The Coningsbys
THE day was brilliant: music, sunshine, ravishing bonnets, little parasols that looked like large butterflies. The new phaetons glided up, then carriages-and-four swept by; in general the bachelors were ensconced in their comfortable broughams, with their glasses down and their blinds drawn, to receive the air and to exclude the dust; some less provident were cavaliers, but, notwithstanding the well-watered roads, seemed a little dashed as they cast an anxious glance at the rose which adorned their button-hole, or fancied that they felt a flying black from a London chimney light upon the tip of their nose.
Within, the winding walks dimly echoed whispering words; the lawn was studded with dazzling groups; on the terrace by the river a dainty multitude beheld those celebrated waters which furnish flounders to Richmond and whitebait to Blackwall.
‘Mrs. Coningsby shall decide,’ said Lord Beaumanoir.
Edith and Lady Theresa Lyle stood by a statue that glittered in the sun, surrounded by a group of cavaliers; among them Lord Beaumanoir, Lord Mil-ford, Lord Eugene de Vere. Her figure was not less lithe and graceful since her marriage, a little more voluptuous; her rich complexion, her radiant and abounding hair, and her long grey eye, now melting with pathos, and now twinkling with mockery, presented one of those faces of witchery which are beyond beauty.
‘Mrs. Coningsby shall decide.’
‘It is the very thing,’ said Edith, ‘that Mrs. Coningsby will never do. Decision destroys suspense, and suspense is the charm of existence.’
‘But suspense may be agony,’ said Lord Eugene de Vere, casting a glance that would read the innermost heart of Edith.
‘And decision may be despair,’ said Mrs. Coningsby.
‘But we agreed the other night that you were to decide everything for us,’ said Lord Beaumanoir; ‘and you consented.’
‘I consented the other night, and I retract my consent to-day; and I am consistent, for that is indecision.’
‘You are consistent in being charming,’ said Lord Eugene.
‘Pleasing and original!’ said Edith. ‘By-the-bye, when I consented that the melancholy Jaques should be one of my aides-de-camp I expected him to maintain his reputation, not only for gloom but wit. I think you had better go back to the forest, Lord Eugene, and see if you cannot stumble upon a fool who may drill you in repartee. How do you do, Lady Riddlesworth?’ and she bowed to two ladies who seemed inclined to stop, but Edith added, ‘I heard great applications for you this moment on the terrace.’
‘Indeed!’ exclaimed the ladies; and they moved on.
‘When Lady Riddlesworth joins the conversation it is like a stoppage in the streets. I invented a piece of intelligence to clear the way, as you would call out Fire! or The queen is coming! There used to be things calledvers de société, which were not poetry; and I do not see why there should not be social illusions which are not fibs.’
‘I entirely agree with you,’ said Lord Milford; ‘and I move that we practise them on a large scale.’
‘Like the verses, they might make life more light,’ said Lady Theresa.
‘We are surrounded by illusions,’ said Lord Eugene, in a melancholy tone.
‘And shams of all descriptions,’ said Edith; ‘the greatest, a man who pretends he has a broken heart when all the time he is full of fun.’
‘There are a great many men who have broken hearts,’ said Lord Beaumanoir, smiling sorrowfully.
‘Cracked heads are much commoner,’ said Edith, ‘you may rely upon it. The only man I really know with a broken heart is Lord Fitz-Booby. I do think that paying Mount-Dullard’s debts has broken his heart. He takes on so; ‘tis piteous. “My dear Mrs. Coningsby,” he said to me last night, “only think what that young man might have been; he might have been a lord of the treasury in ‘35; why, if he had had nothing more in ‘41, why, there’s a loss of between four and five thousand pounds; but with my claims—Sir Robert, having thrown the father over, was bound on his own principle to provide for the son—he might have got something better; and now he comes to me with his debts, and his reason for paying his debts, too, Mrs. Coningsby, because he is going to be married; to be married to a woman who has not a shilling. Why, if he had been in office, and only got 1,500L. a year, and married a woman with only another 1,500L., he would have had 3,000L. a year, Mrs. Coningsby; and now he has nothing of his own except some debts, which he wants me to pay, and settle 3,000L. a year on him besides.”’
They all laughed.
‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Coningsby, with a resemblance which made all start, ‘you should have heard it with the Fitz-Booby voice.’
