London Pride by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> London Pride

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"I should revolt against such tyranny," said Lady Sarah. "I have always
appreciated Shakespeare, but I adore a witty comedy, and I never allowed my
husband to dictate to me on a question of taste."

"Plays which her Majesty patronises can scarcely be unfit entertainment for
her subjects," remarked another lady.

"Our Portuguese Queen is an excellent judge of the niceties of our
language," said Fareham. "I question if she understands five sentences in
as many acts."

"Nor should _I_ understand anything low or vulgar," said Hyacinth.

"Then, madam, you are best at home, for the whole entertainment would be
Hebrew to you."

"That cannot be," protested Lady Sarah; "for all our plays are written by
gentlemen. The hack writers of King James's time have been shoved aside. It
is the mark of a man of quality to write a comedy."

"It is a pity that fine gentlemen should write foul jests. Nay, it is a
subject I can scarce speak of with patience, when I remember what the
English stage has been, and hear what it is; when I recall what Lord
Clarendon has told me of his Majesty's father, for whom Shakespeare was
a closet companion, who loved all that was noblest in the drama of the
Elizabethan age. Time, which should have refined and improved the stage,
has sunk it in ignominy. We stand alone among nations in our worship of the
obscene. You have seen plays enough in Paris, Hyacinth. Recall the themes
that pleased you at the Marais and the Hotel de Bourgogne; the stories of
classic heroism, of Christian fortitude, of manhood and womanhood lifted
to the sublime. You who, in your girlhood, were familiar with the austere
genius of Corneille----"

"I am sick of that Frenchman's name," interjected Lady Sarah. "St. Evremond
was always praising him, and had the audacity to pronounce him superior to
Dryden; to compare _Cinna_ with the _Indian Queen_."

"A comparison which makes one sorry for Mr. Dryden," said Fareham. "I have
heard that Conde, when a young man, was affected to tears at the scene
between Augustus and his foe."

"He must have been very young," said Lady Fareham. "But I am not going to
depreciate Corneille, or to pretend that the French theatre is not vastly
superior to our own. I would only protest that if our laughter-loving King
prefers farce to tragedy, and rhyme to blankverse, his subjects should
accommodate themselves to his taste, and enjoy the plays he likes. It is a
foolish prejudice that deprives me of such a pleasure. I could always go in
a mask."

"Can you put a mask upon your mind, and preserve that unstained in an
atmosphere of corruption? Indeed, your ladyship does not know what you
are asking for. To sit and simper through a comedy in which the filthiest
subjects are discussed in the vilest language; to see all that is foolish
or lascivious in your own sex exaggerated with a malignant licence, which
makes a young and beautiful woman an epitome of all the vices, uniting the
extreme of masculine profligacy with the extreme of feminine silliness.
Will you encourage by your presence the wretches who libel your sex? Will
you sit smiling to see your sisters in the pillory of satire?"

"I should smile as at a fairy tale. There are no such women among my
friends----"

"And if the satire hits an enemy, it is all the more pungent," said Lady
Sarah.

"An enemy! The man who can so write of women is your worst enemy. The day
will come, perhaps, long after we are dust, when the women in _Epsom Wells_
will be thought pictures from life. 'Such an one,' people will say, as
they stand to read your epitaph, 'was this Lady Sarah, whose virtues are
recorded here in Latin superlatives. We know her better in the pages of
Shadwell.'"

Lady Sarah paled under her rouge at that image of a tomb, as Fareham's
falcon eye singled her out in the light-hearted group of which De Malfort
was the central figure, sitting on the marble balustrade, in an easy
impertinent attitude, swinging his legs, and dandling his guitar. She was
less concerned at the thought of what posterity might say of her morals
than at the idea that she must inevitably die.

"Not a word against Shad," protested Sir Ralph. "I have roared with
laughter at his last play. Never did any one so hit the follies of town and
country. His rural Put is perfection; his London rook is to the very life."

"And if the generality of his female characters conduct themselves badly
there is always one heroine of irreproachable morals," said Lady Sarah.

"Who talks like a moral dragoon," said Fareham.

"Oh, dem, we must have the play-houses!" cried Masaroon. "Consider how dull
town is without them. They are the only assemblies that please quality and
riffraff alike. Sure 'tis the nature of wit to bubble into licentiousness,
as champagne foams over the rim of a glass; and, after all, who listens to
the play? Half the time one is talking to some adventurous miss, who will
swallow a compliment from a stranger if he offer it with a china orange.
Or, perhaps, there is quarrelling; and all our eyes and ears are on the
scufflers. One may ogle a pretty actress on the stage; but who listens to
the play, except the cits and commonalty?"

