Crotchet Castle

T >> Thomas Love Peacock >> Crotchet Castle

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

"Well, Captain," said Lady Clarinda, "I perceive you can still
manoeuvre."

"What could possess you," said the Captain, "to send two
unendurable and inconceivable bores to intercept me with rubbish
about which I neither know nor care any more than the man in the
moon?"

"Perhaps," said Lady Clarinda, "I saw your design, and wished to
put your generalship to the test. But do not contradict anything I
have said about you, and see if the learned will find you out."

"There is fine music, as Rabelais observes, in the cliquetis
d'asssiettes, a refreshing shade in the ombre de salle a manger,
and an elegant fragrance in the fumee de roti," said a voice at the
Captain's elbow. The Captain turning round, recognised his
clerical friend of the morning, who knew him again immediately, and
said he was extremely glad to meet him there; more especially as
Lady Clarinda had assured him that he was an enthusiastic lover of
Greek poetry.

"Lady Clarinda," said the Captain, "is a very pleasant young lady."

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. So she is, sir: and I understand she has all
the wit of the family to herself, whatever that totum may be. But
a glass of wine after soup is, as the French say, the verre de
sante. The current of opinion sets in favour of Hock: but I am
for Madeira; I do not fancy Hock till I have laid a substratum of
Madeira. Will you join me?

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. With pleasure.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Here is a very fine salmon before me: and May
is the very point nomme to have salmon in perfection. There is a
fine turbot close by, and there is much to be said in his behalf:
but salmon in May is the king of fish.

MR. CROTCHET. That salmon before you, doctor, was caught in the
Thames, this morning.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. [Greek text]. Rarity of rarities! A Thames
salmon caught this morning. Now, Mr. Mac Quedy, even in fish your
Modern Athens must yield. Cedite Graii.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Eh! sir, on its own around, your Thames salmon has
two virtues over all others; first, that it is fresh; and, second,
that it is rare; for I understand you do not take half a dozen in a
year.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. In some years, sir, not one. Mud, filth, gas-
dregs, lock-weirs, and the march of mind, developed in the form of
poaching, have ruined the fishery. But, when we do catch a salmon,
happy the man to whom he falls.

MR. MAC QUEDY. I confess, sir, this is excellent: but I cannot
see why it should be better than a Tweed salmon at Kelso.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, I will take a glass of Hock with you.

MR. MAC QUEDY. With all my heart, sir. There are several
varieties of the salmon genus: but the common salmon, the salmo
salar, is only one species, one and the same everywhere, just like
the human mind. Locality and education make all the difference.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Education! Well, sir, I have no doubt schools
for all are just as fit for the species salmo salar as for the
genus homo. But you must allow that the specimen before us has
finished his education in a manner that does honour to his college.
However, I doubt that the salmo salar is only one species, that is
to say, precisely alike in all localities. I hold that every river
has its own breed, with essential differences; in flavour
especially. And as for the human mind, I deny that it is the same
in all men. I hold that there is every variety of natural capacity
from the idiot to Newton and Shakespeare; the mass of mankind,
midway between these extremes, being blockheads of different
degrees; education leaving them pretty nearly as it found them,
with this single difference, that it gives a fixed direction to
their stupidity, a sort of incurable wry neck to the thing they
call their understanding. So one nose points always east, and
another always west, and each is ready to swear that it points due
north.

MR. CROTCHET. If that be the point of truth, very few intellectual
noses point due north.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Only those that point to the Modern Athens.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Where all native noses point southward.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Eh, sir, northward for wisdom, and southward for
profit.

MR. CROTCHET, JUN. Champagne, doctor?

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Most willingly. But you will permit my
drinking it while it sparkles. I hold it a heresy to let it deaden
in my hand, while the glass of my compotator is being filled on the
opposite side of the table. By-the-bye, Captain, you remember a
passage in Athenaeus, where he cites Menander on the subject of
fish-sauce: [Greek text]. (The Captain was aghast for an answer
that would satisfy both his neighbours, when he was relieved by the
divine continuing.) The science of fish-sauce, Mr. Mac Quedy, is
by no means brought to perfection; a fine field of discovery still
lies open in that line.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Nay, sir, beyond lobster-sauce, I take it, ye
cannot go.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. In their line, I grant you, oyster and lobster-
sauce are the pillars of Hercules. But I speak of the cruet
sauces, where the quintessence of the sapid is condensed in a
phial. I can taste in my mind's palate a combination, which, if I
could give it reality, I would christen with the name of my
college, and hand it down to posterity as a seat of learning
indeed.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Well, sir, I wish you success, but I cannot let
slip the question we started just now. I say, cutting off idiots,
who have no minds at all, all minds are by nature alike. Education
(which begins from their birth) makes them what they are.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. No, sir, it makes their tendencies, not their
power. Caesar would have been the first wrestler on the village
common. Education might have made him a Nadir Shah; it might also
have made him a Washington; it could not have made him a merry-
andrew, for our newspapers to extol as a model of eloquence.

