■ ■■ ■■■■■■:<■:.. ?■■
 
 THE PAGEANTRY 
 
 LIFE
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS 
 
 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 THE PAGEANTRY OF LIFE 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE 
 THACKERAY 
 
 WILLIAM PITT 
 
 AMERICAN SKETCHES 
 
 ESSAYS IN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 LETTERS OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 First and Second Scries 
 
 LITERARY PORTRAITS 
 POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 LITERARY STUDIES
 
 THE PAGEANTRY 
 
 OF 
 
 LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES WHIBLEY 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1921
 
 First Edition published igoo 
 
 Ail rights, including translation, reserved
 
 
 T 
 
 H 
 
 h- 
 
 ' Studious they appear 
 Of art i that polish life' 
 
 MILTON 
 
 £82774
 
 / desire to thank Mr. William Black- 
 wood for bis courteous permission to 
 reprint the chapter — Disraeli the 
 Younger — which appeared in the pages 
 of his Magazine.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION i 
 
 YOUNG WESTON 43 
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 61 
 
 THEAGENES 87 
 
 THE REAL PEPYS 109 
 
 SAINT-SIMON 127 
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 181 
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL .... 201 
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 223 
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 241
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THERE is an Art of Life, as there are arts of 
 colour, form, and speech ; and what a material 
 is theirs who practise it ! The poet or painter is 
 perforce engrossed with a momentary aspect of this 
 one or that ; he finds an inspiration in a passing 
 thought or in the outward seeming of man or moun- 
 tain : the cataract may haunt him like a passion, or 
 he may attempt to simplify the mysteries of the sea. 
 But his motive is still fragmentary ; his subject is 
 expressed in a passing, imperfect symbol. The 
 Artist in Life, on the other hand, need recognise no 
 limit save death. He takes his days with all their 
 delicate variety, and cuts them into what form he 
 will. His smallest action is an added touch, a fresh 
 detail in the vast design. Life is his material, enjoy- 
 ment his medium, and to enhance the effect of his 
 single masterpiece he may employ the manifold 
 resources of gaiety and splendour. Rare wines flatter 
 his delicate palate ; his ingenuity designs a new 
 cravat or a coat of unwonted elegance ; wit and 
 beauty are his constant companions ; and whate'er 
 befall, he never knows the shame of vulgar common- 
 
 A
 
 2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 place or dismal routine. Concerned only with his 
 own perfection, he is a miracle of selfishness : that is 
 the first condition of success; and it is not surprising 
 that he too often escapes the sympathy of his fellows. 
 For it is no part of his design to be a good citizen ; 
 and, if he do deserve well of his country, he claims 
 her gratitude in an interval snatched from his more 
 serious enterprise. The common ambitions are in- 
 cidental to his nature, when they are not abhorrent 
 from it. He neither controls governments nor wins 
 battles. He despises the glory which follows a popular 
 triumph, and he professes no greater interest in the 
 secrets of philosophy than is becoming to a person of 
 wit. Nor is he a shining example of the homely 
 virtues ; with him a sense of the picturesque is more 
 vivid than the sense of morality. He does not cut 
 his life into a sermon; rather he shapes it into a witty 
 romance. The external world is his province — a 
 dazzling appearance, discreet magnificence, the quick- 
 exchanged repartee. Yet by a nonchalance of 
 manner, by a proper pride of conduct, he guards his 
 superiority over those whom the world esteems more 
 valiant heroes ; and since he makes the rarest ap- 
 pearance upon the world's stage, his claim to a unique 
 grandeur is not extravagant. There are ten generals, 
 twenty statesmen, to balance one hero who has con- 
 quered life; and if we may judge by results it is easier 
 to discover a savage country or to sing an unheard 
 melody than to design a new coat or to invent a dish 
 untasted before. Above all the true artist in life
 
 THE ARTIST IN LIFE 3 
 
 must climb the frozen altitude of self-consciousness, 
 a more difficult peak to scale than Chimborazo; he 
 must 'live and sleep,' as one said who knew him 
 well, 'before a mirror.' 
 
 What then makes the artist, whose portrait is 
 here attempted ? It is not profession, nor birth, nor 
 manners, nor knowledge, nor success, though all 
 these are invaluable accessories. It is temperament, 
 it is life. The priest need not lag behind the courtier. 
 Who had a finer sense of grandeur than Wolsey ? 
 and was not Pascal famous for his six horses ? Nor 
 need poverty disturb a skilful exercise of the art. 
 Burns had a glimpse into its possibilities when he 
 sported the only tie wig in the parish, and the simple 
 propriety of a graceful dinner is beyond the pocket 
 of no man who can afford clean linen and a cheese. 
 Again, the coat depends for its effect less upon the 
 reckless use of velvet or satin than upon the bravery 
 wherewith it is worn. An inapposite assumption of 
 birth, a clumsy show of riches, are the worst foes 
 of elegance : without the true temperament the 
 resources of Golconda will avail nothing. When 
 Byron said he would rather be Brummel than 
 Napoleon, he did not merely pay a deserved tribute 
 to the genius of dandyism ; he acknowledged that 
 the Dandy was distinguished by rarer qualities than 
 those which achieve the conquest of the world. Yet 
 Brummel could dazzle his rivals neither by exalted 
 birth nor by lavish display. He was gifted with 
 nothing save the sublime talent of his craft, and he 
 triumphed.
 
 4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The artist, alas ! cannot always take a serene 
 pleasure in his perfected work. Though his is ever 
 the joy of creation, he is not permitted to contem- 
 plate the result with appreciative impartiality. For 
 life generally unveils itself to him who lives it as a 
 panorama. Now fortune overcomes the design, now 
 the unexpected imposes a sudden change. And he 
 who, unconsciously maybe, was aiming at a complete 
 harmony, is compelled to content himself with a set 
 of brilliant, discursive images. Still, there have been 
 men of so strong a nature that they have themselves 
 put the last touch to life, and forced the picture to 
 justify the sketch. So Disraeli, if we forget his 
 politics, remained until the last hour within the 
 same frame whose four corners bounded his youthful 
 design and boyish ambition. 
 
 A yet greater grief than unfulfilled purpose pursues 
 the artist. Declining grandeur is, save for the rare 
 and happy few, touched with regret. The egoist is 
 sad at last. So long has he stared at himself in the 
 mirror, that others refrain from contemplation. Or 
 a change of fashion overwhelms the memory of his 
 brilliant youth. So Bassompierre found himself dis- 
 moded when he left the Bastille, and Brummel died 
 at Caen in broken imbecility. But ultimate failure 
 does not impair the splendour of their achievement : 
 reverses are the fate of all great men. No real hero 
 ever lived from youth to age without a check upon 
 his happiness ; indeed, he who boasts an unbroken 
 triumph convicts himself of insensibility. Even
 
 HONOUR AND RESTRAINT 5 
 
 Csesar, with the world at his feet, bewailed a bald 
 head. 
 
 Life, like all the arts, obeys its own rules; since 
 life without rules is, like language without grammar, 
 inarticulate and absurd. The first article in the 
 code is that wayward body of antique tradition, 
 called honour, which, by enforcing the subtler rules 
 of conduct, checks the noisy spirit of the brawler 
 and renders altercation a disgrace. Next in order 
 come dignity and restraint, without which magnifi- 
 cence is common and splendour a vain show. A 
 perfect fitness, indeed, is embarrassment's only 
 antidote, and he who is embarrassed must needs cure 
 his malady, or crawl through his years in the asylum 
 of a decent obscurity. But there are many who, 
 falsely claiming to practise the art of life, reverence 
 no laws, and so make a travesty of elegance. Every 
 generation is troubled by a rabble of curiosity- 
 mongers, who feign an exquisite sensibility to such 
 impressions as escape them, and whose appreciation 
 of unnumbered sights and sounds is the more loudly 
 expressed as it is felt the less sincerly. These 
 gentry, robbed of gaiety and courage, can make 
 nothing of their wizened careers, for all their proud 
 ambition ; wherefore they convert their vile bodies 
 into hoardings, and advertise by the effrontery of 
 foolish clothes the tastes after which they im- 
 potently hanker. So they gather the indiscriminate 
 spoils of all countries, and by their lack of choice 
 render even the rare and beautiful of no effect.
 
 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Worse still arc those merry blades, the roysterers, 
 who mistake squalor for gaiety, and who think a loud 
 licence the best mark of a gentleman. They, know- 
 ing nought of a more gracious world, dwell in the 
 dark suburb of Bohemia, where they delight in false 
 freedom, tempered by compulsory poverty. The 
 man of sense, driven perchance into this gipsyland, 
 passes through it hastily, regretting his sojourn, and 
 shaking off as soon as maybe the memory of its 
 thickened atmosphere. For he, at once the art and 
 artist, inhabits a fairer province, where the trees are 
 not smoke-begrimed, and where the voice of music 
 is still heard. 
 
 The most self-conscious of craftsmen, he is un- 
 selfish in his outlook upon posterity. He does not 
 work for fame ; he raises no monument cere perennius. 
 For him, indeed, his art is his own reward, since it 
 enhances the pleasures of every hour, and is perfected 
 too often without a record. So it is that his achieve- 
 ment is generally ephemeral, and affects few beyond 
 the reach of his intimate friendship. But now and 
 again, if he be gifted with sincerity, he sends him- 
 self down the ages in his own despite ; sometimes, 
 even, tradition preserves, in an imperishable sketch, 
 the memory of his triumph. Scrope Davies, for 
 instance, the near rival of Brummel, is well-nigh 
 forgotten. His conversation glittered only in the 
 ears of those who heard him, and we are none the 
 wiser for knowing that Byron found him l always 
 ready, and often witty.' His quiet manners, his
 
 SCROPE DAVIES 7 
 
 discreet attire are famous, but they merely give him 
 a place beside Alvanley and the best of his contem- 
 poraries. We are nearer to the truth when Byron 
 tells us that he dined tete-a-tete at the ' Cocoa with 
 Scrope Davies — sat from six till midnight — drank 
 between us one bottle of champagne and six of 
 claret. . . . Offered to take Scrope home in my 
 carriage; but he was tipsy and pious, and I was 
 obliged to leave him on his knees praying to I know 
 not what purpose or pagod.' 
 
 Yet neither tipsiness nor piety mark out Davies 
 from his contemporaries. It is only when we see him 
 in old age that his real character is revealed. Over- 
 taken by poverty this admirable scholar, wit, and 
 gamester lived at Paris in a single room, which no 
 intimate ever penetrated. Every day he would sit 
 in the garden of the Tuileries, and there, bowed 
 down by poverty and years, he would receive his 
 friends with the Dandy's own imperial manner. 
 Thus he preserved untouched the genius of his 
 youth ; and Scrope Davies, on the seat of the 
 Tuileries, scrupulous in adversity, is as genuine 
 a creation as a canto of Don 'Juan (let us say), 
 or the ' Ode to the Skylark.' Not even Old Q_, 
 ruffian that he was, need fear oblivion, for he too 
 has left an immortal sketch. There he will remain, 
 sinister and contemptuous, beneath the shadow of 
 an umbrella, ogling the passers-by from his renowned 
 balcony, so long as the memory of man lingers upon 
 the picturesque.
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The art has not been practised in all ages with 
 equal success ; the artist himself has varied with the 
 period. Of Greek life, in the elegant sense, we 
 know as little as we know of Greek painting. And 
 we regret our ignorance the more because we are 
 
 to o 
 
 confident that the Greek was supreme at all points. 
 Such intimate records as might reveal the accom- 
 plishments of the men about Athens are unhappily 
 lacking. Plutarch gives us just a glimpse of 
 Alcibiades, who, like Lord Chesterfield, thought 
 the flute an instrument unworthy the lips of a 
 gentleman ; but the biographer is far more interested 
 in Alcibiades the politician than in Alcibiades the 
 beau, and Alcibiades the politician was a secondary 
 personage. When the Roman Emperors sat upon 
 their throne the opportunity is less, though the 
 records are more eloquent. But the men of that 
 age were tainted with the taint of the amateur, and 
 the artistry of Herodes Atticus (for instance) was 
 a thing of wealth rather than of talent. 
 
 Throughout the Middle Ages life was so hard to 
 live that ornament was impossible. You cannot 
 imagine a primitive Briton embellished with the 
 manners of the Macaronis. Even the savage who 
 decorates his canoe or polishes his kava-bowl 
 approaches nearer to delicacy than did our woaded, 
 touzle-headed ancestors. And chivalry introduced 
 no easier refinement. The Knight in Armour was 
 too heavily clad for dandyism. It is true that he 
 devoted a certain coquetry to his coat of mail, which
 
 THE NEED OF LEISURE 9 
 
 he chased and chiselled, polished and inlaid. But 
 he drank deep stoups, and made love with shrewd 
 blows ; nor was he ever really himself, either as 
 hero or lover, until his squire had hoisted him on to 
 a horse, heavily encumbered as himself. Now and 
 again, as the years roll on, there are signs to detect 
 of awakening splendour. Even in the grim reign 
 of Louis xi. the Dukes of Berry and Brittany 
 showed themselves men of fashion by their love of 
 useless magnificence. After the battle of Montlhery, 
 when they should have been equipped to fight the 
 foe, they rode forth ' mounted upon small ambling 
 nags, and armed with slight brigandines, light and 
 thin, yea, and some said they were not plated, but 
 studded only with a few gilt nails upon the satin 
 for the less weight.' Thus, animated by a spirit 
 which Brummel himself might have admired, they 
 defied the rules of war. It was grace whereat they 
 aimed, not valiance, and they cared little with what 
 weapons they assailed their enemies, so they cut 
 a brave and dashing figure before their friends. 
 
 If wealth is not necessary for the embellishment 
 of life, leisure is indispensable ; and it was only when 
 tranquillity was assured the world that men had time 
 to adorn themselves and to glorify their environ- 
 ment. The rare revelations of the fifteenth century 
 still suggest a grim struggle and a stern debauch. 
 He whose land was not safe from his neighbours' 
 aggression, whose house must be in very truth his 
 castle, needed a recreation as violent as his duty.
 
 io INTRODUCTION 
 
 Arms were his playthings, a fortress was his library. 
 He was forced to ponder so deeply of his foes, that 
 he had scarce a thought to waste upon himself. 
 There is little gaiety, for instance, in that store- 
 house of domestic history — the ' Paston Letters.' 
 Who should be gay with savage intruders knocking 
 at the door ? And Margaret Paston, most admirable 
 of wives, proved herself the just child of her age, 
 when instead of jewels she begs of her husband 
 crossbows, wyndocs, and quarrels. Yet, though 
 crossbows were first in her thought as in her letter, 
 even she at times remembered the trivialities of life, 
 and would have sent in the same packet with the 
 munitions of war a pound of almonds, a pound of 
 sugar, and ' some friese to make of our child his 
 gouns.' 
 
 With the contemporaries of Mistress Paston 
 triviality was an interlude, and it was only with the 
 sixteenth century that a delicate frivolity smiled on 
 the renascent world. Now, at last, life was pursued 
 with a fierce zest and for its own sake. On either 
 side the Channel, the beau plumed himself upon his 
 attire, upon his reckless gaming, upon the wrested 
 favours of women. The field of the Golden Cloth 
 was, so to say, a symbol of revived magnificence 
 and high spirits. Henry, young and handsome, was 
 a fitting rival for his cousin of France, nor would 
 the courtiers yield to their monarchs in such sports 
 as became a gentleman. Henceforth, then, the 
 world was prepared for the last extravagance, and
 
 THE GOLDEN AGE n 
 
 the most daring rufflcr might inul a theatre worthy 
 his exploits. 
 
 Splendid though our Henry was, it was the 
 Restoration which heralded the golden age of life. 
 For once sentiment and opportunity were perfectly 
 matched. On the throne a king who preferred wit 
 to wisdom, and who ruled a country eager to react. 
 For a while patriotism slept, save in half a dozen 
 wakeful hearts, and the glory of grave enterprises 
 was obscured ; yet regret for duties unaccomplished 
 need not blind us to the glamour of this wayward 
 reign, which at least was inexorably hostile to 
 dulness and stupidity. Curiosity triumphed every- 
 where ; life was radiant because a radiant Court was 
 determined to enjoy it. The theatre echoed to 
 a wit which, for all its freedom, was never disreput- 
 able, because it was neither senseless nor vulgar. 
 And beauty was omnipotent over King and Court. 
 Manners alone made man, and unkempt virtue had 
 little chance of sympathy or admiration. Nobody 
 curtailed his pleasure for the narrow scruples which 
 before, as since, have controlled society ; another 
 standard of morals invaded the town with a more 
 exclusive ambition : an ill-cut coat became a cardinal 
 sin, and vice lay not in the intrigue, but in its mis- 
 conduct. 
 
 Happily the age was garrulous as well as gay. Its 
 exploits, which shook footstools if they left thrones 
 secure, have been set forth with the careful fidelity 
 of eyewitnesses. Our own Pepys had not only
 
 i2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the quickest vision but the lightest hand of them all. 
 Moreover, to him no world came amiss. He was 
 at home in Whitehall or in the City. Wherever 
 he went he saw what was best worth the seeing, 
 and he chronicled it with a simple truth, which no 
 other artist has ever surpassed. Grammont, on the 
 other hand, is far more pompous and less supple 
 than his English rival, and for once the light- 
 fingered wit is on our side the Channel. Antony 
 Hamilton, the exquisite's biographer, himself an 
 exquisite, was inspired by a literary ambition. He 
 would have made Grammont play the part of 
 Achilles in an epic of frivolity ; he would have 
 fashioned him into the hero of a new ' Cent 
 Nouvelles Nouvelles.' So that while Pepys is the 
 friend of us all, Grammont is a personage in 
 a drama. And he is a personage, whose indomit- 
 ably high spirits atoned for many of the meaner 
 vices. His spiteful tongue gave him a licence, 
 which not even the Great King dared to dispute. 
 ' All was permitted him,' says Saint-Simon, 'and he 
 permitted himself all.' In truth, had not gaiety and 
 elegance kept him afloat, he would have sunk in 
 youth beneath the waves of cowardice and dis- 
 honour. But a mastery of life confers distinction 
 upon the arrantest knave, and Grammont kept the 
 favour of the Court a lively cavalier of eighty-six 
 summers. Unhappily he did not compose his own 
 memoirs. While he smiled, Hamilton held the pen, 
 and the demure Hamilton did not possess his hero's
 
 BEAU NASH 13 
 
 reckless spirit. None the less he paid him the 
 loftiest compliment known to literature. c II 
 cherchait,' says the biographer, ' et portait partout 
 la joie.' La jo'ie ! that was the end of Grammont's 
 palatial ambition, as it was the end of Pepys's 
 ambling curiosity, and, alas ! it is an ambition which 
 in these days has yielded to the harder lust of gold, 
 the keener pleasure of advancement. 
 
 Grammont, then, sought in London the joy which 
 he had forfeited at the Court of France, and he 
 played his game bravely, in accordance with the 
 prevailing rules. A magnificent egoist, he spared his 
 nearest friend neither in love nor at the dice-board. 
 His career was like a Restoration comedy — vivid, 
 irresponsible, and monotonous. Variety was un- 
 known to those seekers after pleasure ; they took 
 no interest in the Dancing Mare, and even Jacob 
 Hall, the Rope-walker, left them indifferent. No, 
 the advent of a fresh Maid-of-Honour alone availed 
 to quicken their pulses, and since even Maids-of- 
 Honour sometimes lack invention, Grammont and 
 his colleagues ran the risk of staling their enjoyment 
 by too zealous a repetition. 
 
 The succeeding age, while it lost in gaiety, gained 
 nothing in discretion. France declined upon the 
 worship of etiquette and the royal wig. England, 
 after an interlude, bowed her face to the insolence of 
 Beau Nash, under whose sovereignty pleasure became 
 general and democratic. No man who travelled to 
 Bath need despair of elegance. For elegance, when
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Nash was Master of the Ceremonies, was sold over 
 the counter : you paid your subscription to the band, 
 and henceforth you were a man of fashion ; you 
 might walk a minuet in the Pump Room with the 
 best of society ; and so long as you did not infringe 
 the tyrant's laws, you might believe yourself the 
 legitimate successor of Grammont and Rochester. 
 It was droll, this assumption of a rare quality by a 
 mob which had not the slenderest pretension to true 
 elegance. Yet to purchase genius with a guinea 
 seemed not impossible to the eye of optimism, and 
 at Bath beaux grew common as poets in a country 
 newspaper. And Nash himself was the strangest 
 figure of them all. He was shrewd, he was impudent, 
 he was successful. He saw clearly that the reputation 
 for fashion, sincerely prized when the Second Charles 
 was king, might profitably flatter the general vanity. 
 So he sold a title, which was not his to bestow, and 
 the world bought it without perceiving the folly of 
 its bargain. Thus a talent, above all exclusive, was 
 triumphantly vulgarised for the unique glory and 
 profit of Richard Nash. 
 
 To judge his clients it is sufficient to read the 
 rules divised by the Beau for the better conduct of 
 the Pump Room. To judge the Beau, it is enough 
 to consider the clumsy wit wherewith these rules 
 are framed. Gentlemen are requested to give their 
 tickets for the balls to none but gentlewomen. 
 ' N.B. Unless they have none of their acquaintance.' 
 The wit in the 'N.B.' is characteristic, as it were a
 
 THE KING OF BATH 15 
 
 kind of horseplay in words. Again, ' gentlemen ' are 
 reminded that if they crowd before ladies at a ball, 
 'they shew ill manners'; after which caution you 
 are not surprised that stern measures were taken 
 to exclude riding-boots from the assembly. Nash, 
 indeed, had a ragged team to drive, and he drove it 
 with a curb. For himself, he was less a beau than 
 any of his contemporaries. Two qualities he shared 
 with many a man of fashion — he was lazy and a 
 gambler ; but the genius which would have made 
 his laziness a virtue, and would have condoned his 
 love of hazard were wholly lacking. A brusque 
 tyranny did duty for humour, and at the last he was 
 free to insult whom he would. So, for instance, he 
 
 stripped the Duchess of Q- of a white apron, 
 
 exclaiming that only Abigails were thus attired, and 
 none was brave enough to resent his impertinence. 
 Moreover he played all the foolish tricks of his 
 time : for a wager he rode naked on a cow. And 
 he ruled Bath like a king, passing his laws with an 
 imperial assurance. 
 
 A professed Master of the Ceremonies, a Monarch 
 of the back-shop, he won his supremacy by the till, 
 and he allowed none to infringe his laws. At eleven 
 gaiety ceased in his Pump Room, even if a Royal 
 Prince would prolong a dance. In the magniloquent 
 phrase of Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote his bio- 
 graphy : ' Regularity repressed pride, and that 
 lessened, people of fortune became fit for society.' 
 Fit for their own, perhaps : it may be doubted
 
 16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 whether Nash introduced into his world a single 
 habit of elegance. In his own person display usurped 
 the place of taste. His dress was tawdry and of a 
 mixed fashion ; the only mark of individuality was a 
 white hat, though his chariot and six greys won him 
 some notoriety. Yet he watched the decline of 
 many reputations, the defeat of unnumbered modes. 
 'He had seen flaxen bobs succeeded by majors' (so 
 says his biographer), ' which in their turn gave way 
 to negligents, which were at last totally routed by 
 bags and ramilies.' And not even this vast experience 
 availed to save him from penury and disgrace. His 
 end was squalid, and the squalor was not undeserved ; 
 yet he interpreted life to thousands of his country- 
 men, and he was called a Beau by the generation 
 which had witnessed the splendour of Bolingbroke. 
 
 So life became the popular art of the Eighteenth 
 Century, practised by many with knowledge, by few 
 with eminent success. Now, a grandiose manner 
 was esteemed by such heroes as Chesterfield as the 
 one and only aim of existence, and he was abundantly 
 justified of his opinion. Not content with action, 
 Chesterfield was impelled to preach ; and so he 
 stands forth as the supreme critic of his craft, whose 
 ambition it was to convert a delicate art into an 
 austere science. Nash thought to make the first- 
 comer a gentleman by asking him for a subscription ; 
 Chesterfield hoped that the grand manner might be 
 imparted by a treatise. And Chesterfield failed, as 
 Nash failed, as all fail who believe that artifice will
 
 THE GOSPEL OF CHESTERFIELD 17 
 
 supply gifts denied by nature. Philip Stanhope died 
 a worthy young man, who had never learnt (in 
 shame be it spoken) to enter a room with dignity. 
 His father was abashed at the failure, but he was 
 forgiving all the same, and his forgiveness might be 
 remembered by those angry moralists who have 
 chosen Chesterfield as a pack-horse for all the vices. 
 Indeed, never had nobleman been more unfortunate. 
 Resolved upon the education of his son, he sacrificed 
 those hours of leisure which might have been en- 
 grossed by the dice-box, that Philip Stanhope should 
 learn to speak and to bear himself with something 
 of his father's splendour. Pedant as he was, he 
 might have remembered the Latin adage — nascitur 
 mn Jit — and refrained from his Sisyphean labour. 
 He might also have reflected that some secrets are 
 valuable only to those who discover them, and left 
 his son to grow up the good-hearted churl that he 
 was. 
 
 But with Chesterfield zeal outrun discretion ; and 
 we, at any rate, should be grateful for the zeal. For 
 if Chesterfield failed at one point, at another he 
 achieved a splendid triumph. He set out to educate 
 his son, and he revealed himself, so that we know 
 him better than any of his contemporaries. His ideal 
 of a man was 'a Corinthian edifice upon a Tuscan 
 foundation ' ; and it must be confessed that the 
 foundation was in his eyes far less important than 
 the edifice. In other words, he was a true Corin- 
 thian, who worshipped the Graces, those accessories 
 
 B
 
 18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of manner and presentation which exert more in- 
 fluence in the world than mere intellect. As he 
 would base his own actions upon self-love, as he 
 boldly declared that l he who loves himself best is 
 the honestest man,' so he would win the approval of 
 other men, and he would win that approval by an 
 elegance of bearing, an invariable dignity of conduct. 
 ' The Graces, the Graces,' he writes to his son : 
 ' remember the Graces ! ' And that cry from the 
 heart represents his philosophy. To these mysterious 
 qualities he attributes the success of the Duke of 
 Marlborough. 'Of all the men that ever I knew in 
 my life,' says he, ' the late Duke of Marlborough 
 possessed the Graces in the highest degree, not to 
 say engrossed them.' So the conqueror of Blenheim 
 atoned for all his manifold faults of English, spelling, 
 and intelligence. He had the Graces ! Wherefore 
 Europe fell before him, and poor Philip Stanhope 
 perhaps dreamt in his exile that when once he could 
 sit down and rise up like a gentleman, the most 
 brilliant victories were also within his reach. 
 
 Chesterfield's theory was indubitably sound. 
 Whatever was awkward, either in gesture or in 
 speech, was distasteful to him ; he shrank in horror 
 from failure, and would attempt nothing which could 
 not be achieved with simplicity and elegance. He 
 too, like Alcibiades, condemned the flute as an 
 instrument which no self-respecting man could play ; 
 only to the flute he added the fiddle. He detested 
 laughter as bitterly as Philip iv. of Spain, and he
 
 WALPOLE A DILETTANTE 19 
 
 declared with pride that none had seen him express 
 his hilarity by aught more violent than a smile. 
 The same sense of proportion made him conceal his 
 knowledge with a rare modesty. c Wear your 
 learning,' said he in an admirable phrase, 'like your 
 watch, in a private pocket.' Similarly, like the 
 Dandies of another generation, he preached a perfect 
 simplicity in dress. c Let your dress be never spoken 
 of,' he urged, c as either too negligent or too much 
 studied.' Horseplay and pleasure — that is, pleasure 
 as it was interpreted by the Macaronis — were alike 
 distasteful to him ; on the other hand, he was never 
 averse from gallantry, and he welcomed all such 
 recreation as could be pursued with dignity. Not 
 unnaturally he hated the country, and loathed field- 
 sports. His will imposed a fine upon his heir should 
 he frequent Newmarket, and shooting he condemned 
 in a characteristic phrase. ' Eat game,' said he, ' but 
 do not be your own butcher and kill it.' In brief, 
 his hobbies were conversation and fine company ; 
 therefore he loved capitals, and it was not until 
 deafness overtook him that he settled down at Black- 
 heath to solitude and the cultivation of his garden. 
 
 Such was his admirable ideal of life, more Corin- 
 thian than Tuscan may be, but always dignified and 
 ornate. He was a sort of Louis xiv. tempered by 
 Voltaire's restrained vivacity. He adored wit, but 
 no wit would persuade him to be seen without his 
 wig. He was worldly, of course ; but then he lived 
 in the world, and thought that retirement meant
 
 20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 death. ' Tyrawlcy and I,' said he in a pretty epigram, 
 ' have been dead these two years, but we do not want 
 it known.' And he has acquired, in his own despite, 
 a reputation for villany, which, though it would not 
 vex, would certainly astonish him. His detractors 
 are annoyed that he did not applaud the practice of 
 the homely virtues. In his own phrase he left that 
 to the excellent Mr. Harte or to Dr. Dodd. And 
 his detractors display a lamentable lack of humour 
 when they ask this worldling to mount the pulpit. 
 Would they expect a lecture on the Graces from 
 their favourite preacher ? 
 
 Chesterfield, then, was an artist for whom life was 
 an affair of external accomplishment and scrupulous 
 restraint. And in his own kind he remains without 
 a rival. Horace Walpole, who stretches an accidental 
 hand from Chesterfield to the Dandies, was less 
 happily inspired. For he was an amateur even in his 
 life ; he was so delicately refined a dilettante that 
 even his enjoyment smacks of insincerity. The 
 multiplicity of his interests imperilled them all. He 
 must needs print little books at his little press, and 
 exalt the literary indiscretions of kings. When his 
 friends visited him he would fire off" a popgun, as it 
 were a royal salute of welcome. But for all his 
 wit and amiability he was a coxcomb rather than a 
 beau ; he was too careless of his appearances ; he 
 looked upon life more lightly than he looked upon 
 literature ; his manners were marked by an easy 
 familiarity, as far removed from the dignity of
 
 BRUMMEL'S SUPERIORITY 21 
 
 Chesterfield as from the stern inflexibility of Brum- 
 mel. In brief, he forms a pleasant interlude in the 
 history of manners, and gives us a momentary pause 
 before we consider the marvellous achievement of the 
 greatest artist among them all — George Brummel. 
 
 Other heroes have wasted their powers in un- 
 certain experiment ; they have fumbled uselessly in 
 the search after their true talent. George Brummel 
 came into his inheritance while still a boy ; he never 
 for a moment was anything but a Dandy. In truth 
 he has made the title his own, and other men claim 
 it merely because they believe themselves illuminated 
 by a spark of Brummel's genius. He might have 
 been a soldier or a politician ; he might, perchance, 
 have been a wit ; but war was as distasteful to him 
 as affairs, and with that perfect consistency which 
 marks only the greatest of men, he devoted himself 
 to the unique cultivation of himself. The sole end 
 and aim of his career was to present George Brummel 
 to the world as a type of grandeur and superiority. 
 His biographer, the best that hero was ever blessed 
 withal, puts him in a niche apart, because he never 
 complicated his vanity by the larger ambition which 
 animates kings and rulers. Richelieu, says Barbey 
 d'Aurevilly, might have been a Dandy, and was not, 
 because he was also a statesman. Maybe, the 
 paradox is pressed too far ; the greatest Minister 
 might, perchance, be a Dandy in his hours of ease ; 
 but I will not quarrel with a paradox which exalts 
 thus magnificently the throne of Brummel.
 
 22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Brummel, then, was to himself a work of art, 
 which should be embellished by perfect manners, 
 perfect taste, and a cunning tailor ; nor is it sur- 
 prising that the finished work inspired the whole of 
 English society with an admiring awe. Moreover, 
 he was no mere theorist, he was an inventor as 
 well. In the matter of clothes, he was what the 
 Germans would call epoch-making. He arrived at 
 the moment when the democratic spirit had killed 
 elegance. The Revolution had done its work, and 
 Charles Fox, himself a Dandy of the second class, 
 had preached the doctrine of equality. The old 
 picturesqueness was dead ; the cocked hat had been 
 vanquished by the topper ; and Brummel had no 
 less a task than to construct a noble costume from 
 this wreckage of republican principles. And what 
 a poor material had he whereon to work ! A coat, 
 a waistcoat, and a pair of trousers ! Yet he was no 
 fanatic to restore the ancient mode ; his greatness 
 consisted in the proper adaptation of the poor 
 materials left to his hand. He did not neglect their 
 shape and contour ; but that their poverty of design 
 might be less noticed, he drew off attention to the 
 cravat. 
 
 This, indeed, was the masterpiece of his inven- 
 tion. The cravat of Brummel was the envy of 
 crowned heads ; yet nothing could have been more 
 simple. It was half-starched, and it went twice 
 round ; its glory began and ended in the perfect 
 arrangement of its folds ; and Brummel was so
 
 •EXQUISITE PROPRIETY' 23 
 
 delicate an artist that he discarded a cravat which 
 was not flawless at the first attempt. He would 
 insult neither himself nor his cravat by a second 
 trial, and the famous story is a proper index of 
 his greatness. A friend one day encountered his 
 valet on the stairs carrying with him a tray-full of 
 discarded cravats. c What arc these ? ' asked the 
 eager friend, with half a hope that he might pene- 
 trate a long-kept secret. ' These,' replied the 
 valet, £ are some of our failures.' And in that 
 simple phrase was revealed Brummel's true imperish- 
 able temperament. 
 
 The hours which other men devote to aimless 
 politics and irrelevant intrigue Brummel devoted 
 fearlessly to himself and his mirror. His ingenuity 
 and sense of elegance were concentrated upon him- 
 self. His person was the field of battle where he, 
 the general, routed his adversaries — bad taste and 
 awkwardness. His costume, devised by himself, 
 was invariable and worthy of exact record. In the 
 morning, then, he wore Hessians and pantaloons, or 
 top-boots and buckskins, and a light or buff- 
 coloured waistcoat. His evening dress was a blue 
 coat and a white waistcoat, black pantaloons which 
 buttoned tight to the ankles, striped silk stockings, 
 and opera-hat. His greatest pride was the tight 
 pantaloons which displayed at night the shapeliness 
 of his leg. These, indeed, were cut to his design, 
 and it is not remarkable that the Regent followed the 
 Dandy's mode in this and other particulars. ' The
 
 24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 finest gentleman in Europe' would sit for hours and 
 hours in Chesterfield Street, watching the peerless 
 Brummcl at work ; yet all the watching in the 
 world could not teach the elegances, and the Regent 
 never legitimately rivalled the Dandy, at whose ruin 
 he jealously connived. 
 
 Now, Brummel was the direct descendant from 
 Chesterfield in the line of beaux, and it is not 
 remarkable that his slender library contained a copy 
 of the Earl's Letters. He, too, might have ex- 
 claimed, ' the Graces, the Graces, remember the 
 Graces ! ' For his days were loyally given to their 
 worship, and no man ever practised more sedulously 
 what Chesterfield preached. His two ambitions 
 were cleanliness and correction ; and he was so 
 finished a master of his craft that he could always 
 elude notice between Chesterfield Street and White's. 
 And he eluded notice because he fitted the land- 
 scape with delicate exactitude. In Regent Street 
 his pantaloons might have cried aloud. They 
 belonged to the scenery of Piccadillv. 
 
 So it is that Byron, a lifelong worshipper, spoke 
 the truth when he said that there was nothing 
 remarkable in Brummel's appearance save c its ex- 
 quisite propriety.' Starched cravats and varnished 
 boots might seem to be within the reach of all men ; 
 yet in these accomplishments Brummel was without 
 a rival. His cravat was perfect because he touched 
 it with his own magic fingers. His boots were 
 perfect because, like the statues in a Greek pedi-
 
 THE FLIGHT TO CALAIS 25 
 
 ment, they were as highly finished where they were 
 not seen as on their polished surface. The smallest 
 detail was so nicely calculated that a mistake was 
 impossible. The foolish man reproached Brummel 
 with a lack of manners because he found it im- 
 possible to doff his hat to a lady. But it was the work 
 of many minutes and much thought with the Dandy 
 to pose his hat at the right angle ; and who so vain 
 as to demand its removal when once it was set as 
 a crown upon those auburn locks ? To some the 
 head is a receptacle of intelligence ; for Brummel it 
 was a block to sustain the perfect hat. 
 
 The world has misjudged Brummel, as it mis- 
 judged Chesterfield, because it has sought qualities 
 which were alien to his character. He was heart- 
 less, perhaps ; but, then, he was not concerned with 
 affairs of the heart. Women hated him, especially 
 such women as Harriette Wilson, because, as Captain 
 Jesse says in a solitary moment of insight, c he must 
 have inspired her with une jalousie cle femme a femme — 
 a woman can hardly be expected to forgive a man 
 for being more elegant than herself.' Morover, it 
 was his business to inspire admiration rather than 
 friendship, and for this reason there was none — not 
 even the admirable Scrope — who would break his 
 fall. But if he had no heart, and not too much of 
 the discursive talent called intelligence, he was 
 gifted with a sturdy wit — not too refined, it is true, 
 but effective enough against the stupidity of his foes. 
 Outside his personal decoration the one achievement
 
 26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of his life was the question he put to Alvanley when 
 the Regent cut him at the Dandies' Ball. 'Who's 
 your fat friend ? ' he demanded in an immortal 
 phrase — a phrase for which it was worth while to 
 live and die. 
 
 In all encounters, he had a natural superiority, 
 which depended not upon judgment or wit or the 
 faculty of repartee. He was great because he had 
 the supreme gift of presentation ; he stood before 
 society so exactly poised, so marvellously apparelled, 
 that power and intellect shrank before his gaze. 
 He shared the worst vice of his time : he was 
 a gambler ; or his magnificence might have ap- 
 peared inhuman ; and it is very certain that, if 
 his flight to Calais had not been imperative, he 
 would still have braved London in security, even in 
 triumph. But you must seek the course of his 
 success in such details as do not crush empires or 
 exalt kings. The memory of Napoleon suggests 
 the glory of the Italian Campaign. It is an im- 
 portant event in the career of Brummel that he 
 polished his teeth with red root. 
 
 The journey to Calais was but a crown to the 
 Dandy's greatness. He had already proved how 
 much might be achieved by the grand manner, for, 
 being a Dandy, he had taken snuff ; and no man ever 
 dared to say that he inelegantly besmirched himself. 
 But then he had framed rules for the management 
 of a snuff-box, as he had framed rules for the 
 architecture of a cravat. The box, said he, must be
 
 THE BEAU'S WATERLOO 27 
 
 held and opened in the same hand ; and the box 
 must change with the season. Though a trifle in 
 blue Sevres was admirable for the summer, it would 
 make a chilly appearance in December, and could 
 not then be tolerated. Thus Brummel cut a 
 magnificent figure when London was at his feet, 
 and he displayed in adversity a loftiness of soul for 
 which none of his few friends gave him credit. 
 Poor and forsaken, he proved that a Dandy may be 
 a hero even in the common sense of the word. 
 
 The Regent deserted him in a fit of bitter 
 jealousy, and the snobs of London followed the 
 Regent ; but Brummel, unabashed, still did the 
 honours of Great Britain in a modest hotel 
 at Calais. He received exalted visitors with the 
 condescension of an ambassador ; he deigned to 
 embellish a tranquil life with the charity of acquaint- 
 ances. Greville, who had little sympathy with what 
 Barbey d' Aurevilly calls Brummel's ' majestic 
 frivolity,' sketched him as truthfully as he could. 
 'I found him,' said the Clerk of the Council, 'in 
 his old lodging, dressing ; some pretty pieces of 
 old furniture in the room, an entire toilet of silver, 
 and a large green macaw perched on the back of a 
 tattered silk chair with faded gilding, full of gaiety, 
 impudence, and misery.' 
 
 It is a fine picture of heroism ; yet at Calais 
 Brummel was on the mere threshold of misfortune, 
 and it is to his eternal glory that neither an empty 
 pocket nor a failing mind destroyed his gaiety or
 
 28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 his impudence. His flight from Calais is like the 
 retreat of a general overcome by superior odds. 
 When once he was at Caen, defeat was inevitable 
 and bravely borne. That which to another was 
 a light affront was for Brummel a blow dealt to his 
 shaken pride. Poverty robbed him of all the 
 delicacies which made life a reality. He was like 
 a soldier debarred from the battle-field, like a poet 
 deprived of solitude, ink and paper. And he fought 
 for his dignity unto the last ditch ; he endured 
 defeat with the imperturbability wherewith he had 
 smiled on victory. He still spent several hours at 
 his toilet, though a provincial town of France was 
 a poor opportunity of display, and thus, as always, 
 he pursued his art, with little thought of the world's 
 opinion. He seldom complained, and even when he 
 did he complained with a touch of the ancient 
 grandeur. ' My old friend, King Allen,' he writes 
 to Alvanley, ' has promised to send me some habili- 
 ments for my body, denuded like a new-born infant 
 — and what a Beau I once was ! ' That is a note of 
 sorrow, bravely sounded ; and it is only the first 
 note of his sorrow. When charity came it came in 
 so harsh a guise that it hurt his pride and wrought 
 no benefit. At the last gasp for the necessities of 
 life, he asked for a shawl dressing-gown. They 
 gave him a gown of cotton. What could he but 
 fling it out of window ? 
 
 1835 was his Waterloo. In that year he was 
 arrested, and, worse still, obliged to dress before the
 
 THE DEATH OF BRUMMEL 29 
 
 police. This might have seemed the last insult to 
 one who had never revealed the secrets of his toilet 
 to any save his own Prince Regent. For a moment 
 even his courage failed, but he speedily recovered 
 himself, and he had not been many hours under 
 lock and key when he 'descended into the debtor's 
 court,' to quote Jesse, 'with his neckcloth as white 
 and well tied, his hat smoothed to a hair, and his 
 whole exterior as perfect as if he had been going 
 to pay a morning visit.' Did Napoleon show a 
 grander spirit than that when he threw himself, 
 proud and imperial, upon the mercy of his enemies ? 
 But Brummel's Waterloo was the prelude to a bitter 
 series of defeats. True, his liberation was a triumph, 
 which restored for a day all the wonderful gaiety of 
 the past. ' C 'est aujourd'hui,' he wrote to a 
 friend, c le plus heureux jour de ma vie, car je suis 
 sorti de prison, et j'ai mange du saumon.' The 
 happiness, however, was an interlude, and soon 
 broken. The monsters who dispensed the charity 
 of his friends were cruel and close-fisted. Piece by 
 piece they deprived him of all the simple frivolities, 
 which meant nothing to their drab souls, and which 
 to poor Brummel were the salt of life. One day we 
 find him writing to his hard-hearted paymaster : ' I 
 have never trespassed upon the rules of economy 
 which you have dictated to me, except in one 
 instance, and that has been that damned, execrable 
 blacking. I have now relinquished it for ever.' 
 Poor devil ! what was Brummel without the black-
 
 3 o INTRODUCTION 
 
 ingj which had made his boots the wonder of Europe ? 
 And a yet bitterer humiliation was in store 
 for him. Hard, grinding poverty compelled him to 
 exchange the white tie which was his own invention, 
 ami had been his greatest glory, for a black silk 
 cravat ! Yet he did not falter ; he made a master- 
 piece of black silk, and for a while was content with 
 his handiwork. Then came the crowning dishonour. 
 As a symbol of elegance, he had still cherished a 
 passion for maraschino and biscuits de Rheims. Maybe 
 he cared little for the sweetmeats ; but they repre- 
 sented a vanished luxury, and to satify this whimsical 
 taste he pawned his jewels ; and when all the jewels 
 were pawned, he surrendered the last poor embellish- 
 ment of a tragic career, and sank to the miserable 
 slovenliness of an imbecile. It is a heart-breaking 
 end, only relieved by the fashion of the beau's mad- 
 ness. In imbecility Brummel was still grandiose, 
 and during his last days he would light candles in 
 his desert room, holding phantom receptions of all 
 the great personages who once begged his favour. 
 So he lived, great in courage, as he was great in 
 elegance, the martyr of an unkind society. The 
 man who invents a new screw or a fancy piston is 
 secured against poverty. Brummel's service to the 
 cravat could be translated into no reward of money. 
 And he died without a pension, without the humble 
 solace of biscuits de Rheims and maraschino. 
 
