s allusions have been mostly historical or classic-literary, as in this episode’s playful gesture where he invokes the Hippogriff — a beast from Greek myth familiar to Harry Potter fans — in dramatizing a simple scene break, and thereby transporting the reader from London to Dinant, in France, at a speed faster than thought.

    It might be interesting, then, to consider the builders’ parable for a moment — especially given its “originary” significance to the Christian institution. The parable appears in Mathew 7:24-27 and Luke 6:46-49, attributing to Christ’s words the power to raise mankind above the chaos of the world. According to Saint John Chrysostom (c.340 – 407), in Christ’s telling of the parable:

    By “rain” here, and “floods,” and “winds,” He is expressing metaphorically the calamities and afflictions that befall men; such as false accusations, plots, bereavements, deaths, loss of friends, vexations from strangers, all the ills in our life that any one could mention. “But to none of these,” says He, “does such a soul give way; and the cause is, it is founded on the rock.”

    He [Christ] calls the steadfastness of His doctrine a rock; because in truth His commands are stronger than any rock, setting one above all the waves of human affairs. For he who keeps these things strictly, will not have the advantage of men only when they are vexing him, but even of the very devils plotting against him.”

    Homily 24 on Mathew

    The author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles addresses his work to a listener who goes by the name of Theophilus, held traditionally to be a companion of Saul/Paul. Christian scholars have variously supposed this Theophilus to have been a Jewish high priest, a Roman official, or simply, as his name suggests, one “loved by God.”

    Luke’s explicit aim is to assure Theophilus of the truth “of the things he had been taught” (Luke 1:3-4); for example, of the resurrection and the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Smith’s character Theophilus is notable for his morbid bookishness and is, it emerges, increasingly morally compromised. Is he nonetheless redeemable?

    According to Christian standards, of course he is; by the logic of Smith’s own narrative, this remains to be seen. I wonder whether an extreme sacrifice may be necessary.

    Remarkably, the magic whisper our Theo receives from the narrator is like an inspirational summoning to ethics. Yet he plans to collaborate with the viscountess in some dastardly plot, evidently one intended to ensnare the lovely Lady Kate in a loveless marriage with her morally bankrupt loser of a son, the disgraced Royal Horse Guard, Clarence Marsham, currently residing in Dinant.

    The narrator himself refers the metaphor of building on the rock not to faith in Christ as such, but instead to a concept of “the rock of integrity,” suggestive of a more agnostic view, which may be more indicative, we feel, of Smith’s own. Viscountess Allworth’s riposte at Theo’s implicit censure goes a step further, and is worthy of a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche:

    ‘My house is erected on indomitable will, cemented by past success — guarantees against the future,’ observed his visitor, sneeringly.

    Clearly not the approved perspective, as reasonable as it may seem to us postmoderns.

    The theme is developed as well at a tangent, the opposition of “superstructure” to “base”; which is equivalent to that of “superficial appeal” as opposed to “being solidly grounded” — such as in Christ or in some form of integrity (a Christian view being that the latter needs to be grounded in the former).

    This secondary version of the parable is in the form “all that glitters is not gold” — or after Shakespeare, all that “glisters”. Living our life in pursuit of superficial attractions would be analogous to building upon the sand. The viscountess is such a person, and we now become privy to the tenuous underpinnings of her privileged status, and their further manifestation in the character of her son.

    Her attraction to the glitter of social position, at the expense of integrity, generates the villainous momentum that placed Kate and her maid-servant at such dire peril in the novel’s opening scenes in the red barn at Deerhurst and is still at work hatching further dark schemes.

    Love’s Shadow (1867), Frederick Sandys. Source: Wikimedia Commons; Sotheby’s NY.

    CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

    A House Built on Sand — Very Showy but not Secure — News of Clarence Marsham and Squire Burcham — They Meet at Dinant, in France

    We are warned by an authority older than modern civilisation not to build our house upon sand. How many stately edifices have been swept away from being erected on no better foundation. The world witnesses it daily, and yet the supposed wiseacres of the earth are continually falling into the same fatal error, looking to the superstructure rather than the base. The rock of integrity, on which alone a solid mansion can be reared, appears to them so hard to dig — the process is too slow.

    From the glimpses already given of the character of Viscountess Allworth, our readers already, doubtless, have divined, that she has been one of the unwise builders alluded to. In the eyes of the world her position appeared a most enviable one. Born in obscurity and poverty, she had become rich and titled by the exercise of talents bestowed for far different purposes. Not that we despise wealth; on the contrary, we consider it a blessing, when honestly acquired and nobly used; but for mere rank — the thing that men are born to — we feel a profound indifference. Like the cap and bells, it merely serves to make folly appear more ridiculous, and adds not one iota to the consideration justly due to the really great and virtuous.

    Her ladyship felt greatly annoyed. She had just received a note from a person whom she had not met for years, and trusted never to meet again; and yet they had never lost sight of each other.

    The note was a very laconic one: ‘I must see you.’ It had no signature, but the address of the writer was given, an obscure street in the Strand.

    ‘What can he want?’ she murmured to herself. ‘Money?’ No, to do l him justice, he has never been unreasonable on that score. There can be no real cause for alarm, for, although my plans are laid, no overt action has been taken to put them in execution.’

    After a few minutes’ reflection she continued: ‘I dare not refuse. A false alarm, or, more likely still, some scholarly crotchet he wants my influence to gratify. Would he were dead,’ she added, deliberately. ‘I could breathe freely then. The grave is the only safe confidant.’

    Of course, it would never do for the fashionable Lady Allworth to be seen in her own equipage driving down one of the narrow, obscure lanes of the Strand, even if it did bear the aristocratic name of Cecil-street. A century previous and royalty might have been seen there without exciting surprise; but times have changed. Mansions formerly the abode of nobles have either been pulled down or converted into lodging-houses, and those not of the highest class.

    After attiring herself in a very plain dress and wearing a thick veil her ladyship quitted Allworth House unattended, and walked as far as the quadrant in Regent-street. There she took a cab, and directed the man to drive to No. 13 Cecil-street.

    It was so short a distance that the driver at once set her down for a stranger in the metropolis, and mentally resolved to charge her half a crown.

    Ivy Bridge Lane, in the Strand, from Old and New London, Vol. 3, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London, 1878). Source: British History Online.

    On reaching the house Lady Allworth felt greatly annoyed that the smallest coin in her purse was a half sovereign. The man eyed it greedily.

    ‘Can’t do it, Miss,’ he said. He always said ‘Miss’ to his female fares; fancied they liked it. ‘Yours was the first off the stand this mornin’. Large family; wife sick; very poor, but honest, that a well-known fact. If you like to trust me with the half skiv’ (slang word for half a sovereign) ‘I can melt it at the Fox and Geese and bring you back your change ker-rectly, Miss, in five minutes.’

    Of course her ladyship was not deceived, but she pretended to be so. Anything appeared preferable to waiting on the street and risking the chance of a discovery.

    ‘Yes, I dare say,’ she replied. ‘Very dreadful, no doubt. ‘I am not rich, but can feel for honest poverty. You may keep the half-sovereign, and may it do you all the good I wish.’

    ‘God bless you, Miss!’ exclaimed the driver, jumping on the box of his vehicle with an alacrity surprising for his years and starting his worn horse at a rapid pace.

    Lady Allworth stood watching him till he and his cab disappeared by turning into the Strand. Then, with a sigh of relief, she rang the bell of a respectable-looking house near her. It was answered by a slatternly-looking maid-of-all-work.

    Lady Allworth asked if the person whose address she had was in.

    ‘Yes, mam,’ said the maid. ‘Jest step into the parlor. ‘Missis is gone up to the gentleman’s room to see what he wants for dinner; down in a minute — do take a cheer.’

    The visitor, who felt tired as well as agitated, silently accepted one.

    ‘Come to git your fortin told?’ added the speaker.

    ‘Fortune told!’ repeated the lady, greatly surprised. ‘No. Why do you ask such a ridiculous question?’

    ‘Beg pardin, mam, didn’t know; thought you might. I and the missus made up our minds the gentleman wor sothing o’ that sort when we seed the books he brought with him; such odd-lookin’ letters. No Christian ever printed them.’

    ‘Perhaps you cannot read,’ observed the visitor, with a half-suppressed smile.’

    The maid-of-all-work tossed her head, curl papers and all — for she only took them down in the afternoon — indignantly, as if she had received some personal affront.

    ‘Indeed, mam, but I can read. ‘I wor edicated at St. Pancrass, and wor called the best scholard in the school.’

    Considering the lamentable state of the school system for the poor in England of the time, there appeared nothing very improbable in the assertion.

    The landlady now made her appearance, and inquired if she were the person whom her new lodger expected.

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘He is quite ready to receive you. This way, if you please. Will show you upstairs myself. His daughter, I presume?’

    The question was put forth as a feeler, but failed to elicit a reply.

    Second class furnished apartments, as their as their owners ambitiously term them, in the days of the regency, were sad uncomfortable affairs. The same crimson, moreen curtains, probably twice dipped, bordered with black cotton velvet; the half dozen regulation chairs, one facetiously called an easy one, and a ricketty table, generally comprised the entire furniture. In the more pretentious ones a couple of engravings — the death of Wolfe or the Battle of Trafalgar — might occasionally be found. Where such was the case, they added considerably to the price. Lodging-house keepers make money out of everything. The style has somewhat improved at the present day. Not in comfort — O! dear, no — but in show. As Shakespeare says, the world is still deceived by ornament.

    On the first floor, into such a room as we have described, the visitor was shown. Its occupant was a well-dressed man, with a white beard — an unusual appendage in those days. He was seated in the easy-chair. A pile of books, most probably Greek classics, which had so excited the curiosity of the maid-of-all-work, were on the table beside him.

    It was our readers’ old acquaintance, Theophilus Blackmore, the tenant of the martello tower and school-master of Deerhurst.

    ‘Take a chair, Zelinda,’ he said, without rising from his seat. ‘I will not trouble you to wait.’ This was addressed to the landlady, who disappeared with a dissatisfied air.

    Lady Allworth was about to close the door after her, when the speaker added:

    ‘Leave it open. It faces the staircase: She cannot return to listen without our being aware of it. Now turn your chair and face me. I will watch the door.’

    It was not till these instructions had been carried out that the viscountess raised her veil. The old man gazed upon her countenance long and earnestly.

    ‘Time has little changed “you,’ he observed. ‘You are still the same resolute being whose courage and strong will excited my admiration in the past. Well, Zelinda,’ he continued, ‘you have, succeeded in the objects of your ambition — wealth and rank. How the dead would laugh in their graves could they see to what heights you have climbed! You are rich and a peeress.’

    ‘Not so wealthy as you suppose. Clarence has been a sad drain upon me.’

    ‘You love your son, then?’

    ‘Devotedly.’

    ‘The question was an unnecessary one,’ said the questioner. ‘You would not be human if you did not. It is the weakness of maternity. The she wolf will fight for her young.’

    ‘Thank you, Theo!’ ejaculated the lady.

    ‘You know I rarely compliment,’ was the reply. ‘You still adhere to your project of this marriage?’

    ‘More tenaciously than ever,’ answered Lady Allworth, harshly. ‘My poor boy dares not return to England, or show his face in society if he did, till it is accomplished. Not so much for the girl’s fortune — that, although an important motive, might be got over — as on account of an unsuccessful attempt to — ‘

    ‘Yes! yes!’ interrupted her hearer. ‘I have heard all about the affair. It was foolishly contrived and badly managed. Clarence has not his mother’s brains.’

    ‘I thought you never complimented.’

    ‘Truth is no compliment,’ observed the schoolmaster. ‘The fact is, your son is a reckless idiot.’

    ‘Was it to tell me this,’ exclaimed her ladyship, her countenance flushed with mortification j and anger, ‘that you quitted your retreat, left your beloved books, and sought this interview? Your son — you see I am aware you have one,’ she added sarcastically — ‘is, doubtless, perfection?’

    ‘Benoni might be wiser,’ answered the old man, evasively, ‘but he is no fool, and has few scruples, as yourself. But we will not speak of him.’

