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Tag: Victorian Era

  • 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 — Sixteenth Instalment

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

    Prior to the two Australian newspaper series we’re using to reconstruct The Mystery of the Marsh, the novel appeared serialized in the New York Ledger during the period December 1882 — March 1883. You may recall that Smith moved from Europe to the United States in 1870, residing there until his death in 1890. According to Montague Summers, the author of A Gothic Bibliography (1941; 1964), by that time Smith’s fortune was ‘wasted’, owing to his ‘too ample charities and generosity’, and he died ‘in obscurity, if not indeed in actual want.’

    During that period, Smith wrote original stories for the New York Ledger, a so-called ‘six-cent weekly’ offering diverse family entertainment, but catering mostly for a female readership, with an emphasis on romantic fiction (‘Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls’; Stanford U).

    In considering provenance, as tempting as it is to suggest that Mystery of the Marsh was first published in the New York Ledger, Summers cautions that in America Smith ‘republished many of his old tales and wrote some new romances the titles of which it is baffling to trace.’ The problem is exacerbated by the fact that many stories published in London were given no explicit byline, but rather advertised as ‘By the author of such-and-such.’ It would seem a fool’s errand to go wading through a morass of digitized newspapers in search of a serialized text whose author was unstated and title unsure.

    The copy referenced in the New York Ledger is itself  hard to access. Earhart and Jewell explain how

    While the works of major writers and periodicals are being digitized, there is limited funding for others. For example, scholars have no electronic or even microfilm access to the New York Ledger, the newspaper where Fanny Fern, among the most famous women writers in the nineteenth century, published her weekly columns from 1856 to 1872.

    The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age, (U of Michigan P, 2011)

    There is little if any doubt, however, that the work is Smith’s own, given its style, catalogue attributions, and details of reference, some of which I’ve mentioned in previous notes. It seems to me that, in one sense, while we cannot know exactly when the work first appeared, such a limitation adds a certain interest to the work, being a function of the channels and technologies of the text’s transmission.

    More on technicalities in a later post. For the time being, let us leave them behind and turn to the pleasure of the text. In this week’s chapter, the Paris duel and its aftermath; and some dubious characters find themselves ensnared. This instalment’s featured image shows a daytime view of one of the ‘alleys’ of the Luxembourg where the duel is fought.

    CHAPTER SIXTEEN

    Result of the Duel — The Victor and his Friends Make Good their Retreat to London — Lord Bury Once More in the Country — Plot and Counterplot

    On reaching the alley of the Luxembourg — the one skirted by the dead wall in which Marshal Ney was shot for his fidelity to the first Napoleon, and truth compels us to add, undoubted treason to Louis the Eighteenth — the late revellers, their eyes still sparkling under the influence of the wine cup, advanced with a confident if not cheerful air, followed by the three Englishman, whose demeanor appeared far more serious.

    Allée au jardin du Luxembourg, Vincent van Gogh, 1886

    At a distance, but out of sight, Monsieur Vezin, with several agents of police, were on their track. The clever detective had received not only his reward, but instructions. If Lord Bury fell, he was to take no steps against the liberty of his antagonist. If Clarence succumbed, he was not to use the information he had obtained or arrest him. The only circumstances under which the last step would be taken — his refusal to fight — did not seem likely to occur; he was already on the ground.

    Although little more than boys in years, the students were men of the world as far as the punctilios of the duel are concerned. They had secured the services of a surgeon on their way to the Luxembourg, measured the ground with mathematical exactness, and placed the pistol in the hands of their principal.

    It had been agreed that the combatants should fire together.

    The fall of the handkerchief was followed by the instantaneous discharge of the weapons. Lord Bury still stood erect, although the ball of Clarence had slightly grazed his temple. Marsham lay senseless on the ground, bleeding from a severe wound in his throat.

    The surgeon approached, looked in his face, and shook his head gravely. Despite the semi-Bohemian life he led, he was a man of honor. Turning to the English group, he said:

    ‘You had better retire, gentlemen, and provide for your safety. The result threatens to be serious, and the government of the day sets its face against duelling.’

    Captain Seymour had taken the precaution of keeping the carriage waiting at the gate of the Luxembourg. In less than an hour Bury and his friends had quitted Paris and were on their way to the nearest frontier town in Belgium.

    Monsieur Vezin took care they were not too closely followed.

    Meanwhile Marsham had been taken back to his hotel, and further surgical assistance sent for.

    * * *

    Tact is one of those qualities which some men are born with; few things are more difficult to acquire. Experience can only partially supply its absence. It lacks the smoothness, the ready spontaneity of the former; then it sometimes blunders, which tact carefully avoids.

    ‘Here, you girls,’ exclaimed Sir George Meredith, handing the “Morning Post” — the fashionable journal of the day — to his daughter as they sat at luncheon, ‘see if you can solve this riddle. I can make nothing of it.’

    Clara addressed herself to the paragraph in the “Morning Post,” and had not proceeded far before a deadly paleness overspread her countenance, and she fell, half-fainting, from her chair.

    With the assistance of Lady Kate and Rose Neville, who were staying at the Hall, the housekeeper and female servants conveyed the deeply agitated girl to her own room. A groom was dispatched to the nearest physician by her half distracted parent, who at intervals stood puzzling his brains as to the cause of the sudden attack. Slowly the perception dawned upon his mind that something in the “Post” had occasioned it

    Snatching up the paper, he perused the paragraph a second time. For the benefit of our readers we shall transcribe it :

    ‘Paris. — Duel in High Life. — On the l8th instant a hostile meeting took place in the garden of the Luxembourg, between Captain Lord B—, of the Guards, and Lieutenant M—-, whose late retirement from the service caused considerable comment in fashionable circles. Both the combatants wore wounded; his lordship in the temple; his antagonist far more seriously in the throat. His life, we hear, is despaired of.’

    What renders the affair still more distressing is the fact of the father of Lord B— being married to the mother of the gentleman whose life is despaired of.

    ‘B stands for Bury,’ muttered the baronet, after reading the paragraph a second and third time. ‘He would never be such a fool as to call Marsham to account, and yet M— designates the rascal clearly enough.’

    ‘But why should Clara faint on reading the news?’ he added.

    Glancing his eyes once more over the journal, he detected a paragraph which had escaped his attention:

    ‘Lord Bury, we are happy to hear, has arrived safely from Paris, and is now staying with his regiment at Knightsbridge.’

    And a little lower down he read:

    ‘Viscount and Viscountess Allworth left town last night for the continent. The state of Mr. M— is considered hopeless.’

    ‘Served the rascal right, if it is really the man I suspect,’ said Sir George, by way of comment. ‘But I have no time to think of him. My mind is occupied with Clara. What could her fainting mean?’

    The speaker paced the apartment for several minutes. A smile at last appeared upon his honest countenance.’ An idea had struck him — one that, we shrewdly suspect, has already occurred to our readers.

    ‘If it should be so,’ he muttered, ‘I have a great mind to write and remind him of his promised visit. But first for the “Morning Post.”‘

    Carefully marking the two last bits of gossip, he directed the housekeeper to convey the paper to Lady Kate Kepple.

    ‘A clever girl that,’ he thought. ‘She will know what I mean. Girls understand each other.’

    Two hours elapsed before his niece made her appearance. She entered the room with a smiling face that boded favourable intelligence of the patient.

    ‘Clara is much better!’ she exclaimed. ‘Quite recovered from her fainting fit. The heat of the weather. Nothing serious.’

    ‘No doubt’ of it,’ replied the baronet. ‘I felt it myself. Dreadfully warm.’

    The morning had been a frosty one. The speakers looked in each other’s face, and laughed. A sense of the ridiculous had struck them both.

    ‘Sir George,’ observed the young lady, regarding him archly, ‘are you aware that you are a very deceitful, treacherous old gentleman?’

    ‘Treacherous and deceitful!’ exclaimed her relative. ‘What can you mean?’

