CHAPTER LVI

THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP

Not before Beauchamp was flying with the Winter gales to warmer climes

could Rosamund reflect on his career unshadowed by her feminine

mortification at the thought that he was unloved by the girl he had

decided to marry. But when he was away and winds blew, the clouds which

obscured an embracing imagination of him--such as, to be true and full

and sufficient, should stretch like the dome of heaven over the humblest

of lives under contemplation--broke, and revealed him to her as one who

had other than failed: rather as one in mid career, in mid forest, who,

by force of character, advancing in self-conquest, strikes his impress

right and left around him, because of his aim at stars. He had faults,

and she gloried to think he had; for the woman's heart rejoiced in his

portion of our common humanity while she named their prince to men: but

where was he to be matched in devotedness and in gallantry? and what man

of blood fiery as Nevil's ever fought so to subject it? Rosamund followed

him like a migratory bird, hovered over his vessel, perched on deck

beside the helm, where her sailor was sure to be stationed, entered his

breast, communed with him, and wound him round and round with her love.

He has mine! she cried. Her craving that he should be blest in the

reward, or flower-crown, of his wife's love of him lessened in proportion

as her brooding spirit vividly realized his deeds. In fact it had been

but an example of our very general craving for a climax, palpable and

scenic. She was completely satisfied by her conviction that his wife

would respect and must be subordinate to him. So it had been with her. As

for love, let him come to his Rosamund for love, and appreciation,

adoration!

Rosamund drew nigh to her hour of peril with this torch of her love of

Beauchamp to illuminate her.

There had been a difficulty in getting him to go. One day Cecilia walked

down to Dr. Shrapnel's with Mr. Tuckham, to communicate that the

Esperanza awaited Captain Beauchamp, manned and provisioned, off the

pier. Now, he would not go without Dr. Shrapnel, nor the doctor without

Jenny; and Jenny could not hold back, seeing that the wish of her heart

was for Nevil to be at sea, untroubled by political questions and

prowling Radical deputies. So her consent was the seal of the voyage.

What she would not consent to, was the proposal to have her finger ringed

previous to the voyage, altogether in the manner of a sailor's bride. She

seemed to stipulate for a term of courtship. Nevil frankly told the

doctor that he was not equal to it; anything that was kind he was quite

ready to say; and anything that was pretty: but nothing particularly kind

and pretty occurred to him: he was exactly like a juvenile correspondent

facing a blank sheet of letter paper:--he really did not know what to

say, further than the uncomplicated exposition of his case, that he

wanted a wife and had found the very woman. How, then, fathom Jenny's

mood for delaying? Dr. Shrapnel's exhortations were so worded as to

induce her to comport herself like a Scriptural woman, humbly wakeful to

the surpassing splendour of the high fortune which had befallen her in

being so selected, and obedient at a sign. But she was, it appeared that

she was, a maid of scaly vision, not perceptive of the blessedness of her

lot. She could have been very little perceptive, for she did not

understand his casual allusion to Beauchamp's readiness to overcome 'a

natural repugnance,' for the purpose of making her his wife.

Up to the last moment, before Cecilia Halkett left the deck of the

Esperanza to step on the pier, Jenny remained in vague but excited

expectation of something intervening to bring Cecilia and Beauchamp

together. It was not a hope; it was with pure suspense that she awaited

the issue. Cecilia was pale. Beauchamp shook Mr. Tuckham by the hand, and

said: 'I shall not hear the bells, but send me word of it, will you?' and

he wished them both all happiness.

The sails of the schooner filled. On a fair frosty day, with a light wind

ruffling from the North-west, she swept away, out of sight of Bevisham,

and the island, into the Channel, to within view of the coast of France.

England once below the water-line, alone with Beauchamp and Dr. Shrapnel,

Jenny Denham knew her fate.

As soon as that grew distinctly visible in shape and colour, she ceased

to be reluctant. All about her, in air and sea and unknown coast, was

fresh and prompting. And if she looked on Beauchamp, the thought--my

husband! palpitated, and destroyed and re-made her. Rapidly she underwent

her transformation from doubtfully-minded woman to woman awakening

clear-eyed, and with new sweet shivers in her temperate blood, like the

tremulous light seen running to the morn upon a quiet sea. She fell under

the charm of Beauchamp at sea.