    ‘As you please,’ said his strangely assorted confederate — for such they evidently were — in a tone of the utmost indifference. ‘But you have not yet informed me of the motive of your visit to London.’

    ‘I am uneasy in my mind.’

    ‘Some Greek root puzzled you?’ asked the lady, alluding to his favourite studies.

    The scholar smiled.

    ‘Ah, Zelinda,’ he said, ‘if you had only been content to share my labours; but it is useless to regret that now.’

    ‘Perfectly!’ ejaculated her ladyship. ‘Well, then, we will confine our conversation to the present and the future,’ observed Theophilus Blackmore, with a sigh. ‘You are fixed in your purpose of effecting this marriage?’

    ‘Immovably so.’

    ‘I have carried out your instructions,’ continued the former, ‘but you were wrong to have transmitted them through Brit. I doubt that man. It was still more unwise to assist him in his scheme for plundering Burcham, who has escaped from the Bitterns’ Marsh.’

    ‘Where can he have fled to?’

    ‘To France — to Dinant, Brittany.’

    ‘There must have been treachery!’ ejaculated his hearer.

    ‘Not on my part,’ answered the tenant of the tower. ‘Everything is prepared as you desired. The loopholes have been newly barred. The place is provisioned for a month, water unfailing. It would stand a siege. As for the wild inhabitants of the swamp, my influence over them since I obtained the lease is unbounded.’

    ‘In half the time you name,’ exclaimed the viscountess, in a tone of confidence, ‘Lady Kate will be the wife of Clarence. Pride — the dread of the world’s scandal — will overcome her childish repugnance, and my son’s position be secured.’

    ‘Sand! sand!’ murmured the ex-schoolmaster, half aloud.

    ‘What were you saying?’

    ‘Nothing; a mere allusion to the volume whose contents we have both of us, I fear, too long ignored. It warns us against building on such foundations as you have trusted to,’ he added, thoughtfully.

    ‘My house is erected on indomitable will, cemented by past success — guarantees against the future,’ observed his visitor, sneeringly. ‘But enough of this. We fully understand and can rely upon each other.’

    ‘Yes; I have no other choice,’ was the reply. ‘You always did as you pleased with me. I have been as plastic as potter’s clay in your hands; send or bring your victim when you will, all things shall be in readiness.’

    ‘It may be weeks and even months, first,’ said her ladyship. ‘The stake is a vast one, and must be cautiously played for.’

    And placing a roll of bank notes upon the table, the speaker lowered her veil and rose to depart, and had reached the head of the stairs, when something important seemed to strike her. She retraced her steps, and fixing her eyes searchingly upon those of her confederate, pronounced in an undertone, the name of ‘Nance?’

    ‘Dead, years since,’ answered the old man, calmly. ‘Ague and the marsh fever played into your hands. I thought you were aware of it.’

    A smile of intense satisfaction broke over the countenance of the scheming woman as she slowly descended the staircase.

    It was not till Theophilus Blackmore heard the street door open and shut that he raised the notes from the table, and began to count them. They amounted to £200.

    ‘Books?’ he muttered, in a tone of satisfaction — ‘mere books! They are the only friends left me, and I cannot have too many of them. But even they are not always to be relied upon. How I should like to examine the precious manuscript of Josephus in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and collate it with my own copy. The best critics pronounce the disputed passage an interpolation. Who knows? Possibly I might be able to bring new light upon the subject.

    ‘This affair of Zelinda’s once concluded, I shall be enabled to indulge in the dream of tranquil study my soul so longs to realise. But, will she keep her promise?’ he added, to himself.

    For several instants the aged bookworm appeared lost in profound reflection.

    ‘She dares not play me false!’ he exclaimed at last. ‘She is in my power, and I can crush her like some worm beneath my feet !’

    With this reflection we take our leave of the schemers for a time.

    Roger délivrant Angélique (1824), by Louis-Édouard Rioult. Louvre.

    Many of our readers have, doubtless, heard of the hippogriff — that fabulous monster, half horse and half griffin, which owed its existence to the fertile imagination of the Greeks, who named it the Centaur. The middle ages changed the form of its first conception. Poets and romance writers are the only persons who have ever seen it but, then, poets and romancists, like the Scottish highlanders, sometimes see strange things. The gift of double sight is not always to be relied upon. Amongst the extraordinary powers attributed to the hippogriff, a speed far outstripping steam — in short, every known means of locomotion — was, perhaps, the most remarkable. The flight of the eagle was as the creeping of the snail in comparison. Thought alone could outstrip it.

    We are about to invite the readers of the “Evening News” to take a ride with us on the back of one of these monsters. They need not be alarmed; the seat is easy, the motions pleasant enough. Even as we write its wings are spread, the journey accomplished, and we are safely landed at the little town of Dinant, in the ancient province of Brittany, in France.

    It was to this obscure place that Clarence Marsham had retreated after recovering from his wound, to exist, as he termed it, on the reduced allowance his mother prudently made him. But few of his countrymen had hitherto found their way there. Its inhabitants are a reserved, unsocial race, particularly shy of strangers. The little community of Englishmen were compelled, in self-defence, to associate together. The cafe, billiards, botany and fishing occupied most of their time; the rest of it, we fear, was spent in idleness and debauchery. This condition of things has greatly changed since we first visited Dinant; the English form quite an important colony, taking, as the Scotch say, the crown o’ the causeway, from their wealth and numbers. We say wealth, by comparison, the native inhabitants, including the nobility, being as poor as they were proud; the Reign of Terror and the iron hand of Napoleon had completely crushed them for their adherence to the Bourbons and the ancient faith.

    The return of Louis XVIII somewhat alleviated their misery.

    Such was the state of society in this obscure corner of France when Clarence Marsham took up his abode there. The change from the Guards, the excitement of the mess-table, the turf and his club, had a most depressing effect upon him, but not a salutary one, and he soon began to experience what our Gallic neigbours describe as the English malady — the spleen. They, too, suffer from the same disease. True, they call it ennui — a much prettier name.

    In the state of what he was pleased to call his mind, the young roue naturally felt relieved by the appearance of Burcham, whom he had met occasionally in London, and rather patronised. The meeting proved agreeable to both, and they soon contracted a species of friendship— intimacy probably would be the better word, for it is almost a profanation to employ the first.

    Honour is much more chary of confidence than vice; it bestows it slowly, but, then, it is generally lasting. Vice, on the contrary, is capricious in its intimacies, contracting and breaking them heedlessly. The similarity of their position drew them yet more closely together, till at last, over a bowl of punch, each made a clean breast of it to the other.

    ‘Ah,’ hiccoughed Clarence, ‘my position is bad enough, but yours is worse — forger!’

    ‘Pshaw!’ interrupted Burcham; ‘a ridiculous letter. It had no commercial value, at any rate. I am safe here, and can fight Moses and Co. at a distance. My steward, Banks, holds the estate; they can’t get it from me. He served my father, and will stick to me like the old house-dog. Brit, the family lawyer, warned me against that rascally Jew; but I was a fool, wanted money, and refused to listen to him.’

    ‘The way with most of us, I suppose,’ remarked his companion, philosophically. ‘What do you intend to do?’

    ‘Compromise,’ was the reply. ‘Get the letter out of the claws of that vulture of Israel. Willing to act squarely — do anything but give up the lands, I should never get an acre back again.’

    ‘Not unlikely,’ remarked Clarence, with drunken gravity. After a pause he added: ‘Settle your affair as soon as you can, and I have something to propose to you.’

    ‘What is it?’

    ‘Settle your affair first, I tell you.’

    ‘Some turf speculation, I suppose; mine have been most unlucky. I have lost all faith in them,’ said the squire, despondingly. ‘Lost three thousand on the Eclipse race. The ring is too strong for outsiders,’ he added.’

    ‘I won on it!’ exclaimed Marsham, with a grin of satisfaction; ‘only a brace of fifties, though; funds were low; dared not venture more; was in the Guards at the time. In the Guards we are always expected to pay up. But the affair I hinted at has nothing to do with racing; there is a woman in it.’

    ‘A rich one?’

    ‘That of course.’

    ‘Ah!’ ejaculated the squire, ‘like my own case; for good or evil, they are generally mixed up in our affairs. Fatality, I suppose.’

    As time dragged its weary length along, the speakers became more and more confidential with each other. They took long walks together, discussed their plans, which were so far matured that they waited only till the signal from England should be given to put them in execution. Having few mental resources, the conspirators generally spent their evenings at the principal cafe in Dinant, where the inhabitants and the little colony met, as it were, on neutral ground. It was awfully slow work, as Clarence declared, but better than the painful reflection of their own thoughts.

    As their countrymen were generally poor, they gathered round Clarence and the squire, in the hope of gathering a few francs at pool, and laughed at their jokes as parasites laugh at the stale jests of their patrons. The gains of these unfortunates could not have been very large; the rich rogues played an excellent game.

    Amongst other frequenters of the cafe were two Englishmen who attracted the attention of the exiles. One was a fellow about forty years of age, who called himself Captain Brandle. There was no such name in the army list, and yet few men ventured to question him or his decisions on billiards; his bullying airs, and a certain fierce rolling of his eyes, cowed them, and he obtained credit cheaply for courage; it was considered dangerous to tackle him.

    The second, a young man, who wore the dress of a fisherman, appeared remarkably quiet and unassuming in his manners. He drank little, and only occasionally took a hand at pool. His quiet, unobtrusive manners excited the curiosity of the two conspirators — not that they apprehended any danger from his presence in Dinant; there appeared nothing suspicious about him, except his name — Smith — the most ill-used and unjustly abused one in the world — that is to say, the English world.

    A pool of billiards was being played at the cafe, in which Captain Brandle and the bearer of the long vilified name of Smith, we suspect it was only borrowed, took a part. Clarence Marsham and his friend were standing near the table, merely looking on.

    ‘That was a foul stroke!’ exclaimed the young man, ‘and ought not to count!’

    The spectators looked aghast at the speaker; the captain, who had made it, having impressed them with an awful opinion of his courage by his constant braggadocio. The impostor (for true courage rarely or ever boasts) glared at him ferociously, twisted his moustache, stamped angrily upon the ground, and called him a liar.

    ‘We will soon see,’ observed his accuser calmly, ‘which of us merits that appellation. I repeat, the stroke was a foul one, and appeal to these gentlemen,’ he added, turning to Clarence and the squire; ‘they must have seen it.’

    The two gentlemen declared they had not seen the stroke made; something had distracted their attention at the moment it was made.

    The accuser bowed somewhat sarcastically.

    ‘Of course I cannot dispute your word.’ he said. ‘I thought you had; but find I must settle the point with the bully without the assistance of your evidence.’

    ‘Bully!’ repeated the captain, who appeared thunderstruck at his presumption.

    ‘And coward,’ coolly added his accuser.

    The quarrel was becoming interesting. All present expected to see the speaker, who had so rashly provoked the hostility of the fire-eater, annihilated on the spot. Instead of springing on his victim like a roused tiger, as they anticipated, he mastered his rage and advancing towards the speaker, asked him if he were tired of his life.

    ‘Not quite yet, for I have never disgraced it,’ was the reply.

    One or two of the spectators began to smile.

    Possibly the redoubtable captain did not like the cool, steady gaze which encountered his. As a last effort to redeem his reputation he exclaimed:

    ‘This must be settled elsewhere. For a less insult I have spitted two such cockerels before breakfast.’

    ‘Did you. eat them afterwards?’ inquired his opponent, with the utmost seriousness.

    ‘Turn him out of the café!’ shouted the disconcerted bully. ‘ I cannot answer for my rage ; something dreadful will occur — murder done — or — ‘

    ‘Petty larceny committed,’ added the speaker, turning to the crowd. The first time I saw this cheat and rascal,’ he continued, ‘was in the felon’s dock at Bow-street. I thought I knew him when I arrived at Dinant. Although he has got himself up exceedingly well for the part he has been playing, I am now convinced that he is the same miserable scamp.’

    ‘You shall hear from me in the morning,’ repeated the pretended captain. ‘If I remain, rage and indignation at his insolent assertions will choke me. ‘

    ‘This,’ said the young Englishman, giving him a kick, ‘to remind you of your promise.’