"And even they are more eyes than ears," said Lady Sarah, "and are gazing
at the King and Queen, or the Duke and Duchess, when they should be
'following an intrigue by Shadwell or Dryden."

"Pardieu!" exclaimed De Malfort, "there are tragedies and comedies in the
boxes deeper and more human than anything that is acted on the stage. To
watch the Queen, sitting silent and melancholy, while Madame Barbara lolls
across half a dozen people to talk to his Majesty, dazzling him with her
brilliant eyes, bewildering him by her daring speech. Or, on other nights
to see the same lady out of favour, sitting apart, with an ivory shoulder
turned towards Royalty, scowling at the audience like a thunder-cloud."

"Well, it is but natural, perhaps, that such a Court should inspire such a
stage," returned Fareham, "and that for the heroic drama of Beaumont and
Fletcher, Webster, Massinger, and Ford, we should have a gross caricature
of our own follies and our own vices. Nay, so essential is foulness to the
modern stage that when the manager ventures a serious play, he takes care
to introduce it with some filthy prologue, and to spice the finish with a
filthier epilogue."

"Zounds, Fareham!" cried Masaroon, "when one has yawned or slept through
five acts of dull heroics, one needs to be stung into wakefulness by a
high-spiced epilogue. For my taste your epilogue can't be too pungent
to give a flavour to my oysters and Rhenish. Gud, my lord, we must have
something to talk about when we leave the play-house!"

"His lordship is spoilt; we are all spoilt for London after having lived in
the most exquisite city in the world," drawled Mrs. Danville, one of Lady
Fareham's particular friends, who had been educated at the Visitandines
with the Princess Henrietta, now Duchess of Orleans. "Who can tolerate the
coarse manners and sea-coal fires of London after the smokeless skies and
exquisite courtesies of Parisian good company in the Rue St. Thomas du
Louvre--a society so refined that a fault in grammar shocks as much as a
slit nose at Charing Cross? I shudder when I recall the Saturdays in the
Rue du Temple, and compare the conversations there, the play of wit and
fancy, the elaborate arguments upon platonic love, the graceful raillery,
with any assembly in London--except yours, Hyacinth. At Fareham House we
breathe a finer air, although his lordship's esprit moqueur will not allow
us any superiority to the coarse English mob."

"Indeed, Mrs. Danville, even your prejudice cannot deny London fine
gentlemen and wits," remonstrated Sir Ralph. "A court that can boast a
Buckhurst, a Rochester, an Etherege, a Sedley----"

"There is not one of them can compare with Voiture or Godeau, with Bussy or
St. Evremond, still less with Scarron or Moliere," said De Malfort. "I have
heard more wit in one evening at Scarron's than in a week at Whitehall. Wit
in France has its basis in thought and erudition. Here it is the sparkle
and froth of empty minds, a trick of speech, a knack of saying brutal
things under a pretence of humour, varnishing real impertinence with mock
wit. I have heard Rowley laugh at insolences which, addressed to Louis,
would have ensured the speaker a year in the Bastille."

"I would not exchange our easy-tempered King for your graceful despot,"
said Fareham. "Pride is the mainspring that moves Louis' self-absorbed
soul. His mother instilled it into his mind almost before he could speak.
He was bred in the belief that he has no more parallel or fellow than the
sun which he has chosen for his emblem. And then, for moral worth, he is
little better than his cousin, Louis has all Charles's elegant vices, plus
tyranny."

"Louis is every inch a King. Your easy-tempered gentleman at Whitehall is
only a tradition," answered De Malfort. "He is but an extravagantly paid
official, whose office is a sinecure, and who sells something of his
prerogative every session for a new grant of money. I dare adventure, by
the end of his reign, Charles will have done more than Cromwell to increase
the liberty of the subject and to demonstrate the insignificance of kings."

"I doubt the easy-tempered sinecurist who trusts the business of the State
to the nation's representatives will wear longer than your officious
tyrant, who wants to hold all the strings in his own fingers."

"He may do that safely, so long as he has men like Colbert for puppets----"

"Men!" cried Fareham. "A man of so rare an honesty must not be thought of
in the plural. Colbert's talent, probity, and honour constitute a phoenix
that appears once in a century; and, given those rare qualities in the man,
it needs a Richelieu to inspire the minister, and a Mazarin to teach him
his craft, and to prepare him for double-dealing in others which his
own direct mind could never have imagined. Trained first by one of the
greatest, and next by one of the subtlest statesmen the world has ever
seen, the provincial woollen-draper's son has all the qualities needed to
raise France to the pinnacle of fortune, if his master will but give him a
free hand."