MR. MAC QUEDY. Now, sir, I think education would have made him
just anything, and fit for any station, from the throne to the
stocks; saint or sinner, aristocrat or democrat, judge, counsel, or
prisoner at the bar.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I will thank you for a slice of lamb, with
lemon and pepper. Before I proceed with this discussion,--Vin de
Grave, Mr. Skionar,--I must interpose one remark. There is a set
of persons in your city, Mr. Mac Quedy, who concoct, every three or
four months, a thing, which they call a review: a sort of sugar-
plum manufacturers to the Whig aristocracy.

MR. MAC QUEDY. I cannot tell, sir, exactly, what you mean by that;
but I hope you will speak of those gentlemen with respect, seeing
that I am one of them.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, I must drown my inadvertence in a glass of
Sauterne with you. There is a set of gentlemen in your city -

MR. MAC QUEDY. Not in our city, exactly; neither are they a set.
There is an editor, who forages for articles in all quarters, from
John o' Groat's house to the Land's End. It is not a board, or a
society: it is a mere intellectual bazaar, where A, B, and C,
bring their wares to market.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Well, sir, these gentlemen among them, the
present company excepted, have practised as much dishonesty as, in
any other department than literature, would have brought the
practitioner under the cognisance of the police. In politics, they
have ran with the hare and hunted with the hound. In criticism,
they have, knowingly and unblushingly, given false characters, both
for good and for evil; sticking at no art of misrepresentation, to
clear out of the field of literature all who stood in the way of
the interests of their own clique. They have never allowed their
own profound ignorance of anything (Greek for instance) to throw
even an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the
matter. They set an example of profligate contempt for truth, of
which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; and when
their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, they cried
out against their own reflected sin, as if they had never committed
it, or were entitled to a monopoly of it. The latter, I rather
think, was what they wanted.

MR. CROTCHET. Hermitage, doctor?

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Nothing better, sir. The father who first
chose the solitude of that vineyard, knew well how to cultivate his
spirit in retirement. Now, Mr. Mac Quedy, Achilles was
distinguished above all the Greeks for his inflexible love of
truth; could education have made Achilles one of your reviewers?

MR. MAC QUEDY. No doubt of it, even if your character of them were
true to the letter.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. And I say, sir--chicken and asparagus--Titan
had made him of better clay. I hold with Pindar, "All that is most
excellent is so by nature." [Greek text]. Education can give
purposes, but not powers; and whatever purposes had been given him,
he would have gone straight forward to them; straight forward, Mr.
Mac Quedy.

MR. MAC QUEDY. No, sir, education makes the man, powers, purposes,
and all.

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. There is the point, sir, on which we join
issue.

Several others of the company now chimed in with their opinions,
which gave the divine an opportunity to degustate one or two side
dishes, and to take a glass of wine with each of the young ladies.

CHAPTER V: CHARACTERS

Ay impute a honte plus que mediocre etre vu spectateur ocieux de
tant vaillans, disertz, et chevalereux personnaiges.
RABELAIS.