 Brummel's was so masterful a type that in his 
 single person he included all the Dandies. Yet, if
 
 D'ORSAY 31 
 
 he knew no rivals, he was at least followed by a mob 
 of imitators, who exaggerated his qualities into vice. 
 And they are not too amiable, these other Dandies 
 of the Regency. But they retained the friendship of 
 the Prince, who had gladly suffered Brummel's exile, 
 and at last they pretended to a political influence. 
 When George iv. found that his coronation would 
 be disturbed by riot, his first care, says Lord Laming- 
 ton, was to discover what was the feeling of the 
 Dandies. Hearing it was against him, ' I care no- 
 thing for the mob,' he exclaimed, 'but I do for the 
 Dandies ! ' Wherefore he entertained them at 
 breakfast, and so recovered their friendship. This 
 poor anecdote reveals the Dandies' decadence. You 
 cannot imagine Brummel seduced by an invitation, 
 which his arrogance would probably have declined. 
 Moreover, Brummel's successors, as Gronow tells us, 
 were guilty of three faults : they loved snuff, puns, 
 and practical jokes. Their lack of ingenuity is 
 abundantly proved by Whites' Betting Book, and if 
 they had hazarded fifty pounds upon the death or 
 marriage of a friend they thought they had achieved 
 a masterpiece of humour. The man who had known 
 Brummel grew into a bore, and, what is worse, a 
 solemn bore, who cursed more than he laughed, and 
 who cultivated the obsolete slang of his master. So 
 that when the incomparable D'Orsay introduced a 
 more humane artifice of life, the world was reason- 
 ably content. For if D'Orsay was a Dandy among 
 Dandies, he was besides a gentleman of incomparable
 
 32 INTRODUCTION 
 
 wit and fancy, and it was the good fortune of another 
 man of genius, Benjamin Disraeli, that he learnt the 
 first lessons of life from the lively lover of Lady 
 Blessington. 
 
 Indeed, D'Orsay occupies a separate throne, which 
 he claims not only by elegance, but by artistry. His 
 sympathies were as wide as his famous shirt-front, 
 and had he not professed to glitter as a man of fashion, 
 he might have come down the ages as a poet or 
 sculptor. His preference was justified, and we can 
 spare many blocks of unhewn marble for the vision 
 of D'Orsay upon his well-bred steed. Above all he 
 had the genius of appreciation. None of his friends 
 ever won a trivial success without the reward of a 
 just and deftly turned compliment. His achievement, 
 then, was broader, less concentrated than Brummel's. 
 And when defeat came upon him — defeat less bitter 
 than that which overwhelmed the great Dandy — he 
 endured it with all his old serenity and light-hearted- 
 ness. He even found a certain drollery in the siege 
 of Gore House, where all the week his creditors kept 
 him a close prisoner. And as the clock struck mid- 
 night on Saturday, he would go forth to Crockford's 
 in his bravery, throwing a brilliant smile or a word 
 of flattery to the least and greatest of his friends. 
 And when at last grief and old age vanquished him, 
 he accepted the inevitable as a man should. Lord 
 Lamington gives us a glimpse of the hero's declining 
 days. He found his room draped with black, his bed 
 and window shrouded with curtains of the same sable
 
 GUIDES TO THE COURT 33 
 
 hue, and all about him souvenirs of the lady whom 
 he loved and mourned. That is not the end of the 
 true Dandy, who, in defeat as in prosperity, should 
 remain an egoist. 
 
 D'Orsay was but a figure of accident in a senti- 
 mental age, and after the flight of Brummel elegance 
 was a rare and furtive virtue. Under George IV., 
 the smartest of Regents and vulgarest of monarchs, 
 under William IV., the shrewdest of sea-captains and 
 not quite the stupidest of kings, life was cultivated 
 less ardently than politics. Reform cast a shadow 
 upon gaiety and imagination ; men like Greville, 
 born for Newmarket and frivolity, were driven down 
 the backstairs of political intrigue, and though we 
 may be certain that the Duke of York did his best 
 to uphold the honourable tradition, there was no 
 industrious historian to record the prowess of his 
 light-hearted companions. 
 
 And to-day is Dandyism dead ? Has it perished 
 beneath the weight of uniformity ? Is it eclipsed 
 by the brilliant light which beats upon its throne 
 from a thousand newspaper offices ? Maybe it is 
 not dead ; most assuredly it is obscured. It faces a 
 harder task than that which confronted Brummel. 
 A common frock coat is a more stubborn material 
 than the blue coat and Hessians which distinguished 
 the greatest of all Dandies. Moreover, it is difficult 
 to shine with an exclusive radiance in a world where 
 nothing is hidden from the vulgar gaze. A modern 
 journalist would look down Brummel's chimney for 
 c
 
 34 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the secret of his incomparable cravat. If D'Orsay 
 were alive to-day he could not leave Kensington 
 Gore without being tracked by a hundred eager 
 spies. His dress and occupations would be noted in 
 so common a phrase that he would straightway be 
 driven to self-consciousness and concealment. But 
 there is no need to despair ; there may still be heroes 
 left to respect the grandiose conventions of life, and 
 if we know nothing of their exploits, if their sense 
 of refinement has enabled them to escape the scrutiny 
 of the journal, some cunning Greville or industrious 
 Pepys may be in their midst, composing an immortal 
 diary, which shall hand down to our children's chil- 
 dren a picture of our vague, yet rarely secret time. 
 
 But the supremacy of the Beaux is as transient as 
 the conversation of the Salon. Where the effect 
 depends upon the set of the coat, the glint of an 
 eye, the tone of a voice, the effect dies with death, 
 and it is a mere reflection of the past that is flashed 
 upon us. One poor shadow is cast by the ancient 
 handbooks to the Court, which begin with Castig- 
 lione's enchanting masterpiece, and end with 
 Chesterfield's monument of good breeding. But 
 with a few exceptions these learned treatises are not 
 illuminating. In the first place they are but the 
 application of science to art ; in the second place 
 they echo from one to the other a kind of bland 
 cynicism. As Machiavelli taught the lesson of 
 worldly cunning to his Prince, so the many imitators 
 of Castiglione desired less to make their courtier?
 
 THE VALUE OF MEMOIRS 35 
 
 elegant than shrewd. The Courtier's speediest 
 road of advance, says one, ' is to insinuate himself 
 into the pleasures of his Prince.' And again : c It is 
 a prudent part in a Courtier to lose sometimes 
 at play on purpose, to put his Master in a good 
 humour.' In the matter of dress they are unanimous, 
 these instructors of deportment. C A gentleman is 
 fine enough when he is black, new, and neat.' That 
 maxim may be found in all the treatises from Castig- 
 lione to Chesterfield. But Baltazzar Castiglione is 
 incomparably the wisest and the most amiable. His 
 declaration is as clear and lucid as may be : ' The 
 manners and carriage of a man, which I here dis- 
 tinguish from his deeds, give us in a great measure a 
 good idea of him.' Of course he insists upon grace 
 and skill in arms. Of course he inculcates that 
 negligence or concealment of art, which has always 
 seemed the mark of a gentleman. He, too, declares 
 that the Courtier should 'adore the Prince, whose 
 service is his great engagement.' But he is too 
 decorous and too humane to urge the petty means of 
 cajolery, upon which his successors unscrupulously 
 insist. For his Courtier must be polished, as well as 
 successful. He must accept the teaching of Plato, 
 and study music, sternly despising the bold front of 
 the professed musician. ' He should perform,' in 
 fact, c as a matter of diversion, and be brought to it, 
 as it were, by constraint.' For the rest Castiglione 
 is a profound philosopher, with views not merely 
 upon behaviour, but upon the virtues of a literary
 
 36 INTRODUCTION 
 
 style. And the setting of his argument is as romantic 
 as Boccaccio's own garden ; in brief, he is as gay and 
 cultivated a companion as man can wish to have, and 
 if he cannot teach the impossible, that is not his fault, 
 but the fault of his aspiration. 
 
 Less entertaining and far more practical is Francis 
 Osborne's Advice to a Son, which holds a middle 
 place between Castiglione and Chesterfield. Francis 
 Osborne was half a moralist, and wholly a man of 
 the world. Yet he aims less at grace than at seemly 
 conduct. He would have his son neatly habited, 
 'exceeding rather than coming short of others of 
 like fortune ' ; he would have him always pay with 
 ready money, and ' be drawn rather where you find 
 things cheap and good than for friendship or ac- 
 quaintance.' That is worldly wisdom, in truth, nor 
 will his maxim be disputed that 'next to clothes a 
 good horse becomes a gentleman.' And here again 
 he adds a warning against being cozened for the 
 profit of a friend. But his fiercest displeasure is 
 reserved for sportsmen. ' Who can put too great a 
 scorn upon their folly,' says he, ' that to bring home 
 a rascal deer, or a few rotten conies, submit their 
 lives to the will or passion of such as may take 
 them?' In this passage of humorous contempt he 
 agrees with the great Lord Chesterfield, whom he 
 rivals in prudence, but whose worship of the Graces 
 he could never have appreciated. 
 
 Another and a more vivid reflection is flashed upon 
 us by the ' Memoirs,' which fix the character of the 
 time in a faded photograph. The newspapers also
 
 CHARLES GREVILLE 37 
 
 fix it, after their fashion, like a dead butterfly with 
 the pin of scandal through its back. As the solemn 
 documents, stored in the public offices, reveal the 
 serious progress of history, so irresponsible diaries 
 and reminiscences give us some poor image of life's 
 passing pageant. And it is by the accident of genius 
 that we know one period, while another is hidden 
 from our view ; since we can best understand a 
 period, if we know one man who played a part in it. 
 Our knowledge of the Restoration is due, for instance, 
 to the incomparable Pepys, that man of genius who 
 added a perfect sincerity to a perfect knowledge of 
 himself. And thus we arrive at the first qualification 
 of him who would keep a diary. He must know 
 himself before he knows his world ; and to know 
 oneself is the most difficult of all accomplishments. 
 Caelo descendit <yva>0i aeavrov, said the satirist, and 
 certainly it was from heaven that the maxim should 
 have descended. Alas ! it descends but seldom. To 
 the mass of men know yourself is a counsel of unrealised 
 perfection. For he who knows himself knows all 
 things ; he has learnt the value of that mysterious x, 
 which shall solve the equation of life. But how 
 shall we, creatures of passing moods, catch each 
 mood as it passes ? Death and the lapse of time 
 allow our friends a casual comprehension of our way- 
 wardness. We never get far enough from our own 
 images for a sincere judgment, and we generally 
 die in complete ignorance of that which lies nearest 
 to us. The history of the world, in brief, is the 
 history of failure induced by the lack of self- 
 
 282774
 
 38 INTRODUCTION 
 
 knowledge, and we cannot but believe that the 
 ancient philosopher who grimly looked out at his 
 fellows from his attic window, murmuring yvwdc 
 aeavrov, was a humorist in disguise. Yet now and 
 again the philosopher who knows himself takes pen 
 in hand, and then he pierces other mysteries than 
 that of his own character. 
 
 So Pepys and Bassompierre triumphed where 
 Charles Greville, most zealous of diarists, failed. 
 And Greville failed not through ignorance but by 
 half-knowledge. He is always on the edge of suc- 
 cess, and at any moment he might have drawn a true 
 and stirring picture. But a kind of hesitancy, a false 
 pride in his own seriousness, which was of no account, 
 stayed his hand, and he fell back on the gossip of 
 the clubs. He exaggerates the importance of 
 politics, as Grammont exaggerates the importance 
 of Maids of Honour, while Pepys holds the divine 
 balance by seeing the value of all things. Again, 
 Greville never gives you the aspect and gesture of his 
 informant ; to him the subtle drama of gossip is lack- 
 ing ; while Pepys, by setting before you the last man 
 or woman with whom he spoke, always guards the 
 sympathy of his reader. Worse still, Greville fails in 
 sincerity : he is desperately anxious to conceal his 
 true character, not only from his reader, but from 
 himself. In truth, it is chiefly by regrets that the 
 true Greville is revealed, and his repentance is never 
 grimly humorous like the repentance of Pepys; 
 rather it is marked by a sadness which utterly 
 destroys the picturesque effect.
 
 THE LAST GOSSIP 39 
 
 For instance, the real business of Greville's life was 
 gambling ; he lived for and upon Newmarket ; he 
 knew the world of trainers and jockeys as few men 
 in his time knew that droll and entertaining world. 
 But does he tell you one secret of the turf, does he 
 reveal one characteristic of the shady sportsman ? 
 Not a bit of it. The Reform Bill chokes him, and 
 then he falls back upon a dull remorse. 'All last 
 week at Epsom,' says he ; 'and now, thank God, all 
 these races are over. Nothing but the hope of gain 
 would induce me to go through this demoralising 
 drudgery, which I am conscious reduces me to the 
 level of all that is most disrespectable and despicable, 
 for my thoughts are eternally absorbed by it. 
 Jockeys, trainers, and blacklegs are my companions, 
 and it is like dram-drinking ; having once entered 
 upon it I cannot leave it off, though I am disgusted 
 by the occupation all the time.' Of course he could 
 not leave it off; of course his thoughts were 
 eternally absorbed. And why did he not tell us all 
 about it ? Why did he not sketch for us the trainers 
 and blacklegs, as Pepys would have sketched them ? 
 Then he too would have given us a real page from 
 the art of life. But his insincerity barred the road 
 of truth. He believed himself a politician, when he 
 was something far rarer, a man living in accord with 
 his own character. 
 
 So Boccaccio set vast store by his treatise De 
 Genealogia Deorum, and believed that no man would 
 ever remember his marvellous tales. So the excellent 
 musician, sketched by Castiglione, laid aside his
 
 4 o INTRODUCTION 
 
 instrument and gave himself up to poetry, until all the 
 world laughed at him, and his very music was quite 
 forgot. And so Greville with an equal contempt of 
 himself has told us many things which we might 
 have found out elsewhere, and has left untold that 
 strange record of pleasure and remorse which none 
 of his age had the courage to relate. He was, in 
 brief, a man of the world masquerading as a prig ; 
 he always wanted to be another man, and it is of the 
 other man that he is commonly eloquent. His touches 
 of intimacy are so rare that they have a strangely vivid 
 effect in his sombre history. 'Dined with the Duke 
 of Wellington yesterday ; thirty-one people, very 
 handsome, and the Styrian Minstrels playing and 
 singing all dinner-time, a thing 1 never saw before.' 
 It is not much ; yet we would not exchange it for a 
 wilderness of political intrigue and Reform Bills. 
 Greville, in fact, had many amiable gifts, and he has 
 bequeathed us a valuable book. He knew so little 
 of himself that the rest of the world was blurred to 
 his vision, and he is not a rival near the throne of 
 Pepys. Yet he is the last of his race, the last gossip, 
 who believed that life was the material of a cunning 
 art. And has he left a successor ? We hope so, and 
 with a fervent unselfishness. P\>r whoever he be 
 that shall act the part of Pepys to our own genera- 
 tion, we shall never contemplate his achievements, 
 since it is the Beau's penalty that he shall be under- 
 stood only when the smile is dead upon his face, and 
 the sparkling jest is silent upon his withered tongue.
 
 YOUNG WESTO N
 
 YOUNG WESTON 
 
 THE King, missing his stroke, stumbled clumsily 
 upon the tennis-court ; and gathering up his 
 heavy frame with difficulty, strode sullenly within. 
 1 Your Grace,' cried young Weston, chuckling that 
 another game was his, c Your Grace shall take your 
 revenge with the dice-box.' But Henry, enraged no 
 less at his waning skill than at the loss of his money, 
 threw not a word at his smiling favourite, who gazed 
 imperturbable at the retreating corpulency. 
 
 Young Weston chuckled again. Though scarce 
 sixteen he rode upon the full tide of fortune. 
 Admitted, at an age when most boys linger at school, 
 to the friendship of his Sovereign, he was secure that 
 neither extravagance nor indiscretion could check 
 his progress. A hundred advantages were his : his 
 open brow, his clear blue eye, his burnished hair 
 compelled admiration, and at Court he was already 
 a famous breaker of hearts. His loose-knit frame 
 united the suppleness of youth with the assured 
 strength of manhood ; and, as no exertion seemed 
 too great for him, he undertook the most desperate 
 adventure with a light heart and a lighter hand. He
 
 44 YOUNG WESTON 
 
 was an easy master of all sports, nor was there a 
 single game of chance whereat his golden luck did 
 not pursue him. To see him on horseback was to 
 think of Alexander and Bucephalus, and though 
 neither his weight nor his lack of judgment per- 
 mitted him at a single chase to tire ten steeds, he 
 rode as hard and as straight as the Kinir himself. At 
 
 to o 
 
 tennis he knew not his equal in Europe, and, as he 
 never played without backing his skill, a comfortable 
 income was assured him in a world of gamblers. A 
 courtier born, he assumed that all the elegances of a 
 refined life were his proper birthright, and he was 
 already an exquisite, when he left Surrey, under the 
 Cardinal's august protection, to take office in the 
 King's household. A ribbon awry, an ill-cut doublet 
 were a lasting offence to him ; the taste and ambition 
 of childhood had taught him to be dainty in his 
 dress ; and he was a leader of fashion when most of 
 his fellows were content with the fusty uniform of 
 school or college. 
 
 No wonder, then, he dreamed his career a march 
 of triumph ; no wonder he believed his charm in- 
 vincible. Mine, said he to himself, is the genius of 
 success. He would royster and gamble though life, 
 winning all those hearts which he chose to assail, and 
 as much money as should equip him nobly for the 
 most gallant enterprise. His childish vanity per- 
 suaded him to hope that he would bend even the 
 stubborn King to his will, and the monarch's 
 displeasure at another lost game irked him not a
 
 YOUNG WESTON 45 
 
 whit. The scene of the tennis-court was as common 
 as sunrise, and the revenge with the dice-box ever 
 doubled the debt. For all his extravagance, for all 
 his ambition of beautiful things, of jewels, books, 
 and pictures, he had small fear of an empty pocket, 
 and he sunned himself in the favour of heaven with 
 the pride and carelessness of some bright-plumaged 
 bird. Moreover, he accepted his happiness without 
 the least touch of vulgar surprise : after all he enjoyed 
 no more splendour than that for which his childhood 
 had prepared him. 
 
 His father, as became a travelled gentleman who 
 had witnessed the brilliancy of the Cloth of Gold, 
 was familiar with the art and luxury of France and 
 of that fair country which lay beyond the Alps. 
 He had built amid the hills of Surrey a mansion 
 which would not have outraged the taste of an 
 Italian nobleman. And Francis, for all his sixteen 
 years, could carry back his memory to the growing 
 magnificence of Sutton Place. He had seen the 
 doorways framed with their dainty pilasters; he had 
 seen the delicate amorini chiselled upon the lintels ; 
 he had witnessed the honour that attends the acquisi- 
 tion of a treasure which is not only beautiful but 
 fashionable. To Sutton had thronged the great 
 nobles of England ; there they had marvelled at the 
 fantasy of Sir Richard Weston ; there they had ap- 
 plauded his cultured, exotic taste. They had even 
 condescended, while acclaiming the courage of the 
 innovator, to steal the design for the enlargement of
 
 46 YOUNG WESTON 
 
 their own glory. The King himself had honoured 
 the new house with his presence and approval ; there 
 was no courtier whom Wolsey had destined more 
 generously for distinction than the master of Sutton. 
 And young Weston left his home to assume the 
 duties of a Royal Page with no danger of the ruin 
 that follows a sudden aggrandisement. 
 
 When the boy arrived in London — it was in 1526 
 — Henry was no longer the handsomest monarch in 
 Europe. Not even the most genial Ambassador, in 
 that spirit of content which is bred of a good dinner 
 and 8000 ducats won in a day, could assert that his 
 play at tennis was ' the prettiest thing in the world 
 to see.' His encroaching corpulency was fast driving 
 him to the familiar aspect of a fat man with a small 
 mouth. His plumped cheeks were thrusting his 
 bead-like eyes still further into his head. Though 
 yet an ardent sportsman, he sat heavily upon his 
 horse, and was rather a spectator than a combatant at 
 joust and tourney. His thirty-six years had impaired 
 neither his learning nor his courage, but, in the words 
 of the historian, his accomplishment soon became 
 cunning, his bravery fell into cruelty. Though his 
 wolfish character had not yet declared itself, though 
 he had not yet come forth a Sadie monster with an 
 immitigable taste for matrimony, a Gilles de Rais 
 with a quenchless passion for another lawful spouse, 
 he was already deeply committed to the cruel intrigue 
 which was the tardy undoing of the blameless, foolish 
 Catharine. The Bishops of England were even
 
 YOUNG WESTON 47 
 
 now busy with argument and excuse ; the Cardinal's 
 devotion was engaged in the persuasion of Rome ; 
 and Henry's own casuistical brain had at last dis- 
 covered, by the light of Anne Boleyn's eyes, 'a certain 
 scrupulosity that pricked his conscience.' He was 
 Bluebeard, indeed, employing hypocrisy for bloodshed, 
 but resolved, if the simpler method failed, not to 
 shrink from the headsman's axe. 
 
 Such was the monster against whose will and cun- 
 ning young Weston pitted his boyish intelligence. 
 And the boy's charm and skill gave him an immediate 
 advantage. For Henry was a tireless gambler ; even 
 in that distant time, when his father destined him for 
 an archbishopric, and it was his amiable custom to 
 say five masses in a day, he could resist neither the 
 card-table nor the dice-box, and in Francis Weston 
 he met an opponent whose skill was as great as his 
 recklessness. There was no game at which this 
 cynic of sixteen would not encounter his Sovereign, 
 and so expert were his hand and eye that he ever 
 came off" victorious. Yesterday it was tennis, to- 
 morrow it might be bowls, every day it was dice or 
 imperial. And extravagant as Weston was in dress 
 and finery, in all the luxury which belongs to the 
 life of palaces, for a while he had small difficulty in 
 making the King pay for his magnificence. Henry, 
 morever, despite his brutality, loved or feared a suc- 
 cessful antagonist. Just as he reverenced Wolsey 
 for the astuteness and obstinacy which outwitted his 
 master, so he admired the stripling who defeated him
 
 48 YOUNG WESTON 
 
 in the tennis-court, and won his money across the 
 table, to the rattle of the dice. In truth, the King 
 was never tired of rewarding the boy's superiority ; 
 he would lend him money at the slightest embarrass- 
 ment, he would give him presents in recompense for 
 his sport and energy, and for ten years he was resolute 
 to procure him profit and advancement. Thus young 
 Weston passed from London to Greenwich, from 
 Greenwich to Hampton, enjoying whatever there 
 was of splendour and gaiety in life, a favoured guest 
 at the twin Courts of Cardinal and King. 
 
 His father had sent him to London with a headful 
 of worldly precepts, which Francis was astute enough 
 never to forget. Now, Sir Richard Weston, an 
 ancient intriguer, and friend of Wolsey, was among 
 the first to foresee the rise of the Boleyns, and to 
 the Boleyns, cunning and ambitious, he commended 
 his cunning and ambitious son. Sir Thomas Boleyn's 
 grandfather, a Lord Mayor, had gifted him with the 
 comfort of wealth, and distinguished connections had 
 insisted that for him a brilliant career should be 
 crowned with a peerage. There was nothing he 
 would not sacrifice for the honour and advancement 
 of an upstart house, and he had the wit to perceive 
 the value of culture in the unequal battle. Culture, 
 he recognised, is seldom so seductive as when it is 
 exalted by the patronage of fashion, and learning had 
 never been more fashionable than under the Eighth 
 Henry. Thus were politics and intelligence inex- 
 tricably mixed, as in our own day, and though the
 
 YOUNG WESTON 49 
 
 more ancient houses still reserved an exclusive respect 
 for their horses and dogs, those with a keener eye 
 upon their immediate advancement were quick to 
 approve the newly discovered classics, and to babble 
 of ancient Greece with a kind familiarity. 
 
 To his children it was then that Sir Thomas 
 looked for his own advancement. One and all, 
 they were accomplished in the sport and knowledge 
 of the day. If they were rather fashionable than 
 erudite, they were scrupulously and intelligently in the 
 movement, and they possessed the dash and assurance 
 which proceed from a not too sensitive superiority. 
 With them the revival of learning was a common- 
 place : they had dipped into Utopia ; they appraised 
 the achievement of Erasmus and Colet with a glib 
 counterfeit of scholarship. The vogue of the minute 
 compelled a knowledge of Latin and French, and at 
 all points they thought themselves the King's equals, 
 and the Cardinal's masters. Their wealth and con- 
 fidence procured them an obedient following ; every 
 licence was granted to their pride and learning ; and 
 before long there grew up a tiny Court within the 
 Court, wherein Anne Boleyn was a mimic queen, 
 and all her friends and worshippers paid a willing 
 reverence. Already the young Lord Percy had been 
 disinherited for venturing upon an adoration, which 
 Anne, not foreseeing the King's pleasure, had more 
 than half reciprocated ; and Henry, thus forced into 
 an admission of his love, had declared his passion, 
 proclaiming — after his wont — his motive honourable. 
 
 D
 
 50 YOUNG WESTON 
 
 Nor need the proudest Sovereign have shrunk from 
 paying her homage, for Anne Boleyn was the most 
 accomplished woman of her age : she had spent five 
 years in the Court of the Reine Claude ; she had 
 learned all the wit and sprightliness that Marguerite 
 of Valois had to teach ; with an intellectual courage, 
 rare even at this epoch of revolution, she had 
 mastered the theological speculation of her time, and 
 she would confute the most erudite of prelates and 
 cardinals with a bland smile of innocence. 
 
 Henry, then, whose love of casuistry was irresis- 
 tible, found a perpetual delight in the society of this 
 lady, whose stockings were at least stained with blue, 
 and who, while she captivated him with her wit, 
 dazzled him with her person. For her beauty, 
 though it might elude the passer-by, was none the less 
 seductive. A delicate brunette, she charmed rather 
 by life and expression than by any formal regularity of 
 feature. ' Briefly,' says Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 
 ' it seems the most attractive perfections were 
 eminent in her.' And if she sat her down to music, 
 there was none so insensible, he would withhold a 
 willing worship. ' When she composed her hands 
 to play,' again it is the historian who speaks, 'and 
 voice to sing, it was joined with that sweetness of 
 countenance that three harmonies concurred.' The 
 King, at any rate, fell a ready victim to her 
 c perfections' ; and when, echoing Elizabeth Wood- 
 ville, she declared that, if she were not of birth high 
 enough to be his Queen, she was still too well born to
 
 YOUNG WESTON 51 
 
 be his mistress, he redoubled the ardour of his suit, 
 addressed her letters of passionate regret — which, 
 forgetful of his middle-class ferocity, he signed with a 
 heart — and urged his Cardinal to hasten the divorce. 
 
 Thus Anne Boleyn was a Queen in reverence, if 
 not in name, and it was to her fortunes that young 
 Weston attached himself. In her circle he, too, 
 babbled of the learning that was new, and openly 
 defied the tyranny of Popes and Legates. Ever 
 hopeful of Catharine's downfall, her friends looked to 
 the time when Anne should sit upon the throne, and 
 when Wolsey, who had prospered them all, should 
 be stripped of a power that grew impertinent. Thus 
 they clutched the wine-cup of life with both hands, 
 and left not a few poor dregs to attest their draught. 
 They gambled and spent the gold their luck brought 
 them with an extravagance which terrified those for 
 whom Henry vu. was yet a tradition ; they talked 
 with a daring and a certainty which appeared 
 infamous to a society educated in the strictest 
 obedience to authority ; they rode, they jousted, 
 they killed the hart with a skill which lent a glory to 
 their courage and their pride. Living on terms of 
 perfect familiarity with the tyrant who frowned upon 
 them all, they treated him with a monstrous levity, 
 and won his money or witnessed his discomfiture in 
 happy disregard of his Sadie temper. 
 
 Of this society Francis Weston was instantly a 
 leader : his father's taste in architecture had placed 
 him on a pinnacle ; the quickness of his own talent
 
 52 YOUNG WESTON 
 
 had confirmed the distinction. There was no 
 pleasure whereto he was not impelled by his joyous 
 temperament : not even the philosophy of Anne 
 Bolcyn's salon checked his enthusiasm for sport, and 
 the King continued to pay dearly for his favourite's 
 skill. But with the years his extravagance increased ; 
 a scanty patrimony hardly supported the necessities 
 of life, and even his unrivalled luck was insufficient 
 to sustain a growing weight of debt. No resource 
 was left but a wealthy marriage, and he was scarce 
 twenty when he entered upon a tiresome and profit- 
 able alliance. The King smiled approval, and for a 
 demure present gave the bridegroom £6 13s. 4.6. 
 handsomely tied up, one supposes, in red tape. But 
 before long Weston found the heiress a hindrance 
 to his preferment at Court, and, with the cynical 
 indifference that was his characteristic, he banished 
 her to Sutton, and pursued afresh his career in that 
 brilliant world of wit and extravagance, wherein the 
 lightest bond was unendurable. 
 
 His moment of triumph arrived when the King 
 proclaimed the marriage with Catharine a blasphemy, 
 and crowned Anne Boleyn with so reckless a 
 splendour as should atone for her years of equivocal 
 sovereignty. On all sides were heard the sound of 
 cannonades, the fountains ran wine, ' white, claret, 
 and red'; wherever the progress was stayed, there 
 was prepared a lordly pageant. At Gracechurch 
 Apollo and the Muses Nine, sitting upon Mount 
 Parnassus, were appropriately revealed to the learned
 
 YOUNG WESTON 53 
 
 Queen ; at the Conduit a sumptuous show of the 
 Three Graces flattered the royal beauty. Nor did 
 this memorable day end with an empty spectacle : 
 there was none of the circle that was not instantly 
 advanced ; titles were freely distributed among the 
 Boleyns, and young Weston became — at twenty-two 
 — a Knight of the Bath. Wolsey was dead, killed 
 by an implacable intrigue, and Weston and his 
 friends believed that, with Cromwell to aid, the 
 King would prove the willing slave of their greed and 
 ambition. The Court, freed from the frowning 
 tragedy of Catharine, became yet gayer and more 
 refined ; and, if the King glutted his taste for blood, 
 if the head of Sir Thomas More fell under the axe, 
 the favourites thought their own necks safe, and still 
 enjoyed the fruits of a fashionable culture. 
 
 But Weston and the Queen, in their hatred of 
 Wolsey, had removed the single statesman who 
 might have controlled the savagery of the King, and 
 it was this treachery that, at last, ensured their ruin. 
 Meantime, a bitter quarrel divided the Queen's own 
 family : my Lord of Norfolk was indignant that 
 Anne's father, a new-made Earl, should be preferred 
 before himself in the King's counsels, while the wife 
 of George Boleyn, the most cultured wit and poet of 
 them all, hated her sister-in-law as fiercely as she 
 despised her elegant husband. 
 
 So the dissension became noisier and more vulgar ; 
 the restraints of prudence and learning were flung 
 aside, and the Court was troubled perpetually by the
 
 54 YOUNG WESTON 
 
 paltry jealousies of angry women. Weston, less from 
 loyalty, one is sure, than from an imperfect foresight, 
 espoused the cause of the Queen, and thus unwit- 
 tingly prepared his own death. The King, tired of 
 wit, wearied, maybe, with the unprofitable sports of 
 dice and tennis, determined that he would endure no 
 longer the domination of the party his inclination 
 had created. Anne, thought he, had proved some- 
 what amiable in her favours ; and, though no breath 
 of scandal touched her character, she amused herself 
 too freely, for the taste of the British Bluebeard, 
 with the attentions of the troubadours who thronged 
 the Court. Moreover the King had fallen virtuously 
 in love with Jane Seymour, and, since he preferred 
 murder before the mere suspicion of adultery, he had 
 determined, at a single blow, to rid himself of a wife 
 who no longer pleased him, and to save the money 
 which he daily squandered in the tennis-court. 
 
 But even he, though no restraint fettered his will, 
 must find an occasion for this fresh brutality. He 
 could not in cold blood kill a virtuous and accom- 
 plished lady, whom he had loved through years of 
 wooing and honoured with a share of his throne. 
 Yet the desire of Jane Seymour was not to be denied, 
 and the prim and bloodthirsty husband eagerly 
 watched his opportunity. The opportunity came 
 at a tourney ; the Queen's brother and young 
 Weston were in the lists, and the Queen in the 
 innocence of her heart, and careless with the excite- 
 ment of the joust, let her handkerchief flutter down
 
 YOUNG WESTON 55 
 
 between the combatants. One of them, said the 
 King, picked it up and pressed it to his guilty lips, 
 and on the morrow the Queen and her friends were 
 involved in an infamous charge of adultery. Murder 
 should have been enough to satisfy the dour temper 
 of the corpulent monster, but he preferred to invent 
 in hypocritical self-justification, an array of shameful 
 accusations. The trial was proclaimed with an 
 indecent haste ; the Queen's own uncle presided to 
 ensure his niece's punishment ; and, though to flatter 
 the King even at the moment of death one miscreant 
 pleaded guilty, six heads fell that Henry might satisfy 
 his lust without infringing the first law of domestic 
 respectability. 
 
 Francis Weston was involved in the common ruin 
 of his cultured set, though the evidence furnished 
 forth by an interested prosecution, was sufficient for 
 acquittal. The Queen, said the youth's detractors, 
 had reproached him with paying too instant a suit to 
 Margaret Shelton, a Maid of Honour, and with 
 neglecting the poor heiress whom he had made his 
 wife. ' He replied,' urged the voice of malice, 
 ' that he loved one in her house better than both. 
 And the Queen said : " Who is that ? " " It is 
 yourself." And she defyed him.' There is the 
 simple statement, and it was for this, guiltless and 
 uncorroborated, that the most brilliant courtier of 
 his age died a disgraceful death. As in life he had 
 borne himself with a gay lightheartedness, so he 
 gave his head with complete dignity and a noble
 
 56 YOUNG WESTON 
 
 reserve. He incriminated none ; he spoke no word 
 of praise or blame ; he asserted his innocence, and 
 after condemnation declined to part his lips in protest 
 or confession ; he even forbore to add one word in 
 favour of the pardon which was asked ; and he died 
 owing the butcher who had slain him forty-six 
 pounds, so that even from beyond the grave he won 
 a last victory over his Royal master. 
 
 His debts amounted to the goodly sum of ^925, 
 7s. 2d. and with the gambler's thrift he made his last 
 petition for their discharge. ' Father and mother 
 and wyfe,' he wrote with a pathetic dignity, ' I shall 
 humbly desyre you for the salvacyon of my sowle to 
 dyschardge me of this bill, and to forgyve me of all 
 the offences that I have done to you. And in 
 especyall to my wyfe, whiche I desyre for the love 
 of God to forgive me, and to pray for me, for I 
 beleve prayer wyll do me good. Goddys blessing 
 have my chylderne and meyne. By me a great 
 offender to God.' The schedule which then follows, 
 the last document written by the courtier's hand, is 
 a fitting farewell to a life of pleasure. To Browne, 
 the draper, he owed fifty pounds ; to ' my lorde of 
 Wylshyre,' the father of the murdered Queen, forty 
 pounds in angels; to Bridges, ' my taylor,' twenty- 
 six pounds ; to ' parson Robynson ' (the sporting 
 parson existed even in the sixteenth century), sixty- 
 six pounds ; and most moving of all, ' to a pooer 
 woman at the Tennes play for bawles I cannot tell 
 howe muche.'
 
 YOUNG WESTON 57 
 
 ' To a pooer woman at the Tennes play for bawles 
 I cannot telle how muche.' Where shall one find 
 a dying speech so eloquent and appropriate ? After 
 this forethought, you are not surprised to know, on 
 the faith of an eye-witness, that ' he died very 
 charitably.' And if no better sportsman ever held a 
 racket, so no more careless a gentleman was ever 
 sacrificed to the lust and intrigue of a virtuous 
 monarch. Truly his memory was writ in water. 
 No sooner had his head fallen from his shoulders 
 than he was forgotten of his friends. The King 
 wore white for a day, and on the morrow married 
 Jane Seymour, whose beauty had been the death- 
 warrant of all. And Sir Richard Weston showed so 
 chivalrous a contempt for his son's martyrdom that 
 he did not for a single hour interrupt his obsequious 
 friendship for the King. But his century knew no 
 courtier so picturesque as Francis Weston, and you 
 contemplate his career with the satisfaction that, if 
 he lost his head, he yet compelled his patron and his 
 murderer to pay handsomely for a pitiful lack of skill 
 at ' tennes, dyce, and imperial!.'
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 TO be great and yet intimate is the heritage of 
 few. Kings and warriors play their part upon 
 the larger stage of life, and urge us to forget that 
 passion, jealousy, and private malice were ever among 
 their qualities. It is the field of battle, not the 
 gaming table, that seems to befit the masters of the 
 world, and in the clash of states the whisper of love 
 is too often silenced by the blare of the trumpet. 
 Wherefore, your admiration is the greater when one 
 of the immortal heroes descends to a confidence, and 
 gossips (so to say) at your fireside of triumph or 
 defeat, vaunting the smiles of fair women and the 
 favour of kings. Thus it is that Francois de 
 Bassompierre lives in our memory ; if the statelier 
 records proclaim his powers and fidelity, his 
 Memoirs reveal an accomplished and debonair gentle- 
 man, with whom his own candour invites you to 
 make acquaintance across the disparting centuries. 
 
 His family was German and of immemorial nobil- 
 ity. The County of Ravelstein, the Barony of Bestein, 
 were the heritage of unnumbered ancestors, who since 
 time began had been accustomed to the service of 
 emperors and of kings. So that when he was born, on
 
 62 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 April 1 2th, 1579, at four o'clock in the morning, at 
 the Chateau of Harouel, a life of splendour and 
 magnificence was already prepared him. His child- 
 hood was spent in the seclusion of Lorraine, and he 
 set forth upon the grand tour with a conscious pride 
 in his destiny and lineage. Everywhere he was 
 received with the honour which is paid to illustrious 
 descent, and under the auspices of mighty princes 
 he became accomplished in all the learning and 
 elegance of the age. If in Germany he pursued 
 the study of Aristotle with a dangerous zeal, Italy 
 provided a gracious diversion, and at Naples he 
 perfected himself in those knightly exercises which 
 won him instant glory at the Court of France. The 
 august Pignatelle was his riding-master, until old age 
 set its seal upon a distinguished career; he learnt the 
 art of dancing, wherein he excelled all his contem- 
 poraries, from Agostino himself, while Marquino 
 taught him the use of lance and rapier. Thus he 
 returned to Harouel at all points a proper gentleman, 
 and when at nineteen he set out for Paris, accom- 
 panied by his mother and sisters, the equipage was 
 no more brilliant than his reasonable hopes. The 
 capital, indeed, was the scene of his immediate 
 triumph ; he began the career of courtier under 
 kingly patronage and with universal admiration. 
 Young, handsome, accomplished, he had nothing to 
 fear, save the jealousy of the inexpert, and for thirty 
 years his invincible tact preserved him even from the 
 assaults of malice.
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 63 
 
 The occasion was not unworthy the young courtier's 
 enterprise and audacity. France had settled into the 
 semblance of a peace, and Henry, her King — that 
 Polichinelle of genius — knew no other care than 
 joyousness. Before the Court passed a gorgeous 
 procession of dances and masquerades ; the King's 
 mistresses were the most beautiful in Europe ; his 
 warriors the most valiantly equipped. The card-table 
 had brought oblivion of the religious wars, and not 
 even the sorrows of the Huguenots had driven the 
 smile of merriment from his face. Moreover, he was 
 loyal, frank, simple, and just such a monarch as would 
 entice the devotion and dazzle the fancy of a careless 
 soldier, in whose eyes pleasure was a distinction and 
 warfare an easy pastime. It was an age, indeed, of 
 love and war, of strong passion and hot temper, when 
 a man's hand was ready at his sword-hilt, and the 
 tourney was practised in the courtyard of the Louvre. 
 
 Nor could ingenuity have devised a more suitable 
 appearance than Bassompierre's : a dinner at Monsieur 
 le Grand's, whither the Comte de Grammont had 
 conducted him, made him acquainted with the gallants 
 of the Court who presently proposed to beguile the 
 King's malady with a ballet. Straightway Bassom- 
 pierre was bidden of the number, and when he pleaded 
 reluctantly that he had not yet done reverence to his 
 Majesty, the excuse was brushed aside and he set out 
 with the rest for Monceaux. No sooner was the 
 ballet finished, and the masks removed, than the King 
 called for Bassompierre, treated him with a generous
 
 64 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 amiability, presented him to his mistress, the Duchess 
 of Beaufort, the famous Gabrielle herself, and bade him 
 henceforth be counted among his friends. The 
 young soldier was eager to seize the advantage ; like 
 many another gentleman adventurer, he increased his 
 patron's consideration by his reckless gambling ; and 
 in a few weeks he had won so goodly a sum of money 
 from the King, that Henry could no longer endure to 
 think of his departure. Bassompierre received the 
 King's offer of service with characteristic independ- 
 ence. ' I had not yet intended,' said he, ' to resolve 
 upon the future. I came to France for amusement's 
 sake, and designed to visit Spain before devoting my 
 hand and my sword to the welfare of a king. Yet 
 on this short voyage I have found a master whom I 
 can serve until death, and to you I dedicate my life 
 and courage.' Henceforth he esteemed himself a 
 Frenchman ; henceforth he defended the interests of 
 his master with a foresight and a valiance which 
 nothing save an agreeable intrigue could interrupt. 
 Though he won Henry's money, though once even 
 he stole Henry's mistress, he lived with the King upon 
 terms of equal cordiality until Ravaillac's knife 
 deprived him of a gracious friend, and the hawthorn 
 that grew in the Court of the Louvre fell on a 
 windless day ; nor did the death of his patron weaken 
 for an instant his honourable regard for France. 
 
 He was the gallantest lover of a gallant age, and he 
 professed unto the end a joyful pride in his conquests. 
 With a very gentlemanly frankness he has told the
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 65 
 
 story of his loves, and the simplicity wherewith he 
 records his triumph is worthy of our own Pepys. Le 
 jeudi 22, he writes, feus une bonne fortune. The 
 statement can neither be bettered nor translated, and 
 for many a year there are few days whereon the boast 
 is not justified. A generous admirer of beauty, he 
 was always ready to accept complacency in return for 
 his admiration, and it was his unchanging; ambition to 
 break no heart — not even his own. Like all strong 
 men, he knew the joy of life ; like all wise ones, he 
 was ashamed to discard it. While his adoration of 
 Mademoiselle d'Entragues is yet fresh, he interrupts 
 the recital of his triumphs at lansquenet and in the 
 hunting-field with this rhapsody : ' I was in love with 
 d'Entragues and with another beautiful lady. I was 
 also in the flower of my youth, and well-made, and 
 gay.' What a delightful memory wherewith to break 
 the pitiless monotony of the Bastille ! 
 
 And the beautiful women of France love him in 
 spite (or on account) of his inconstancy. When he 
 is sent on a mission to Lorraine, they pursue him 
 with messengers, with letters, with presents even ; 
 and when the news is brought of his return, they set 
 forth in their carriages that he may make his entry 
 with a proper guard of honour. Sometimes he 
 excuses his popularity with an unbecoming modesty. 
 Thus, he would belittle his success when he brings 
 back a treaty from Spain : ' There were few gallants 
 in Paris, and all the ladies assembled at the Tuileries. 
 I was in vast esteem, and was in love with divers of 
 E
 
 66 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 them. Besides, I had spent twenty thousand crowns 
 upon Spanish curiosities, and these procured me an 
 excellent reception.' The modesty is insincere, and 
 the real Bassompierre is rather he who boasts on 
 another occasion : ' I was well both with the Court 
 and with the ladies ; I had a host of beautiful 
 mistresses.' In truth they loved their Bassompierre 
 better than all the treasures of Spain, and it was 
 not to receive his gifts that they flocked in eager 
 emulation to the deserted Tuileries. 
 