In view of the island of Madeira, Jenny noticed that some trouble had

come upon Dr. Shrapnel and Beauchamp, both of whom had been hilarious

during the gales; but sailing into Summer they began to wear that look

which indicated one of their serious deliberations. She was not taken

into their confidence, and after awhile they recovered partially.

The truth was, they had been forced back upon old English ground by a

recognition of the absolute necessity, for her sake, of handing

themselves over to a parson. In England, possibly, a civil marriage might

have been proposed to the poor girl. In a foreign island, they would be

driven not simply to accept the services of a parson, but to seek him and

solicit him: otherwise the knot, faster than any sailor's in binding,

could not be tied. Decidedly it could not; and how submit? Neither Dr.

Shrapnel nor Beauchamp were of a temper to deceive the clerical

gentleman; only they had to think of Jenny's feelings. Alas for us!--this

our awful baggage in the rear of humanity, these women who have not moved

on their own feet one step since the primal mother taught them to suckle,

are perpetually pulling us backward on the march. Slaves of custom,

forms, shows and superstitions, they are slaves of the priests. 'They are

so in gratitude perchance, as the matter works,' Dr. Shrapnel admitted.

For at one period the priests did cherish and protect the weak from

animal man. But we have entered a broader daylight now, when the sun of

high heaven has crowned our structure with the flower of brain, like him

to scatter mists, and penetrate darkness, and shoot from end to end of

earth; and must we still be grinning subserviently to ancient usages and

stale forms, because of a baggage that it is, woe to us! too true, we

cannot cut ourselves loose from? Lydiard might say we are compelling the

priests to fight, and that they are compact foemen, not always passive.

Battle, then!--The cry was valiant. Nevertheless, Jenny would certainly

insist upon the presence of a parson, in spite of her bridegroom's

'natural repugnance.' Dr. Shrapnel offered to argue it with her, being of

opinion that a British consul could satisfactorily perform the ceremony.

Beauchamp knew her too well. Moreover, though tongue-tied as to

love-making, he was in a hurry to be married. Jenny's eyes were lovely,

her smiles were soft; the fair promise of her was in bloom on her face

and figure. He could not wait; he must off to the parson.

Then came the question as to whether honesty and honour did not impose it

on them to deal openly with that gentle, and on such occasions

unobtrusive official, by means of a candid statement to him overnight, to

the effect that they were the avowed antagonists of his Church, which

would put him on his defence, and lead to an argument that would

accomplish his overthrow. You parsons, whose cause is good, marshal out

the poor of the land, that we may see the sort of army your stewardship

has gained for you. What! no army? only women and hoary men? And in the

rear rank, to support you as an institution, none but fanatics, cowards,

white-eyeballed dogmatists, timeservers, money-changers, mockers in their

sleeves? What is this?

But the prospect of so completely confounding the unfortunate parson

warned Beauchamp that he might have a shot in his locker: the parson

heavily trodden on will turn. 'I suppose we must be hypocrites,' he said

in dejection. Dr. Shrapnel was even more melancholy. He again offered to

try his persuasiveness upon Jenny. Beauchamp declined to let her be

disturbed.

She did not yield so very lightly to the invitation to go before a

parson. She had to be wooed after all; a Harry Hotspur's wooing. Three

clergymen of the Established Church were on the island: 'And where won't

they be, where there's fine scenery and comforts abound?' Beauchamp said

to the doctor ungratefully.

'Whether a celibate clergy ruins the Faith faster than a non-celibate, I

won't dispute,' replied the doctor; 'but a non-celibate interwinds with

us, and is likely to keep up a one-storied edifice longer.'

Jenny hesitated. She was a faltering unit against an ardent and

imperative two in the council. And Beauchamp had shown her a letter of

Lady Romfrey's very clearly signifying that she and her lord anticipated

tidings of the union. Marrying Beauchamp was no simple adventure. She

feared in her bosom, and resigned herself.

She had a taste of what it was to be, at the conclusion of the service.

Beauchamp thanked the good-natured clergyman, and spoke approvingly of

him to his bride, as an agreeable well-bred gentlemanly person. Then,

fronting her and taking both her hands: 'Now, my darling,' he said: 'you

must pledge me your word to this: I have stooped my head to the parson,

and I am content to have done that to win you, though I don't think much

of myself for doing it. I can't look so happy as I am. And this idle

ceremony--however, I thank God I have you, and I thank you for taking me.

But you won't expect me to give in to the parson again.'

'But, Nevil,' she said, fearing what was to come: 'they are gentlemen,

good men.'