    ‘Exactly what I said,’ answered Kate; ‘and you know it. But we will not discuss the question. It can do no good. If I had a secret,’ she added, ‘I should be very careful how I gave you a clue to it.’

    ‘All girls have their secret,’ observed the father of Clara, playfully, ‘and I feel certain that you are no exception to the rule, for you have a heart.’

    Lady Kate coloured to the temples.

    ‘So you may just as well confess it,’ added the speaker.

    ‘When I have,’ she answered laughingly, as she quitted the room, ‘I will come to you for advice; but not till then.’

    The worthy baronet felt particularly well satisfied with himself. He had acted most diplomatically; conveyed the information he wished to his daughter without permitting his suspicions as to the cause of her illness to appear.

    That same day he wrote to his nephew, alluded frankly to the reports he had read, and asked him candidly how much truth he was to attribute to them. He concluded the letter by reminding him of his promised visit to the country.

    That will do,’ he said, after reading  it  twice; ‘must not appear too pressing. Clara would never forgive me. I wish she were well married.’

    ‘Just the thing,’ thought his lordship, on perusing the invitation. ‘A few weeks rest will be welcome to me. I wonder if Clara knew of her father’s writing. Don’t be conceited, Bury,’ he added, smiling to himself;  ‘even if she does know of it, it means nothing. What more natural? It must be awfully dull in the country.’

    Ten days later he was on his way to Norfolk, but not alone. Tom Randal accompanied him in the character of his valet.

    It is the privilege of every officer in the army to take one man from his regiment to act as a servant, not that the young guardsman had the slightest intention of entrusting his person to the care of the rustic lover of the pretty Phoebe, who, excited by the hope of meeting his sweetheart again, and, if possible, shaking her resolution, forgot all about his determination of wearing no other livery than that of his country.

    ‘Tom,’ said his captain, when everything was settled; ‘we travel in mufti.’

    Mufti, in military parlance, means plain clothes.

    ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ continued the speaker, ‘but you can wear your uniform only on Sundays; weekdays you will have to dress in –‘

    ‘Your Lordship’s livery,’ interrupted the farmer’s son, in a tone of wounded pride.

    The officer fixed his eyes keenly upon him.

    ‘You deserve that I should say yes, for doubting me,’ he replied. ‘Do you think I could humiliate you? I had no other means of obtaining your temporary leave of absence, or I would have tried it. Take that card, Tom, to my tailor. He will supply you with plain clothes that will not disgrace your father’s son — and on Sundays you may break the hearts of half the village girls by wearing your uniform — and a deuced fine fellow you look in it.’

    ‘Phœbe,’ he added, ‘will scarcely be able to resist it.’

    Needless to say, poor Tom Randal was profuse in his gratitude. At the appointed time they started on their journey.

     * * *

    Like a solitary spider in its web, Mr. Brit, senior, sat alone in his chambers. The clerks had quitted at the usual hour, but their employer remained under pretence of having important papers to look through; but in reality to hold a meeting with his agent and confederate, the money lender.

    Benoni, who, whilst seeming attentive only to his duties, had eyes and ears for everything that transpired, was not deceived by their ruse. He had already acquired one piece of practical knowledge in his new profession — that the last thing a lawyer gives is his reason for any act. He prefers putting forth the pretence. Instead of returning as his fellow clerks did, to his lodgings, he resolved to remain in the neighbourhood of the Old Jury and watch the proceedings of his employer.

    To this degrading action he was impelled by a double motive  — curiosity and fear. The allurements of London had already proved too much for him; he had yielded to their blandishments and plunged, without making any real resistance, into a career of vice. As is usual in such cases, the first false step forced on a second. To supply the means of extravagance, the unfortunate youth had appropriated a check, left by a country client in settlement of an account; and even that was not the worst — he had endorsed it with his employer’s name.

    No wonder the possible consequence of this rash act haunted him. He saw but one way of escaping from it — discovering something so damaging to the reputation of the pious Mr. Brit that might in turn place that gentleman in his power.

    It was a terrible game of see-saw Benoni was playing. At one end of the balance stood the hangman with his rope; at the other, even if he succeeded, shame and exposure.

    The odds were desperately in favor of the elder rogue.

    Benoni had concealed himself in a dark, narrow passage, bordered by dirty, gloomy-looking houses. At night the passage was a solitude; few except the hungry and destitute invaded it — or the criminal.

    After standing two hours upon the watch, a prey to his remorseful fears, the concealed spy saw the old money lender, Moses, glide like a shadow from his own den to that of the respectable Mr. Brit.

    ‘Something,’ he thought, ‘but not sufficient. If I could but overhear their conversation.’

    Whilst he stood puzzling his fevered brain to contrive the means, two men, who, from the bottom of the passage, had been watching his proceedings, crept stealthily towards him. They were meanly dressed, their faces partially hid by high shirt collars, then just coming into vogue, and long woollen wrappers twisted loosely round their necks.

    No echoing footfall gave warning of their approach. A cloak was thrown suddenly over the head of the spy, who felt himself dragged still farther into the passage, then down a short flight of steps, leading, as he rightly conjectured, to the basement of one of the houses.

    The prisoner, who had never been remarkable for courage, believing himself to have fallen into the hands of justice, fainted.

    On recovering his senses he found himself seated in an arm chair, his arms bound, and the cloak still over his face. Certain animals, we are told, when closely pressed by the hunter, will pretend to be dead. Benoni was not much of a naturalist, but he had read the Greek fable, and, although restored to consciousness, made up his mind to act the insensible.

    He was rewarded by hearing the following conversation between his captors:

    ‘I tell you,’ said the tallest of the two, ‘it is useless to trust him. He has not the courage of a hare. Can’t you see what a miserable cur he is?’

    ‘But he is cunning,’ replied a thin, squeaking voice, which the listener thought he recognised.

    ‘What security will his cunning give for his fidelity?’

    ‘None; but I have a better than that — his neck.’

    The tall man repeated the words.

    ‘Yes,’ continued the former speaker. ‘He has committed a breach of trust; forged old Brit’s name to a check; no great amount, but sufficient to hang him. The warrant is out.’

    Benoni with difficulty suppressed a groan.

    ‘On his return to his lodgings he will be arrested.’

    At this revelation the prisoner experienced a fresh access of terror. His limbs trembled in every joint, and, yet faithful to the part he was acting, he gave no signs of consciousness till the cloak had been removed and a glass of cold water dashed in his face, when he opened first one eye, then the other, and stared languidly round the room.

    ‘Ah, Wickwar,’ he said, In a faint tone, ‘is that you?’

    ‘In person,’ chuckled the man.

    ‘Always playing some practical joke.’

    ‘You will find it no joke,’ observed the squeaking voice, dryly.

    Benoni recognised in its answer the confidential clerk of Mr. Moses, the money-lender, and experienced an unpleasant choking sensation at his throat.

    ‘Look you,’ continued the speaker. ‘I don’t know that I am much better than you are — only a little more prudent. My employer has no hold on me. Yours has upon you. I have engaged myself to serve this gentleman, who has fallen into the hands of our masters, who are great rogues, but exceedingly clever ones. I am bound to carry out my promise. Now, if you could undertake to guide him to a place of safety, perhaps — mind, I only say perhaps — I might connive at your escaping with him. Do you know of such a place?’

    ‘I do!’ exclaimed Benoni, eagerly. ‘A retreat where the staunchest bloodhounds of the law would not attempt to penetrate.’

    ‘Is it far from London?’

    ‘Thirty miles.’

    ‘By land or water?’

    ‘Much the same either way,’ was the reply. ‘But by water would be safest. What day is it?’

    ‘Thursday.’

    ‘Then I am certain I could perform my promise,’ observed Benoni. ‘There will be boats in the river laden with wild fowl, game and spirits. Four hours’ sharp rowing will land us safely in the Bittern’s Marsh.’

    After a few whispered words between the two men the proposal was agreed to.

