Devereux — Complete

CHAPTER VIII.

LIGHTLY WON, LIGHTLY LOST.—A DIALOGUE OF EQUAL INSTRUCTION AND AMUSEMENT.—A VISIT TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER.

ONE morning Tarleton breakfasted with me. “I don’t see the little page,” said he, “who was always in attendance in your anteroom; what the deuce has become of him?”

“You must ask his mistress; she has quarrelled with me, and withdrawn both her favour and her messenger.”

“What! the Lady Hasselton quarrelled with you! Diable! Wherefore?”

“Because I am not enough of the ‘pretty fellow;’ am tired of carrying hood and scarf, and sitting behind her chair through five long acts of a dull play; because I disappointed her in not searching for her at every drum and quadrille party; because I admired not her monkey; and because I broke a teapot with a toad for a cover.”

“And is not that enough?” cried Tarleton. “Heavens! what a black bead-roll of offences; Mrs. Merton would have discarded me for one of them. However, thy account has removed my surprise; I heard her praise thee the other day; now, as long as she loved thee, she always abused thee like a pickpocket.”

“Ha! ha! ha!—and what said she in my favour?”

“Why, that you were certainly very handsome, though you were small; that you were certainly a great genius, though every one would not discover it; and that you certainly had the air of high birth, though you were not nearly so well dressed as Beau Tippetly. But entre nous, Devereux, I think she hates you, and would play you a trick of spite—revenge is too strong a word—if she could find an opportunity.”

“Likely enough, Tarleton; but a coquette’s lover is always on his guard; so she will not take me unawares.”

“So be it. But tell me, Devereux, who is to be your next mistress, Mrs. Denton or Lady Clancathcart? the world gives them both to you.”

“The world is always as generous with what is worthless as the bishop in the fable was with his blessing. However, I promise thee, Tarleton, that I will not interfere with thy claims either upon Mrs. Denton or Lady Clancathcart.”

“Nay,” said Tarleton, “I will own that you are a very Scipio; but it must be confessed, even by you, satirist as you are, that Lady Clancathcart has a beautiful set of features.”

“A handsome face, but so vilely made. She would make a splendid picture if, like the goddess Laverna, she could be painted as a head without a body.”

“Ha! ha! ha!—you have a bitter tongue, Count; but Mrs. Denton, what have you to say against her?”

“Nothing; she has no pretensions for me to contradict. She has a green eye and a sharp voice; a mincing gait and a broad foot. What friend of Mrs. Denton would not, therefore, counsel her to a prudent obscurity?”

“She never had but one lover in the world,” said Tarleton, “who was old, blind, lame, and poor; she accepted him, and became Mrs. Denton.”

“Yes,” said I, “she was like the magnet, and received her name from the very first person* sensible of her attraction.”

*Magnes.

“Well, you have a shrewd way of saying sweet things,” said Tarleton; “but I must own that you rarely or never direct it towards women individually. What makes you break through your ordinary custom?”

“Because I am angry with women collectively; and must pour my spleen through whatever channel presents itself.”

“Astonishing,” said Tarleton; “I despise women myself. I always did; but you were their most enthusiastic and chivalrous defender a month or two ago. What makes thee change, my Sir Amadis?”

“Disappointment! they weary, vex, disgust me; selfish, frivolous, mean, heartless: out on them! ‘tis a disgrace to have their love!”

“O Ciel! What a sensation the news of thy misogyny will cause; the young, gay, rich Count Devereux, whose wit, vivacity, splendour of appearance, in equipage and dress, in the course of one season have thrown all the most established beaux and pretty fellows into the shade; to whom dedications and odes and billet-doux are so much waste paper; who has carried off the most general envy and dislike that any man ever was blest with, since St. John turned politician; what! thou all of a sudden to become a railer against the divine sex that made thee what thou art! Fly, fly, unhappy apostate, or expect the fate of Orpheus, at least!”

“None of your raileries, Tarleton, or I shall speak to you of plebeians and the canaille!”

“Sacre! my teeth are on edge already! Oh, the base, base canaille, how I loathe them! Nay, Devereux, joking apart, I love you twice as well for your humour. I despise the sex heartily. Indeed, sub rosa be it spoken, there are few things that breathe that I do not despise. Human nature seems to me a most pitiful bundle of rags and scraps, which the gods threw out of Heaven, as the dust and rubbish there.”

“A pleasant view of thy species,” said I.

“By my soul it is. Contempt is to me a luxury. I would not lose the privilege of loathing for all the objects which fools ever admired. What does old Persius say on the subject?

 “‘Hoc ridere meum, tam nil, nulla tibi vendo Iliade.’”*

* “This privilege of mine, to laugh,—such a nothing as it seems,—I would not barter to thee for an Iliad.”