    The kick was repeated. The exposed scamp fairly took to his heels, and escaped across the square.

    ‘A resolute fellow,’ whispered Clarence to the squire; ‘might be useful in our own affair.’

    His confederate nodded assent, and it was agreed to invite him to supper.

    Thus it was that the quiet, unpretending young man made the acquaintance of his fellow countrymen.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes

    rascally Jew: Please see my brief consideration of historical anti-Semitism in Chapter 14. In no instance does Smith himself express anti-semitic attitudes, apart from attributing them to characters whom he valorizes negatively.

    ricketty: Alt. spelling “rickety”

    the world is still deceived by ornament: Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, 3.2: “The world is still deceived with ornament” (Bassanio).

    crown o’ the causeway: The middle of the street. Fine Dictionary.

    Eclipse race: Horse race established at Sandown Park, 1886, named after a famous 18th century racehorse. Now known as the “Coral-Eclipse.” Contemporary newspaper results of the inaugural race here.

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Twentieth Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Twentieth Instalment

    Sometimes the anomalies in a text can provide a starting point to explore possibilities of meaning that aren’t immediately evident. The first such a one in this chapter is striking: Smith’s misquotation from Romeo and Juliet, which ought to read:

    These violent delights have violent ends,
    And in their triumph die. (2.6)

    An erroneous word, “transports,” conceals both the true terms “delights” and “triumph,” as though they fall into a conceptual blind spot. “Transports” is a distinct concept from the others, denoting the sense of an ecstatic loss of control, which is absent from the actual terms. At the same time, it is illogical that “transports” (of caprice) die in their own “transports,” as the misquotation circularly proposes. The quote seems to summon the virtues of self-restraint, but in a mere rhetorical gesture, one that lacks sufficient conviction even to check the logic.

    We assume that an alternative species of love will endure — “true, manly passion” he calls it. An issue of true love flows beneath the ensuing narration of the perennial courtship ritual, reenacted by two youthful couples. The narrator’s perspective, which he assumes the reader will share, is self-assured and authoritative — one of disengagement, having access to the superior wisdom of age. Just as pointedly, the narrator’s point of view is one of retrospection, that of an elderly man looking back upon his own youth, and applying to the young those realizations beyond their grasp, which can only be acquired with time and life-experience.

    Such an ever-so-slight but unmistakably condescending tone colours the narrative, this erroneous word “transports” loaded with a pejorative sense of “ecstasis” — a being beside oneself, being taken or stepping outside the self, as in a rapture or trance: a danger to which youth is singularly vulnerable in matters of sexual love. The courtship and fate of Romeo and Juliet exemplify the transcendence and peril. (Let’s overlook the later underwhelming allusion to Juliet assigned to Lady Kate: “Parting is always sad.”)

    A further anomaly is the conspicuous mention made of the Greek lyric poet Anacreon (c. 582 – c. 485 BC), whose brows were “crowned with snow,” says the narrator (in Anacreonic mode), when he wrote his love poetry, though the topic is the young William Whiston’s attempt to express his passion to Kate in verse — but not only in verse. Anacreon’s relevance would appear to be not so much to Willie, however, as to the narrator, as a proxy for Smith himself, who finds himself here “cheering his age” with the remembered sweetness of past love.

    We can assume a degree of familiarity with Anacreon on the part of Smith’s ideal reader. Thomas Moore’s (1779 – 1852) Odes of Anacreon, Translated into English Verse with Notes (1800) spawned a vogue of ‘Anacreonics’ — the art of imitating Anacreon — among further Irish and English poets, expanding a more minor European tradition that went back several centuries, an ancient tradition of erotic verse. Poets of such significance as Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth took one interest or another in the Greek, who was “one of the original lyricists of wine, women and song” (Jane Moore passim.)

    For a sample, let’s see Thomas Moore’s translation of Ode XVII, as illustrated by the French Anacreonic translator and artist Girodet de Roussy (1767 – 1824), said to have captured the essence:

    Now the star of day is high,
    Fly, my girls, in pity fly,
    Bring me wine in brimming urns,
    Cool my lip, it burns, it burns!
    Sunn’d by the meridian fire,
    Panting, languid I expire!
    Give me all those humid flowers,
    Drop them o’er my brow in showers.
    Scarce a breathing chaplet now
    Lives upon my feverish brow;

    Every dewy rose I wear
    Sheds its tears and withers there.
    But for you, my burning mind!
    Oh! what shelter shall I find?
    Can the bowl, or floweret’s dew,
    Cool the flame that scorches you?

    Here Anacreon, like Smith’s narrator, facilitates the encounters of two imagined couples, except in an explicitly voyeuristic rite, all the signifiers in free play. Symbolism of humid flowers, burning of lips, scorching of flames, wearing of dewy roses. Nothing like a good orgy in the middle of the day.

    Turning now to the more prosaic scene, structured by Victorian proprieties, we are a little sensitive to the fluttering hearts, a smouldering subtext beneath the cut and thrust of Lord Bury and Clara’s repartee and ripostes, undercurrents of love yet undeclared. Similarly in the circular drawing-room, William’s love sings his Anacreonic lyrics, his urge to break out of the restrictions placed upon his burgeoning passion.

    It’s more in keeping with the Smith we have come to know, the wine-imbibing Bohemian wanderer. Not the fuddy-duddy uncle who sits “playing propriety,” putting a damper on this youthful excitation, but that wag who blew up the Mississippi river boat and elevated a printer’s devil.

    Wine, women and song? Hell, you can drink and sing any time.

    CHAPTER TWENTY

    A Lesson on Prudence — Clara Meredith’s Defence of her Friends — Love Vs the Absurd Teachings of the World

    When a man begins to feel puzzled as to the nature of his feelings towards a woman, we may feel assured that something akin to love is mingling-with them. He may not be conscious of it; in fact, we very much doubt if any male creature was ever yet perfectly aware of the heart’s entanglement till the net had become too strong for its meshes to be broken.

    In speaking thus of love, of course it is to be understood that we are describing it in the true, manly, common sense of the word, not of those sudden caprices to which Shakespeare alludes when he says

    These violent transports have violent ends,
    And in their transports die.

    Lord Bury began to feel a strong but, as he conceived, purely platonic friendship for his cousin Clara. There had been no attempt to catch him, no efforts to attract; great points in the lady’s favor. Although, like most young men, a great admirer of beauty, it ceased to charm as soon as it becomes demonstrative; like the magnet, it had two poles — one to attract, the other to repel.

    His lordship was fastidious in his tastes, as might naturally be expected from his education and the surroundings of his youth. Fortunately he possessed a safeguard in those high principles which most certainly he had not imbibed from his father, whose profligate example failed to corrupt him, as an overdose of poison sometimes fails to destroy life from its excess.

    Clara Meredith and Lord Bury were conversing in the conservatory at Montague House, whilst their cousin, Lady Kate, was giving a lesson in music to William Whiston, now a constant visitor in the circular drawing-room, where Martha, who shared the peril and flight of her young mistress, was seated at a distance to play propriety.

    ‘Hush!’ said Clara, interrupting the conversation with her cousin. ‘How perfectly their voices blend together!’

    ‘Too perfectly!’ observed gentleman, dryly.

    ‘Bury,’ replied the lady, ‘that is really the first ungenerous word I ever heard you utter. I thought you liked her preserver.’

    ‘And so I do,’ continued her cousin, ‘like him for his perfectly unaffected manners, his plucky perseverance at the university — the studies would have killed me — the reputation he has already acquired, and his fixed determination to win a name.’

    ‘Win a name!’ repeated Clara. ‘Why he has one already.’

    ‘Ah, indeed!’

    ‘And you know it as well as I do — William Whiston.’

    ‘I cannot find it in the Herald’s books,’ observed his lordship.

    ‘Possibly,’ said Miss Meredith; ‘he wishes to avoid bad company — a great many bad names there. Seriously,’ she added, ‘you are ungenerous — unlike yourself.’

    ‘You think that I am naturally generous then?’

    ‘Yes,’ replied Clara, ‘when you speak and act for yourself, I mean your real self, and not from the prejudices of the world. Why should he not be received here? The service he rendered Kate was immense; his family is respectable, his character without reproach, his talents undeniable.’

    In the warmth of her defence of the absent the speaker had risen from her seat and was about to leave the conservatory.

    ‘Come and sit by me again,’ said his lordship. ‘We must not quarrel; that would be too absurd. Let us talk reasonably.’

    Clara Meredith silently complied with his request, yet felt angry with herself for doing so.

    ‘Thanks,’ said her cousin. ‘I knew you would not judge me unheard.

    ‘But I have heard you —’

    ‘Only partially,’ continued the gentleman. ‘Recollect there are two sides to every medal.’

    ‘And to most faces,’ added her cousin.

    ‘An epigram!’ exclaimed her cousin, archly.

    ‘I did not intend it for one,’ continued Clara. ‘Merely an observation. You know I never can disguise my thoughts, and would not if I could, unless to avoid giving pain to these I love,’ she added.

    The young guardsman began to feel a wish to be one of those she alluded to.

    ‘Clara,’ he said, ‘I cannot endure to be misjudged by those whom I respect. Listen to me calmly.’

    He took her hand in his, and the heart of the young girl began to flutter wildly.

    ‘It is not our fault,’ resumed the speaker, ‘that we are born in the rank and privileged station that we hold in the world.’

    ‘Nor our merit,’ was the reply.

    ‘Granted,’ said his lordship. ‘But having been born to them, it is our duty to fulfil the obligations they impose upon us.’

    ‘Some of them. A broad charity in estimating the worth of others, and a helping hand not only to the poor and humble, but to all who by cultivation, intellect and honourable industry are seeking to escape the trammels of prejudice, the worldly jealousies which would cuff down rising merit, clip the wings of the young eaglet, to prevent its soaring to these nobler heights where fortune’s owls are perched in idle security.’

    ‘These are strange doctrines,’ observed her hearer, ‘for one of your age and sex.’

    ‘I cannot help it, coz. They come naturally to me.’

    Lord Bury rose from his seat, paced the length of the conservatory, then turned and reseated himself by the side of the speaker.

    ‘You approve, then,’ he said, in calm, dispassionate tones, ‘in your cousin, Lady Kate Kepple, the last descendant of an ancient and noble race, falling in love with William Whiston, the son of an obscure farmer? I grant that he is honourable; not a speck upon his reputation. I have ascertained that.’

    ‘I am not aware that there is yet any question of love between them,’ answered his hearer.

    ‘Aye, but there is, or at the very least a danger. I have watched them closely, Clara. His tongue may have been mute — I trust it has — but his eyes, those windows of the soul, are eloquent. He will declare himself,’ he added, ‘and that is the danger I wish to guard against. You, too, have seen it. It is useless to deny it. I have watched you both.’

    Clara Meredith began to feel extremely embarrassed. The words of the speaker were not without influence on her prejudices. Education was to blame for that. But they failed to shake her principles. There she felt firm as the rock of reason on which they were based. Conversion at the swiftest is but a slow process, the world has so many ties to draw us back, to stifle our best instincts. Clara was too truthful to deny the uneasiness she had long felt on her cousin’s account. As yet she knew nothing, if she feared much. She felt that the speaker was treading upon treacherous ground, so, with true feminine instinct, she hastened to change the position.

    ‘I am perfectly satisfied,’ she said, ‘that Kate will never disgrace herself by contracting an improper marriage.’

    Lord Bury smiled. He was not much of a logician, but he detected the ruse.

    ‘An alliance with meanness, with vulgarity, sordid interest. She has a sensitive nature; pride almost equal to your own, Egbert. None but a true heart could win her.’

    ‘I am as firmly convinced of that as you are,’ observed her cousin. ‘Whiston possesses the quality you name. I do him that justice. Were he a mere scheming adventurer, I should feel perfectly easy on our cousin’s account. More, he is gifted with rare talents, and that still rarer quality, perseverance. Therefore I fear him,’ he added.

    ‘As a rival, perhaps.’

    ‘Pshaw!’ ejaculated his lordship, impatiently. ‘You know me better than that. I never thought of Kate on my own account.’

    ‘What is it you fear, then?’

    ‘A misalliance in our family.’