    ‘Listen to me,’ said the eldest. ‘Guide me safely to the place you name, and you will not only secure your own safety, but a handsome reward. Attempt to betray me, and I will  blow your brains out. I will not be taken alive.’

    To prove this threat was not an idle one, he drew from his pocket a pair of pistols.

    The three speakers quitted the basement together.

    At the entrance of the passage Wickwar gave a low whistle, and presently a dingy looking cab was seen driving along the Old Jury. Benoni and the tall man entered it, when it immediately drove off. The money-order clerk stood watching it as it disappeared.

    ‘The fools!’ he muttered to himself. ‘Bully and coward — they are well matched.’

    Waiting till the rattle of the wheels ceased to be heard, the schemer crossed rapidly to the other side of the streets and began groping his way in the dark up the stairs leading to the chamber of the respectable Mr. Brit.

    It was no part of that gentleman’s policy — all lawyer’s are gentlemen by act of Parliament — to drive the fugitive, who was no other than their dupe Burcham, out of the country, but to frighten him into some place of concealment where he could communicate neither with friends nor receive advice. The transactions with his dupe through his agent, Moses, had been most profitable, and promised to be more so, but he well knew they could not bear the light. It was with this view the scene we have described had been enacted.

    Needless to add that Wickwar was in the plot.

    ‘Capital, my dear fellow, capital!’ said the lawyer, in a tone of satisfaction, when the last-named personage entered the chambers. ‘Could not have done it better myself.’

    ‘Peautiful!’ exclaimed the Jew. You think he will be quite safe?’

    ‘As in the grave,’ answered the clerk, confidently. ‘Few,’ he added, have ever escaped from the Bittern’s Marsh.’

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes and References

    he had read the Greek fable: Seems to be Aesop’s fable of the cat and the mice.

    Mufti, in military parlance, means plain clothes: See Hobson-Jobson: a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive by Sir Henry Yule et al (London: Murray, 1903). Jump to page on Internet Archive.

    Luxembourg Gardens and Latin Quarter locations:

    Montague Summers. A Gothic Bibliography. NY: Russell & Russell, 1964 (1941). Jump to page on Internet Archive.

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

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

    The scene shifts to Paris, where Smith can draw upon his youthful experience of bohemian life in the Latin Quarter.  A character in our upper echelon has gone there to take care of some … unfinished business — of the serious kind. Here we meet a new brand of character, a detective by the name of Monsieur Vezin. Although, while in the process of introducing him Smith alludes to Poe (1809–49), this Vezin is hardly the stature of the brilliant Le Chevalier Auguste Dupin — the world’s first fictional detective — of The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter. One has only to look at his coarse, mercenary nature and how he snaps up such a mundane mission. Dupin would never lower himself.

    In saying so, I don’t mean to detract from Smith. On the contrary, his subtle realistic approach compares favourably with Poe’s spectacle and artifice, as entertaining as these are in their own right. (An escaped orangutan did it?!)

    Smith’s seemingly gratuitous reference to Poe is complicated, but worth a few minutes trying to untangle. The historical Duchess de Berry (Maria Carolina Ferdinanda Luise; 1798–1870) is famous for her intrigue against Louis Philippe I, King of France, in whose place she aimed to ‘restore’ her son Henri as the legitimate descendant of the overthrown Bourbon dynasty.  In an incident well-known in the history of cryptography, she sent an encrypted letter to a group of anti-monarchists in Paris, advising them she had arrived in order to mount the insurrection. Unfortunately, she forgot to supply them with the cipher-key (the key explaining which ciphers in the message correspond to which letters of the alphabet).

    It was the great politician and orator, the lawyer Pierre-Antoine Berryer, who reputedly worked out the key — definitely not a detective named Vezin. Poe used the idea in his story The Gold-bug, where the plot turns on deciphering an encoded message just as Berryer did. On the other hand, this particular letter of the Duchess’ doesn’t seem to have been ‘compromising’ as such. Perhaps Smith mixes in a vague allusion to Poe’s ‘purloined letter’, since its disclosure ‘would bring in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station’ (Poe, PL).

    Later in the chapter, out of the blue, Smith makes further reference to the absence of a figurative ‘key’, this time in the form of a Latin quotation: ‘nil nisi clavis [deest]’ (‘nothing is wanting but the key’), an arcane Masonic catechism. Does he mean to imply, more broadly, that there exists a missing master-key to some overarching mystery? Shades of Umberto Eco. Is it for the reader, or yet for the author himself to uncover?

    And we notice the echoing of names and identities. ‘Marsham’ has become ‘Marsh’, recalling the eponymous Bittern’s Marsh. We have ‘Lord Bury’, the alluded ‘Duchess of Berry’ and ‘Berryer’. Don’t tell me something is going to be found buried in the marsh?

    Yet the substance of the story unfolds in a straightforward, naturalistic fashion, without a defined, singular, impelling mystery. It is as though the entry of the Poe-esque character, Vezin, acts as a stimulus for ideas that are more characteristic of the Dupin-style of detective fiction, the precursor to the twentieth-century mystery genre. Many incidents in Smith’s novel have a ‘mystery’ or unknown quantity attached to them, waiting to be revealed: boys who turn out to be girls; dark plots; characters with obscure histories in the marsh; and those who have disappeared back into the Bittern’s Marsh …

    Naturally enough, the contemporary reader cannot expect it to conform to a modern mystery. But nevertheless, the conventions of the genre may skew one’s expectations.

    CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    A Glance at Paris — The Avenger on the Track — Students’ Orgie — Preliminaries of a Duel

    When Lord Bury started for France it was with the full intention of calling Clarence Marsham to account for his unmanly conduct to Lady Kate.

    Our traveller’s first halting-place was Paris. It was not his lordship’s first visit to the gay metropolis of our Gallic neighbors. He had been there twice before; seen something of its dissipations, without plunging over head and ears into them. Escaped from the fire, in fact, with only a few feathers singed.

    Faithful to the object of his journey, knowing the character and habits of the man he sought, he frequented once more the scenes he had formerly visited. They failed, however, to attract him. His mind had acquired a more manly tone.

    Paris, Grands Boulevards 1860. Etching

    It is astonishing how soon a naturally healthy appetite sickens of the sugared dainties of our youth.

    Not having discovered Clarence Marsham where he thought he would be found, Lord Bury addressed himself first to the English embassy; next to the prefecture of the police. Neither of them could afford the information be required. No passport in the name of Marsham had been viséd at either place.

    Travelling with a Secretary of State’s passport, which the English Government grants only to the favourite few, his lordship had been received with great civility by the authorities, who really felt anxious to oblige him.

    As he was leaving the prefecture — it was his third visit — a little old man, who had very much the air of a retired grocer or small shopkeeper, addressed him, and after a profusion of bows, such as Frenchmen alone know how to make, blandly inquired if he could be of any service.

    ‘I fear not,’ was the reply. ‘I have already had two interviews with the minister of police, who assures me that everything has been done that could be done.’

    ‘Officially?’ inquired the old man.

    ‘Of course.’ The querist smiled sarcastically. There was an expression of something very like contempt in his small, twinkling grey eyes at the obtuseness of the Englishman that roused the anger of the latter, who asked himself if the Frenchman had played with or been mocking him. Monsieur Vezin noticed this, and hastened to dissipate it.

    ‘No, no, my lord,’ he said, eagerly. ‘The prefect of the police can have no interest in deceiving you. What I meant was simply this: Official investigations are not always the most satisfactory. They have so much to attend to.’

    The traveller naturally felt surprised at finding his thoughts so accurately interpreted, and eyed the speaker more closely.

    ‘You know me?’ he observed.

    The detective smiled.

    ‘I know everyone who comes to Paris in his own name and with a legitimate passport,’ he replied. ‘And those who do not, I know where to find them.’

    ‘Who are you, sir?’

    ‘I am Vezin.’

