Nightmare Abbey
Page 11
CHAPTER XI
Scythrop, attending one day the summons to dinner, found in thedrawing-room his friend Mr Cypress the poet, whom he had known atcollege, and who was a great favourite of Mr Glowry. Mr Cypress said,he was on the point of leaving England, but could not think of doingso without a farewell-look at Nightmare Abbey and his respectedfriends, the moody Mr Glowry and the mysterious Mr Scythrop, thesublime Mr Flosky and the pathetic Mr Listless; to all of whom, andthe morbid hospitality of the melancholy dwelling in which they werethen assembled, he assured them he should always look back with asmuch affection as his lacerated spirit could feel for any thing. Thesympathetic condolence of their respective replies was cut short byRaven's announcement of 'dinner on table.'
The conversation that took place when the wine was in circulation, andthe ladies were withdrawn, we shall report with our usual scrupulousfidelity.
MR GLOWRY
You are leaving England, Mr Cypress. There is a delightful melancholyin saying farewell to an old acquaintance, when the chances are twentyto one against ever meeting again. A smiling bumper to a sad parting,and let us all be unhappy together.
MR CYPRESS (_filling a bumper_)
This is the only social habit that the disappointed spirit neverunlearns.
THE REVEREND MR LARYNX (_filling_)
It is the only piece of academical learning that the finished educateeretains.
MR FLOSKY (_filling_)
It is the only objective fact which the sceptic can realise.
SCYTHROP (_filling_)
It is the only styptic for a bleeding heart.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS (_filling_)
It is the only trouble that is very well worth taking.
MR ASTERIAS (_filling_)
It is the only key of conversational truth.
MR TOOBAD (_filling_)
It is the only antidote to the great wrath of the devil.
MR HILARY (_filling_)
It is the only symbol of perfect life. The inscription 'HIC NONBIBITUR' will suit nothing but a tombstone.
MR GLOWRY
You will see many fine old ruins, Mr Cypress; crumbling pillars, andmossy walls--many a one-legged Venus and headless Minerva--many aNeptune buried in sand--many a Jupiter turned topsy-turvy--many aperforated Bacchus doing duty as a water-pipe--many reminiscences ofthe ancient world, which I hope was better worth living in than themodern; though, for myself, I care not a straw more for one than theother, and would not go twenty miles to see any thing that eithercould show.
MR CYPRESS
It is something to seek, Mr Glowry. The mind is restless, and mustpersist in seeking, though to find is to be disappointed. Do you feelno aspirations towards the countries of Socrates and Cicero? No wishto wander among the venerable remains of the greatness that has passedfor ever?
MR GLOWRY
Not a grain.
SCYTHROP
It is, indeed, much the same as if a lover should dig up the buriedform of his mistress, and gaze upon relics which are any thing butherself, to wander among a few mouldy ruins, that are only imperfectindexes to lost volumes of glory, and meet at every step the moremelancholy ruins of human nature--a degenerate race of stupid andshrivelled slaves, grovelling in the lowest depths of servility andsuperstition.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
It is the fashion to go abroad. I have thought of it myself, but amhardly equal to the exertion. To be sure, a little eccentricity andoriginality are allowable in some cases; and the most eccentric andoriginal of all characters is an Englishman who stays at home.
SCYTHROP
I should have no pleasure in visiting countries that are past all hopeof regeneration. There is great hope of our own; and it seems to methat an Englishman, who, either by his station in society, or by hisgenius, or (as in your instance, Mr Cypress,) by both, has the powerof essentially serving his country in its arduous struggle with itsdomestic enemies, yet forsakes his country, which is still so richin hope, to dwell in others which are only fertile in the ruins ofmemory, does what none of those ancients, whose fragmentary memorialsyou venerate, would have done in similar circumstances.
MR CYPRESS
Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled withhis wife is absolved from all duty to his country. I have written anode to tell the people as much, and they may take it as they list.
SCYTHROP
Do you suppose, if Brutus had quarrelled with his wife, he would havegiven it as a reason to Cassius for having nothing to do with hisenterprise? Or would Cassius have been satisfied with such an excuse?
MR FLOSKY
Brutus was a senator; so is our dear friend: but the cases aredifferent. Brutus had some hope of political good: Mr Cypress hasnone. How should he, after what we have seen in France?