The character of a woman rapidly develops after marriage, and sometimes seems to change, when in fact it is only complete. Hitherto we have known Edith only in her girlhood, bred up in a life of great simplicity, and under the influence of a sweet fancy, or an absorbing passion. Coningsby had been a hero to her before they met, the hero of nursery hours and nursery tales. Experience had not disturbed those dreams. From the moment they encountered each other at Millbank, he assumed that place in her heart which he had long occupied in her imagination; and, after their second meeting at Paris, her existence was merged in love. All the crosses and vexations of their early affection only rendered this state of being on her part more profound and engrossing.
But though Edith was a most happy wife, and blessed with two children worthy of their parents, love exercises quite a different influence upon a woman when she has married, and especially when she has assumed a social position which deprives life of all its real cares. Under any circumstances, that suspense, which, with all its occasional agony, is the great spring of excitement, is over; but, generally speaking, it will be found, notwithstanding the proverb, that with persons of a noble nature, the straitened fortunes which they share together, and manage, and mitigate by mutual forbearance, are more conducive to the sustainment of a high-toned and romantic passion, than a luxurious prosperity.
The wife of a man of limited fortune, who, by contrivance, by the concealed sacrifice of some necessity of her own, supplies him with some slight enjoyment which he has never asked, but which she fancies he may have sighed for, experiences, without doubt, à degree of pleasure far more ravishing than the patrician dame who stops her barouche at Storr and Mortimer’s, and out of her pin-money buys a trinket for the husband whom she loves, and which he finds, perhaps, on his dressing-table, on the anniversary of their wedding-day. That’s pretty too and touching, and should be encouraged; but the other thrills, and ends in an embrace that is still poetry.
The Coningsbys shortly after their marriage had been called to the possession of a great fortune, for which, in every sense, they were well adapted. But a great fortune necessarily brings with it a great change of habits. The claims of society proportionately increase with your income. You live less for yourselves. For a selfish man, merely looking to his luxurious ease, Lord Eskdale’s idea of having ten thousand a year, while the world suppose you have only five, is the right thing. Coningsby, however, looked to a great fortune as one of the means, rightly employed, of obtaining great power. He looked also to his wife to assist him in this enterprise.
Edith, from a native impulse, as well as from love for him, responded to his wish. When they were in the country, Hellingsley was a perpetual stream and scene of splendid hospitality; there the flower of London society mingled with all the aristocracy of the county. Leander was often retained specially, like a Wilde or a Kelly, to renovate the genius of the habitual chief: not of the circuit, but the kitchen. A noble mansion in Park Lane received them the moment Parliament assembled. Coningsby was then immersed in affairs, and counted entirely on Edith to cherish those social influences which in a public career are not less important than political ones. The whole weight of the management of society rested on her. She had to cultivate his alliances, keep together his friends, arrange his dinner-parties, regulate his engagements. What time for romantic love? They were never an hour alone. Yet they loved not less; but love had taken the character of enjoyment instead of a wild bewitchment; and life had become an airy bustle, instead of a storm, an agony, a hurricane of the heart.
In this change in the disposition, not in the degree, of their affection, for there was the same amount of sweet solicitude, only it was duly apportioned to everything that interested them, instead of being exclusively devoted to each other, the character of Edith, which had been swallowed up by the absorbing passion, rapidly developed itself amid the social circumstances. She was endued with great vivacity, a sanguine and rather saucy spirit, with considerable talents, and a large share of feminine vanity: that divine gift which makes woman charming. Entirely sympathising with her husband, labouring with zeal to advance his views, and living perpetually in the world, all these qualities came to light. During her first season she had been very quiet, not less observant, making herself mistress of the ground. It was prepared for her next campaign. When she evinced a disposition to take a lead, although found faultless the first year, it was suddenly remembered that she was a manufacturer’s daughter; and she was once described by a great lady as ‘that person whom Mr. Coningsby had married, when Lord Monmouth cut him off with a shilling.’