    I know not whether it tells in their favour or not as a people, but the French have long been celebrated for the marvellous astuteness of their police. It is a speciality, and they are proud of it. And yet, singular contradiction, the humblest tradesman or mechanic would consider himself insulted by being taken for a member of it. Hint to a Frenchman of the middle classes that his morals are loose, he will only laugh at you. Accuse him of untruthfulness, he merely shrugs his shoulders. Call him a spy, and he is ready to fight you.

    Lord Bury was no stranger to the name of the detective. It was of European reputation, although he had not yet made the famous stroke by which he discovered the compromising letter of the Duchess de Berry, which the American poet, Poe, has made such a clever use of.

    ‘It is not the means I should prefer,’ he thought, but Clarence Marsham has left me no other.’

    Turning to the old man, he added, aloud:

    ‘I think, Monsieur, that you can be of use to me.’

    Vezin bowed.

    ‘This is no place for confidence,’ continued the speaker. ‘Follow me to my hotel, where we can converse more freely.’

    ‘With pleasure, my lord.’

    Once seated at the Bristol — the then fashionable hotel — his lordship described his anxiety to discover the whereabouts of Clarence Marsham, but not his motives; in this he was wrong. A detective is something like a confessor — he should be trusted with everything or nothing. The young Englishman ought to have understood this — perhaps he did — but his pride revolted at the thought of painting one so nearly connected with him in his true colours.

    Monsieur Vezin looked puzzled — just sufficiently to justify his asking a few questions.

    ‘Very clear,’ he said;  ‘in fact, perfectly lucid; still in certain cases we require an excess of light. Has the Englishman — I wish to put it as delicately as possible, done anything to render him amenable to the laws?’

    ‘His offence is a social one,’ was the evasive answer.

    ‘And you are in Paris to call him to an account?’ continued the former. ‘You need not reply. I can read the intention in your flashing eyes. I have nothing to do with that. If Mr. Clarence Marsham is in Paris I pledge my reputation to discover his retreat — but it will cost both time and money.’

    ‘You shall have no cause to complain,’ observed Lord Bury, haughtily. ‘Find his address, that is all I ask. You may leave the rest to me.’

    Monsieur Vezin thought so too.

    Three days after the above conversation the detective made his appearance at the Hotel Bristol again;  his employer saw by his eyes that he had been successful.

    ‘Well?’ he exclaimed eagerly.

    ‘I am on the track my lord.’

    ‘Pshaw! Only on the track?’

    ‘That is something,’ observed Monsieur Vezin, quietly; ‘a pledge that I shall run him to earth, as your fox-hunting countrymen say. There is but one difficulty. He has a Secretary of State’s passport,’ he added, significantly, ‘in the name of Marsh.’

    ‘My father must have procured it for him,’ thought Lord Bury, bitterly.

    ‘That there may be no errors,’ continued his visitor, ‘I have called to consult with you before I proceed any further.’

    ‘Not for the world!’ exclaimed his lordship, eagerly. ‘Leave him to me.’

    ‘He has signed a false name.’

    ‘With no political or fraudulent intentions. I can answer for that.’

    ‘Still it is a serious offence by the laws of France. I ought to arrest him.’

    ‘Come, come, Monsieur Vezin,’ said the Englishman, forcing a smile. ‘You are, I am convinced, too gallant a gentleman’ — the word gentleman stuck in his throat — ‘not to appreciate the difficulty in which such a step would place me; my honour and courage might be suspected — the world would suppose that I feared to meet him.’

    ‘It is possible,’ observed the Frenchman, musingly.

    ‘Of course it is,’ said his employer. ‘Let us see if duty or sentiment cannot hit upon a compromise.’

    A compromise was hit upon. Needless to say, it took a tangible shape, and the following agreement made: At an early hour the following morning, Monsieur Vezin was to accompany Lord Bury and two of his English friends, to point out the house in the students’ quarters where Clarence Marsham had taken up his abode. If he accepted the duel, well, the police would wink at its taking place. If he refused, they were at once to arrest him.

    ‘I shall be sure to hit him,’ thought his lordship, as he quitted his hotel in search of a second.

    The detective muttered something very similar as he walked towards the prefecture of police; to be sure, the words were somewhat different.

    ‘He means mischief. I can see it in his eyes,’ he said. ‘Bah! What is it to me if one English dog shoots another? — a troublesome affair off my mind, even if I am well paid for it.’

    ‘The Latin Quarter of Paris has a type apart from the rest of  the pleasure-loving city. It is the centre of Bohemian life in all its varieties. Students, grisettes, dealers in books, old coins, bric-a-brac, antique furniture, costumes and armor, indispensable accessories of the painter’s studio, locate themselves chiefly in the street of the Ancient Comedy, where the once celebrated Cafe Procope still. opens wide its doors. The brilliant galaxy, Balzac, Lamartine, dear old Béranger, Victor Hugo, have long since disappeared from the busy stage of Parisian life.

    Student life in the Latin Quarter has changed but little. Its amusements, occupations, habits, vices, and, let us add, virtues, are still pretty much the same as when the author shared it some fifty years ago. A little study, great extravagance, loyal generosity to a comrade in distress, a rude sense of honor where their own sex are concerned, a general disregard of it towards the weaker and more helpless one.

    Street in Latin Quarter, 1862, photograph, Charles Marville. Source: nga.gov

    The houses occupied by the students are exceedingly numerous. The steady ones board; the pleasure-seeking merely lodge in them. Each set of rooms is a separate fortress; their occupants band in strict alliance for self-defence.

    In the middle ages, the members of the university braved the crown — frequently gave laws to it. At the present day they brave only the police, unless a revolution happens to be upon the tapis; then something like their old spirit returns to them.

    In the street of the Ancient Comedy stands a large hotel which, for nearly a century, has been a favorite abode with the semi-Bohemian race we have just described. On the first floor of the building, Clarence Marsham — or rather Clarence Marsh, as his passport designated him — had engaged one of the most roomy and best apartments. Compared with his neighboring lodgers, his surroundings might be termed luxurious; still they were a sad falling off from the regimental club and the splendors of Allworth House. The youthful profligate did not, however, regret the change very much. In Paris he had found what he deemed compensation in the alluring pleasures of the French metropolis.

    Although his mother had reduced his allowance by one half, Clarence Marsham appeared a veritable Crœsus to his new acquaintances, who ate his suppers, drank his wines, and occasionally borrowed a few francs from him. Not that he was by any means a generous lender; it was a tax he had to pay, and he paid it grudgingly.

    Our roué, who was fast gliding into the habits and manners of his new associates, had invited some half dozen of them to a late breakfast in his rooms. Amongst others were Duhammel, the son of a rich notary; Alfred Oufroy, of an old Norman family; Alphonse Dubarry; St. Ange, brother to the great advocate, — all of them giddy, pleasure loving youths, but extremely sensitive on the one great point of French honor — courage.

    As for morals, in the strict sense of the word, we fear they scoffed at them.

    From Scenes de la vie de boheme (1850), Henri Murger, illustr. Maurice Berty.
    From La Vie de Boheme (1850), Henri Murger, illustr. Maurice Berty.

    The revel was at its height — continued from the orgies of the preceding night — orgies which we cannot take upon ourselves to describe, even if we had the inclination. Glasses were drained, plans for fresh dissipations laid out, and vows of eternal friendship — false as dicers’ oaths — exchanged.

    One instant, bursts of equivocal jest; the next, the half-drunken madcaps broke into one of their student songs — honoured traditions in the Latin Quarter. Their fathers and grandfathers most probably, had sung them under similar circumstances, with the same noisy accompaniments of jingling glasses and rattling of forks and knives.

    Brother students, we are met for mirth and delight,
    And joy the bright goblet of Bacchus shall fill;
    For though woman, dear women, be absent to-night,
    The spell of her beauty is over us still.
    ‘Twas wisely decreed by our masters of old,
    To refuse them degrees, ‘spite entreaties and sighs;
    For once in our halls they would rule uncontrolled,
    And govern each class by the light of their eyes.
    Then think not in Bacchus alone we delight,
    And seek but the cup of the wine-god to fill:
    For though woman, dear woman, be absent to-night,
    The spell of her beauty is over us still.