"At any rate, he will make Jacques Bonhomme pay handsomely for his
Majesty's new palaces and new loves," said De Malfort. "Colbert adores the
King, and is blind to his follies, which are no more economical than the
vulgar pleasures of your jovial Rowley."

"Who takes four shillings in every country gentleman's pound to spend
on the pleasures of London," interjected Masaroon. "Royalty is plaguey
expensive."

The company sighed a melancholy assent.

"And one can never tell whether the money they squeeze out of us goes to
build a new ship, or to pay Lady Castlemaine's gambling debts," said Lady
Sarah.

"Oh, no doubt the lady, as Hyde calls her, has her tithes," said De
Malfort. "I have observed she always flames in new jewels after a subsidy."

"Royal accounts should be kept so that every tax-payer could look into
them," said Masaroon. "The King has spent millions. We were all so
foolishly fond of him in the joyful day of his restoration that we allowed
him to wallow in extravagance, and asked no questions; and for a man who
had worn threadbare velvet and tarnished gold, and lived upon loans and
gratuities from foreign princes and particulars, it was a new sensation to
draw _ad libitum_ upon a national exchequer."

"The exchequer Rowley draws upon should be as deep and wide as the river
Pactolus; for he is a spendthrift by instinct," said Fareham.

"Yet his largest expenditure can hardly equal his cousin's drain upon the
revenue. Mansart is spending millions on Versailles, with his bastard
Italian architecture, his bloated garlands and festoons, his stone lilies
and pomegranates. Charles builds no palaces, initiates no war----"

"And will leave neither palace nor monument; will have lived only to have
diminished the dignity and importance of his country. Restored to kingdom
and power as if by a miracle, he makes it his chief business to show
Englishmen how well they could have done without him," said Denzil Warner,
who had been hanging over Angela's tea-table until just now, when they both
sauntered on to the terrace, the lady's office being fulfilled, the little
Chinese teapot emptied of its costly contents, and the tiny tea-cups
distributed among the modish few who relished, or pretended to relish, the
new drink.

"You are a Republican, Sir Denzil, fostered by an arrant demagogue!"
exclaimed Masaroon, with a contemptuous shake of his shoulder ribbons. "You
hate the King because he is a King."

"No, sir, I despise him because he is so much less than a King. Nobody
could hate Charles the Second. He is not big enough."

"Oh, dem, we want no meddlesome Kings to quarrel with their neighbours, and
set Europe by the ears! The treaty of the Pyrenees may be a fine thing for
France; but how many noble gentlemen's lives it cost, to say nothing of the
common people! Rowley is the finest gentleman in his kingdom, and the most
good-natured. Eh, gud, sirs! what more would you have?"

"A MAN--like Henry the Fifth, or Oliver Cromwell, or Elizabeth."

"Faith, she had need possess the manly virtues, for she must have been
an untowardly female--a sour, lantern-jawed spinster, with all the
inclinations but none of the qualities of a coquette."

"Greatness has the privilege of small failings, or it would scarce
be human. Elizabeth and Julius Caesar might be excused some harmless
vanities."

* * * * *

The spring evenings were now mild enough for promenading St. James's Park,
and the Mall was crowded night after night by the finest company in London.
Hyacinth walked in the Mall, and appeared occasionally in her coach in
Hyde Park; but she repeatedly reminded her friends how inferior was the
mill-round of the Ring to the procession of open carriages along the Cours
la Reine, by the side of the Seine; the splendour of the women's dress,
outshone sometimes by the extravagant decoration of their coaches and the
richness of their liveries; the crowds of horsemen, the finest gentlemen in
France, riding at the coach doors, and bandying jests and compliments with
Beauty, enthroned in her triumphal chariot. Gay, joyous sunsets; light
laughter; delicate feasting in Renard's garden, hard by the Tuileries. To
remember that fairer and different scene was to recall the freshness of
youth, the romance of a first love.

Here in the Mall there was gaiety enough and to spare. A crowd of fine
people that sometimes thickened to a mob, hustled by the cits and
starveling poets who came to stare at them.

Yet, since St. James's Park was fashion's favourite promenade, Lady Fareham
affected it, and took a turn or two nearly every evening, alighting from
her chair at one gate and returning to it at another, on her way to rout
or dance. She took Angela with her; and De Malfort and Sir Denzil were
generally in attendance upon them, Denzil's devotion stopping at nothing
except a proposal of marriage, for which he had not mustered courage in a
friendship that had lasted half a year.

