Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  “Mine’s Reginald — Reginald Edward Harewood. It doesn’t sound at all well” (this with a sententious suppressed flourish in his voice as of one who blandly deprecates a provoked contradiction)— “no, not at all; because there’s such a lot of ‘D’s’ in it. Yours is a much better name. How old are you?”

  The abject Frank apologetically suggested “ Nine.”

  “You just look it,” said Reginald Harewood, with an awful calm, indicative of a well-grounded contempt for that time of life, restrained for the present by an exquisite sense of social courtesy. “ I’m eleven — rising twelve — eleven last month. Suppose we go out?”

  IV

  Once out in the garden, Reginald became more wonderful than ever. Any one not two years younger, and half a head shorter, must have doubled up with laughter before he had gone three steps. Our friend’s patronage of the sunlight, his tolerance of the roses, his gentle thoughtful condescension towards the face of things in general, were too sublime for words.

  When they came to the parapet of an old broad terrace, Reginald, still in a dignified way, got astride it, not without a curious grimace and some seeming difficulty in adjusting his small person; tapped his teeth with his whip-handle, and gave Frank for a whole minute the full benefit of his eyes. Frank stood twisting a rose-branch, and looked meek.

  The result of Reginald’s scrutiny was this question, delivered with much solemn effect.

  “I say. Were you ever swished?”

  “Swished? “ said Frank, with a rapid heat in his cheeks.

  “Swished,” said Reginald, in his decided voice. “Birched.”

  “Do you mean flogged?”

  Frank asked this very diffidently, and as if the query singed his lips.

  “Well, flogged, if you like that better,” said Reginald, conscious of a neat point. “Flogged. But I mean a real, right-down swishing, you know. If a fellow says flogged, it may be a whip, don’t you see, or a strap. That’s caddish. But you can call it flogging, if you like; only not at school, mind. It’s all very well before me.”

  Reverting from these verbal subtleties to the main point, Reginald put the grand query again in a modified shape, but in a tone of courteous resolution, not to be evaded by any boy.

  “Does your father often flog you?”

  “I never was flogged in my life,” said Frank, sensible of his deep degradation.

  Reginald, as a boy of the world, could stand a good deal without surprise; experience of men and things had inured him to much that was curious and out of the usual way. But at the shock of this monstrous and incredible assertion he was thrown right off his balance. He got off the parapet, leaned his shoulders against it, and gazed upon the boy, to whom birch was a dim dubious myth, a jocose threat after dinner, with eyebrows wonderfully high up, and distended eyelids. Then he said, —

  “Good — God! “ softly, and dividing the syllables with hushed breath.

  Goaded to insanity by the big boy’s astonishment, agonized by his silence, Frank tenderly put a timid foot in it.

  “Were you?” he asked, with much awe.

  Then, with straightened shoulders and raised chin, Reginald Harewood took up his parable. Some of his filial expressions must be forgiven to youthful excitement, and for the sake of accuracy; boys, when voluble on a tender point, are awfully accurate in their choice of words. Reginald was very voluble by nature, and easy to excite on this painfully personal matter.

  “Ah, yes, I should think so. My good fellow, you ought to have seen me yesterday. I was swished twice in the morning. Can’t you see in a man’s eyes? My father is — the — most — awful — Turk. He likes to swish me — he does really. What you’ll do when you get to school “ (here a pause), “ God knows.” (This in a pensive and devout manner, touched with pity.) “You’ll sing out — by Jove! — won’t you sing out the first time you catch it! I used to — I do sometimes now. For it hurts most awfully. But I can stand a good lot of it. My father can always draw blood at the third or fourth cut. It’s just like a swarm of mad bees stinging you at once. At school, if you kick, or if you wince even, or if you make the least bit of row, you get three cuts over. I always did when I was your age. The fellows used to call me all manner of chaffy names. Not the young ones, of course; I should lick them. I say, I wish you were going to school. You’d be letting fellows get you into the most awful rows — ah! wouldn’t you? When I was your age I used to get swished twice a week regular. The masters spite me. I know one of them does, because he told one of the big fellows he did. At least he said I was a curse to my division, and I was ruining all the young ones. He did really, on my word. I was the fellow’s fag that he said it to, and he called me up that night and licked me with a whip; with a whip like this. He was a most awful bully. I don’t think I’ll tell you what he did once to a boy. You wouldn’t sleep well to-night.”