'Yes, yes.'

'They are educated men, Nevil.'

'Jenny! Jenny Beauchamp, they're not men, they're Churchmen. My

experience of the priest in our country is, that he has abandoned--he 's

dead against the only cause that can justify and keep up a Church: the

cause of the poor--the people. He is a creature of the moneyed class. I

look on him as a pretender. I go through his forms, to save my wife from

annoyance, but there 's the end of it: and if ever I'm helpless, unable

to resist him, I rely on your word not to let him intrude; he's to have

nothing to do with the burial of me. He's against the cause of the

people. Very well: I make my protest to the death against him. When he's

a Christian instead of a Churchman, then may my example not be followed.

It 's little use looking for that.'

Jenny dropped some tears on her bridal day. She sighed her submission.

'So long as you do not change,' said she.

'Change!' cried Nevil. 'That's for the parson. Now it's over: we start

fair. My darling! I have you. I don't mean to bother you. I'm sure you'll

see that the enemies of Reason are the enemies of the human race; you

will see that. I can wait.'

'If we can be sure that we ourselves are using reason rightly,

Nevil!--not prejudice.'

'Of course. But don't you see, my Jenny, we have no interest in opposing

reason?'

'But have we not all grown up together? And is it just or wise to direct

our efforts to overthrow a solid structure that is a part . . . ?'

He put his legal right in force to shut her mouth, telling her presently

she might Lydiardize as much as she liked. While practising this mastery,

he assured her he would always listen to her: yes, whether she

Lydiardized, or what Dr. Shrapnel called Jenny-prated.

'That is to say, dear Nevil, that you have quite made up your mind to a

toddling chattering little nursery wife?'

Very much the contrary to anything of the sort, he declared; and he

proved his honesty by announcing an immediate reflection that had come to

him: 'How oddly things are settled! Cecilia Halkett and Tuckham; you and

I! Now, I know for certain that I have brought Cecilia Halkett out of her

woman's Toryism, and given her at least liberal views, and she goes and

marries an arrant Tory; while you, a bit of a Tory at heart, more than

anything else, have married an ultra.'

'Perhaps we may hope that the conflict will be seasonable on both

sides?--if you give me fair play, Nevil!'

As fair play as a woman's lord could give her, she was to have; with

which, adieu to argumentation and controversy, and all the thanks in life

to the parson! On a lovely island, free from the seductions of care,

possessing a wife who, instead of starting out of romance and poetry with

him to the supreme honeymoon, led him back to those forsaken valleys of

his youth, and taught him the joys of colour and sweet companionship,

simple delights, a sister mind, with a loveliness of person and nature

unimagined by him, Beauchamp drank of a happiness that neither Renee nor

Cecilia had promised. His wooing of Jenny Beauchamp was a flattery richer

than any the maiden Jenny Denham could have deemed her due; and if his

wonder in experiencing such strange gladness was quaintly ingenuous, it

was delicious to her to see and know full surely that he who was at

little pains to court, or please, independently of the agency of the

truth in him, had come to be her lover through being her husband.

Here I would stop. It is Beauchamp's career that carries me on to its

close, where the lanterns throw their beams off the mudbanks by the black

riverside; when some few English men and women differed from the world in

thinking that it had suffered a loss.

They sorrowed for the earl when tidings came to them of the loss of his

child, alive one hour in his arms. Rosamund caused them to be deceived as

to her condition. She survived; she wrote to Jenny, bidding her keep her

husband cruising. Lord Romfrey added a brief word: he told Nevil that he

would see no one for the present; hoped he would be absent a year, not a

day less. To render it the more easily practicable, in the next packet of

letters Colonel Halkett and Cecilia begged them not to bring the

Esperanza home for the yachting season: the colonel said his daughter was

to be married in April, and that bridegroom and bride had consented to

take an old man off with them to Italy; perhaps in the autumn all might

meet in Venice.

'And you've never seen Venice,' Beauchamp said to Jenny.

'Everything is new to me,' said she, penetrating and gladly joining the

conspiracy to have him out of England.

Dr. Shrapnel was not so compliant as the young husband. Where he could

land and botanize, as at Madeira, he let time fly and drum his wings on

air, but the cities of priests along the coast of Portugal and Spain

roused him to a burning sense of that flight of time and the vacuity it

told of in his labours. Greatly to his astonishment, he found that it was

no longer he and Beauchamp against Jenny, but Jenny and Beauchamp against

him.