 He changed his mistresses as easily as he put off" a 
 worn-out coat. 'I started this year' — such is the 
 plain record of 1608 — 'with a fair lady.' And the 
 colour was fashionable, for on the next page you 
 read of an exquisite comedy performed by a flaxen- 
 haired troop for the King's pleasure. But presently 
 it is a Greek beauty, who haunts the theatre for his 
 sake, and you readily believe his confidence that les 
 soirs et les nuits m'etaient belles. And yet for many 
 years he kept one separate corner in his heart for 
 Mademoiselle d'Entragues. Though she never gained 
 a complete ascendency over his affection, though even 
 at her zenith she must share her lover with the world, 
 yet he adored her with a tempered constancy, and his 
 attention persuaded her to demand marriage of the 
 law. At the outset she was the toast of the Court — 
 the mistress of the King ; and doubtless the young 
 Bassompierre was proud enough to poach upon his 
 master. Besides, the intrigue was carried on with all 
 the romance of a guilty love. An upper chamber
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 67 
 
 was discovered, which the lady might reach through 
 a door concealed in her wardrobe ; it was adorned 
 with silver plaques and silver torches, and its furni- 
 ture was the furniture of Zammer. 
 
 Such was the meeting-place of Bassompierre and 
 Mademoiselle d'Entragues, and all might have been 
 well had not the King and M. de Guise been seized 
 with jealousy. Their suspicion fell easily enough upon 
 M. le Grand, whom they hated like the plague, and 
 presently they warned the lady's mother of his design. 
 Madame d'Entragues, determined upon discovery, 
 rose hastily one night, found her daughter's room 
 empty, and the door open which led to the hidden 
 staircase. The poor girl was soundly thrashed for 
 her pains ; her lover was with difficulty restored to 
 favour ; and, for a while at least, they feared the 
 King's resentment so bitterly that they spoke only 
 in secret. ' However,' says Bassompierre, * lovers are 
 always ingenious enough to find some rare means of 
 intercourse'; and doubtless the intimacy was more 
 frequent even after disclosure than the King 
 suspected or than Bassompierre chose to reveal. 
 
 But, alas ! the intrigue became notorious. While 
 he was too young for discretion, she was resolved 
 upon marriage and respectability. So they still 
 appeared together at Fontainebleau, and they still met 
 in the secret chamber, which lay behind the hidden 
 door, and was approached by the forgotten staircase. 
 And one night, some worthless ruffian, surprised in a 
 house hard by, was bastinadoed and flung, with scanty
 
 68 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 covering, into the street, where presently he died. 
 And the mob, seeing a lifeless body at the door of 
 Madame d'Entragues' house, was not slow to spread 
 the report of Bassompierre's death. Straightway his 
 friends flocked for news to his lodging, and, finding 
 him absent on another quest, gave the comedy a 
 tragic complexion, until the town believed the 
 courtier was no more. The mystery was easily 
 pierced ; but the tongues of the gossips were already 
 on the wag, and Bassompierre, who liked not a serious 
 scandal, began to tire of d'Entragues' advertised 
 affection. The lady, however, was resolute, and for 
 eight years she threatened her reluctant lover with a 
 lawsuit. The squalid conclusion to what should 
 have been a very pretty drama inspires a regret. 
 For the lady was beautiful and the gallant had once 
 been ardent, but the law declined to aid her, and the 
 Court knew her presence no more. Once, in her 
 discredited years, she encountered her ancient lover. 
 He was in the Queen's carriage, and as they passed, 
 the Queen exclaimed, with a laugh: 'There goes 
 Madame de Bassompierre.' ' That is only her nom 
 de guerre] said Bassompierre. The unhappy lady 
 overheard the taunt ; and denounced her ancient 
 lover as le plus sot des hom?nes. l Ah, madame,' he 
 replied, c what would you have said had you married 
 me?' 
 
 His most romantic adventure had a still more 
 sinister conclusion. It chanced — in the year 1606 — 
 that as often as he passed over the Petit-Pont, a
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 69 
 
 beautiful washer-girl, at the Sign of the Two Angels, 
 made him her courtesy, and followed him with her 
 eyes until he was out of sight. Now, one day when 
 he crossed the bridge on the road from Fontainebleau, 
 the girl stood at her shop door and murmured as he 
 passed : ' Sir, I am your servant.' He saluted her 
 with reverence, and turning his head from time to 
 time, he saw that she looked after him as long as she 
 could. Forthwith he bade his lackey dismount, and 
 so sent word to the girl, that in return for her 
 flattering curiosity he would be pleased to give her 
 an interview. She told the lackey that he had 
 brought her the best news he could, and she came 
 to the meeting-place in all joyousness of heart. 
 
 Bassompierre, the liberal lover of the Court, was en- 
 chanted with her amiable simplicity, and implored 
 her to see him once more. Wishing nothing more 
 ardently she yet strenuously declined to re-enter the 
 none too honourable place which the lackey had 
 prepared for their reception. 'I know well,' said 
 she, with perfect tact, ' the character of the house 
 wherein we are met. Hither I have come for my 
 love of you, and because you dignify even this in- 
 famous meeting-place ; but once is not custom, and 
 though I would do much for one I loved, and for a 
 Bassompierre, to return to this house would expose 
 me to a just reproach. Wherefore you must see me 
 the next time at the house of my aunt, who lives in 
 the Rue Bourg l'Abbe, not far from the market, 
 and close to the Rue aux Ours. Her door is the
 
 7 o A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 third on the side next the Rue St. Martin ; and 
 there I shall await you from ten o'clock to midnight, 
 and afterwards I will leave the door open. At the 
 entrance is a small alley, which you must pass in 
 haste, for there is my aunt's chamber, and then you 
 will find a staircase, which will lead you to the 
 second storey.' 
 
 Bassompierre accepted the conditions, and on 
 Sunday night, crossing the Petit-Pont, he made his 
 way along the Rue St. Denis and past the market, 
 until he came to the Rue aux Ours. The Rue 
 Bourg l'Abbe faced him, and at ten o'clock he stood 
 outside the house which the washer-girl had de- 
 scribed. But the girl, alas ! was not there to bid 
 him welcome. The door was closed, and every 
 floor was ominously illuminated. He knocked, and 
 heard no answer but only the voice of a man, 
 who brusquely demanded his business. Thereon he 
 retreated to the Rue aux Ours, and coming again he 
 found the door open, and so ascended to the second 
 story. Instantly he knew the cause of the light, 
 for the straw of the bed was burning, and two naked 
 bodies lay stretched upon the table. 
 
 'I retired,' thus he continues the narrative, 'much 
 astonished, and as I went out I met two plague- 
 buryers, who asked me what I sought, and I, to 
 clear them from my way, took sword in hand, and 
 passed into the street, and so returned to my lodging, 
 not a little disturbed at this unexpected vision.' Here 
 he drank two or three glasses of pure wine, which was
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 71 
 
 the German remedy against the plague, and after an 
 unbroken sleep he set out next morning for Lorraine. 
 On his return to Paris he was determined to discover 
 the poor girl, whose beauty still dazzled his memory. 
 His search was vain. She had vanished as suddenly 
 as the charred straw of the plague-stricken room ; 
 she was forgotten even at the Sign of the Two 
 Angels, where less romantic hands held the wash- 
 tub, and Bassompierre could only regret a lost love 
 and find consolation in a flippant Court. 
 
 Such is the story which has contributed more to 
 Bassompierre's immortality than his embassy to 
 England or the Siege of Rochelle. Nor has the 
 beauty of the Two Angels lacked lovers since her 
 death. So captivated was Chateaubriand with her 
 story that he paid a pious pilgrimage to the Rue 
 Bourg PAbbe. But he found no washer-girl to do 
 him reverence ; no woman, frank and fair, 'with her 
 hair done for the night, wearing a very fine shift, a 
 green petticoat, and slippers on her feet.' There 
 was instead an old beldame, whose teeth were soon to 
 meet in the tomb, and who threatened violence with 
 her crutch. ' Perhaps,' thought he, ' it is the aunt of 
 the meeting-place.' The house itself was no longer 
 the shrine of this vanished tragedy. The front was 
 new ; and neither on the first, nor the second, nor 
 the third story did the windows glimmer with light. 
 Only the attic, under the roof, was bright with a 
 garland of nasturtiums and sweet peas. 
 
 On the ground-floor a barber plied his trade, and
 
 72 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 Chateaubriand, still under the spell, asked him with 
 diffidence : ' Have you, perchance, bought the hair 
 of a young washer-girl, who once lived at the sign 
 of the Two Angels, near the Petit-Pont ! ' The 
 astonished barber gasped inarticulate, and we shall 
 never unravel the secret already tangled for Bassom- 
 pierre. Was it the girl's body which lay stark in 
 the chamber of death ? Or was the aunt the sudden 
 victim of the plague ? The idle may fit the story 
 with a dozen conclusions, yet never better its solemn 
 mystery. And we of to-day are even less fortunate 
 than was Chateaubriand. For the Rue aux Ours 
 has begun to fall beneath the pitiless pick of 'im- 
 provement,' and the famous meeting-place of love 
 and death is lost for ever. The name, ' Bourg 
 l'Abbe,' remains to mark another obscure and desolate 
 street, and this is the sole, unconscious witness to a 
 perished yet imperishable romance. 
 
 His adventures were not all so grim, and there is 
 small wonder that Carmail, Termes, and he were 
 known at Court as les dangereux. Indeed, so general 
 was his passion and so nice his discretion that on the 
 morning of the day when he was dragged to the 
 Bastille he burned more than six thousand love- 
 letters. Nor did he ever, save once, strive to embark 
 upon the sea of marriage, and this single enterprise 
 was foiled by the intrigue of his King. Yet it was 
 commenced with a favourable augury, and though 
 Bassompierre escaped with an unbroken heart, his 
 vanity received a grievous wound, which only a
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 73 
 
 sense of humour could have cured. The honour 
 paid him was conspicuous, for it was no less a 
 personage than the Constable of France who offered 
 him his daughter's hand, and Bassompierre, who had 
 already admired the beauty of Mademoiselle de 
 Montmorency, was infinitely flattered by the pro- 
 posal. The Constable delivered a speech which 
 brought tears to the eyes of his friends, and Bassom- 
 pierre, whose eloquence was never at a loss, accepted 
 the father's compliment and the daughter's hand with 
 becoming diffidence. On either side there was 
 reason to rejoice, until the Court expressed its 
 disapproval, and rumours were heard of a broken 
 contract. 
 
 At first Bassompierre refused to surrender his 
 promised bride, and the Constable set his face sternly 
 against the Prince de Conde, who was now forced 
 upon his daughter's acceptance. But the King's 
 will was unconquerable, and the sequel was so 
 delightful a comedy of manners, that the victim 
 himself could not have forborne to smile. When 
 the intrigue was at its keenest, and the Prince's 
 insolence intolerable, the King sent for Bassompierre, 
 and assured him that he thought continually of his 
 marriage. The Knight answered that if it had not 
 been for the Constable's gout, the ceremony would have 
 already been performed. ' No,' interposed the King, 
 ' I was thinking of your marriage with Mademoiselle 
 d'Aumale.' And when Bassompierre would have 
 expostulated, the King heaved a deep sigh, and thus
 
 74 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 continued : ' Eassompierre,' he murmured, 'I would 
 speak to you as a friend. I love Mademoiselle de 
 Montmorency madly and desperately. If you marry 
 her, and she loves you, I shall hate you ; if she loves 
 me, you will hate me. And I would have nothing 
 break our ancient friendship and good understanding. 
 Therefore, I intend to marry her to my nephew, 
 who likes the chase a thousand times better than 
 woman, and thus to keep her near my house. So I 
 shall find consolation and entertainment for the old 
 age which is creeping upon me.' 
 
 To this appeal no reply was possible ; the King 
 and his servant mingled their tears and congratula- 
 tions ; to Bassompierre there remained the gaming- 
 table and unnumbered intrigues, so that he could but 
 wish his monarch happiness and desist from his suit. 
 The last act of comedy turned to farce, for the 
 nephew, basely ungrateful for the King's thoughtful- 
 ness and generosity, took the money, and fled from 
 France with his bride. Henry was transported to 
 the very madness of rage. He stormed, he raved, he 
 asked advice of all his councillors, and as instantly 
 rejected it. At last he sent for Sully. ' What can 
 I do to recover the fugitives ? ' he asked. ' Let me 
 sup,' said Sully, ' and sleep upon the matter, and I 
 will give you my counsel to-morrow.' 'No,' 
 clamoured the King, ' you must tell me on the spot. 
 'Then,' demurred Sully, 'I must think.' So he 
 walked to the window, and there beat a tattoo upon 
 the glass with his fingers. And when he turned to
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 75 
 
 the King, and the King demanded eagerly — ' What 
 can be done ? ' — c Nothing,' he replied, and so ended 
 the whimsical farce which was Bassompierre's 
 solitary attempt at matrimony. 
 
 No sport at the time came anywise amiss to him, 
 and as he won his place by his love of gambling, so 
 it was with the cards that he retained the affection 
 of the King and maintained his own extravagance. 
 Trictrac, lansquenet, and la prime were his favourite 
 games, and good luck rarely deserted him. * I won 
 this year,' says he, on the very top of the wave, 
 ' more than five hundred thousand francs at play, 
 though I was distracted by a thousand follies 
 of youth and love.' Another time he records that 
 the stakes at Fontainebleau were the highest he had 
 ever known. 'No day passed,' he writes, c without 
 the loss or gain of twenty thousand pistoles. The 
 smallest stake was fifty pistoles, and they ran so fast 
 that they were called quinterottes^ after the incompar- 
 able speed of the English horses lately introduced 
 into France by Quinterot.' The delay of two days 
 on a journey once cost him twenty-five thousand 
 crowns, but, in revenge, there were few years wherein 
 he did not come off with a handsome balance. So, 
 also, he was an accomplished dancer, and in taste 
 and fancy his ballets were unsurpassed. Their 
 motives were varied and ingenious : now it was 
 Turks, now Sea-gods, now even Washerwomen, 
 that Bassompierre and his fellow courtiers repre- 
 sented before the Kino-.
 
 76 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 With M. de Guise, too, he revived, for the 
 moment, the fashion of the tourney, and broke a 
 lance in the courtyard of the Louvre, half in jest, 
 half for the favour of Mademoiselle d'Entragues. 
 The combat was conducted with order and magnifi- 
 cence. Bassompierre and his friends carried arms 
 plated with silver; and their plumes were flesh- 
 colour and white, which colours were echoed in 
 their silken hose. M. de Guise, on the other side, 
 was in mourning for Madame de Verneuil, at that 
 moment a prisoner in the Bastille, and he wore 
 neither arms nor habiliments which were not black 
 and gold. The battle took place before a splendid 
 assembly, and the result was not long in doubt. 
 For M. de Guise rode a small horse, and charged 
 from the lower end, while Bassompierre descended 
 upon his opponent with the speed of a gallant 
 courser of Spain. So that M. de Guise broke his 
 lance not upon his adversary's helmet, but upon his 
 tassets, and inflicted such a wound as only a hero 
 could endure. The Court was in despair at its 
 favourite's mischance, but Bassompierre was ever 
 confident of recovery, and no sooner was the wound 
 healed than he set out for Plombieres to take the 
 waters. Even his sickness turned to gaiety ; a 
 crowd of nobles followed him to the baths ; he took 
 a band of fiddlers in his retinue ; and despite his 
 wound he enjoyed all ' the diversion which a young 
 man, rich, debauched, and thriftless, could desire.' 
 
 He spent his money with a regal magnificence,
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 77 
 
 which no wealth could withstand, and, despite his 
 appointments and the King's generosity, he was 
 always embarrassed. Yet his good humour made 
 light of all difficulties, and there was no pass from 
 which he did not emerge with credit. Once upon 
 a time, returning from Lorraine, he was bidden to 
 a Royal christening, and found in his wardrobe 
 nothing worthy so great an occasion. The tailors 
 of Paris, moreover, were reluctant to increase their 
 promises of apparel, and Bassompierre, with a 
 slender pocket, feared that he could not make a 
 fitting appearance. But he ordered his tailor and 
 embroiderer to attend his pleasure, and was told that 
 a merchant had just arrived from Antwerp with a 
 load of pearls, wherewith, said the embroiderer, you 
 could make such a coat as should surpass all others 
 at the ceremony. And for the making he asked a 
 poor six hundred crowns. It was cloth of gold and 
 purple, with interlacing palm leaves ; and when this 
 was chosen there remained only to purchase the pearls, 
 and pay the bill of fourteen thousand crowns. 
 
 Now, Bassompierre had but seven hundred crowns 
 in the world, and the jeweller demanded four thousand 
 as earnest. The Knight could but put him off to the 
 morrow, and rely upon Providence. That evening 
 M. d'Espernon bade him to supper, and with his seven 
 hundred crowns he won five thousand. Thus he 
 satisfied the jeweller, and after another night's play 
 he not only paid for his miraculous coat, but purchased 
 a diamond-hiked sword, and still had five thousand
 
 78 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 crowns in his pocket. But he always came off trium- 
 phant from an embarrassment, and both the Kings 
 whom he served were inclined to humour his extra- 
 vagance. On one occasion, Louis xiii., knowing 
 him to be hard pressed for money, begged a gift of the 
 cider which he received every year from Normandy. 
 Bassompierre sent the King a dozen bottles, and 
 received in exchange twelve thousand crowns. ' Sire,' 
 said the Marshal, with a twinkle, ' I have a hogshead 
 at my lodging, which I am willing to sell on the same 
 terms.' The King was satisfied with his dozen 
 bottles, and Bassompierre with the King's liberality. 
 Nor did his thrift increase with years, and perhaps he 
 reflected with a glimmer of satisfaction that when he 
 entered the Bastille he owed without its inhospitable 
 walls no less than one million six hundred thousand 
 francs. 
 
 Much as he loved gaiety and beautiful women 
 and splendid clothes, much as he esteemed wit and 
 devilry, he was no mere gallant. He played an active 
 part in the war and diplomacy of his time, nor did 
 he yield to one of his contemporaries in courage or 
 address. He was, moreover, a single-minded 
 gentleman living among the astute professors of 
 intrigue, and he looked no further beyond his duty 
 than the service of his King. But he treated nobody, 
 not even the King his master, with more submission 
 than became a man of honour, nor did he ever 
 scruple to condemn a policy which he deemed 
 unprofitable to France. In truth, so long as
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 79 
 
 Henry iv. was alive, Bassompierre was safe to enjoy the 
 best things of an amiable life, since even the King's 
 foibles won the sympathy of his friend, and c intrigue ' 
 had not yet acquired a sinister meaning. But the 
 Regency of Marie de Media's, and the supremacy 
 of the King's favourites, crushed the gaiety from 
 Bassompierre's heart. Too honest, too independent 
 to fight the Due de Luynes (for instance) with his 
 own weapons, he was very often in disgrace, and 
 even in danger. 
 
 Thus it was that he turned Ambassador, and 
 travelled to Spain or to England, that he might gain 
 a respite from the suspicions of the King's advisers. 
 Once abroad, he made the very best of his voyage, 
 and proved a model diplomatist. In tact and firmness 
 he was a match for the cleverest, and while Charles 1. 
 shuddered at his persistence, Buckingham recognised 
 his worth, and helped him to a solution. And if his 
 despatches from the Courts of London and Madrid 
 are admirable State papers, his Memoirs prove that 
 his curiosity was still insatiable, that his zest for life 
 was as keen as when he first travelled to Paris from 
 his distant Lorraine. He reached Madrid in time 
 to see the King die of etiquette, but already he had 
 rejoiced in the dances of the Basques and in many a 
 pleasant comedy. With the adaptability which was 
 always his, he wore Spanish mourning, and won 
 more honour and glory among the Spaniards than he 
 could claim in the country of his adoption. For 
 with all his cleverness and tact he was unable to
 
 8o A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 overcome the wiles of his adversaries. Louis xin., 
 accustomed to flattery, tired of the plain speaking 
 of the valiant Bassompierre. He liked not that this 
 soldier should decline to take further part in the Siege 
 of Rochelle, unless he had a separate army, separate 
 stores, and a separate exxhequer ; and he resented the 
 straightforward eloquence which hindered him — 
 before Chastillon — from an act of bad faith. Nor 
 had Schomberg and Richelieu cause to love the 
 resolute Marshal of France. More than once he 
 had spurred Louis on to acts of insubordination, and 
 on one occasion he had heartened the King to decline 
 their informal visit. Moreover, he was a noble who 
 favoured his own order, and the Bastille was his sad, 
 inevitable goal. 
 
 For once his ' good fortune' failed him — that good 
 fortune, in which Schomberg believed so loyally that 
 he sent him upon many a forlorn hope — and he was 
 Richelieu's prisoner. He entered his dungeon with 
 a light heart and a good courage. Not only did he 
 decline flight ; he accepted his fate with a brave 
 resignation, which turned to sadness rather than to 
 complaint when grief lay too heavy a hand upon him. 
 At last he had hung his harp upon the wall ; no more 
 might he know the pleasures of which not even years 
 had robbed him. Perhaps the treachery of the King 
 irked him — of the King whom he had loyally served 
 and who two days since had promised that nothing 
 should be done against his liberty. But he accepted 
 his fate with courage, and believed devoutly that
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 81 
 
 freedom was at hand. Moreover the Cardinal's 
 assurance was never lacking. Day after day, year 
 after year, he received promises of liberty, until at 
 last he resolved to listen no more to the voice of 
 falsehood. And no sooner was he behind the walls 
 of the Bastille than disaster added to disaster shook 
 his fortitude. Not only were his appointments 
 taken from him ; presently his estates were stolen 
 through the faithlessness of his enemies. The 
 Chateau of Bassompierre was destroyed, the profit 
 of his crops was turned to an alien channel, while 
 his nephew lost his honourable position in the army 
 and saw his own Chateau de Dammartin burned 
 by order of the King. Nor did he escape the lesser 
 miseries of life : the coach which was bringing him 
 money and clothes from Nancy was held up by 
 highwaymen, and plundered. In brief he saw 
 himself slipping into poverty, and thus, said he, with 
 a grim humour, ' thus I kept my jubilee.' 
 
 The gloom grew only deeper as the chance of 
 feedom lessened. c I passed the whole month of 
 January,' he wrote after some years of captivity, 
 ' without hope of liberty, and with infinite sadness.' 
 And while he lost hope, and money, and houses, and 
 crops, he was soon to mourn the greater sadness of 
 death. First, the Princess de Conti died, killed it is 
 said by the disgrace of his imprisonment, and in her 
 he lost the closest friend that remained to him in the 
 world. Then, one after another his kinsmen died, 
 and left him, forsaken and miserable, in the Bastille. 
 
 F
 
 82 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 So he sat in a solitude as bitter as Job's, until the 
 last affront was put upon his pride by an insolent 
 gaoler. So for ten years he suffered from the resent- 
 ment or the caution of Richelieu, and it was not 
 until the death of the Cardinal that he breathed the 
 larger air of liberty. 
 
 And then too late was he restored to his places 
 of honour and profit ; too late did the King smile 
 again upon his ancient favourite. He was out of 
 fashion ; his wit appeared slow-footed to the water- 
 flies of the Court ; he brought from the Bastille a 
 leisurely arrogance which was ill understood in a 
 busy, progressive age. In revenge, he might plume 
 himself upon a strangely rotund and finished career — 
 a career which was not only brilliant, but also was 
 brilliantly modulated. No experience had escaped 
 him : a youth of pleasure, a middle-life of war and 
 diplomacy, an age of bitter imprisonment and ultimate 
 respect — he had known them all, and had accepted 
 each in a spirit of valiance. Moreover, the ten years' 
 captivity had not dulled his wit, and he was ready 
 on the instant with a dignified reproof. 'How old 
 are you ? ' asked the King on the Marshal's enlarge- 
 ment. ' Fifty years, sire,' was the reply. And when 
 the King seemed incredulous, he added : c I discard 
 the years which were not spent in your service.' 
 
 His book approaches most nearly to the Diary of 
 our own Pepys, but it seldom attains the engaging 
 candour of that masterpiece. Compiled when im- 
 prisonment had forced him to an unwelcome leisure,
 
 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 83 
 
 it is an effort rather of memory than of observation. 
 It was not his happiness to fix the fleeting indiscre- 
 tion by a timely phrase ; rather, he is driven to the 
 fading tablets of his mind even for the record of his 
 bonnes fortunes. Again, while the Englishman only 
 remembers that he is a man, Bassompierre never for- 
 gets that he is a Marshal of France. He approaches 
 himself in full uniform, and he dares not be as inti- 
 mate with his own actions as the merest stranger 
 may be with the peccadilloes of Pepys. He does not 
 let you glance over his shoulder as he writes ; his 
 very dignity keeps you at a distance, and reminds 
 you (what Pepys bids you forget) that there are 
 privacies into which curiosity should not intrude. 
 From the point of view of style, his was incomparably 
 the higher ambition. He was anxious to embellish 
 his narrative with set speeches, in accordance with 
 the artifice of Thucydides and Livy ; and, while 
 Pepys is content to be witty or scandalous in a line, 
 he would at times sustain the dignity of his prose for 
 a dozen pages. 
 
 He displayed as much truth and sincerity as may be 
 expected from a warrior and statesman ; and it is not 
 strange if, greater in much else, he fell, in candour, 
 below the splendid genius of Samuel Pepys. ' I shall 
 make an ample discourse of my life,' he declares, 
 'without affectation or vanity . . . and you will not 
 find it strange if I tell all things in detail.' The 
 detail it is that makes the book a masterpiece : that 
 he saw a comet in 1608, that the floor of the Queen's
 
 84 A MARSHAL OF FRANCE 
 
 salon collapsed, save the plank whereon her Majesty 
 was standing, that outside Agen a cannon carried oft 
 the four arms of the four soldiers who carried the 
 flags of Navarre, that the Lord Mayor's Show of 1626 
 was the finest spectacle that ever he saw — these are 
 the details which give life and vividness to the book. 
 And you lay it down with the pleasant assurance that, 
 if you may not claim Bassompierre for a friend, you 
 have lived for a week upon amiable terms with a 
 great man.
 
 THEAGENES
 
 THEAGENES 
 
 WHEN Sir Kenelm Digbyconfrontedhisaudience 
 at Montpellier, there shone upon his face 
 the pleasant assurance and self-content which had 
 carried him triumphantly through half a century of 
 adventure. It irked him little that he mounted his 
 hobbyhorse at so great a distance from his native 
 London, for here the course was open, and a fervid 
 applause encouraged his management of the ancient 
 steed. None enjoyed more keenly than he the 
 appreciation bestowed upon a prophet in a strange 
 land, and for a while at least he was secure from the 
 glacial incredulity of John Evelyn and the sceptics. 
 Besides, the soft air of the South had tempered the 
 winter unto gentleness, and Sir Kenelm knew that 
 supreme satisfaction which comes of aa abated 
 malady. 
 
 His subject was old and familiar — the Powder of 
 Sympathy, and he handled it in the old and familiar 
 style. With a flourish of pride he vaunted his 
 prowess, and explained for the hundredth time the 
 approval of King James. Well might Montpellier 
 express her astonishment ! Well might her men of 
 science marvel at the miracle ! But Sir Kenelm
 
 88 THEAGENES 
 
 was stern in his conviction, and he permitted not 
 the shadow of a doubt to be cast upon the clear page 
 of his achievement. There was no wound, he de- 
 clared in the voice of certainty, that he could not 
 cure, and he was ready on the instant with his 
 renowned example. It was no less a personage, said 
 he, than James Howell, the famous author of Dendro- 
 logia, whose injury had yielded to his discreet and 
 superstitious remedy. Upon a generous impulse, he 
 who afterwards became King Charles's Historio- 
 grapher had attempted to part the swords and check 
 the embroilment of two friends, and the officious 
 hand had naturally been cut to the bone. 
 
 The doctors feared gangrene, and Howell appealed 
 for aid to Sir Kenelm, with the proverb of doubtful 
 compliment upon his lips : c Let the miracle be done, 
 though Mahomet do it.' Nor was Mahomet sloth- 
 ful to perform the wonder. He did but call for a 
 basin of water, sprinkle therein a handful of powder 
 of vitriol, and immerse a garter stained with the 
 blood of the victim. Instantly Howell was free from 
 the pain ; a feeling of composure crept over the 
 wounded hand, and though Sir Kenelm, for experi- 
 ment's sake, might now and again remove the garter 
 from the sovereign cure, and so rack his friend with 
 torture, five days' immersion of the blood-stained 
 silk was sufficient to heal the hand, and to bruit Sir 
 Kenelm's miracle about the Court. Buckingham 
 first was devoured by curiosity, and then the King, 
 always avid of novelty, must be informed of the
 
 THEAGENES 89 
 
 miracle. So that Howell and Sir Kenelm were 
 united in a common fame, and the Powder of 
 Sympathy was the wide-mouthed wonder of a day. 
 Thus, to his own glory and to the bedevilment of 
 Montpellier, did Sir Kenelm Digby extol his skill, 
 thus did he infect the learned South with the fever 
 of his own credulity. 
 
 Nor did he abate one jot of his vanity, though he 
 carried a solid weight of years upon his back. In 
 his own eyes he was still the noble, brave, persuasive 
 Theagenes, who with peerless eloquence had wooed 
 Stelliana, the hapless and irresistible. The admira- 
 tion of his own beauty, which was the reasonable 
 comfort of his youth, remained the solace of his riper 
 age. Even yet he recalled with satisfaction the 
 panegyric his own modesty had composed, even yet 
 he wondered which were the more remarkable : ' the 
 great strength and framing of his body,' or ' the 
 noble temper of his mind.' Despite the growing 
 bulk, which turned his giant stature to unwieldiness, 
 he was still assured that in his single person were 
 united the attributes of Apollo and of Hercules. 
 And he smiled the sunny smile of boastfulness upon 
 the scholars of Montpellier, who rivalled the more 
 deeply instructed in their obedience to Sir Kenelm's 
 will. For, pedant as he was, he was quick to catch 
 the breath of sympathy, and in defiance of his 
 pragmatical habit, he had determined at the first to 
 take the froth off the bowl of life. The rest might 
 drink the lees, if they would ; he only knew the
 
 9 o THEAGENES 
 
 sparkle of the wine as it leapt against his palate, for 
 in the glass of his career every draught, of love and 
 war, of scholarship and intrigue, had been turned to 
 the lively champagne of adventure. 
 
 Fate favoured him in the cradle, and though he 
 was unconscious of his first tragedy, it was already 
 far removed from the commonplace. His father, Sir 
 Everard, as brave a gentleman as ever died a rebel's 
 death, suffered on Tower Hill when Kenelm was no 
 more than two years old. And the manner of his 
 capture was as splendid as the legend of his death. 
 Had he sacrificed his servants after the Gunpowder 
 Plot, he might have escaped pursuit, but preferring 
 to face his assailants, he surrendered with a noble 
 serenity. And when, saith rumour, he climbed 
 Tower Hill, there happened to the father just such 
 a miracle as the fancy of the son would have delighted 
 to invent. The executioner, dragging out Sir 
 Everard's heart, lifted it to the people's gaze and 
 declared that it was the heart of a traitor; where- 
 upon the victim protested, as life flickered at his 
 ashen lips, that he was no traitor, and thus died. 
 
 With so marvellous a legend the young Kenelm 
 might have pampered his early pride, and in order 
 not to break with tradition he was but a boy when 
 he encountered the serious drama of his life. To 
 the dispassionate mind there seems no obstacle which 
 should have divided the valiant Digby from Venetia 
 Stanley, or, to give them the names he chose him- 
 self, Theagenes from Stelliana. Equal in birth
 
 THEAGENES 91 
 
 and affluence, thev passed their childhood in a 
 paradise of love. His boyish constancy was more 
 than rewarded by her magnanimous fidelity ; and 
 if in a handsome body he carried a marvellously 
 instructed mind, she was already a beauty of the 
 Court before she had turned her fifteenth year. 
 How then devise a properer match ? Naught 
 seemed necessary to happiness, save a brief span 
 of patience, but it was Kenelm's fate to enjoy 
 romance, and fate would have been outraged had he 
 ridden, at twenty, upon the level tide of marriage. 
 Wherefore every hindrance, which a malevolent 
 ingenuity could invent, was put in the way of his 
 happiness. Poor Venetia must endure all the pains 
 and more than the dishonour which are wont to 
 perplex the Princesses of Fairyland. Truly, for 
 many a year * the sun of her beauty ' was doomed to 
 shine ' through the clouds of sadness,' and for no 
 cause, save that her Kenelm should know the cruel 
 joy of uncertainty, and should cultivate the stilted 
 eloquence of a foiled, yet ever devoted, lover. 
 
 His own mother was the bitterest enemy of this 
 celestial alliance, and, like many another, she believed 
 the grand tour the easiest cure for a wayward fancy. 
 And so, while Venetia pined at home, Kenelm set 
 forth to see the world, and to correct by dissipation 
 the passion of a virtuous heart. He knew strange 
 Courts and distant cities ; wherever he travelled he 
 was received with the courtesy which follows distin- 
 guished birth and noble connections ; if we may
 
 92 THEAGENES 
 
 believe him, the ladies of Europe were at his feet, 
 and even the Queen of Erance disdained not to 
 confuse his virgin heart by the reckless ardour of her 
 suit. But never for an instant did he forget his 
 Venetia : neither the beauty of his suitors nor the 
 taunts of his companions availed to shake his super- 
 human constancy ; and though his poor frame 
 might wander in the centre of France, or in remoter 
 Spain, his soul was still in the English countryside 
 where dwelt Venetia, faithful and unconsoled. 
 
 Meanwhile treachery had laid its plots of ruin and 
 of spite. In her lover's absence, the stainless heroine 
 was assailed with all the weapons of devilish intrigue. 
 Not only were Kcnelm's letters suppressed, but a 
 villainous report of his death was most sedulously 
 spread abroad ; and, as though this mystification 
 were not enough, Venetia was offended by the gross 
 addresses of unscrupulous lovers. Her ancient nurse 
 was as eager for betrayal as the nurse of immemorial 
 comedy, and no incident was lacking to the pre- 
 ordained embroilment. The assailant's name is 
 happily forgotten, but Sir Kenelm dubbed him 
 Ursatius, not without an etymological propriety, 
 and so eagerly did he play the part of Lovelace, that 
 he might have sat for that gentleman's portrait. 
 Believing that his honourable suit was hopeless, and 
 spurred to villainy by the avaricious nurse, Ursatius 
 resolved to kidnap the virtuous Stelliana, who was 
 easily beguiled by a false report of Theagnes's return. 
 Thus she was decoyed to a coach and four ; she was
 
 THEAGENES 93 
 
 carried ofF by hirelings to the mansion of Ursatius ; 
 and thus she would have suffered the unkind fate of 
 Clarissa, had not her own courage and the burnt 
 ashes of Ursatius's honour prevented her undoing. 
 
 He, at any rate, played his part with a broken 
 spirit. His resolution, inspired by the falsehood of 
 the nurse, wavered at the first sight of the adored 
 Venetia, and he accepted his dismissal with the 
 obedience of a crushed and lawful suitor. But the 
 lady was none the less compromised, and at midnight 
 she crept from the alien house, and letting herself 
 down into the garden upon an improvised rope, she 
 fled to the woods, where she lay hid until morning, 
 and where, as romance would suggest, she was 
 attacked by a wolf. Nor would she ever have looked 
 again into the eyes of her Kenelm, had not a young 
 nobleman, who lived hard by, come sudden to her 
 rescue. The rest is a veritable fairy-tale. Mar- 
 dontius — for thus the nobleman is called — not con- 
 tent with falling desperately in love at first sight, tells 
 her that her kinswoman lives hard by, and Venetia is 
 presently under a friendly roof, safe, though soiled. 
 
 Another love was thus added to her discomfiture ; 
 and as time brought no news of the ever faithful 
 Digby, Venetia, listening at last to the addresses of 
 Mardontius, gave him her portrait as a pledge of a 
 tempered gratitude rather than of affection. And 
 even now misfortune pursued her, for Mardontius, as 
 though secure of his enchanting mistress, turned 
 aside for a while to woo a rustic beauty, until
 
 94 THEAGENES 
 
 Venetia, furious at the slight, banished him from her 
 presence. But this misfortune changed to happi- 
 ness ; for when the truant returned, the dismissal of 
 Mardontius made easier the reconciliation of the 
 parted lovers, who expressed their adoration in the 
 stateliest periods, protesting the while that upon so 
 high a theme ' neither wit nor study can have any 
 share in the contexture of what one saith.' Yet, 
 once again, scandal interrupted the course of passion, 
 and saved Sir Kenelm — for by this he had been 
 knighted — from the suspicion of a too easily acquired 
 security. The busybodies of the Court, eager in the 
 dispraise of Venetia, assured the traveller that during 
 his absence she had carried on a disgraceful intrigue 
 with a notorious nobleman ; they whispered venom- 
 ously in his ear that Mardontius still treasured the 
 lady's portrait ; and, though Sir Kenelm, upon the 
 threat of a duel, won an apology from his repentant 
 rival, his soul was yet unpurged of jealousy. Though 
 his provocation was great, his lack of courage was 
 unpardonable, and when he should publicly have 
 avowed his loyalty, he shufHed, he hesitated, he aped 
 the base tactics of Ursatius, he pleaded the cause of 
 another. At last, however, his own love and the 
 devotion of Venetia, who pawned her jewels in his 
 service, silenced the hoarse voice of falsehood. With 
 a secrecy, which was a proper climax to this whim- 
 sical series of misadventures, the lovers were at last 
 united, and henceforth Sir Kenelm had noughtto regret 
 save the deceit of his friends and his own timidity.
 
 THEAGENES 95 
 
 Eor Vcnetia was not only the most accomplished, 
 but the most beautiful woman of her age. A famous 
 toast, she is still celebrated in the ardent verse of Ben 
 Jonson. Her dark hair crowned a delicately perfect 
 oval ; her brown eyes shone irresistible from beneath 
 their gently opening lids. She was no taller than 
 became a woman ; yet there was an heroical dignity 
 in all her movements, and it is no wonder that she 
 was unsurpassed in the art of conquest. Her devotion 
 to Sir Kenelm knew no abatement after marriage, 
 and it is a plain discredit that for two years he kept 
 this honourable alliance secret. But he would have 
 been miserable had conscience forced him to accept 
 a common situation, and it was not until he set out 
 for Scanderoon with letters of marque that he paid a 
 tardy justice to the fairest dame in England. Hence- 
 forth he proved himself a husband who was still a 
 lover, and when she died — in 1633 — he was in- 
 consolable. 
 
 But even in the moment of her death the harsh 
 croaking of scandal was heard. She was poisoned, 
 said this one, because jealousy had turned her 
 husband's heart to hatred. She died, said that, from 
 a draught of viper-wine, given her by Digby to 
 preserve her waning beauty. But Sir Kenelm, 
 wisely listening neither to malice nor envy y retired 
 in sad silence to Gresham College, where he sought 
 forgetfulness in the study of chemistry and the 
 other sciences. Even in his dress he shadowed forth 
 his intolerable grief. For two years he wore
 
 96 THEAGENES 
 
 a mourning cloak and a high-cornered hat : his 
 unshorn beard and hair unkempt gave him the 
 appearance of a hermit ; and he who, while she 
 lived, had always treasured a cast of her dainty hand 
 and daintier foot, set up, at her death, a monument 
 worthy her beauty and his affection. 
 
 Fortunate in his marriage, Kenelm Digby was 
 also fortunate in his career. As he was adventurous 
 in his youth, so he might have boasted in his age 
 that he had never shirked a combat nor receded from 
 an argument. A determined duellist, he fought his 
 way across Europe with a courage and address which 
 the Admirable Crichton might have envied, and never 
 once was he worsted in the fray. His most cele- 
 brated battle was fought at Madrid, whither he had 
 attended his Prince questing after a Spanish 
 marriage ; and of the distinguished company 
 gathered at the southern capital, none was more 
 highly distinguished than the youthful Digby. In 
 his own eyes the mirror of knighthood, he imposed 
 by his wit and courage upon all the gallants, who 
 marvelled at the demure elegance of Charles, or 
 shrank from Buckingham's unscrupulous intrigue. 
 No sooner had he reached Madrid than his bravery 
 found a splendid occasion. Truly, in one night he 
 lived through a whole Spanish romance, and 
 Cervantes himself would not have disdained to tell 
 the story of an adventure to which no element of 
 picturesque surprise was lacking. 
 
 'Twas the first evening he had spent in the
 
 THEAGENES 97 
 
 southern city, and with his kinsman John Dive and 
 another he was returning to his lodging from the 
 Ambassador's house, when the sound of music and 
 singing struck upon his ear. The evening had 
 turned the heat of the day to a pleasant coolness, 
 and the three Englishmen loitered on their home- 
 ward way, enjoying the pleasant breeze and marvel- 
 ling at the sweetness of the strange song. Presently 
 they discovered the wandering voice, and beheld 
 upon a trellised balcony a fair lady with her lute. 
 But admiration changed instantly to dismay, for no 
 sooner had they gazed with reverence upon her 
 beauty than fifteen armed men rushed from the 
 shadow into the moonlight, intent upon the murder 
 of Dive, their ancient enemy. He, on the impulse 
 of passion, drew his sword and struck the first comer 
 so terrible a blow upon the head, that he had fallen 
 dead on the spot had he not been protected with 
 a goodly cap of steel. But so well was he covered, 
 that Dive's blade was shattered to a hundred pieces ; 
 and, his friend's sword suffering a like fate, he knew 
 no other course than to run for aid, and to leave his 
 kinsman to his own defence. 
 
 Here, indeed, was such an occasion as delighted 
 the fervent courage of Kenelm Digby. On the 
 one side, fifteen armed men, bent upon vengeance, 
 on the other himself and his single blade. Nor was 
 his task lightened by the fitful moonlight, which 
 cast ghostly shadows in every corner, obscuring far 
 more than it revealed. His opponents, moreover, bv 
 
 G
 
 98 THEAGENES 
 
 a devilish contrivance, had fixed lanthorns upon their 
 bucklers, and the light being thus cast forward, they 
 remained in darkness, while he trembled in the 
 dazzling glare. On all sides of him flitted the 
 Spaniards, yet never for an instant was his courage 
 daunted. A wiser man had taken to his heels, but 
 Digby valued fearlessness far above agility, and he 
 was prepared to thrust and parry against the fifteen 
 armed and covered lanthorns. 
 
 Once only did he attempt to parley, when, 
 singling out the master of them all, who wore over 
 his jack of mail a gold-embroidered cassock, he 
 asked what injury he had done that he should sustain 
 so vigorous an attack. But the Spanish lord giving 
 an insolent retort, Kenelm set upon his enemies 
 with doubled strength, and when two traitors crept 
 behind to perplex him, he resolved to fight his way 
 through his assailants unto safety. And so stoutly 
 did he lay about him, that he cut one man's head in 
 two, and running another through the belly he bade 
 him also render up his life. Thus, with his face to 
 the foe, he retreated to the Ambassador's house, and 
 reached the haven triumphant and unscathed. To 
 the sceptic the fifteen men in bucklers and coats of 
 mail might suggest those other heroes in buckram ; 
 but to appreciate Sir Kenelm you must needs be 
 credulous, and who knows but he would have with- 
 stood the whole Spanish army arrayed against him ? 
 
 No less glorious was the combat wherein he 
 maintained his honour in the teeth of that infamous
 
 THEAGENES 99 
 
 swashbuckler, Lord Mount le Ros. It was during 
 the knight's unhappy exile that the encounter took 
 place, and at every point Sir Kenelm proved himself 
 the more valiant gentleman. The provocation was 
 given at the French lord's house, where, after 
 a banquet, they fell to the drinking of healths. 
 Thus they toasted the King of France and divers 
 others, and Digby lagged no whit behind the rest in 
 loyal enthusiasm. At last, Mount le Ros, with the 
 presumption of a wineskin, clamoured for the health 
 of the arrantest coward in Europe. And when Sir 
 Kenelm asked to whom he should raise his glass, 
 ' Drink,' cried the Frenchman, 'and when you have 
 pledged you shall know.' Sir Kenelm, innocent of 
 suspicion, emptied his glass, whereupon answered 
 Lord Mount le Ros: 'I meant your King of 
 England.' 
 