  “Oh, do!” said Frank, quivering. The terrific interest of Reginald’s confidences suspended his heart at his lips; he beheld the Complete Schoolboy with a breathless reverence. As for pity, he would as soon have ventured to pity a crowned head.

  “No,” said the boy of the world, shaking considerate curls; “I won’t tell a little fellow, I think: it’s a shame to go and put them in a funk. Some fellows are always trying it on, for a spree. I never do. No, my good fellow, you’d better not ask me. You had really.”

  Reginald sucked his whip-handle with a relish, and eyed the universe in a conscious way. “Do, please,” pleaded the younger. “ I don’t mind; I’ve heard of — that is, I’ve read of — all kinds of awful things. I don’t care about them the least bit.”

  “Well, young one,” said Reginald, “ don’t blame me then, that’s all, if you have bad dreams. There was one fellow ran away from school when he heard of it — on my word.” And Reginald proceeded to recite certain episodes — apocryphal or canonical — from the life of a lower boy, giving the details with a dreadful unction. No description can express the full fleshy sound of certain words in his mouth. He talked of “ cuts “with quite a liquorish accent, and gave the technical word” switch “with a twang in which the hissing sound of a falling birch became sharply audible. The boy was immeasurably proud of his floggings, and relished the subject of flagellation as few men relish rare wine. As for shame, he had never for a second thought of it. A flogging was an affair of honour to him; if he came off without tears, although with loss of blood, he regarded the master with chivalrous pity, as a brave enemy worsted. A real tormentor always revelled in the punishment of Reginald. Those who plied the birch with true loving delight in the use of it enjoyed whipping such a boy intensely. Orbilius would have feasted on his flesh — dined off him.

  He looked Frank between the eyes as he finished and gave a great shrug. “ I said you’d better not. You look blue and green, upon my honour you do. It’s your fault, my good fellow. I’m very sorry. I know some fellows can’t stand things. I knew you couldn’t by the look of your eyes. I could have taken my oath of it. It isn’t in you. It’s not your fault; I dare say you’ve no end of pluck, but you’re nervous, don’t you see? I don’t mean you funk exactly; things disagree with you — that’s it.”

  Here Reginald strangled a discourteous and compromising chuckle, and gave himself a cut with his whip that made his junior wink.

  “Ah, now, you see, that makes you wince. Now, look here, you just take hold of that whip and give me a cut as hard as you possibly can. You just do that. I should like it. Do, there’s a good fellow. I want to see if you could hurt me. Hit hard, mind. Now then,” and he presented a bending broadside to the shot.

  The trodden worm turned and stung. Driven mad by patronage, and all the more savage because of his deep admiration, Frank could not let the chance slip. He took sharp aim, set his teeth, and, swinging all his body round with the force of the blow as he dealt it, brought down the whip on the tightest part he could pick out, with a vicious vigour and stinging skill.

  He had a moment’s sip of pure honey; Reginal
d jumped a foot high, and yelled.

  But in another minute, before Frank had got his breath again, the boy turned round, rubbing hard with one hand, patted him, and delivered a “ Well done! “ more stinging than a dozen cuts. Frank succumbed.

  “I say, just let me feel your muscle,” said Reginald, passing scientific finger-tips up the arm of his companion. “Ah, very good muscle you’ve got; you ought just to keep it up, you see, and you’ll do splendidly. Bend your arm up; so. I’ll tell you what now; you ought to make no end of a good hitter in time. But you wouldn’t have hurt me a bit if I hadn’t come to such grief yesterday. It was a jolly good rod, and quite fresh, with no end of buds on; but you see you can’t understand. Of course you can’t. Then, you see, there was the ride over here. Riding doesn’t usually make me lose leather; but to-day, you know — that is, you don’t know. But you will.”

