Pelham — Complete

CHAPTER III.

         Thus does a false ambition rule us,
         Thus pomp delude, and folly fool us.
      —Shenstone.
    

An open house, haunted with great resort.—Bishop Hall’s Satires.

I left Cambridge in a very weak state of health; and as nobody had yet come to London, I accepted the invitation of Sir Lionel Garrett to pay him a visit at his country seat. Accordingly, one raw winter’s day, full of the hopes of the reviving influence of air and exercise, I found myself carefully packed up in three great coats, and on the high road to Garrett Park.

Sir Lionel Garrett was a character very common in England, and, in describing him, I describe the whole species. He was of an ancient family, and his ancestors had for centuries resided on their estates in Norfolk. Sir Lionel, who came to his majority and his fortune at the same time, went up to London at the age of twenty-one, a raw, uncouth sort of young man, in a green coat and lank hair. His friends in town were of that set whose members are above ton, whenever they do not grasp at its possession, but who, whenever they do, lose at once their aim and their equilibrium, and fall immeasurably below it. I mean that set which I call “the respectable,” consisting of old peers of an old school; country gentlemen, who still disdain not to love their wine and to hate the French; generals who have served in the army; elder brothers who succeed to something besides a mortgage; and younger brothers who do not mistake their capital for their income. To this set you may add the whole of the baronetage—for I have remarked that baronets hang together like bees or Scotchmen; and if I go to a baronet’s house, and speak to some one whom I have not the happiness to know, I always say “Sir John—.”

It was no wonder, then, that to this set belonged Sir Lionel Garrett—no more the youth in a green coat and lank hair, but pinched in, and curled out—abounding in horses and whiskers—dancing all night—lounging all day—the favourite of the old ladies, the Philander of the young.

One unfortunate evening Sir Lionel Garrett was introduced to the celebrated Duchess of D. From that moment his head was turned. Before then, he had always imagined that he was somebody—that he was Sir Lionel Garrett, with a good-looking person and eight thousand a-year; he now knew that he was nobody unless he went to Lady G.‘s and unless he bowed to Lady S. Disdaining all importance derived from himself, it became absolutely necessary to his happiness, that all his importance should be derived solely from his acquaintance with others. He cared not a straw that he was a man of fortune, of family, of consequence; he must be a man of ton; or he was an atom, a nonentity, a very worm, and no man. No lawyer at Gray’s Inn, no galley slave at the oar, ever worked so hard at his task as Sir Lionel Garrett at his. Ton, to a single man, is a thing attainable enough. Sir Lionel was just gaining the envied distinction, when he saw, courted, and married Lady Harriett Woodstock.

His new wife was of a modern and not very rich family, and striving like Sir Lionel for the notoriety of fashion; but of this struggle he was ignorant. He saw her admitted into good society—he imagined she commanded it; she was a hanger on—he believed she was a leader. Lady Harriett was crafty and twenty-four—had no objection to be married, nor to change the name of Woodstock for Garrett. She kept up the baronet’s mistake till it was too late to repair it.

Marriage did not bring Sir Lionel wisdom. His wife was of the same turn of mind as himself: they might have been great people in the country—they preferred being little people in town. They might have chosen friends among persons of respectability and rank—they preferred being chosen as acquaintance by persons of ton. Society was their being’s end and aim, and the only thing which brought them pleasure was the pain of attaining it. Did I not say truly that I would describe individuals of a common species? Is there one who reads this, who does not recognize that overflowing class of the English population, whose members would conceive it an insult to be thought of sufficient rank to be respectable for what they are?—who take it as an honour that they are made by their acquaintance?—who renounce the ease of living for themselves, for the trouble of living for persons who care not a pin for their existence—who are wretched if they are not dictated to by others—and who toil, groan, travail, through the whole course of life, in order to forfeit their independence?

I arrived at Garrett Park just time enough to dress for dinner. As I was descending the stairs after having performed that ceremony, I heard my own name pronounced by a very soft, lisping voice, “Henry Pelham! dear, what a pretty name. Is he handsome?”

“Rather distingue than handsome,” was the unsatisfactory reply, couched in a slow, pompous accent, which I immediately recognized to belong to Lady Harriett Garrett.

“Can we make something of him?” resumed the first voice.

“Something!” said Lady Harriett, indignantly; “he will be Lord Glenmorris! and he is son to Lady Frances Pelham.”

“Ah,” said the lisper, carelessly; “but can he write poetry, and play proverbes?”

“No, Lady Harriett,” said I, advancing; “but permit me, through you, to assure Lady Nelthorpe that he can admire those who do.”

“So you know me then?” said the lisper: “I see we shall be excellent friends;” and disengaging herself from Lady Harriett, she took my arm, and began discussing persons and things, poetry and china, French plays and music, till I found myself beside her at dinner, and most assiduously endeavouring to silence her by the superior engrossments of a bechamelle de poisson.

I took the opportunity of the pause, to survey the little circle of which Lady Harriett was the centre. In the first place, there was Mr. Davison, a great political economist, a short, dark, corpulent gentleman, with a quiet, serene, sleepy countenance, which put me exceedingly in mind of my grandmother’s arm-chair; beside him was a quick, sharp little woman, all sparkle and bustle, glancing a small, grey, prying eye round the table, with a most restless activity: this, as Lady Nelthorpe afterwards informed me, was a Miss Trafford, an excellent person for a Christmas in the country, whom every body was dying to have: she was an admirable mimic, an admirable actress, and an admirable reciter; made poetry and shoes, and told fortunes by the cards, which came actually true.