 The next day the French lord dined with Sir 
 Kenelm, and being provoked by another toast he 
 repeated the same insult. Digby was instant with 
 a challenge. c Twice,' said he, * you have reviled 
 the best King in the world in the hearing of 
 me, his faithful subject, wherefore I demand the 
 satisfaction of a single combat, where either you shall 
 pay your life for your sauciness or I will give mine 
 for my King.' Now, the French lord, though a 
 braggart, was a man of courage, and after dinner 
 they went incontinent upon the field, and, plucking 
 off their doublets, made ready for the fight. Digby, 
 fearing an ambush, hastened the onset, and at the
 
 ioo THEAGENES 
 
 fourth bout ran his sword so hard through the 
 Frenchman's breast that it came out at his throat, 
 and drove before it the last insolent breath of Mount 
 le Ros. The French King did not lose this occasion 
 of magnanimity. ' Not the proudest lord of France,' 
 said he, 'shall cast a slur upon my brother of Eng- 
 land.' And so he pardoned Sir Kenelm his violence, 
 and gave him an honourable escort into Flanders. 
 
 'The Magazine of all the Arts.' Thus it is that 
 a contemporary described the peerless Digby. And, 
 trulv, he was no less famous for his eloquence and 
 erudition than for his bodily strength and prowess. 
 Having spent many years in foreign travel, he was as 
 familiar with French and Spanish as with his own 
 English, and not a little proud of the accomplishment. 
 Indeed, said an admirer, had he been dropped from 
 the clouds upon any corner of the globe, he would 
 have won obedience and respect. But, added his 
 detractors, he must not stay there above six weeks. 
 Not only was he master of strange tongues : he 
 wrote his own with surpasssing elegance, and culti- 
 vated the ornate style of his epoch with conspicuous 
 success. The Private Memoirs, upon which his fame 
 is solidly established, are so ingeniously packed with 
 self-adulation, that they were certainly designed for 
 the prying eye of the public, and they will ever re- 
 main the noblest monument of his skill. With a 
 characteristic mystification, he tells the story of his 
 courtship, giving his personages high-sounding, in- 
 appropriate names. Under the mask of Theagenes
 
 THEAGENES 101 
 
 he lays himself at the feet of an imagined Stelliana, 
 who is pestered by the loathed addresses of Ursatius 
 and Mardontius. In this fairyland, Madrid is trans- 
 formed to Alexandria, and Paris, not Edinburgh, 
 masquerades as the modern Athens. But the colour 
 of the narrative is beyond praise, and surely autobio- 
 graphy never took on so strange a complexion. 
 
 After the fashion of his age, he was a pedant 
 rather than a scholar. There was no superstition he 
 would not invest with a spurious importance, and he 
 would have accepted as indisputable truth the most 
 monstrous of Sir Thomas Browne's Popular Errors. 
 For him Aristotle was the last of the wise men, and 
 yet his noble allegiance to the past did not hinder 
 his eager curiosity. It was at Oxford, and at the 
 inspiration of Thomas Allen, who recognised his pupil 
 for the Mirandola of his age, that he acquired an 
 insatiable taste for astrology. To the end he re- 
 mained a zealous student of the occult ; the notorious 
 Evans was among his friends ; and many were the 
 experiments he witnessed in the half-guilty seclusion 
 of Gunpowder Alley. He vaunted, in fact, the cox- 
 combry of scholarship. In learning, as in love, he 
 treasured romance before all things, and he demanded 
 that the dish of research should always be flavoured 
 with the spice of charlatanry. He could not make 
 his famous journey to Madrid without turning aside 
 to converse with a profound and cunning Brahmin, 
 who laid bare to him those secrets of Theosophism 
 which have since become vulgar, and who imposed
 
 102 THEAGENES 
 
 upon his faith by a vision of Vcnctia bathed in 
 tears. 
 
 Thus it was that he won the reputation of a 
 guileless believer, if not of a deliberate impostor. 
 Evelyn, for instance, after a visit to his laboratory in 
 Paris, condemned him as an arrant mountebank, and 
 Stubbs in his fury called him the Pliny of his age for 
 lying. But these zealots of truth misunderstood 
 Digby's fantastic humour. It was not merely that 
 he was credulous ; he delighted to measure the 
 credulity of others, and when he declared that in 
 Tripoli's he had seen a city turned to stone, he knew, 
 as well as the rest, the extravagance of his fiction. 
 But the Mercurius Politicus printed the fable ; and 
 Sir Kenelm enjoyed the wondering folly of the dolt, 
 no less than the genuine tribulation of the patient 
 historian. 
 
 In all things he would appear distinguished or at 
 least notorious. To be in the mouths of men, to be 
 pointed at with the finger of admiration, were com- 
 pliments essential to his happiness. It flattered him 
 to be thought the strongest man of his age, and he 
 never wearied of boasting that he could pick up the 
 Earl of Bristol, his chair and all, with one arm. Thus 
 he would acclaim the discoveries of his intellect, pre- 
 ferring even ridicule to forgetfulness. His vanity, 
 in truth, was superb ; and he hymned his own praises 
 with a tireless industry. In his own eyes he is per- 
 fect, and he prophesies the highest attainment for 
 himself, c if a lazy desire of ease or some other dis-
 
 THEAGENES 103 
 
 turbance do not interrupt him.' His Memoirs are 
 written with an eloquence and energy which nothing 
 would justify, save the glory of Kenelm Digby. 'I 
 am the greatest man of my age,' he says in effect, 
 'and if no biographer be found to rejoice in my 
 qualities, I disdain to deceive the world.' 
 
 Though he remained constant to Venetia, he 
 suffered his life long from the importunity of amorous 
 ladies. The Queen of France created a scandal by 
 her shameless courtship, and his success in Spain was 
 little less brilliant. At Madrid the Captain of the 
 King's Guard rallied him on his prudery. ' Your 
 mind,' said he to the constant Digby, c has been 
 trained up continually in scholastical speculations, 
 and hath always conversed with books at such times 
 as you have not exercised your body in the use of 
 arms and managing of horses. Why, then, do you 
 pass by the fairest faces in daily indifference ? ' And 
 so Kenelm, unwilling to confess that any excellence 
 was lacking to him, made a wager with the Grandee 
 that he would estrange the love of the peerless Donna 
 Anna Maria Manrique. He was the more eager for 
 the enterprise because his noble heart whispered that 
 he had already lost the bet. ' How should I capture 
 the lady's affection,' thought he, 'when my love is 
 feigned ? ' But, alas ! he forgot for a moment the 
 invincibility of his charm. Donna Anna surrendered 
 at the first assault ; she flung herself in a whirlpool 
 of passion at his feet ; and when her suit was refused 
 in a spirit of virtuous fidelity to another, she
 
 io 4 THEAGENES 
 
 straightway renounced the world, and concealed her 
 inauspicious beauty within the walls of a convent. 
 
 Courtier, scholar, warrior, politician, Sir Kenelm 
 Digby filled his life with a thousand triumphs. He 
 united the braggart bravery of Cellini with the 
 cunning of an ancient philosopher. And he owed 
 his success in no small part to his indefatigable 
 aptitude. ' No man knew better how to abound and 
 to be abased,' says Aubrey, and every turn of fortune 
 was welcome to him. If circumstances smiled, he 
 accepted their favour without a hint of surprise ; and 
 if to-morrow his household were reduced to a single 
 lackey, he laughed at a humiliation which his vanity 
 found incongruous. After a boyhood spent in digni- 
 fied obscurity, he set out upon an august mission 
 without the slightest trepidation. c Henceforward,' 
 he observes with a colossal simplicity, c my fortunes 
 mingled themselves with, and had a part in, the 
 actions of great princes.' His self-esteem was de- 
 lighted whatever befell him, and if he had no better 
 audience than the scholars of Montpellier, he trans- 
 formed their mediocrity by the mere contact of his 
 wit into the sublimated genius of the universe. Even 
 when the Pope despised his intervention and pro- 
 nounced him mad, he did but c huff' his Holiness, 
 and leave Rome in a fit of generous lamentation. 
 
 When the learned laughed at his Chemistry, and 
 flouted his discourse upon the Body and the Soul, 
 when they condemned his premature reply to Religio 
 Medici as an act of bad faith, he folded his giant
 
 THEAGENES 105 
 
 hands in pity, and recommended them to study Mr. 
 White's Dialogue of the World. But in one field he 
 won universal glory. His single experiment in 
 serious warfare was a perfect masterpiece. Under- 
 taken with the lightest heart, because it was necessary 
 to employ himself in some generous action, it was 
 carried out with a good luck and determination, 
 which made light of disease and of contrary winds. 
 The Battle of Scanderoon, fought by a civilian of 
 twenty-five, was a glorious victory. Not only did 
 Digby decline the shameful peace offered by the 
 Venetians, but he straightway attacked, and sank, 
 the French ships. Thus he earned the tribute of 
 two doggerel lines from Ben Jonson, and if his 
 prowess could not increase his own self-esteem 
 at least his grandeur was proved to a doubtful 
 world. 
 
 He lived in an age of treachery and deceit, and 
 it is political intrigue that put the solitary blot upon 
 his respectable career. A Royalist in person and in 
 mind, he valiantly espoused the cause of the Prince 
 he had served so faithfully and so long. And yet 
 after Charles had laid his head upon the block, Sir 
 Kenelm is found living upon friendly terms with the 
 usurping Cromwell. Nay, worse, he appears to have 
 accepted the patronage of the Protector as the in- 
 iquitous price of a return from exile. And though, 
 maybe, he coquetted with his enemies, that the 
 Catholics might benefit by his subtlety, though he 
 retained until the end the friendship of Henrietta
 
 106 THEAGENES 
 
 Maria, none the less he profited by his defection, and 
 only his own casuistry could justify the lapse. But 
 you remember him as a colossus of vanity, who would 
 have smiled upon the blackest vice, if it were but his 
 own, until it seemed the onlv virtue ; as a pedant, 
 who corrected a priggish scholarship with a sense of 
 romance ; as a writer, who handled the English 
 language with a judicious pomp ; as a lover, who 
 remained constant to Venetia, even when scandal 
 had besmirched her fame. And if these glories be 
 not enough to win commendation, the most obdurate 
 must still respect the only inventor of the Sym- 
 pathetic Powder, the valiant and thrice-fortunate 
 victor of Scanderoon.
 
 THE REAL PEPYS
 
 THE REAL PEPYS 
 
 THERE are many books to which habit and per- 
 version have given an entirely false character. 
 We arrive at them through an irresponsible inter- 
 preter, who has clipped or embellished his original 
 in accordance with some personal whim. When 
 Galland published his Thousand and One Nights, he 
 revealed a world of phantasy and delight, which 
 pornographic pedantry will never abolish. Here, 
 indeed, is an enchantment far gayer than the truth ; 
 and none, with the memory of childhood clear and 
 strong, will appreciate the dismal accuracy of the 
 Benares Press. So, too, we who know not Omar 
 Khayyam in his native tongue, may rejoice at the 
 freedom of Edward FitzGerald, condemning neither 
 adornment nor inaccuracy. Whether Moore and 
 Murray did good or ill by the world, when they 
 destroyed Byron's own Memoirs, is still matter for 
 conjecture and controversy. But Pepys's Diary, 
 edited by Mr. Wheatley, has afforded us an in- 
 direct opportunity of seeing the bowdleriser at work, 
 and it is proved that in one instance at least the go- 
 between took a narrow view of his proper duty. 
 Now, when the transcription .of Pepys's Diary
 
 no THE REAL PEPYS 
 
 came into the hands of Lord Braybrooke, the Editor 
 had a unique occasion. For more than a century 
 and a half this priceless record had remained unde- 
 ciphered. Had he chosen, he might have displayed 
 Pepys's own incomparable portrait. But the time 
 (1825) was not favourable to daring enterprise, and 
 Lord Braybrooke daubed and slashed the picture, 
 until the Secretary to the Admiralty, the most many- 
 sided of men, was presented only in one or two 
 aspects. All that is most joyous and intimate was 
 ruthlessly torn away without warning or explanation. 
 'As he was in the habit of recording the most 
 trifling occurrences of his life, it became absolutely 
 necessary to curtail the MS. materially.' So said 
 the Editor, in complete misunderstanding of the 
 truth that that which seems most trifling is 
 commonly most valuable. Nor did Lord Braybrooke 
 explain even by a hint the real cause of suppression. 
 He does not acknowledge the fear of alarming the 
 Philistines. From his confession you might believe 
 that all the sprightliest passages of Pepys's life were 
 duly transcribed, and that you lost nothing save the 
 duller details of an official career. And presently 
 you discover that not only has he omitted every 
 syllable that could offend the chaste ear of a school- 
 girl, but he has also sacrificed a hundred delightfully 
 innocent passages. In truth, he had a feeble dis- 
 cernment of his hero's qualities. He even forewarns 
 his readers that they may not expect in the Diary 
 1 accuracy of style or finished composition.' As
 
 THE REAL PEPYS m 
 
 though Pepys's own dressing-gown and slippers were 
 not better fitted for their purpose than the gorgeous 
 satin of full dress ! 
 
 And yet, if Lord Braybroolce fell below the 
 Editor's opportunity, he followed the craft of the 
 eminent Bowdler with some success. His sin was 
 less than the man's who laid a heavy hand upon 
 Shakespeare, and at least he had a chance to escape 
 detection. Samuel Pepys had not then grown into 
 a classic ; the sacrilege was less public, less wanton. 
 And accordingly, there being none to find him out, 
 Lord Braybroolce invented a Pepys of his own. He 
 was not the real Samuel ; not only was he capable 
 of misunderstanding, he was generally misunderstood. 
 It was with a certain justification that he was de- 
 nounced as a mean-souled, pedantic miser. His 
 sterner foibles were displayed to the world's wonder- 
 ment ; his more genial traits were concealed without 
 apology. One thing only was realised even in Lord 
 Braybrooke's mutilation : the man's quaint and in- 
 comparably appropriate style. That became a 
 model and a heritage to generations that knew but 
 a fragment of the Diary. But it was Pepys's 
 appointed destiny to smile from the locked bookcase. 
 And Lord Braybrooke, stepping between Providence 
 and the world, laid the Diary upon the drawing- 
 room table. Not a mean achievement, and not 
 wholly unworthy. For Samuel Pepys is now a 
 universal possession. The child may read him (in 
 the timid pages of Braybrooke) and profit thereby,
 
 ii2 THE REAL PEPYS 
 
 while for the scholar is there not the freer version 
 of Mr. Myjiors Bright, and now the yet more 
 liberal edition of Mr. Wheatley ? 
 
 But even Mr. Wheatley, though he took 
 his courage in both hands, has fallen thirty 
 pages short of perfection. We are still cheated 
 of the complete Pepys, and the sin is the 
 worse because it is without reason. Mr. Wheatley 
 asks you to have faith in his judgment, and you can- 
 not. He has printed so much that it is difficult to 
 explain why he has omitted a line. The prude will 
 find his edition abominable, not only for coarseness 
 of speech, but for coarseness of fact. With an 
 admirable bravery, the editor has put down upon the 
 page the words which are heard at the street corner, 
 but are banished from literature ; nor has he scrupled 
 to record the lightest of the diarist's frailties. To 
 those who are not impure with the higher purity, 
 there is no offence in this frankness, and since this 
 latest edition is properly hedged about from popu- 
 larity by its price, there was no need of reticence. 
 But Mr. Wheatley has omitted thirty pages, and it 
 is impossible to withhold this single complaint, for 
 the very reason that Mr. Wheatley has come so near 
 to perfection. In all other respects the edition is 
 secure from reproach : the notes are miracles of 
 condensed information, and the Editor in suppressing 
 himself has consulted the best interests of his author. 
 Briefly, at last we are face to face with the real 
 Pepys, the most intimate and engaging personality
 
 THE REAL PEPYS 113 
 
 in literature ; and Mr. Wheatley's courage has not 
 only given us the most delightful of books, but has 
 done complete, if tardy, justice to the reputation of 
 Samuel Pepys. 
 
 Mr. Lowell once described the author of the Diary 
 as a Philistine, and the whole world of criticism does 
 not contain a falser judgment. Doubtless, this par- 
 ticular critic trusted implicitly to his Braybrooke, 
 when the fuller edition of Mr. Mynors Bright should 
 have enlightened him. And thus you may test the 
 infamy of bowdlerising, since no man has ever been 
 more wantonly misrepresented than Pepys. One 
 professional historian of English literature, I believe, 
 has discovered that the Secretary to the Admiralty 
 lacked enthusiasm! But even the edition of 1825 
 might have corrected this amazing fallacy. From 
 beginning to end Pepys's life was packed with enthu- 
 siasm : he wandered from one joyous sensation to 
 another ; and he never underrated the pleasure of the 
 moment. None save our professional historian would 
 condemn to a lack of enthusiasm the man who, after 
 an evening passed with Mrs. Pierce, Mrs. Knipp, and 
 his wife, wrote in his journal : ' I spent the night in 
 ecstasy almost, the best company for musique I ever 
 was in, and I wish I could live and die in it.' Is that 
 the utterance of a cold-blooded cynic ? 
 
 But Mr. Lowell's folly is yet more monstrous than 
 the professional historian's. The charge of Philistin- 
 ism has not the smallest warrant. A Philistine has 
 been defined as one insensible to the finer flavours of 
 
 H
 
 ii 4 THE REAL PEPYS 
 
 life ; and surely he must needs be narrow-minded, 
 prudish, pedantic, and hide-bound. Now, Pepys 
 was as free from the grimmer sins as any roysterer 
 that ever kissed a woman or pledged his King 
 in a glass of sack. No man was ever born into 
 England with so complete a disregard for those 
 depressing virtues bequeathed us by the Puritans. In 
 only one point could Mr. Lowell make good his 
 charge : it is obvious that Pepys was thrifty ; he was 
 penurious even in his amours. But though the love 
 of money may be the root of all evil, it is not the 
 inevitable result of Philistinism ; and nothing but 
 ignorance or a love of paradox could call this most 
 liberal lover, this keenest observer, this fiercest 
 glutton of pleasure, a Philistine. When critics play 
 such pranks as this, you doubt whether they have 
 mastered the art and science of reading. Here is 
 the gayest, most wayward of men exulting through 
 eight volumes in the lust of the eye and the glorifi- 
 cation of the senses ; and, while one pedant damns 
 him for a Philistine, another declares that he wants 
 enthusiasm ! 
 
 Lord Braybrooke, in his respect for the drawing- 
 room table, emphasised the few faults and minimised 
 the abundant virtues of this perfect worldling. And 
 the critics have been at small pains to correct their 
 childish impression by recent studies : the disjointed 
 fragments of the earlier editions persuaded the pedants 
 to laugh in their sleeve at the man they were 
 not allowed to understand. But misconception is
 
 THE REAL PEPYS 115 
 
 no longer excusable, and with Mr. Wheatlcv's aid 
 you may know Pepys better than you know yourself 
 or your most intimate friend. For Pepys is the one 
 familiar man in history : he knew himself, and, 
 more, he knew how to reveal himself to others. 
 He approached his subject in no mean spirit of 
 analysis ; he did not whittle away his emotions in 
 psychological anatomy. He kept a journal, but he 
 did not live up to it. Now such amateurs of auto- 
 biography as Marie Bashkirtseff never forget the 
 diary : they spend their days and their nights in 
 making 'copy' for their own record. They smirk 
 and squirm and posture that one more folly may be 
 written down at the day's end. But Pepys did not 
 sparkle through the day with his eye upon a 
 note-book. He went about his business, and he 
 rejoiced in his pleasure, without pose or forethought, 
 and when it was over, he found an added delight in 
 describing for his own eye the triumphs or failures 
 of the hour. 
 
 Above all, he is the frankest man in history : 
 he is frank even to himself. The veriest fool, the 
 commonest knave can cultivate an appearance of 
 frankness to the world. Pepys's achievement was 
 far higher and less simple. He looked at himself 
 with absolute straightforwardness, and could under- 
 stand his own vanities — could measure his own vices 
 without difficulty. He never seeks a fantastic 
 motive ; he never excuses the grossest wantonness. 
 He extenuates nothing — not even the faults of his
 
 n6 THE REAL PEPYS 
 
 friends. Here, then, is the one man we have been 
 permitted to know, as we shall never know ourselves. 
 Let us, then, make the most of him : let us do 
 homage to the one master of self-revelation that 
 history can furnish forth. 
 
 A lust of being and moving, of exercising his 
 senses to their utmost, governed his existence. 
 Unnumbered and innumerable are his crowded hours 
 of glorious life. The man who c is with child to 
 see any strange thing' is neither cynic nor Philistine. 
 Nothing came amiss to him. He was as pleased 
 with Sir George Ent's discourse upon l Respiration ' 
 as he was with the peerless beauty of Lady 
 Castlemaine. Only he must always be doing, or 
 hearing, or seeing some new thing. To-day he is 
 singing with Knipp, and listening with a hungry 
 ear to the praise of his famous song, ' Beauty, 
 Retire'; to-morrow he is discussing with Dr. 
 Whistler whether masts should be kept dry or 
 damp. Now he goes to Will's to meet 'Dryden 
 the poet (I knew at Cambridge)'; now he is 
 chaffering for cloves with some poor seamen in a 
 ' blind alehouse.' And all the while he is drinking 
 in life at its abundant source. His zest is almost 
 too violent, and you wonder how he could have 
 sustained, through many years of suffering, this 
 ferocious energy of enjoyment ; how he remained 
 firm in this dogged determination to miss no minute 
 of lapsing time. To his industry no transition 
 seemed abrupt : he turned from his mistress to his
 
 THE REAL PEPYS 117 
 
 accounts without weariness or regret, and no sooner 
 had he found an end of his figures than he was ready 
 to play again with all the spirit of a released schoolboy. 
 His philosophy was the most arrogant that ever a man 
 about town imagined. * Read every book,' he said in 
 eflect, 'see every play, empty every wine-cup, kiss 
 every woman.' And when he died, in all piety he 
 might have owned that he never missed an opportunity. 
 Alexander conquered the world ; Pepys, with a 
 keener, more selfish understanding of life, conquered 
 a world for every sense. He could not take a boat 
 without singing to the 'skuller' ; he could not meet 
 a Dutch bellman without taking his clapper in his 
 hand, without noting that 'it is just like the clapper 
 that our boys frighten the birds away from the corn 
 with in summer time in England.' 
 
 And in all his research, in all his desire to pene- 
 trate the mysteries of science, there is no touch of 
 pedantry. He was not one to encumber himself 
 with the impediments of useless knowledge. He 
 learnt all that he could with the lightest heart and 
 the merriest smile. For he had but two motives in 
 his life : pleasure and self-advancement. Mr. R. L. 
 Stevenson, the most valiant champion of Pepys and 
 his Diary, wrote, maybe in a moment of morbid 
 self-consciousness, that he was happy but once. 
 Samuel Pepys knew only the briefest interludes of 
 displeasure. For ten years he screamed aloud with 
 happiness, in so confident a tone that you wonder 
 that he was not always trying to dodge the
 
 n8 THE REAL PEPYS 
 
 nemesis of his own pleasures. ' In this humour 
 we sat till about ten at night,' he writes, of himself, 
 and Evelyn, and Sir J. Minnes, and my Lord 
 Bruncker — 'and so my Lord and his mistress 
 home, and we to bed, it being one of the times of 
 my life wherein I was the fullest of true sense of joy.' 
 * True sense of joy ' — is it not magnificent? And 
 the phrase may be matched upon every page. Yet 
 says the professional historian of literature : l Pepys 
 lacked enthusiasm ' ! 
 
 Nor was it part of his creed to put off" till to- 
 morrow what might be enjoyed to-day. His was the 
 Epicureanism of Horace. c Ciirpe diem ' he shouted 
 in his joyous voice. ' I do indulge myself a little 
 the more in pleasure,' said he by way of excuse 
 to himself, * knowing that this is the proper age 
 of my life to do it ; and out of my observation that 
 most men that do thrive in the world, do forget 
 to take pleasure during the time that they are getting 
 their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, 
 and then it is too late for them to enjoy it with any 
 pleasure.' So Pepys let not an hour pass un- 
 challenged, and by a youth of pleasure prepared an 
 old age of happiness. 
 
 He loved the amenities of life : art, music, a new 
 coat, the songs of birds, the river, the open air were 
 his perpetual delight. But before all things he 
 loved a pretty woman. At the outset he was but a 
 modest wooer. He once — it was on his return from 
 Delft — sat side by side with 'a pretty sober Dutch
 
 THE REAL PEPYS 119 
 
 lass,' and ' 1 could not fasten any discourse upon her,' 
 he declares in a bland confession of failure. During 
 the same journey to Holland he found ' a pretty 
 Dutch woman in bed alone,' and, 'though he had a 
 month's mind, he had not the boldness to go to her.' 
 But in a year's space his boldness was invincible. 
 And the Diary, as we know it at last, is a paean to 
 the triumph of love. He might have said with 
 truth that he never saw a pretty woman that he did 
 not salute. A bright eye lit up for him the darkest 
 sermon. The austerity of Church was but an 
 occasion for the ogling of beauty. For every woman 
 he has a magnificent phrase. ' Our noble, brave, fat 
 lady,' he calls Madame Lethulier, when he saw her 
 at church. Not even his bitterest enemy could 
 call his patriotism in question, and yet hot upon the 
 defeat of the Dutch fleet he writes: 'that which 
 pleased me as much as the newes was to have the 
 fair Mrs. Middleton at our church, who indeed is a 
 very beautiful lady.' Two qualities only did he 
 abhor in woman : avarice and that immodesty which 
 sets no barriers in the path of love. So he hated 
 Mrs. Lane with a freely expressed cordiality. For 
 not only was she too easy a mistress, but she 
 borrowed ^5 upon the firm security of ^4 10s. in 
 gold — a transaction whereat the business habits of 
 the excellent Pepys most properly revolted. 
 
 To kiss and tell is righteously esteemed the un- 
 pardonable sin. Yet Pepys kissed every day, and con- 
 fided the exploit to his Diary. And by the wittiest
 
 120 THE REAL PEPYS 
 
 inspiration of genius he made this ultimate confi- 
 dence, not in bald English, but in an infantile 
 jargon, wherein French and Spanish and Latin are 
 unequally blended. And you think that he em- 
 ployed this artifice, lest the secret journal, conscious 
 of his shame, should change its ink to a blushing 
 scarlet. Nowhere else does he reveal so openly 
 the master frailty of his temperament. The record 
 was (let us assume) for himself alone. His vanity 
 insisted that he should remind himself that he passed 
 the evening with Mrs. Bagwell or with Mrs. 
 Martin ; his honour whispered that it was monstrous 
 to tell the truth, intended only for his single eye, in 
 plain English. Wherefore he invented a lingo of his 
 own to salve a callous conscience. The contradic- 
 tion is exquisite and characteristic. In these poor 
 phrases of illegitimate French, you seem to catch 
 the cunning, casuistical brain of Samuel Pepys in 
 perfect action. Upon every page he reveals himself 
 with obvious intent ; here he lays bare his conscience 
 with an inadvertent subtlety. And the effect is 
 almost too acute. You are not merely looking over 
 his shoulder ; you seem to be guiding the hand that 
 writes. 
 
 By his own account a more general lover never 
 lived. He made his conquests on the highway or 
 in the kitchen. That he may dally with the wife> 
 he sends the husband forth to purchase wine, and 
 presently offers him a purser's place. When his 
 sister Pall would marry, he recommends Mr.
 
 THE REAL PEPYS 121 
 
 Harman the upholsterer, ' to whom I have a great 
 love, and did heretofore love his former wife.' But to 
 be found out was in his eyes a cardinal sin. And 
 when Creed disgraced himself at Oxford, Pepys was 
 the first to condemn his indiscretion. Now and 
 again a wave of penitence swept over the golden 
 sands of his complacency. ' Musique and women,' 
 he acknowledges, with regret, 'I cannot but give 
 way to, whatever my business is.' And again : ' I 
 observe the folly of my mind that cannot refrain 
 from pleasure.' Even his good resolutions are made 
 but to be broken. ' I have made an oathe,' says he 
 one day, 'for the drinking of no wine, &c, on such 
 penalties till I have passed my accounts and cleared 
 all.' And in a week he confesses that he has broken 
 his oath 'without pleasure.' 'Without pleasure' — 
 that is the one phrase in the book that I am 
 persuaded to mistrust. For the first and last time 
 Pepys seems to be posing, to be cutting an antic 
 before a mirror. Had he said the wine was bad, 
 you had understood him. Were the wine good, you 
 know that, oath or no oath, Pepys would have 
 delighted in it. 
 
 Yet amidst all the frivolity and selfishness of his 
 time, Pepys remained a patriot. While the Dutch 
 were threatening our coasts, the Secretary's mind 
 was troubled the more if it rained, ' to think what 
 the sailors would do on board in all this weather.' 
 When the Plague drove all save heroes and paupers 
 from London, Pepys remained at his post in the very
 
 i22 THE REAL PEPYS 
 
 best of good humours, serving his country with un- 
 bated zeal. In a hopelessly corrupt age, he took no 
 more commissions than should satisfy his necessities ; 
 and the glory of the British fleet overcame in his re- 
 gard the plumpest cheek, the most provoking eye. 
 But his services to the country — are they not told in 
 Lord Braybrooke's chastened page, and heightened 
 by many an entertaining contrast in Mr. Wheatley's 
 more spirited version ? 
 
 Was Pepys an artist ? This is the question which 
 has grimly agitated the critics. Yet the answer 
 seems easy : assuredly he was. He understood the 
 art of life incomparably well. He never opposed his 
 absorbing greed of sensation ; he bent all the sterner 
 considerations of time to the full enjoyment of the 
 moment. And the severest critic will hardly detect 
 a single fault in the interpretation of his wishes. He 
 was an artist also in frankness, in that rare quality 
 which, despite (or on account of) its simplicity, is far 
 more difficult of attainment than the highest heaven. 
 The artistic result of which is that he has given us 
 such a picture of a man as is approached nowhere 
 else than in Boswell's Life of Johnson. Once it was 
 fashionable to believe, with Macaulay, that Boswell's 
 was an idiot grinning through a horse-collar. It is 
 still popular to assert that Pepys is a garrulous brag- 
 gart, who has amused the nineteenth century by 
 accident. But in the world of art accidents do not 
 happen, and the peculiar excellence of the Diary is 
 as firmly intentioned as a play by Shakespeare or a 
 lyric by Tennyson.
 
 THE REAL PEPYS 123 
 
 Pepys set out to give himself a finished record 
 of his life, and while his modesty shrank from 
 immediate publication, he doubtless intended posterity 
 to enjoy the fruit of his ceaseless labour. That the 
 manuscript, with its cipher explained, should have 
 been carefully and generously bequeathed to Mag- 
 dalene College is proof positive that Pepys had a 
 certain conscious respect for his own work. Had 
 the journal been the idle, lazy vapourings of an 
 amiable loafer, it would have been destroyed 
 before its indiscretions could have annoyed a wonder- 
 ing world. But the journal was the one, long, 
 deliberate effort of Pepys's life, and it is idle to deny 
 the title of artist to the man who has drawn the 
 living portrait of a living man. 
 
 Even by his style, Samuel Pepys may claim the 
 august title. For its very looseness is perfectly 
 appropriate. He had already made an experiment 
 in literature, when, at Cambridge, he began his 
 romance Love a Cbeate. And if, as he said, he had 
 lost one vein, most assuredly he found another. His 
 mannerisms, his monotony, his constant mse of the 
 stereotyped phrases of the day, give to his Diary an 
 air of reality which a more deliberate method would 
 have missed. And, as I have said, it is the fuller 
 edition which has displayed his art in the strongest 
 light. Nor has the candour of Mr. Wheatley de- 
 prived a single human being of legitimate pleasure. 
 Though for us the old Pepys is dead, though not 
 even a professor will ever dare again to call him
 
 i2 4 THE RKAL PEPYS 
 
 either Philistine or cold-blooded, the scant broken 
 transcription of Lord Braybrooke may still adorn the 
 schoolroom and the home. And at last the locked 
 bookcase is the richer by a genuine and deathless 
 version of an incomparable classic.
 
 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 I
 
 SAINT-SIMON 
 I. — Himself. 
 
 LOUIS DE ROUVROY, Due dc Saint-Simon, 
 was born old, the son of an old father. His 
 earliest years were devoted less to the trivial sports of 
 childhood than to the study of science and history, 
 and when at the age of sixteen he put on the uniform 
 of the Grey Musketeers he was not only a scholar 
 but a man of the world. He records his presentation 
 to the King with his habitual irony and circumspec- 
 tion. It was at half-past twelve on the day of Saint 
 Simon and Saint Jude, in 1691, that he made his first 
 bow. The King, finding him small and delicate, 
 objected that he was still very young. ' He will 
 serve your Majesty the longer,' replied his father 
 with an old-fashioned loyalty to which the more 
 punctilious and wayward son never attained. And, 
 though his service was neither long nor constant, 
 he advanced rapidly in the Royal favour. Three 
 months after he was admitted Musketeer he 
 mounted guard at Compiegne ; he was equipped 
 with thirty-five horses, innumerable servants, and 
 as much money as he cared to spend ; while his
 
 ia8 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 rank admitted him instantly to the narrow circle of 
 the Court. So that at seventeen he had danced his 
 first step before a brilliant assembly in the King's 
 palace with the accomplished Mademoiselle de 
 Sourches for a partner, and he had already mastered 
 the recondite secrets of etiquette and genealogy. 
 
 His character and career show no progress, ;or 
 rather his youth was never immature. What he was 
 at forty, that he was already at nineteen — set, hard- 
 wired, and bitter-tongued. So long as he remained 
 a soldier his courage and energy were unquestioned. 
 He distinguished himself by five dashing charges at 
 Neerwinden, where he not only outstripped his 
 escort but tired two horses. Nevertheless he speedily 
 discovered that warfare was not his profession. The 
 long idleness of a dragging campaign was insupport- 
 able to his restless spirit. He found his brother 
 soldiers coarse and slatternly ; they understood his 
 ambitions as little as they respected his serene arro- 
 gance ; and though he was a captain at eighteen, 
 and a year later had purchased a regiment of cavalry, 
 his curiosity drove him rather to the Court than to 
 the field. 
 
 Indeed, his first campaign was no sooner over 
 than he was ambitious of a distinguished alliance, 
 and he set about marrying himself with the cold 
 blood of a professional matchmaker and the cunning 
 of an ancient diplomatist. He went forth upon his 
 love-making without excitement and without passion. 
 His terrific precocity put pleasure and sentiment far
 
 SAINT-SIMON 129 
 
 from him. The wooing well became one who had 
 never sown a handful of wild oats, and who would 
 never be influenced by any tenderer emotion than 
 pride and expedience. He began, in fact, by select- 
 ing his father-in-law, and so far he could not have 
 been more wisely guided. For the Due de Beau- 
 villiers was a Marshal of France and governor of the 
 Due de Bourgogne, so that he would possess not 
 only the will but the power to help a favoured son- 
 in-law. Saint-Simon instantly realised the advantage, 
 and there is not the smallest hint that he was swayed 
 by affection, admiration, or the desire of happiness. 
 He was a duke ; he was wealthy ; he was out of 
 debt. He expected no dowry, and he was indifferent 
 to beauty. But he would marry into a powerful 
 family ; upon that he was resolved at nineteen ; 
 wherefore he boldly waited upon M. de Beauvilliers, 
 and exposed his ambition without phrase or hesi- 
 tation. 
 
 The father was flattered by the attention thus 
 paid to his daughters and to his house, and if only 
 he had had a marriageable daughter all would have 
 been well. But Saint-Simon, in spite of his cir- 
 cumspection, had aspired to the unattainable. For 
 the eldest girl — she was but fourteen — had already 
 determined to espouse the Church ; the second 
 was deformed ; the third was a child of twelve. 
 The young Saint-Simon was unabashed : if the 
 eldest were vowed to religion, he would content 
 himself with the third. After all age was of little 
 1
 
 130 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 account, and did not the late Due de Martemont 
 marry the sister-in-law of M. de Beauvilliers himself 
 when she had not turned her thirteenth year ? So 
 he had a precedent ready for the most desperate 
 emergency, and it was not his fault that M. de 
 Beauvilliers dismissed him with a courtly acknow- 
 ledgment of gratitude. Moreover, Saint-Simon had 
 won his end. If he could not espouse Mademoiselle 
 de Beauvilliers, he had won the family ; his hand- 
 some compliment had attached the friendship of her 
 father, and thus he was free to marry Mademoiselle 
 de Lorges without sacrificing the support of a great 
 soldier and a Royal favourite. 
 
 A boy who could thus formulate his opinion of life 
 was evidently devoid neither of cynicism nor conceit, 
 and his second exploit immensely increased his fame. 
 M. de Luxembourg, returning to Paris flushed with 
 victory, claimed to be placed over the heads of seven- 
 teen dukes, who hitherto had taken precedence of 
 him. Here was a crisis, which instantly attracted 
 the energies of Saint-Simon, who, young as he was, 
 felt that the privileges of his order were attacked. 
 Without pity or fatigue he flouted the pretensions of 
 M. de Luxembourg, and in thus early leading the 
 opposition he buckled to himself a band of enemies 
 who never forgot nor forgave. The young Quixote 
 cared not : he saw his order affronted, and a passion- 
 ate admiration of the ducal body was as strong in his 
 heart as the love of the Church. He fought the 
 fight against the superior odds of King and Parlia-
 
 SAINT-SIMON 131 
 
 mcnt and he lost. But the failure did not abate his 
 sense of honour and well-doing : he never was recon- 
 ciled to M. de Luxembourg, and his first experiment 
 in militant egoism gave him that eager taste for the 
 fray which he lost only with death. 
 
 Meanwhile, his fortunate alliance with the family 
 of the Marechal de Lorges had bettered his position 
 at Court, and it was already the part of envious 
 intrigue to oppose his advance. The narrow world 
 in which he had elected to live resented his assump- 
 tion of superior pride as bitterly as they feared the 
 sting of his malignant tongue. Before long he saw 
 all hopes of military advancement eclipsed. His 
 own regiment was taken from him, and his juniors 
 placed unscrupulously over his head. Now, no man 
 ever sat down less lightly under an injury than 
 Saint-Simon. Was he not a duke, who conferred a 
 glory upon the army by his presence ? None the 
 less, he hesitated many a weary month, lamenting the 
 prospect of enforced laziness, and those long summers 
 of inactivity, when all men should speak of war, 
 glory and promotion. Besides, he declares that he 
 had caught the enthusiasm of his trade, that he 
 already dreamt of victory and fame; and though, 
 perhaps, he was here guilty of self-deception, he 
 determined to resign only after long and mature 
 reflection. 
 
 The occasion, in truth, was not one for haste. 
 The Due de Saint-Simon proposed to resign his 
 commission, and surely so vast a decision could
 
 i 3 2 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 not be easily framed. With all his own incom- 
 parable sense of dignity, he appointed a board of 
 reference (so to say), which, consisting of three 
 marshals and three eminent courtiers, was capable 
 of passing an honourable sentence. With no dis- 
 sentient voice they agreed that Saint-Simon should 
 leave the service, which had failed to treat him with 
 becoming respect. A duke and peer, well established 
 in the world, as was Saint-Simon, could not conde- 
 scend to serve like a common runaway, and to see 
 a rift-raff mob put over his head. Wherefore, said 
 his friends, he owed to his order an instant resigna- 
 tion. Still he wavered : j'ai besoin, says he, de ma 
 colere et de man depit, qualities which never failed him, 
 and he realised with regret that the King's fury was 
 inevitable. 
 
 At length, however, the letter was written, which 
 ascribed his resignation to ill-health, and a multitude 
 of friends was set to discover the attitude of the 
 King. Louis, who was never so magnificent as when 
 he accepted a blow attracted by his own imprudence, 
 spoke of it but once. £7;, bien, monsieur^ said he to 
 Chamillart, voila encore un homme qui nous qulttc. 
 With this superb reticence there was no argument, 
 and Saint-Simon was driven to a false position. Nor 
 did the King pause on the road of humiliation. He 
 overwhelmed Saint-Simon by a single act of polite- 
 ness, and then left him in silence for two years. 
 Now, the King possessed before all men the art of 
 giving importance to trifles, and he was wont to
 
 SAINT-SIMON 133 
 
 show his esteem by permitting a favoured courtier 
 to hold his candle as he went to bed. Only those of 
 the highest rank were chosen to perform this in- 
 timate service. Ambassadors, save the Papal Nuncio, 
 were rarely thus flattered, and it was with astonish- 
 ment that Saint-Simon, purposely retired to the 
 background, heard his name pronounced on the eve 
 of his retirement. But he held the candle, and 
 henceforth endured the displeasure of the King, 
 who would neither address him nor, save by accident, 
 cast even a casual glance upon him. 
 
 Retired from the army, Saint-Simon had no re- 
 source but the Court, and at the Court he was 
 received with declared chagrin. The King no 
 longer bade him to Marly, and even at Versailles 
 encountered him unwillingly. But it was only in 
 the close air of the Court that Saint-Simon could 
 breathe, and, despite his monarch's displeasure, he 
 did not begin the real work of his life until he had 
 laid aside his captain's uniform. Moreover, by 
 degrees the King's anger abated ; and his wife's 
 tact, together with his own intrigue, recaptured 
 him a semblance at least of the Royal favour. 
 
 Saint-Simon was born into the world an animated 
 peerage. For him a knowledge of ceremony and 
 precedence was the essential of a duke's career, and 
 there was nobody of distinction either above or 
 below his own rank. The throne was useful as the 
 expression of the ducal power ; the people was useful 
 because it could work for the ducal pleasure. The
 
 134 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 one and the other were but complements, and the 
 smallest infraction of the ducal dignity was a danger 
 to the State. To preserve this dignity in its be- 
 coming place the most punctilious diligence was 
 necessary, and Saint-Simon worshipped the forms 
 of ceremonial life with a keener devotion than 
 Amadis de Gaul brought to the cult of chivalry. 
 He forgot that the pomp of the Court did but 
 facilitate the progress of the kingly chariot, and in 
 this forgetfulness he esteemed it a separate and 
 necessary enterprise. 
 
 So in his eyes the Court existed for pageantry's 
 sake ; so in the enthusiasm of a courtier he valued 
 the means above the end. With all sincerity he 
 believed that the set of a wig or the colour of a 
 hat was of more importance than policy or valour. 
 When Lauzun persuaded the Marechal de Tesse to 
 appear before his monarch in a grey hat, Saint-Simon 
 is no less indignant at the outrage than his monarch. 
 The folly of a Master of the Ceremonies who per- 
 mitted a debutante to kiss the Duchesse de Bour- 
 gogne's cheek aroused a fiercer anger in his breast 
 than Marlborough's most brilliant victory. The 
 appointment of a maid-of-honour was to him of far 
 higher interest than the generalship of a campaign. 
 But it were foolish and unjust to reproach Saint- 
 Simon with the loyal pursuit of his duty. Narrow 
 as was his ideal, he worshipped it with a fidelity and 
 a courage which make ridicule unjust and contempt 
 impossible. He discussed the one burning question
 
 SAINT-SIMON 135 
 
 of his life, whether he should or should not leave 
 Court, with the same contracted persistence which 
 Panurge brought to the subject of marriage. But 
 his persistence was honourable and wise. At Court 
 he could exercise his best gifts, his most brilliant 
 talents; away from the Court he was a musician 
 deprived of his instrument, a knight stripped for ever 
 of the accoutrements of war. 
 