  Reginald gave a pathetic nod, indicative of untold horrors.

  Frank had begun a meek excuse, which was cut short with imperious grace.

  “My dear fellow, don’t bother yourself. I don’t mind. You’ll have to learn how to stand a cut before you leave home; or the first time you’re sent up, by Jove! how you will squeak! There was a fellow like you last half (Audley his name was), who had never been flogged till he came to school; he was a nice sort of fellow enough, but when they told him to go down — look here, he went in this way.” And Reginald proceeded to enact the whole scene, making an inoffensive laurel-bush represent the flagellated novice, whose yells and contortions he rendered with fearful effect, plying his whip vigorously between whiles, till a rain of gashed leaves inundated the gravel, and giving at the same time vocal imitations of the swish of the absent birch-twigs and the voice of the officiating master, as it fulminated words of objurgation and jocose contumely at every other cut. The vivid portraiture of the awful thing, and Redgie’s subsequent description (too graphic and terrible in its naked realism to be reproduced) of the culprit’s subsequent appearance and demeanour, and of his usage at the hands of indignant schoolboys, whose sense of propriety his base behaviour under punishment had outraged in its tenderest part, all this made the youthful hearer’s blood shiver deliciously, and his nerves tingle with a tremulous sympathy. He was grateful for this experience, and felt older than five minutes since. Reginald, too, remarking and relishing the impression made, felt kindly towards his junior, and promised, by implication, a continuance of his patronage.

  When they went in to luncheon, Redgie examined his friend’s sister with the acute eyes of a boy of the world, and evidently approved of her; became, indeed, quite subdued, “lowly and serviceable,” on finding that thirteen took a high tone with eleven, and was not prepared to permit advances on an equal footing. Frank, meantime, was scrutinizing under timid eyelids the awful Captain Harewood, in whose hand the eye of his fancy saw, instead of knife and fork, a lifted birch, the twigs worn and frayed, and spotted with filial blood.

  Redgie’s father was thirty-eight that year, nine years older than his ex-wife, but looking much more. Mrs. Stanford had a fresh equable beauty which might have suited a woman ten years younger. The Captain was a handsome tall man, square in build, with a hard forehead; the black eyes and eyebrows he had bequeathed to his son, but softened; his own eyes were metallic, and the brows heavy, shaggy even. He had a hard mouth, with large locked lips; a tight chin, a full smooth moustache, and a wide cheek, already furrowed and sad-looking. Something of a despot’s justice in the look of him, and something of bitter doubt and regret. His host, a man twelve years older, had worn much better than he had.

  When the boys were again by themselves, Redgie was pleased to express his sense of the merits of Frank’s sister; a tribute gratefully accepted. Clara was stunning for a girl, her brother added — but was cautious of over-praising her.

  “I’ve got a sister,” Reginald stated; “ I believe she’s a clipper, but I don’t know. Oh, I say, isn’t my grandmother an aunt of yours or something?”

  “Aunt Helena? “ said her nephew, who held her in a certain not unfriendly awe. “ That’s her,” said Redgie, using a grammatical construction which, occurring in a Latin theme, would have brought down birch on his bare skin to a certainty. “ Isn’t she a brick? I think she’s the greatest I know — that’s about what she is.”

  Frank admitted she was kind.

  “Kind? I should think she was, too. She’s a trump. But do you know she hates my governor like mad. They hardly speak when she comes to our crib. Last time she came she gave me a fiver; she did really.” (Redgie at that age wanted usually some time to get up his slang in, but when it once began, he was great at it, considering he had never got into a very slang set.) “ Well, she says my sister is no end of a good one to look at by this time; but I think yours must be the jolliest. I’ve known lots of girls” (the implied reticence of accent was, as Lady Midhurst would have said, impayable), “ but I never saw such a stunner as she is. She makes a fellow feel quite shut up and spooney.”