    The cheers which followed the song and chorus had barely subsided when Monsieur Bellot, the proprietor of the hotel, entered the room. His appearance was hailed by the revellers with bursts of laughter and applause. Clarence insisted on his drinking a glass of champagne in honor of his guests. The Frenchman bowed, swallowed the wine, then gravely informed the host that three gentlemen were in the ante-room who insisted on seeing him.

    The young Englishman looked disconcerted. The recollection of the false passport, and his assumed name, suggested suspicions of the police.

    ‘Who are they?’ he demanded after a pause. ‘Frenchmen?’

    ‘No,’ replied Mons. Bellot, ‘Englishmen. I can swear to that. But their cards,’ he added, at the same time, ‘will doubtless inform you of the purport of their visit.’

    The roué read the names of three officers of Lord Bury’s regiment. His enemy had found him.

    ‘Yes, certainly!’ exclaimed the latter, enforcing a laugh to conceal his embarrassment. ‘They are old friends, show them in.’

    The students noticed with surprise that the three Englishmen, when they entered the room, instead of rushing to their host, embracing him, and indulging in a succession of gyrations which it would puzzle a mathematician to describe, bowed stiffly, and the eldest one, advancing towards Clarence, requested the favour of a private conversation with him.

    ‘A duel,’ whispered Oufroy.

    Duhammel thought it looked very like one.

    ‘How odd these islanders are,’ added a third student. ‘Three seconds to carry one message. But, nil nisi clavis, we have not the key of the enigma yet.’

    ‘You may speak before these gentlemen,’ exclaimed Marsham, in a tone of bravado, trusting that his guests would stand by him.

    ‘Tiens!’ said one of them. ‘The insular appears civilised.’

    Considering that barely four years had elapsed since the battle of Waterloo had been fought, this was rather a handsome admission for a Frenchman to make.

    ‘My Lord Bury,’ said the second, ‘feeling deeply insulted in his honour and personal dignity by the conduct of Mr. Marsh’– he gave him his assumed name — ‘towards a lady whose name it would be indelicate to mention, demands immediate satisfaction for the outrage.’

    Although Clarence was not particularly brave, he was far from being, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, a coward. He knew that his lordship was a dead shot, and began to reflect whether some means might not be found to avoid the meeting. What made the affair more difficult was the Englishman had delivered his message in excellent French.

    ‘Mon Dieu!’ whispered Oufroy in his ear. ‘What are you hesitating about?’

    ‘Looking for his lost courage,’ suggested another of the students.

    Clarence turned towards them, his mind being made up at last.

    ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you are, I believe, all of you, my excellent good friends.’

    To this there succeeded a dead silence His guests were waiting.

    ‘I am placed in a position of extreme delicacy,’ added the speaker, ‘and solicit your advice, pledging myself, of course, to act on it.’

    At this there was a faint murmur of approval.

    ‘The gentleman who has challenged me is so nearly related to me that I hesitate about accepting the provocation.’

    ‘Is he a brother?’ asked Duhammel, the oldest of the Frenchmen present.

    ‘No. His father is the husband of my mother.’

    An ironical smile — in fact, it amounted almost to a sneer — curled the lips of the students, who unanimously assured the speaker that so slight a degree of relationship presented no obstacle to his accepting the duel.

    ‘Curse them!’ muttered Clarence to himself. ‘I am in for it.’ Speaking aloud he added: ‘Thanks, gentlemen; you have relieved my mind of a painful doubt. Perhaps you will arrange the time and place of meeting with my adversary?’

    ‘It must be instantly,’ observed Captain Seymour, the name of the messenger. ‘His lordship is waiting in the Alley of the Luxembourg, hard by.’

    ‘Is the offence so deadly?’ asked Duhammel.

    ‘Most deadly,’ was the reply. Walking close to Clarence, he whispered in his ear: ‘Choose at once ‘between the satisfaction demanded or being arrested, dragged through the streets of Paris, for travelling under a false name and passport.’

    ‘And can you reconcile to yourselves turning informers?’

    ‘Under ordinary circumstances, certainly not; but by violating the laws of honor you have placed yourself beyond the pale of society. The police are already in the hotel, ready to arrest you. The exposure once made, his friends cannot permit Lord Bury to meet you.’

    ‘And shall I fall?’

    ‘You need not trouble yourself for any after results,’ observed Captain Seymour, dryly.

    ‘Should I be the victor?’ added Clarence.

    ‘In that case,’ remarked the former, ‘neither my brother officers nor myself will feel called upon .to denounce you.’

    Cornered at every point, the cowardly insulter of Lady Kate resolved to take the desperate chance. Walking to the table he tossed off in succession two or three glasses of wine; then, turning to his student friends, exclaimed, in an almost joyous tone:

    ‘I am ready.’

    The former had already supplied themselves with both swords and pistols, that the principal might have the choice of weapons on the ground.

    ‘And now, gentlemen, where to?’ inquired Duhammel.

    ‘To the garden of the Luxembourg,’ answered Captain Seymour, gravely.

    A few minutes later the speakers passed by the Odeon, where a bal masque had been held the preceding night. Several of the students who had attended it recognised Clarence and his friends as they passed them.

    Death and dissipation jostled each other on the street. They are old acquaintances, and a familiar nod was all that seemed necessary.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes, References, Further Reading

    orangutan: To counterbalance my glib comment, see Sydney Lévy, ‘Why an Ourang-Outang? Thinking and Computing with Poe‘, at Épistémocritique: Littérature et savoirs.

    orgie: Fr. orgy

    grisette: ‘1. A young French working-class woman; 2. A young woman combining part-time prostitution with some other occupation.’ Merriam-Webster.

    upon the tapis: from Fr. ‘sur le tapis’ = ‘on the carpet’; in the context, ‘on the table-cloth’, or ‘under consideration’, as in the English idiom ‘on the table’.

    Crœsus: King of Lydia, 560–547 BCE, whose riches came from gold in the sands of the River Pactolus, where King Midas washed his hands.

    false as dicers’ oaths: ‘Such an act / That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, / Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose / From the fair forehead of an innocent love / And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows / As false as dicers’ oaths: O, such a deed […]’ (Hamlet iii.4). That is, as untrustworthy as a dicer’s vow to quit gambling.

    [Louis de Loménie], R.M. Walsh, trans. ‘Berryer’ in Sketches of Conspicuous Living Characters of France (1841). Available free at Internet Archive.

    Henri Murger, La Vie de Boheme (1850). Available free at Internet Archive.

    Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841), ‘The Purloined Letter’ (PL) (1844), ‘The Gold-bug’ (1843).

    William F. Friedman, ‘Edgar Allan Poe, Cryptographer’ in L.J. Budd and E.H. Cady eds.,  On Poe (1993).

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

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

    Almost a century and a half has passed since Smith launched his penny blood, so it is natural that a mere aside by the narrator can set off a question mark that repays investigation. In considering the theory of literature, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur describes how a text moves from the world of human experience, through a state of representation and back again. In defining this mimetic process, he places significance upon the role of the reader, because “It is by way of reading that literature returns to life, that is, to the practical and affective field of existence.”

    This is the same for any poem or fiction, but the idea seems to ring particularly true in a case like this, where Smith’s novel has lain dormant in a sense, like a sunken ship. The reader feels to some degree at sea, becomes aware of a lack of particular background schema here and there, due to their separation from the author’s life-world, such as was encoded in the text.