But Edith had anticipated these difficulties, and was not to be daunted. Proud of her husband, confident in herself, supported by a great establishment, and having many friends, she determined to exchange salutes with these social sharp-shooters, who are scarcely as courageous as they are arrogant. It was discovered that Mrs. Coningsby could be as malicious as her assailants, and far more epigrammatic. She could describe in a sentence and personify in a phrase. Themotwas circulated, thenom de niquerepeated. Surrounded by a brilliant band of youth and wit, even her powers of mimickry were revealed to the initiated. More than one social tyrant, whom all disliked, but whom none had ventured to resist, was made ridiculous. Flushed by success and stimulated by admiration, Edith flattered herself that she was assisting her husband while she was gratifying her vanity. Her adversaries soon vanished, but the powers that had vanquished them were too choice to be forgotten or neglected. The tone of raillery she had assumed for the moment, and extended, in self-defence, to persons, was adopted as a habit, and infused itself over affairs in general.
Mrs. Coningsby was the fashion; she was a wit as well as a beauty; a fascinating droll; dazzling and bewitching, the idol of every youth. Eugene de Vere was roused from his premature exhaustion, and at last found excitement again. He threw himself at her feet; she laughed at him. He asked leave to follow her footsteps; she consented. He was only one of a band of slaves. Lord Beaumanoir, still a bachelor, always hovered about her, feeding on her laughing words with a mild melancholy, and sometimes bandying repartee with a kind of tender and stately despair. His sister, Lady Theresa Lyle, was Edith’s great friend. Their dispositions had some resemblance. Marriage had developed in both of them a frolic grace. They hunted in couple; and their sport was brilliant. Many things may be said by a strong female alliance, that would assume quite a different character were they even to fall from the lips of an Aspasia to a circle of male votaries; so much depends upon the scene and the characters, the mode and the manner.
The good-natured world would sometimes pause in its amusement, and, after dwelling with statistical accuracy on the number of times Mrs. Coningsby had danced the polka, on the extraordinary things she said to Lord Eugene de Vere, and the odd things she and Lady Theresa Lyle were perpetually doing, would wonder, with a face and voice of innocence, ‘how Mr. Coningsby liked all this?’ There is no doubt what was the anticipation by the good-natured world of Mr. Coningsby’s feelings. But they were quite mistaken. There was nothing that Mr. Coningsby liked more. He wished his wife to become a social power; and he wished his wife to be amused. He saw that, with the surface of a life of levity, she already exercised considerable influence, especially over the young; and independently of such circumstances and considerations, he was delighted to have a wife who was not afraid of going into society by herself; not one whom he was sure to find at home when he returned from the House of Commons, not reproaching him exactly for her social sacrifices, but looking a victim, and thinking that she retained her husband’s heart by being a mope. Instead of that Con-ingsby wanted to be amused when he came home, and more than that, he wanted to be instructed in the finest learning in the world.
As some men keep up their Greek by reading every day a chapter in the New Testament, so Con-ingsby kept up his knowledge of the world, by always, once at least in the four-and-twenty hours, having a delightful conversation with his wife. The processes were equally orthodox. Exempted from the tax of entering general society, free to follow his own pursuits, and to live in that political world which alone interested him, there was not an anecdote, a trait, a good thing said, or a bad thing done, which did not reach him by a fine critic and a lively narrator. He was always behind those social scenes which, after all, regulate the political performers, knew the springs of the whole machinery, the chang-ings and the shiftings, the fiery cars and golden chariots which men might mount, and the trap-doors down which men might fall.
But the Marquess of Montacute is making his reverence to Mrs. Guy Flouncey.
There was not at this moment a human being whom that lady was more glad to see at herdéjeûner; but she did not show it in the least. Her self-possession, indeed, was the finest work of art of the day, and ought to be exhibited at the Adelaide Gallery. Like all mechanical inventions of a high class, it had been brought to perfection very gradually, and after many experiments. A variety of combinations, and an almost infinite number of trials, must have been expended before the too-startling laugh of Con-ingsby Castle could have subsided into the haughty suavity of that sunny glance, which was not familiar enough for a smile, nor foolish enough for a simper. As for the rattling vein which distinguished her in the days of our first acquaintance, that had long ceased. Mrs. Guy Flouncey now seemed to share the prevalent passion for genuine Saxon, and used only monosyllables; while Fine-ear himself would have been sometimes at fault had he attempted to give a name to her delicate breathings. In short, Mrs. Guy Flouncey never did or said anything but in ‘the best taste.’ It may, however, be a question, whether she ever would have captivated Lord Monmouth, and those who like a little nature and fun, if she had made her first advances in this style. But that showed the greatness of the woman. Then she was ready for anything for promotion. That was the age of forlorn hopes; but now she was a general of division, and had assumed a becoming carriage.