'What!' he cried, 'to draw breath day by day, and not to pay for it by

striking daily at the rock Iniquity? Are you for that, Beauchamp? And in

a land where these priests walk with hats curled like the water-lily's

leaf without the flower? How far will you push indolent unreason to gain

the delusion of happiness? There is no such thing: but there's trance.

That talk of happiness is a carrion clamour of the creatures of prey.

Take it--and you're helping tear some poor wretch to pieces, whom you

might be constructing, saving perchance: some one? some thousands! You,

Beauchamp, when I met you first, you were for England, England! for a

breadth of the palm of my hand comparatively--the round of a copper

penny, no wider! And from that you jumped at a bound to the round of this

earth: you were for humanity. Ay, we sailed our planet among the icy

spheres, and were at blood-heat for its destiny, you and I! And now you

hover for a wind to catch you. So it is for a soul rejecting prayer. This

wind and that has it: the well-springs within are shut down fast! I

pardon my Jenny, my Harry Denham's girl. She is a woman, and has a brain

like a bell that rings all round to the tongue. It is her kingdom, of the

interdicted untraversed frontiers. But what cares she, or any woman, that

this Age of ours should lie like a carcase against the Sun? What cares

any woman to help to hold up Life to him? He breeds divinely upon life,

filthy upon stagnation. Sail you away, if you will, in your trance. I go.

I go home by land alone, and I await you. Here in this land of moles

upright, I do naught but execrate; I am a pulpit of curses.

Counter-anathema, you might call me.'

'Oh! I feel the comparison so, for England shining spiritually bright,'

said Jenny, and cut her husband adrift with the exclamation, and saw him

float away to Dr. Shrapnel.

'Spiritually bright!'

'By comparison, Nevil.'

'There's neither spiritual nor political brightness in England, but a

common resolution to eat of good things and stick to them,' said the

doctor: 'and we two out of England, there's barely a voice to cry scare

to the feeders. I'm back! I'm home!'

They lost him once in Cadiz, and discovered him on the quay, looking

about for a vessel. In getting him to return to the Esperanza, they

nearly all three fell into the hands of the police. Beauchamp gave him a

great deal of his time, reading and discussing with him on deck and in

the cabin, and projecting future enterprises, to pacify his restlessness.

A translation of Plato had become Beauchamp's intellectual world. This

philosopher singularly anticipated his ideas. Concerning himself he was

beginning to think that he had many years ahead of him for work. He was

with Dr. Shrapnel, as to the battle, and with Jenny as to the delay in

recommencing it. Both the men laughed at the constant employment she gave

them among the Greek islands in furnishing her severely accurate accounts

of sea-fights and land-fights: and the scenes being before them they

could neither of them protest that their task-work was an idle labour.

Dr. Shrapnel assisted in fighting Marathon and Salamis over again

cordially--to shield Great Britain from the rule of a satrapy.

Beauchamp often tried to conjure words to paint his wife. On grave

subjects she had the manner of speaking of a shy scholar, and between

grave and playful, between smiling and serious, her clear head, her nobly

poised character, seemed to him to have never had a prototype and to

elude the art of picturing it in expression, until he heard Lydiard call

her whimsically, 'Portia disrobing'

Portia half in her doctor's gown, half out of it. They met Lydiard and

his wife Louise, and Mr. and Mrs. Tuckham, in Venice, where, upon the

first day of October, Jenny Beauchamp gave birth to a son. The thrilling

mother did not perceive on this occasion the gloom she cast over the

father of the child and Dr. Shrapnel. The youngster would insist on his

right to be sprinkled by the parson, to get a legal name and please his

mother. At all turns in the history of our healthy relations with women

we are confronted by the parson! 'And, upon my word, I believe,'

Beauchamp said to Lydiard, 'those parsons--not bad creatures in private

life: there was one in Madeira I took a personal liking to--but they're

utterly ignorant of what men feel to them--more ignorant than women!' Mr.

Tuckham and Mrs. Lydiard would not listen to his foolish objections; nor

were they ever mentioned to Jenny. Apparently the commission of the act

of marriage was to force Beauchamp from all his positions one by one.

'The education of that child?' Mrs. Lydiard said to her husband.

He considered that the mother would prevail.

Cecilia feared she would not.

'Depend upon it, he'll make himself miserable if he can,' said Tuckham.