    George “Beau” Brummell, watercolor by Richard Dighton (1805)

    So, for example, Smith characterises the son of Benoni’s new employer as dressing appropriately for his drudging work in the legal office, but after hours transforming into a clothes-horse and butterfly, in attire of which “even Beau Brummell  — the D’Orsay of the day” might have approved. These are “beaux” or “dandies,” men extravagantly attentive to dress and fashion, a determining trait to which further characteristics tend to adhere, until the individual assumes proportions of influence, grandeur and, inevitably, caricature. Smith lends the moral taint of the dandy to Roland Brit, to contrast the upstanding firm into which William Whiston is to pass. The narrator’s digression into the meaning of Goliah Gob’s pet word “frimicating” echoes the theme.

    The “fop” is the historical predecessor to both, and epitomizes a perceived risible and foolish aspect of an excessive devotion to livery; originally and for some centuries, the word meant any kind of fool at all. Though the pejorative sense may adhere in one way or another, the beau and dandy can become a figure of influence, occupying the highest echelons — consider the dandy George IV, Prince of Wales and Prince Regent, far from the least.

    It was thanks to having attracted the attention of the prince that George ‘Beau’ Brummell rose to prominence, setting fashions, holding society in thrall as he strutted among the upper crust, about the salons, parks, clubs and gambling rooms. Some facility with wit is prerequisite to maintaining the position, in order to command fear. When someone offered Brummell a lift to Lady Jersey’s ball, he declined with

     But pray, how are you to go? You surely would not like to get up behind; no that would not be right, and yet it will scarcely do for me to be seen in the same carriage with you.

    Wharton and Wharton

    Fittingly, the Beau’s decline into misery was initiated by an ill-measured remark he made when dining with the Prince Regent and feeling like some more wine: “Wales, ring the bell!” The prince rang, but said to the servant who answered, “Order Mr. Brummell’s carriage.”

    The French amateur painter Alfred Count D’Orsay cannot strictly speaking be claimed to have inherited Brummell’s “descending mantle,” Grace and Philip Wharton consider (Wits and Beaux of Society, 1890) “for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress“. So perhaps that is a fine point of differentiation between beau and dandy.

    Alfred, Count D’Orsay, by Sir George Hayter (1839)

    With his winning tongue, his daring and skill at arms, the irresistably handsome lady-killer, broad-shouldered and slim-waisted, witty, pretty good rider to hounds, irreproachably gotten-up, debonair Count D’Orsay shone in  the Park and dining room. Together with the ultra-glamorous Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington — his mother-in-law and recognised lover — the two ruled from her brilliant London salon, which attracted the likes of Disraeli, Dickens and Hans Christian Anderson. Even Lord Byron, whom the pair befriended, admired  D’Orsay’s writing.

    His imitators were so avid and so numerous that an antagonist was once dissuaded from issuing him a challenge to a duel when it was pointed out that if D’Orsay fought him, everyone else would be wanting to do likewise. D’Orsay commented:

    It’s lucky I’m a Frenchman and don’t suffer from the dumps. If I cut my throat, tomorrow there’d be three hundred suicides in London, and for a time at any rate the race of dandies would disappear.

    Shore

    In his heyday, tailors paid him to wear their creations, and even inserted banknotes into the pockets. On one occasion when the custom was overlooked, D’Orsay had his valet return the garment with his complaint that ‘the lining of the pockets had been forgotten’.

    D’Orsay like Brummell underwent an ignominious descent, fleeing London from creditors, whom to pay was beneath his dignity, to die bankrupt and broken in Paris a few years later.

    CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    Goliah Gob Arrives Safely in London — Visits to our Hero — The Letter — Benoni Enters the Office of Brit and Son — Whose Practice is in a Different Line from Richard Winston’s

    Lawyer Whiston had gone to his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Bunce was now regularly employed, at a fair salary, as one of the regular clerks, Up to the present date the conduct of the poor tramp had proved exemplary. He not only wrote a good band, but showed himself quick and intelligent, but, what was better still, grateful. He had a fulcrum at last. His employer felt some thing more than satisfied with him.

    Law clerks in England are divided into two classes — articled and unarticled. The first are expected to become full-fledged attorneys in something less than three years, and must posses considerable means, for the process of hatching them is an expensive one. The stamp on their articles costs one hundred pounds; next, the premium to the firm, frequently amounting to a much larger sum. A few of the less fortunate scribes contrive to get admitted by hard work, attending closely to the interests of their employers, who, after years of service, make them a present of their indentures; rarely, however, before they have earned them. We have observed it as rather a singular fact, that men so admitted rarely rise to any great eminence in their profession; probably because the opportunity arrives too late. Whatever the motives of his generosity — and gratitude, we suspect, was not the only one — Richard Whiston, after a few weeks’ trial of his capabilities and conduct, gave Bunce his articles and paid all the expenses, taking his acknowledgement for the same. He also allowed him a moderate salary.

    Even his nephew felt surprised at this liberality, but he felt no jealousy; on the contrary, he rejoiced in the good, fortune of the friendless adventurer.

    ‘I suppose, nephew,’ observed the lawyer, as they sat conversing over the breakfast table, ‘you are somewhat puzzled by my conduct to your friend, Bunce.’

    ‘Exceedingly, sir,’ replied the youth; ‘but not more puzzled than glad. He will prove himself worthy of it.’

    ‘I hope so.’

    ‘And I feel certain of it.’

    ‘It is a speculation,’ observed his relative, thoughtfully. ‘I wish to attach him to me, and to know where to place my hand upon him at any moment.’

    ‘A speculation!’ replied our hero, more and more mystified.

    ‘Yes; but not a moneyed one. And now let us speak of your prospects. I have changed my mind respecting you — that is, if you agree to my proposal. Instead of giving you a stool in my office, I wish you to go to college. You possess fair abilities, and if I have read you rightly, are not without ambition. You shall have the chance I threw away.’

    ‘My dear, kind uncle!’ exclaimed William. ‘Could I have made a choice, it is the very one I would have selected; but the expense — the –‘

    ‘You need not trouble your head about that,’ interrupted Richard Whiston, with a smile. ‘Of course,’ he prudently added, ‘I shall expect you to make it as light as possible. You may. attain a scholarship.’

    ‘I will do my best,’ observed the nephew.

    ‘Not for the money value, but for the distinction,’ added the old gentleman. ‘The fact is I felt so confident you would accede to my views that I have already entered your name on the books of St. John’s College, Cambridge. No thanks; your conduct will be the best acknowledgement you can make me. I trust to that.’

    ‘And it shall not disappoint you,’ thought William Whiston, as the speaker left to go to his office. ‘Kind, generous man! I should be a wretch indeed to prove unworthy of his bounty.’

    Our hero was reflecting on the above conversation, and the unexpected change in his prospects when his friend, Goliah, came bouncing into the room. There was a red spot on his brow, and the youth saw that something had occurred to make him angry.

    ‘Dear old fellow!’ he exclaimed, shaking him warmly by the hand. ‘I was just wishing for some one to congratulate me. I feel so happy to see you.’

    ‘I believe that,’ answered the rustic, ‘for I knowed Lonnon could, not change ’ee; but that old fellow in the hall, when I told him I was come to see thee, said he would inquire if ’ee wor at ome, and threatened to ’noance me. Gorry, I would ha loiked to see ’m try it.’

    Our hero could scarcely repress a smile.

    ‘What be thee a grinning at?’ demanded Goliah.

    ‘Only at a slight mistake. Nothing of any consequence,’ replied his friend; ‘The footman meant to be civil. Of course, he knew that I would see you. By announcing you, he merely intended to say that he would let me know you were here. London ways,’ he added, ‘are not like our simple, homely ways in the country. So you must forgive him.’

    ‘No more they be, the frimicating fools.’

    “Frimicating” is an expressive word, and ought to be admitted into our best dictionaries. It means conceited, artificial. In the eastern counties of England it is in general use.

    After delivering his load of hay, Goliah had rushed off to Soho Square without waiting for breakfast. Of course he had to refresh the inner man. While doing so, William had ample time to read his cousin’s letter.

    ‘Kind, affectionate girl!’ he said as his visitor, whose appetite was satisfied at last, dropped his knife and fork by the side of his plate; ‘but I think she alarms herself unnecessarily. Benoni can do me no injury. Besides, why should he?’