There was also Mr. Wormwood, the noli-me-tangere of literary lions—an author who sowed his conversation not with flowers but thorns. Nobody could accuse him of the flattery generally imputed to his species; through the course of a long and varied life, he had never once been known to say a civil thing. He was too much disliked not to be recherche; whatever is once notorious, even for being disagreeable, is sure to be courted in England. Opposite to him sat the really clever, and affectedly pedantic Lord Vincent, one of those persons who have been “promising young men” all their lives; who are found till four o’clock in the afternoon in a dressing-gown, with a quarto before them; who go down into the country for six weeks every session, to cram an impromptu reply; and who always have a work in the press which is never to be published.

Lady Nelthorpe herself I had frequently seen. She had some reputation for talent, was exceedingly affected, wrote poetry in albums, ridiculed her husband, who was a fox hunter, and had a great penchant pour les beaux arts et les beaux hommes.

There were four or five others of the unknown vulgar, younger brothers, who were good shots and bad matches; elderly ladies, who lived in Baker-street, and liked long whist; and young ones, who never took wine, and said “Sir.”

I must, however, among this number, except the beautiful Lady Roseville, the most fascinating woman, perhaps, of the day. She was evidently the great person there, and, indeed, among all people who paid due deference to ton, was always sure to be so every where. I have never seen but one person more beautiful. Her eyes were of the deepest blue; her complexion of the most delicate carnation; her hair of the richest auburn: nor could even Mr. Wormwood detect the smallest fault in the rounded yet slender symmetry of her figure.

Although not above twenty-five, she was in that state in which alone a woman ceases to be a dependant—widowhood. Lord Roseville, who had been dead about two years, had not survived their marriage many months; that period was, however, sufficiently long to allow him to appreciate her excellence, and to testify his sense of it: the whole of his unentailed property, which was very large, he bequeathed to her.

She was very fond of the society of literati, though without the pretence of belonging to their order. But her manners constituted her chief attraction: while they were utterly different from those of every one else, you could not, in the least minutiae, discover in what the difference consisted: this is, in my opinion, the real test of perfect breeding. While you are enchanted with the effect, it should possess so little prominency and peculiarity, that you should never be able to guess the cause.

“Pray,” said Lord Vincent to Mr. Wormwood, “have you been to P—this year?”

“No,” was the answer.

“I have, my lord,” said Miss Trafford, who never lost an opportunity of slipping in a word.

“Well, and did they make you sleep, as usual, at the Crown, with the same eternal excuse, after having brought you fifty miles from town, of small house—no beds—all engaged—inn close by? Ah, never shall I forget that inn, with its royal name, and its hard beds—

“‘Uneasy sleeps a head beneath the Crown!’”

“Ha, ha! Excellent!” cried Miss Trafford, who was always the first in at the death of a pun. “Yes, indeed they did: poor old Lord Belton, with his rheumatism; and that immense General Grant, with his asthma; together with three ‘single men,’ and myself, were safely conveyed to that asylum for the destitute.”

“Ah! Grant, Grant!” said Lord Vincent, eagerly, who saw another opportunity of whipping in a pun. “He slept there also the same night I did; and when I saw his unwieldy person waddling out of the door the next morning, I said to Temple, ‘Well, that’s the largest Grant I ever saw from the Crown.’” [Note: It was from Mr. J. Smith that Lord Vincent purloined this pun.]

“Very good,” said Wormwood, gravely. “I declare, Vincent, you are growing quite witty. Do you remember Jekyl? Poor fellow, what a really good punster he was—not agreeable though—particularly at dinner—no punsters are. Mr. Davison, what is that dish next to you?”

Mr. Davison was a great gourmand: “Salmi de perdreaux aux truffes,” replied the political economist.

“Truffles!” said Wormwood, “have you been eating any?”

“Yes,” said Davison, with unusual energy, “and they are the best I have tasted for a long time.”

“Very likely,” said Wormwood, with a dejected air. “I am particularly fond of them, but I dare not touch one—truffles are so very apoplectic—you, I make no doubt, may eat them in safety.”

Wormwood was a tall, meagre man, with a neck a yard long. Davison was, as I have said, short and fat, and made without any apparent neck at all—only head and shoulders, like a cod-fish.

Poor Mr. Davison turned perfectly white; he fidgeted about in his chair; cast a look of the most deadly fear and aversion at the fatal dish he had been so attentive to before; and, muttering “apoplectic,” closed his lips, and did not open them again all dinner-time.

Mr. Wormwood’s object was effected. Two people were silenced and uncomfortable, and a sort of mist hung over the spirits of the whole party. The dinner went on and off, like all other dinners; the ladies retired, and the men drank, and talked indecorums. Mr. Davison left the room first, in order to look out the word “truffle,” in the Encyclopaedia; and Lord Vincent and I went next, “lest (as my companion characteristically observed) that d—d Wormwood should, if we stayed a moment longer, ‘send us weeping to our beds.’”