revealed to me (as who would not who has read the Arabian Nights in his
youth?), yet I would not choose the moment when the Brahmin of the house
was dead, his women howling, his priests doctoring his child of a widow,
now frightening her with sermons, now drugging her with bang, so as to
push her on his funeral pile at last, and into the arms of that carcase,
stupefied, but obedient and decorous. And though I like to walk, even in
fancy, in an earl's house, splendid, well ordered, where there are feasts
and fine pictures and fair ladies and endless books and good company; yet
there are times when the visit is not pleasant; and when the parents in
that fine house are getting ready their daughter for sale, and
frightening away her tears with threats, and stupefying her grief with
narcotics, praying her and imploring her, and dramming her and coaxing
her, and blessing her, and cursing her perhaps, till they have brought
her into such a state as shall fit the poor young thing for that deadly
couch upon which they are about to thrust her. When my lord and lady are
so engaged I prefer not to call at their mansion, Number 1000 in
Grosvenor Square, but to partake of a dinner of herbs rather than of that
stalled ox which their cook is roasting whole. There are some people who
are not so squeamish. The family comes, of course; the Most Reverend the
Lord Arch-Brahmin of Benares will attend the ceremony; there will be
flowers and lights and white favours; and quite a string of carriages up
to the pagoda; and such a breakfast afterwards; and music in the street
and little parish boys hurrahing; and no end of speeches within and tears
shed (no doubt), and His Grace the Arch-Brahmin will make a highly
appropriate speech, just with a faint scent of incense about it as such a
speech ought to have; and the young person will slip away unperceived,
and take off her veils, wreaths, orange-flowers, bangles and finery, and
will put on a plain dress more suited for the occasion, and the
house-door will open--and there comes the SUTTEE in company of the body:
yonder the pile is waiting on four wheels with four horses, the crowd
hurrahs and the deed is done.
This ceremony amongst us is so stale and common that to be sure there is
no need to describe its rites, and as women sell themselves for what you
call an establishment every day; to the applause of themselves, their
parents, and the world, why on earth should a man ape at originality and
pretend to pity them? Never mind about the lies at the altar, the
blasphemy against the godlike name of love, the sordid surrender, the
smiling dishonour. What the deuce does a mariage de convenance mean but
all this, and are not such sober Hymeneal torches more satisfactory often
than the most brilliant love matches that ever flamed and burnt out? Of
course. Let us not weep when everybody else is laughing: let us pity the
agonised duchess when her daughter, Lady Atalanta, runs away with the
doctor--of course, that's respectable; let us pity Lady Iphigenia's
father when that venerable chief is obliged to offer up his darling
child; but it is over her part of the business that a decorous painter
would throw the veil now. Her ladyship's sacrifice is performed, and the
less said about it the better.
Such was the case regarding an affair which appeared in due subsequence
in the newspapers not long afterwards under the fascinating title of
"Marriage in High Life," and which was in truth the occasion of the
little family Congress of Baden which we are now chronicling. We all
know--everybody at least who has the slightest acquaintance with the army
list--that, at the commencement of their life, my Lord Kew, my Lord
Viscount Rooster, the Earl of Dorking's eldest son, and the Honourable
Charles Belsize, familiarly called Jack Belsize, were subaltern officers
in one of His Majesty's regiments of cuirassier guards. They heard the
chimes at midnight like other young men, they enjoyed their fun and
frolics as gentlemen of spirit will do; sowing their wild oats
plentifully, and scattering them with boyish profusion. Lady Kew's luck
had blessed him with more sacks of oats than fell to the lot of his noble
young companions. Lord Dorking's house is known to have been long
impoverished; an excellent informant, Major Pendennis, has entertained me
with many edifying accounts of the exploits of Lord Rooster's grandfather
"with the wild Prince and Poins," of his feats in the hunting-field, over
the bottle, over the dice-box. He played two nights and two days at a
sitting with Charles Fox, when they both lost sums awful to reckon. He
played often with Lord Steyne, and came away, as all men did, dreadful
sufferers from those midnight encounters. His descendants incurred the
penalties of the progenitor's imprudence, and Chanticlere, though one of
the finest castles in England, is splendid but for a month in the year.