SCYTHROP
A Frenchman is born in harness, ready saddled, bitted, and bridled,for any tyrant to ride. He will fawn under his rider one moment, andthrow him and kick him to death the next; but another adventurersprings on his back, and by dint of whip and spur on he goes asbefore. We may, without much vanity, hope better of ourselves.
MR CYPRESS
I have no hope for myself or for others. Our life is a false nature;it is not in the harmony of things; it is an all-blasting upas,whose root is earth, and whose leaves are the skies which rain theirpoison-dews upon mankind. We wither from our youth; we gasp withunslaked thirst for unattainable good; lured from the first to thelast by phantoms--love, fame, ambition, avarice--all idle, and allill--one meteor of many names, that vanishes in the smoke of death.[8]
MR FLOSKY
A most delightful speech, Mr Cypress. A most amiable and instructivephilosophy. You have only to impress its truth on the minds ofall living men, and life will then, indeed, be the desert and thesolitude; and I must do you, myself, and our mutual friends, thejustice to observe, that let society only give fair play at one andthe same time, as I flatter myself it is inclined to do, to yoursystem of morals, and my system of metaphysics, and Scythrop's systemof politics, and Mr Listless's system of manners, and Mr Toobad'ssystem of religion, and the result will be as fine a mental chaos aseven the immortal Kant himself could ever have hoped to see; in theprospect of which I rejoice.
MR HILARY
'Certainly, ancient, it is not a thing to rejoice at:' I am oneof those who cannot see the good that is to result from all thismystifying and blue-devilling of society. The contrast it presentsto the cheerful and solid wisdom of antiquity is too forcible not tostrike any one who has the least knowledge of classical literature. Torepresent vice and misery as the necessary accompaniments of genius,is as mischievous as it is false, and the feeling is as unclassical asthe language in which it is usually expressed.
MR TOOBAD
It is our calamity. The devil has come among us, and has begun bytaking possession of all the cleverest fellows. Yet, forsooth, this isthe enlightened age. Marry, how? Did our ancestors go peeping aboutwith dark lanterns, and do we walk at our ease in broad sunshine?Where is the manifestation of our light? By what symptoms do yourecognise it? What are its signs, its tokens, its symptoms, itssymbols, its categories, its conditions? What is it, and why? How,where, when is it to be seen, felt, and understood? What do we see byit which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worthseeing? We see a hundred men hanged, where they saw one. We see fivehundred transported, where they saw one. We see five thousand in theworkhouse, where they saw one. We see scores of Bible Societies, wherethey saw none. We see paper, where they saw gold. We see men in stays,where they saw men in armour. We see painted faces, where they sawhealthy ones. We see children perishing in manufactories, where theysaw them flourishing in the fields. We see prisons, where they sawcastles. We see masters, where they saw representatives. In short,they saw true men, where we see false knaves. They saw Milton, and wesee Mr Sackbut.
MR FLOSKY
The false knave, sir, is my honest friend; therefore, I beseech you,let him be count
enanced. God forbid but a knave should have somecountenance at his friend's request.
MR TOOBAD
'Good men and true' was their common term, like the chalos chagathosof the Athenians. It is so long since men have been either good ortrue, that it is to be questioned which is most obsolete, the fact orthe phraseology.
MR CYPRESS
There is no worth nor beauty but in the mind's idea. Love sows thewind and reaps the whirlwind.[9] Confusion, thrice confounded, is theportion of him who rests even for an instant on that most brittle ofreeds--the affection of a human being. The sum of our social destinyis to inflict or to endure.[10]
MR HILARY
Rather to bear and forbear, Mr Cypress--a maxim which you perhapsdespise. Ideal beauty is not the mind's creation: it is real beauty,refined and purified in the mind's alembic, from the alloy whichalways more or less accompanies it in our mixed and imperfect nature.But still the gold exists in a very ample degree. To expect toomuch is a disease in the expectant, for which human nature is notresponsible; and, in the common name of humanity, I protest againstthese false and mischievous ravings. To rail against humanity for notbeing abstract perfection, and against human love for not realisingall the splendid visions of the poets of chivalry, is to rail at thesummer for not being all sunshine, and at the rose for not beingalways in bloom.