"Because there was one so favoured as Endymion, am I to hope for the moon
to come down and give herself to me?" he said one day, when Lady Fareham
rebuked him for his reticence. "I know your sister does not love me; yet I
hang on, hoping that love will come suddenly, like the coming of spring,
which is ever a surprise. And even if I am never to win her, it is
happiness to see her and to talk with her. I will not spoil my chance by
rashness; I will not hazard banishment from her dear company."

"She is lucky in such an admirer," sighed Hyacinth. "A silent, respectful
passion is the rarest thing nowadays. Well, you deserve to conquer, Denzil;
and if my sister were not of the coldest nature I ever met in woman she
would have returned your passion ages ago, when you were so much in her
company at Chilton."

"I can afford to wait as long as the Greeks waited before Troy," said
Denzil; "and I will be as constant as they were. If I cannot be her lover I
can be her friend, and her protector."

"Protector! Nay, surely she needs no protector out-of-doors, when she has
Fareham and me within!"

"Beauty has always need of defenders."

"Not such beauty as Angela's. In the first place, her charms are of no
dazzling order; and in the second, she has a coldness of temper and an
old-fashioned wisdom which would safeguard her amidst the rabble rout of
Comus."

"There I believe you are right, Lady Fareham. Temptation could not touch
her. Sin, even the subtlest, could not so disguise itself that her purity
would not take alarm. Yes; she is like Milton's lady. The tempter could
not touch the freedom of her mind. Sinful love would wither at a look from
those pure eyes."

He turned away suddenly and walked to the window.

"Denzil! Why, what is the matter? You are weeping!"

"Forgive me!" he said, recovering himself. "Indeed, I am not ashamed of a
tributary tear to virtue and beauty like your sister's."

"Dear friend, I shall not be happy till I call you brother."

She gave him both her hands, and he bent down to kiss them.

"I swear you are losing all your Anabaptist stiffness," she said,
laughingly. "You will be ruffling it in Covent Garden with Buckhurst and
his crew before long."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SAGE OF SAYES COURT.

One of Angela's letters to her convent companion, the chosen friend and
confidante of childhood and girlhood, Leonie de Ville, now married to the
Baron de Beaulieu, and established in a fine house in the Place Royale,
will best depict her life and thoughts and feelings during her first London
season.

"You tell me, chere, that this London, which I have painted in somewhat
brilliant colours, must be a poor place compared with your exquisite city;
but, indeed, despite all you say of the Cours la Reine, and your splendour
of gilded coaches, fine ladies, and noble gentlemen, who ride at your coach
windows, talking to you as they rein in their spirited horses, I cannot
think that your fashionable promenade can so much surpass our Ring in Hyde
Park, where the Court airs itself daily in the new glass coaches, or outvie
for gaiety our Mall in St. James's Park, where all the world of beauty and
wit is to be met walking up and down in the gayest, easiest way, everybody
familiar and acquainted, with the exception of a few women in masks, who
are never to be spoken to or spoken about. Indeed, my sister and I have
acquired the art of appearing neither to see nor to hear objectionable
company, and pass close beside fine flaunting masks, rub shoulders with
them even--and all as if we saw them not. It is for this that Lord Fareham
hates London. Here, he says, vice takes the highest place, and flaunts in
the sun, while virtue blushes, and steals by with averted head. But though
I wonder at this Court of Whitehall, and the wicked woman who reigns
empress there, and the neglected Queen, and the ladies of honour, whose bad
conduct is on every one's lips, I wonder more at the people and the life
you describe at the Louvre, and St. Germain, and Fontainebleau, and your
new palace of Versailles.

