CHAPTER XVII

'THE PRINCESS EGERIA'

London, say what we will of it, is after all the head of the British

giant, and if not the liveliest in bubbles, it is past competition the

largest broth-pot of brains anywhere simmering on the hob: over the

steadiest of furnaces too. And the oceans and the continents, as you

know, are perpetual and copious contributors, either to the heating

apparatus or to the contents of the pot. Let grander similes besought.

This one fits for the smoky receptacle cherishing millions, magnetic to

tens of millions more, with its caked outside of grime, and the inward

substance incessantly kicking the lid, prankish, but never casting it

off. A good stew, you perceive; not a parlous boiling. Weak as we may be

in our domestic cookery, our political has been sagaciously adjusted as

yet to catch the ardours of the furnace without being subject to their

volcanic activities.

That the social is also somewhat at fault, we have proof in occasional

outcries over the absence of these or those particular persons famous for

inspiriting. It sticks and clogs. The improvising songster is missed, the

convivial essayist, the humorous Dean, the travelled cynic, and he, the

one of his day, the iridescent Irishman, whose remembered repartees are a

feast, sharp and ringing, at divers tables descending from the upper to

the fat citizen's, where, instead of coming in the sequence of talk, they

are exposed by blasting, like fossil teeth of old Deluge sharks in

monotonous walls of our chalk-quarries. Nor are these the less welcome

for the violence of their introduction among a people glad to be set

burning rather briskly awhile by the most unexpected of digs in the ribs.

Dan Merion, to give an example. That was Dan Merion's joke with the

watchman: and he said that other thing to the Marquis of Kingsbury, when

the latter asked him if he had ever won a donkey-race. And old Dan is

dead, and we are the duller for it! which leads to the question: Is

genius hereditary? And the affirmative and negative are respectively

maintained, rather against the Yes is the dispute, until a member of the

audience speaks of Dan Merion's having left a daughter reputed for a

sparkling wit not much below the level of his own. Why, are you unaware

that the Mrs. Warwick of that scandal case of Warwick versus Dannisburgh

was old Dan Merion's girl--and his only child? It is true; for a friend

had it from a man who had it straight from Mr. Braddock, of the firm of

Braddock, Thorpe and Simnel, her solicitors in the action, who told him

he could sit listening to her for hours, and that she was as innocent as

day; a wonderful combination of a good woman and a clever woman and a

real beauty. Only her misfortune was to have a furiously jealous husband,

and they say he went mad after hearing the verdict.

Diana was talked of in the London circles. A witty woman is such salt

that where she has once been tasted she must perforce be missed more than

any of the absent, the dowering heavens not having yet showered her like

very plentifully upon us. Then it was first heard that Percy Dacier had

been travelling with her. Miss Asper heard of it. Her uncle, Mr. Quintin

Manx, the millionnaire, was an acquaintance of the new Judge and titled

dignitary, Sir Cramborne Wathin, and she visited Lady Wathin, at whose

table the report in the journals of the Nile-boat party was mentioned.

Lady Wathin's table could dispense with witty women, and, for that

matter, witty men. The intrusion of the spontaneous on the stereotyped

would have clashed. She preferred, as hostess, the old legal anecdotes

sure of their laugh, and the citations from the manufactories of fun in

the Press, which were current and instantly intelligible to all her

guests. She smiled suavely on an impromptu pun, because her experience of

the humorous appreciation of it by her guests bade her welcome the

upstart. Nothing else impromptu was acceptable. Mrs. Warwick therefore

was not missed by Lady Wathin. 'I have met her,' she said. 'I confess I

am not one of the fanatics about Mrs. Warwick. She has a sort of skill in

getting men to clamour. If you stoop to tickle them, they will applaud.

It is a way of winning a reputation.' When the ladies were separated from

the gentlemen by the stream of Claret, Miss Asper heard Lady Wathin speak

of Mrs. Warwick again. An allusion to Lord Dannisburgh's fit of illness

in the House of Lords led to her saying that there was no doubt he had

been fascinated, and that, in her opinion, Mrs. Warwick was a dangerous

woman. Sir Cramborne knew something of Mr. Warwick; 'Poor man!' she

added. A lady present put a question concerning Mrs. Warwick's beauty.

'Yes,' Lady Wathin said, 'she has good looks to aid her. Judging from

what I hear and have seen, her thirst is for notoriety. Sooner or later

we shall have her making a noise, you may be certain. Yes, she has the

secret of dressing well--in the French style.'

A simple newspaper report of the expedition of a Nileboat party could

stir the Powers to take her up and turn her on their wheel in this

manner.

But others of the sons and daughters of London were regretting her

prolonged absence. The great and exclusive Whitmonby, who had dined once

at Lady Wathin's table, and vowed never more to repeat that offence to

his patience, lamented bitterly to Henry Wilmers that the sole woman

worthy of sitting at a little Sunday evening dinner with the cream of the

choicest men of the time was away wasting herself in that insane modern

chase of the picturesque! He called her a perverted Celimene.

Redworth had less to regret than the rest of her male friends, as he was

receiving at intervals pleasant descriptive letters, besides manuscript

sheets of ANTONIA'S new piece of composition, to correct the proofs for

the press, and he read them critically, he thought. He read them with a

watchful eye to guard them from the critics. ANTONIA, whatever her faults

as a writer, was not one of the order whose Muse is the Public Taste. She

did at least draw her inspiration from herself, and there was much to be

feared in her work, if a sale was the object. Otherwise Redworth's highly

critical perusal led him flatly to admire. This was like her, and that

was like her, and here and there a phrase gave him the very play of her

mouth, the flash of her eyes. Could he possibly wish, or bear, to, have

anything altered? But she had reason to desire an extended sale of the

work. Her aim, in the teeth of her independent style, was at the means of

independence--a feminine method of attempting to conciliate contraries;

and after despatching the last sheets to the printer, he meditated upon

the several ways which might serve to, assist her; the main way running

thus in his mind:--We have a work of genius. Genius is good for the

public. What is good for the public should be recommended by the critics.

It should be. How then to come at them to, get it done? As he was not a

member of the honourable literary craft, and regarded its arcana

altogether externally, it may be confessed of him that he deemed the

Incorruptible corruptible;--not, of course, with filthy coin slid into

sticky palms. Critics are human, and exceedingly, beyond the common lot,

when touched; and they are excited by mysterious hints of loftiness in

authorship; by rumours of veiled loveliness; whispers, of a general

anticipation; and also Editors can jog them. Redworth was rising to be a

Railway King of a period soon to glitter with rails, iron in the

concrete, golden in the visionary. He had already his Court, much against

his will. The powerful magnetic attractions of those who can help the

world to fortune, was exercised by him in spite of his disgust of

sycophants. He dropped words to right and left of a coming work by

ANTONIA. And who was ANTONIA?--Ah! there hung the riddle.--An exalted

personage?--So much so that he dared not name her even in confidence to

ladies; he named the publishers. To men he said he was at liberty to

speak of her only as the most beautiful woman of her time. His courtiers

of both sexes were recommended to read the new story, THE PRINCESS

EGERIA.

Oddly, one great lady of his Court had heard a forthcoming work of this

title spoken of by Percy Dacier, not a man to read silly fiction, unless

there was meaning behind the lines: that is, rich scandal of the

aristocracy, diversified by stinging epigrams to the address of

discernible personages. She talked of THE PRINCESS EGERIA: nay, laid her

finger on the identical Princess. Others followed her. Dozens were soon

flying with the torch: a new work immediately to be published from the

pen of the Duchess of Stars!--And the Princess who lends her title to the