Devereux — Volume 04 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📕

of which I had been despoiled. Never from that time would I trust myself to meet or see the despoiler. Once, directly after I had thus braved him in his usurped hall, he wrote to me. I returned the letter unopened. Enough of this: the reader will now perceive what was the real nature of my feelings of revenge; and will appreciate the reasons which throughout this history will cause me never or rarely to recur to those feelings again, until at least he will perceive a just hope of their consummation.

I went with a quiet air and a set brow into the world. It was a time of great political excitement. Though my creed forbade me the open senate, it could not deprive me of the veiled intrigue. St. John found ample employment for my ambition; and I entered into the toils and objects of my race with a seeming avidity more eager and engrossing than their own. In what ensues, you will perceive a great change in the character of my memoirs. Hitherto, I chiefly portrayed to you /myself/. I bared open to you my heart and temper,—my passions, and the thoughts which belong to our passions. I shall now rather bring before you the natures and the minds of others. The lover and the dreamer are no more! The satirist and the observer; the derider of human follies, participating while he derides; the worldly and keen actor in the human drama,—these are what the district of my history on which you enter will portray me. From whatever pangs to me the change may have been wrought, you will be the gainer by that change. The gaudy dissipation of courts; the vicissitudes and the vanities of those who haunt them; the glittering jest and the light strain; the passing irony or the close reflection; the characters of the great; the colloquies of wit,—these are what delight the temper, and amuse the leisure more than the solemn narrative of fated love. As the monster of the Nile is found beneath the sunniest banks and in the most freshening wave, the stream may seem to wander on in melody and mirth,—the ripple and the beam; but /who/ shall tell what lurks, dark, and fearful, and ever vigilant, below!

CHAPTER II. AMBITIOUS PROJECTS.

IT is not my intention to write a political history, instead of a private biography. No doubt in the next century there will be volumes enough written in celebration of that era which my contemporaries are pleased to term the greatest that in modern times has ever existed. Besides, in the private and more concealed intrigues with which I was engaged with St. John, there was something which regard for others would compel me to preserve in silence. I shall therefore briefly state that in 1712 St. John dignified the peerage by that title which his exile and his genius have rendered so illustrious.

I was with him on the day this honour was publicly announced. I found him walking to and fro his room, with his arms folded, and with a very peculiar compression of his nether lip, which was a custom he had when anything greatly irritated or disturbed him.

"Well," said he, stopping abruptly as he saw me,—"well, considering the peacock Harley brought so bright a plume to his own nest, we must admire the generosity which spared this gay dunghill feather to mine!"

"How?" said I, though I knew the cause of his angry metaphor. St. John used metaphors in speech scarcely less than in writing.

"How?" cried the new peer, eagerly, and with one of those flashing looks which made his expression of indignation the most powerful I ever saw; "how! Was the sacred promise granted to me of my own collateral earldom to be violated; and while the weight, the toil, the difficulty, the odium of affairs, from which Harley, the despotic dullard, shrank alike in imbecility and fear, had been left exclusively to my share, an insult in the shape of an honour to be left exclusively to my reward? You know my disposition is not to overrate the mere baubles of ambition; you know I care little for titles and for orders in themselves: but the most worthless thing becomes of consequence if made a symbol of what is of value, or designed as the token of an affront. Listen: a collateral earldom falls vacant; it is partly promised me. Suddenly I am dragged from the House of Commons, where I am all powerful; I am given—not this earldom, which, as belonging to my house, would alone have induced me to consent to a removal from a sphere where my enemies allow I had greater influence than any single commoner in the kingdom,—I am given, not this, but a miserable compromise of distinction, a new and an inferior rank; given it against my will; thrust into the Upper House to defend what this pompous driveller, Oxford, is forced to forsake; and not only exposed to all the obloquy of a most infuriate party opposed to me, but mortified by an intentional affront from the party which, heart and soul, I have supported. You know that my birth is to the full as noble as Harley's; you know that my influence in the Lower House is far greater; you know that my name in the country, nay, throughout Europe, is far more popular; you know that the labour allotted to me has been far more weighty; you know that the late Peace of Utrecht is entirely my framing, that the foes to the measure direct all their venom against me, that the friends of the measure heap upon me all the honour: when, therefore, this exact time is chosen for breaking a promise formerly made to me; when a pretended honour, known to be most unpalatable to me, is thrust upon me; when, at this very time, too, six vacant ribbons of the garter flaunt by me,—one resting on the knee of this Harley, who was able to obtain an earldom for himself,—the others given to men of far inferior pretensions, though not inferior rank to my own,—myself markedly, glaringly passed by: how can I avoid feeling that things despicable in themselves are become of a vital power, from the evident intention that they should be insults to me? The insects we despise as they buzz around us become dangerous when they settle on ourselves and we feel their sting! But," added Bolingbroke, suddenly relapsing into a smile, "I have long wanted a nickname: I have now found one for myself. You know Oxford is called 'The Dragon;' well, henceforth call me 'St. George;' for, as sure as I live, will I overthrow the Dragon. I say this in jest, but I mean it in earnest. And now that I have discharged my bile, let us talk of this wonderful poem, which, though I have read it a hundred times, I am never wearied of admiring."