The estate is mortgaged up to the very castle windows. "Dorking cannot
cut a stick or kill a buck in his own park," the good old Major used to
tell with tragic accents, "he lives by his cabbages, grapes, and
pineapples, and the fees which people give for seeing the place and
gardens, which are still the show of the county, and among the most
splendid in the island. When Dorking is at Chanticlere, Ballard, who
married his sister, lends him the plate and sends three men with it. Four
cooks inside, and four maids and six footmen on the roof, with a butler
driving, come down from London in a trap, and wait the month. And as the
last carriage of the company drives away, the servants' coach is packed,
and they all bowl back to town again. It's pitiable, sir, pitiable."
In Lord Kew's youth, the names of himself and his two noble friends
appeared on innumerable slips of stamped paper, conveying pecuniary
assurances of a promissory nature; all of which promises, my Lord
Kew singly and most honourably discharged. Neither of his two
companions-in-arms had the means of meeting these engagements. Ballard,
Rooster's uncle, was said to make his lordship some allowance. As for
Jack Belsize: how he lived; how he laughed; how he dressed himself so
well, and looked so fat and handsome; how he got a shilling to pay for a
cab or a cigar; what ravens fed him; was a wonder to all. The young men
claimed kinsmanship with one another, which those who are learned in the
peerage may unravel.
When Lord Dorking's eldest daughter married the Honourable and Venerable
Dennis Gallowglass, Archdeacon of Bullintubber (and at present Viscount
Gallowglass and Killbrogue, and Lord Bishop of Ballyshannon), great
festivities took place at Chanticlere, whither the relatives of the high
contracting parties were invited. Among them came poor Jack Belsize, and
hence the tears which are dropping at Baden at this present period of our
history. Clara Pulleyn was then a pretty little maiden of sixteen, and
Jack a handsome guardsman of six or seven and twenty. As she had been
especially warned against Jack as a wicked young rogue, whose antecedents
were wofully against him; as she was never allow
ed to sit near him at
dinner, or to walk with him, or to play at billiards with him, or to
waltz with him; as she was scolded if he spoke a word to her, or if he
picked up her glove, or touched her hand in a round game, or caught him
when they were playing at blindman's-buff; as they neither of them had a
penny in the world, and were both very good-looking, of course Clara was
always catching Jack at blindman's-buff; constantly lighting upon him in
the shrubberies or corridors, etc. etc. etc. She fell in love (she was
not the first) with Jack's broad chest and thin waist; she thought his
whiskers as indeed they were, the handsomest pair in all His Majesty's
Brigade of Cuirassiers.
We know not what tears were shed in the vast and silent halls of
Chanticlere, when the company were gone, and the four cooks, and four
maids, six footmen, and temporary butler had driven back in their private
trap to the metropolis, which is not forty miles distant from that
splendid castle. How can we tell? The guests departed, the lodge-gates
shut; all is mystery:--darkness with one pair of wax candles blinking
dismally in a solitary chamber; all the rest dreary vistas of brown
hollands, rolled Turkey carpets, gaunt ancestors on the walls scowling
out of the twilight blank. The imagination is at liberty to depict his
lordship, with one candle, over his dreadful endless tapes and papers;
her ladyship with the other, and an old, old novel, wherein perhaps, Mrs.
Radcliffe describes a castle as dreary as her own; and poor little Clara
sighing and crying in the midst of these funereal splendours, as lonely
and heart-sick as Oriana in her moated grange:--poor little Clara!