    ‘Can’t tell; sartin he be no friend. I wish thee had seen the look he gave thee when thee turned thee back on him at Deerhurst.’

    ‘As to her mother’s meeting him at the back of the orchard, it must have been for the love of gossip.’

    ‘Aye! aye!’ observed Goliah. ‘Peggy Hurst be mortal curious, for sure. Still I beant quite satisfied in my mind. London be a queer sort of a place.’

    ‘There is no Bittern’s Marsh in it,’ remarked William.

    ‘Maybe there are worse things,’ replied his friend. ‘Come home wi’ me,’ he added, coaxingly; ‘thee needn’t go to thee uncle’s. Mother and I ha’ talked it all over. There be a hearty welcome for thee at the farm. Do come, Willie. It beant home without thee.’

    ‘Dear, true friend,’ said the youth, affected not only by the generous offer, but the touching simplicity of the words in which it was made. ‘I feel all your kindness, but let us talk the matter over calmly. I am not to remain in London.’

    ‘The Lord be praised for that!’ ejaculated his hearer. ‘I am going to Cambridge,’ continued the youth. ‘My uncle wishes it, and I most ardently desire it.’

    ‘And what be thee a goin’ there for?’

    ‘To complete my education.’

    ‘Edication!’ repeated the rustic. ‘Why, thee do know twice, or, for the matter of that, three times as much as I do. Thee wor allays first in school.’

    The speaker could not be accused justly of exaggerating his friend’s attainments.

    ‘You must not flatter me, Goliah,’ said his friend, with a slight touch of humour.

    ‘No. I won’t, Willie, I won’t.’

    ‘I cannot go against my uncle’s and my own interests. That would be folly as well as ingratitude.’

    ‘Are thee to be a parson, then?’

    ‘No. A barrister.’

    Had the speaker declared his intention of changing himself into a hippopotamus it would have conveyed the same amount of information to his rustic friend, who observed that anything was better than being a lawyer.

    The speakers passed the greater part of the day together. William bought a very pretty ring for his cousin, in answer to her letter, and quite won the heart of his companion, by encouraging him in his courtship of Susan.

    ‘You must speak boldly,’ he observed; — there was little fear of her admirer overdoing it. ‘You can’t expect a modest, sensible girl should throw herself into your arms unasked.’

    ‘Gorry! wouldn’t I catch her!’ ejaculated the rustic.

    To crown his satisfaction, William Whiston rode all the way through the city in Goliah’s waggon, and only parted from him when he had seen him safely on the high road to Deerhurst; and on that same evening Benoni arrived in London.

    The offices of Brit and Son, to whom, to use a mercantile phrase, he had been consigned, were situated in the Old Jury nearly two miles distant from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so that for the present there appeared but little chance of the former friends meeting. Neither of them wished it.

    Our hero, because, it would recall painful recollections of former intimacy, and feelings which, reason as we may, will exert an influence over us; Benoni, from that lingering sense of shame which shows the heart not to be all corrupt.

    The Old Jury is a very different locality from the place where Richard Whiston’s offices were situated. It is a dull, gloomy street, almost in the heart of London, where every foot of ground is, figuratively speaking, worth its weight in gold; in other words, rents are enormously high, and the gains of those who occupy the offices or houses proportionately large to enable the tenant to pay them.

    The practice of Brit and Son was in some respects a peculiar one. They were solicitors to several religious societies, and treasurers to more than one wealthy charity. Criminal suits they rarely undertook, unless in the interests of their clients. The world considered them highly respectable, and so they were as far as outward appearances were concerned. What they really were will be seen as our tale progresses.

    Joshua Brit dressed to his reputation; in fact dress was a part of it; — a plain suit of black, cambric ruffles, white cravat, no collar, and powdered hair, which somewhat toned down the restless activity of his small dark eyes. His son copied his father pretty closely,  allowing for the difference in their age — copied him in the office, and in business hours; but once released from the drudgery of the office, the grub became a butterfly. Even Beau Brummel — the D’Orsay of the day — might have pronounced his attire passable. He had been named Roland, after one of the most popular preachers of the day.

    Such were the persons who received Benoni when the latter was introduced into their private room to present his credentials.

    ‘Well acquainted with London?’ inquired the old gentleman, after a few preliminary remarks.

    ‘The first time, sir, I have been here. My father advised me to be upon my guard; said it was a dangerous place for young men.’

    Brit junior gave a faint smile.

    ‘I trust,’ added the speaker, ‘I shall not be led astray.’

    ‘With the Lord’s help,’ piously ejaculated the head of the firm.

    ‘Certainly, sir — with the Lord’s help. We cannot stand alone.’

    This, in a youth of eighteen, was perhaps just a little overdone.

    Roland Brit looked at him a second time, but there was no smile upon his visage. On the contrary, he regarded the speaker curiously.’

    I am happy to find,’ observed his father, ‘that my old acquaintance, Blackmore, has instilled such excellent principles in his son. We shall get on very well, no doubt. We undertake no questionable cases. Good morning. The managing clerk has instructions to appoint you to a desk, and will set you to work at once.’

    Benoni bowed and withdrew.

    ‘What do you think of our new clerk?’ said Brit senior, turning to his son as soon as they were alone.

    ‘Humbug,’ replied the young man.

    The old gentleman looked rather surprised. The mild cant of the youth had produced rather a favourable impression upon him; and yet, having practised it so long himself, he ought to have judged it at its exact value.

    ‘Have you not condemned him too hastily?’ he asked.

    ‘Humbug,’ repeated Roland Brit, still more emphatically. ‘Can’t say at present whether dangerous or not. Possibly he may prove useful. But I shall keep an eye upon him.’

    Here the conversation ended, and here we must leave the Old Jury firm, principals and clerk, for some time, whilst we return to the country — to green trees and graceful hedge-rows, enameled flowers — nature’s gems upon earth’s bosom. She requires no other.

    Lady Montague, after presenting her niece at the first drawing-room, and giving one brilliant ball to introduce her to society, had quitted London to pay a long promised visit to Sir George Meredith and his daughter. The girls were cousins, and already inclined to like each other. In retiring thus early in the season from observation, the polite old maid had a double purpose in view. In the first place, she wished the rumours, which were growing fainter every day, to die entirely out — be buried in the tomb of a hundred other forgotten scandals. Next she desired to secure to Lady Kate, in the event of her own death, a trustworthy guardian and protector in the person of the baronet.

    In the course of a few weeks the liking had ripened into a warm attachment for each other. Unreserved confidence already existed between them. When we say unreserved, it is just possible there might be one little secret reserved on either side. If so, it was only natural. They had never yet acknowledged it even to themselves, and probably were unconscious of it.

    Sir George and his daughter, who at first had missed the society of Lord Bury more than they cared to confess, began to get reconciled to it. Lady Montague was an admirable hand at piquet — the only game the baronet really cared about; and they sat down to it every evening.

    As for the fair cousins, we might as well attempt to describe the grateful gyrations of the swallow, or count the vibrations on the painted wings of the butterfly, as give a list of their occupations, in which the claims of charity had no small share. They walked and rode together, amused themselves in the garden, for both dearly loved flowers; visited the schools, and once or twice, by Clara’s persuasion — much to Lady Montague’s dismay — Kate allowed herself to be tempted into the hunting field; but when the dear old maid found that most of the daughters of the country families did the same, she contented with herself with observing that things were different in her young days.

    In the evenings the cousins had music and singing. Of course they had their little innocent plots; they would scarcely have been girls had it been otherwise. Amongst others, the one, half formed by Clara, in the interests of Phœbe and Tom was not lost sight of.

    The time had almost arrived to commence the execution.

    ‘What a delightful thing it must be to have a father!’ observed Lady Kate Kepple, with a sigh, as she and her cousin stood watching the bees in their glass hives in the flower garden. ‘If I did not love you so much how I should envy you.’