"Ah—'The Rape of the Lock'. It is indeed beautiful, but I am not fond of poetry now. By the way, how is it that all our modern poets speak to the taste, the mind, the judgment, and never to the /feelings/? Are they right in doing so?"

"My friend, we are now in a polished age. What have feelings to do with civilization?"

"Why, more than you will allow. Perhaps the greater our civilization, the more numerous our feelings. Our animal passions lose in excess, but our mental gain; and it is to the mental that poetry should speak. Our English muse, even in this wonderful poem, seems to me to be growing, like our English beauties, too glitteringly artificial: it wears /rouge/ and a hoop!"

"Ha! ha!—yes, they ornament now, rather than create; cut drapery, rather than marble. Our poems remind me of the ancient statues. Phidias made them, and Bubo and Bombax dressed them in purple. But this does not apply to young Pope, who has shown in this very poem that he can work the quarry as well as choose the gems. But see, the carriage awaits us. I have worlds to do; first there is Swift to see; next, there is some exquisite Burgundy to taste; then, too, there is the new actress: and, by the by, you must tell me what you think of Bentley's Horace; we will drive first to my bookseller's to see it; Swift shall wait; Heavens! how he would rage if he heard me. I was going to say what a pity it is that that man should have so much littleness of vanity; but I should have uttered a very foolish sentiment if I had!"

"And why?"

"Because, if he had not so much littleness perhaps he would not be so great: what but vanity makes a man write and speak, and slave, and become famous? Alas!" and here St. John's countenance changed from gayety to thought; "'tis a melancholy thing in human nature that so little is good and noble, both in itself and in its source! Our very worst passions will often produce sublimer effects than our best. Phidias (we will apply to him for another illustration) made the wonderful statue of Minerva for his country; but, in order to avenge himself on that country, he eclipsed it in the far more wonderful statue of the Jupiter Olympius. Thus, from a vicious feeling emanated a greater glory than from an exalted principle; and the artist was less celebrated for the monument of his patriotism than for that of his revenge! But, /allons, mon cher/, we grow wise and dull. Let us go to choose our Burgundy and our comrades to share it."

However with his characteristic affectation of bounding ambition, and consequently hope, to no one object in particular, and of mingling affairs of light importance with those of the most weighty, Lord Bolingbroke might pretend not to recur to, or to dwell upon, his causes of resentment, from that time they never ceased to influence him to a great, and for a statesman an unpardonable, degree. We cannot, however, blame politicians for their hatred, until, without hating anybody, we have for a long time been politicians ourselves; strong minds have strong passions, and men of strong passions must hate as well as love.

The next two years passed, on my part, in perpetual intrigues of diplomacy, combined with an unceasing though secret endeavour to penetrate the mystery which hung over the events of that dreadful night. All, however, was m vain. I know not what the English police may be hereafter, but, in my time, its officers seem to be chosen, like honest Dogberry's companions, among "the most senseless and fit men." They are, however, to the full, as much knaves as fools; and perhaps a wiser posterity will scarcely believe that, when things of the greatest value are stolen, the owners, on applying to the chief magistrate, will often be told that no redress can be given there, while one of the officers will engage to get back the goods, upon paying the thieves a certain sum in exchange: if this is refused, your effects are gone forever! A pretty state of internal government!

It was about a year after the murder that my mother informed me of an event which tore from my heart its last private tie; namely, the death of Aubrey. The last letter I had received from him has been placed before the reader; it was written at Devereux Court, just before he left it forever. Montreuil had been with him during the illness which proved fatal, and which occurred in Ireland. He died of consumption; and when I heard from my mother that Montreuil dwelt most glowingly upon the devotion he had manifested during the last months of his life, I could not help fearing that the morbidity of his superstition had done the work of physical disease. On this fatal news, my mother retired from Devereux Court to a company of ladies of our faith, who resided together, and practised the most ascetic rules of a nunnery, though they gave not to their house that ecclesiastical name. My mother had long meditated this project, and it was now a melancholy pleasure to put it into execution. From that period I rarely heard from her, and by little and little she so shrank from all worldly objects that my visits, and I believe even those of Gerald, became unwelcome and distasteful.

As to my lawsuit, it went on gloriously, according to the assertions of my brisk little