Lord Kew's drag took the young men to London; his lordship driving, and
the servants sitting inside. Jack sat behind with the two grooms, and
tooted on a cornet-a-piston in the most melancholy manner. He partook of
no refreshment on the road. His silence at his clubs was remarked:
smoking, billiards, military duties, and this and that, roused him a
little, and presently Jack was alive again. But then came the season,
Lady Clara Pulleyn's first season in London, and Jack was more alive than
ever. There was no ball he did not go to; no opera (that is to say, no
opera of certain operas) which he did not frequent. It was easy to see by
his face, two minutes after entering a room, whether the person he sought
was there or absent; not difficult for those who were in the secret to
watch in another pair of eyes the bright kindling signals which answered
Jack's fiery glances. Ah! how beautiful he looked on his charger on the
birthday, all in a blaze of scarlet, and bullion, and steel. O Jack! tear
her out of yon carriage, from the side of yonder livid, feathered,
painted, bony dowager! place her behind you on the black charger; cut
down the policeman, and away with you! The carriage rolls in through St.
James's Park; Jack sits alone with his sword dropped to the ground, or
only atra cura on the crupper behind him; and Snip, the tailor, in the
crowd, thinks it is for fear of him Jack's head droops. Lady Clara
Pulleyn is presented by her mother, the Countess of Dorking; and Jack is
arrested that night as he is going out of White's to meet her at the
Opera.
Jack's little exploits are known in the Insolvent Court, where he made
his appearances as Charles Belsize, commonly called the Honourable
Charles Belsize, whose dealings were smartly chronicled by the indignant
moralists of the press of those days. The Scourge flogged him heartily.
The Whip (of which the accomplished editor was himself in Whitecross
Street prison) was especially virtuous regarding him; and the Penny Voice
of Freedom gave him an awful dressing. I am not here to scourge sinners;
I am true to my party; it is the other side this humble pen attacks; let
us keep to the virtuous and respectable, for as for poor sinners they get
the whipping-post every day. One person was faithful to poor Jack through
all his blunders and follies and extravagance and misfortunes, and that
was the pretty young girl of Chanticlere, round whose young affections
his luxuriant whiskers had curled. And the world may cry out at Lord Kew
for sending his brougham to the Queen's Bench prison, and giving a great
feast at Grignon's to Jack on the day of his liberation, but I for one
will not quarrel with his lordship. He and many other sinners had a jolly
night. They said Kew made a fine speech, in hearing and acknowledging
which Jack Belsize wept copiously. Barnes Newcome was in a rage at Jack's
manumission, and sincerely hoped Mr. Commissioner would give him a couple
of years longer; and cursed and swore with a great liberality on hearing
of his liberty.
That this poor prodigal should marry Clara Pulleyn, and by way of a dowry
lay his schedule at her feet, was out of the question. His noble father,
Lord Highgate, was furious against him; his eldest brother would not see
him; he had given up all hopes of winning his darling prize long ago, and
one day there came to him a great packet bearing the seal of Chanticlere,
containing a wretched little letter signed C. P., and a dozen sheets of
Jack's own clumsy writing, delivered who knows how, in what crush-rooms,
quadrilles, bouquets, balls, and in which were scrawled Jack's love and
passion and ardour. How many a time had he looked into the dictionary at
White's, to see whether eternal was spelt with an e, and adore with one a
or two! There they were, the incoherent utterances of his brave longing
heart; and those two wretched, wretched lines signed C., begging that
C.'s little letters might too be returned or destroyed. To do him
justice, he burnt them loyally every one along with his own waste paper.
He kept not one single little token which she had given him or let him
take. The rose, the glove, the little handkerchief which she had dropped
to him, how he cried over them! The ringlet of golden hair--he burnt them
all, all in his own fire in the prison, save a little, little bit of the
hair, which might be any one's, which was the colour of his sister's. Kew
saw the deed done; perhaps he hurried away when Jack came to the very
last part of the sacrifice, and flung the hair into the fire, where he
would have liked to fling his heart and his life too.