This was the firstdéjeûnerat which Tancred had been present. He rather liked it. The scene, lawns and groves and a glancing river, the air, the music, our beautiful countrywomen, who, with their brilliant complexions and bright bonnets, do not shrink from the daylight, these are circumstances which, combined with youth and health, make a morning festival, say what they like, particularly for the first time, very agreeable, even if one be dreaming of Jerusalem. Strange power of the world, that the moment we enter it, our great conceptions dwarf! In youth it is quick sympathy that degrades them; more advanced, it is the sense of the ridiculous. But perhaps these reveries of solitude may not be really great conceptions; perhaps they are only exaggerations; vague, indefinite, shadowy, formed on no sound principles, founded on no assured basis.
Why should Tancred go to Jerusalem? What does it signify to him whether there be religious truth or political justice? He has youth, beauty, rank, wealth, power, and all in excess. He has a mind that can comprehend their importance and appreciate their advantages. What more does he require? Unreasonable boy! And if he reach Jerusalem, why should he find religious truth and political justice there? He can read of it in the travelling books, written by young gentlemen, with the best letters of introduction to all the consuls. They tell us what it is, a third-rate city in a stony wilderness. Will the Providence of fashion prevent this great folly about to be perpetrated by one born to be fashion’s most brilliant subject? A folly, too, which may end in a catastrophe? His parents, indeed, have appealed in vain; but the sneer of the world will do more than the supplication of the father. A mother’s tear may be disregarded, but the sigh of a mistress has changed the most obdurate. We shall see. At present Lady Constance Rawleigh expresses her pleasure at Tancred’s arrival, and his heart beats a little.
Disenchantment
THEY are talking about it,’ said Lord Eskdale to the duchess, as she looked up to him with an expression of the deepest interest. ‘He asked St. Patrick to introduce him to her at Deloraine House, danced with her, was with her the whole evening, went to the breakfast on Saturday to meet her, instead of going to Blackwall to see a yacht he was after.’
‘If it were only Katherine,’ said the duchess, ‘I should be quite happy.’
‘Don’t be uneasy,’ said Lord Eskdale; ‘there will be plenty of Katherines and Constances, too, before he finishes. The affair is not much, but it shows, as I foretold, that, the moment he found something more amusing, his taste for yachting would pass off.’ ‘You are right, you always are.’ What really was this affair, which Lord Eskdale held lightly? With a character like Tancred, everything may become important. Profound and yet simple, deep in self-knowledge yet inexperienced, his reserve, which would screen him from a thousand dangers, was just the quality which would insure his thraldom by the individual who could once effectually melt the icy barrier and reach the central heat. At this moment of his life, with all the repose, and sometimes even the high ceremony, on the surface, he was a being formed for high-reaching exploits, ready to dare everything and reckless of all consequences, if he proposed to himself an object which he believed to be just and great. This temper of mind would, in all things, have made him act with that rapidity, which is rashness with the weak, and decision with the strong. The influence of woman on him was novel. It was a disturbing influence, on which he had never counted in those dreams and visions in which there had figured more heroes than heroines. In the imaginary interviews in which he had disciplined his solitary mind, his antagonists had been statesmen, prelates, sages, and senators, with whom he struggled and whom he vanquished.
He was not unequal in practice to his dreams. His shyness would have vanished in an instant before a great occasion; he could have addressed a public assembly; he was capable of transacting important affairs. These were all situations and contingencies which he had foreseen, and which for him were not strange, for he had become acquainted with them in his reveries. But suddenly he was arrested by an influence for which he was unprepared; a precious stone made him stumble who was to have scaled the Alps. Why should the voice, the glance, of another agitate his heart? The cherubim of his heroic thoughts not only deserted him, but he was left without the guardian angel of his shyness. He melted, and the iceberg might degenerate into a puddle.
Lord Eskdale drew his conclusions like a clever man of the world, and in general he would have been right; but a person like Tancred was in much greater danger of being captured than a common-place youth entering life with second-hand experience, and living among those who ruled his opinions by their sneers and sarcasms. A malicious tale by a spiteful woman, the chance ribaldry of a club-room window, have often been the impure agencies which have saved many a youth from committing a great folly; but Tancred was beyond all these influences. If they had been brought to bear on him, they would rather have precipitated the catastrophe. His imagination would have immediately been summoned to the rescue of his offended pride; he would have invested the object of his regard with supernatural qualities, and consoled her for the impertinence of society by his devotion.