    ‘Oh, you men! you men!’ exclaimed Clara, impatiently, ‘with your pride of rank, your worship of a mere accident, your absurd veneration for musty parchments and the Herald’s blazon! You laugh at our sex — the weaker one, as you insolently term us — for our love of bric-a-brac, majolica, Sevres, antique lace and niello, whilst with admirable inconsistency, you bow down before idols which have not even artistic beauty to recommend them.’

    ‘If you advocate Kate’s cause so warmly, I shall begin to think you share her weakness.’

    ‘That was a most ungenerous thrust,’ observed the lady coldly, ‘and unlike yourself, because it was discourteous. If there is one quality more than another which I like in you,’ she added, ‘it is your perfect tone and manner with women.  I should regret being compelled to change the opinion I have formed of you; very sorry.’

    His lordship felt the reproof all the more from the consciousness that he had merited it. He was gratified also by the compliment with which she had withdrawn the sting.

    ‘Let us change the subject,’ he said. ‘I perceive I shall not have you for an ally. Let what will happen, we must remain fast friends, coz. I cannot afford to lose you and Kate; it would leave a void in my existence greater than you dream of.’

    Clara blushed at the words — which might have meant much or nothing. Reflection — for she had a very humble opinion of her attractions — convinced her of the latter. Still, she treasured them in her memory.

    Whilst the above conversation was taking place in the conservatory, one far more eloquent, because far less worldly, occurred in the circular drawing-room, where Lady Kate Kepple and our hero had been practising a duet together. William was about to return to the university, and each knew that nearly a year would elapse before they met again.

    Poetry and music are the keys of the heart — fortunately, there is sometimes a third one, which fetters its voice in silence — prudence; not that it is always sufficiently strong to guard the tongue from uttering the words that quiver on the lips of a true, manly passion. Feeling often becomes too powerful to be governed by self -imposed restraints. A look, a sigh, and, still more frequently, a tear, will break the strongest resolution. In age we can reason on these things calmly, else it would be impossible to describe them truly.

    The brows of Anacreon were crowned with snow when he wrote his passionate love-verses. The realities had passed; but the dream, like the exquisite perfume of some precious flower, remained to cheer his age with its remembered sweetness.

    From Ode XX: “Sing, sing of love, let music’s breath / Softly beguile our rapturous death.”

    William, who had won the chancellor’s medal for the prize poem the preceding year, wrote a few lines on the subject of his approaching departure, which, in a rough, unscientific way, no doubt, he contrived to set to music, then sent them to Lady Kate, modestly requesting her to correct the music for him.

    ‘Artful,’ we hear some of our fair readers exclaim. Perhaps it was; but, if so, it was artfulness without craft— the artfulness of nature. It is scarcely necessary to add that the grateful girl complied with his request — the words touched her more than she would like to have confessed, and the simple, unskilled melody to which the youthful author had set them haunted her. Were it averred that she murmured it even in her sleep, we should scarcely doubt it.

    This was the composition, which had so strongly excited the suspicions of Lord Bury and created considerable uneasiness in the mind of Clara Meredith, who knew the world and shrank from its sneers, although in a just cause she felt that she could brave them.

    ‘I think I have succeeded,’ observed Lady Kate, when the poet hesitatingly presented himself in the drawing-room. ‘I have arranged it as a duetto.’

    ‘The very thing I most desired.’

    ‘You can look it over,’ added the fair girl, pointing to the sheet of music upon the pianoforte; ‘afterwards we will try it.’

    Little did she suspect the snare she had prepared for her own heart.

    Sufficient to add that the arrangement was gratefully approved of, and they commenced singing together:

    Farewell! Farewell! I would not fling
    Around thy brow the veil of sorrow;
    Brightly for thee the morn shall spring,
    And mirth and music wait thy morrow.

    I dare not leave one parting token,
    Or breathe a sigh of vain regret;
    Dream not the word I leave unspoken,
    Or if thou dost, thy dream forget.

    The poet seeks his cloistered hall,
    Thy home will still be beauty’s bower;
    Should memory his strains recall,
    Forgive the madness of the hour.

    Twice had the youthful singers repeated the strain which betrayed the feelings they dared not express. On the last occasion the rich voice of our hero trembled with emotion, but with a strong effort he mastered himself, and a silence more dangerous than words ensued. Kate was the first to break it. Strange to say, she had been more successful in suppressing all outward signs of agitation than the youth who so truly and, as he believed, hopelessly loved her; that exquisite reserve and sensitive modesty which are a girl’s best safeguards restrained her, for William had never hinted at his passion before — he considered it hopeless, and no true woman ever yet could bring herself to acknowledge she had, unsought, been won.

    Kate was the first to speak.

    ‘Parting is always sad,’ she observed, ‘especially from those we esteem; but you must not feel its pangs too keenly. Consider it but a cloud obscuring the bright morning of your young life. Your good, kind uncle, who loves you like a son I am certain, views the separation as I do. The cloud will pass,’ she added, attempting to force a smile, ‘and all be fair again.’

    ‘I was not thinking of my uncle,’ observed our hero; ‘and yet I feel most grateful to him. I shall find him unchanged on my return, even should I disappoint his expectations.’

    ‘Doubting yourself, Willie,’ resumed the object of his thoughts. ‘Is not that unwise? Why even I, who am a poor, weak girl, possess more courage and hopefulness than that. I am not a judge of such things, but every one tells me the highest honours of the university are within your reach; and in this land, where there are no barriers of caste that may not be surmounted, we know what they lead to. I speak not of wealth, but of the world’s consideration, respect from the respected. The senate and the bar have long been ruled by men who won their way as you will do.’

    ‘They have ceased to attract me,’ observed her hearer, sadly. ‘I have fixed my heart upon a prize so immeasurably above my reach that even hope is denied me, like the golden apples of the fabled garden, it hangs so high above my reach I can only gaze wistfully at a distance. Life,’ he added, ‘has lost its best incentive to exertion.’

    ‘Patience,’ said Kate, scarcely conscious of the import of the words she uttered, ‘patience and perseverance, and the branches will descend to you, borne down by the weight of their fruit.’ Then, as the sudden flush, the flashing eyes of her lover betrayed the construction he placed upon her speech, broke upon her mind, she hid her face in her hands.

    In an instant he was at her feet, pouring forth a torrent of impassioned words all the more eloquent for having been so long restrained. We cannot trust our pen to repeat the words in which he clothed his feelings; they would appear cold and vapid to those who never felt the pangs of a true love, whilst to those who have felt them they are unnecessary.

    A true passion, like Proteus, takes many forms, but the same soul animates each. Love is a mighty lord indeed; gentle as a child, despotic as an autocrat by turns. Poor Kate had resolved to be very reasonable — in fact, she had been so; for what can be a higher exercise of reason than to place our affections worthily!

    ‘William,’ she murmured, as he buried her blushing face upon his bosom, ‘I did not mean to betray myself. You will think me very weak.’

    ‘Angel!’

    ‘But I could not endure to see you so unhappy.’

    ‘Angel!’ repeated her lover, as his arm stole around her waist, and he imprinted a kiss, the first of love he had ever given upon her yielding lips, sealing her as it were to himself, and to himself alone.

    ‘Kate,’ he whispered fondly, ‘you will not mar the immeasurable happiness of an hour like this by one regretful thought?’

    ‘I feel none,’ came a gently murmuring voice.

    ‘From the hour we first met I loved you,’ continued Willie, ‘although I knew not what love meant. Saw you nightly in my dreams, and felt impatient of the garish day till slumber should return, bringing the blissful vision back to my sight again. I believed you to be poor — poorer even than myself. It was for your sake I wasted the midnight oil, striving to win a name to offer you, and a fortune to protect you. Oh! how, these thoughts sustained me; hope and courage both were high within me; but when the truth was made apparent, and I saw how immeasurably you were placed above me, despair took possession of my heart, its energies died out— all but its love had faded.’

    ‘Dwell not on such sad fancies,’ replied the now happy girl — happy despite her tears. ‘There can be no inequality where love is mutual.’

    ‘Bless you, dearest, for these words,’ said her lover. ‘You know not the strength they have given me; the steady will of manhood has returned, and I will yet win a name that shall justify your choice in the eyes of your friends, your family and the world.’

    ‘I care not for the last,’ observed Lady Kate Kepple. ‘My choice is made; my heart is given; the faith that accompanies them can never change. We are both young, and must wait till you have finished your career at college. Should it prove successful, none will hail your triumph more truly than myself. Should it fail you,’ she added, ‘my heart and hand shall still be yours.’

    With such a prospect, and an angel’s promises to cheer him, no wonder that our hero returned to Cambridge a happy man.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes, Reference and Further Reading

    play propriety: An older term: ‘play the chaperone’, in a sense

    Herald’s books: Records of heraldry, family pedigrees.

    golden apples of the fabled garden: The myth of Tantalus, whom the gods punished by immobilizing him in the royal garden next to an enchanted apple tree, whose branches would move away each time he reached for one. Note that apples traditionally symbolize the female’s breasts,  which motivates Kate’s double entendre about the apples descending.

    Proteus: Note that Proteus, the Greek god of change, is also an elderly figure.

    Moore, Jane. ‘Thomas Moore, Anacreon and the Romantic Tradition’. Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780–1840 21 (2013): 30–52. Jump to pdf.

    Moore, Thomas, Trans. The Odes of Anacreon, with Fifty-Four Illustrative Designs by Girodet de Roussy (1869). Jump to html version at gutenburg.org

    The Works of Anacreon, Sappho, and Musaeus. Translated from the Greek by Francis Fawkes (1810)
    (Includes a section on the life of Anacreon as well as several odes). Jump to free ebook (Google).

    Roche, John B. The First Twenty-eight Odes of Anacreon, In Greek and in English, and in Both Languages, in Prose as Well as in Verse : with Variorum Notes  a Grammatical Analysis, and a Lexicon (1827). Jump to free ebook (Google).

    Hunt, Leigh. ‘Anacreon’, in Arthur Symons, ed., Essays by Leigh Hunt 1887: 169-173. Facsimile available at Internet Archive. Jump to page.

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Eighteenth Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Eighteenth Instalment

    In the previous chapter, Clara expresses her relief when William turns out to be a gentleman, as is borne out by the credentials printed on his card and his reputation as a scholar, which has become a matter of public knowledge. Lady Kate hadn’t doubted it, perhaps thanks to her greater sensitivity to him and his actions, or because her noble breeding better equips her to judge.

    The theme of interpreting gentleman-like virtues and qualities continues in the present chapter, incorporating a theme of etiquette. To be a Victorian gentleman, it would appear, requires an innate, transcendent trait of nobility, but as well, the ability to negotiate a finely-tuned symbolic system of ritual and convention, in order to be able to present oneself as a gentleman.

    On the other hand, Goliah seems to possess at least two innate virtues of the gentleman: honesty and bravery. Place him in a situation requiring a modicum of gentlemanly savoir faire, however, and he can’t measure up. He expresses himself with childlike spontaneity and needs a poke in the ribs to keep quiet. When Bunce insists that Goliah is a gentleman, that “It is the heart that gives the title. The rest is the mere gilding of the surface,” it is in a tone of kindly rhetoric. Goliah is clearly as yet a primitive if well-intended ‘unsuspecting rustic’ and comic relief, competent at only the most basic ropes.

    ‘Love Will Triumph’ (1900). Charles Haigh-Wood. Source: artnet.com

    But how should a gentleman behave in Lady Montague’s mansion on a social call? She is a stickler for the protocols. Why was the meeting in the park necessary in the first place? Did Lady Kate not repay his services with a gift? — which ought to be sufficient in the language of etiquette. Kate’s reply demonstrates her own finesse at interpreting and balancing symbolic actions and their meanings.

    There are actions which the most costly gifts cannot repay, but which a few kind words may amply recompense. Besides, she added, ‘Mr. Winston is a gentleman.’

    When a servant takes William’s card and ushers him to the morning-room, he is pitiably afflicted with confusion and doubt. Smith-narrator worries about what William will do with his hat, “that terrible test to young men”. Perhaps he should read something like that most useful guide,The Spirit of Etiquette; Or Politeness Exemplified, by Lady de S****** (London, 1837):

    On paying a morning call, keep your hat in your hand unless at the house of an intimate friend. If you leave it in the hall, it appears as though you intended staying; and unless you are very intimate with the party, it is a liberty.