  This amorous confidence was brought up short and gracious impudence (though it was not really a case of bad tone, he allowed) had evidently been too much for him. The Captain, too, had expressed uneasiness about his boy, and a sense of vexatious outlooks ahead.

  After all there grew up no great intimacy out of this first visit; a mere childish interlude, which seemingly had but just result enough to establish a certain tie at school afterwards between young Cheyne and his second cousin — a tie considerably broken in upon by various squabbles, and strained often almost to snapping; but, for all that, the visit had left its mark on both sides, and had its consequences.

  V

  We have taken a flying view of these domestic affairs and the people involved in them, as they stood twelve years or so before the date of the ensuing correspondence. Something may now be understood of the characters and positions of the writers; enough, no doubt, to make the letters comprehensible without interloping notes or commentaries. Much incident is not here to be looked for; what story there is to tell ought at least to be given with clearness and coherence. There remains only by way of preface to sum up the changes that fell out between 1849 and 1861.

  At the latter date two deaths and two marriages had taken place; old Lord Cheyne, much bewept by earnest and virtuous men of all classes, had died, laborious to the last in the great cause of human improvement, and his son, a good deal sobered by the lapse of time and friction of accident, had married, in May 1859, within a year of his accession as aforesaid, his cousin Mrs. Stanford’s daughter; she was married on her eighteenth birthday, and there was no great ado made about it. John Cheyne had died a year before his brother, having lived long enough to see his daughter well married, in 1857, to Mr. Ernest Radworth, whose fame as a man of science had gone on increasing ever since he came into his property in 1853, at the age of twenty-one. His researches in osteology were of especial value and interest; he was in all ways a man of great provincial mark.

  There is not much else to say; unless it may be worth adding that Francis Cheyne was at college by this time, with an eye to the bar in years to come; his father’s property had been much cut into by the share assigned to his sister, and there was just a fair competence left him to start upon. When not at Oxford, he lived usually at Lidcombe or at Blocksham, seldom by himself at home; but had for some little time past shown a distinct preference of his cousin’s house to his brother-in-law’s, Lord Cheyne and he being always on the pleasantest terms. With this cousin, eighteen years older than himself, he got on now much better than with his old companion Reginald Harewood, whose Oxford career had just ended in the passing over his hapless head of the untimely plough, and whose friends, all but Lady Midhurst, had pretty well washed their hands of him.

  I Lady Midhurst to Mrs. Radworth

  Ashton Hildred, Jan. 12th, ‘61

  MY DEAR NIECE:

  I write to beg a favour of you, and you are decidedly the one woman alive I could ask it of. There is no question of me in the matter,
I assure you; I know how little you owe to a foolish old aunt, and would on no account tax your forbearance so far as to assume the very least air of dictation. You will hardly remember what good friends we used to be when you were a very small member of society indeed. If I ever tried then to coax you into making it up with your brother after some baby dispute, I recollect I always broke down in a lamentable way. The one chance at that time was to put the thing before you on rational grounds. I am trying to act on that experience now.