Lady Constance was clever; she talked like a married woman, was critical, yet easy; and having guanoed her mind by reading French novels, had a variety of conclusions on all social topics, which she threw forth with unfaltering promptness, and with the well-arranged air of an impromptu. These were all new to Tancred, and startling. He was attracted by the brilliancy, though he often regretted the tone, which he ascribed to the surrounding corruption from which he intended to escape, and almost wished to save her at the same time. Sometimes Tancred looked unusually serious; but at last his rare and brilliant smile beamed upon one who really admired him, was captivated by his intellect, his freshness, his difference from all around, his pensive beauty and his grave innocence. Lady Constance was free from affectation; she was frank and natural; she did not conceal the pleasure she had in his society; she conducted herself with that dignified facility, becoming a young lady who had already refused the hands of two future earls, and of the heir of the Clan-Alpins.
A short time after thedéjeûnerat Craven Cottage, Lord Montacute called on Lady Charmouth. She was at home, and received him with great cordiality, looking up from her frame of worsted work with a benign maternal expression; while Lady Constance, who was writing an urgent reply to a note that had just arrived, said rapidly some agreeable words of welcome, and continued her task. Tancred seated himself by the mother, made an essay in that small talk in which he was by no means practised, but Lady Charmouth helped him on without seeming to do so. The note was at length dispatched, Tancred of course still remaining at the mother’s side, and Lady Constance too distant for his wishes. He had nothing to say to Lady Charmouth; he began to feel that the pleasure of feminine society consisted in talking alone to her daughter.
While he was meditating a retreat, and yet had hardly courage to rise and walk alone down a large long room, a new guest was announced. Tancred rose, and murmured good-morning; and yet, somehow or other, instead of quitting the apartment, he went and seated himself by Lady Constance. It really was as much the impulse of shyness, which sought a nook of refuge, as any other feeling that actuated him; but Lady Constance seemed pleased, and said in a low voice and in a careless tone, ‘’Tis Lady Bran-cepeth; do you know her? Mamma’s great friend;’ which meant, you need give yourself no trouble to talk to any one but myself.
After making herself very agreeable, Lady Constance took up a book which was at hand, and said, ‘Do you know this?’ And Tancred, opening a volume which he had never seen, and then turning to its titlepage, found it was ‘The Revelations of Chaos,’ a startling work just published, and of which a rumour had reached him.
‘No,’ he replied; ‘I have not seen it.’
‘I will lend it you if you like: it is one of those books one must read. It explains everything, and is written in a very agreeable style.’
‘It explains everything!’ said Tancred; ‘it must, indeed, be a very remarkable book!’
‘I think it will just suit you,’ said Lady Constance. ‘Do you know, I thought so several times while I was reading it.’
‘To judge from the title, the subject is rather obscure,’ said Tancred.
‘No longer so,’ said Lady Constance. ‘It is treated scientifically; everything is explained by geology and astronomy, and in that way. It shows you exactly how a star is formed; nothing can be so pretty! A cluster of vapour, the cream of the Milky Way, a sort of celestial cheese, churned into light, you must read it, ‘tis charming.’
‘Nobody ever saw a star formed,’ said Tancred.
‘Perhaps not. You must read the “Revelations;” it is all explained. But what is most interesting, is the way in which man has been developed. You know, all is development. The principle is perpetually going on. First, there was nothing, then there was something; then, I forget the next, I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came, let me see, did we come next? Never mind that; we came at last. And the next change there will be something very superior to us, something with wings. Ah! that’s it: we were fishes, and I believe we shall be crows. But you must read it.’
‘I do not believe I ever was a fish,’ said Tancred. ‘Oh! but it is all proved; you must not argue on my rapid sketch; read the book. It is impossible to contradict anything in it. You understand, it is all science; it is not like those books in which one says one thing and another the contrary, and both may be wrong. Everything is proved: by geology, you know. You see exactly how everything is made; how many worlds there have been; how long they lasted; what went before, what comes next. We are a link in the chain, as inferior animals were that preceded us: we in turn shall be inferior; all that will remain of us will be some relics in a new red sandstone. This is development. We had fins; we may have wings.’