LADY CLARINDA (to the Captain). I declare the creature has been
listening to all this rigmarole, instead of attending to me. Do
you ever expect forgiveness? But now that they are all talking
together, and you cannot make out a word they say, nor they hear a
word that we say, I will describe the company to you. First, there
is the old gentleman on my left hand, at the head of the table, who
is now leaning the other way to talk to my brother. He is a good-
tempered, half-informed person, very unreasonably fond of
reasoning, and of reasoning people; people that talk nonsense
logically: he is fond of disputation himself, when there are only
one or two, but seldom does more than listen in a large company of
illumines. He made a great fortune in the city, and has the
comfort of a good conscience. He is very hospitable, and is
generous in dinners; though nothing would induce him to give
sixpence to the poor, because he holds that all misfortune is from
imprudence, that none but the rich ought to marry, and that all
ought to thrive by honest industry, as he did. He is ambitious of
founding a family, and of allying himself with nobility; and is
thus as willing as other grown children to throw away thousands for
a gew-gaw, though he would not part with a penny for charity. Next
to him is my brother, whom you know as well as I do. He has
finished his education with credit, and as he never ventures to
oppose me in anything, I have no doubt he is very sensible. He has
good manners, is a model of dress, and is reckoned ornamental in
all societies. Next to him is Miss Crotchet, my sister-in-law that
is to be. You see she is rather pretty, and very genteel. She is
tolerably accomplished, has her table always covered with new
novels, thinks Mr. Mac Quedy an oracle, and is extremely desirous
to be called "my lady." Next to her is Mr. Firedamp, a very absurd
person, who thinks that water is the evil principle. Next to him
is Mr. Eavesdrop, a man who, by dint of a certain something like
smartness, has got into good society. He is a sort of bookseller's
tool, and coins all his acquaintance in reminiscences and sketches
of character. I am very shy of him, for fear he should print me.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. If he print you in your own likeness, which is
that of an angel, you need not fear him. If he print you in any
other, I will cut his throat. But proceed -

LADY CLARINDA. Next to him is Mr. Henbane, the toxicologist, I
think he calls himself. He has passed half his life in studying
poisons and antidotes. The first thing he did on his arrival here
was to kill the cat; and while Miss Crotchet was crying over her,
he brought her to life again. I am more shy of him than the other.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. They are two very dangerous fellows, and I
shall take care to keep them both at a respectful distance. Let us
hope that Eavesdrop will sketch off Henbane, and that Henbane will
poison him for his trouble.

LADY CLARINDA. Well, next to him sits Mr. Mac Quedy, the Modern
Athenian, who lays down the law about everything, and therefore may
be taken to understand everything. He turns all the affairs of
this world into questions of buying and selling. He is the Spirit
of the Frozen Ocean to everything like romance and sentiment. He
condenses their volume of steam into a drop of cold water in a
moment. He has satisfied me that I am a commodity in the market,
and that I ought to set myself at a high price. So you see, he who
would have me must bid for me.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. I shall discuss that point with Mr. Mac Quedy.

LADY CLARINDA. Not a word for your life. Our flirtation is our
own secret. Let it remain so.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Flirtation, Clarinda! Is that all that the
most ardent -

LADY CLARINDA. Now, don't be rhapsodical here. Next to Mr. Mac
Quedy is Mr. Skionar, a sort of poetical philosopher, a curious
compound of the intense and the mystical. He abominates all the
ideas of Mr. Mac Quedy, and settles everything by sentiment and
intuition.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Then, I say, he is the wiser man.

LADY CLARINDA. They are two oddities, but a little of them is
amusing, and I like to hear them dispute. So you see I am in
training for a philosopher myself.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Any philosophy, for Heaven's sake, but the
pound-shilling-and-pence philosophy of Mr. Mac Quedy.

LADY CLARINDA. Why, they say that even Mr. Skionar, though he is a
great dreamer, always dreams with his eyes open, or with one eye at
any rate, which is an eye to his gain: but I believe that in this
respect the poor man has got an ill name by keeping bad company.
He has two dear friends, Mr. Wilful Wontsee, and Mr. Rumblesack
Shantsee, poets of some note, who used to see visions of Utopia,
and pure republics beyond the Western deep: but, finding that
these El Dorados brought them no revenue, they turned their vision-
seeing faculty into the more profitable channel of espying all
sorts of virtues in the high and the mighty, who were able and
willing to pay for the discovery.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. I do not fancy these virtue-spyers.

LADY CLARINDA. Next to Mr. Skionar sits Mr. Chainmail, a good-
looking young gentleman, as you see, with very antiquated tastes.
He is fond of old poetry, and is something of a poet himself. He
is deep in monkish literature, and holds that the best state of
society was that of the twelfth century, when nothing was going
forward but fighting, feasting, and praying, which he says are the
three great purposes for which man was made. He laments bitterly
over the inventions of gunpowder, steam, and gas, which he says
have ruined the world. He lives within two or three miles, and has
a large hall, adorned with rusty pikes, shields, helmets, swords,
and tattered banners, and furnished with yew-tree chairs, and two
long old worm-eaten oak tables, where he dines with all his
household, after the fashion of his favourite age. He wants us all
to dine with him, and I believe we shall go.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. That will be something new, at any rate.