 Not merely did he cherish a lofty ideal. He was 
 born into the world with a perfect knowledge of 
 his art. There was no question of etiquette or pro- 
 priety which he could not decide at a first hearing, 
 and so faithfully did he follow his conviction that he 
 would never permit an infraction of the law he knew 
 so well. Hence was derived much of his inevitable 
 unpopularity. He was infallible, and the world — 
 even the world of Louis xiv. — hates infallibility. 
 The traps laid to foil his knowledge were innumer- 
 able, and never once was he caught by the jester. 
 On the day of his reception by Parliament he was 
 purposely misinformed as to his costume. But the 
 greffier wasted his breath. Saint-Simon could not 
 have been deceived even in his cradle by the most 
 accomplished student of etiquette. Thus he lived 
 in the proud consciousness of infallibility — the one 
 courtier of France, from whom no detail of genea- 
 logy, procedure, or precedent could ever be concealed. 
 And his pride is pardonable for its splendid sincerity. 
 Some there are who devote themselves to sport or 
 literature. Others can quicken a sluggish interest
 
 136 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 <-'iily in a tumult of affairs. Saint-Simon, the secret 
 of his Memoirs being kept, posed before the world 
 for a touchstone of correctness. Nor may the most 
 censorious do more than lift his hat in the presence 
 of a master, and acknowledge that in one corner of 
 human intelligence Saint-Simon was, and will always 
 remain, unrivalled. 
 
 Of course his superiority procured him enemies, 
 and even had he not angered the King by his early 
 retirement from the army he could not have lived 
 on terms of constant amity with le Roi Soleil. While 
 his knowledge and independence made him a bad 
 subject, he was incapable of the flattery which could 
 alone have won for him the esteem of his Sovereign, 
 and his active life is a record of quarrel and dispute. 
 He stood, the personification of ducal rectitude, 
 against the world. And ducal rectitude persuaded 
 him to hate the King, Madame de Maintenon {cette 
 viellle fee he calls Her Solidity), and all the race of 
 Royal bastards. In truth, there was nothing in the 
 wide world that he hated so bitterly as a bastard, and if 
 his heart had become the slate of destiny, there is no 
 doubt what word would have been inscribed thereon. 
 Thus his quarrel with the King grew apace, and a 
 hundred attempts at reconciliation were thwarted by 
 the intrigue of Madame de Maintenon. Yet Saint- 
 Simon never lost courage ; again and again he would 
 have compelled an understanding by a personal inter- 
 view. And when you remember the terrifying eye 
 and the awful majesty of the Great King, you can
 
 SAINT-SIMON 137 
 
 appreciate the intrepidity of this insolent duke. 
 'Since you left my service,' said the King, 'you 
 think of nothing but studying ranks and of bringing 
 actions against all the world. If I were wise, I 
 would see you so far off that you would not worry 
 me for a long time.' 
 
 Saint-Simon stood firm even against this pitiless 
 rebuke. Rather he took it to his own glory that he 
 had protected the rank of his peers ; he raised his 
 voice against the King's, that all the Court might 
 hear, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that 
 the King felt the rectitude of his argument. For a 
 while his position was easier, but the cabal of the 
 Lorraines and the bastards would not grant him 
 peace, and every year he is found appealing to the 
 King's justice. And the King each time resents 
 the duke's 'attachment to his dignity,' and each time 
 grants him a reluctant reconciliation. ' It is your 
 own fault,' he said on another occasion, ' you talk 
 and you blame, and that is the reason why all the 
 world speaks against you. If you had never occupied 
 yourself with rank, there would have been nothing 
 to say.' 
 
 But Saint-Simon did occupy himself with rank, and 
 he would have sacrificed the King's favour to his 
 never-failing sense of duty. However, the service 
 which he rendered to the realm by separating the 
 Due d'Orleans from Madame d'Argenton helped to 
 make a final peace, and he returned to Court with 
 all the air of an injured hero. He did not attribute
 
 138 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 the glory of his return to his own tact. His gene- 
 rosity gave the credit, where it was due, to his wife, 
 whose popularity had never been dimmed even by 
 her husband's petulance. i What a treasure,' he 
 exclaims, 'is a sensible and virtuous wife ! ' But his 
 restoration to Court abated his hostility to the 
 bastards not a whit. Asked to accept the friendship 
 of M. du Maine, he was virtuously indignant. 
 'Never will I shake their hand,' he replied with 
 fervour ; ' I hate them, and I hate their rank.' 
 
 Even when the sons of M. du Maine received the 
 crowning honour of their father's rank, he offered 
 the necessary congratulations with a breaking heart. 
 i This scene,' he confesses, * was the most novel and 
 singular of the whole reign for those who knew the 
 King and his intoxication of omnipotence. Enter- 
 ing his cabinet at Versailles, and the order given as 
 usual, he advanced gravely into his second cabinet, 
 and placed himself near his arm-chair without sitting 
 down, slowly passed his eyes over the whole company, 
 and, without addressing any one, declared that he 
 gave to the children of M. du Maine the same rank 
 and the same honours as M. du Maine himself 
 possessed ; and without a moment's interval he marched 
 to the furthest end of the cabinet, calling to himself 
 Monseigneur and the Due de Bourgogne. There, 
 for the first time in his life, this proud monarch, 
 this severe and masterful father, humiliated himself 
 before his son and his grandson. He implored them, 
 as they were both to reign after him, to grant the
 
 SAINT-SIMON 139 
 
 rank to the children of the Due du Maine which he 
 had given them, and to pay this tribute to the 
 tenderness which he flattered himself they felt for 
 him, and which he felt both for the father and the 
 children.' Thus the King drank the dregs of 
 humiliation to the hushed silence of his son and 
 grandson ; thus Saint-Simon enjoyed the secret 
 pleasure of his Sovereign's sole discomfiture, a 
 pleasure tempered by the subsequent compliment 
 extorted from his ducal majesty. But his hatred 
 knew no abatement, and even when he had helped 
 to compass the bastards' ruin, he still hardened his 
 heart mercilessly against them. 
 
 Meanwhile he had won the friendship of the Due 
 d'Orle'ans, a friendship which contrived his solitary 
 appearance upon the active stage of politics, and 
 which gave him at last a recognised position. His 
 influence over this self-indulgent prince is as evident 
 as his fidelity, and a fleeting admiration for the 
 Due de Bourgogne did not break the bond which 
 united Philip and the courtier. Doubtless, had the 
 Due de Bourgogne lived to succeed his grandfather, 
 Saint-Simon would have become famous as the framer 
 or a constitution. For his confessed hobby was 
 politics, and, had he possessed the power, he would 
 have reformed the whole realm of France to suit the 
 legitimate ambition of her dukes. But the Due de 
 Bourgogne died, and France was allowed to drift into 
 the Revolution without the check which Saint-Simon 
 might have set upon her progress. None the less,
 
 140 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 the death of Louis xiv. gave him his supreme 
 opportunity. With his aid thu King's testament 
 was set aside, the bastards at last suffered a merited 
 disgrace, and the Due d'Orleans was proclaimed 
 Regent. Such was the moment of Saint-Simon's 
 triumph. For this he had endured the ill-will of the 
 Great King, and tolerated the insolence of Madame 
 de Maintenon ; for this he had borne the imper- 
 tinence of courtiers, who would still chaff him con- 
 cerning order and precedence. At last he saw the 
 illegitimate children of his King driven into obscur- 
 ity, and was content. 
 
 It was a brilliant victory, which soon put him 
 out of conceit with a public life. He, who had 
 the right to ask so much, asked nothing ; he refused 
 the guardianship of the infant King, and, doubtless 
 with a swift recollection of that embassy to Rome 
 from which he had been ousted by Madame de 
 Maintenon's intrigue, he accepted the one serious 
 employment of his life — a mission to Madrid. There 
 he acquitted himself with the tact and intelligence 
 expected of an accomplished courtier, and there he 
 drew that series of vivid pictures which are a title 
 to immortality. With his embassy to Madrid his 
 public life was finished. The death of the Regent 
 drove him from the Court, and henceforth he devoted 
 himself to a country life and the preparation of his 
 renowned Memoirs. Moreover, the life of Paris had 
 no longer an interest for him. He belonged to the 
 ancient France of Henry iv. and Louis xiil. The
 
 SAINT-SIMON 141 
 
 brilliance of Louis xiv., which he witnessed himself, 
 was but an interlude, and he had little sympathy with 
 the age of reason heralded by Voltaire and Diderot. 
 
 Indeed his hasty references to Voltaire are sufficient 
 to demonstrate the spirit of intolerance wherewith he 
 approached the newest literature of his age. ' Arouet, 
 the son of a notary who served my father and myself 
 until his death, was exiled and sent to Tulle for a set 
 of verses very satirical and very impudent. I would 
 not amuse myself by recording this trifle had not this 
 same Arouet, now grand poet and Academician, under 
 the name of Voltaire, become, in consequence of many 
 tragic adventures, a kind of personage in the republic 
 of letters, and even a kind of somebody in a certain 
 society.' Such is his reference to Voltaire — twice- 
 made. And this intolerance did not proceed from a 
 lack of literary appreciation. It merely meant that 
 an aged courtier did not understand the wit and in- 
 telligence of a strange world, into which he had 
 wandered by the accident of a long life. Thus he 
 tottered towards the grave in the retirement of his 
 country seat, so little mindful of his former dignity 
 that (says rumour) he sat without his wig because 
 c his head smoked.' But those Memoirs were already 
 written which were destined to make his character 
 and genius a part of the world's inheritance. 
 
 His character, which we know as intimately as if 
 he had sketched it in a page of his own mordant 
 prose, was shaped by his age. Saint-Simon, as he 
 reveals himself, could have flourished only at the
 
 i 4 2 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 Court of Louis xiv. He needed an atmosphere of 
 sumptuous frivolity for the proper development of 
 his qualities ; and it is his noblest distinction that in 
 his eyes the prevailing frivolity, sumptuous as it was, 
 always escaped the reproach of folly and irrelevance. 
 When the King died, his historian has scarce a word 
 to say of his policy or prowess. But he devotes all 
 his eloquence to the proper description of the Royal 
 uprising, the putting on of the Royal boots, the 
 Royal supper-table, and the Royal retirement to 
 rest. Even patriotism is merged in the pious obser- 
 vation of a courtly manner, and you feel that it 
 matters not a jot that M. du Maine shows the white 
 feather at the head of the army so long as the Roi 
 Soleil sinks to the west in august magnificence. A 
 single custom of the Court — the distinction of the 
 pour — gives us an insight into the dominant punctilio. 
 Over the apartment of the Princes of the Blood, the 
 Cardinals, and foreign Princes was written pour M. 
 tin Tel. Over the apartments of lesser personages 
 stood the bald legend M. un Tel, and this simple word 
 pour was responsible for many an argument and much 
 ill-humour. The distinction could not have survived 
 without the support of an invincible tradition, and 
 the wisest courtier may be pardoned if he saw all 
 things in a whimsical relation. But Saint-Simon 
 outstripped the vainest of his contemporaries. For 
 him nothing was unimportant that had its sanction 
 in the habit of princes. 
 
 Above all, he was a man of principle. For his
 
 SAINT-SIMON 143 
 
 precedence before the Due de Richelieu, for the exclu- 
 sion of Capitaine de Rouvroy from his family, for the 
 proper service of the King's Commission, he would 
 willingly have sacrificed his life. Never once in his 
 blameless career did he give ground on the field of 
 ceremony, and it was this peculiar sense of devotion 
 that made him the best-hated man of his time The 
 staunch champion of his order, he won the dislike of 
 high and low. Madame de Maintenon denounced 
 him for a frondeur, full of views. Madame, bolder 
 than the rest, turned him to public ridicule. Once 
 when he was taking his seat at dinner before the 
 Prince de Deux-Ponts, she said aloud : ' How is it 
 that M. de Saint-Simon presses the Prince de Deux- 
 Ponts so close ? Would he beg him to take one of 
 his sons for his page ? ' D'Argenson, more violent 
 still, called him ce petit devot sans genie, and in a 
 fury denounced ' his odious, unjust, anthropophagous 
 character.' But Saint-Simon was indifferent to 
 censure. The best hater of his time, he paid all such 
 insolence with contempt, and quickly added another 
 portrait to his incomparable gallery. 
 
 So loyal was he to the principle of his life that 
 vice was as remote from his character as gaiety. 
 How should he be gay in a Court devoted to pomp 
 — a Court which found its solitary relief in indelicate 
 horseplay ? And of vice he was intolerant even in 
 others. So virtuous was he, in brief, that he seems 
 almost too good ; and the supreme gravity of his 
 demeanour, his perpetual ambition to win the friend-
 
 144 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 ship of older men than himself, might have involved 
 him in the reproach of priggishness. But his talent 
 saved him from this last disgrace, and his unfailing 
 tact, his perfect discretion, forced respect even from 
 his enemies. He was, moreover, a gentleman of 
 perfect courage, who never feared to face the anger 
 of his Sovereign, and so vast was his capacity for 
 righteous indignation, that he was never known to 
 excuse a friend or forgive an enemy. 
 
 Where he loved, he loved with a loyal generosity 
 which was not common in his world of cynicism 
 and selfishness. He would have laid down his life 
 for Beauvilliers ; he clung to Chamillart, even in 
 his disgrace ; and he mourned Ranee, the sincere 
 admiration of his youth, with a simple pathos, which 
 dignity almost withheld from expression. Then, 
 too, his honesty was beyond question. He confesses 
 that he has a horror of making money at Court, and 
 with all his opportunity of gain he lived and died 
 with hands unsullied by avarice. His wisdom 
 matched his virtue. He was born with a perfect 
 knowledge of mankind. At nineteen he had mastered 
 all the mysteries of conduct and intrigue,and through- 
 out his career he never made a mistake through lack 
 of foresight or intelligence. 
 
 In brief, he was a virtuous, fantastic, proud, in- 
 tolerant, lettered, upright, courageous, cynical, im- 
 placable, pious gentleman, who would have fought 
 king; or devil in defence of his Church or his order. 
 Had he ever been placed near the throne he would
 
 SAINT-SIMON 145 
 
 have clipped the sovereign power for the glory 
 of the dukes, since, with all his contempt of the 
 people, he was in a sense the enemy of the Crown ; 
 and it is common to assert that his policy of ducal 
 aggrandisement prepared the way for the downfall 
 of kings and the advent of democracy. Yet, maybe, 
 he was prophet enough to sec that the power of the 
 great families might stem the tide of revolution in 
 France, as in England, and at least he fought the 
 battle of his order with a constancy none the less 
 admirable for its conspicuous egoism. 
 
 He left the army too early for the display of his 
 skill, and the death of the Due de Bourgogne took 
 from him his one chance of political experiment. So 
 that he lives neither as soldier nor as statesman. 
 But he has a far better title to immortality : he was 
 a man of genius. Though his contemporaries knew 
 it not, he was preparing an ample revenge for their 
 neglect and antipathy. In brief, he was writing the 
 history of himself and his age, as no man ever wrote 
 it before or since. From his earliest youth he had 
 been attached to the study of Memoirs, and it was 
 Bassompierre whose example first spurred him to 
 emulation. His resolve was taken atGaw-Boecklheim, 
 and it was to solace the tedium of a long campaign 
 that he first sat him down to relate whatever was 
 memorable in his life. With characteristic precocity, 
 he began the real work of his life at the age of nine- 
 teen, and for thirty years there is scarce a day without 
 its record. 
 
 K
 
 146 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 The result is a piece of history and biography un- 
 exampled in the world's literature. It is impossible 
 adequately to praise this vast canvas with its crowd 
 of figures, each one outlined by the firm hand of a 
 master. Saint-Simon was not a mere autobiographer. 
 He was determined to give the world something else 
 than the revelation of a personage, and so he painted 
 the grandiose Court of Louis xiv. with all its splen- 
 dour and all its vanity. He has spared nobody, least 
 of all himself; he has displayed his hatreds and con- 
 tempts in the most vivid colours, and as he hated 
 like a strong man his picture is never in monotone ; 
 but, on the other hand, he has sketched, not always 
 with a light hand, his own follies and foibles, and 
 though he bitterly resented the reproof of others, it 
 is plain that he kept an open eye upon his passion 
 for rank and dignity. In brief, he will always remain 
 the most candid historian of his epoch, and no other 
 epoch has ever found so brilliant a commentator. 
 His grasp of detail is miraculous ; nothing escapes 
 his all-seeing eye ; and he seems to have understood 
 the motives as well as the actions of men. 
 
 He worked, he said in a letter to Ranee, only for 
 himself, for a few of his friends during his life, and 
 for whomsoever would after his death, so that he 
 determined to spare nobody on any consideration 
 whatever. He believed that his struggle against 
 the pretension of M. de Luxembourg would be the 
 bitterest chapter in his book ; but he had not then felt 
 the whole strength of his reproof, and he assuredly
 
 SAINT-SIMON 147 
 
 surpassed his earliest invective in vigour and magni- 
 ficence. Before all things he claims in his epilogue 
 the merit of truth. The love of truth, he avows, 
 has ruined his career, and he claims to pursue it with 
 double ardour in his Memoirs. On the score of 
 impartiality he is far less arrogant. ' The Stoic,' says 
 he, ' is a fine and noble chimera.' Wherefore he 
 does not boast an impartial temper. 'I should do it 
 in vain,' he confesses with excellent sense, and when 
 this fierce contemner of his fellows is moved by 
 prejudice or drawn by admiration, he tells you his 
 predilection. Even when he has thrown his affection 
 into one scale, he levels the balance by weighing the 
 other with his conspicuous honesty. 
 
 He has achieved the greatest triumph of the writer : 
 he has produced a true and large effect by a multi- 
 plicity of details. The details never disturb a pro- 
 longed contemplation, because they are kept most 
 scrupulously in their place. His method was rather 
 that of the historian than of the biographer. He 
 does not, after the fashion of Pepys, attempt to 
 render the sights and sounds of the day. Where 
 vision is defective, he supplements it by inquiry and 
 imagination. Nor does he attempt to render the 
 gradual development of his character and inclination. 
 A serious historian set down to the deliberate pro- 
 duction of a masterpiece, he has given to his work a 
 consistent and homogeneous quality. His notes 
 were taken day by day, but the finished work was 
 produced after the stress of long study and con-
 
 i 4 8 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 sideration. So sternly does he eliminate what he 
 thought trivial that he tells you nothing of those 
 intimacies which delight you in the page of Bassom- 
 pierre. You never hear how he was troubled to 
 procure a coat or to woo a lady. On the other 
 hand, you watch the great panorama of empire as it 
 unrolls itself with splendour and ceremony. The 
 amplitude of the impression never contracts. You 
 are face to face with the majeste ejf'rayante of the 
 Great King j you shudder at the ' false prudery ' of 
 Madame de Maintenon ; you share the author's dis- 
 gust at the intolerable viciousness of M. de Vendome ; 
 and all the while you appreciate the perfect con- 
 science, the inspired intuition of the man, who saw 
 even that which was closest to him. 
 
 His own pride was that his Memoirs were first 
 hand, and de source ; and his pride was justified. As 
 to their reception he was indifferent. ' It matters 
 nothing to me,' he wrote; ' I shall see nothing of 
 it' — but he anticipated an outburst of indignation, 
 and it was only their tardy appearance which saved 
 their author from an idle expression of rage. They 
 came so late into the world that they could be viewed 
 dispassionately as a work of art. And even as a work 
 of art they were misunderstood. Madame du 
 DefYand, who first admired them, deplores their 
 style (in a letter to Walpolc), and, though amused 
 by their anecdote, she condemns their portraiture. 
 Yet, after the perfection of their portraiture, it is 
 the style which keeps the Memoirs of Saint-Simon
 
 SAINT-SIMON 149 
 
 ever fresh. For Saint-Simon was a master of French 
 apart and by himself; he derives from none; and 
 when the complete work saw the light in 1829 the 
 condemnation of Madame du Deffand was instantly 
 reversed. 
 
 His style, vigorous, involved, and inflected as it is, 
 varies with the occasion, and is everything save 
 pedantic. The conversations keep the very impress 
 of the speaking characters ; the narrative pauses or 
 quickens with the necessity of quietude or speed. 
 But the phrase is always personal, and though Saint- 
 Simon was a purist in life, most assuredly he was 
 never a purist in speech. He sprinkles his colour 
 with a free hand, and throws into his phrase a vigour 
 that is all his own. He wrote French with some- 
 thing of the fulness and variety which the great 
 Elizabethans imposed upon English. The style was 
 licentious perhaps, but how supple, diverse, collo- 
 quial, stately, and impressive ! To the eighteenth 
 century, accustomed to a timid accuracy, his style 
 might well seem an outrage. For us, who know 
 that a strict adherence to a set of wiredrawn rules 
 is not the first duty of art, the style of Saint-Simon 
 has an abounding life and a vivid energy. 
 
 To its shortcomings none was more alive than 
 himself. He recognised his negligence, his vain 
 repetitions of the same words, his too lavish use of 
 multiplied synonyms, his constant obscurity, now 
 born of repetition, now of long and tortuous 
 sentences. He felt his defects, but could not correct
 
 150 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 them. Always carried away by the subject, he was 
 too little attentive, he confesses, to the method of 
 expression. But, says this most punctilious of 
 courtiers, with an irresistible irony, ' I never was an 
 Academic subject, and I could never cure myself of 
 writing rapidly.' His only thought was of truth and 
 exactitude, and he made bold to declare that these 
 were the soul and law of his Memoirs^ meanwhile 
 asking a benign indulgence for their style. The 
 style, Tacitean in its authority and compression, 
 needs no indulgence, and is still an influence. The 
 lofty intelligence, which took in at a glance the 
 grandeur of the Great King and his Court, did not 
 shrink from expressing itself in a separate and indi- 
 vidual language, and the gallery of portraits, which 
 Madame du Deffhnd condemned, is unique in the 
 literary experience of the world.
 
 SAINT-SIMON 
 II
 
 SAINT-SIMON 
 II. — His Gallery 
 
 WHEN M. de la Trappe declined to sit for his 
 portrait, Saint-Simon introduced Rigault by 
 stealth, that the painter might make the necessary 
 notes of his unconscious victim ; and for thirty years 
 this cunning courtier himself pursued a similar policy. 
 No man passed before his eyes unnoticed : a line 
 jotted down here, a feature recorded there, ensured 
 that a perfect presentment should be transmitted to 
 posterity. His contemporaries, in perfect ignorance 
 of their doom, met his cold, seeing eye without a 
 tremor ; nor did they know, when they encountered 
 the obdurate Saint-Simon in the King's cabinet, that 
 their characteristics were pitilessly marked and 
 treasured for the note-book. But he spared the 
 world as little as he respected it, and kept the secret 
 inviolate until his gallery was complete. 
 
 He was born with the genius of portraiture, and 
 he is still without a rival in the delicate art of bring- 
 ing back the bodily, or rather the moral, presence of 
 the dead. To read his book is to wander in a vast 
 gallery hung with unnumbered portraits of scheming 
 
 153
 
 i 54 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 courtiers and intriguing ladies, of valiant captains 
 and well-skilled diplomatists. His style he varies at 
 will : now he paints with an ample brush upon a 
 vast canvas ; now he suggests a figure in half a 
 dozen strokes ; or, again, he bites a mordant outline 
 as upon copper. By habit serious, he does not dis- 
 dain caricature, and he can twist the features of his 
 model when an inherent grotesquery suggests the 
 perversion. While he was happy in his art, he was 
 fortunate also in his sitters. His was an Augustan 
 age, as he proudly confesses ; and there was no dis- 
 tinguished contemporary with whose aspect and 
 character he was not familiar. Yet he laid certain 
 restrictions upon himself. He would paint none 
 whose qualities or pursuits were beyond his sym- 
 pathy. Admirable writer though he was, he 
 approached literature with a certain diffidence. He 
 who had every opportunity of observing Racine, 
 sketches him merely as the man who in Madame 
 de Maintenon's presence attributed the collapse of 
 comedy to the revival of such poor, foolish pieces 
 as Scarron's. But no courtier escaped his rapid 
 vision ; and he has left us a picture, unsurpassed 
 and unsurpassable, of all those who gossiped in the 
 secluded defiles of Marly or took their pleasure in 
 the cool glades of Fontainebleau. 
 
 In one other direction his talent was severely 
 limited. He painted always without accessories. 
 His figures stand out bare and bold upon his canvas ; 
 but they have no proper background, nor are their
 
 SAINT-SIMON 155 
 
 qualities and occupations ever explained by the 
 accompaniment of inanimate details. He will not 
 symbolise a huntsman by a hound or a surgeon by a 
 scalpel. Though he was a perfect clairvoyant of 
 character, though he looked right into the heart and 
 brain of man, he was deaf to the sounds and blind to 
 the sights of existence. His kings and nobles might 
 have lived in vacancy and clothed themselves in rags. 
 Versailles might have been a barn stripped of furniture 
 and beggared of elegance. Life, it is true, was his 
 material : life as it is lived amid the intrigue and 
 etiquette of Courts ; but it is the life of the mind, 
 not of the body, which engrosses him, and into the 
 mind of man he looked as an astronomer gazes at 
 the stars. Always sensitive to an encounter of wits 
 or an interchange of incivilities, he ignores the en- 
 vironment of cultured society. Fine houses, noble 
 furniture, dainty ornaments — all things that give an 
 outward splendour to the pomp and dignity of 
 Courts — never touch him to eloquence. Maybe, he 
 took it for granted that dukes and gentlemen, who 
 alone were of consequence in the world, should 
 surround themselves with whatever was grandiose 
 and decorative. None the less, he pleads guilty to 
 a strange insensitiveness, since a sincere admiration 
 of life's adornments would have expressed inself in 
 spite of his theories. 
 
 With a similar obstinacy, he professes no interest 
 in clothes. Himself a beau, he pictured the beaux 
 of his time, yet always with so profound a disregard
 
 156 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 of their aspect that not one of them need have 
 been at the pains to dress. When the colour of 
 a general's hat appears a breach of etiquette to the 
 King, Saint-Simon is quick to note the outrage ; but 
 this vigilance proceeds not from an interest in the 
 fripperies of life, but from a devotion to the strict, 
 unwritten code of courtliness. So far his portraits 
 catch a glint of his own personality. With all his 
 passion for what was actual and vivid — he was, 
 indeed, a god among society journalists writing for 
 posterity — he pictured his models as so many collec- 
 tions of intellectual qualities or defects; and he bent 
 his intelligence to consider the triviality of serious 
 minds, until at times he appears nonchalant or in- 
 human. You acknowledge the truth of his presenta- 
 tion ; yet, now and again you sigh for the breath of 
 frivolity which might inspire with gaiety those strange 
 processes of demeanour which to the courtier are 
 the most poignant anxiety, and to the democrat an 
 occasion of easy ridicule. 
 
 None the less, this insensibility to physical impres- 
 sions heightens his few passages of description. Thus 
 he sketches a review whereat the King, according to 
 his wont, follows the carriage of Madame de Main- 
 tenon with a blind devotion. The Royal eyes are 
 all for c the old witch,' the Royal tongue is more 
 eager to explain than to command. Her Solidity, 
 ever anxious for adulation, still respects herself so 
 far as to keep the window of her carriage shut. 
 Yet the window falls as the Royal hat is doffed, and
 
 SAINT-SIMON 157 
 
 this process, indefinitely repeated, impresses upon us 
 the carriage and its window, concerning whose 
 existence scepticism might otherwise have been 
 justified. 
 
 Elsewhere his 'world' is never 'visible.' A 
 crowd of courtiers, dressed you know not how, 
 wanders about in a palace built of you know not 
 what ; but each man or woman of the crowd is 
 quick with intelligence or alive with vice. The 
 intellectual portraits, at least, are drawn with a sure 
 hand, though the artist shirks the method of the 
 great masters. Velasquez gave Philip his gun or set 
 him down to his devotions ; Rembrandt surrounded 
 his Doctor with colleagues, or showed the youthful 
 Burgomaster a connoisseur by a statuette held 
 daintily in his hand. Vandyke could not imagine 
 his most dignified patron apart from the clothes 
 imposed by an extravagant fashion. Saint-Simon 
 closes his eyes to all accessories ; sterner even than 
 Holbein, he suppresses backgrounds, and puts a 
 bare intelligence upon his paper. 
 
 At the head of his gallery hang two portraits, 
 elaborate to the last detail, yet broad in the simplicity 
 of a general aspect : Louis xiv. and his consort 
 Madame de Maintenon. Upon their portraiture he 
 has exhausted the utmost resources of his art. Scarce 
 a day passes but he adds a touch or heightens a tint ; 
 and, since he is disturbed neither by loyalty nor by 
 affection, his presentment is brutal in its sincerity. 
 He at least is determined to show the Great King
 
 158 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 without his wig, to display to the world le Roi 
 Soleil with his beams dimmed to insignificance. And 
 the picture, coloured by his malevolence, is not 
 pleasant to contemplate. A small man, shrunk in 
 body and withered in mind, the keynote of whose 
 character is mediocrity, most carefully cherished — 
 that is the Sovereign of the World. A coward 
 abroad, a busybody at home, he is yet determined to 
 be 'great'; and if he cannot achieve his end he 
 must persuade himself of his grandeur and hire others 
 to say that they believe him. Therefore the first 
 necessity of his life is to surround himself with 
 bastards and sycophants. He hates nothing more 
 bitterly than noble birth, save sprightly intelligence. 
 He asks at his Court neither character nor wit. 
 Praise he must have at any cost ; and though he 
 understands no music, and was never endowed with a 
 voice, he will sing his foolish songs night after night 
 that he may exult in hired applause. Though 
 innocent of taste, he must build and build and 
 build to prove his magnificence, and he must hire 
 architects who dare all things save to do their duty 
 and to speak the truth. 
 
 In war a poltroon and a novice, he must yet 
 see his armies ever in the field, as though to assure 
 himself of his own valiance, while his timid ambition 
 drives him so far that he listens contentedly to the 
 casual ridicule of his own exploits, if only his consort 
 and her toadies esteem him a model of courage. 
 Thus his historian, in cold blood, dubs him a king of
 
 SAINT-SIMON 159 
 
 reviews, holding his cheap bravery up to eternal 
 ridicule. In brief, says Saint-Simon, he was fit only 
 for display, and yet was aghast at his own extrava- 
 gance. Overtaken by remorse, he urged the Dauphin 
 to avoid a worthless example. ' My child,' said he 
 on his death-bed, 'you are going to be a great king ; 
 do not emulate the taste which I have had for build- 
 ings, nor the taste which I have had for war; try, 
 on the contrary, to live in peace with your neigh- 
 bours. Render to God that which you owe Him, 
 recognise your obligations to Him, and compel your 
 subjects to do Him honour. Follow always good 
 counsels ; try to solace your people, that which I 
 have been miserable enough not to have done.' 
 That is a cry from a disappointed heart, and Saint- 
 Simon echoes it cheerfully, that the right touch be 
 not lacking to his portrait. 
 
 Thereafter he proceeds to prove that all the 
 King's actions derived from a petty spirit of jealousy. 
 Louis, in fact, was determined to govern for himself, 
 yet had not the wit. But his lack of spirit checked 
 not his ambition. He was merely driven into an 
 insane hatred of those better gifted than himself. 
 Thus circumscribed, he reigned perforce on a small 
 scale : he could never attain to a large effect, and 
 even in the petty corners of his wilful indiscretion 
 he was more often than not over-persuaded. How- 
 ever, with good guidance he might, perhaps, have 
 come to success. For his impoverished intelligence 
 was capable of discipline. He loved glory and order,
 
 160 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 and good government. He was born prudent, 
 moderate, secret, master of himself and of his speech. 
 He was even born — though this is incredible — honest 
 and just, and God had given him enough qualities 
 to be a good and even a passably great King. But 
 his early education was so monstrously neglected 
 that none dared approach his apartment ; and all 
 the bitterness, which he professed unto the end for 
 these early days, could not atone for the indignity 
 of the neglect. In revenge, his natural pride was so 
 vast that, had it not been for the fear of the devil 
 which God had implanted in him, he would have 
 had himself worshipped, nor would there have been 
 any difficulty in finding adorers. So fantastic, in- 
 deed, was his vanity that he took pleasure in the 
 ridiculous monuments set up to his honour; he 
 smiled with approval at the pagan statue of the 
 Place des Victoires; and he contemplated every 
 stupidity with a serene arrogance which made his 
 folly almost heroic. 
 
 Thus it was that he hated the Dukes, the only 
 loyal supporters of France. Thus it was that he 
 made way for the supremacy of the people by his ill- 
 considered tyranny. But, in private as in public, he 
 lived a miserable, even a squalid life, which not even 
 the reckless magnificence of the Court was enough 
 to palliate. His love affairs were the open scandal of 
 Europe ; and, when at last he had sown his wild oats, 
 it was but to reap them in the hard, chaste bosom of 
 Madame de Maintenon ! So, says his biographer, he
 
 SAINT-SIMON 161 
 
 lived dishonoured by all save worthless women and 
 unscrupulous bastards. His sentiment of paternity 
 spent itself upon an unrequited love for the aban- 
 doned children of long-forgotten mistresses. Tiuly 
 as dismal a picture as history has to show ! Yet 
 even Saint-Simon would soften the harsh effect. 
 Two conspicuous virtues the Great King retained 
 until his death — the virtues of majesty and grace : 
 virtues so foreign to his nature that he had acquired 
 them by a painful and a constant effort. His majesty, 
 acquired as it was, was ejfrayante^ and it was not 
 merely the dignity of his position which inspired him 
 with the power to strike terror into others. Doubt- 
 less the habit of years and the weight of uncontrolled 
 authority are strong enough to bear down the 
 heaviest antipathy ; yet there have been many bad 
 and foolish kings since the world began, and there 
 has been but one whose majesty was proclaimed a 
 terror by his bitterest antagonist. Wherefore we 
 must view the portrait of Saint-Simon through 
 coloured spectacles, and attribute the violent colours 
 to the outraged sense of a displaced, dishonoured 
 Duke. 
 
 The companion portrait — of the half-royal consort 
 — is yet more ignoble. In Saint-Simon's eyes Madame 
 de Maintenon was wholly black, without one single 
 touch of amiable light or dainty colour to relieve the 
 indistinguishable opacity. An adventuress, who first 
 appeared before the world as the wife of a cul-de-jatte y 
 she cheerfully endured the direst insults, the most
 
 162 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 equivocal positions, to arrive at the empire of the 
 world. The governess of the Royal bastards, whose 
 mother she easily and remorselessly supplanted, she 
 won her place by no charm of person, by no elegance 
 of manner. The King, who set out to hate her, was 
 seduced by the intelligence of her letters, presently 
 submitted to her faculty of intrigue, installed her at 
 his side, made her his secret wife, and finally placed 
 the government of France in her adroit, unscrupulous 
 hands. 
 
 A false prude, she upheld a morality to which she 
 was a perfect stranger, yet worshipped the idea of 
 bastardy because she knew the way to the Royal 
 heart. After the manner of abandoned women, who 
 scrub churches to atone for the forgotten past, she 
 devoted herself with the air of a Sainte-Nitouche 
 to the glory of religion. She built convents ; she 
 patronised ancient foundations ; she devoted her 
 fullest ingenuity to ecclesiastical intrigue. By dint 
 of a vain cunning she contrived to hold herself a 
 kind of universal abbess, and she undertook the 
 details of all the dioceses. For, like Louis himself, 
 she possessed a talent so closely wedded to detail that 
 it could not compass a general effect. Thus, the 
 ambitions of bishops were her most engaging interest, 
 and she ended in believing herself the mother of the 
 Church. 
 
 Meanwhile she passed through every degradation 
 to the throne of honour. Her apartments were 
 almost next to the King's, and the country was
 
 SAINT-SIMON 163 
 
 governed from the privacy of her salon. The 
 Minister who would have his way might leave the 
 King severely alone, so long as he gained the ear of 
 this ancient intriguer. Her own meanness was 
 matched only by the Royal subservience. Un- 
 attractive, intolerable as she was, she received the 
 adoration of a King, who never addressed her with- 
 out uncovering, and only replaced his hat when she 
 had vouchsafed an answer. Her one merit — and 
 that wholly unsympathetic — was to enhance rather 
 than to decrease her age, lest her hold over the King 
 should be established upon the quicksand of vanity 
 rather than upon the solid rock of interest. She 
 undertook no enterprise that was not disgraceful, she 
 gave no advice that was not disastrous ; yet she ruled 
 France without sentiment, without affection, during 
 the lifetime of the King, whose last days she rendered 
 miserable by neglect, and whose death was too long 
 lingered for her august endurance. The King, with 
 the lovesick enthusiasm of an old man, prayed that 
 God might be pleased ere long to take his consort 
 too ; but she, who had been more than Queen, 
 desired also to be immortal, and so bitterly resented 
 his pious wish that she retired in dudgeon to St. Cyr. 
 So Saint-Simon sums up her achievements: 'Suc- 
 cess, entire confidence, rare dependence, omnipotence, 
 public and universal adoration, the whole world at 
 her feet — Ministers, Generals, the Royal Family ; 
 all good and well by her, all at fault without her ; 
 men, affairs, things ; elections, justice, pardons,
 
 1 64 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 religion, all, without exception, in her hand ; the 
 King and the State her victims ; such was this in- 
 credible witch, and thus she governed without a 
 break, without an obstacle, without the slightest 
 cloud for more than thirty years, the incomparable 
 spectacle of all Europe ! ' But at least she was in- 
 comparable for all her baseness and self-seeking, and 
 Saint-Simon, had not policy and tradition blinded his 
 judgment, might, one thinks, have taken a more 
 cynically favourable view of her achievement. 
 
 These are the two masterpieces of the portrait- 
 painter — masterpieces which engrossed the whole of 
 his life and talent. Yet they are but two among 
 many hundreds, and, though elaborated with a devo- 
 tion and an energy which are not elsewhere revealed, 
 they are a mere corner in Saint-Simon's claim to 
 immortality. For this incomparable draughtsman 
 had many methods of work, and more often he re- 
 jected the vast canvas for the smaller space and closer 
 craftsmanship. Now he would clarify the impression 
 by an array of epithets, now he would suggest a 
 character by a jaunty anecdote. For instance, you 
 might read a dozen characters of Peter the Great, 
 yet miss the essential quality presented by Saint- 
 Simon in half a page. Peter, says the chronicler, 
 indignant at England's lassitude in sending him an 
 embassy, displayed no anxiety to receive William's 
 representatives. From day to day he put off the 
 audience, and at last declared that he would receive 
 them on board a Dutch man-of-war which it was his
 
 SAINT-SIMON 165 
 
 pleasure to inspect. The Ambassadors complained 
 of the informality of the reception ; and they com- 
 plained far more bitterly when the Emperor sent 
 word that he was at the masthead, and would see 
 them there. The Englishmen, not sailors enough 
 to mount the rigging, excused themselves with what 
 timid grace they might. But the Emperor insisted 
 that he would entertain them there or not at all ; 
 and after many parleyings, they submitted to his 
 caprice, and laboriously, foot by foot, they climbed 
 the rigging. Upon this narrow and aerial ground 
 the Czar received them with the same majesty 
 wherewith he would have bidden them approach his 
 throne. He listened to their speech ; gave a favour- 
 able answer to the King and the nation ; laughed 
 at the fear depicted upon their faces ; and explained 
 with a smile that it was the punishment of a too 
 tardy arrival. 
 
 Saint-Simon's most renowned achievement is to 
 etch a portrait with a handful of bitter phrases, and 
 none ever suffered so acutely at his hands as the 
 President Harlay, who had dared to support the pre- 
 tension of M. de Luxembourg. ' This issue of great 
 magistrates,' wrote the Duke, 'had all their gravity, 
 which he carried even to cynicism ; he affected their 
 disinterestedness and modesty, and dishonoured these 
 qualities, the one by his conduct, the other by a 
 refined but extreme pride, which, in spite of himself, 
 leapt to discovery. He plumed himself above all 
 upon his probity and justice, but the mask soon fell.
 
 1 66 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 Between John Doe and Richard Roe he preserved 
 the utmost rectitude ; but no sooner did he perceive 
 an interest to flatter or a favour to gain than he 
 instantly found his price. . . . He was learned in 
 public law ; he had a firm hold upon the principles 
 of jurisprudence ; in literature he equalled the most 
 accomplished ; he had a perfect knowledge of history ; 
 he knew how to control his company with an au- 
 thority which endured no repartee, and which no 
 other President had ever attained. A pharisaical 
 austerity rendered him terrible by the licence of that 
 public reproof which he administered to litigants, 
 advocates, and magistrates, so that none had business 
 before him without a shudder. Moreover, supported 
 in all points by the Court, of which he was the 
 slave, the most humble servant of whatever was in 
 favour there, a fine courtier, a strangely cunning 
 politician, he turned all his brilliant talents to 
 domination and success, determined before all things 
 to make the reputation of a great man. Without 
 honour, with no private morals, with none save an 
 outward probity, even without humanity — in a word, 
 a perfect hypocrite without faith, law, God, or soul, 
 a cruel husband, a barbarous father, a tyrannical 
 brother, a friend only of himself, malicious by nature, 
 delighting in insult, outrage, and impertinence, he 
 never once in his life lost an opportunity of evil. . . . 
 Outwardly he was a little man, vigorous and thin, 
 witli a diamond-shaped face, a large aquiline nose, 
 fine, speaking, piercing eyes, which looked only by
 
 SAINT-SIMON 167 
 
 stealth, but which, fixed upon a client, or a magistrate, 
 sufficed to drive him into the earth. He wore a not 
 very ample coat, clerical bands and flat cuffs, a brown 
 wig mixed with white, bushy but short, and over all 
 a big coif. He held himself, even when he walked, 
 slightly bent, with a false air of humility rather than 
 of modesty, and he always shaved the walls so as to 
 make room for himself with as much noise as pos- 
 sible, and at Versailles he never moved a step without 
 respectful and even shameful bows to right and left.' 
 That is a portrait which Tacitus himself, Saint- 
 Simon's one rival in the art of literary portraiture, 
 might have drawn without shame or regret. It is 
 bitter enough, yet it reveals a man and not a monster, 
 an individual, not a type ; and even if Saint-Simon 
 did his enemy an injustice, he was just to himself 
 and to his craft. For the Harlay, drawn in this 
 memorable passage, is a living, breathing personage, 
 softened into life by certain traits of talent and ami- 
 ability. But Saint-Simon is not always thus severe 
 upon his contemporaries. He praises the Due 
 d'Orleans and Monseigneur with a loyalty that 
 nothing can blunt. He approaches Beauvilliers and 
 Ranee in the silent attitude of hero-worship. From 
 the time when he first linked the bonds of friendship 
 he never wavered for a moment in his loyalty to the 
 Due d'Orleans, and the death of the Regent inspired 
 him to a panegyric the more notable for the general 
 hatred and distrust. He praises his talents without 
 stint or hesitation, and he is silent concerning those
 
 1 68 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 indiscretions which might have brought disgrace 
 upon the Regent's memory. 
 
 His foibles, the Duke confesses, were known to 
 all ; it was abroad, rather than at home, that his 
 brilliant qualities were recognised. Not even his 
 bitterest enemies could belittle his experience, his 
 liberal and just wisdom, the grandeur of his genius 
 and his views, his singular penetration, his resourceful- 
 ness and fertility in expedient, his dexterity of conduct 
 under all changes, circumstances, and events ; the 
 charity wherewith he considered and combined all 
 things ; his superiority over his own Ministers and 
 those sent by foreign Powers ; his exquisite discern- 
 ment in the unravelling of affairs ; and, finally, the 
 learned ease with which he replied on the spot, 
 whenever he chose. These qualities, thought Saint- 
 Simon, were sufficient to distinguish the loftiest 
 prince, and to counterbalance a transitory feebleness 
 of life and conduct. 
 
 But, honourably as he admired the Due d'Orleans, 
 it was the Due de Bourgogne who had won Saint- 
 Simon's tenderest regard. Not only was his respect 
 for this prince profound : his knowledge was deep as 
 his respect. The portrait of the Dauphin, in fact, 
 is drawn with the sympathy which comes of life- 
 long intimacy ; but it was not easy to draw, and 
 Saint-Simon, in painting this complex character, 
 shows himself once more a master of mankind. The 
 Due de Bourgogne, then, was born with all the 
 passions and all the vices that could beset a prince.
 