    Clara silently kissed her.

    ‘Some one to watch and care for our happiness, who is ever preparing some little graceful surprise expressive of affection. How old are you, coz?’

    ‘I shall be nineteen in two months. Why do you ask?’

    ‘Nothing serious. A little curiosity, perhaps.’

    Clara Meredith regarded her for an instant, then broke into a merry laugh.

    ‘You dear little hypocrite!’ she exclaimed. ‘I see it all. Papa has been consulting you respecting a birthday present for me.’

    ‘I promised not to tell,’ observed her cousin, artlessly.

    ‘And kept your promise as papa, I suspect, intended it should be kept. How else could you advise both?’

    ‘Sir George has seen such a love of a bracelet at Rundel and Bridge’s,’ said Kate.

    ‘I have more than a dozen already, and rarely wear one of them,’ replied her friend.

    ‘And a diamond and opal cross,’ added the former. ‘I like opals.’

    ‘And I prefer pearls; but as I have two sets already, they would be useless,’ observed Clara. ‘What I wish for is a farm.’

    ‘A farm!’ repeated her cousin, greatly surprised.

    ‘Yes, a farm of three hundred acres of land, more or less, as I heard the steward say, to have and to hold, dispose of the rents as I please — buy feathers with them if it takes my fancy, or pug dogs.’

    ‘Your father will doubtless buy you one,’ said Lady Kate, looking very much puzzled, for she knew the speaker to be anything but mercenary.

    The laughing girl shook her head.

    ‘That would not answer,’ she exclaimed. ‘What I want is the Home Farm — the one,’ she added, seeing that Kate did not quite understand her — ‘that Farmer Randal is the tenant of. His lease expires, I know, in six months.’

    There was no further mystification possible. The purpose of the speaker became clear, and the girls laughed and chatted over their plot to promote the happiness of the rustic lovers.

    It would have been difficult to find an elderly gentleman more surprised than Sir George Meredith when Lady Kate Kepple informed him of his daughter’s wishes respecting the Home Farm. The suggestion might have puzzled a wiser head than his.

    ‘The Home Farm!’ he ejaculated. ‘What can she want the Home Farm for?’

    ‘Possibly for pin money,’ answered the fair girl, laughing.

    The baronet repeated the words mechanically.

    ‘You have no idea how expensive they are,’ continued the former. ‘No lady can make a presentable toilet without them. They serve so many purposes. Keep things in their place. Sometimes,’ she added, archly, ‘they serve to attach them together.’

    Still the gentleman looked mystified.

    ‘My dear uncle, how obtuse you are! Can’t you see that if the Home Farm were Clara’s, she could let it to whom she pleased — Farmer Randal, his son Tom, or the pretty Phœbe?’

    Sir George Meredith indulged in a hearty laugh. He comprehended the plot at once.

    ‘She shall have it !’ he exclaimed. ‘What a fool I was to suspect my child of a selfish thought! Let it to whom she pleases? Make ducks and drakes of the rent, if she likes. Spend it in white mice and pug dogs. So this is the birthday present Clara wished for?’

    Lady Kate nodded her head in the affirmative.

    ‘She shall have the bracelet, too,’ added the speaker. ‘Gad! I feel so delighted with the girl’s ingenuity that I could find it in my heart to purchase half Rundel and Bridge’s stock, if she desired it.’

    ‘My dear uncle, you must not be too extravagant. The bracelet and opal cross will be quite sufficient.’

    ‘That girl,’ thought the old gentleman, as his niece quitted the room, ‘has a clear head for business. The cross! Humph! I ought to have thought of that. Cost another thousand! Phsaw! what signifies money? The only use I can see in it is to make those around us happy. Rather expensive though.’

    Would that more possessors of the golden gifts of fortune shared the speaker’s opinion!

    The transfer of the farm had been duly made, and a few days afterwards, as the two cousins were taking their morning ride, they encountered old Randal, looking exceedingly dejected and miserable. The absence of his son had told upon him. The farmer had been up to London, taking a hundred pounds with him to purchase Tom’s discharge; but the colonel of the regiment had refused his consent. Lord Bury advised him, but who prompted his lordship we must leave our readers to guess.

    Tom also had declared that he would never quit the service unless to marry Phœbe.

    No wonder his father felt down-hearted and miserable. On seeing the young ladies approach, he doffed his hat, as usual, to them.

    ‘Good morning, Mr. Randal,’ said Clara. ‘Sorry to see you looking so unwell.’

    ‘Worry, Miss. It be all worry,’ replied the farmer. ‘That boy o’ mine is a killin’ on me. Would you believe it? He has gone and ’listed.’

    The young ladies expressed by their looks a proper amount of surprise.

    ‘Tried to buy him off,’ continued the speaker, ‘but Tom wouldn’t leave, and the officer refused to let him go. But I don’t wonder at that. They won’t catch a recruit like my Tom every day. Hard lines for me, beant it, my lady? I am in great trouble.’

    ‘I am not surprised.at that,’ observed Clara Meredith. ‘I thought something quite dreadful would occur. Some persons are so very obstinate.’

    ‘Ain’t they?’ replied old Randal, not suspecting for an instant that the word obstinate had been intended to apply to himself.

    ‘I be goin’, to the Hall,’ he added, ‘to see Sir George about a new lease of the Home Farm, and ask him to speak a good word for me to some of his great friends in London. I must have Tom back.’

    The cousins continued their ride.

    Great was the astonishment of the farmer when, on his arrival at the Hall, Sir George Meredith informed him that he had given the Home Farm to his daughter, Clara, and that any application for a new lease must be made to her.

    ‘You will find her very reasonable, I expect,’ he added. ‘I have no longer any control over it.’

    ‘Well,’ said the old man, upon whose obtuse mind a faint glimmering of light was beginning to dawn. ‘I and mine have been upon the land more nor a hundred years. The land is good land. Can’t deny that. But, then, I allays paid my rent regularly — voted on the right side. I think you ought to have renewed my lease while it was in your power.’

    The baronet winced. It went rather against the grain to plot against his old tenant.

    ‘My daughter, no doubt, will consider these claims,’ he observed.

    ‘Maybe she will, and maybe she wont,’ remarked the farmer.

    ‘Anything else I can do for you?’

    ‘Thank ’ee, Sir George. My boy, Tom, is ’listed.’

    ‘So I have heard.’

    ‘If your honour would only speak a good word to the big guns in London, maybe they might let him off.’

    ‘I will write this very day,’ replied the old gentleman; ‘do everything in my power. But don’t you think,’ he added, ‘it would be wiser, to let your son have his own way?’

    ‘And marry the organist’s daughter?’ exclaimed the visitor, greatly exasperated. ‘Never! Never! I see it all. Thee be agi’n me too. But I won’t give way. Let the farm go. My young lady may lease it to Phœbe, if she likes. I shall have land enough of my own left to live upon.’

    ‘Very glad to hear it, Mr. Randal,’ remarked the gentleman. ‘I always thought you were a prudent person. I will not forget the letter I promised. Good morning.’

    His visitor caught up his hat and quitted the room, muttering as he did so:

    ‘Gentle and simple, they be all ag’in me; but I beant beaten yet.’ We fear not.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes, References, Further Reading

    Frimicating: has an entry in Joseph Wright’s English dialect dictionary, being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years (1900):

    Old Jury: Alternate form of “Old Jewry, a street running from the north side of the POULTRY to GRESHAM STREET, so called as being in the Middle Ages the Jews’ quarter of the city” Wheatley, London Past and Present (1891).

    William Jesse, The Life of George Brummell, commonly called Beau Brummell (1884). Available free at Google Books.

    Grace and Philip Wharton, The Wits and Beaux of Society, 2 vols. (1890). Available free at Project Gutenberg.

    William Teignmouth Shore, D’Orsay; or, The complete dandy (1911). Available free at Project Gutenbeg.

    Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Vol. 3 (1988).