    Or perhaps he has. A slew of such books appeared in the Victorian era, a more accessible variation on the previous “courtesy” genre, which had enjoyed currency since the Renaissance. Addressed to an aristocratic audience, courtesy books discoursed on manners as an expression of moral ideals (Curtin 411). The publication of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774) marked a turning point, attending to more pragmatic, outward, imitable issues, toward the ends of self-interest:

    Observe the shining part of every man of fashion, who is liked and esteemed; attend to and imitate that particular accomplishment for which you hear him chiefly celebrated and distinguished; then collect those various parts and make yourself a Mosaic of the whole.

    Henceforth the discussion of manners was disassociated from high culture and disdained by distinguished authors. In the pattern set by Chesterfield for his son, etiquette books addressed themselves to the upwardly mobile members of the burgeoning middle class. Those who had become financially successful now looked to rub shoulders with those of “le suprême bon ton,” to advance socially and hide their humble origins by assuming the manners of the aristocracy.

    Chesterfield writes on the implications of what a gentleman wears:

    Your dress (as insignificant a thing as dress is in itself) is now become an object worthy of some attention; for, I confess, I cannot help forming some opinion of a man’s sense and character from his dress; and I believe most people do as well as myself. Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.

    We may note in this light the understated taste with which William dresses — which is entirely appropriate, as Lord Bury tacitly discries, “to a mere morning call”.

    In the era of the industrial revolution and the advent of what Karl Marx termed commodity fetishism, extravagant garments no longer proclaim rank and status. Rather, co-opting a new cosmopolitan aesthetic, clothes become a protective shield against invasion, a mechanism of codes and signs and a process of discernment.

    Details of workmanship now show how “gentle” a man or woman is. The fastening of buttons on a coat, the quality of fabric counts, when the fabric itself is subdued in color or hue. Boot leather becomes another sign. The tying of cravats becomes an intricate business; how they are tied reveals whether a man has “stuffing” or not, what is tied is nondescript material.

    As watches become simpler in appearance, the materials used in their making are the mark of the owner’s social standing. It was, in all these details, a matter of subtly marking yourself; anyone who proclaims himself a gent obviously isn’t.

    (Sennett, 165)

    It is more than just lavender gloves as things-in-themselves. An emerging bourgeois self is dislocated from its tranquil sources in the family and in the country and exposed to a mechanism of intrusive forces and gazes that seek to determine it — just as we see Kate’s family array itself as her protective shield in determining to its satisfaction what William is.

    Deep anxieties underpin these new social processes, such as Lady Montague embodies, seemingly risibly characterised with her phobia of social exposure. Why so humiliating for the scandalous details surrounding Lady Kate and Clarence Marsham to come out? Perhaps because codes that define the male, in terms of how he matches up against a positive model of the gentleman (and not a “coxcomb” or a “scoundrel”), are the same that determine the lady against a relatively negatively valorised model of the “loose woman”. Hence, the spontaneity that Kate exhibits — even in abruptly stopping the carriage, blocking the orderly flow of traffic — may be perceived as a disturbing, hysterical trait:

    [W]hen a society proposes to its members that regularity and purity of feeling are the price for having a self, hysteria becomes the logical, perhaps the only means of rebellion.

    (Sennett, 182)

    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    Lawyer Whiston Makes a New Acquaintance — A Glance at the Past — Plans for the Future

    However excellent in theory the law of England may be, like most human institutions, it presents many singular anomalies. In practice its professors are divided into two distinct branches, or bodies. First in rank are the barristers who alone possess the right of pleading in the superior courts. They are generally men of university education, and not unfrequently have won its proudest honours.

    From them the lord chancellors, vice chancellors and judges are invariably taken.

    The second, or inferior class, as they are considered, are the attorneys, or solicitors, whose forensic abilities are confined to the police courts and quarter sessions. They act as wet-nurses to the barristers, collect evidence, and prepare their briefs, which none but a solicitor can present. A client, no matter how intelligent and capable, may not draw up his own brief, or statement of his case. No barrister would receive it; it would be considered against the usages of the courts.

    Solicitors divide their practice into several branches, some of them exceedingly lucrative; the conveyance of real estate, which in England is beset with difficulties, being one of them. Divorce cases and criminal defence are two others, to say nothing of offences against the excise laws, poaching, and civil suits generally. They have to prepare all the evidence, and although they may not open their lips in the superior courts, may frequently be seen seated by the side of the privileged barrister, prompting or coaching him.

    The wealthiest and probably most respected members of this branch of the legal profession are the family solicitors to the nobility, landed aristocracy, and great mercantile firms. In the first two instances they have the management of the estates and of honourable men; are consulted on all occasions, looked upon in the light of a friend.

    In this class of solicitors the uncle of our hero held a distinguished position. His clients were not numerous, but they were wealthy, and of high social standing. To such a man the means of obtaining information were sore and varied. Lately he had spent considerable time in piecing together the fragments of half-burnt letters, which Bunce had given him, and the result was that he began to feel considerable interest in the antecedents of Viscountess Allworth. Amongst other bits of information he discovered that her first husband, Gervais Marsham, had a brother, a wealthy merchant in the city, who bore a high character for integrity and honourable dealing.

    As a general rule, if there is any little speck of dirt, flaw of reputation, or circumstance that we particularly wish to conceal, relatives are the first to disclose it, especially if the unfortunate tainted wether of the flock happens to be placed in a more enviable position regarding rank and fortune than the rest. Richard Whiston was far too close an observer of human nature, both as a lawyer and a man, for this peculiarity to have escaped him, and he set about turning it to advantage in his own quiet ways. It was an easy matter to obtain an introduction to the merchant, to whom he made himself so agreeable that invitations were soon exchanged.

    On the occasion of his first visit he contrived to be just ten minutes too late for dinner — not long enough to disturb the equanimity of his host, or, what was of more consequence, that of his maiden sister, Miss Penelope Marsham, who presided over her brother’s bachelor establishment.

    ‘Not a word, my dear sir, said the city man, cutting short his apologies. ‘A dozen turns, more or less, of the spit will not hurt the haunch, and turtle can’t spoil. Will you take my sister in?’

    Their new acquaintance gave his arm to the lady, and the small but select party proceeded to the dining-room.

    The dinner proved an excellent one — a little heavy, perhaps; but that was to be expected in the city, yet not uncomfortably so. It was not till the dessert made its appearance that the wily lawyer alluded to the cause of his delay.

    ‘Consultation,’ he said, ‘with a noble client in rather an intricate affair between two ladies of the fashionable world — Lady Montague and Viscountess Allworth. Ladies — pardon the remark. Miss Marsham — are at times disposed to be a little prolix.’ Turning to her brother, he added, as he eyed the bronze beading on the rim of his glass. ‘This is exquisite Burgundy.’

    ‘Imported it myself,’ observed his host.

    At the name of the viscountess Miss Penelope gave one of those scarcely perceptible little shrugs, which sometimes convey a vast amount of meaning.

    ‘Are you concerned in any legal affairs for Lady Allworth?’ she asked.

    ‘Oh, dear, no! not in the slightest degree. My client is opposed to her. A question of guardianship —’

    ‘Your client,’ remarked the spinster, ‘had better be upon her guard.’

    ‘Pen,’ interrupted her, brother, ‘our friend, I suspect, has had quite enough professional business for one day. Had we not better change the subject?’ A frown accompanied the observation.

    The lady looked displeased, but took the hint, although it lost her an occasion for airing her resentment.

    Richard Whiston appeared perfectly unconscious of this little piece of by-play, but came at once to the conclusion that the sister was the one likely to afford the information he sought.

    With some men — and they are not the worst of their kind — there is nothing like good dinners to cement intimacy. They even assist friendship. The wealthy merchant was a bon vivant, and the lawyer’s cook an artist of peculiar merit. Visits were frequently exchanged; gradually they became intimate. Like an experienced general, Mr. Whiston attacked the weakest side of the fortress; directed all his inquiries to Miss Penelope, and soon succeeded in drawing from her much curious information respecting the antecedents of the crafty viscountess, whom she hated — bitterly — intensely — only as a woman can hate.

    Her brother, Walter Marsham, it appeared, had been left a widower, with only one son, a boy six years of age. It was an awkward position for a young man immersed in affairs. Too fond of his child to commit him to the care of strangers, he engaged a lady, who came, highly recommended, to take charge of his household and superintend the education of his infant heir.

    The next fact extracted from the garrulous old maid was that, six months after the arrival of the governess, the boy was drowned; the body never found.

    ‘A sad misfortune,’ observed the lawyer, in a sympathetic tone.

    ‘A terrible one,’ added the narrator. ‘But for his loss, poor Walter would never have become the dupe of that artful woman. He married her within a year.’

    ‘I can comprehend your feelings,’ said Mr. Whiston, ‘especially if the antecedents of the Lady —’

    ‘She had no antecedents,’ interrupted Miss Penelope Marsham. ‘No one knows anything about her. As my brother, Gervais, said, when he heard of it, she came into the family like a doubtful bill, without any endorsement. We city people have our pride. Neither my brother nor myself ever noticed her.’

    ‘And your sister-in-law is now Viscountess Allworth?’

    ‘No mistake about that,’ observed Penelope, just a little spitefully. ‘His lordship married her for her money. Walter left her everything — but he did not get it, after all. The schemer was too cunning for him.’

    It took at least half a dozen dinners and quite as many calls to draw out the information which we have thus briefly condensed for the satisfaction of our readers.

    After carefully weighing all these circumstances, the astute lawyer at last made up his mind that the time had arrived for him to act, and the morning after the arrival of Goliah in town he sent for Bunce to come to his private room at the office, having given strict orders to the managing clerk that they were not to be disturbed under any pretence.

    ‘Are you satisfied,’ he asked, as soon as they were seated, ‘with the manner in which I have treated you?’

    ‘Satisfied!’ repeated the ex-tramp. ‘Ah, sir, I am most grateful. Your confidence has been most generous. With nothing but my simple word to support my assertions, you have placed a confidence in me almost against reason to expect. I would give my life to serve you.’

    ‘I believe you,’ observed the gentleman with a smile. ‘In the service I am about to ask of you fortunately there is no such risk to be encountered. And yet,’ he added, ‘it is not without some danger.’

    ‘Try me,’ said the young man, eagerly.

    ‘You are well acquainted, I believe, with the Bittern’s Marsh?’

    ‘Every track is familiar to me. Regular roads — that is to say, roads worthy of the name — there are none. Reckless and unprincipled as the inhabitants are, at war with justice and the world, it would not answer their purpose to have any.’

    ‘Reflect well before you answer my question,’ said Mr. Whiston, ‘and let not gratitude sway your judgment. Do you think it would be possible for you to visit that den of outcasts without much risk of detection? I would not you should endanger your life to serve me — added to which, the sacrifice would defeat my project.’

    A pause of several instants ensued in the conversation, during which the grateful fellow coolly but rapidly turned over in his mind all the difficulties of the task.

    ‘I was a mere boy,’ he replied at last, ‘when I quitted the Marsh, and am so changed in person that the fear of recognition is not great. Possible, but not probable; nothing more. The real danger lies in the suspicion with which the steps of every stranger are watched — unless, indeed, in the shooting season, when the hope of gain renders them less cautious. The majority of the inhabitants are smugglers; vessels laden with brandy and silks frequently land their cargoes from the left bank of the Thames. They come from Dinant in Brittany. Could I land from one of these, pass for one of the crew, I should have little doubts of the result.’

    ‘Can you speak the language of those smugglers?’ inquired his benefactor.

    ‘It was familiar to me as my mother tongue when a boy, sir. The captains and mates of the barks generally lodged with the old man who said he had kept me from charity.’

    ‘Your idea is an excellent one,’ observed the lawyer, ‘and a vast improvement on my original plan, for in Dinant you can render me an equally important service. In what character do you think of going?’

    ‘As a sailor.’

    ‘You shall be well provided with money,’ said his employer.