 SAINT-SIMON 169 
 
 He was arrogant, passionate, and of a surpassing 
 obstinacy. He could not endure the interference 
 even of times or seasons, and a shower of rain was 
 enough to throw him into a fury. So high was he 
 above the rest of the world, that the utmost of his 
 condescensions was to believe his brothers a feeble 
 link between himself and the human race. As he 
 grew up he devoted himself with a fierce energy to 
 all the pleasures that were possible to his rank. He 
 surrounded himself with mistresses, he played, he 
 drank, he was transported with rage at the smallest 
 check of fortune. 
 
 His infirmities did but accentuate his excesses. 
 Lame and hunchbacked, he was prevented from the 
 sports and exercises he loved so well. His pride, 
 moreover, was hourly shocked by the deformity 
 which all his ingenuity could do no more than 
 palliate. At the same time he was gifted with an 
 intelligence which set him far above his family and 
 his Court. There was no branch of science which 
 he had not studied, and he was born with an instinc- 
 tive understanding of politics. Had he lived, the 
 destiny of France might have been changed, for he was 
 incapable of the suicidal blindness which encouraged 
 the Revolution. Moreover, with years came dis- 
 cretion, and this marvel of restless dissipation was 
 suddenly chastened by a fervent piety from the follies 
 which had disgraced his first youth. Henceforth he 
 devoted himself with a whole heart to literature and 
 affairs. Alive and alert to the destiny which he be-
 
 1 7 o SAINT-SIMON 
 
 lieved to await him, he conferred with ministers, he 
 made himself indispensable to the army, he proved 
 in a thousand ways his perfect fitness to govern 
 France. 4 The King,' said he, c is made for the 
 people, not the people for the King': thereby ex- 
 plaining his distrust of Louis xiv. and his keen 
 perception of France's real necessities. 
 
 Above all — and here he touched Saint-Simon in his 
 most delicate point — he deplored the collapse of the 
 nobles, and in the many discourses wherein he 
 opened his heart to his favourite Duke, he declared 
 that once upon the Throne he would ensure the 
 safety of his country by readjusting the balance of 
 the powers. His conviction that the people were 
 the real masters of the Throne persuaded him to 
 detest warfare and luxury, the two methods em- 
 ployed by his grandfather to exaggerate the grandeur 
 of which he was never certain. But none the less, 
 he maintained an inalterable loyalty : he treated the 
 King with a more than filial respect, and he never 
 approached Madame de Maintenon without the sub- 
 mission due to her pomp and influence. His converse 
 was amiable, weighty, and reasoned. Avid of know- 
 ledge, he always sought the counsel of such as were 
 specially informed, and he had no taste for the 
 mediocrities which surrounded the Throne. His 
 virtue was the more solid because it was established 
 upon a knowledge of vice, and this prince, who had 
 known all things, and had drunk the very dregs of 
 life, had yet preserved energy enough to be a great 
 ruler.
 
 SAINT-SIMON 171 
 
 But he died young, perhaps of poison, and left 
 Saint-Simon, who might have proved his colleague, 
 to indite his panegyric. c France,' says the courtier, 
 'fell under this last punishment. God showed her 
 a prince whom she did not deserve. The earth was 
 not worthy of him : he was already ripe for eternal 
 happiness.' 
 
 On occasion Saint-Simon can be even gay, and his 
 picture of d'Aubigne, the drunken, reckless brother 
 of Madame de Maintenon is nothing less than a 
 light-hearted caricature. ' He was called,' says the 
 historian, 'the Comte d'Aubigne; he had never 
 been anything but a captain of infantry, yet he 
 spoke of the old wars as a man who had deserved 
 everything, and who had suffered the most egregious 
 wrong in not having been made a Marshal of France 
 long ago ; at other times he would say, with a grin, 
 that he had taken his baton in money. He attacked 
 Madame de Maintenon after the most terrible fashion 
 that she had not made him a duke and a peer. . . . 
 Of money he was a perfect sieve, impossible to close ; 
 but he was endowed with a pretty wit for such sallies 
 and repartees as were wholly unexpected. Withal a 
 good fellow and an honest man, polite, and free from 
 the vanity which the situation of his sister might 
 have made impertinent. In other respects he was 
 marvellously impertinent, and it was a pleasure you 
 might often experience to hear him discourse on the 
 times of Scarron, in the Hotel d'Albret, or on times 
 even before that. Now and again nothing would
 
 i 7 2 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 restrain him from discoursing upon his sister's gal- 
 lantries, from comparing her devotion and present 
 situation to her ancient adventures, and from ex- 
 pressing his surprise at her monstrous good fortune. 
 All this was bad enough, but it was not the end of 
 the rascal's pleasantry. For at times he would sit 
 upon a bench in the Tuileries, and entertain the 
 world with the most flippant discourse, calling the 
 Kino; his brother-in-law.' No wonder d'Aubig-ne was 
 banished to a retreat, and bidden to spend the rest of 
 a droll life in religious exercises. But he lived long 
 enough in the world for Saint-Simon to know and 
 understand him, and to leave us a sketch which is 
 none the less amusing for the gentle malice which 
 inspires it. 
 
 Yet Saint-Simon had a thousand friends, and it is 
 to the glory of England and of Dutch William that 
 the Earl of Portland is among his heroes. Of this 
 nobleman he paints what is perhaps the most amiable 
 portrait in all his vast gallery, though his apprecia- 
 tion, maybe, was heightened by Louis xiv.'s hatred 
 of the British King, who had declined without parley 
 to marry a Royal bastard. But whatever the motive, 
 the portrait is there — sketched with an undeniable 
 loyalty and admiration. Bentinck, says he, was 
 discreet, secret, polite, faithful, and adroit. A perfect 
 sportsman, and a lofty gentleman, he had not only 
 accompanied his own Prince in all his enterprises, 
 but had even won over the French Court, and was 
 singled out by the reluctant Louis for special favour.
 
 SAINT-SIMON 173 
 
 Louis, in fact, advertised his admiration of the digni- 
 fied Ambassador, and conferred upon him the last 
 favour in permitting him to hold his candlestick as 
 he retired to rest. Monsieur, on the other hand, 
 found him the best companion in the chase, and was 
 never so happy hunting the wolf at Marly as when 
 Bentinck was by his side. His appearance at Court 
 was overwhelming. * He had a personal eclatj says 
 Saint-Simon, c a politeness, an air of the world and of 
 the Court, a gallantry, and a grace which surprised 
 everybody. With that, much dignity, much haughti- 
 ness even, but tempered by discernment, and a prompt 
 judgment, which left nothing to chance.' 
 
 Thus Saint-Simon suggests, with kindliness and 
 grace, the amiable traits of his friends. Whomever 
 he pictures he marks ofF from all his fellows. The 
 zeal of precision never flags, and the least of his models 
 has henceforth a separate and distinct existence. 
 The epithets are always felt, the traits essential to 
 the character. Here, for instance, is a thumb-nail 
 sketch of Chamilly, the hero or villain of the 
 Portuguese Letters, upon whom sentimentality has 
 emptied the whole cruse of its venom. ' He was a 
 tall, fat man,' writes the biographer, ' but very well 
 made, extremely distinguished for his valour in 
 several actions, and celebrated by his defence of 
 Grave. He was a gentleman of honesty and worth, 
 who lived everywhere most honourably ; but he had 
 so little wit, that the world was continually sur- 
 prised, and his wife, who had much, often embarrassed.
 
 174 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 As a youth he had served in Portugal, and it was to 
 him that the Portuguese Letters were addressed by a 
 nun whom he had known, and who had gone mad 
 for love of him.' 
 
 So, while the partisans of the lovesick nun have 
 told you without ceasing that Chamilly was a miracle 
 of heartless cynicism, Saint-Simon explains no more 
 than that he was tall, fat, brave, honest, aud witless. 
 The soldier, in brief, obscures the Don Juan, and 
 there is no doubt which is the truer portrait. Again, 
 he sketches Law, the Scottish banker, with the 
 humour of condescension, and the contempt due to 
 inferior origin. Yet he liked the man, and cherished 
 a genuine admiration of his buoyant, kindly, modest, 
 gallant disposition. He absolves him entirely from 
 avarice and dishonesty, and finds him, in fact, a 
 fanatic rather than a swindler, unspoilt by fortune, 
 and superior to ruin. Mrs. Law did not meet with 
 equal favour in Saint-Simon's judgment. To begin 
 with, she was not Law's wife at all, but an English 
 lady of good family, who had followed him for love, 
 and who bore his name without the ceremony of 
 marriage. None the less, she was haughty, even 
 insolent in her manners. She received homage in 
 her own house, but she rarely paid visits, and was 
 rewarded for her pride and fidelity by the constant 
 care and respect of her husband. 
 
 Very different in style is the character of Fenelon, 
 which is drawn with a firmer hand, and with the 
 august dignity which became the subject. 'This
 
 SAINT-SIMON 175 
 
 prelate,' writes Saint-Simon in his most renowned 
 passage, c was a tall, thin man, well made, and pale, 
 with a big nose, eyes whose fire and spirit leaped 
 forth like a torrent, and a physiognomy whose like I 
 have never seen, and which none could forget who 
 once had seen it. It contained everything, yet there 
 was no strife of opposites upon it. There gravity 
 and gallantry, seriousness and gaiety were depicted ; 
 there were suggested at once the man of learning, 
 the bishop, and the grand seigneur. But the air which 
 was breathed, not only from his face but from his 
 whole person, was an air of delicacy, wit, the graces, 
 seemliness, and, above all, nobility. It required an 
 effort to cease from looking at him. His manners 
 corresponded to this aspect. He had an ease which 
 he imparted to others, and a good taste which comes 
 only from familiarity with the best company and the 
 great world. Withal he possessed a natural, soft, 
 and ornate eloquence, a politeness, which, if in- 
 sinuating, was always noble and suited to the occasion, 
 an easy, smooth, agreeable elocution, and an air of 
 clearness and lucidity which made him intelligible in 
 the most difficult and complicated discourses. 
 
 c Moreover, he was a man who never cared to have 
 more wit than those with whom he spoke, who set 
 himself within the reach of all without making the 
 condescension felt, whose charm put every one at his 
 ease, so that it was impossible to leave him, or to 
 refrain from him, or not to try to meet him again. 
 In fact, he possessed this rare talent in so remarkable
 
 176 SAINT-SIMON 
 
 a degree that, despite his fall, he attached his friends 
 to him for their whole lives, and, even after their 
 dispersion, reunited them to talk of him, to regret 
 him, to desire his presence, to cling to him more and 
 more, as the Jews to Jerusalem, to sigh after his 
 return and to hope it always, as this wretched people 
 awaits and sighs after its Messiah. It is also by this 
 authority of prophet acquired over his friends, that 
 he was used to a domination which, for all its mild- 
 ness, would not brook resistance. Had he returned 
 to the Court and taken his seat upon the Council, 
 which was his great ambition, he would have endured 
 no rival : when once he was anchored and indepen- 
 dent of others, it would have been dangerous, not 
 only to oppose him, but not to have supported him 
 always with compliance and admiration.' This, 
 indeed, is the true eloquence of panegyric, phrased 
 and balanced with a care which Fenelon himself 
 would have approved. And if you would find an 
 adequate contrast, turn at once to the few lines of 
 contumely which Saint-Simon devotes to the despic- 
 able M. du Maine — that man of mud, who sought 
 refuge in the darkness, and whom even the darkness 
 threw up. 
 
 In truth, he never writes without the distinction 
 which comes of understanding and courage : and if 
 his judgments are coloured by the animosities of his 
 nature, they are never marred by timidity or lack 
 of frankness. He is an historian who dared to 
 paint all his fellows as they appeared to his honest
 
 SAINT-SIMON i 77 
 
 yet partial eye ; and, while he is never a match in 
 concision for Tacitus, he emulates that writer of 
 genius in a dozen other qualities. At any rate, one 
 court is revealed to us by the clairvoyance and daring 
 of a single man ; and if we assume to know the men 
 and women of Louis xiv.'s time, it is to the sur- 
 passing talent of Saint-Simon that we must o-j V e 
 thanks for our intimacy and appreciation. 
 
 M
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 CHARLES JOSEPH, Prince de Ligne, was 
 born in 1735, at the Castle of Belceil. His 
 family, the most highly distinguished in the Low 
 Countries, possessed such wealth and titles as make 
 success a commonplace and grandeur a necessity. A 
 Field-Marshal's baton lay in his cradle ; he was a 
 grandee of Spain before he could speak ; and, at his 
 birth, some fairy godmother hid beneath his pillow 
 the priceless gifts of undying childhood and eternal 
 gaiety. That he flashed his first smile upon Belgium 
 is strange enough ; it is still stranger that this 
 miracle of joyousness was the son of a joyless, stern, 
 fantastic old warrior. He who was destined to be an 
 amiable lover encountered in his youth nothing save 
 hate. His father, frank and liberal in his detestation, 
 left his education to a pack of tutors, only one of 
 whom, said the ingenuous victim, believed in a God. 
 Nor did the paternal fury decrease with years. 
 When the young Prince was made colonel — at 
 twenty-three — in the regiment of the family, his 
 father congratulated him in a masterpiece of con- 
 tempt. 'Next to the unhappiness of having you for
 
 i8 2 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 a son,' wrote the Field-Marshal, ' I know none 
 more acute than the unhappiness of having you for a 
 colonel.' But the Prince cared as little for his 
 father's malevolence as 'for the brutality of the 
 pedants who pretended to direct his studies. And 
 no misfortune availed to stem the full tide of his 
 talent and ambition. 
 
 He dreamed away his boyhood in visions of 
 military glory ; even the fresh slumber of fifteen 
 was disturbed by the haunting prowess of Charles xn. 
 and the great Conde, while the stately gardens of 
 Beloeil were the theatre of a hundred imagined 
 exploits. At sixteen he wore the uniform of Austria, 
 and, received at Court with every mark of favour 
 and distinction, he presently began that career of 
 frolic prodigality and splendid abandonment which 
 death alone interrupted. His father, who had long 
 since lost the habit of smiling, frowned upon his 
 excesses in cold displeasure, shuddered at his triumphs, 
 and determined to put an end to the enchanting, 
 extravagant romance by an uncongenial marriage. 
 It was not his wont to take counsel with his son, 
 even where the boy's heart was concerned, and, the 
 resolution once framed, he neither expected nor 
 encountered opposition. The young Prince had 
 returned to Belceil with an astounding array of debts, 
 and the father's grim and only comment was to 
 order his departure on the morrow. He accompanied 
 his son without a word, and without a word they 
 arrived in Vienna. They took up their abode at
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 183 
 
 a house thronged with pretty women, married or 
 marriageable. The son was set at dinner next to 
 the youngest ; but as no word of warning had been 
 spoken, he knew nought of the drama wherein he 
 was playing the principal part. At last his valet 
 whispered him what was the rumour, yet left him 
 in doubt whether it was his mother-in-law, an aunt, 
 or the lady herself that was his destined bride. He 
 was married in a week to a Princess of Lichtenstein, 
 to whom he had spoken scarce a word, and who 
 remained unto the end a reverenced and charming 
 stranger. 'I found her amusing for a fortnight,' 
 said he, 'and afterwards indifferent.' But not for a 
 moment did he demur to the fate prepared by his 
 father. He accepted it, as he accepted whatever was 
 serious in life, with an easy jest, and a perfect 
 assurance that nothing could mar the prevailing 
 happiness. If he could not give love, he was very 
 generous of courtesy, but he resolved, never to 
 surrender to a Belgian home the talents which were 
 meant for the crowned heads of Europe. ' Are you 
 married ? ' asked a courtier many years afterwards. 
 0#/', mats si peu^ smiled the Prince de Ligne, who 
 continued his brilliant Odyssey unperturbed. 
 
 He had been a bridegroom but a few months when 
 the Seven Years' War gave him that chance of glory 
 for which his ardent soul was thirsting. Though the 
 better part of his life was spent in a frivolous diplo- 
 macy, he was soldier first, and gallant afterwards. 
 Indeed, it was but for lack of opportunity that his
 
 1 84 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 sword was ever sheathed, and the feud between 
 Frederic and Maria Theresa was the first fuel to the 
 fire of his military ambition. He was a soldier of 
 the ancient type, to whom the whistle of the bullets 
 was the sweetest music, and who esteemed personal 
 valour more highly than the defter arts of war. Not 
 for him to revolutio nise tactics, or totrap his oppo- 
 nent by months of patient watchfulness. He loved 
 fighting for its own sake, and was always ready to 
 give his life in exchange for a brilliant action. 
 Nowhere was his gaiety so remarkable as in the field. 
 He charged the enemy in a fury of good spirits, and 
 was never happier than when the first to enter a 
 beleaguered fort. 
 
 That his carelessness escaped the proper reward of 
 death is but a part of that astounding luck which 
 never deserted him. There was no risk of war 
 which he did not invite, yet he survived years of 
 serene courage and reckless intrepidity. Had his 
 skill been equal to his enthusiasm, he might have 
 left us a perfect description of war. Yet his pen 
 limped along behind his intention, and, for all his 
 protestation, the field, and not the study, was his 
 rightful province. However, he compels the world 
 to share such a vague sensation as inspired his own 
 breast in the very heat of action. ' To speak well 
 of a battle,' says he in a passage of epic excitement, 
 'you must know such a moment of drunkenness as 
 comes to you when a battle is won. For a battle is 
 like an ode of Pindar : you must bring to it an
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 185 
 
 enthusiasm which almost touches delirium .... 
 Here there is no servile march to follow. The first 
 calculations are upset by circumstances impossible to 
 forsee . . . Who, indeed, shall prophesy all the 
 imbecilities, all the hazards ? A mere nothing 
 decides the fate of a day, which decides the fate of an 
 empire ; and it is by the event that you appear an 
 Achilles or Thersites. I am astonished that a single 
 soul survives a battle. How shall you not die of 
 grief if you lose, and of joy if you win ? 
 
 In this temper, then, he fought through the Seven 
 Years' War, rejoicing always in the stress of combat 
 and in the abounding vigour of his blood. But he 
 was little less apt for the elegance of Courts, and 
 Maria Theresa showed her knowledge of men when, 
 after Marxen, she sent him with the news of victory 
 to Versailles. Here his triumph was conspicuous, as, 
 indeed, it might be, since he had all the qualities 
 which compel success. Young, handsome, with a 
 very riot of spirits, which, says the Comte de Segur, 
 came near to madness, he could not fail at a Court 
 which set gaiety high among the virtues. Moreover, 
 though he was not rich, yet he was a spendthrift, and 
 lack of money was no bar either to his happiness or 
 his magnificence. Even with an empty pocket he 
 would travel in state, and the direst poverty gave no 
 flutter to the heart of this imperturbable gambler. 
 But if Versailles received him with acclamation, he 
 returned her worship with the courtliest disdain. He 
 despised the King, he flouted the reigning favourite.
 
 186 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 He detected everywhere a meanness and stupidity, 
 which he was at no pains to palliate or condone. 
 Nor did his contempt spring from prejudice, since 
 France was and remained until his death the country 
 of his choice. Though the Low Countries gave him 
 birth, though he exulted in the Austrian uniform, 
 though for a while he was Catherine's obedient 
 servant, his wit was French, his talent was French, 
 his desires, where war was not in question, never 
 strayed far from Paris. 
 
 But dulness was inexcusable, even though it were 
 French ; and he recoiled in horror from the stupidities 
 of Louis xv. and the insolent patronage of Madame 
 de Pompadour. The King (said he) asked the silliest 
 questions, discussing the weather of Vienna with 
 Stahremberg, and bidding the Papal Nuncio describe 
 after what fashion the Pope dressed his pages. The 
 favourite was more serious and less discreet. In an 
 instant she was lost in the clouds of politics and war. 
 For the benefit of the Prince she sketched half a 
 dozen plans of campaign, and then with an august 
 wave of the hand declared ' we are selling our plate to 
 carry on your war.' And as though this condescension 
 were not enough, she proceeded to reprove the ladies 
 of Prague, to which folly the Prince found no reply. 
 But the King atoned for his stupidity by the gift of 
 a superb ring, which the Prince de Ligne pawned the 
 next day with the facile conscience of youth and 
 health. ' In those days,' wrote he, ' I cared for 
 nothing. I was only anxious to live, knowing that
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 187 
 
 war was still waging, and being afraid that I should 
 not get enough pleasure before I died.' He need not 
 have feared ; his sincere desire of life and pleasure 
 was matched by the good fortune which made all 
 pleasure easy, and let him live out all his days. He 
 loved, he laughed, he gambled, he read, he wrote — 
 and all with a zest and curiosity which, while they 
 kept him ever young, exacted an amazed acquiescence 
 from all the world. 
 
 At Versailles, then, he was accepted as a master of 
 the elegances. Foreigner though he was, he enjoyed 
 the unique experience of imposing his tastes upon a 
 cultivated Court. He did not accept the fashion of 
 the moment ; he transformed it in an instant, and 
 kept it for thirty years as his whim would have it. 
 His wit and gallantry were alike irreproachable. 
 His brilliant conversation, though it enforced respect, 
 was seldom bitter enough to make him enemies. But 
 again, after his first pacific conquest, the war 
 summoned him ; and though he made many a sojourn 
 in France, it was not until the accession of Louis xvi. 
 that he found his home at Versailles. His hatred of 
 Louis xv. had driven him from the Court to the 
 Salons, whose intrigues were little more to his taste 
 than the common-places of the King. Yet the 
 patronage of Marie Antoinette made all things a 
 delight, and in the few years which preceded the 
 Revolution the Prince de Ligne was supreme in 
 Paris as at the Trianon. 
 
 He had changed, moreover, since his first appear-
 
 188 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 ance before the French King. His style had 
 broadened with experience, and he was at last a 
 perfect master of himself and of society. Once he 
 was no more than a man of fashion, now he was a 
 fashionable philosopher to boot, and there was no 
 Court in Europe whereat the philosophy of the 
 hour was not a potent influence. The intervening 
 years he had spent in the laborious idleness of 
 travelling ; yet his idlest journey had not been 
 aimless, and he knew men and cities more intimately 
 than any of his contemporaries. The death of his 
 father — in 1767 — had given him command of a 
 princely fortune, which he spent with more than 
 a princely extravagance ; and since the peace had 
 enforced leisure, he made the best of it, enjoyed life 
 with every nerve and fibre, and traversed Europe up 
 and down in sheer lightness of heart. 
 
 But France was still the country of his predilection, 
 and Marie Antoinette the Queen to whom he pre- 
 ferred to pay homage. Never for a moment did he 
 falter in his loyalty to his unhappy lady, who rewarded 
 his devotion by a frank and gracious amiability. He 
 accompanied her upon her rides in the Bois ; when 
 there was a spectacle at Versailles, he was privileged 
 to stand beneath her box, and comment upon the 
 piece with his nimble wit and high spirits ; he was 
 always present at the concerts given under the trees 
 of the Orangery ; and it was even his lot to counsel 
 prudence at the masked balls. But the Court had its 
 absurdities, and only the unruffled temper of the
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 189 
 
 Prince de Ligne could preserve an even tranquillity. 
 Though he remained ostensibly upon cordial terms 
 with the King, he confesses that he approached him 
 with an air of patronage. He would protect him 
 against his favourites, and even attempt to improve 
 his mind with conversation that was not wholly 
 devoted to sport and folly. 
 
 The Due d'Artois and his practical jokes were 
 more difficult of endurance ; yet the Prince was 
 never betrayed into a look or a word of ill-temper. 
 On one occasion he had promised to accompany the 
 Queen upon her ride, while D'Artois insisted that he 
 should hunt the boar ; and the result was a comedy, 
 or rather a farce, from which only the Prince emerged 
 with credit. At six in the morning, D'Artois with 
 a troop of companions thundered at his door, which 
 was already barricaded for the siege. The attacking 
 party won the first advantage ; breaking into the 
 stronghold, they dragged the Prince de Ligne, the 
 most dignified courtier in Europe, from his bed ; they 
 hustled him into his clothes, and carried him on to the 
 horse that awaited him. But he was too quick for 
 his assailants. No sooner was he on horseback, than 
 his foot slipped the stirrup, and he had fled into the 
 King's kitchen. Pursued thence by twenty scul- 
 lions, he took refuge in the theatre, from which he 
 was dislodged without his boots and with a scarred 
 face. The sight of blood brought his opponents to 
 reason. Instantly they ceased their noisy song of 
 triumph, and left the Prince to bathe his wound, and
 
 igo A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 meet the Queen upon the terrace. Thus he would 
 support the most ribald of practical jokes for the 
 sake of Marie Antoinette, and as he was her docile 
 slave while she lived, so after her death he was her 
 most eloquent panegyrist. 
 
 He collected monarchs (so to say) as the modern 
 journalist collects celebrities. But with a motive 
 infinitely more honourable. It was only among the 
 great that he could find such society as befitted his 
 magnanimity, and he took the place which belonged 
 to him without a trace of snobbishness or of flattery. 
 To Joseph ii. he dedicated his sword, and Joseph n. 
 rewarded him with a constant admiration. He was 
 present at the Emperor's coronation ; he witnessed 
 his dignified and uncomplaining death ; he was one 
 of the four who carried his body to its last resting- 
 place at the Capucines ; and he described him to 
 Catherine, in a masterpiece of measured grief, as 
 ' the Prince who did honour to man — the man who 
 did the greatest honour to Princes.' 
 
 But if he loved the Emperor Joseph more, it was 
 the great Frederic who ranked higher in his regard. 
 To this hero alone he paid the tribute of timidity : 
 short-lived, indeed, yet none the less sincere. He 
 was wont to compare him to Henry iv., in his eyes 
 the supreme hero of all time j to Louis XI. ; to 
 Francis I. 'An old wizard who divined all things, 
 and whose tact was the finest I have ever seen' — 
 that was his opinion, based upon a ripe experience ; 
 but for all the King's grandeur, De Ligne was pre-
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 191 
 
 pared, when once he had conquered his shyness, to 
 fight him on politics, or to chatter encyclopaedias. 
 And then, as if to prove his catholicity, he gave a 
 liberal share of the heart, already claimed by Marie 
 Antoinette, to Catherine le Grand, the invincible, 
 august, unscrupulous Empress of All the Russias. 
 She, who had never seen his like, declared that he 
 thought profoundly and behaved like a child ; and 
 he attended the orgies of her half-savage, wholly 
 splendid Court with a zest which appeared a kind of 
 madness to the most flippant of her Ambassadors. 
 
 He witnessed, said he, the last magnificence of 
 Europe, when the Empress, despite her glacial 
 climate, wedded Asiatic luxury to the splendour of 
 Louis xiv., of the Greeks, of the Romans, of the 
 Thousand Nights and a Night. For her he acted the 
 spy upon Potiamkin ; for her he put off" his own 
 uniform to assume the uniform of Russia. He was 
 one of those who followed her to the Crimea, on 
 that exultant journey which was half-campaign, half- 
 picnic. Though the grandeur was little to his taste, 
 4 though ' (in his own words) c the carriages were 
 full of peaches and oranges, though the valets were 
 drunk with champagne, though he died of hunger, 
 and found nothing warm, save the drinking water,' 
 yet his curiosity never slept, and he spent the days 
 in a marvelling enjoyment. And well he might, for 
 the Empress set out in a chariot, drawn by thirty 
 horses, containing room to seat eight persons, with a 
 card-table and library by way of distraction. The
 
 1 92 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 diplomacy consisted in a free exchange of bouts rimes 
 and epigrams. When once they had left their 
 chariots for the barges which carried them down 
 the Dnieper, he awoke Segur every morning by 
 shouting impromptus through the dividing wall of 
 their cabins, he carried on an elaborate corre- 
 spondence at ten paces, and in his assumed character 
 of ' diplomatic jockey,' he discussed politics after the 
 frivolous fashion which endeared him for ever to the 
 Empress Catherine. 
 
 Thus he spent his life, in unbroken merriment, 
 seeing all, and flashing upon all that amazing wit 
 which, without gesture and glance, is the shadow of 
 a shade. Thus he knew Maurocordato, the tyrant 
 of Moldavia, whose harem was an open house, and 
 whose kingly ideal was universal happiness. Thus 
 he knew Casanova, whom he disliked, and whom he 
 described with more than his wonted venom as proud, 
 because 'he was nobody, and had nothing.' And 
 wherever he went, whomsoever he saw, he was happy ; 
 not because he sought happiness, but because no other 
 temper was possible to him. 
 
 Never idle, never listless, he must always inau- 
 gurate a new enterprise, invent a new idea, or visit a 
 new country. And as adventures are for those who 
 seek them, his life was packed with surprise. Avid 
 of all things save money, he was never a fortune- 
 hunter. He avoided diplomacy, because he would 
 not be a shopman of intrigue ; and when peace 
 compelled him to sheathe his sword, he always found
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 193 
 
 a fresh project to engross him. c I never reflect,' he 
 boasted ; * either I am busy, or I fall into a suave 
 idleness.' Yet, so lofty was his ideal of happiness, 
 that he confesses — this courtier who never knew 
 chagrin — that only four days of his life were truly 
 and completely happy : the day when first he put on 
 his uniform, the day before his first battle, the day 
 that he first knew that he was loved, and the day 
 that he got over the small-pox. These very excep- 
 tions to years of unbroken happiness prove him in- 
 capable of fatigue, and give him the right to call his 
 career the most joyous that he knew. 
 
 But with the burden of time even his activity 
 decreased, or rather it was diverted from the field 
 and the high road into the study. If he had not 
 squandered his life in laboriousness, he had not 
 suffered the ignominy of rest ; and at last he retired 
 to Vienna and the softer toil of literature, but not 
 without adding up, in a spirit of genial boastfulness, 
 the sum of his achievements. ' I will bet,' said he, 
 c I have spent three years of my life and more than 
 one hundred and fifty thousand florins in carriages 
 alone ; and an equal sum in gambling. My cam- 
 paigns have cost me more than five hundred thousand, 
 and above that I have given two hundred thousand 
 to my regiment and to the other troops I have had 
 under my command. I have spent an equal sum in 
 fetes, reviews, and manoeuvres. In fact, I reckon 
 that my expenditure, since I have been in the world, 
 has been six or seven millions of florins.' And for 
 
 N
 
 194 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 this he had seen whatever was most amiable and 
 attractive in Europe ; but he had, alas ! also wit- 
 nessed the squalid encroachment of revolution, and 
 the consequent decay of all the Courts. 
 
 Wherefore he retired to Vienna, broken in fortune, 
 yet gallant as in his splendid youth, and cultivated the 
 Muses with the same energy and zeal with which 
 aforetime he had pursued pleasure. Had he been a 
 modern Englishman he might, perhaps, have con- 
 tented himself with golf and an occasional article 
 furtively contributed to a magazine ; but being a 
 true child of his age he was determined, like his 
 betters, to shine in philosophy. At a time when 
 literature was as steadfast a necessity of the Court as 
 gambling, how should the Prince de Ligne escape 
 the contagion, especially when he was gifted with 
 a ready tongue and never-failing repartee ? So he 
 committed the one indiscretion of his life: he became 
 a literary fop, like Frederic the Great, whom he 
 pronounced in all seriousness more of a man of 
 letters than Catherine ! 
 
 And as nothing came amiss to his talent, he wrote 
 all things, prose and verse, history and romance, 
 comedies and characters. He would reach the con- 
 fines of human knowledge, like M. de Voltaire ; or 
 with Jean- Jacques he would go beyond the distant 
 horizon, anxious for a precipitate return to nature — 
 he for whom nature was nothing and the foibles of 
 men an absorbing interest. But at any risk he must 
 be in the movement ; and the movement of his day
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 195 
 
 was to be not an artist in words, a pretty juggler of 
 phrases, but a resolute collector of facts, an ambula- 
 tory encyclopaedia. And the knowledge which he 
 had gathered in every corner of Europe could not 
 be collected in less than forty volumes ! That the 
 publisher who produced this forgotten library went 
 bankrupt is not surprising ; the marvel is that the 
 author survived ; and, indeed, so vast a baggage were 
 enough to undo the reputation even of the Prince de 
 Ligne had any one been intrepid enough to unpack it. 
 For the ironical truth is that he — the nobleman 
 and courtier — was rather a journalist than a man of 
 letters. He recorded the foibles of his time with a 
 pretty wit ; his visit to Spa might have made the 
 fortune of a society paper ; he could sketch a portrait 
 in a page and a half with more penetration and just- 
 ness than the most of his fellows : and when he 
 condescends to autobiography, he is uniformly en- 
 chanting. But his solemn treatises are unread and 
 unreadable ; his forty volumes are but quarries, 
 wherefrom the literary stone-breaker may collect a 
 few blocks of genuine marble. And the literary 
 stone-breakers, with Madame de Stael at their head, 
 have done the best for his reputation. His weakness 
 is amiable, and he shared it with the best of his con- 
 temporaries, whose indiscreet love of letters is the 
 strangest feature in a strange epoch. A race of 
 heroes, to which the battlefield was a delight and a 
 necessity, was bitten with an ambition to ape 
 Voltaire ! And there is more danger in this de-
 
 1 96 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 fection from an heroic ideal than appears at the first 
 glance. For when kings would become journalists, 
 then the people would become kings, and in this 
 universal fever of dulness you may detect revolution 
 in the making. 
 
 But the Prince de Ligne was always quick to 
 correct the habit of pedantry by a stern observation. 
 When Frederic was agog to dig and plant with Virgil 
 in his hand, the Prince was instant in discourgement. 
 ' Sire,' said he, c Virgil was a great poet, but a very 
 bad gardener ' ; and here the Prince's judgment was 
 infallible, for he had his favourite subject at his 
 finger's end, and has left us as wise a treatise as exists 
 upon the art and science of gardens. Nor did his 
 literary vanity seduce him to pretentiousness. He 
 was always conscious of his limitation and recognised 
 that it was the pruning-knife of Madame de Stael, 
 who cut forty volumes into two, that revealed his 
 slender talent to the world. Above all, he was in- 
 capable of patronage. He valued the friendship of 
 Voltaire, the acquaintance of Rousseau, as highly as 
 he esteemed the amiability of Marie Antoinette ; he 
 approached them with the deference that was due to 
 the masters of their craft, and with so sensitive a 
 freedom from egoism that, when he visited Rousseau, 
 he did not think it necessary to reveal his name. 
 And, if his complete works were never vivified, he 
 wrote pages not a few of which, frozen as they are 
 in the coldness of type, give a hint at least of the 
 warmth and brilliance of his conversation.
 
 A FRIEND OF KINGS 197 
 
 But apart from his experiments in literature, neces- 
 sary to subdue his restless activity, he spent his last 
 years in a retirement which was an honourable con- 
 clusion to an honourable career. Not even his 
 straitened means conquered his vanity and love of 
 display. Though his house upon the ramparts of 
 Vienna was small, it was illustrious, and was digni- 
 fied by the style and title of the Hotel de Ligne. 
 His salon was narrow as a corridor ; yet here stood 
 the most distinguished statesmen of Europe, proud 
 only to have gained admittance, and thither came — 
 in 1807 — Madame de Stael, with profound humility 
 and perfect acquiescence in the temper of the man 
 who despised her. 
 
 And at seventy-two he was still a fop and still a 
 gallant. ' His delicately malicious and gaily ironic 
 wit,' wrote Count OuvarofF, who knew him only 
 in old age, 'was allied with a sweetness of character 
 and an equality of temper that were unparalleled.' 
 Gravity only was distasteful to him, and he would 
 always turn the conversation with a word or a nod 
 from too serious a topic. His pride was flattered by 
 the eagerness wherewith the curious pointed their 
 finger at him in the street, and he was yet anxious 
 to attract the attention which was his due. He 
 would walk abroad in the Field-Marshal's cloak which 
 became his youthful figure, or, still more splendid, 
 he would drive in his grey coach, whose white horses 
 were the wonder of all Vienna. His happiness had 
 suffered no eclipse ; his talk was as marvellous as
 
 198 A FRIEND OF KINGS 
 
 when he astonished the Court of Versailles, and not 
 even his wrinkles obscured the dazzle of his smile. 
 The best of life had been his ; he awaited the end 
 in placid content ; and it is in his triumph in Vienna, 
 rather than in his cumbrous books, that you catch 
 the last glimpse of the Prince de Ligne. 
 
 In brief, the grey coach was a clearer revelation 
 of his spirit than his treatise on the Thirty Years' 
 War, and it was with a justi fied pride that — in 1 8 1 5 — 
 he did the honours of Vienna to the whole of Europe. 
 He died, as he would have wished to die, with all 
 men's eyes upon him, and amid the gaieties of the 
 Congress. c Le Congres ne marche pas ; il danse,' 
 these were his parting words, and his last epigram. 
 And thus in the victory of a great man, who played 
 the most elegant part in the drama of his time, is 
 Belgium avenged for a century of affronts.
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 WILLIAM BECKFORD, torn by misfortune 
 from the palace of Fonthill, restricted, yet 
 did not lose, his unbroken ambition of pomp and 
 magnificence. His collection at Bath was all the 
 choicer for an enforced economy ; the new tower 
 which rose upon Lansdown Hill was at once more 
 stable and more elegant than Wyatt's shattered un- 
 sightliness. Though no park separated his windows 
 from the world's eye, the door was opened to his 
 rare visitants by a Spanish dwarf, broad-faced, shape- 
 less, and flat-footed. Here on the threshold was a 
 symbol of his distinction ; throughout a long life — 
 and he preserved his youth for fourscore years — he 
 never stooped to common surroundings, nor accepted 
 the drab superstition of his meaner contemporaries. 
 
 The son of a Lord Mayor, he was yet a child of 
 genius ; and being debarred the University by his 
 mother's whim, he was educated under the watchful 
 eye of Lord Chatham, who declared he was ' all air 
 and fire.' His guardians, designing him for a political 
 career, had set him down sternly to the study of 
 Greek and Latin. But it was the pictured East that
 
 202 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 engrossed his boyish imagination ; under the tutel- 
 age of Zenir, the Turk, he had translated the manu- 
 scripts of that other mystification, Wortley Montagu; 
 and (may be) his fancy had already orientalised old 
 Fonthill into the Hall of Eblis. Nor should the 
 taste have been unforeseen : a love of the East was in 
 his blood, and he had a genuine pride in his kinship 
 with the author of Les ®hiatre Facard'ins. i I think 
 Count Hamilton will smile on me,' he wrote to 
 Henley, ' when we are introduced to each other in 
 Paradise.' But his family imposed discipline, and an 
 exemplary tutor, one Lettice, who never forgot to 
 address his pupil and patron in the proper terms of 
 adulation, presented him to the cultured society of 
 Geneva, trained him in the polite learning of the 
 day, and led him to Ferney, that he might pay homage 
 to the aged Voltaire. 
 
 Thus he was a scholar in his teens, and when, at 
 twenty-one, he inherited a colossal fortune he was 
 already master of that knowledge and experience 
 which should distinguish luxury from dissipation. 
 Handsome, with a fearless eye and the lofty mien of 
 aristocracy, he made the tour of Europe with un- 
 paralleled splendour ; the quickness of his imagina- 
 tion enabled him to see all things in a strangely 
 personal light ; and he was still a boy when he 
 printed his Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents, 
 the first vivid hint of the fancies and opinions which 
 remained with him till his death. ' I am a fervent 
 classic,' he wrote, in complete unconsciousness of his
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 203 
 
 genuine instinct. For he was no classic at all, but 
 an unbridled romantic : a prophet of that nascent 
 school which Gray and Bishop Percy had inaugu- 
 rated. Nature was his goddess, not Art, and Nature 
 not trimmed and clipped by the dainty hand of man, 
 but rough and unkempt, with tumbled flowers and 
 hurtling rocks. 
 
 Through whatever land he passed, it was always 
 his pleasure to separate himself from his companions, 
 and to commune with trees and mountains in a 
 spirit that Wordsworth might have envied. The 
 discovery of myrtle in bloom throws him into an 
 ecstasy ; at Florence he is more constant to the 
 adoration of an old crooked ilex than to the treasures 
 of the Uffizi. He would sit for hours, he says, in 
 the woods of the Cascini, c hear, without feeling, the 
 showers trickling above my head, and see the cattle 
 browsing peacefully in their pastures, which hazel 
 copses, Italian pines, and groves of cypress enclose.' 
 So he would wander, drunk with the dews of the 
 morning, passing his delicate fingers through his jet- 
 black hair, rejoicing in the music of the birds, pluck- 
 ing flowers with fresh-hearted devotion, and quoting 
 Theocritus that the classics might not be wholly 
 forgotten. So, with half-sincerity, he would imagine 
 himself a child of Sylvanus, forget that London is 
 peopled with prowling savages, and believe that the 
 sounds and sights of the country are sufficient for the 
 aspirations of mankind. 
 
 This sense of romance perplexed his judgment,
 
 204 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 and at times made blind his eyes. The discreet 
 beauty of Holland, the well-ordered perfection of 
 her cities, the exquisite fashion of her houses meant 
 nothing to him. He still sighed for rocks and 
 waterfalls, and affected to miss the exotic foliage of 
 the South. Insensible to the charm of space and 
 light, blinded by poetic reminiscences to the golden 
 atmosphere of the dunes, he shudders at Amsterdam, 
 and tells you at Haarlem that 'all his dislike of the 
 walking filth of the Low Countries had returned.' 
 
 But this love of romanticism is not without its 
 compensation. It imparts to his travels a note of 
 lyric jubilation hitherto unknown in English litera- 
 ture. If his book is not good prose, it might have 
 been admirable verse, and he who contained so many 
 prophecies in his brain was thus an inventor of the 
 prose poem. Moreover, a quick response to the 
 aspect of streams and flowers and trees saved him 
 from that obliquity which overtakes the lettered 
 antiquary, and enabled him to look upon Rome (for 
 instance) with clear and steadfast vision. Unmerci- 
 fully does he belabour the archaeologist, who tells 
 him that five years would not reveal to him half 
 that Rome contains, and instantly going forth to 
 condemn the Coliseum, he is inspired with 'a vehe- 
 ment desire to break down and pulverise the whole 
 circle of saints' nests and chapels, which disgrace the 
 arena.' 
 
 His enthusiasm is as enchanting as the movement 
 and energy of his style. He cannot sit in Petrarch's
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 205 
 
 chair without bestirring himself with vivid im- 
 aginings. It is only with a timid reverence that he 
 places himself upon it, and he is 'pensive' (you may 
 be sure) when he reflects that, sitting in the same 
 chair, Petrarch was found dead. But still he tempers 
 his romance with a respect for old masters, and in- 
 tensifies his piety with a loyal admiration of music. 
 Even the horror of the Lowlands is mitigated by 
 Corelli's symphonies, and at Antwerp, the organ 
 c transported him to Italian climes.' Wherefore you 
 are not surprised to detect in these early impressions 
 a suspicion of that artificiality which fought against 
 the fashionable romanticism, and presently dominated 
 him. The conflict is brusque, but reasonable. The 
 young Beckford, in his own despite, was already half 
 in love with the fantastic, and would forget at times 
 the grosser glories of nature in the more refined 
 ingenuities of mankind. 
 
 Perhaps he remembered the eloquence of Sir 
 Thomas Browne, and reflected, lounging beneath a 
 twisted ilex, that were the world now as on the 
 Sixth Day, there were yet a chaos. At any rate, he 
 is sometimes seduced into admiration of extravagant 
 artifice. Now he recalls with delight the festival 
 given at Venice to Henry in. of France, when the 
 ancient square was turned by an awning, brilliant 
 with artificial stars, into a vast saloon, and carpeted 
 with the matchless tapestries of Persia. Now he 
 envies the supreme illusion of Gualbertus, who from 
 his rocky cell saw saints and martyrs sweep across
 
 206 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 the sky, and read his missal by the light of opening 
 heaven. This love of the artificial and the bizarre 
 encroached with encroaching years, until the whole 
 world believed him a mystery ; but he first visited 
 Italy in a spirit of frank, ingenuous romanticism ; and 
 Apuleius is the Latin writer who for the moment 
 exercised the weightiest influence upon his mind and 
 vision. 
 