  This is rather a stupid grand sort of beginning, when all I really have to say is that I want to see the whole family on comfortable terms again especially to make you and Amicia friends. For you know it is hopeless to persuade an old woman who is not quite in her dotage that there has not been a certain coldness-say coolness-of late in the relations between you and those Lidcombe people. Since my poor brother’s death, no doubt, the place has not had those attractions for Mr. Radworth which it had when there was always some scientific or philanthropic gathering there; indeed, I suppose your house has supplanted Lidcombe as the rallying-point of provincial science for miles. By all I hear you are becoming quite eminent in that line, and it must be delicious for you personally to see how thoroughly your husband begins to be appreciated. I quite envy you the society you must see, and the pleasure you must take in seeing and sharing Mr. Radworth’s enjoyment of it. (I trust his sight is improving steadily.) But for all this you should not quite cast off less fortunate people who have not the same tastes and pursuits. You and Cheyne were once so comfortable and intimate that I am certain he must frequently regret this change; and Amicia, as you know, sets far more store by you than any other friend she could have about her. Do be prevailed upon to take pity on the poor child: her husband is a delightful one, and most eager to amuse and gratify, but I know she wants a companion. At her age, my dear, I could not have lived without one; and at yours, if you were not such a philosopher, you ought to be as unable as I was. Men have their uses and their merits, I allow, but you cannot live on them. My friend, by the by, was not a good instance to cite, for she played me a fearful trick once; Lady Wells her name was; I had to give her up in the long run; but she was charming at one time, wonderfully bright in her ways, at once quick and soft, as it were-just my idea of Madame de Léry, in “Un Caprice.” She was idolized by all sorts of people, authors particularly, for she used to hunt them down with a splendid skill, and make great play with them when caught; but the things the woman used to say! and then the people about her went off and set them all down in their books. The men actually took her stories as samples of what went on daily in a certain circle, and wrote them down, altering the names, as if they had been gospel. She told me some before they got into print; there was nobody she would not mix up in them, and we had to break with her at last in a peaceable way. If you ever see an old novel called (I think) “ Vingt-et-Un,” or some such name. I know there are cards in it — you will find a picture there of your aunt, painted by the author (a Mr. Caddell) after a design by Lady Wells. I am the Lady Manhurst of that nice book. I cheat at cards; I break the heart of a rising poet (that is, I never would let Sir Thomas invite Mr. Caddell); and I make two brothers fight a duel, and one is killed through my direct agency. I run away with a Lord Avery; I am not certain that my husband dies a natural death; I rather think, indeed, that I poison him in the last chapter but one. Finally, I become a Catholic; and Lord Avery recognizes me in the conventual garb, the day after my noviciate is out, and immediately takes leave of his senses. I hope I died penitent; but I really forget about that. You see what sort of things one could make people believe in those days; I suppose there is no fear of a liaison dangereuse of that sort between you and poor little Amicia. She has not much of the Lady Wells type in her. I have a graver reason, as you probably imagine by this time, for wishing you to see a little of Amicia just now. It is rather difficult to write about, but I am sure you will see things better for yourself than I could make you if I were to scribble for ever in this cautious roundabout way; and I can trust so thoroughly in your good feeling and good sense and acuteness, that I know you will do what is right and useful and honourable. It is a great thing to know of anybody who has a head that can be relied upon. Good hearts and good feelings are easy to pick up, but a good clear sensible head is a godsend. Nothing else could ever get us through this little family business in reasonable quiet. I fear you must have heard some absurd running rumours about your brother’s last stay at Lidcombe. People who always see what never exists are beginning to talk of his devotion to poor dear Amicia. Now I of course know, and you of course know, that there never could be anything serious on foot in such a quarter. The boy is hardly of age, and might be at school as far as that goes. Besides, Cheyne and Amicia are devoted to each other, as we all see. My only fear would be for poor Frank himself. If he did get any folly of a certain kind into his head it might cause infinite personal trouble, and give serious pain to more people than one. I have seen more than once how much real harm can come out of such things. I wonder if you ever heard your poor father speak of Mrs. Askew, Walter Askew’s wife, who was a great beauty in our time? Both my brothers used to rave about her; she had features of that pure long type you get in pictures, and eyes that were certainly mieuxfendus than any I ever saw, dim deep grey, half lighted under the heaviest eyelids, with a sleepy sparkle in them: faulty in her carriage, very; you had to look at her sitting to understand the effect she used to make. Her husband was very fond of her, and a cleverish sort of man, but too light and lazy to do all he should have done. Well, a Mr. Chetwood, the son of a very old friend of mine (they used to live here), became infatuated about her. Spent days and days in pursuit of her; made himself a perfect jest. Everywhere she went there was this wretched man hanging on at her heels. They were not much to hang on to, by the by, for she had horrid feet. To this day I believe he never got anything by it; if the woman ever cared for anybody in her life it was your father; but Mr. Askew had to take notice of it at last; the other got into a passion and insulted him (I am afraid they were both over-excited-it was after one of my husband’s huge dinners, and they came up in a most dreadful state of rage, and trying to behave well, with their faces actually trembling all over and the most fearful eyes), and there was a duel and the husband was killed, and Chetwood had to fly the country, people made it out such a bad case, and he was ruined-died abroad within the year; he had spent all his money before the last business. The woman afterwards married Dean Bainbridge, the famous Waterworth preacher, you know, who used to be such a friend of my friend Captain Harewood’s for the last year or two of his life; he had buried his third wife by that time; Mrs. A. was the second. He was a detestable man, and had a voice exactly like a cat with a bad cold in the head. Now if anything of this sort were to happen to Francis (not that I am afraid of my two nephews cutting each other’s throats-but so much may happen short of that), it is just the kind of thing he might never get well over. He and Amy are about the same age, I think, or he may be a year older. In a case like this, of amicable intimacy between two persons, one married, there is necessarily a certain floating amount of ridicule implied, even where there is nothing more; and the whole of this ridicule must fall in the long run upon the elder person of the two. I am not sure, of course, that there is any ground for fear just now, but to avoid the least chance of scandal, still more of ridicule, it is always worth while being at any pains. Nobody knows how well worth while it is till they are turned of thirty. Now you must see, supposing there is anything in this unfortunate report, that I cannot possibly be of the least use. Imagine me writing to that poor child to say she must not see so much of her cousin, or to Frank imploring him to spare the domestic peace of Lidcombe! It would be too absurd for me to seem as if I saw or heard anything of the matter. A screeching, cackling grandmother, running round the yard with all her frowsy old feathers ruffled at the sight of such a miserable red rag as that, would be a thing to laugh at for a year; and I have no intention of helping pe
ople to a laugh at my white hairs (they are quite white now). Or would you have me write to Cheyne? La bonne farce! as Redgie Harewood says, since he has been in Paris. Conceive the delicate impressive way one would have to begin the letter in, so as not to arouse the dormant serpents in a husband’s heart. Think of the soft suggestive Iago style one would have to adopt, so as to intimate the awfullest possibilities without any hard flat assertion. Poor good Edmund too, of all people! Imagine the bewildered way in which he would begin the part of Othello, without in the least knowing how-without so much as an Ethiopian dye to help him out! You must allow that in writing to you I have done all I could; more, I do believe and hope, than there was any need of my doing; but I look to your goodness and affection for your brother to excuse me. I want merely to suggest that you should keep a quiet friendly watch over Frank, so as to save him any distress or difficulty in the future. A sister rather older and wiser than himself ought really to be about the best help and mainstay a boy of his age can have. If I had had but five years or so more to back me, I might have saved your father some scrapes at that time of life. I have one more petition to my dear niece: be as patient with my garrulous exigeance as you can. If you see Reginald Harewood this winter, as I dare say you will-he is pretty sure to be at Lidcombe before the month is out-may I beg your bienveillance towards the poor boy? He is “ sat upon “ (as he says) just now to such an extent that “it is a real charity in any one to show him a little kindness. I know his brilliant college career is not a prepossessing episode in his history; but so many boys do so much worse-and come off so much better! That insufferable Captain Harewood behaves as if every one else’s son had made the most successful studies, and at the end of three years saved up a small but decent income out of his annual allowance. If my father had only had to pay two hundred for the college debts of yours! I cannot conceive what parents will be in the next generation: I am sure we were good-natured enough in ours, and you see what our successors are. If Mr. Radworth has spare time enough, in the intervals of his invaluable labours, to be reminded of an old woman’s unprofitable existence, will you remember me to him in the kindest way? and, if you have toiled through my letter, accept the love and apologies of your affectionate aunt.