    ‘Not too much, sir,’ answered Bunce, with a smile.

    ‘And when will you be ready to start?’

    ‘In two days.’

    ‘In two days be it then,’ said Mr. Whiston; but recollect, you are to run no unnecessary risks. Greatly as I value the success of the enterprise, it may be too dearly purchased.’

    The above conversation took place on the morning of the day when our hero and Goliah encountered Lady Kate and Miss Meredith in the park. With his usual frankness, Willie informed his uncle of the meeting and exchange of cards, and concluded by asking him if it would not be the correct thing to call.

    ‘Evidently,’ was the reply.

    ‘I have so often puzzled my brain, sir, wondering if we should ever meet again. Was it not a lucky accident? How fortunate that you advised us to drive in the park.’

    We cannot assert it, but are rather inclined to suspect that the lawyer foresaw the great probability of Lady Kate’s meeting with her protector.

    The next day the visit was duly made. Goliah, however, did not accompany his friend. Richard Whiston so particularly required his opinion on the capabilities of a farm he was about to purchase in the neighbourhood of London, that the unsuspecting rustic could not refuse to go with him.

    Decidedly the uncle of our hero ought to have been a diplomat. He was born with a vast amount of natural tact.

    The heart of the youth beat violently as he alighted at the stately mansion of Lady Montague, and when the groom of the chamber ushered him into the morning-room, saying that he would take his card to the young lady, his confusion increased to so pitiable a degree that he almost regretted the step he had taken.

    ‘Why render my regrets indelible?’ murmured he to himself. ‘What can Lady Kate Kepple ever be to me? The disparity is too great.’

    By this time, we suspect Willie already began to have a faint suspicion of the feelings which were gradually entwining themselves with his existence — haunting his dreams, absorbing his waking thoughts. The romance of the first meeting with the fair girl he had so gallantly protected, made a powerful impression, on his imagination — that beneficent or dangerous quality which, for good or ill. as we employ it, controls the greater part of man’s existence; so subtle are its operations that brain and heart are enthralled before we feel conscious of the process which youth, especially in its firsts love, rarely perceives. The man — and the observation we are about to add applies equally to woman — who can analyse its effects, count and estimate the strength of every link as it is added to the chain, may entertain a caprice, but he is not in love.

    ‘The Patient Competitors’ (1892). Charles Haigh-Wood. Source: The Athenaeum

    When her niece and Clara informed Lady Montague of the meeting in the park, that exceedingly correct personage appeared slightly annoyed. We say slightly, for the dread of scandal had died out, nearly two years having elapsed since the adventure which so troubled her at the time.

    ‘I thought,’ she observed gravely, ‘that you had already acknowledged his services by the gift you forwarded to him?’

    ‘Gift!’ repeated Lady Kate, warmly. ‘There are actions which the most costly gifts cannot repay, but which a few kind words may amply recompense. Besides, she added, ‘Mr. Winston is a gentleman.’

    ‘Mr. Whiston!’ repeated the aunt, in surprise.

    Her niece silently handed her our hero’s card.

    ‘Mr. William Whiston, Trin. Col., Cam.,’ said her ladyship, reading it aloud. ‘Well, it certainly does look as if he might be a gentleman.’

    She passed the card to Lord Bury, who was present, and whose frequent and prolonged visits to the country, intimate association with two sensible, right-minded girls, who placed principle before fashion, and what they felt to be right before the conventionalities of the world, had shaken a vast amount of nonsense out of his lordship’s disposition, and the operation had greatly improved him; he had always been strictly honourable. If a certain residuum of pride still remained, it was pride without meanness, based on true manhood and honour.

    ‘I do not see, Lady Montague,’ he observed, ‘how my cousin could have acted otherwise — it would have been ungrateful. A call does not necessarily lead to intimacy. I think you ought to receive him.’

    ‘You, too!’ exclaimed the spinster, half-reproachfully. ‘Well, I suppose I must.’

    ‘I and Clara,’ he added, ‘will, if you wish it, both be present; it may relieve Kate from some embarrassment.’

    ‘Thanks!’ exclaimed the latter, ‘for I should feel dreadfully embarrassed at receiving him alone.’

    ‘Not to be thought of, my love!’ exclaimed the aunt.

    In consequence of this arrangement, all of the speakers were present when our hero was shown into the morning reception room at Montague House.

    The young guardsman eyed him as critically as he would have done a colt which he had serious thoughts of introducing into his own stables. On the important points of dress, person and appearance nothing could be more satisfactory. Plain morning suit; not a trinket visible; pale lavender gloves; his hat — that terrible test to young men, who so rarely know what to do with it — in his hand, it being a mere morning call.

    ‘Well,’ thought his lordship, ‘he certainly does look like a gentleman.’

    Lady Kate, having first introduced him by name to her relatives, began to falter forth her thanks for the protection to had afforded her.

    ‘Pray do not allude to it.’ said Willie, perceiving her embarrassment. ‘A hundred such services would be amply repaid by the simplest expression of thanks. ‘It is I,’ he added, raising his eyes timidly to her blushing countenance, ‘who ought to feel grateful for the pleasure it has afforded me by this introduction.’

    ‘Not bad,’ whispered Lady Montague to Clara; ‘he certainly is a gentleman.’

    ‘I told you so, aunt,’ was the reply.

    ‘Allow me to express my own and Lady Montague’s feelings,’ said Lord Bury, extending his hand to their visitor, ‘for your conduct on an occasion which I will not further allude to, although it can never be forgotten. May I ask,’ he added, by way of changing the subject, ‘if you are related to the Whistons of Northumberland? I have occasionally met several  members of that family.’

    ‘Not in the slightest degree, that I am aware of,’ answered our hero, unhesitatingly. ‘The only relative of standing I possess is my uncle and guardian, Richard Whiston, the eminent solicitor of Lincoln’s Inn Field, to whose bounty I am indebted for my university education — to whose affection for me more than I can ever repay.’

    ‘He is a noble fellow,’ thought his lordship, ‘No pinchbeck about him.

    ‘I am perfectly aware of your uncle’s respectability and high standing in his profession,’ observed the stately old maid. ‘For many years,’ she added, ‘he has had the management of my affairs.’

    ‘Whiston’s nephew,’ she mentally added. ‘Of course I can rely on his discretion.’ Speaking aloud, she added:

    ‘I receive every Wednesday. Mine is not a very brilliant circle but you will meet some celebrities worth knowing, should you favour me with your presence.’

    As the speaker did not add the word ‘occasionally,’ Clara and Kate considered it a sure sign that the invitation had been cordially given .

    More visitors being announced, Willie took his leave.

    ‘What tact,’ observed Lord Bury. ‘Not being acquainted with the fresh arrivals, it might have looked as if he sought an introduction. I think I shall like the fellow,’ he added.

    Considering the source from whence it came, this was high praise.

    ‘I already like him very much,’ observed Clara Meredith.

    ‘Of course. He has such remarkably fine eyes,’ said his lordship.

    Kate remained silent.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes and References

    pinchbeck: Alloy of copper and zinc used to imitate gold in jewelry; hence ‘something counterfeit or spurious’ (Merriam-Webster)

    Lady de S******. The Spirit of Etiquette; Or Politeness Exemplified, (London, 1837). Available free at Google Books (jump to cover).

    Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774). Good edition available free at Adelaide Univ. ebooks (jump to file).

    See also, James Pitt, Instructions in Etiquette, intended for the use of schools and young persons (1840). Available free at Google Books (jump to cover).

    Michael Curtin, “A Question of Manners: Status and Gender in Etiquette and Courtesy,” Journal of Modern History, 57.3 (1985).

    Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (NY: Penguin, 1986)

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Seventeenth Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Seventeenth Instalment

    Old newspapers are not much cared about and are often applied to undignified functions, recalling Dryden:

    From dusty shops neglected authors come,
    Martyrs of pies, and relics of the bum.

    (‘Mac Flecknoe’)

    or tossed on the rubbish heap, as in Joyce:

    About that original hen. Midwinter (fruur or kuur?) was in the offing and Premver a promise of a pril when, as kischabrigies sang life’s old sahatsong, an iceclad shiverer, merest of bantlings observed a cold fowl behaviourising strangely on that fatal midden or chip factory or comicalbottomed copsjute (dump for short) afterwards changed into the orangery […]

    (Finnegans Wake, Ch. 5)

    Biddy the hen scratches up an old letter in the rubbish heap, which stands for Finnegans Wake the novel itself, or the Bible, or even the substance of universal human history. Mere “bits and scraps” (Samuel Beckett) though they may be, they are impregnated with the world in which they were manufactured, and which decays along with them. Note that as Biddy scratches and pecks on the letter, she creates marks and holes that later exegetes interpret as part of the original message.

    This project of raising Smith’s penny novel is achievable thanks to the work accomplished by scholars and librarians such as those who established the Trove digital archives of the National Library of Australia, from where I’ve obtained the original serials of The Mystery of the Marsh.

    Convenient, comprehensive and flexible a resource as Trove is, we find many instances where the text breaks down in one way or another, presenting a jigsaw puzzle. Figure 1 shows a fundamental type of this problem. Here there are two horns of the dilemma: i) the easier, where a librarian needed to piece together the paper, like an actual jigsaw; and ii) where the text, to varying degrees, becomes difficult to read, either because of damage to the original, or because of a problem in the copying process. For example:

    Figure 1. Sample of torn and blurred copy.

    Here is how the machine-reader deals with the text in Figure 1, extending from “His friend gave a short, dry cough”:

    ffi^MBnd-g8-fi^HteB^^ooBi^i-^lsfeit4«
    had ^g^. calLad..Ojp)6n ^tb jBssent tr- a proposition
    – ‘ Heidi I ‘ fie eiBonlatedl . ”Jtmx -^nidn ts
    :f&nn4id~ cmL .«.? Ealt trutlL. Tt A* ar6 m- pldea

    After “There are two sides”, it seems to give up and omit the rest as a smudge.

    Very Wake-esque but unedifying. Usually the machine-read copy is useful in piecing together a rough cut and saving a fair amount of keying-in, though every word still needs to be checked against one or both of the (digitalized) original copies.

    Thankfully there are two different copies of the serial, appearing in different publications, originally separated by about eight years, and edited by different editors. When the earlier “fair” copy is damaged (so-termed because it is closer to the author and has proven itself reliable), the later “foul” copy can provide clarification.

    At the same time, the editor of the foul copy sometimes slaps things together cavalierly. This is understandable — they’re not handling a manuscript of Shakespeare’s or the Dead Sea scrolls. Their job is to fill up available space in the most economical way. But in so doing, they often fiddle about with points of spelling, grammar and lexicon, probably aiming to make the story “more readable,” but sometimes achieving the opposite.

    Figure 2 demonstrates one of a couple of befuddling gaffes on the part of the foul editor this fortnight:

    Figure 2. Editorial gaffe from the foul copy.

    Perhaps you’ve spotted the problem already: there is no such word as “obinsensible”. At the end-of-line hyphen the text jumps to somewhere unrelated to the original scene: from Goliah and William’s reunion, to Benoni’s apprehension by the villains (in the previous chapter of the fair copy), where it stays for the rest of the chapter, hopelessly throwing out the entire narrative and requiring all sorts of calisthenics to get back on track. It’s interesting to observe how the editor’s fast moving eye has been deceived by an illusion of continuity created by the references in both scenes to two characters conversing, and by the formatting. The reader glides on blithely — and suddenly thinks, “What the blazes is going on?!”

    The sample in Figure 3 presents a satisfying teaser.

    Figure 3. Sample of blurred word in fair copy.

    This is from the scene where William finally meets his love-interest Lady Kate again, when they are both being driven in carriages in London’s Hyde Park — a popular Sunday recreation of the well-to-do.  We can clearly see that Kate “involuntarily pulled” something that stops the carriage, but what? The words are not quite clear enough to be confident without further reference.

    The foul copy doesn’t help: the cavalier editor doesn’t seem to know either, or maybe thinks their readership won’t, and treats the incident thus:

    The former recognised her protector in an instant, and involuntarily, for it was the impulse of gratitude, called the driver to stop the carriage.