 As he approached the bleak hamlet of Lognone, 
 he was confronted upon a mountain path by two 
 hags, who stepped straight from the pages of The 
 Golden Ass. They were, in truth, shaped less by 
 nature than by literary reminiscence, and they could 
 never have scowled upon a traveller whose eyesight 
 had not been informed by study. In their hands 
 were ominous lanterns, and it was with a sinister 
 grin that they offered the strangers a dish of mustard 
 and crows' gizzards, cooked, no doubt, in printer's 
 ink, and served upon an ancient quarto. And Beck- 
 ford, remembering the source of his observation, 
 declined the banquet in terror, lest he should be 
 changed forthwith to a bird of darkness, and sit till 
 doomsday upon the roof of a smoke-grimed cottage. 
 In brief, he coloured the present in the romantic 
 hues of the past, and learned from books to be the 
 fervent child of Nature. 
 
 But the Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcoba^a and 
 Batalha is the masterpiece of his experience, and is so 
 far embellished by memory and invention as to seem 
 a work of pure imagination. Grandeur is its motive,
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 207 
 
 and Petronius its model, though the travellers set 
 forth with a splendid retinue, and are the very inverse 
 of the immortal beggars. It was the Regent of 
 Portugal who ordered the expedition, and the pre- 
 paration was worthy this princely patronage. At 
 last — it was in 1794 — Beckford had learned how to 
 live : he knew the triumphs which money might 
 buy ; and a French cook added no less to the dignity 
 of his retinue than a German physician. ' Depart 
 from thy palace surrounded by all the pageants of 
 majesty — thy most faithful slaves, thy best beloved 
 wives, thy most magnificent litters, thy richest 
 loaden camels — and set forward on thy way to 
 Istakar.' Such the command given to Vathek, 
 when he quested the treasures of the Preadamite 
 Sultans ; and in a spirit of equal magnificence did 
 Vathek's creator leave his quinta of San Jose. 
 
 The travellers are idealised as frankly as the 
 adventure. The author himself is drawn in the true 
 heroic style, while his companions — the Grand Prior 
 of Aviz and the Prior of St. Vincent's — are admir- 
 ably imagined, the one the laziest, the other the most 
 complaisant, prelate that ever did honour to a sump- 
 tuous and exclusive Church. The narrative glitters 
 with sunlight and magnificence, and the orange- 
 orchards of Portugal are an appropriate background. 
 The evenings passed like the mornings in a perfection 
 of indolence — c all warmth, chat, and idleness.' Yet 
 every stage had its surprise, and Beckford's excite- 
 ment flags as little as his unwearying commentary
 
 208 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 upon life and art. An accidental encounter with a 
 Chinese missionary throws him into an ecstasy, 
 and his enthusiasm leaps at the wonders of Pelcin. 
 In the Emperor's garden this wayward apostle of 
 artifice might have realised his ideal. For even 
 in winter, said the Padre, the walks were warmed 
 with scented vapour ; the season was forgotten in 
 the silken leaves which peopled the trees ; while 
 gaily enamelled ducks quacked automatically as they 
 took the food flung by the eunuchs into their mouths 
 of brass. ' Dreadful ! ' exclaimed the Grand Prior ; 
 ' I wonder the Emperor has not shared the fate of 
 Nebuchadnezzar.' But Eeckford smiled, and thought 
 prophetically of Fonthill. 
 
 The reception at Alcobaca is a veritable page 
 from an aristocratic Satyricon. No sooner were the 
 ' cooings and comfortings' of the Lord Abbots suit- 
 ably performed than a shout arose : ' To the kitchen ! 
 To the kitchen ! ' And there were such preparations 
 for the feast as Trimalchio could not have surpassed, 
 and only Eeckford imagined. ' Through the centre 
 of the immense and nobly groined hall' — to change 
 a word were to spoil a masterpiece — ' not less than 
 sixty feet in diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the 
 clearest water, flowing through pierced wooden 
 reservoirs, containing every sort and size of the finest 
 river-fish. On one side, loads of game and venison 
 were heaped up ; on the other, vegetables and fruit in 
 endless variety. Beyond a long line of stoves ex- 
 tended a row of ovens, and close to them, hillocks of
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 209 
 
 wheaten flour whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars 
 of the purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which 
 a numerous tribe of lay-brothers and their attendants 
 were rolling out and puffing up into a hundred dif- 
 ferent shapes, singing all the while as blithely as larks 
 in a corn-field.' What a noble sense is here of 
 wealth and gluttony, of recklessness and splendour, 
 suitable alike to ancient Portugal and to ' England's 
 wealthiest son ' ! 
 
 And so the royal progress continued : the never- 
 ending banquets were enriched by delicacies from 
 China and Brazil ; a lay-brother was in attendance 
 to dress shark-fins ; and the c divine, perfumed, 
 ethereal Aljubarota' assuaged the mightiest thirst. 
 Nor did the French cook fall below this great 
 occasion : his macedoine, murmured the Lord Abbot 
 was worthy Alexander the Great, while his omelettes 
 were safe from oblivion so long as Portugal frowned 
 upon the sea. At night the romance ceased not ; 
 it became grave ; and the monastery of Batalha 
 awoke to the awful imprecation of a mad priest. 
 'Judgment ! judgment ! ' he cried ; 'tremble at the 
 anger of an offended God.' Then by a changing 
 whim, Beckford would affect his old love of solitude 
 and, mounting his Arabian, would seek the distant 
 tranquillity of river banks, or haply espy behind a 
 convent lattice the adorable Francisca. But the 
 plump, round-bellied abbots were jealous of his 
 absence, and presently he returns to marvel at the 
 excruciating tragedy of Donna Inez de Castro, and 
 o
 
 210 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 hear the heartrending tag, * Perish they shall,' echoed 
 from a ladder-top by an aged monk. 
 
 The monks were not the only fantastic inhabitants 
 of Portugal. Still more grotesque is the bird-queen, 
 that lady of august lineage, who had caged within 
 her garden half the birds of the country — parrots, 
 araras, and screeching cockatoos. Trimmed hedges 
 and spruce parterres formed an amiable avenue to 
 this Paradise, or Inferno, of birds ; and the lady's 
 retinue, which was composed of three sleek and 
 sallow nephews, habited in faded court-suits of blue 
 and silver, a dwarf, an ex-Jesuit, and a half-crazed 
 buffoon, is little less terrific than the bevy of black- 
 bearded and forbidding hags which surrounded her. 
 No wonder Beckford was disconcerted by this c ugly 
 display of living tapestry,' but when her Excellency 
 from her high-backed seat put the question : c Most 
 estimable Englishman, have you any native birds in 
 your island ? ' Beckford's reply was triumphant. 
 ' Yes, madam,' said he, ' we have ; one in particular 
 — seldom seen, but often heard — the cuckoo.' And 
 to complete the absurdity of the situation, Franchi 
 and the buffoon imitated the well-known note, until 
 her ladyship was dismayed, and the hags shuddered. 
 
 The Englishman's fame had reached the Court, 
 and the Infanta imperiously commanded an audience. 
 Report pictured him a miracle of fleetness, and she 
 asked forthwith that he should show his paces in a 
 grove of catalpas and orange trees. Being a hero, 
 and an Englishman, he gave his companions a liberal
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 211 
 
 start of ten paces, but left them instantly behind, 
 and reached the goal, a marble statue dimly illumin- 
 ated by transparent lamps, an easy and graceful 
 winner. The Infanta was enchanted, but unsatis- 
 fied. 'Now let me see,' she exclaimed, 'whether he 
 can dance a bolero ; if he can, and I abhor unsuc- 
 cessful enterprises, Antonita shall be his partner.' 
 Now Beckford yielded to none in his abhorrence of 
 unsuccessful enterprises : wherefore Antonita was 
 his partner, and they glided along in a ' delirium of 
 romantic delight.' His progress through Portugal, 
 then, was an unbroken glory. With his French 
 cook to aid, he captivated the country ; the Court, 
 the Nobles, and the Church paid him extravagant 
 honour; and he carried back to England a memory 
 which, though merged in imagination, still flattered 
 his vanity after fifty years. 
 
 After fifty years ! Half a century did his impres- 
 sions of Portugal mature, and they were better 
 tenfold for the keeping. The book, which opens 
 with the condescension of the Prince Reg-ent, and 
 breaks off" (for it does not end) with a queenly 
 scream, is more highly characteristic of its author 
 than Vathck itself. If the old house at Fonthill 
 suggested the Eastern romance, the romance, in 
 revenge, was the inspiration of every subsequent 
 enterprise. But in the interval Beckford had grown 
 into the mystification which has become notorious. 
 He had realised that his genius would find expression 
 in life rather than literature. The double repute of
 
 212 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 Vathek — in France and England — had given him that 
 touch with the arts which was necessary to the 
 perfection of his ideal. At last he was secure in his 
 own, if not in the world's, admiration, and hence- 
 forth he was free to resume in his life the manifold 
 fancies of his works. 
 
 He never tired of telling the stranger that he 
 composed his famous Eastern fantasy in three days 
 and two nights, that during this strenuous period 
 he never took off his clothes, and that he hastened 
 himself into a sickness by heroic pertinacity. 
 Though the fable is not strictly accurate, truth lies 
 in exaggeration, and this imagined hurry best 
 represents the sudden forcibleness of the sublimely 
 humorous fable which is Vathek. But the time had 
 come to represent in a reasoned existence his ironic 
 and capricious temperament. Spurning politics, for 
 which his contempt was always sincere, he retired 
 to Fonthill, where he merged a vague past in a 
 vaguer future. Fortunate in the wealth which 
 enabled him to realise the manifold dreams of his 
 youth, he set the dramas of his imagination upon a 
 vast stage, which he alone might contemplate. 
 Imagine Shakespeare, in retirement at Stratford, 
 acting now Ha?nlet, now Romeo, in his own park 
 with irreproachable trappings, and you may form 
 an opinion of Beckford's sojourn at Fonthill. Him- 
 self the actor, himself the audience, he knew no 
 check to his performance, he groaned at no adverse 
 criticism.
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 213 
 
 His Abbey was for him what the Palaces of the 
 Five Senses were for Vathek. A love of animals, 
 which rendered all field sports abominable, separated 
 him completely from the country gentlemen, his 
 neighbours. He was still better at home (in spirit) 
 with indulgent priests, spendthrift hidalgos, and 
 distorted dwarfs than with the strenuous fox-hunters 
 of England. His seat in Parliament did not mitigate 
 in the slightest his hatred of public life. Once — in 
 Portugal — he had looked with complacency at tables 
 whereon 'no newspaper had ever been thrown'; 
 he had lain his head 'on neat, white pillows, guiltless 
 of propping up the heads of those assassins of real 
 prosperity — political adventurers.' 
 
 But he did not, like Byron, defy the world : 
 he lived outside it. If in his childhood he had 
 been spoilt by adulation, a jealous antipathy frowned 
 upon his manhood. The sentiment and freedom of 
 his Waking Thoughts inspired his friends with an 
 inveterate suspicion. 'Neither Orlando nor Bran- 
 dimarte,' he wrote to Henley, ' was ever more tor- 
 mented by daemons and spectres in an enchanted 
 castle than William Beckford in his own hall by his 
 nearest relations.' His pride begot misunderstanding, 
 misunderstanding created hate, and hate found ex- 
 pression in groundless slander, until in revenge he 
 framed a theory of solitude, and elevated it into a 
 practice. He was among the first to formulate the 
 doctrine of individual effort. ' All important truths,' 
 he said with astonishing clairvoyance, ' have been
 
 2i 4 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 the result of solitary effort. None have been 
 discovered by masses of people — it is fair to suppose 
 they never will.' And heartened by a proper 
 arrogance, he built a wall twelve feet high round 
 the park of Fonthill, and set himself to resume in 
 a sedentary life the conclusions of his years of 
 travel. 
 
 The Wiltshire Downs provided the natural solace 
 for which his romanticism still pined. There he 
 might listen to the music of running water, or throw 
 himself impulsive under the trees. There, too, he 
 planted exotics of every shape and kind, that the 
 genial South might not be forgotten : thus, thought 
 he, he could put Portugal in his garden, and capture 
 Spain beneath the leaden panes of his glass-house. A 
 thousand strange dishes, innumerable wines, availed 
 to transport his fancy wherever it would travel, and 
 within the circuit of his own domain he might enjoy 
 voyages as fantastic as the famous excursion to the 
 Monasteries of Alcobaca and Batalha. The atmo- 
 sphere, which he changed at will and without regard 
 to the shifting seasons, was his own, and under the 
 sky of an English autumn he might mimic the 
 sultry heat of an Italian summer. 
 
 His years of solitary confinement at Fonthill 
 increased that love of artificiality which was already 
 alive when he made the tour of Europe, and not 
 only did his silk blossoms rival the ingenuity of the 
 Chinese Emperor, but he devised a painted tree 
 that should be independent of winter or summer, of
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 215 
 
 sunshine or rain. But all this was insufficient for 
 his boundless energy. Like Vathek, he must always 
 be building towers or bidding palaces rise to the 
 heaven. The old house, in which the Lord Mayor 
 had expressed his modest taste, was too small and 
 ill situated to fit the ambition of the son. So Wyatt, 
 the Destroyer, was ordered to build the monstrous 
 Abbey, an orgy of reckless Gothic, and to surmount 
 the imposing edifice with a far-seen, gigantic tower. 
 The tower, built upon the sand, most righteously 
 collapsed, but not until death had removed its 
 architect beyond the reach of rumour and reproach. 
 Otherwise how just had been the retribution ! Even 
 after death must Wyatt continue the work of 
 destruction. Unable longer to desecrate churches, or 
 to tear down abbeys, he left his own creations upon 
 foundations so insecure that time and the winds of 
 heaven were sufficient to perfect his work, and 
 Beckford's folly crumbled harmlessly to the ground. 
 
 Insensate grandeur was the characteristic of Font- 
 hill. This wing was an imitation of Canterbury ; 
 there a church tower was parcelled out in dwelling- 
 rooms ; and the whole was in accord with the flagrant 
 taste of Wyatt and his time. Doubtless Beckford 
 remembered the ill-fated Fonthill, when in his 
 Portuguese Excursion he wondered ' how persons of 
 correct taste ' could tolerate Norman arches or the 
 horseshoes of the Moors, 'when they might enjoy 
 the lovely Ionic so prevalent in Greece, the Doric 
 p;randeur of the Parthenon, and the Corinthian
 
 216 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 magnificence of Balbec and Palmyra.' How, indeed ? 
 And yet this miracle of taste conspired with Wyatt 
 to achieve a monster, to which Time and Decay 
 wire kind beyond its desert. 
 
 But none the less Fonthill was sumptuous and 
 immense, the proper scene of pageantry and display. 
 And even Beckford would interrupt the solitude he 
 loved so well, if there offered the opportunity of a 
 spectacle. To the Abbey came Nelson, accompanied 
 by Sir William and Lady Hamilton, to receive the 
 homage paid by genius to bravery. The splendour 
 of the festival was assured, though the guard of 
 Volunteers seems a reminiscence of the city, and 
 though the brass band must have struck stridently on 
 Beckford's cultured ear. The Abbey, still incom- 
 plete, wore the casual beauty of a ruin, and there the 
 most brilliant banquet was given. The entertain- 
 ment was certainly more barbarous, and perhaps less 
 amusing, than that afforded by the monks of Batalha; 
 but Lady Hamilton seized the opportunity most 
 effectively, and appeared before Nelson in the garb 
 of Agrippina, carrying in a golden urn the ashes of 
 Germanicus. 
 
 At times, indeed, Beckford would play the part of 
 a grand seigneur. But to the world he remained an 
 impenetrable mystery, fearful to those who knew him 
 not, yet quick to capture the devotion he was stead- 
 fast to retain. Against the idle curiosity of strangers 
 his door was honourably closed, and when a too 
 zealous traveller did succeed in climbing the twelve
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 217 
 
 feet of wall, he was received with so cold a civility 
 as was a patent discouragement to his kind. One 
 tourist, more valiant than the rest, found himself in 
 the park, and, taking Beckford for the gardener, 
 followed him complacently into every nook and 
 cranny, until at last the master showed him to the 
 dining-room, and revealing himself, insisted that the 
 stranger should remain to lunch. The poor tourist, 
 overcome by terror and even touched by shame, 
 knew that escape was hopeless, and there he must 
 sit a weary hour under the cold, disdainful eye 
 of the man upon whose privacy he had intruded. 
 He went off, did this tripper, to complain of his 
 patron's ill-usage ; but surely man-trap was never so 
 adroitly set ! surely spring-gun was never so quietly 
 discharged ! 
 
 Beckford, in fact, never performed an awkward 
 duty awkwardly. Everything that he ventured was 
 sudden, distinguished, unexpected. The world, 
 jealous of his wealth, recoiled also before the bitter- 
 ness of his tongue, the imperiousness of his ven- 
 geance. When a certain duchess would have sought 
 his hand for her daughter, he gave her such a lesson 
 as avarice and ill-breeding have seldom received. 
 He invited her to Fonthill and put everything in 
 order as for a royal visit. He dazzled her cupidity 
 by an extravagant display, and determined that she 
 should never set eyes upon him. The servants 
 treated her with an eager obsequiousness, yet gave 
 uncertain replies to her constant query : ' Shall I see
 
 2i8 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 Mr. Beckford to-day ? ' Ever hopeful, ever greedy, 
 the duchess remained six or seven days in the hos- 
 pitable, tenantless mansion, and returned to London 
 furious against the man who, without a word spoken, 
 had foiled her enterprise. Thus you account for his 
 unpopularity ; thus explain the constant calumnies 
 which an ignorant, suspicious world uttered against 
 him. 
 
 He lived his whole life amiable and aloof. His 
 house was his distraction, his collection society. To 
 his eager interest nothing came amiss, and he packed 
 his vast rooms with pictures, books, and curiosities, 
 purchased perhaps with more courage than discretion. 
 His love of art was fashionable, despite its ardour ; 
 and his frequent criticism of paintings belongs rather 
 to his time than to himself. Though in his Bio- 
 graphical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters he flagel- 
 lates the follies of others, he yet praises Poussin for 
 his subjects, and blames Rubens for the selection of 
 his models. None the less he was the fortunate 
 possessor of countless treasures, from the best of 
 which not even disaster could separate him, and it is 
 recorded to his credit that, though necessity forced 
 him to sell his pictures, he never till his death parted 
 with a book. 
 
 When Fonthill was taken from him, he shrugged 
 his shoulders, and bought prints instead of oil- 
 paintings. Even at eighty his zest had no way 
 diminished, and on the brink of the grave he con- 
 fessed to a dealer that he was still 'all agog, all
 
 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 219 
 
 ardour, all intrepidity.' Nor did he ever show himself 
 more conspicuously honourable than at the moment 
 of ruin. The scholar, who had never known a mo- 
 ment's boredom in his life, found as much pleasure 
 in Bath as at Fonthill. Miserable without a tower, 
 he instantly commenced the edifice that looks down 
 to-day from Lansdown Hill. This, said he, was a 
 necessity, since his slender house afforded no pro- 
 spect ; and so genuinely disgusted was he at last 
 with Wyatt's ill-fated Gothic that a model of the 
 Lysicratean temple — in iron — surmounted the newer 
 pillar. His ancient collection gone, he was no whit 
 disheartened, and the sale-rooms were still the theatre 
 of his enterprise and courage. There were still left 
 enough retainers for the alternate exercise of wit and 
 kindness ; and surely no man who shunned the world 
 treated his household with a more generous friend- 
 ship, no man was ever so ingenious in reproving 
 disobedience by a jest. 
 
 He left no other biographer than a vulgar gossip, 
 and you are apt from his books to view his life in a 
 wrong proportion. His youth was spent in a fever 
 of travel and composition. If Vathek do not rank 
 among the greatest works of the world, it is still a 
 miracle of grim wit, caustic humour, contemptuous 
 irony ; and once more Beckford distinguished him- 
 self — an Englishman — from all his fellows by giving 
 a masterpiece to the literature of France. Some 
 few burlesques, now sliding into forgetfulness, were 
 dictated by the same spirit of careless satire, and if
 
 220 THE CALIPH OF FONTHILL 
 
 the earliest book of travel be a lyric expression of 
 himself, the latest is a reasoned expression of his art. 
 But his real life lay as far apart from literature as 
 from Spain. Fonthill was Beckford made concrete. 
 There he attempted to create a false world, to trans- 
 late into practice an imaginative ideal. That he 
 failed was his loss rather than ours. The twelve- 
 foot wall shuts out the Abbey from prying eyes as 
 sternly to-day as it did near a century ago. We 
 can only catch sight at a distance of the Gothic 
 tower, and marvel that his vast resources of wealth 
 and taste could produce no better effect. We can 
 but attribute a furtive confusion between Wardour 
 Street and the perfect collection to the influence of 
 his generation, which, despite his own valiant theory, 
 warped his judgment. But without reserve may we 
 admire a courteous gentleman, splendid in prosperity, 
 brave in adversity, who hated the world's interruption 
 as heartily as he despised its malice, and who, not- 
 withstanding the load of wealth and sycophancy, yet 
 carved his life into a definite and a personal shape.
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 IN life,' said Barbey d'Aurcvilly, c we are strangled 
 between twj doors, of which the one is labelled 
 Too Soon, the other Too Late? And assuredly none 
 was ever born at so untoward a time as the author of 
 Les Diaboliques. It was not the world that was out 
 of joint : that ancient machine obeyed the fortuitous 
 touch of fate with as idle a patience in 1810 — the 
 year of Barbey d'Aurevilly's birth — as in the callow 
 childhood of Eden. And had its wheels perchance 
 been clogged, he was no Hamlet, foredoomed against 
 his will to set them right. But what should this 
 Merovingian have schemed in the nineteenth century? 
 His was not the imbecile temperament which could 
 take a pleasure in the progress of the age ; he could 
 not dishonour his nature so far as to seek a kinship 
 with the century yet unborn. No, without deceit 
 or circumstance he knew himself a stranger in a 
 strange epoch ; and while he acknowledged the mis- 
 fortune, he repudiated indignantly the disgrace of his 
 inapposite appearance. 
 
 Nor was his profession more happily chosen than 
 his epoch. Action was the primal necessity of his
 
 224 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 being. His hand was fashioned to hold a sword ; yet 
 fate thrust a pen into his fingers, and he must needs 
 be content with the less dangerous, more formidable 
 weapon. He belonged to the race of those who are 
 tricked by their talent as by their circumstances into 
 a career of irksome tranquillity. He was fit for every 
 stalwart enterprise. Had he found a Sovereign 
 worthy his allegiance, he would have dedicated his 
 life and courage to the welcome service ; had he 
 lived (as he should have lived) in the age of chivalry, 
 he would have battered the stubbornest castle for the 
 sake of Beauty, he would have endured the fiercest 
 onset for a smile. But why should he draw blade 
 from scabbard to defend a Republic which he despised, 
 and for which (said he) no artist could ever strike a 
 blow ? Why should he surrender the lust of words, 
 the glory of a coined phrase, for an ignoble cause ? 
 Thus, like Carlyle, like FitzGerald, like many 
 another valiant warrior, he was betrayed by the 
 exaction of literature, his imperious mistress, into a 
 life of inactivity. Once more Art conquered pre- 
 dilection, and Art, as always, was justified of her 
 victory. Stripped of intelligence he would have led 
 a forlorn hope, or driven back his country's enemies. 
 But a restless brain compelled him to avoid the pro- 
 fession which his ingenuity continued to glorify, and 
 a hostile environment deprived the inevitable defection 
 of remorse. 
 
 Barbey d'Aurevilly, then, was a mediaeval knight 
 driven by a destiny, hapless for himself, thrice blessed
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 225 
 
 for us, into the literary life of the nineteenth century. 
 But not even his talent persuaded him to accept the 
 conventions of his fellows, and he passed his years in 
 an arrogant isolation from which he has never 
 emerged. For curiosity has not yet prompted his 
 friends to scandal, nor has the prattling tongue of 
 truth attempted to warp our judgment. His love 
 affairs are unrevealed ; his dignity remains unsoiled 
 by the prying industry of the pamphleteer. Hence 
 we are free to fashion his portrait, as he would have 
 it fashioned, from his own books and scanty con- 
 fessions. Hence we approach far nearer reality 
 than we could were we perplexed by the patient 
 research and hasty discoveries of the literary rag- 
 picker. For, like all writers of strong temperament, 
 he surrendered to his theories without a struggle, 
 and he was incapable of excluding either himself or 
 his convictions from his romances. Not only does 
 he speak in his characters, he comes behind them 
 with a sudden comment ; and while you contemplate 
 the fate 6f Le Chevalier des Touches or U Ensorcelee 
 with interest, you are really enlarging your ac- 
 quaintance with their creator. Moreover, he is so 
 near to us that the legend, born of his mysterious life, 
 is still fresh ; nor has it yet become, as it will by lapse 
 of time, a problem for the serious historian. 
 
 Born in Normandy, at St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte, he 
 
 was endowed with the martial ardour of his father, 
 
 an ancient Chouan. It was his own boast that, like 
 
 Aphrodite, he came from the waves, and was nurtured 
 
 p
 
 226 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 in the foam of the sea. There flowed in his veins the 
 blood of fishermen and corsairs, and he describes his 
 uncle, a great drover, as the Rob Roy of Cotentin. 
 Such was the ancestry, in which he preserved a 
 legitimate pride, and whose ferocity of action he 
 translated into a ferocity of style. To the end of 
 his life he was loyal to his country, its tradition and 
 memories ; and the type of his choice was the old 
 sea-wolf. 'I love these men,' he wrote, 'these old 
 gulls, disfeathered by the storms which they have 
 resisted.' And again he recalls the translator of 
 Omar, who knew no worthier rival to Tennyson 
 than the captain of his fishing-smack. 
 
 In after years he enveloped his childhood in an 
 atmosphere of romance, not unbecoming one whose 
 whole existence was a magnificent and troubled 
 dream. To his imagination his father's house wore 
 a stern, Jansenist aspect. His education was en- 
 trusted, he would declare, to a grave, fantastic Abbe, 
 while horsemanship and the sword were among his 
 earliest accomplishments. To foster his skill his 
 father would place a louis on the saddle, and the louis 
 was his if he leapt over the horse's back without 
 dislodging it. But an end soon came to this amiable 
 ease, and his father, who hated Paris with a hatred 
 as keen as his son's love of Normandy, sent him to 
 Caen to study law — to Caen, where he watched the 
 decline of Brummel and which he afterwards described 
 with the tact of sympathy in his Memorandum. 
 
 An inveterate warrior, he could not long remain
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 227 
 
 on terms of amity with that other warrior, his father : 
 at seventeen the breach was complete, and, forced 
 to sacrifice his ideal of splendid leisure, Barbey 
 d'Aurevilly presently sought Paris and the combat 
 of letters. The combat once engaged, he fought 
 to the end. The greatest men, he held with his 
 Norman pertinacity, are those that yield last ; and 
 he retired, at death, from the unequal battle, without 
 surrendering an inch of ground. He wrote a series 
 of incomparable romances, which, in their rapidity of 
 thought and style, suggest the flash of the foil, and 
 into every one of which he threw himself and his 
 prejudices. He contributed to the journals, which 
 he hated, and which he once called c the railroads of 
 falsehood,' without committing a single act of dis- 
 loyalty to his inflexible ideals. He fought, pen in 
 hand, against what he believed the follies and vul- 
 garities of the age, and, since he was a solitary 
 conservative among the devotees of progress and 
 revolution, he fought alone. 
 
 It is this fight which is the true history of 
 his life. Apart from his intellect and ambition, 
 he engaged in no enterprise. He did not travel, for 
 the hustling of railroads and of chance companions 
 annoyed him. 'There is something democratic 
 in travelling,' he said, 'a secret love of majorities, 
 which should be despised.' And though there are 
 others to whom a solitary voyage is the sternest 
 seclusion, he was sincere in his opinion and stayed 
 at home. But if he has no adventures to record.
 
 228 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 he reveals again and again in a parenthesis the 
 tastes which help an appreciation of his character. 
 With the instinct of an artist he hated mountains. 
 ' Am I descended of the Titans,' he asked, ' upon 
 whom they were hurled ? ' And above all sounds he 
 loved the music of bells. £ The voices of bronze,' 
 said he, ' do not change like the voices of men.' 
 One single episode, which reveals his inherited dispo- 
 sition, is still memorable. When V Ensorcelee was 
 published, his father recalled him in two words : 
 ' Revenez, Monsieur.'' And you know not which 
 to admire the more, the grandeur of the father or 
 the pride of the exiled son. 
 
 He came to a Paris agog with the Romantic 
 Movement ; yet to him the Romantic Movement 
 said nothing. He was alone in a hostile world with 
 his dreams of the past, and he could not contemplate 
 the universal innovation without horror. On all 
 sides he saw desolation and decay. The death of 
 politeness sensibly afflicted him, to whom politeness 
 was not only the supreme elegance but the trustiest 
 weapon of life. ' Of what use is it,' he asked, ' in 
 this reasonable and utilitarian age ? ' Time was, it 
 seemed, the best rod to keep fools at a distance — a 
 rod that spared you the trouble of striking. But it 
 was lost in the prevailing insolence, lost with dancing, 
 which was degraded to the polka, with horseman- 
 ship, which was mere jockeydom — ' the monkey on 
 horseback ' — with fencing, which had degenerated 
 into the art of giving blovvs.
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 229 
 
 Deploring thus the decadence of manners, he 
 found a yet worse terror in politics. He saw en- 
 croaching ' the boundless folly of universal suffrage,' 
 and was convinced that had Judas been alive to-day 
 he would have been a minister. Of equality he had 
 as fierce a horror as Carlyle, and yet knew its 
 inevitableness. 'Equality in vice,' he said, 'makes 
 speedier progress than equality in politics, which 
 advances well enough. Where in the world shall 
 we end?' And already he foresaw — in 1847 — 
 that terrific uniformity, misbegotten child of Demo- 
 cracy, which should suppress costume as vainglorious, 
 and convert mankind into a brood of indistinguishable 
 vermin. Hating the Age of Lead, he was the 
 resolute champion of 'great men.' He believed 
 only in what was rare : great men, great wit, great 
 character. 'The highest praise,' he wrote, 'that 
 you can give to a diamond is to say that it is alone,' 
 and it was this devotion to the noble and dis- 
 tinguished which shaped his opinions and controlled 
 his life. For him, then, there was no resource but 
 battle : wherefore he unsheathed his pen, fought 
 with fury, and never outstepped in the bitterest 
 combat that boundary of convention which it was 
 his contemporaries' habit to transgress. 
 
 He opposed the Radicals with a confirmed hatred ; 
 and, being a Catholic in the world of sceptics, he was 
 set aside by the undiscerning as a farceur. His sense 
 of logic induced him to approve the Spanish Inquisi- 
 tion, and to applaud his country for the murder of
 
 2 3 o BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 the Huguenots. Yet, after all, it was only the 
 other side of the medal, and far more dignified than 
 the 'freethinker's' smug delight in the triumph of 
 his open mind. He contemned the very memory of 
 Luther, and it was his constant regret that that 
 Reformer was not burnt, instead of his books. His 
 criticism, then, is deeply preoccupied with self, but 
 its prejudice makes it the more interesting. For, if 
 it puts the victim in a false light, it reveals Barbey 
 d'Aurevilly in all his brilliant fantasy, and becomes 
 in a sense creative. His decisions may proceed from 
 false premises, carried to extravagant conclusions. 
 He was never capable of isolating the art of literature 
 from his manifold creeds and superstitions. A poet 
 who did not agree with him upon a question of 
 politics was no poet at all, and he was prepared to 
 riddle him through and through with the sharpest of 
 swords dipped in the bitterest of acids. But he 
 directed his campaign with so obvious a sincerity, 
 with so nonchalant a disregard for the views of the 
 other side, that even his enemies smiled at the 
 onslaught, while they recognised the honourable and 
 courageous talent which inspired it. 
 
 For he was not of those who conceal their opinions 
 for the sake of a shuffling amiability, and his mordant 
 wit gave him a palpable advantage in the many con- 
 troversies wherein he was engaged. He judged 
 rather by intuition than by argument, and he was 
 quicker to declare his taste than to explain it. In 
 brief, he was not endowed with the critical spirit,
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 231 
 
 and therefore his criticisms have outlived half a 
 library of painful analyses. He cared neither to 
 weigh rival mediocrities in the balance, nor to 
 establish his predilection upon an everlasting founda- 
 tion. It was combat that he loved, and if he were 
 sometimes a rash judge, he was always a brilliant 
 advocate. Thus he ridiculed Renan, he despised 
 Michelet, he hated Victor Hugo, whose Miserables 
 gave his polished invective its finest opportunity. 
 And one and all have triumphed over the attack. 
 But the critic was as incapable of uprooting his 
 prejudice as of changing his faith, and at least he 
 was guiltless of falsifying his impressions. 
 
 Moreover, he was a fine scholar, profoundly 
 versed in many languages. His Norman blood gave 
 him a keen sympathy with English Literature, which 
 he read with a closer insight than any of his 
 countrymen. His admiration of Shakespeare was 
 loyal and discerning ; and alone of his generation 
 he had a sane appreciation of Byron's poetry and 
 temperament. For the Germans, if you except 
 Heine, he cherished a frank antipathy. 'They do 
 not write books,' he said ; c they only prepare them.' 
 And where will you find a briefer definition of the 
 Teutonic talent ? But what he most urgently 
 demanded of literature was distinction : imagination 
 and fancy were as nothing to him without the tact 
 of selection, without the perfect architecture of phrase. 
 And like all those to whom the battle is a necessity, 
 he championed his heroes as vigorously as he attacked
 
 232 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 his foes. The men whose superiority won his 
 esteem were incapable of wrong. Even when thev 
 were deceived, they overtopped the rest of the world, 
 for their vision was more false, and their fault more 
 splendid, than the vision and virtue of pigmies. 
 Hence, also, said he, with excellent understanding 
 they must necessarily appear spiteful, since their 
 implacable eye discovers folly and vice invisible to 
 the less highly gifted. And what he said of others 
 may be said, with double truth, of himself. 
 
 He tilted at windmills, but at windmills which 
 often demanded demolition, and his age, had it cared 
 to understand him, would have recognised a Don 
 Quixote, inspired to sanity. But his age did not 
 understand him, and he was far too proud to supply 
 the key to his intelligibility. He lived his own life in 
 the remote fastnesses of the Rue de Sevres, in a vain 
 solitude. He would imitate the ambition of the 
 Persian kings, and enjoy the majesty of the in- 
 visible. It was not for him to seek a cheap romance 
 at the edge of an Italian lake. Paris and his own 
 province gave him all that he lacked. If he could 
 not realise his own ideal of splendour, yet he could 
 dream it. And so he created out of the poor 
 materials at his hand a regal magnificence, and 
 living in a world of ideas glorified his modest apart- 
 ment into a Venetian palace. 
 
 His aspect was worthy his ambition ; the martial 
 insolence of his bearing was mitigated by the keen, 
 bitter refinement of the inexorable artist. The
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 233 
 
 handsome features, depicted in his portraits, display 
 that nobility which is Norman and aristocratic, 
 transformed by the vague reflectiveness of the poet. 
 The embarrassment of poverty never persuaded him 
 to forego the hope of wealth and splendour, nor 
 could he regard himself in other than a grandiose 
 environment. The pride and aristocracy of his 
 sentiments set him above the trivial annoyances of 
 the moment. Were he in debt, he compelled his 
 creditors to admiration, and bestowed upon them a 
 friendly patronage, which made light of obligations. 
 He would rather dine meagrely at the Maison Doree 
 than gorge in a tavern, which would have disgusted 
 his refinement ; and Rumour is busy concerning the 
 demands made upon his purse by the costly cutlets 
 which his noble vanity compelled him to eat in 
 fitting company. 
 
 His costume, too, was remarkable and his own. 
 Hating the colourlessness of modern life, he adopted 
 the guise of his youth, whereto he always remained 
 faithful. His trousers of grey-pearl or white are a 
 part of folk-lore, and the full-skirted, tight-waisted 
 frock-coat has been celebrated by Goncourt and a 
 hundred others. Such was the fashion of his attire, 
 adopted with deliberation and worn without the 
 smallest suspicion of false conceit. It was as inti- 
 mate a part of himself as his Catholicism or his 
 pitiless contempt of all Republics. And if for 
 seventy years he never changed it, so, too, he pre- 
 served his opinions inalterable. By temperament a
 
 234 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 soldier and a nobleman, he should have controlled 
 limitless wealth, and been given a constant oppor- 
 tunity of honourable display. But destiny opposed 
 his temperament, and it is to his lasting glory that 
 not even destiny compelled submission. Age might 
 have touched the seams of his coat, yet he wore it 
 with a courage and a vanity which the longest purse 
 and the costliest tailor were insufficient to impart. 
 
 Knowing his own foibles, he reverenced the foibles 
 of others. ' I have never hated,' said he, ' a spice of 
 foppery in a man when lack of wit does not compro- 
 mise him,' and it was one of his dreams to write a 
 treatise on the follies of great men. That lack of 
 wit never compromised him needs not to be said, 
 and it was his triumph to have brought a flash of 
 colour into a life which circumstances might have 
 condemned to dulness. Whatever was his must 
 be exclusive and apart. His manuscripts, says an 
 enthusiast, were illuminated like missals ; his hand- 
 writing was as fine as Richelieu's, and it was his 
 amiable whim to write his romance in inks of 
 different colour, which might respond to his fancy 
 or to the character of the work. 
 
 ' I have seen Brummel mad and D'Orsay dying,' 
 he once wrote with a certain pride ; and it is his 
 peculiar glory to have written the epic of Dandyism 
 and of Brummel. This masterpiece is more inti- 
 mately his own than the best of his romances, the 
 fiercest of his criticisms. For not only in his life, but 
 in his art, dandyism was a constant obsession. Again
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 235 
 
 and again he recurs to his favourite theme, and this 
 immortal treatise is the best commentary on his 
 works as on his career. Dandyism he defines as the 
 fruit of vanity, but of vanity which has nought to do 
 with the conquest of women. And he esteems it 
 the exclusive product of England, and of England 
 under the Regency. The word is as foreign to 
 France as that which it expresses, and France, he 
 thinks, will never share this vanity with England. 
 c We may reflect all colours, but the chameleon 
 cannot reflect white, and white, for peoples, is the 
 force of their originality.' And again : 'It is the 
 force of English originality impressing itself upon 
 human vanity — that vanity anchored even to the 
 heart of scullions, compared to which the contempt 
 of Pascal is but a blind insolence — which produces 
 that which is called Dandyism. 
 
 And thereafter he analyses the quality with a fine- 
 ness of perception aud closeness of argument which 
 are incomparable. Richelieu was not a dandy, since 
 his prowess in the field, his astuteness in the council, 
 modified his vanity. Even Pascal, his favourite 
 Pascal, was separated by his qualities from the majesty 
 of Brummel. The nearest rival to the Englishman's 
 throne is the Prince de Kaunitz, whose ' majestic 
 frivolity and fierce egotism ' almost equalled Brum- 
 mel's, and who boasted that he had no friend. And 
 even Kaunitz knew moments of failure. He was 
 not a dandy, says Barbey d'Aurevilly, when he wore 
 a corset of satin ; he was a dandy when, to give his
 
 236 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 hair the exact shade, he walked through a suite of 
 rooms, whose length and number he had reckoned, 
 while valets, armed with powder-puffs, sprinkled him 
 as he passed. No, all fail to fit the definition save 
 Brummel himself; and 'take away the dandy from 
 him, and what remains' ? 
 
 Moreover, Barbey d'Aurevilly frees his favourite 
 quality from many a misapprehension. ' You can be a 
 dandy in a ragged coat,' he says ; * it is not the coat 
 which walks alone ! it is a certain manner of wearing 
 it which makes the dandy.' And here you might 
 be persuaded to believe the panegyrist himself first 
 cousin of Brummel. For if ever a man knew how 
 to glorify a coat by the noble wearing of it, it was 
 he. But you remember that the vanity of apparel 
 and aspect was never sufficient for him. He was a 
 fighter, a philosopher, a creator of fantastic types, 
 and if for a moment we pronounced him a dandy, 
 we must pronounce him a dandy modified by a dozen 
 accomplishments. Yet he, too, like Brummel, glori- 
 fied a fashion, and if his capacity was not limited c to 
 the brutal art of putting on a cravat,' it is certain 
 that under other circumstances and with a restricted 
 talent he might have attained what he proclaims im- 
 possible, and acclimatised in France that dandyism 
 which Johnson's Dictionary knew not, and which 
 needed for its invention the special circumstances of 
 the Regency. 
 
 At any rate it is his treatise, Du Dandysme et de 
 Georges Brummel^ which best defines the talent of
 
 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 237 
 
 Barbey d'Aurevilly. It bears to his life the same 
 relation which Vathek bore to the career of Beckford. 
 It is echoed in his romances, it influences his criticism. 
 The least suspicion of the dandy awakens all his 
 enthusiasm ; and, though he would have refused the 
 title to Lord Byron, you are sure that a part of his 
 admiration for the master of Newstead Abbey was 
 reserved for the Man about Town, for the bosom 
 friend of Scrope Davies, for the extravagant who 
 vowed he would rather be Brummel than Napoleon. 
 Thus, also, he reverenced D'Orsay, whose nature he 
 finds far ampler and more deeply human than the 
 dandyism of Brummel. And yet in his own despite 
 it is D'Orsay the dandy who claims his enthusiasm. 
 This 'King of amiable benevolence' would have 
 smiled in vain upon the world ; in vain would he 
 have thrown his napkin at the officer who spoke evil 
 of the Virgin Mary, and fastened a quarrel upon him 
 because he would not have a woman insulted in his 
 presence ; in vain would he have displayed his amazing 
 sympathy ; Barbey d'Aurevilly at least would have 
 withheld his worship, had there not been added to his 
 benevolence the talent of fashion, the genius even of 
 tying a cravat. 
 