LADY CLARINDA. Next to him is Mr. Toogood, the co-operationist,
who will have neither fighting nor praying; but wants to parcel out
the world into squares like a chess-board, with a community on
each, raising everything for one another, with a great steam-engine
to serve them in common for tailor and hosier, kitchen and cook.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. He is the strangest of the set, so far.

LADY CLARINDA. This brings us to the bottom of the table, where
sits my humble servant, Mr. Crotchet the younger. I ought not to
describe him.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. I entreat you do.

LADY CLARINDA. Well, I really have very little to say in his
favour.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. I do not wish to hear anything in his favour;
and I rejoice to hear you say so, because -

LADY CLARINDA. Do not flatter yourself. If I take him, it will be
to please my father, and to have a town and country house, and
plenty of servants and a carriage and an opera-box, and make some
of my acquaintance who have married for love, or for rank, or for
anything but money, die for envy of my jewels. You do not think I
would take him for himself. Why, he is very smooth and spruce as
far as his dress goes; but as to his face, he looks as if he had
tumbled headlong into a volcano, and been thrown up again among the
cinders.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. I cannot believe, that, speaking thus of him,
you mean to take him at all.

LADY CLARINDA. Oh! I am out of my teens. I have been very much in
love; but now I am come to years of discretion, and must think,
like other people, of settling myself advantageously. He was in
love with a banker's daughter, and cast her off at her father's
bankruptcy, and the poor girl has gone to hide herself in some wild
place.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. She must have a strange taste, if she pines
for the loss of him.

LADY CLARINDA. They say he was good-looking, till his bubble
schemes, as they call them, stamped him with the physiognomy of a
desperate gambler. I suspect he has still a penchant towards his
first flame. If he takes me, it will be for my rank and
connection, and the second seat of the borough of Rogueingrain. So
we shall meet on equal terms, and shall enjoy all the blessedness
of expecting nothing from each other.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. You can expect no security with such an
adventurer.

LADY CLARINDA. I shall have the security of a good settlement, and
then if andare al diavolo be his destiny, he may go, you know, by
himself. He is almost always dreaming and distrait. It is very
likely that some great reverse is in store for him: but that will
not concern me, you perceive.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. You torture me, Clarinda, with the bare
possibility.

LADY CLARINDA. Hush! Here is music to soothe your troubled
spirit. Next to him, on this side, sits the dilettante composer,
Mr. Trillo; they say his name was O'Trill, and he has taken the O
from the beginning, and put it at the end. I do not know how this
may be. He plays well on the violoncello, and better on the piano;
sings agreeably; has a talent at versemaking, and improvises a song
with some felicity. He is very agreeable company in the evening,
with his instruments and music-books. He maintains that the sole
end of all enlightened society is to get up a good opera, and
laments that wealth, genius, and energy are squandered upon other
pursuits, to the neglect of this one great matter.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. That is a very pleasant fancy at any rate.

LADY CLARINDA. I assure you he has a great deal to say for it.
Well, next to him, again, is Dr. Morbific, who has been all over
the world to prove that there is no such thing as contagion; and
has inoculated himself with plague, yellow fever, and every variety
of pestilence, and is still alive to tell the story. I am very shy
of him, too; for I look on him as a walking phial of wrath, corked
full of all infections, and not to be touched without extreme
hazard.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. This is the strangest fellow of all.

LADY CLARINDA. Next to him sits Mr. Philpot, the geographer, who
thinks of nothing but the heads and tails of rivers, and lays down
the streams of Terra Incognita as accurately as if he had been
there. He is a person of pleasant fancy, and makes a sort of fairy
land of every country he touches, from the Frozen Ocean to the
Deserts of Sahara.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. How does he settle matters with Mr. Firedamp?