    However, calling the driver to stop is not really an involuntary action in the sense that physically pulling on a device that automatically stops the carriage may be considered. Such a device enables the chain of action to occur in an instant: the sighting; the recognition; and her involuntarily activating the device, which automatically stops the carriage.

    The device in question is found in Dearden’s Miscellany (1839): a “check string”, an invention that causes the reins to be pulled up automatically from inside the carriage in case of an emergency. Why on earth did the foul editor muck up Smith’s perfectly good line? The term was used in Australia, as its occurrence in Caroline Leakey’s novel Broad Arrow (1859) evidences.

    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    The Tables Begin to Turn — Lady Kate Meets Her Protector — A Lawyer’s Plot, but an Honest One

    It is a sad thing when parents, by dishonourable practices, give their children the right to despise them. The natural law is sure to avenge the violation of the divine one; for, with respect, filial love gradually dies — fading like some young tree planted in an ungenial soil; first indifference, then contempt usurps its place. In rough, uncultivated natures a worse tyranny is not unfrequently exercised over the erring parents who have no moral force to resist it, and they either sink into the slaves of the offspring their example has corrupted, or consent to pander to their vices.

    No doubt this is a terrible picture, but, alas! it is a true one; and may be seen, allowing for difference in tone and colour, in almost every grade of society — the highest as well as the lowest. In the former, the veil of a flimsy refinement hides the more revolting traits; but they exist. The facts are there. In the latter, they stare you in the face in all their cynical deformity.

    Viscount and Lady Allworth were beginning to feel the truth of this. The fashionable season had once more commenced in London, but Lord Bury never appeared at any of his father’s parties. He ceased to frequent the club of which they were both members, in order to avoid meeting him. Occasionally, however, it was unavoidable; but when society threw them together he treated him merely with that formal respect which, in some instances, is more cutting than downright rudeness, and far more painful to receive than positive insult. The more polished the weapon the deeper the wound.

    What made the conduct of the young nobleman still more mortifying to his father, was that he never failed to attend the receptions of Lady Montague, who had returned to town for the season. Sir George Meredith and his daughter were her ladyship’s guests; they had accepted an invitation to spend the season with her, to the great delight of Kate and Clara, who become warm friends.

    The fashionable world, which is far more observant than outsiders give it credit for, soon began to notice this polite estrangement between father and son; and the viscount, who was not wanting in tact, resolved to have an explanation with Bury. Half a dozen times he had called at his chambers, but never found him at home. ‘Absent,’ ‘On duty,’ or ‘In the country,’ were the answers he received from the obsequious porter, as he respectfully received his lordship’s card and placed it on the rack In his office. The aged roué knew that the fellow was lying, and almost respected him for the grace with which he did it.

    An actor himself, he could appreciate good acting in others.

    So he muttered, as he drove from the Albany —

    ‘Bury has taken his part and seems resolved to carry it out. Let him — cursedly ungrateful, though. I hate ingratitude. I first suggested Meredith’s girl — he ought to remember that, and not feel so resentful at the Chellston affair.’

    That any higher principle had actuated his lordship’s conduct never entered into the imagination of the worldly-minded man.

    Lady Allworth already began to discern this painful truth; in forfeiting the respect of her son she had lost all hold on his affection, which had never been very strong. From Dinant, a small town in Brittany, to which he had retired on recovering from his wound, he was continually writing for money to supply his vulgar extravagance, and yet the allowance made him was a liberal one. In answer to a letter refusing to send additional funds, he wrote back threatening to return to England and expose her share in the attempt to force Lady Kate into a clandestine marriage; if he could not rob, he would disgrace her.

    The reply of her ladyship was characteristic and laconic:

    ‘Return without my permission, and I will not only reduce the allowance I promised, but disinherit you. You cannot scare me.’

    Not a word of affection. She felt that he had none. She could not appeal to his honor; it had too long been forfeited. It was to his selfish fears that she addressed her answer, and it proved successful. Clarence Marsham knew his mother too well to doubt for an Instant that, if further provoked, she would execute her threats. He was entirely at her mercy, and he knew it. It was a bitter pill for him to swallow, but after a brief struggle with his passionate temper and sundry profane curses he did swallow it, sat down and wrote a penitential letter, declaring that he was drunk when he made his insolent demand, and asking her forgiveness, which in due time was coldly accorded.

    Lady Allworth was what the world would call a strong-minded woman; if any real strength can be found in evil, undoubtedly she merited the designation. Up to the present period her life had been a series of successes, purchased by sacrifices which will appear hereafter in all their questionable details. The crowning scheme — the marriage of her worthless son with Lady Kate Kepple — had hitherto proved a failure which discouraged without inducing her to change her purpose, which remained fixed as ever, although at times, when dwelling on the future, she began to discern faint outlines of that dark shadow which from the first step into crime follows one’s footsteps. Sometimes it appeared to be drawing nearer, frowning menacingly; then it would disappear, and courage revive again.

    We must not forget William Whiston, the hero of our tale, who had passed his first year at Cambridge, where to the great delight of his uncle, he had obtained two scholarships — one in mathematics and one in classics, and was now in London for the vacation.

    William Powell Frith (1836-8), attrib. Douglas Cowper.

    It was not the trifling income derived from this success that gratified his guardian; that was a matter of perfect indifference to him. It was the proof that his nephew had used his time at college wisely. Tutors had written most encouragingly respecting him, predicting his future success.

    Still the old lawyer did not feel quite satisfied; the pale cheeks and certain dark circles round the eyes of the tired student alarmed him, and the first thing he did on his arrival was to send for a physician.

    ‘Overwork,’ said the man of science. ‘No organic disease.’

    The uncle breathed more freely.

    ‘We will soon remedy this,’ he observed. ‘The boy is up for the long vacation, and shall work only six hours per day.’

    Dr. Canton shook his head.

    ‘What! You think that too much? Four, then.’

    ‘Not one,’ replied the doctor emphatically.

    ‘I have frequently observed that you lawyers,’ he added, ‘astute enough in your own profession, are like children when they wander out of it — bewildered and unreliable in their judgment. I would as soon consult my tailor on a plea in chancery,’ he added, ‘as a lawyer on a point of hygiene.’

    His friend gave a short dry cough — a habit he had when called upon to assent to a proposition that did not appear quite clear to him.

    ‘Hem!’ he ejaculated. ‘Your opinion is founded on a half truth. There are two sides to the question. I am not so incapable of judging as you suppose. Have you forgotten how I cured my carriage horse after Harrassian, the prince of veterinaries, had pronounced that nothing could be done?’

    ‘And pray, how did you treat your horse?’ demanded Canton, with a half-suppressed twinkle in his eyes, for he felt that he had cornered him.

    ‘Very simply,’ replied his friend. ‘Took off his shoes and turned him loose.’

    ‘Excellent!’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘Exactly what I have been prescribing. Take off your nephew’s shoes — in other words, lock up his books — and turn him out to grass. The result will be the same.’

    With these words the friendly physician took his leave.

    ‘Canton is right!’ exclaimed the man of law, after a few minutes’ reflection. ‘I was a fool not to perceive it at first. The boy’s brain has been overtaxed. No more work till the end of the vacation. What a terrible error I was about to fall into! He shall enjoy himself. Won’t let him go to Deerhurst, though.’

    Two days afterwards our hero was delighted by the arrival of his faithful friend, Goliah. Knowing their attachment to each other, Lawyer Whiston had arranged that the two young men should spend a month together in London. There was nothing selfish in the old man’s affection for his nephew. He knew that the sympathies of youth require youth to draw them forth. The wisdom of age, however the young may venerate it, sometimes appears dry to them. Paradox as it may seem, hearts sometimes require weakness instead of strength to lean upon.

    For several instants the long separated friends sat silently grasping each other’s hand. The honest rustic was the first to speak.

    ‘This be like old times ag’in,’ he observed. ‘Deerhurst has been mortal dull without thee. Willie,’ he added, ‘thee do look pale and tired like.’

    ‘A little over-worked. Nothing more,’ replied the student. ‘I shall soon get over it.’ My uncle is very kind to me, and I have done my best to please him.’

    ‘Kind to thee?’ repeated his friend. ‘How can he help being kind to thee? Thee hast such a curious way of making a home in the hearts of all who know thee.’

    ‘Not all,’ said Willie, with something like a sigh.

    ‘All!’ added Goliah emphatically. ‘And those who don’t love thee don’t know thee. But never mind that now. I be come to spend a whole month with thee. The hay be all in, and Uncle Whiston settled it all right with mother.’

    His hearer heard the arrangement with almost as much surprise as pleasure. It was an additional proof of the place he had won in the regard of his relative.

    It was dinner-time before the lawyer made his appearance in Soho Square. He brought Bunce with him. The appearance of the poor tramp was so improved that Goliah scarcely recognised him.

    ‘Why, thee do look like a born gentleman!’ he exclaimed, at the same time shaking hands with him cordially. ‘They wouldn’t know thee at Deerhurst,’ he added.

    ‘You are as true a gentleman as I am,’ observed the wanderer. ‘Probably more so.’

    ‘I see thee be poking fun at me.’

    ‘Not so,’ replied his former acquaintance. ‘Fine clothes do not make a gentleman, or the ruffian upon whose face you left the mark of your whip would be the better gentleman of the three. It is the heart that gives the title. The rest is the mere gilding of the surface.’

    ‘There be some truth in that,’ said the honest rustic, thoughtfully.

    His hearers remarked with pleasure that considerable improvement had taken place less in the language than the manners of the speaker. He was far more quiet. His rough, boisterous fits of laughter no longer jarred upon the ears. If occasionally they broke forth, they were quickly suppressed. Mr. Whiston and Bunce felt more surprised than our hero did at the change. He thought of Susan, and understood it. His own recollections of Kate — the influence they had exercised upon his mind, although he still ignored her rank and fortune — explained it to him.

    Love is a great beautifier. The fable of Cymon and his nymph contains a delicate truth. Few of us, we suspect, but have learnt the lesson.

    ‘Not at home to any one,’ said the lawyer, as the butler placed the dessert upon the table, ‘and do not disturb me unless I ring.’

    The well-trained domestic withdrew.

    ‘And now, boys,’ continued the speaker, ‘as my nephew is enjoying his vacation, I think it only fair that I should take mine for an evening or two at least. Impossible to take more. The affairs of others might suffer.’

    ‘How stand affairs at Deerhurst?’ he added, addressing himself to Goliah. ‘Commence with Farmer Hurst, his wife and the pretty Susan.’

    At the last name his visitor coloured slightly and looked embarrassed, till a smile from Willie encouraged him to proceed.

    ‘Farmer Hurst is a changed man,’ he replied. ‘He do miss his nephew sadly. For the matter of that, so do the whole village. I don’t think,’ he added, ‘the grey mare be the best horse in the stable as it wor once. The filly ha’ taken her place. Not altogether,’ he added thoughtfully; ‘wish she had; but in a great many things.’

    ‘You mean to say that Peggy has not so much her own way as she used to have,’ observed the lawyer.

    ‘That’s it. How clever thee do put it.’

    ‘Mere practice,’ observed the man of law. ‘You, too, Goliah, are becoming a logician in your way.’

    ‘What be that?’ demanded the latter. ‘Nothing to do with law, I hope.’

    ‘More than you imagine, I expect,’ answered Mr. Whiston, with a smile. ‘But never mind that now. What is the news from Deerhurst?’

    ‘Schoolmaster Blackmore and his son Benoni ha’ left the place. Neighbours began to look coldly on them, so they started off, bag and baggage, without a word to any one; and a good riddance, too.’

    ‘And where are they gone? To London?’

    ‘Not so far as that,’ continued the lad. ‘Leastways Benoni has been seen several times in the village. He do come mostly at nights. People do say they be livin’ at their old home in the Marsh.’

    The lawyer and Bunce exchanged glances.

    ‘Mind,’ added the speaker, ‘I don’t know that it is so. At any rate he took all his books there. Breeze and Howard helped to carry them. It be a queer place to live in, fit only for wild geese and teal. Justice’s clerk told mother that schoolmaster ha’ gotten a lease of the whole place from some great lord in London.’