Tancred grew silent and thoughtful; Lady Bran-cepeth moved, and he rose at the same time. Lady Charmouth looked as if it were by no means necessary for him to depart, but he bowed very low, and then bade farewell to Lady Constance, who said, ‘We shall meet to-night.’
‘I was a fish, and I shall be a crow,’ said Tancred to himself, when the hall door closed on him. ‘What a spiritual mistress! And yesterday, for a moment, I almost dreamed of kneeling with her at the Holy Sepulchre! I must get out of this city as quickly as possible; I cannot cope with its corruption. The acquaintance, however, has been of use to me, for I think I have got a yacht by it. I believe it was providential, and a trial. I will go home and write instantly to Fitz-Heron, and accept his offer. One hundred and eighty tons: it will do; it must.’
At this moment he met Lord Eskdale, who had observed Tancred from the end of Grosvenor Square, on the steps of Lord Charmouth’s door. This circumstance ill prepared Lord Eskdale for Tancred’s salutation.
‘My dear lord, you are just the person I wanted to meet. You promised to recommend me a servant who had travelled in the East.’
‘Well, are you in a hurry?’ said Lord Eskdale, gaining time, and pumping.
‘I should like to get off as soon as practicable.’ ‘Humph!’ said Lord Eskdale. ‘Have you got a yacht?’ ‘I have.’
‘Oh! So you want a servant?’ he added, after a moment’s pause.
‘I mentioned that, because you were so kind as to say you could help me in that respect.’
‘Ah! I did,’ said Lord Eskdale, thoughtfully. ‘But I want a great many things,’ continued Tancred. ‘I must make arrangements about money; I suppose I must get some letters; in fact, I want generally your advice.’
‘What are you going to do about the colonel and the rest?’
‘I have promised my father to take them,’ said Tancred, ‘though I feel they will only embarrass me. They have engaged to be ready at a week’s notice; I shall write to them immediately. If they do not fulfil their engagement, I am absolved from mine.’
‘So you have got a yacht, eh?’ said Lord Eskdale. ‘I suppose you have bought the Basilisk?’
‘Exactly.’
‘She wants a good deal doing to her.’
‘Something, but chiefly for show, which I do not care about; but I mean to get away, and refit, if necessary, at Gibraltar. I must go.’
‘Well, if you must go,’ said his lordship, and then he added, ‘and in such a hurry; let me see. You want a firstrate managing man, used to the East, and letters, and money, and advice. Hem! You don’t know Sidonia?’
‘Not at all.’
‘He is the man to get hold of, but that is so difficult now. He never goes anywhere. Let me see, this is Monday; to-morrow is post-day, and I dine with him alone in the City. Well, you shall hear from me on Wednesday morning early, about everything; but I would not write to the colonel and his friends just yet.’
Tancred Rescues a Lady in Distress
THAT is most striking in London is its vastness. It is the illimitable feeling that gives it a special character. London is not grand. It possesses only one of the qualifications of a grand city, size; but it wants the equally important one, beauty. It is the union of these two qualities that produced the grand cities, the Romes, the Babylons, the hundred portals of the Pharaohs; multitudes and magnificence; the millions influenced by art. Grand cities are unknown since the beautiful has ceased to be the principle of invention. Paris, of modern capitals, has aspired to this character; but if Paris be a beautiful city, it certainly is not a grand one; its population is too limited, and, from the nature of their dwellings, they cover a comparatively small space. Constantinople is picturesque; nature has furnished a sublime site, but it has little architectural splendour, and you reach the environs with a fatal facility. London overpowers us with its vastness.
Place a Forum or an Acropolis in its centre, and the effect of the metropolitan mass, which now has neither head nor heart, instead of being stupefying, would be ennobling. Nothing more completely represents a nation than a public building. A member of Parliament only represents, at the most, the united constituencies: but the Palace of the Sovereign, a National Gallery, or a Museum baptised with the name of the country, these are monuments to which all should be able to look up with pride, and which should exercise an elevating influence upon the spirit of the humblest. What is their influence in London? Let us not criticise what all condemn. But how remedy the evil? What is wanted in architecture, as in so many things, is a man. Shall we find a refuge in a Committee of Taste? Escape from the mediocrity of one to the mediocrity of many? We only multiply our feebleness, and aggravate our deficiencies. But one suggestion might be made. No profession in England has done its duty until it has furnished its victim. The pure administration of justice dates from the deposition of Macclesfield. Even our boasted navy never achieved a great victory until we shot an admiral. Suppose an architect were hanged? Terror has its inspiration as well as competition.