That gentleman, however, was perpetually coming fuming from arguments

with Beauchamp, and his opinion was a controversialist's. His common

sense was much afflicted. 'I thought marriage would have stopped all

those absurdities,' he said, glaring angrily, laughing, and then

frowning. 'I 've warned him I'll go out of my way to come across him if

he carries on his headlong folly. A man should accept his country for

what it is when he's born into it. Don't tell me he's a good fellow. I

know he is, but there 's an ass mounted on the good fellow. Talks of the

parsons! Why, they're men of education.'

'They couldn't steer a ship in a gale, though.'

'Oh! he's a good sailor. And let him go to sea,' said Tuckham. 'His

wife's a prize. He's hardly worthy of her. If she manages him she'll

deserve a monument for doing a public service.'

How fortunate it is for us that here and there we do not succeed in

wresting our temporary treasure from the grasp of the Fates!

This good old commonplace reflection came to Beauchamp while clasping his

wife's hand on the deck of the Esperanza, and looking up at the mountains

over the Gulf of Venice. The impression of that marvellous dawn when he

and Renee looked up hand-in-hand was ineffaceable, and pity for the

tender hand lost to him wrought in his blood, but Jenny was a peerless

wife; and though not in the music of her tongue, or in subtlety of

delicate meaning did she excel Renee, as a sober adviser she did, and as

a firm speaker; and she had homelier deep eyes, thoughtfuller brows. The

father could speculate with good hope of Jenny's child. Cecilia's wealth,

too, had gone over to the Tory party, with her incomprehensible espousal

of Tuckham. Let it go; let all go for dowerless Jenny!

It was (she dared to recollect it in her anguish) Jenny's choice to go

home in the yacht that decided her husband not to make the journey by

land in company with the Lydiards.

The voyage was favourable. Beauchamp had a passing wish to land on the

Norman coast, and take Jenny for a day to Tourdestelle. He deferred to

her desire to land baby speedily, now they were so near home. They ran

past Otley river, having sight of Mount Laurels, and on to Bevisham, with

swelling sails. There they parted. Beauchamp made it one of his 'points

of honour' to deliver the vessel where he had taken her, at her moorings

in the Otley. One of the piermen stood before Beauchamp, and saluting

him, said he had been directed to inform him that the Earl of Romfrey was

with Colonel Halkett, expecting him at Mount Laurels. Beauchamp wanted

his wife to return in the yacht. She turned her eyes to Dr. Shrapnel. It

was out of the question that the doctor should think of going. Husband

and wife parted. She saw him no more.

This is no time to tell of weeping. The dry chronicle is fittest. Hard on

nine o'clock in the December darkness, the night being still and clear,

Jenny's babe was at her breast, and her ears were awake for the return of

her husband. A man rang at the door of the house, and asked to see Dr.

Shrapnel. This man was Killick, the Radical Sam of politics. He said to

the doctor: 'I 'm going to hit you sharp, sir; I've had it myself: please

put on your hat and come out with me; and close the door. They mustn't

hear inside. And here's a fly. I knew you'd be off for the finding of the

body. Commander Beauchamp's drowned.'

Dr. Shrapnel drove round by the shore of the broad water past a great

hospital and ruined abbey to Otley village. Killick had lifted him into

the conveyance, and he lifted him out. Dr. Shrapnel had not spoken a

word. Lights were flaring on the river, illuminating the small craft

sombrely. Men, women, and children crowded the hard and landing-places,

the marshy banks and the decks of colliers and trawlers. Neither Killick

nor Dr. Shrapnel questioned them. The lights were torches and lanterns;

the occupation of the boats moving in couples was the dragging for the

dead.

'O God, let's find his body,' a woman called out.

'Just a word; is it Commander Beauchamp?' Killick said to her.

She was scarcely aware of a question. 'Here, this one,' she said, and

plucked a little boy of eight by the hand close against her side, and

shook him roughly and kissed him.

An old man volunteered information. 'That's the boy. That boy was in his

father's boat out there, with two of his brothers, larking; and he and

another older than him fell overboard; and just then Commander Beauchamp

was rowing by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood, jump up and

dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him in safe: that

boy: and he dived again after the other, and was down a long time. Either

he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he'd been rowing himself from the

schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and must have been hot when he

jumped in: either way, he fetched the second up, and sank with him. Down

he went.'

A fisherman said to Killick: 'Do you hear that voice thundering? That's

the great Lord Romfrey. He's been directing the dragging since five o'

the evening, and will till he drops or drowns, or up comes the body.'