So Clara was free, and the year when Jack came out of prison and went
abroad, she passed the season in London dancing about night after night,
and everybody said she was well out of that silly affair with Jack
Belsize. It was then that Barnes Newcome, Esq., a partner of the wealthy
banking firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, son and heir of Sir Brian
Newcome, of Newcome, Bart., and M. P., descended in right line from Bryan
de Newcomyn, slain at Hastings, and barber-surgeon to Edward the
Confessor, etc. etc., cast the eyes of regard on the Lady Clara Pulleyn,
who was a little pale and languid certainly, but had blue eyes, a
delicate skin, and a pretty person, and knowing her previous history as
well as you who have just perused it, deigned to entertain matrimonial
intenti
ons towards her ladyship.
Not one of the members of these most respectable families, excepting poor
little Clara perhaps, poor little fish (as if she had any call but to do
her duty, or to ask a quelle sauce elle serait mangee), protested against
this little affair of traffic; Lady Dorking had a brood of little
chickens to succeed Clara. There was little Hennie, who was sixteen, and
Biddy, who was fourteen, and Adelaide, and who knows how many more? How
could she refuse a young man, not very agreeable it is true, nor
particularly amiable, nor of good birth, at least on his father's side,
but otherwise eligible, and heir to so many thousands a year? The
Newcomes, on their side, think it a desirable match. Barnes, it must be
confessed, is growing rather selfish, and has some bachelor ways which a
wife will reform. Lady Kew is strongly for the match. With her own family
interest, Lord Steyne and Lord Kew, her nephews, and Barnes's own
father-in-law, Lord Dorking, in the Peers, why shall not the Newcomes sit
there too, and resume the old seat which all the world knows they had in
the time of Richard III.? Barnes and his father had got up quite a belief
about a Newcome killed at Bosworth, along with King Richard, and hated
Henry VII. as an enemy of their noble race. So all the parties were
pretty well agreed. Lady Anne wrote rather a pretty little poem about
welcoming the white Fawn to the Newcome bowers, and "Clara" was made to
rhyme with "fairer," and "timid does and antlered deer to dot the glades
of Chanticlere," quite in a picturesque way. Lady Kew pronounced that the
poem was very pretty indeed.
The year after Jack Belsize made his foreign tour he returned to London
for the season. Lady Clara did not happen to be there; her health was a
little delicate, and her kind parents took her abroad; so all things went
on very smoothly and comfortably indeed.
Yes, but when things were so quiet and comfortable, when the ladies of
the two families had met at the Congress of Baden, and liked each other
so much, when Barnes and his papa the Baronet, recovered from his
illness, were actually on their journey from Aix-la-Chapelle, and Lady
Kew in motion from Kissingen to the Congress of Baden, why on earth
should Jack Belsize, haggard, wild, having been winning great sums, it
was said, at Hombourg, forsake his luck there, and run over frantically
to Baden? He wore a great thick beard, a great slouched hat--he looked
like nothing more or less than a painter or an Italian brigand.
Unsuspecting Clive, remembering the jolly dinner which Jack had procured
for him at the Guards' mess in St. James's, whither Jack himself came
from the Horse Guards--simple Clive, seeing Jack enter the town, hailed
him cordially, and invited him to dinner, and Jack accepted, and Clive
told him all the news he had of the place; how Kew was there, and Lady
Anne Newcome, and Ethel; and Barnes was coming. "I am not very fond of
him either," says Clive, smiling, when Belsize mentioned his name. So
Barnes was coming to marry that pretty little Lady Clara Pulleyn. The
knowing youth! I dare say he was rather pleased with his knowledge of the
fashionable world, and the idea that Jack Belsize would think he, too,
was somebody.
Jack drank an immense quantity of champagne, and the dinner over, as they
could hear the band playing from Clive's open windows in the snug clean
little Hotel de France, Jack proposed they should go on the promenade. M.
de Florac was of the party; he had been exceedingly jocular when Lord
Kew's name was mentioned, and said, "Ce petit Kiou! M. le Duc d'Ivry, mon
oncle, l'honore d'une amitie toute particuliere." These three gentlemen
walked out; the promenade was crowded, the was band playing "Home, sweet
Home" very sweetly, and the very first persons they met on the walk were
the Lords of Kew and Dorking, on the arm of which latter venerable peer