LADY CLARINDA. You see Mr. Firedamp has got as far as possible out
of his way. Next to him is Sir Simon Steeltrap, of Steeltrap
Lodge, Member for Crouching-Curtown, Justice of Peace for the
county, and Lord of the United Manors of Spring-gun-and-Treadmill;
a great preserver of game and public morals. By administering the
laws which he assists in making, he disposes, at his pleasure, of
the land and its live stock, including all the two-legged
varieties, with and without feathers, in a circumference of several
miles round Steeltrap Lodge. He has enclosed commons and
woodlands; abolished cottage gardens; taken the village cricket-
ground into his own park, out of pure regard to the sanctity of
Sunday; shut up footpaths and alehouses (all but those which belong
to his electioneering friend, Mr. Quassia, the brewer); put down
fairs and fiddlers; committed many poachers; shot a few; convicted
one-third of the peasantry; suspected the rest; and passed nearly
the whole of them through a wholesome course of prison discipline,
which has finished their education at the expense of the county.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. He is somewhat out of his element here: among
such a diversity of opinions he will hear some he will not like.

LADY CLARINDA. It was rather ill-judged in Mr. Crotchet to invite
him to-day. But the art of assorting company is above these
parvenus. They invite a certain number of persons without
considering how they harmonise with each other. Between Sir Simon
and you is the Reverend Doctor Folliott. He is said to be an
excellent scholar, and is fonder of books than the majority of his
cloth; he is very fond, also, of the good things of this world. He
is of an admirable temper, and says rude things in a pleasant half-
earnest manner, that nobody can take offence with. And next to him
again is one Captain Fitzchrome, who is very much in love with a
certain person that does not mean to have anything to say to him,
because she can better her fortune by taking somebody else.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. And next to him again is the beautiful, the
accomplished, the witty, the fascinating, the tormenting, Lady
Clarinda, who traduces herself to the said Captain by assertions
which it would drive him crazy to believe.

LADY CLARINDA. Time will show, sir. And now we have gone the
round of the table.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. But I must say, though I know you had always a
turn for sketching characters, you surprise me by your observation,
and especially by your attention to opinions.

LADY CLARINDA. Well, I will tell you a secret: I am writing a
novel.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. A novel!

LADY CLARINDA. Yes, a novel. And I shall get a little finery by
it: trinkets and fal-lals, which I cannot get from papa. You must
know I have been reading several fashionable novels, the
fashionable this, and the fashionable that; and I thought to
myself, why I can do better than any of these myself. So I wrote a
chapter or two, and sent them as a specimen to Mr. Puffall, the
book-seller, telling him they were to be a part of the fashionable
something or other, and he offered me, I will not say how much, to
finish it in three volumes, and let him pay all the newspapers for
recommending it as the work of a lady of quality, who had made very
free with the characters of her acquaintance.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Surely you have not done so?

LADY CLARINDA. Oh, no! I leave that to Mr. Eavesdrop. But Mr.
Puffall made it a condition that I should let him say so.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. A strange recommendation.

LADY CLARINDA. Oh, nothing else will do. And it seems you may
give yourself any character you like, and the newspapers will print
it as if it came from themselves. I have commended you to three of
our friends here as an economist, a transcendentalist, and a
classical scholar; and if you wish to be renowned through the world
for these, or any other accomplishments, the newspapers will
confirm you in their possession for half-a-guinea a piece.

CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Truly, the praise of such gentry must be a
feather in any one's cap.

LADY CLARINDA. So you will see, some morning, that my novel is
"the most popular production of the day." This is Mr. Puffall's
favourite phrase. He makes the newspapers say it of everything he
publishes. But "the day," you know, is a very convenient phrase;
it allows of three hundred and sixty-five "most popular
productions" in a year. And in leap-year one more.

CHAPTER VI: THEORIES

But when they came to shape the model,
Not one could fit the other's noddle.--BUTLER.

Meanwhile, the last course, and the dessert, passed by. When the
ladies had withdrawn, young Crotchet addressed the company.

MR. CROTCHET, JUN. There is one point in which philosophers of all
classes seem to be agreed: that they only want money to regenerate
the world.

MR. MAC QUEDY. No doubt of it. Nothing is so easy as to lay down
the outlines of perfect society. There wants nothing but money to
set it going. I will explain myself clearly and fully by reading a
paper. (Producing a large scroll.) "In the infancy of society--"

REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Pray, Mr. Mac Quedy, how is it that all
gentlemen of your nation begin everything they write with the
"infancy of society?"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9