Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody - Andrew Lang 2 стр.

To speak of new friends at home is a more delicate matter. A man may have an undue partiality for the airy children of his friends fancy. Mr. Meredith has introduced me to an amiable Countess, to a strange country girl named Rhoda, to a wonderful old Æschylean nurse, to some genuine boys, to a wise Youth,  but that society grows as numerous as brilliant. Mr. Besant has made us friends with twins of literary and artistic genius, with a very highly-cultured Fellow of Lothian, with a Son of Vulcan, with a bevy of fair but rather indistinguishable damsels, like a group of agreeable-looking girls at a dance. But they are too busy with their partners to be friendly. We admire them, but they are unconcerned with us. In Mr. Blacks large family the Whaup seems most congenial to some strangers; the name of one of Mr. Payns friendly lads is Legion, and Miss Broughtons dogs, with their friend Sara, and Mrs. Moberley, welcome the casual visitor with hospitable care. Among the kindly children of a later generation one may number a sailor man with a wooden leg; a Highland gentleman, who, though landless, bears a kings name; an Irish chevalier who was out in the 45; a Zulu chief who plied the axe well; a private named Mulvaney in Her Majestys Indian army; an elderly sportsman of agile imagination or unparalleled experience in remote adventure. 1 All these a person who had once encountered them would recognise, perhaps, when he was fortunate enough to find himself in their company.

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

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

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

I

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

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

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

The verses are enclosed.

II

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pons Sublicia was up!

With an oath of despair, for life is sweet, I rammed my persuaders into Atys, caught him by the head, and sent him straight at the flooded Tiber!

Va-t-en donc, espèce de type! said the girl on my saddle-bow, finding her tongue at last. Fear, or girlish modesty, had hitherto kept her silent.

Then Atys rose on his fetlocks! Despite his double burden, the good steed meant to have it. He deemed, perchance, he was with the Quorn or the Barons. He rose; he sprang. The deep yellow water, cold in the moons rays, with the farthest bank but a chill grey line in the mist, lay beneath us! A moment that seemed an eternity! Then we landed on the far-off further bank, and for the first time I could take a pull at his head. I turned him on the rivers brim, and leaped him back again.

The runaway was now as tame as a driven deer in Richmond Park.

Well, Camarada, the adventure is over. She was grateful, of course. These pervenche eyes were suffused with a dewy radiance.

You cant call, she said, for you havent been introduced, and Mrs. Walker says we must be more exclusive. Im dying to be exclusive; but Im very much obliged to you, and so will mother be. Lets see. Ill be at the Colosseum to-morrow night, about ten. Im bound to see the Colosseum, by moonlight. Good-bye; and she shook her pale parasol at me, and fluttered away.

Ah, Camarada, shall I be there? Que scais-je? Well, tis time to go to the dance at the Holy Fathers. Adieu, Carissima.  Tout à vous,

III

Mr. Redmond Barry (better known as Barry Lyndon) tells his uncle the story of a singular encounter at Berlin with Mr. Alan Stuart, called Alan Breck, and well known as the companion of Mr. David Balfour in many adventures. Mr. Barry, at this time, was in the pay of Herr Potzdorff, of his Prussian Majestys Police, and was the associate of the Chevalier, his kinsman, in the pursuit of fortune.

Uncle Barry,  I dictate to Pippi, my right hand being wounded, and that by no common accident. Going down the Linden Strasse yesterday, I encountered a mob; and, being curious in Potzdorffs interest, penetrated to the kernel of it. There I found two men of my old regiment Kurz and another at words with a small, dark, nimble fellow, who carried bright and dancing eyes in a pock-marked face. He had his iron drawn, a heavy box-handled cut-and-thrust blade, and seemed ready to fall at once on the pair that had been jeering him for his strange speech.