“And yet, Tarleton,” said I, “the littlest feeling of all is a delight in contemplating the littleness of other people. Nothing is more contemptible than habitual contempt.”

“Prithee, now,” answered the haughty aristocrat, “let us not talk of these matters so subtly: leave me my enjoyment without refining upon it. What is your first pursuit for the morning?”

“Why, I have promised my uncle a picture of that invaluable countenance which Lady Hasselton finds so handsome; and I am going to give Kneller my last sitting.”

“So, so, I will accompany you; I like the vain old dog; ‘tis a pleasure to hear him admire himself so wittily.”

“Come, then!” said I, taking up my hat and sword; and, entering Tarleton’s carriage, we drove to the painter’s abode.

We found him employed in finishing a portrait of Lady Godolphin.

“He, he!” cried he, when he beheld me approach. “By Got, I am glad to see you, Count Tevereux; dis painting is tamned poor work by one’s self, widout any one to make des grands yeux, and cry, ‘Oh, Sir Godfrey Kneller, how fine dis is!’”

“Very true, indeed,” said I, “no great man can be expected to waste his talents without his proper reward of praise. But, Heavens, Tarleton, did you ever see anything so wonderful? that hand, that arm, how exquisite! If Apollo turned painter, and borrowed colours from the rainbow and models from the goddesses, he would not be fit to hold the pallet to Sir Godfrey Kneller.”

“By Got, Count Tevereux, you are von grand judge of painting,” cried the artist, with sparkling eyes, “and I will paint you as von tamned handsome man!”

“Nay, my Apelles, you might as well preserve some likeness.”

“Likeness, by Got! I vill make you like and handsome both. By my shoul you make me von Apelles, I vill make you von Alexander!”

“People in general,” said Tarleton, gravely, “believe that Alexander had a wry neck, and was a very plain fellow; but no one can know about Alexander like Sir Godfrey Kneller, who has studied military tactics so accurately, and who, if he had taken up the sword instead of the pencil, would have been at least an Alexander himself.”

“By Got, Meester Tarleton, you are as goot a judge of de talents for de war as Count Tevereux of de genie for de painting! Meester Tarleton, I vill paint your picture, and I vill make your eyes von goot inch bigger than dey are!”

“Large or small,” said I (for Tarleton, who had a haughty custom of contracting his orbs till they were scarce perceptible, was so much offended, that I thought it prudent to cut off his reply), “large or small, Sir Godfrey, Mr. Tarleton’s eyes are capable of admiring your genius; why, your painting is like lightning, and one flash of your brush would be sufficient to restore even a blind man to sight.”

“It is tamned true,” said Sir Godfrey, earnestly; “and it did restore von man to sight once! By my shoul, it did! but sit yourself town, Count Tevereux, and look over your left shoulder—ah, dat is it—and now, praise on, Count Tevereux; de thought of my genius gives you—vat you call it—von animation—von fire, look you—by my shoul, it does!”

And by dint of such moderate panegyric, the worthy Sir Godfrey completed my picture, with equal satisfaction to himself and the original. See what a beautifier is flattery: a few sweet words will send the Count Devereux down to posterity with at least three times as much beauty as he could justly lay claim to.*

* This picture represents the Count in an undress. The face is decidedly, though by no means remarkably, handsome; the nose is aquiline,—the upper lip short and chiselled,—the eyes gray, and the forehead, which is by far the finest feature in the countenance, is peculiarly high, broad, and massive. The mouth has but little beauty; it is severe, caustic, and rather displeasing, from the extreme compression of the lips. The great and prevalent expression of the face is energy. The eye, the brow, the turn of the head, the erect, penetrating aspect,—are all strikingly bold, animated, and even daring. And this expression makes a singular contrast to that in another likeness to the Count, which was taken at a much later period of life. The latter portrait represents him in a foreign uniform, decorated with orders. The peculiar sarcasm of the month is hidden beneath a very long and thick mustachio, of a much darker colour than the hair (for in both portraits, as in Jervas’s picture of Lord Bolingbroke, the hair is left undisguised by the odious fashion of the day). Across one cheek there is a slight scar, as of a sabre cut. The whole character of this portrait is widely different from that in the earlier one. Not a trace of the fire, the animation, which were so striking in the physiognomy of the youth of twenty, is discoverable in the calm, sedate, stately, yet somewhat stern expression, which seems immovably spread over the paler hue and the more prominent features of the man of about four or five and thirty. Yet, upon the whole, the face in the latter portrait is handsomer; and, from its air of dignity and reflection, even more impressive than that in the one I have first described.—ED.