'O God, let's find the body!' the woman with the little boy called out.

A torch lit up Lord Romfrey's face as he stepped ashore. 'The flood has

played us a trick,' he said. 'We want more drags, or with the next ebb

the body may be lost for days in this infernal water.'

The mother of the rescued boy sobbed, 'Oh, my lord, my lord!'

The earl caught sight of Dr. Shrapnel, and went to him.

'My wife has gone down to Mrs. Beauchamp,' he said. 'She will bring her

and the baby to Mount Laurels. The child will have to be hand-fed. I take

you with me. You must not be alone.'

He put his arm within the arm of the heavily-breathing man whom he had

once flung to the ground, to support him.

'My lord! my lord!' sobbed the woman, and dropped on her knees.

'What 's this?' the earl said, drawing his hand away from the woman's

clutch at it.

'She's the mother, my lord,' several explained to him.

'Mother of what?'

'My boy,' the woman cried, and dragged the urchin to Lord Romfrey's feet,

cleaning her boy's face with her apron.

'It's the boy Commander Beauchamp drowned to save,' said a man.

All the lights of the ring were turned on the head of the boy. Dr.

Shrapnel's eyes and Lord Romfrey's fell on the abashed little creature.

The boy struck out both arms to get his fists against his eyelids.

This is what we have in exchange for Beauchamp!

It was not uttered, but it was visible in the blank stare at one another

of the two men who loved Beauchamp, after they had examined the

insignificant bit of mudbank life remaining in this world in the place of

him.

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A cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a woman

A kind of anchorage in case of indiscretion

A night that had shivered repose

A tear would have overcome him--She had not wept

A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting

A string of pearls: a woman who goes beyond that's in danger

A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin

A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and worry

Admires a girl when there's no married woman or widow in sight

Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening

After forty, men have married their habits

Aimlessness of a woman's curiosity

Alike believe that Providence is for them

All concessions to the people have been won from fear

Am I thy master, or thou mine?

An instinct labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity

An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them!

And life said, Do it, and death said, To what end?

And never did a stroke of work in my life

And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence

And one gets the worst of it (in any bargain)

Anticipate opposition by initiating measures

Appealed to reason in them; he would not hear of convictions

Appetite to flourish at the cost of the weaker

Are we practical?' penetrates the bosom of an English audience

Art of speaking on politics tersely

As fair play as a woman's lord could give her

As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness

As for titles, the way to defend them is to be worthy of them

Automatic creature is subject to the laws of its construction

Beauchamp's career

Beautiful servicelessness

Better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet

Boys are unjust

Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to mouthing it

Calm fanaticism of the passion of love

Canvassing means intimidation or corruption

Carry a scene through in virtue's name and vice's mask

Comfortable have to pay in occasional panics for the serenity

Compassionate sentiments veered round to irate amazement

Consult the family means--waste your time

Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther

Convict it by instinct without the ceremony of a jury

Convictions are generally first impressions

Cordiality of an extreme relief in leaving

Country can go on very well without so much speech-making

Cowardice is even worse for nations than for individual men

Crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke (of history)

Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction

Death within which welcomed a death without

Decline to practise hypocrisy

Despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance

Dialectical stiffness

Dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man

Discover the writers in a day when all are writing!

Disqualification of constantly offending prejudices

Dogs die more decently than we men

Dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage

Effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative

Efforts to weary him out of his project were unsuccessful

Empty magnanimity which his uncle presented to him

Energy to something, that was not to be had in a market

Feigned utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable

Feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness

Fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted

Fit of Republicanism in the nursery

Forewarn readers of this history that there is no plot in it

Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant

Frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be revenged

Give our courage as hostage for the fulfilment of what we hope

Give our consciences to the keeping of the parsons

Given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea

Good maxim for the wrathful--speak not at all

Grief of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth

Had come to be her lover through being her husband

Half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole

Hates a compromise

Haunted many pillows

He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity

He condensed a paragraph into a line

He runs too much from first principles to extremes

He bowed to facts

He lost the art of observing himself

He had expected romance, and had met merchandize

He smoked, Lord Avonley said of the second departure

He never calculated on the happening of mortal accidents

Heights of humour beyond laughter

Holding to his work after the strain's over--That tells the man

Hopes of a coming disillusion that would restore him

How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful!