"Indeed, Leonie, the world must be in a strange way when vice can put on
all the grace and dignity of virtue, and hold an honourable place among
good and noble women. My sister says that Madame de Montausier is a woman
of stainless character, and her husband the proudest of men; yet you tell
me that both husband and wife are full of kindness and favours for that
unhappy Mlle. de la Valliere, whose position at Court is an open insult to
your Queen. Have Queens often been so unhappy, I wonder, as her Majesty
here, and your own royal mistress? One at least was not. The martyred King
was of all husbands the most constant and affectionate, and, in the opinion
of many, lost his kingdom chiefly through his fatal indulgence of Queen
Henrietta's caprices, and his willingness to be governed by her opinions in
circumstances of difficulty, where only the wisest heads in the land
should have counselled him. But how I am wandering from my defence of this
beautiful city against your assertion of its inferiority! I hope, chere,
that you will cross the sea some day, and allow my sister to lodge you in
this house where I write; and when you look out upon our delightful river,
with its gay traffic of boats and barges passing to and fro, and its
palaces, rising from gardens and Italian terraces on either side of the
stream; when you see our ancient cathedral of St. Paul; and the Abbey of
St. Peter, lying a little back from the water, grand and ancient, and
somewhat gloomy in its massive bulk; and eastward, the old fortress-prison,
with its four towers; and the ships lying in the Pool; and fertile
Bermondsey with its gardens; and all the beauty of verdant shores and
citizens' houses between the bridge and Greenwich, you will own that London
and its adjacent villages can compare favourably with any metropolis in the
world.

"The only complaint one hears is of its rapid growth, which is fast
encroaching upon the pleasant fields and rustic lanes behind the Lambs
Conduit and Southampton House; and on the western side spreading so rapidly
that there will soon be no country left between London and Knightsbridge.

"How I wish thou couldst see our river-terrace on my sister's visiting-day,
when De Malfort is lolling on the marble balustrade, singing one of your
favourite chansons to the guitar which he touches so exquisitely, and when
Hyacinth's fine lady friends and foppish admirers are sitting about in the
sunshine! Thou wouldst confess that even Renard's garden can show no gayer
scene.

"It was only last Tuesday that I had the opportunity of seeing more of the
city than I had seen previously--and at its best advantage, as seen from
the river. Mr. Evelyn, of Sayes Court, had invited my sister and her
husband to visit his house and gardens. He is a great gardener and
arboriculturist, as you may have heard, for he has travelled much on the
Continent, and acquired a world-wide reputation for his knowledge of trees
and flowers.

"We were all invited--the Farehams, and my niece Henriette; and even I,
whom Mr. Evelyn had seen but once, was included in the invitation. We were
to travel by water, in his lordship's barge, and Mr. Evelyn's coach was to
meet us at a landing-place not far from his house. We were to start in the
morning, dine with him, and return to Fareham House before dark. Henriette
was enchanted, and I found her at prayers on Monday night praying St.
Swithin, whom she believes to have care of the weather, to allow no rain on
Tuesday.

"She looked so pretty next morning, dressed for the journey, in a light
blue cloth cloak embroidered with silver, and a hood of the same; but she
brought me bad news--my sister had a feverish headache, and begged us to go
without her. I went to Hyacinth's room to try to persuade her to go with
us, in the hope that the fresh air along the river would cure her headache;
but she had been at a dance overnight, and was tired, and would do nothing
but rest in a dark room all day--at least, that was her resolve in the
morning; but later she remembered that it was Lady Lucretia Topham's
visiting-day, and, feeling better, ordered her chair and went off to
Bloomsbury Square, where she met all the wits, full of a new play which had
been acted at Whitehall, the public theatres being still closed on account
of the late contagion.

"They do not act their plays here as often as Moliere is acted at the
Hotel de Bourgogne. The town is constant in nothing but wanting perpetual
variety, and the stir and bustle of a new play, which gives something for
the wits to dispute about. I think we must have three play-wrights to one
of yours; but I doubt if there is wit enough in a dozen of our writers to
equal your Moliere, whose last comedy seems to surpass all that has gone
before. His lordship had a copy from Paris last week, and read the play to
us in the evening. He has no accent, and reads French beautifully, with
spirit and fire, and in the passionate scenes his great deep voice has a
fine effect.

"We left Fareham House at nine o'clock on a lovely morning, worthy this
month of May. The lessening of fires in the city since the warmer weather
has freed our skies from sea-coal smoke, and the sky last Tuesday was bluer
than the river.

"The cream-coloured and gold barge, with twelve rowers in the Fareham
green velvet liveries, would have pleased your eyes, which have ever loved
splendour; but you might have thought the master of this splendid barge too
sombre in dress and aspect to become a scene which recalled Cleopatra's
galley. To me there is much that is interesting in that severe and serious
face, with its olive complexion and dark eyes, shadowed by the strong,
thoughtful brow. People who knew Lord Stafford say that my brother-in-law
has a look of that great, unfortunate man--sacrificed to stem the rising
flood of rebellion, and sacrificed in vain. Fareham is his kinsman on
the mother's side, and may have perhaps something of his powerful mind,
together with the rugged grandeur of his features and the bent carriage of
his shoulders, which some one the other day called the Stratford stoop.

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