MR CYPRESS
Human love! Love is not an inhabitant of the earth. We worship him asthe Athenians did their unknown God: but broken hearts are the martyrsof his faith, and the eye shall never see the form which phantasypaints, and which passion pursues through paths of delusive beauty,among flowers whose odours are agonies, and trees whose gums arepoison.[11]
MR HILARY
You talk like a Rosicrucian, who will love nothing but a sylph, whodoes not believe in the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrelswith the whole universe for not containing a sylph.
MR CYPRESS
The mind is diseased of its own beauty, and fevers into falsecreation. The forms which the sculptor's soul has seized exist only inhimself.[12]
MR FLOSKY
Permit me to discept. They are the mediums of common forms combinedand arranged into a common standard. The ideal beauty of the Helen ofZeuxis was the combined medium of the real beauty of the virgins ofCrotona.
MR HILARY
But to make ideal beauty the shadow in the water, and, like the dog inthe fable, to throw away the substance in catching at the shadow, isscarcely the characteristic of wisdom, whatever it may be of genius.To reconcile man as he is to the world as it is, to preserve andimprove all that is good, and destroy or alleviate all that is evil,in physical and moral nature--have been the hope and aim of thegreatest teachers and ornaments of our species. I will say, too,that the highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariablyaccompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on recordthat Shakspeare and Socrates were the most festive of companions. Butnow the little wisdom and genius we have seem to be entering into aconspiracy against cheerfulness.
MR TOOBAD
How can we be cheerful with the devil among us!
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
How can we be cheerful when our nerves are shattered?
MR FLOSKY
How can we be cheerful when we are surrounded by a _reading public_,that is growing too wise for its betters?
SCYTHROP
How can we be cheerful when our great general designs are crossedevery moment by our little particular passions?
MR CYPRESS
How can we be cheerful in the midst of disappointment and despair?
MR GLOWRY
Let us all be unhappy together.
MR HILARY
Let us sing a catch.
MR GLOWRY
No: a nice tragical ballad. The Norfolk Tragedy to the tune of theHundredth Psalm.
MR HILARY
I say a catch.
MR GLOWRY
I say no. A song from Mr Cypress.
ALL
A song from Mr Cypress.
MR CYPRESS _sung_--
There is a fever of the spirit, The brand of Cain's unresting doom, Which in the lone dark souls that bear it Glows like the lamp in Tullia's tomb: Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire Burns, blasts, consumes its cell, the heart, Till, one by one, hope, joy, desire, Like dreams of shadowy smoke depart.
When hope, love, life itself, are only Dust--spectral memories--dead and cold-- The unfed fire burns bright and lonely, Like that undying lamp of old: And by that drear illumination, Till time its clay-built home has rent, Thought broods on feeling's desolation-- The soul is its own monument.
MR GLOWRY
Admirable. Let us all be unhappy together.
MR HILARY
Now, I say again, a catch.
THE REVEREND MR LARYNX
I am for you.
ME HILARY
'Seamen three.'
THE REVEREND MR LARYNX
Agreed. I'll be Harry Gill, with the voice of three. Begin
MR HILARY AND THE REVEREND MR LARYNX
Seamen three! I What men be ye? Gotham's three wise men we be. Whither in your bowl so free? To rake the moon from out the sea. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine.
Who art thou, so fast adrift? I am he they call Old Care. Here on board we will thee lift. No: I may not enter there. Wherefore so? 'Tis Jove's decree, In a bowl Care may not be; In a bowl Care may not be.
Hear ye not the waves that roll? No: in charmed bowl we swim. What the charm that floats the bowl? Water may not pass the brim. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine.
This catch was so well executed by the spirit and science of MrHilary, and the deep tri-une voice of the reverend gentleman, that thewhole party, in spite of themselves, caught the contagion, and joinedin chorus at the conclusion, each raising a bumper to his lips:
The bowl goes trim: the moon doth shine: And our ballast is old wine.
Mr Cypress, having his ballast on board, stepped, the same evening,into his bowl, or travelling chariot, and departed to rake seas andrivers, lakes and canals, for the moon of ideal beauty.
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