Humour preserved her from excesses of sentiment

I can confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever do so?

I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of France

I cannot say less, and will say no more

If there's no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?

Immense wealth and native obtuseness combine to disfigure us

Impossible for him to think that women thought

Impudent boy's fling at superiority over the superior

In India they sacrifice the widows, in France the virgins

Incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted it unknowingly

Infallibility of our august mother

Inflicted no foretaste of her coming subjection to him

Irony provoked his laughter more than fun

Irritability at the intrusion of past disputes

It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith

It is not high flying, which usually ends in heavy falling

Leader accustomed to count ahead upon vapourish abstractions

Led him to impress his unchangeableness upon her

Let none of us be so exalted above the wit of daily life

Levelling a finger at the taxpayer

Love, that has risen above emotion, quite independent of craving

Love's a selfish business one has work in hand

Made of his creed a strait-jacket for humanity

Making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar

Man owes a duty to his class

Mankind is offended by heterodoxy in mean attire

Mark of a fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself

Martyrs of love or religion are madmen

May not one love, not craving to be beloved?

Men had not pleased him of late

Mental and moral neuters

Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses

More argument I cannot bear

Never was a word fitter for a quack's mouth than "humanity"

Never pretend to know a girl by her face

No heart to dare is no heart to love!

No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is

No stopping the Press while the people have an appetite for it

No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it

None but fanatics, cowards, white-eyeballed dogmatists

Oggler's genial piety made him shrink with nausea

On which does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart?

Once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty

Oratory will not work against the stream, or on languid tides

Parliament, is the best of occupations for idle men

Passion is not invariably love

Past fairness, vaguely like a snow landscape in the thaw

Peace-party which opposed was the actual cause of the war

Peculiar subdued form of laughter through the nose

People with whom a mute conformity is as good as worship

People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query

Planting the past in the present like a perceptible ghost

Play the great game of blunders

Please to be pathetic on that subject after I am wrinkled

Pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty

Politics as well as the other diseases

Practical or not, the good people affectingly wish to be

Prayer for an object is the cajolery of an idol

Press, which had kindled, proceeded to extinguished

Presumptuous belief

Protestant clergy the social police of the English middle-class

Push indolent unreason to gain the delusion of happiness

Ready is the ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done

Rebellion against society and advocacy of humanity run counter

Reproof of such supererogatory counsel

Scotchman's metaphysics; you know nothing clear

She was not, happily, one of the women who betray strong feeling

She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep

Shun comparisons

Shuns the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of posturing

Silence and such signs are like revelations in black night

Slaves of the priests

Small things producing great consequences

So the frog telleth tadpoles

Socially and politically mean one thing in the end

Story that she believed indeed, but had not quite sensibly felt

Straining for common talk, and showing the strain

Style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation

That a mask is a concealment

The girl could not know her own mind, for she suited him exactly

The critic that sneers

The religion of this vast English middle-class--Comfort

The slavery of the love of a woman chained

The turn will come to us as to others--and go

The language of party is eloquent

The defensive is perilous policy in war

The healthy only are fit to live

The system is cursed by nature, and that means by heaven

The world without him would be heavy matter

The weighty and the trivial contended

The rider's too heavy for the horse in England

The greater wounds do not immediately convince us of our fate

The people always wait for the winner

The defensive is perilous policy in war

The family view is everlastingly the shopkeeper's

The infant candidate delights in his honesty

The tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman to write

Their hearts are eaten up by property

Their not caring to think at all

There is no step backward in life

There may be women who think as well as feel; I don't know them

There is no first claim

There's nothing like a metaphor for an evasion

They may know how to make themselves happy in their climate

They have their thinking done for them

They're always having to retire and always hissing

Thirst for the haranguing of crowds

This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief

Those whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh

Those happy men who enjoy perceptions without opinions

Threatened powerful drugs for weak stomachs

Times when an example is needed by brave men

To beg the vote and wink the bribe

Tongue flew, thought followed

Too many time-servers rot the State

Trust no man Still, this man may be better than that man

Unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions

Use your religion like a drug

Virtue of impatience

We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive

We women can read men by their power to love

We could row and ride and fish and shoot, and breed largely

We dare not be weak if we would

We were unarmed, and the spectacle was distressing

We can't hope to have what should be

We have a system, not planned but grown

We are chiefly led by hope

We're treated like old-fashioned ornaments!

Welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting

Well, sir, we must sell our opium

What ninnies call Nature in books

When he's a Christian instead of a Churchman

Where love exists there is goodness

Who cannot talk!--but who can?

Without a single intimation that he loathed the task

Wives are only an item in the list, and not the most important

Women don't care uncommonly for the men who love them

Women must not be judging things out of their sphere

Won't do to be taking in reefs on a lee-shore

Wonderment that one of her sex should have ideas

Wooing a good man for his friendship

World cannot pardon a breach of continuity

You are not married, you are simply chained

You're talking to me, not to a gallery

THE EGOIST

A Comedy in Narrative

by GEORGE MEREDITH

This etext was prepared by Jim Tinsley jtinsley@pobox.com

PRELUDE

A CHAPTER OF WHICH THE LAST PAGE ONLY IS OF ANY IMPORTANCE

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it

deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women,

where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no

violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation

convincing. Credulity is not wooed through the impressionable senses;

nor have we recourse to the small circular glow of the watchmaker's eye

to raise in bright relief minutest grains of evidence for the routing

of incredulity. The Comic Spirit conceives a definite situation for a

number of characters, and rejects all accessories in the exclusive

pursuit of them and their speech. For being a spirit, he hunts the

spirit in men; vision and ardour constitute his merit; he has not a

thought of persuading you to believe in him. Follow and you will see.

But there is a question of the value of a run at his heels.

Now the world is possessed of a certain big book, the biggest book on

earth; that might indeed be called the Book of Earth; whose title is

the Book of Egoism, and it is a book full of the world's wisdom. So

full of it, and of such dimensions is this book, in which the

generations have written ever since they took to writing, that to be

profitable to us the Book needs a powerful compression.

Who, says the notable humourist, in allusion to this Book, who can

studiously travel through sheets of leaves now capable of a stretch

from the Lizard to the last few poor pulmonary snips and shreds of

leagues dancing on their toes for cold, explorers tell us, and catching

breath by good luck, like dogs at bones about a table, on the edge of

the Pole? Inordinate unvaried length, sheer longinquity, staggers the

heart, ages the very heart of us at a view. And how if we manage

finally to print one of our pages on the crow-scalp of that solitary

majestic outsider? We may get him into the Book; yet the knowledge we

want will not be more present with us than it was when the chapters

hung their end over the cliff you ken of at Dover, where sits our great

lord and master contemplating the seas without upon the reflex of that

within!

In other words, as I venture to translate him (humourists are

difficult: it is a piece of their humour to puzzle our wits), the

inward mirror, the embracing and condensing spirit, is required to give

us those interminable milepost piles of matter (extending well-nigh to

the very Pole) in essence, in chosen samples, digestibly. I conceive

him to indicate that the realistic method of a conscientious

transcription of all the visible, and a repetition of all the audible,

is mainly accountable for our present branfulness, and that

prolongation of the vasty and the noisy, out of which, as from an

undrained fen, steams the malady of sameness, our modern malady. We

have the malady, whatever may be the cure or the cause. We drove in a

body to Science the other day for an antidote; which was as if tired

pedestrians should mount the engine-box of headlong trains; and Science

introduced us to our o'er-hoary ancestry--them in the Oriental posture;

whereupon we set up a primaeval chattering to rival the Amazon forest

nigh nightfall, cured, we fancied. And before daybreak our disease was

hanging on to us again, with the extension of a tail. We had it fore

and aft. We were the same, and animals into the bargain. That is all we

got from Science.

Art is the specific. We have little to learn of apes, and they may be

left. The chief consideration for us is, what particular practice of

Art in letters is the best for the perusal of the Book of our common

wisdom; so that with clearer minds and livelier manners we may escape,

as it were, into daylight and song from a land of fog-horns. Shall we

read it by the watchmaker's eye in luminous rings eruptive of the

infinitesimal, or pointed with examples and types under the broad

Alpine survey of the spirit born of our united social intelligence,

which is the Comic Spirit? Wise men say the latter. They tell us that

there is a constant tendency in the Book to accumulate excess of

substance, and such repleteness, obscuring the glass it holds to

mankind, renders us inexact in the recognition of our individual

countenances: a perilous thing for civilization. And these wise men are

strong in their opinion that we should encourage the Comic Spirit, who

is after all our own offspring, to relieve the Book. Comedy, they say,

is the true diversion, as it is likewise the key of the great Book, the

music of the Book. They tell us how it condenses whole sections of the