    The questioner brought the forefinger down to the palm of his hand — a habit he had when he wished to impress any fact or legal point upon his mind.

    Goliah looked upon all this as mere love of gossip on the part of Richard Whiston. In his simple, honest heart he never once suspected that the shrewd man of law was putting him through a regular examination.

    ‘And is this all?’ he asked.

    ‘All as I can recollect,’ was the reply.

    ‘So Benoni came merely to visit his old friends,’ observed the lawyer.

    ‘Since he went back on Willie all the boys despise him — turned him out of the cricket club, thof he wor one of the best bowlers we had. Stay, I do recollect something. The first time he came wor to get some iron bars his father had ordered of Mottram, the blacksmith.’

    A second finger was turned down.

    ‘And the next time?’ said the lawyer, insinuatingly.

    ‘He met Peggy Hurst at the Red Barn. I don’t think,’ added the speaker, ‘he will go near the farm again.’

    ‘And why not?’

    ‘I thrashed him,’ said Goliah, quietly. ‘I heard him tell Peggy that he wor in love wi’ her daughter, and I couldn’t stand that.’

    ‘Jealous,’ observed Willie.

    ‘Not a bit,’ answered his friend. ‘Susan despises him. What true-hearted girl could fancy a coward. I wor never jealous of any one but thee.’

    ‘And with quite as little reason,’ replied our hero. ‘It is quite true that Susan and I love each other; but it is only as brother and sister — nothing more.’

    ‘I know that,’ said the admirer of his cousin. ‘Thee told I so afore, and thee do allays speak the truth. It took such a lump off my heart; for what chance should I ha’ had again thee? Susan told I the same thing when I spoke my mind to her.’

    ‘And she answered —’

    ‘Nay, Willie, that beant fair,’ interrupted his friend. ‘There be two to that secret. When thee do fall in love thee will know all about it. P’raps she laughed at I — p’raps she did not; at any rate, she wor not very angry, though her mother is — she be dead set agin me. The farmer, I think, is all right, or soon will be.’

    Our hero sighed, and mentally repeated the words of the speaker, ‘When thee do fall in love.’ The poor boy was already in love. The fair girl he had rescued had left her image in his young heart. The gift of the watch — and, still more, the simple words from Kate — had confirmed the impression. The desire of pleasing his uncle was not the only motive for his hard studies at the university; a yet stronger impulse inspired him — the thought of making himself worthy of her; for, without the slightest suspicion of her real rank or fortune, he felt they were superior to his.

    ‘Now, boys,’ said the lawyer, as he bade them good night, ‘amuse yourselves in the morning as you please. The carriage and horses are at your disposal. After lunch I would advise you to take a drive in Hyde Park. The season is at its height for equipages, beautiful girls, and remarkable personages. Europe has not a scene to equal it. I can’t accompany you; neither can I spare Bunce — most important case to come off. But we shall meet at dinner.’

    ‘And my studies, sir —’ suggested Willie.

    ‘Hang your studies!’ interrupted his uncle. ‘Of course I don’t exactly mean that; but merely for the present. Recollect that for the present,’ he added, laughingly, ‘I have taken off your shoes and turned you out to grass.’

    Goliah slapped his thigh — a habit he had when greatly pleased — and exclaimed, triumphantly:

    ‘That be right, lawyer! It will soon bring back the colour to Willie’s cheeks, which those plaguey books ha’ stolen away. I opened one of ’em, and it made my eyes ache to look at the crooked lines and figgers; never seed anything like it, except in a conjuring book at fair time. Ecod!’ he added, ‘thee beest almost as sensible as a farmer.’

    Richard Whiston bowed gravely; there was an amused expression on his face.

    ‘I fear you flatter me,’ he said.

    Bunce and Willie laughed heartily.

    Poor Goliah coloured to the roots of his hair; he was quite quick enough to perceive the ridiculous side of his speech, and hastened to amend it.

    ‘I meant about horses,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think thee knowed so much. Of course, in law, book-larning, and such things, thee do know a great deal more. Why don’t thee help I, Willie?’ he exclaimed, turning to his friend. ‘I always helped thee. Thee do know what I mean.’

    ‘And so does my uncle,’ replied our hero. ‘He understands you even better than I do.’

    ‘Then he beant angry wi’ I?’ said the honest rustic.

    ‘Not in the least,’ said Mr. Whiston shaking hands with him before quitting the room. ‘We perfectly understand each other.’

    ‘Of course we does,’ observed Goliah, as the gentleman disappeared, ‘though Willie and Bunce both laughed at I.’

    Rotten Row and Hyde Park Corner. c.1890-1900. Photomechanical print. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

    The following day our hero and his friend did not neglect the lawyer’s advice of driving in Hyde Park at the hour he named, when the scene appears most attractive, especially to those who contemplate it for the first time. No doubt there are spots in the world equally beautiful; a few, perhaps, still more so, but none more animated. The throng of equipages in which elderly persons take their ease whilst inhaling the fresh pure air, the crowd of lovely girls, all life and animation, cantering on well-trained steeds, attended by fathers, brothers and admirers, the former proud of their charge the latter trusting to win a smile from the lips that enthralled them.

    Talk of the Isle of Calypso! The graceful fable of Fenelon never presented half its charms. His goddess and worshippers were a myth — those of Hyde Park are living realities, pure flesh and blood, fresh from the hand of nature.

    Youth! youth! such are thy glorious visions! They haunt its dreams; nor are those of age entirely free from them, dimly seen, perhaps, through the falling mists of a once happy past. So great was the excitement of Goliah that Willie had to check his outspoken bursts of admiration, which more than once attracted attention; and yet there was nothing coarse in them. The heart of the honest rustic was too well guarded for that by the recollection of the pretty Susan.

    Nothing like a pure, manly love to keep the lips and heart pure.

    As they were about to quit the ring the carriage of the lawyer crossed the elegant barouche of Lady Montague. Fortunately its noble owner was not in it — only her niece and Clara Meredith. The former recognised her protector in an instant, and involuntarily pulled the check-string. We say involuntarily, for it was the impulse of gratitude. Nothing more! Of course not! Had the high-born girl taken time to reflect, the fashionable surroundings, the familiar faces passing and repassing, might have prevented her. We do not mean to say that it would, but merely possibly.

    Mr. Whiston’s coachman — he had once been in the service of a lord chancellor — perfectly well understood what the drawing-up of Lady Montague’s equipage meant, and quietly drew up beside it. Clara Meredith looked on wonderingly. She could not understand the blushing, half-hesitating manner of her friend as she addressed our hero whose confusion equalled if it did not exceed her own.

    A very few words explained it.

    ‘I cannot,’ she said, ‘suffer the opportunity to escape me of expressing my gratitude to those who so generously protected me from a very great danger; that I have not done so personally before has not been from heartlessness, but ignorance of his name and address.’

    ‘It is the happiest recollection of my life,’ answered Willie, modestly; ‘but I fear you overrate my services.’

    ‘What!’ exclaimed Goliah, upon whose sluggish brain the truth was slowly dawning. ‘Be thee the —’

    ‘Even so,’ interrupted Lady Kate, hastily, for she had an instinctive dread of what was about to follow. ‘Do you not recollect me?’

    ‘How should I?’ replied the former. ‘Not but I ha’ often thought on thee. When I seed thee afore thee wor —’

    A violent nudge in the ribs, which, as the speaker declared, almost drove the breath out of him, gave him an unmistakable hint that he was treading on forbidden ground. Poor Willie was in agonies lest he should not take it.

    ‘So differently dressed,’ added the rustic, suppressing the allusion to her being disguised as a boy, which trembled upon his lips; ‘but that be only natteral; people don’t wear such fine clothes in the country as they do in London.’

    His friend breathed more freely, and the burning blush which had risen to the cheeks of the agitated girl gradually receded as the words were so adroitly turned.

    ‘You will find me at the residence of my aunt and guardian, Lady Montague,’ observed Lady Kate, at the same time giving him her card, and accepting the one he proffered.

    ‘I ain’t got no card,’ observed Goliah; ‘but I can write my name if Willie will lend I a pencil; that’s if’ — a second nudge, equally emphatic with the first one, cut short the rest of his speech.

    ‘Home!’ said Kate, at the same time bowing her adieu.

    The equipages separated, and for some minutes the ladies drove from the Park in silence.

    ‘O, Kate! Kate,’ said Clara Meredith, who was the first to speak.

    ‘You think I have acted wrongly?’

    ‘Incautiously, my love; wrongly, no — a hundred times no. Better, perhaps, to have let the recollection of the adventure fade from the memory of each.’

    ‘And endure the self-reproach of ingratitude?’ observed Kate.

    ‘Well, there is something in that,’ replied her companion. ‘I wonder what your dear old aunt will say — for, of course, you will tell her?’

    ‘Of course,’ was the reply.

    ‘Can you tell me, James,’ said Miss Meredith, addressing the coachman, ‘to whom the carriage in which those gentlemen were riding, belongs?’

    ‘Certainly, Miss,’ answered the man. ‘To Mr. Whiston, the great lawyer, who has the management of Lady Montague’s estates. The youngest of the gentlemen is his nephew, a great scholar, they say; and —’

    ‘Thank you, that will do.’

    Lady Kate glanced furtively at the card.

    ‘It is the same name,’ she whispered.

    ‘Thank Heaven he is a gentleman,’ exclaimed Clara.

    Her friend made no reply. She had never doubted it.

    Our hero felt too much excited by the unexpected meeting which had set his young heart dreaming to pay much attention to his companion, who sat silently by his side, turning the affair over in his mind in the hope of finding a solution.

    At last he broke into a low chuckle.

    ‘Ecod, Willie,’ he said, ‘thee beest a sly one.’

    ‘I do not understand you.’

    ‘Thee never told I about the — thee knowest who I mean. I can believe now,’ added the speaker, ‘that thee do love Susan only like a brother.’

    ‘Nonsense, Goliah! I have never seen the lady till this morning since we lost sight of her on Chandos-street. She is evidently far above me in rank as fortune. Her speaking to me was merely the result of gratitude, nothing more.’

    His friend gave a knowing wink.

    ‘No, for thee do allays speak the truth when thee do know it. I ha’ learnt many things since thee was puzzling thee brains over them dreadful books that make my eyes ache to look at, and be wiser nor thee in some things.’

    ‘Not unlikely. Susan is a very clever girl,’ observed his friend, with a smile.

    ‘Never mind Susan now,’ added Goliah. ‘I tell ’ee thee girl is in love wi’ thee.’

    ‘Ridiculous!’

    ‘’Diculous or not, be it so. Eyes don’t lie, though the tongue does.’

    Somehow our hero did not feel quite as angry at the absurdity of the speaker as he ought perhaps to have done. During the rest of their ride to Soho Square he remained silent, chewing the cud, as Shakespeare says, of sweet and bitter fancies — a weakness we are all liable to, age as well as youth.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes

    Finnegans Wake: For a pertinent site on the Wake, see Susie Lopez’s piece at Lithub, ‘Finnegan’s Wake at 80: In Defense of the Difficult: On the Pleasure of Annotating One of Literature’s Most Challenging Works’.

    Trove: Trove, National Library of Australia

    Cymon and his Nymph: See John Dryden, ‘Cymon and Iphigenia‘, from Boccace, in Fables Ancient and Modern (1700).

    Isle of Calypso: Reference to Angelica Kauffman’s painting, Telemachus and the Nymphs of Calypso (1782), showing a scene from François Fénelon’s novel The Adventures of Telemachus (1699).

    Rotten Row and Hyde Park Corner (image): A likely site for Lady Kate and William to have crossed paths. See ‘Victorian London: Entertainment and Recreation’.  ‘Rotten Row’ is a corruption of Route du Roi, The King’s Road, which William III had built at the end of the seventeenth century as a safe route for him to travel between Kensington Palace and St. James’s Palace. In the image, Rotten Row is to the right; it was for saddle-horses only.

    Ecod: Egad.

    chewing the cud, as Shakespeare says: Common misquotation of As You Like It, 4.3: “Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy”.

    Dearden’s Miscellaney (1839).  Jump to page on Internet Archive for ‘check string’ entry (under “Important Invention”, p.121).