 These then were Barbey d'Aurevilly's heroes, 
 Byron and D'Orsay, Pascal, who drove six horses in 
 his carriage, and Joseph de Maistre. Thus you may 
 measure the taste of a keen critic and finished gentle- 
 man, to whom combat was a necessity and honour 
 was inevitable, who never wrote a mean line, and
 
 238 BARBEY D'AUREVILLY 
 
 who never descended for an instant from his lofty 
 ideal of conservative and Catholic aristocracy. So 
 much you may learn from his books and his predilec- 
 tions. You may reconstruct from legend or history 
 the outward habit of his life and the costume which 
 made him famous. But his greatest gift died with 
 him : his brilliant conversation, the only gift for 
 which he would have sacrificed all. Those that have 
 listened to it agree in admiration, yet none have been 
 able to define its excellences, to give the most distant 
 echo of its brilliant eloquence. He was a talker, 
 says Rumour, perfect in style, quick in wit, various 
 in colour, quenchless in gaiety, and his talk is var- 
 nished with the elegances he loved so well, with the 
 forlorn hopes of faith and fancy he so gallantly led. 
 Yet he has won the fate which before all he desired. 
 It was his ideal to be a man of genius, and unknown. 
 His works remain to attest his genius, and neither in 
 life nor after death was he perplexed by the admira- 
 tion of the crowd.
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 A SLENDER figure, elegantly poised in an 
 attitude which betokens at once ambition 
 and security. His right elbow rests lightly on the 
 chimneypiece, and the tips of his delicate jewelled 
 fingers are free to coquet with the glossy ringlets 
 which crown a pensive brow. The rolled collar of 
 his coat is of to-morrow's fashion, and an open 
 waistcoat reveals a cascade of scarf magnificently 
 glorified by brooch and chain. His legs are non- 
 chalantly crossed and encased in creaseless trousers, 
 sternly strapped beneath a pair of dainty pumps. A 
 Turkish chibouque thrown upon a pillowed divan 
 symbolises the grand tour and a half-concealed love 
 of tobacco ; while the air of idle luxury is tempered 
 by the beauty of the oval face, and by the imagina- 
 tive eyes, fixed with bold unconcern upon a 
 triumphant future and the mysterious East. Thus 
 is Disraeli the Younger pictured by Maclise ; thus 
 did he appear to the intimates of his romantic youth. 
 Handsome, extravagant, debonair, Disraeli the 
 Younger was the true-born child of a wayward, 
 irresponsible age, which, with its manifold contra- 
 il
 
 242 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 dictions, was more interesting than distinguished, 
 more cultured than heroic. It was, indeed, a time 
 of transition, which bridged the distance between 
 the hard disdain of the Regency and the vapid en- 
 thusiasm of our Early Victorians. But the old 
 brutality was not forgotten, and the Prize Ring 
 nourished at the Keepsake's side. Though a rout 
 at Almack's was still an end of social ambition, there 
 were certain coteries in Brompton which claimed 
 their devoted slaves, and some thought it more 
 glorious to sip tea in L. E. L.'s parlour than to 
 flaunt it in the presence of a hundred duchesses. 
 For Byronism had achieved its proper result, and the 
 man of fashion was driven perforce into an affectation 
 of romance. It was a social duty, eagerly discharged, 
 to stand in attitudes, to cultivate the curling-tongs 
 and the pomatum-pot, to wear extravagant, inhar- 
 monious clothes, to flatter blue-stockings, and to 
 end your careless sentences with 'and all that.' 
 Indeed, 'twas the strangest of mixtures, this age of 
 watered silk and satin waistcoats ; and while on the 
 one hand it knew not the roystering dissipation of 
 Carlton House, on the other it had not yet learnt to 
 simper and be afraid. Certain heroes there were, 
 such as the Marquis of Hertford, to keep alive the 
 ancient tradition ; but Brummel was in exile, and 
 there was an open revolt against his severe, refining 
 influence. 
 
 Doubtless the great Dandy cherished an extravagant 
 taste in snuff-boxes ; but the first article of his
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 243 
 
 creed was a scrupulous simplicity of attire, which 
 Scrope Davies and the more intelligent of his pupils 
 faithfully observed. And when the fourth William 
 sat upon the throne there invaded with softened 
 manners an extravagance of taste. The world, tired 
 of violent debauchery, chose its vices with a better 
 circumspection ; but, equally tired of expensive 
 simplicity, it exercised little tact in the selection of 
 its wine or its wardrobe. It became lackadaisical, 
 tired, fantastic. ' I rather like bad wine,' says 
 Mountchesney in Sybil, 'one gets so bored with 
 good wine ' — a characteristic confession of weakness 
 which no Dandy with an essential pride in excellence 
 would have dared to make. It was the boast of the 
 Brummels that they were surprised at nothing ; their 
 successors cheapened the faculty of admiration, until 
 they wondered not only at the verse of Bulwer but 
 at the prose of Lady Blessington. But at last the 
 cold impassibility was dead : dead also were the 
 pitiless contempt and the hard desire of perfection 
 which marked the golden age of dandyism. No 
 longer was it bad form to display sentiment or to 
 confess an interest in polite literature, while a sonnet 
 signed with a title was sure of a hearing in the most 
 exclusive drawing-room. 
 
 So by degrees elegance ceased to be worshipped 
 for its own sake ; the barrier was broken that once 
 separated fashion from culture ; while Manchester 
 and the Reform Bill created a tolerant curiosity, 
 unknown before, which opened the door to the most
 
 244 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 bizarre of talents, to the most reckless of opinions. 
 In truth, where taste and repartee had once been 
 supreme, a half-awakened soul began to reign, and the 
 courtiers, as if to prove themselves superior to novel 
 sensations and young enthusiasms, dressed themselves 
 with unwonted fancy and extravagance. The bloods 
 of the town were arrayed in such finery as would 
 have shocked the chaster refinement of Brummel. 
 There are vague rumours of green trousers and black 
 satin shirts, while velvet coats gave an air of sump- 
 tuous sobriety to the Opera House. No wonder the 
 Marquis of Hertford, who had witnessed the departed 
 glory of the Regency, took refuge from the changing 
 manners in Paris or Rome ; but, in spite of defection, 
 all was not lost, and London was saved from vulgarity 
 by the surpassing genius of Alfred D'Orsay. 
 
 Now Alfred D'Orsay rivalled the Dandies in ele- 
 gance ; in all other respects he was their antithesis. 
 His magnificence was only less than Brummel's own 
 because it lacked that touch of delicacy and restraint 
 which made the greatest of the Georges an exemplar 
 for all time. While Brummel was wont to walk 
 down St. James's unnoticed, D'Orsay could not leave 
 Gore House without making an immediate and 
 brilliant sensation. His satin-lined coat was thrown 
 as far back as possible, his * breastplate of starched 
 cambric' was broader and more luminous than any 
 other in town ; his boot was the smallest and most 
 highly polished that ever was seen upon the foot of 
 man ; his hat was set with a superb jauntiness over
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 245 
 
 an array of curls which rivalled the beard of an 
 Assyrian bull; his attitude and gestures were the 
 last expression of an arrogance wherein there was no 
 malice, of a pride wherein there was no disdain. 
 
 But it is only at one point that he challenges com- 
 parison with Brummel, his manifest superior in the 
 art of adornment. In all other aspects he stands 
 apart. He knew nothing of the frigid heartlessness, 
 the narrow contempt, the 'majestic frivolity,' which 
 were the essence of Brummel's genius. For while 
 the Dandy occupied but one corner of human 
 activity, D'Orsay put no restraint upon either his 
 heart or his head. He was a man of tact and 
 feeling, always gay, always fresh, always sympa- 
 thetic. His interests were as wide as his intelli- 
 gence; he was as fine a judge of horseflesh as of 
 a dinner ; an instinctive appreciation of literature 
 and art endeared him to the dilettanti ; and a 
 peculiar skill of intimacy turned new acquaintances 
 into old friends. Above all, he was agreeable and 
 enchanting, a fairy-prince, whose delight it was to 
 extricate the luckless from those pitfalls which a 
 profound knowledge of the world had taught him 
 to avoid. An amiable, loyal, pleasure-loving hero, 
 he shared with Lady Blessington the throne of 
 Gore House, and dominated for twenty years that 
 world of fashion which vainly limped after his 
 perfections. Such as he was his contemporaries 
 aspired to be ; and, strangely enough, this eloquent 
 Frenchman remains the symbol of that age when
 
 246 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 men wore Nugee coats and drank Badminton, and 
 when women bared their shoulders and sanjr tearful 
 ditties to the music of the harp. 
 
 It was this world, then, that the young Disraeli 
 entered with the highest credentials of breeding and 
 intelligence, and under the brilliant auspices of the 
 Count himself, whose generosity he repaid by the 
 sketch of Mirabel, as pretty a gentleman as ever 
 unravelled the plot of a love-story. Few men have 
 made a more splendid appearance on the stage. His 
 swift sword opened the oyster at the first encounter, 
 and before the world knew his name he was a leader 
 of society. His progress was like a fairy tale, or a 
 chapter from Balzac, which you cannot read without 
 a spirited enthusiasm. He was young, he was hand- 
 some, he was a fop, he had written a book, and his 
 glory was almost equal to his unparalleled ambition. 
 Strange stories were told of this sallow-faced youth, 
 whose black ringlets were ridiculed by the envious, 
 and the fashion of whose coat is still legendary. But 
 his tasselled ivory cane, inlaid with gold, his flower- 
 embroidered waistcoat, his chains unnumbered, his 
 priceless ruffles — even these were less remarkable 
 than his mysterious silences, his flashes of eloquence, 
 and the bitter contempt which he cherished for his 
 fellows. 
 
 No wonder the world eagerly acknowledged his 
 superiority ; no wonder the chariot of his glory was 
 never stayed. What a career was his ! What an 
 achievement in fascination ! Truly he emptied the
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 247 
 
 bowl of life, and found no poison in the wine. He 
 was witty, accomplished, glorious, and his table was 
 littered with letters ; and London was at his feet. 
 And he — he accepted the homage with a grave and 
 grateful smile, and he wandered from the house of 
 one duchess to the house of another, proud in the 
 conviction that he brought to the smartest party far 
 more than it could yield him. Once upon a time he 
 was mobbed with Bulwer at a ball, and doubtless he 
 took his hustling in the most complaisant of humours. 
 Another night he came late to dinner at Sir Robert 
 Peel's, and found six stealthy politicians eating in 
 silence. Instantly he flung an epigram across the 
 table, dispelled the gravity, and wrung a smile from 
 Peel himself. 
 
 When the influenza attacked London, he met it 
 with the smartest remedies and in the best company. 
 ' D'Orsay and I,' he wrote, ' defy the disorder with 
 a first-rate cook, a generous diet, and medicated 
 vapour-baths.' To-day he dines with Chandos, the 
 only man in the room not a member of Parliament ; 
 to-morrow he sits at another ducal table, proud in 
 the reflection that no commoners are present save 
 himself and Sir William Fremantle. As the season 
 declines, he attends water-parties, devised in the 
 sentimental taste of the time. The guests embarked 
 at five o'clock, 'the heavens very favourable, sang 
 all the way, wandered in beautiful gardens worthy 
 of Paul Veronese, full not only of flowers, but 
 fountains and parroquets.'
 
 248 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 What a picture it is — the titled exquisites dressed 
 a little beyond the limits of good taste and floating 
 down the Thames to the music of a luxurious senti- 
 mentality ! It was drawn but sixty years ago, yet 
 it seems prehistoric, or if, indeed, it must belong to 
 time and space, it should suggest that no man's land 
 of ardour and elegance in which is laid the scene of 
 Henrietta Temple. And Disraeli triumphed over the 
 envy of men and the ridicule of women. True, 
 one murmured that he looked as though he were 
 hanging in chains, while another asked was he in 
 training for the office of Lord Mayor ? But he was 
 a man whose gravity checked impertinence, and as 
 he confesses himself, ' he made his way easily in the 
 highest set, where they like to admire and be amused.' 
 And doubtless they did admire and were amused, 
 until this exquisite had no enemies save the second- 
 rate, and counted among his champions the most 
 beautiful women and the greatest statesmen of his 
 time. 
 
 His glory was no surprise, least of all to himself. 
 He had entered the world to conquer, and the victory 
 was his. Nor was there the smallest touch of snob- 
 bishness in his choice of a battlefield. He deemed his 
 blood the purest in Europe, and himself the equal of 
 the most ancient duke. So that in deserting his 
 father's library for what he would have called ' the 
 saloons of the great,' he was but obeying a natural 
 and a modest instinct. Being a Jew in all things, 
 in nothing did he prove his descent so clearly as
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 249 
 
 in his love of splendour. Had he commanded the 
 wealth of Contarlni Fleming, he, too, would have 
 lived in a ' Palladian pile'; he, too, would have 
 enriched his mansion with all ' the spoils of the 
 teeming Orient'; his terraces would have sparkled 
 with jasper, porphyry, and onyx ; * the gold of Attic, 
 the jewels of Ind, the talismans of Egypt, the per- 
 fumes and manuscripts of Persia, the spices and gems 
 of Araby ' — all those mythical glories would have 
 made his castle for all the world like the great Bazaar 
 of Bagdad. 
 
 The result, of course, would have been opulent 
 rather than beautiful, for Disraeli's taste was of his 
 time, and took no thought either of classic harmony 
 or of delicate restraint. Nevertheless, he was possessed 
 with an indiscriminate, unquestioning admiration of 
 magnificence, which instantly determined the place 
 he should occupy in the world. Above all things, 
 clothes engrossed his fancy, and from the outset 
 he regarded life as a masquerade. He must always 
 be c dressing-up,' as children say, and disguising his 
 origin in the gorgeous trappings of a costume-shop. 
 At Malta he dined with the officers, now as an 
 Andalusian brigand, now as a Greek pirate ; and 
 though we know not what the British soldier thought 
 of his display, he himself was abundantly satisfied 
 with the effect he produced. Indeed, throughout 
 his famous tour, which was nothing less than a march 
 of triumph, he pondered deeply of his wardrobe, and 
 not even the difficulties of travel compelled him to 
 appear in disarray.
 
 250 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 So he is found lamenting that c the king's death 
 is the destruction of his dress-waistcoats ' j so he 
 boasts that a 'handkerchief which he brought from 
 Paris is the most successful thing he ever wore, and 
 universally admired.' But it was at Gibraltar that 
 he made his proudest conquest, and ' maintained his 
 reputation of being a great judge of costume.' For 
 not only did the fashion of discarding waistcoats in 
 the morning reveal the beauty of his peerless studs, 
 but, says he, ' I have the fame of being the first who 
 ever passed the Straits with two canes — a morning 
 and an evening cane. I change my cane as the gun 
 fires, and hope to carry them both on to Cairo. It 
 is wonderful the effect these magical wands produce. 
 I owe to them even more attention than to being 
 the supposed author of — what is it ? — I forget ! ' 
 
 That is a touch of the true Disraeli ! He forgot 
 the title of his book ; he remembered the proper 
 moment to change his cane ; and it was this pleasant 
 mixture of carefulness and nonchalance which gave 
 him his place in the world. It was a pose, of course; 
 but success itself is a pose, which is wholly alien to 
 the natural man. And Disraeli was so little the 
 natural man, that all his actions were the result of 
 forethought, and all his poses were calculated to 
 please his set. For instance, the world was fatigued 
 with action, and here was Disraeli ready to declare 
 that he had never thrown a ball in his life, that it 
 tired him to kill pheasants, that he was indifferent to 
 the pleasures of the chase. Nevertheless, when he
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 251 
 
 did ride to hounds, the spirit of romance seized him, 
 and, 'although not in pink, I was the best-mounted 
 man in the field, riding an Arabian mare, which I 
 nearly killed ; a run of thirty miles, and I stopped at 
 nothing.' 
 
 That is a feat that D'Orsay might have accom- 
 plished every week ; but it is unique in the ex- 
 perience of Disraeli, and merely accentuated his 
 habit of inaction. It was rather within the key 
 of his character to sit resplendent in a half-light, 
 and to dash out sudden from the gloom with a 
 brilliant epigram or a torrent of eloquence. 'I like 
 silent, melancholy men,' said Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, 
 at their introduction — and no doubt Disraeli flattered 
 her taste. For though his duty was speech, he could 
 be silent when he pleased — surely the most difficult 
 achievement, for eloquence is not easily chained — 
 while none of his intimates ever heard him laugh, 
 and few there were who saw him smile. Like the 
 Spanish King, he was possessed by a spirit of gravity, 
 which in no way hindered the flash of his scorn or 
 the ripple of his amazing wit. But it made readily 
 possible the most sincere of all his poses — the pose 
 of mystery. If it were his ambition to penetrate the 
 Asian mystery, he himself was a mystery — Asian, 
 too — that defied penetration. When he seemed a 
 fop, then was he most a visionary, and it was always 
 in the Orient that he saw his visions and dreamed 
 his dreams. 
 
 It is tempting, indeed, to seize his character in his
 
 252 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 novels, and perchance there is something of himself 
 in all his heroes. You can imagine him saying with 
 Vivian Grey that guava and liqueurs were the only 
 refreshment he ever took. You can see him in as 
 deadly opposition as Coningsby to the common creeds 
 of a worn-out party ; above all, you recognise in the 
 fantasies of Tancred his author's own mysticism, and 
 surely he is nearer akin to Lord Montacute than to 
 any of his creations. And he wandered London up 
 and down, a kind of unsolved riddle. ' What is he ? ' 
 asked the world of fashion after a certain eminent 
 personage, and Disraeli was far too skilful a tactician 
 to satisfy an idle curiosity. 
 
 But he was equipped for the fray with other gifts 
 than melancholy and mysticism. Young in tempera- 
 ment as well as in years, he was of those who keep 
 their youth not only in their own hearts but in the 
 eyes of men ; and the author of Coningsby was 
 still leading Young England when he had passed his 
 eighth lustre. And what may a man not do with 
 youth — youth untouched of time, the first and last 
 gift of the gods ? Alas ! we reckon by the clumsy 
 measure of months, condemning boys because they 
 are young and men because they are old, and forget 
 that there are tempers which the passage of time 
 cannot affect. But Disraeli possessed the great gift, 
 and Sidonia's panegyric of youth was doubtless his 
 own. ' " Great men never want experience,' said 
 the stranger ; " the history of heroes is the history 
 of youth.'" And Disraeli might have echoed both
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 253 
 
 statements, for the author of Vivian Grey was already 
 mature, and though he was Prime Minister for the 
 first time at sixty-two, he had then escaped the 
 approach of age. 
 
 Next after youth, it was the faculty of displace- 
 ment which ensured him the victory. He occupied 
 more space than lesser men, and his presence was 
 sufficient to overshadow all competitors. Wherever 
 he went, he compelled observation, and he was never 
 without a field to exercise his talents. Moreover, 
 by his grave, sallow face he masked an intrepid deter- 
 mination and a quiet courage. That he should be a 
 great man, that he should lead the great world, was 
 ordained, because his mind was set upon the enter- 
 prise. 'We make our Fortunes and we call it 
 Fate,' he said somewhere ; but assuredly if he made 
 his fortune, he never let his fate out of his own 
 hands. 
 
 Moreover, he held the place which he had gained 
 by the exercise of the most brilliant talents. His 
 genius of conversation is legendary, and no contem- 
 porary was a match for the quickness of his repartee 
 and the ruthlessness of his scorn. Yet how poor a 
 record is there of his wit ! With the silence of the 
 voice which instantly hushed the babble of common 
 talk one at least of his qualities vanished irreparably. 
 For his repeated jests have lost their savour, and are 
 remembered rather for their effect than for them- 
 selves. If it be rare to encounter a page that will 
 live, it is impossible to fashion a mot that will win
 
 254 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 immortality. And the Disraeli of the drawing- 
 rooms descends to our imagination as the Romantic 
 Movement in person, a hero, maybe, in the vein of 
 Rastignac, whose massy chain and prodigious velvets 
 are infinitely more picturesque than the red waist- 
 coat which inaugurated a revolution across the 
 Channel. 
 
 The most of men would have accepted for a career 
 Disraeli's triumph in the world. He might, indeed, 
 have succeeded to D'Orsay's throne, and been un- 
 disputed arbiter of elegances. Yet he was but a 
 sojourner in society, which was to him rather a means 
 of progress than a pursuit, and where he took his 
 unquestioned place unquestioning ; nor did he for a 
 moment permit an organised frivolity to interrupt 
 the serious occupation of his life. For, besides being 
 a flaneur and a mystic, he was also a man of affairs, 
 whose ambition could only be checked by death 
 itself. And for this he has been called an adventurer, 
 and an adventurer he assuredly is in the sense that 
 every one adventures, be he duke or ploughman, 
 when he leaves his father's hearth. But the baser 
 sense, that by the wiles of the upstart he reached too 
 lofty a position, is wholly inadmissible. 
 
 Who, indeed, should be a leader of men if not 
 he ? Born in a library, as he said, and nurtured on 
 Voltaire, he leaned upon his father's reputation, and 
 in his childhood knew whomsoever he would. In 
 education, in manners, in habit of the world, he was 
 any man's equal, and though he had a gentlemanly
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 255 
 
 acquaintance with debt, he had never known the 
 sharper twinge of poverty. His own sojourn in a 
 sponging-house, and his salvation by the adroit and 
 charming D'Orsay, are described with admirable 
 humour in Henrietta Temple ; while in Fakredeen's 
 mouth he has put a panegyric of debts, ' the dear 
 companions of my life,' which was dictated, doubtless, 
 by a grotesque sincerity. Maybe he thought as 
 much of himself as of the Emir, when he declared 
 that 'among his creditors he had disciplined that 
 diplomatic ability that shall some day confound and 
 control cabinets.' 
 
 But embarrassment is a common incident of life, 
 and if Disraeli was familiar with disappointment, and 
 4 to be disappointed is to be young,' he never was 
 familiar with disaster, and he claimed to play a part in 
 politics without effrontery or astonishment. Indeed, 
 long before he asked the voters of High Wycombe for 
 their confidence, he had been entrusted with a mission 
 the mere memory of which might have made the 
 fortune of another man, and which he himself recalled 
 many years after with pride and satisfaction. 
 
 Now in 1825, when Disraeli had just turned 
 twenty, John Murray determined to found a daily 
 paper. At the boy's instigation it was to be called 
 the Representative, and when the great Sir Walter's 
 opinion was asked, who so apt an emissary as Disraeli 
 the Younger ? Here was his opportunity, and bravely 
 did he tackle it. He set out for the North with the 
 eager curiosity of untravelled youth, proud in the
 
 256 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 confidence of an august publisher, and assured that 
 to his persuasion not even Sir Walter could be deaf. 
 He rested his foot at York, was enchanted with the 
 Minster, and whispered to Murray that Froissart 
 was his companion, 'just the fellow for a traveller's 
 evening.' It is as fresh and buoyant a record as 
 history has to show ; it reminds you of Mozart be- 
 fore the French King, of Pope sitting at the feet of 
 Dryden. 
 
 But no sooner was he arrived at Chiefswood than 
 disappointment awaited him. For Lockhart, who 
 was there to meet him, expected the father, and not 
 having the gift of prophecy, knew not how far 
 greater and more valiant a man was the son. So 
 that 'everything looked as black as possible,' and the 
 adventure evoked the very last of Disraeli's talents. 
 He talked, he flattered, he cajoled, he displayed his 
 perfect cunning of management, until 'in a few 
 hours we completely understood one another, and 
 were upon the most intimate terms.' Here, indeed, 
 you perceive that diplomacy in bud which in blossom 
 was to govern England and to subdue Europe. 
 Between Disraeli and Lockhart there could not have 
 been the link of lasting sympathy. But for the 
 moment it was Disraeli's single-minded endeavour to 
 gain his opponent's intimacy, and it is not surprising 
 that he won an easy victory in this battle of wits. 
 The situation, indeed, was made for him, and after 
 Lockhart's submission the conquest of Sir Walter 
 was assured.
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 257 
 
 Nor did he for a minute underrate the importance 
 of his mission. He impressed upon Murray not 
 only the magnitude of the stake, but also the sacred 
 necessity of discretion. The love of mystery had 
 already taken hold of him, and for fear of the post- 
 man he dared not mention by name the actors in 
 this little drama. No; secrecy must be preserved 
 inviolate, and Sir Walter figures as the Chevalier, 
 while Lockhart is hidden behind an inexpressive M. 
 And all the time the young Disraeli is conducting 
 the negotiation with irresistible firmness and spirit, 
 convinced that even in Sir Walter's presence the 
 hero of the moment is really himself. Already his 
 sanguine temper detected in the combination a vast 
 opportunity, and he assumed the lead with a certainty 
 and an arrogance which are invincible. Despite Sir 
 Walter, Lockhart is to manage the Representative ; 
 but, says Disraeli, 'it should be impressed upon him 
 that he is coming to town not to be editor of a news- 
 paper, but the director-general of an immense organ, 
 and at the head of a band of high-bred gentlemen 
 and important interests.' Thus he had already 
 mastered — this boy of twenty — the art of persuading 
 by a phrase, and with an assurance which the Wizard 
 must have echoed with a laugh, he had even decided 
 which seat in the House should be occupied by the 
 Wizard's son-in-law. 
 
 The negotiation, in fact, was brought to a 
 marvellous issue; and, to top all, Disraeli was able 
 to boast that ' the Chevalier and M. have un- 
 R
 
 258 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 burthened themselves to me in a manner the most 
 confidential that you can possibly conceive.' What 
 secrets they were which passed we shall never know, 
 for Disraeli had the fear of the postman in his eye, 
 and Murray preserved an unhappy silence. But it 
 was an astounding trio that sat round the fire at 
 Chiefswood — Sir Walter and Lockhart and Disraeli j 
 and what a priceless document we should possess if 
 only the greatest man of his generation had recorded 
 his impressions of this light-hearted boy, destined 
 not only to usurp the throne of romance, but to 
 govern the country ! 
 
 Lockhart obeyed the summons ; the Representa- 
 tive was launched and foundered ; and Disraeli, whose 
 memory was always as sanguine as his experience, 
 lived to record, after half a century, Sir Walter's 
 amiable reception. With that touch of exaggeration 
 which kept him a spoilt boy to the last, he described 
 how the author of Waverley^ to humour a lad of 
 twenty, displayed all the glories of Abbotsford, and 
 unlocked the treasures of his mind, until you are half 
 inclined to believe that the Border palace was built to 
 flatter the imagination of this casual visitor, and that 
 Sir Walter had waited for this fitting opportunity to 
 practise the art of conversation. But it was Disraeli's 
 first experience in the management of men, and, 
 though disaster followed, Murray was for the moment 
 enchanted. And as for the hero, he had learnt his 
 lesson ; and when he stood before the electors of 
 High Wycombe, he might reflect that he was not 
 wholly unskilled in affairs.
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 259 
 
 But it was in politics that his alert and vivid 
 genius found its highest expression, and the choice 
 is easily justified. Brilliant as were his gifts in 
 literature, Disraeli was never bound by the slavery 
 of words. He wrote his novels because he craved 
 a popular medium in which to translate his opinions, 
 and the most of his works are rather fanciful exposi- 
 tions of his policy than separate masterpieces. Where- 
 fore he could never have been content for such poor 
 fame as his readers could give him to forego the 
 frenzy of an active life. His ambition was to govern 
 men, and to feel the impression which his voice, his 
 eye, his gesture made upon the crowd. His success 
 was assured as soon as he stood upon the hustings ; 
 and long before he was appointed to lead the House 
 he had turned the current of English opinion. He 
 brought to the solemn task of government all those 
 qualities which made him supreme in the fashionable 
 world, and gave to his novels — dashed off, you may 
 be sure, at a sitting — a corner apart in our English 
 literature. In the first place, he was a born fighter, 
 to whom the interchange of blows was a delight, 
 and who ever scorned to cover his fist with a glove. 
 In the second, he had a perfect talent for stage 
 management. Life for him was a drama, in which he 
 always played the principal part, and he had learnt 
 precisely how and when to bring off" his great effects. 
 
 The controversy with O'Connell, for instance, 
 was as deftly handled as might be expected from 
 D'Orsay's wisdom and Dizzy's wit. The Count
 
 260 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 had far too fine a sense of the world to intervene 
 in a political quarrel, but the challenge was sent 
 under his auspices — in fact, as the principal confessed, 
 he took the management of everything. With 
 perfect delicacy Disraeli remained within doors until 
 ten o'clock, when he dressed, doubtless with pro- 
 digious magnificence, and went to the opera. Every 
 one allowed 'that it was done in first-rate style,' 
 and that O'Connell and all his friends were utterly 
 c squabashed.' The violent explosion in the Times 
 was variously greeted : some found it coarse, others 
 declared it worthy of Swift. But, as its author 
 remarked with naive arrogance, c the general effect 
 is the thing, and all men agree that I have shown 
 pluck.' 
 
 This is but one example of the dramatic instinct 
 which never failed him ; and though he had nothing 
 of the mummer's commonness in his nature, he 
 recognised the utility of stage effect. To be power- 
 ful is to live in the mouths of men ; and when 
 Disraeli stood up to make his maiden speech, he 
 was almost as well known as Sir Robert Peel 
 himself. The moment, of course, was chosen with 
 perfect intelligence, and the subject — Ireland — gave 
 him an opportunity of demolishing his ancient 
 enemy. The House was on the one side expectant, 
 on the other vindictive, but none expected the 
 outburst of ridicule which overwhelmed the speaker. 
 The pallid face of the legend, the glossy curls, the 
 fantastic attire inspired the Opposition at least as
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 261 
 
 much as the hatred of the Repealers. As for the 
 speech itself, it struck the proper note of arrogance : 
 it was, indeed, the trumpet-call to battle sounded 
 by a man who knew neither fear nor failure. 
 
 He set himself up, possibly without reason, as 'the 
 representative of a considerable number of members.' 
 When the House laughed he put it down to envy. 
 With his accustomed love of imagery, abundantly 
 justified by the eye's superiority to the intellect, and 
 by the victory which argument always yields to the 
 picturesque, he represented O'Connell dangling in 
 one hand the keys of St. Peter, in the other the Cap 
 of Liberty. As the uproar increased, he became 
 defiant, and in the old-fashioned style of rodomontade 
 declared that * he had begun many things, and he 
 had often succeeded at last.' Then came the 
 immortal phrase: C I will sit down now, but the 
 time will come when you shall hear me ' ; and the 
 magnificent conclusion, drowned in a scream, 'and 
 when I rise in this Assembly hereafter, a dropped 
 pin shall be heard.' 
 
 The battle had been fought, and Disraeli had won. 
 When they talked of failure Peel was indignant, and 
 Shiel himself flouted his own supporters. The boast, 
 generously youthful in itself, is sanctified by time, 
 and heightens the fabulous character of the man that 
 uttered it. At any rate, the episode left him c in 
 good spirits,' and determined him not to lose his 
 chance. For a while he must subdue his tone, and 
 his next speech was on Copyright ; he must show
 
 262 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 knowledge rather than wit, and he plumped his 
 utterance with hard, unmanageable facts. But the 
 single object was achieved : the orator had captured 
 his audience ; his prophecy was fulfilled almost as 
 soon as uttered ; and henceforth he would never rise 
 to an empty House nor endure the inattention of 
 the scornful. 
 
 Thus, once more, he had turned to triumph what 
 other men had deplored for irretrievable defeat, and 
 proved that Opportunity is the greatest of the gods. 
 Yet, adroit as he was, it was no gift of manner which 
 enabled this Jew of genius to dominate the British 
 House of Commons. He won his place because he 
 touched English politics with the finger of romance, 
 because he lit up even the dark places of Manchester 
 with the flash of imagination. The world, like the 
 youth of Contarini Fleming, was dominated by 
 words, and Disraeli, indignant at the tyranny of 
 worn-out titles, pleaded for the superiority of ideas. 
 Was he Tory or Radical ? What mattered the 
 name, so long as he was guiltless of Whiggish 
 autocracy ? Wherefore he preached the doctrines 
 of the Pentateuch, with others more popular, and 
 appealed for support to Bolingbroke and Pitt. 
 
 It was a strange creed, this mixture of Judaism, 
 the People, and Tory tradition, nor is it surprising 
 that it was misunderstood. The sternly orthodox 
 of all shades were quick to denounce Disraeli for 
 a charlatan, and all the while he was a political 
 philosopher, profoundly inspired. He stood not for
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 263 
 
 a party, but for his opinions, and when once his 
 opinions were shaped he created a party, which 
 should hold them. By a subtle irony he chose for 
 his adherents the nobles and squires of England, 
 and it is small wonder that they looked with sus- 
 picion upon his support, which soon grew into 
 dominion. But he was a statesman who could not 
 live from hand to mouth upon political intrigue, 
 which, said he, was the resource of the second-rate. 
 He would sustain himself upon { great truths,' and, 
 unpalatable as they were, he forced those ' great 
 truths ' upon his colleagues. 
 
 Therefore he detached himself wholly from the 
 common superstitions, and as Sir Walter leapt back 
 to the past for the material of his romances, so 
 Disraeli would suppress all the history which came 
 between 1688 and the passing of the Reform Bill. 
 The object of the Whigs, said he, was, and had 
 always been, to convert England into a Venetian 
 republic, to turn the monarch into a Doge, and sup- 
 press the people. But it was the duty of all patriots 
 to crush the Whigs, whose objects were to establish 
 a tyranny and dismember the empire, and to defeat 
 any party which did not respect the prerogative of 
 the Crown and understand the only object of all 
 government. The theory was admirable, and admir- 
 ably expressed, but it seemed unintelligible to the 
 true-blue Tory, whose creed was still privilege, 
 though the passing of the Reform Bill had en- 
 dangered the common liberty.
 
 264 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 The Whigs, in exchange for the vote, demanded 
 nothing less than to be masters for life, while the 
 people, said Disraeli, c took reform, as some others 
 took stolen goods, and no questions asked.' But 
 he, calling himself a Tory, dared to plead the cause 
 of the mob, and, after the example of Louis XL, 
 he was determined to thwart the reigning oligarchy 
 by an adroit combination of crown and people. To- 
 day, maybe, he would have been called a Socialist, 
 for he dreamt of a Ten Hours Bill ; he valiantly 
 declared that the rights of labour were as sacred as 
 the rights of property ; and he bitterly denounced 
 his chief enemies, the manufacturers, because, said 
 he, they had created a new wealth, and held them- 
 selves responsible to no man. But Socialism was not 
 then invented, and he was vaguely set down as a 
 danger to the State. 
 
 To unfold so romantic a creed before the un- 
 awakened Tory required a reckless courage, but 
 courage was precisely the quality which Disraeli 
 never lacked. He courted opposition, and smiled 
 at contempt. He knew as surely as on the night 
 of his maiden speech that his own hour was coming, 
 and with an anger of scorn he dismissed the policy 
 of the Conservatives as an organised hypocrisy. 
 Whether or not his demolition of Peel was justified, 
 whether it was he or his Minister who struck the 
 first blow, it is idle to speculate ; but it is certain 
 that no party was ever so fiercely demolished by 
 one man as were the Peelites by Disraeli. Young
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 265 
 
 England to-day is a generous dream ; but when 
 George Smythe and the author of Sybil fought side 
 by side it was a bitter, acrimonious reality. In vain 
 did the magnates of England express their distrust ; 
 in vain did the King of Hanover implore Lord 
 Strangford to extricate his son from the clutches 
 of Disraeli ; in vain did the Duke of Rutland lament 
 that the admirable character of Lord John Manners 
 exposed him to * the arts of a designing person.' 
 The battle still waged, and session after session 
 Disraeli delivered speeches which were masterpieces 
 of invective, brilliant with jibe, and serried with 
 argument. 
 
 The worst is, you return to the famous speeches 
 with regret and disappointment : the well-known 
 scorn is there ; once again you recognise the ancient 
 jests — the Whigs are caught bathing and lose their 
 clothes ; Hansard, which should be the Delphi, is 
 but the Dunciad of Downing Street ; Peel's horror 
 of slavery does not extend to the benches behind 
 him — 'there the gang is still assembled, there the 
 thong of the whip still sounds.' But for all the deft 
 illustration, for all the jingled alliteration, the splen- 
 did effect is gone, and you wonder whether it is not 
 a crime to imprison the spoken word. The orator, 
 like the actor, writes his name in snow, and may only 
 be judged by the effect which his voice, his glance, 
 and the wave of his hand produce upon the opinion 
 of others. Weighed by this standard, Disraeli's 
 victory was complete. Despite his small following,
 
 266 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 he was already master of the House ; his friends 
 belonged to those great houses which it was his 
 pleasure to penetrate and his ambition to control ; 
 and surely his irony was never more flattered than 
 at the Manchester Athenaeum, when, flanked by 
 George Smythe and Lord John Manners, who ap- 
 peared by their sires' permission for this occasion 
 only, he pleaded the cause of popular culture in the 
 accent of aristocratic Toryism. He pictured Athens, 
 he quoted Latin, he compared knowledge to Jacob's 
 mystic ladder, whose ' base rests on the primeval 
 earth, whose crest is lost in the shadowy splendour 
 of the empyrean.' And all the while he knew that 
 the hour of Peel's fall was at hand, and that then 
 nothing could intervene between himself and the 
 leadership. A rich experience even for this artist 
 in life. 
 
 Meanwhile, that no field should be left unturned, 
 he was writing the splendid series of romances which 
 would have kept green his fame had he never entered 
 a drawing-room nor stood upon a platform. It is 
 idle to criticise him who criticised everything, for, 
 in truth, his works defy every sentiment save admira- 
 tion. They are composed in a hurry, and without 
 the proper sense of literature. When the author 
 of Alroy believes he is writing lofty prose, he is 
 covering his pages with the blankest of verse. The 
 colour is generally as false as the sentiment, and 
 never, save in such dazzling tours de force as Ixion y 
 Popanilla, and the Infernal Marriage, wherein the
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 267 
 
 severe influence of Voltaire is still apparent, does the 
 writer consider the claims of grammar or logic. 
 But you forgive the extravagance, the sentiment, 
 the folly of such brilliant experiments as Tancred, 
 Sybil, and Coningsby for a thousand golden virtues. 
 For here is the real Disraeli revealed — a mixture of 
 romance and reality, scorn and gentleness. 
 
 Compare the first volume of Tenured with the 
 second, and you shall see the true meeting of East 
 and West. You cannot imagine a greater contrast 
 than glitters between Leander, that king of cooks, 
 and Fakredeen, the immortal type of the adroit, 
 unscrupulous, fascinating adventurer. Yet each is 
 drawn with a precision and sympathy which could 
 only proceed from intimate knowledge. Indeed, 
 Disraeli belonged to many worlds, and he poured 
 pell-mell into his romances his manifold experience. 
 If the blameless young man and the virtuous maid 
 eluded him, as they have eluded the rest, he drew 
 such characters as are outside the common observa- 
 tion with a skill that only can be matched in the 
 great masters of fiction. His Mirabel, his Mon- 
 mouth, his miraculous Sidonia, the ineffable Rigby, 
 those prodigies of intrigue Taper and Tadpole, who 
 never despaired of the Commonwealth, the Marneys 
 and Bellamonts — where shall you rival them for 
 justice and understanding ? 
 
 And the wit of his dialogue, the aptness of his 
 satire, the ferocity of his comment upon life, litera- 
 ture, and art — they are all unparalleled and his own.
 
 268 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 Now instead of appealing from the mediocrity of one 
 to the mediocrity of many, he would hang an archi- 
 tect ; now he sings the paean of intrigue, and declares 
 that youth and debt are the stimulus of action. But 
 wherever you prick him, he sheds the blood of 
 sincerity to himself. For his novels, if not autobio- 
 graphy, are still a transparent reflection of his moods 
 and opinions. He wrote so rapidly that he had not 
 time to mask his meaning ; and he thought so 
 deeply that he repeats himself again and again. If 
 in his novels you find the germs of all his policies, 
 if Cyprus is given to England by Tancred, and 
 the Queen is already hailed Empress of India, so his 
 speeches are little else than his romances, shaped for 
 the voice and another audience. But at least this 
 restless spirit had found another expression, this limit- 
 less ambition had won another pasturage. 
 
 Once upon a time, before he had taken his seat as 
 member for Maidstone, he announced that if there 
 was anything upon which he piqued himself it was 
 consistency. Now, consistency, if it be the least 
 offensive of the vices, is still the vilest of the virtues, 
 which springs rather from the obstinacy of weakness 
 than from the certainty of strength. But in a sense 
 Disraeli was consistent, and his uniformity of opinion 
 is readily explained. He began life with his career 
 minutely sketched ('I mean to be Prime Minister,' 
 he told Lord Melbourne in 1835), and being emanci- 
 pated from the catch-words of party, he was forced 
 to formulate in his youth the creed of popular
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 269 
 
 Toryism, which guided him until the last. Yet in 
 nothing was he so sincerely consistent as in his 
 devotion to his race. He was a Jew first, an 
 Englishman afterwards, and this whole-hearted 
 loyalty was firmly established upon the rock of pride. 
 Whether or not he had suffered from persecution, 
 he 'never imbibed that dislike for his race which the 
 vain are apt to adopt when they find that they are 
 born to public contempt.' He, too, was vain ; in 
 truth, he scaled the heights of arrogance, but his 
 vanity assumed another shape. For him the East 
 was a career ; his eyes were always turned towards 
 the cradle of his race. Oriental in his taste, as in 
 his lack of it, he believed that the patriarchs had laid 
 down the laws of government for all time, and he 
 would twist the policy of England until it harmonised 
 with the ideals of the Hebrew kings. His books, 
 his speeches, his life were the acclamation of Jewish 
 wisdom and Jewish grandeur. He pleaded the cause 
 of his people without passion, but rather with that 
 secure valiance which comes from the conscience of 
 a just cause. Tancred's noble fantasy of the East, 
 Alroy's unhappy devotion to a lost people, are but 
 the loftiest expression of his constant dream. To 
 read his eloquent argument is to wonder that in any 
 corner of the world the foolish men should cry 
 4 Death ' to the Jew. c All is race,' says Sidonia ; 
 c there is no other truth ' ; and every race must decay 
 * unless it lives in deserts and never mixes its blood.' 
 The Jews, it is certain, do not live in deserts, but
 
 270 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 they keep their blood pure, and so, for good or evil, 
 they have become the rulers of the world. 
 
 In Coningsby Sldonia, the concretion of the 
 Hebrew intellect, as fine a gentleman, as adroit a 
 politician, as profound a scholar, as ever stepped into 
 the pages of a novel, would prove by example that 
 the most learned students, the astutest diplomatists, 
 the most powerful Ministers, and even many 
 marshals of France are of Abraham's seed. So far 
 the argument is ornamental and extravagant ; but 
 Disraeli insists upon the perfect emancipation of his 
 people upon other and far more practical grounds. 
 All the tendencies of the Jewish race, he declares, are 
 conservative. How should a people, justly proud of 
 its blood, ever patient in its observance of ceremonial, 
 decline upon so ridiculous a doctrine as the equality 
 of man ! In brief, ' the bias of the Jews is to 
 religion, property, and natural aristocracy ; and it 
 should be the interest of statesmen that this bias 
 should be encouraged, and their energies and 
 creative powers enlisted in the cause of existing 
 society.' As they have lived under a feudal system, 
 so they are born with an understanding of monarchy 
 and submission, and no people in the world is better 
 fitted for patriotism than the people which to-day 
 holds the keys of empire. 
 
 Yet a foolish persecution of a great race would 
 deprive Europe of a solidly conservative element, and 
 that this persecution is unnecessary is proved not 
 only by the large tolerance of many generations, but
 
 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 271 
 
 by the supremacy which the most devoted Jew of 
 the century exercised over an aristocracy many 
 centuries younger than his own. The argument is 
 perfect, if you forget the vain prejudice of race, 
 which makes justice a mockery and turns men into 
 beasts of fury. But Disraeli carried his logic a step 
 further, and asked with perfect reason who could 
 ' deny that Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal glory of 
 the Jewish race ? ' In truth, it was his favourite 
 maxim that the complete Jew believed not only in 
 Sinai but in Calvary, and, said he, the Italian who 
 accuses a Christian Jew of perversion has misread 
 history. For the Jew has but fulfilled the Law and 
 the Prophets, and the pagan, turned against his gods, 
 is the true renegade. 
 
 The soundest arguments war vainly with passion, 
 and Disraeli's career was a finer championship of 
 his race than all his logic. Yet there is one 
 mystery which he cherished himself — the mystery of 
 his character. He achieved so much, and he said so 
 many things, that it has been a favourite pastime to 
 discover inconsistencies in the most consistent hero of 
 the century. He was a Jew and a Christian, a Tory 
 and a Radical, a novelist and an orator. Perhaps 
 there were in him the seeds of many contrary 
 things. And is it not far simpler to confess that he 
 was a man of genius, who fulfilled himself in many 
 ways, a prince of many kingdoms, who came into 
 them all ? Mystery was his pose, and yet he was 
 the most candid of men. He could not, if he would,
 
 272 DISRAELI THE YOUNGER 
 
 suppress his meaning. What he was in his books 
 that he was in his career ; and while romance was 
 his life, his life was a more brilliant romance than 
 his own ironic pen had dared to shape. But time, 
 which spared his genius, indulged not his enemies; 
 and he, who had been content to dream and to fight, 
 was called to government. Henceforth he must 
 desert adventure for accomplishment, romance for 
 the hard, dry atmosphere of office. The career of 
 Disraeli the Younger was finished ; the novels were 
 written, the satires laid aside ; deeds must silence 
 words ; and the Cyprus dreamed of in Tancred 
 should be ours, and the Queen should in very truth 
 be Empress. For though the statesman of to- 
 morrow must eclipse the enchanted Arabian of 
 to-day, his heart was still faithful to romance, his 
 face was still set towards the immortal East. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
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