Though London is vast, it is very monotonous. All those new districts that have sprung up within the last half-century, the creatures of our commercial and colonial wealth, it is impossible to conceive anything more tame, more insipid, more uniform. Pancras is like Mary-le-bone, Mary-le-bone is like Paddington; all the streets resemble each other, you must read the names of the squares before you venture to knock at a door. This amount of building capital ought to have produced a great city. What an opportunity for architecture suddenly summoned to furnish habitations for a population equal to that of the city of Bruxelles, and a population, too, of great wealth. Mary-le-bone alone ought to have produced a revolution in our domestic architecture. It did nothing. It was built by Act of Parliament. Parliament prescribed even a façade. It is Parliament to whom we are indebted for your Gloucester Places, and Baker Streets, and Harley Streets, and Wimpole Streets, and all those flat, dull, spiritless streets, resembling each other like a large family of plain children, with Portland Place and Portman Square for their respectable parents. The influence of our Parliamentary Government upon the fine arts is a subject worth pursuing. The power that produced Baker Street as a model for street architecture in its celebrated Building Act, is the power that prevented Whitehall from being completed, and which sold to foreigners all the pictures which the King of England had collected to civilise his people.
In our own days we have witnessed the rapid creation of a new metropolitan quarter, built solely for the aristocracy by an aristocrat. The Belgrave district is as monotonous as Mary-le-bone; and is so contrived as to be at the same time insipid and tawdry.
Where London becomes more interesting is Charing Cross. Looking to Northumberland House, and turning your back upon Trafalgar Square, the Strand is perhaps the finest street in Europe, blending the architecture of many periods; and its river ways are a peculiar feature and rich with associations. Fleet Street, with its Temple, is not unworthy of being contiguous to the Strand. The fire of London has deprived us of the delight of a real old quarter of the city; but some bits remain, and everywhere there is a stirring multitude, and a great crush and crash of carts and wains. The Inns of Court, and the quarters in the vicinity of the port, Thames Street, Tower Hill, Billingsgate, Wapping, Rotherhithe, are the best parts of London; they are full of character: the buildings bear a nearer relation to what the people are doing than in the more polished quarters.
The old merchants of the times of the first Georges were a fine race. They knew their position, and built up to it. While the territorial aristocracy, pulling down their family hotels, were raising vulgar streets and squares upon their site, and occupying themselves one of the new tenements, the old merchants filled the straggling lanes, which connected the Royal Exchange with the port of London, with mansions which, if not exactly equal to the palaces of stately Venice, might at least vie with many of the hotels of old Paris. Some of these, though the great majority have been broken up into chambers and counting-houses, still remain intact.
In a long, dark, narrow, crooked street, which is still called a lane, and which runs from the south side of the street of the Lombards towards the river, there is one of these old houses of a century past, and which, both in its original design and present condition, is a noble specimen of its order. A pair of massy iron gates, of elaborate workmanship, separate the street from its spacious and airy court-yard, which is formed on either side by a wing of the mansion, itself a building of deep red brick, with a pediment, and pilasters, and copings of stone. A flight of steps leads to the lofty and central doorway; in the middle of the court there is a garden plot, inclosing a fountain, and a fine plane tree.
The stillness, doubly effective after the tumult just quitted, the lulling voice of the water, the soothing aspect of the quivering foliage, the noble building, and the cool and capacious quadrangle, the aspect even of those who enter, and frequently enter, the precinct, and who are generally young men, gliding in and out, earnest and full of thought, all contribute to give to this locality something of the classic repose of a college, instead of a place agitated with the most urgent interests of the current hour; a place that deals with the fortunes of kings and empires, and regulates the most important affairs of nations, for it is the counting-house in the greatest of modern cities of the most celebrated of modern financiers.
It was the visit of Tancred to the City, on the Wednesday morning after he had met Lord Eskdale, that occasions me to touch on some of the characteristics of our capital. It was the first time that Tancred had ever been in the City proper, and it greatly interested him. His visit was prompted by receiving, early on Wednesday morning, the following letter:
‘Dear Tancred: I saw Sidonia yesterday, and spoke to him of what you want. He is much occupied just now, as his uncle, who attended to affairs here, is dead, and, until he can import another uncle or cousin, he must steer the ship, as times are critical. But he bade me say you might call upon him in the City to-day, at two o’clock. He lives in Sequin Court, near the Bank. You will have no difficulty in finding it. I recommend you to go, as he is the sort of man who will really understand what you mean, which neither your father nor myself do exactly; and, besides, he is a person to know.
‘I enclose a line which you will send in, that there may be no mistake. I should tell you, as you are very fresh, that he is of the Hebrew race; so don’t go on too much about the Holy Sepulchre.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘ESKDALE.
‘Spring Gardens, Wednesday morning.’
It is just where the street is most crowded, where it narrows, and losing the name of Cheapside, takes that of the Poultry, that the last of a series of stoppages occurred; a stoppage which, at the end of ten minutes, lost its inert character of mere obstruction, and developed into the livelier qualities of the row. There were oaths, contradictions, menaces: ‘No, you sha’n’t; Yes, I will; No, I didn’t; Yes, you did; No, you haven’t; Yes, I have;’ the lashing of a whip, the interference of a policeman, a crash, a scream. Tan-cred looked out of the window of his brougham. He saw a chariot in distress, a chariot such as would have become an Ondine by the waters of the Serpentine, and the very last sort of equipage that you could expect to see smashed in the Poultry. It was really breaking a butterfly upon a wheel to crush its delicate springs, and crack its dark brown panels, soil its dainty hammer-cloth, and endanger the lives of its young coachman in a flaxen wig, and its two tall footmen in short coats, worthy of Cinderella.
The scream, too, came from a fair owner, who was surrounded by clamorous carmen and city marshals, and who, in an unknown land, was afraid she might be put in a city compter, because the people in the city had destroyed her beautiful chariot. Tan-cred let himself out of his brougham, and not without difficulty contrived, through the narrow and crowded passage formed by the two lines, to reach the chariot, which was coming the contrary way to him. Some ruthless officials were persuading a beautiful woman to leave her carriage, the wheel of which was broken. ‘But where am I to go?’ she exclaimed. ‘Icannot walk. I will not leave my carriage until you bring me some conveyance. You ought to punish these people, who have quite ruined my chariot.’
‘They say it was your coachman’s fault; we have nothing to do with that; besides, you know who they are. Their employers’ name is on the cart, Brown, Bugsby, and Co., Limehouse. You can have your redress against Brown, Bugsby, and Co., Lime-house, if your coachman is not in fault; but you cannot stop up the way, and you had better get out, and let the carriage be removed to the Steel-yard.’
‘What am I to do?’ exclaimed the lady with a tearful eye and agitated face.
‘I have a carriage at hand,’ said Tancred, who at this moment reached her, ‘and it is quite at your service.’
The lady cast her beautiful eyes, with an expression of astonishment she could not conceal, at the distinguished youth who thus suddenly appeared in the midst of insolent carmen, brutal policemen, and all the cynical amateurs of a mob. Public opinion in the Poultry was against her; her coachman’s wig had excited derision; the footmen had given themselves airs; there was a strong feeling against the shortcoats. As for the lady, though at first awed by her beauty and magnificence, they rebelled against the authority of her manner. Besides, she was not alone. There was a gentleman with her, who wore moustaches, and had taken a part in the proceedings at first, by addressing the carmen in French. This was too much, and the mob declared he was Don Carlos.
‘You are too good,’ said the lady, with a sweet expression.
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Tancred opened the door of the chariot, the policemen pulled down the steps, the servants were told to do the best they could with the wrecked equipage; in a second the lady and her companion were in Tancred’s brougham, who, desiring his servants to obey all their orders, disappeared, for the stoppage at this moment began to move, and there was no time for bandying compliments.
He had gained the pavement, and had made his way as far as the Mansion House, when, finding a group of public buildings, he thought it prudent to inquire which was the Bank.
‘That is the Bank,’ said a good-natured man, in a bustle, but taken by Tancred’s unusual appearance. ‘What do you want? I am going there.’
‘I do not want exactly the Bank,’ replied Tancred, ‘but a place somewhere near it. Do you happen to know, sir, a place called Sequin Court?’
‘I should think I did,’ said the man, smiling. ‘So you are going to Sidonia’s?’