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

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  II Mrs. Radworth to Francis Cheyne

  Blocksham, Jan. 16th.

  MY DEAR FRANK:

  IF you had taken my advice you would have arranged either to stay up at Oxford during the vacation, or at least to be back by the beginning of next term. Of course, we should like of all things to have you here as long as you chose to stay, and it would be nicer for you, I should think, than going back to fog and splashed snow in London; but our half engagement to Lidcombe upsets everything. Ernest is perfectly restless just now; between his dislike of moving and his wish to see the old Lidcombe museum again, he does nothing but papillonner about the house in a beetle-headed way, instead of sticking to his cobwebs, as a domestic spider should. Are you also bent upon Lidcombe? For, if you go, we go. Make up your mind to that. If you don’t, I can easily persuade Ernest that his museum has fallen to dust and tatters under the existing dynasty, which, indeed, is not so unlikely to be true. Amicia writes very engagingly to me, just the sort of letter one would have expected, limp, amiable, rather a smirking style; flaccid condescension; evidently feels herself agreeable and gracious. I am rather curious to see how things get on there. You seem to have impressed people somehow with an idea that during your last visit the household harmony suffered some blow or other which it has not got over yet. Is there any truth in the notion? But of course, if there were, I should have known of it before now, if I were ever to know it at all. I have had a preposterous letter from Aunt Midhurst; the woman is really getting past her work: her satire is vicious, stupid, pointless to a degree. Somebody has been operating on her fangs, I suppose, and extracting the venom. It is curious to remember what one always heard about her wit and insight and power of reading character; she has fallen into a sort of hashed style, between a French portiere and a Dickens nurse. It makes one quite sorry to read the sort of stuff she has come to writing, and think that she was once great as a talker and letter-writer like looking at her grey fierce old face (museau de louve, as she called it once to me) and remembering that she was thought a beauty. Still you know some people to this day talk about the softness and beauty of her face and looks, and I suppose she is different to them. To me she always looked like a cat, or some bad sort of bird, with those greyish-green eyes and their purple pupils. I need hardly tell you that since you were here last the place has been most dismal. Ernest has taken to insects now; il me manquait cela. He has a room full of the most dreadful specimens. In the evenings he reads me extracts from his MS. treatise on the subject, which is to be published in the “County Philosophical and Scientific Transactions.” C’est réjouissant! After all, I think you are right not to come here more than you can help. The charity your coming would be to me you must know; but no doubt it would have to be too dearly paid for. Lady Midhurst tells me that your ex-ally in old days, and my ex-enemy, Reginald Harewood, is to be at Lidcombe by the end of this month. Have you seen him since the disgraceful finale of his Oxford studies? I remember having met him a month or two since when I called on her in London, and he did not seem to me much improved. One is rather sorry for him, but it is really too much to be expected to put up with that kind of young man because of his disadvantages. I hope you do not mean to renew that absurd sort of intimacy which he had drawn you into at one time. I am rather anxious to see Lidcombe in its present state, so I think we shall have to go; but seriously, if people are foolish enough to talk about your relations there, I would not go, in your place. I am not going to write you homilies after the fashion of Lady M., or appeal to your good feeling on the absurd subject; I never did go in for advice. Do as you like, but I don’t think you ought to go. Ernest no doubt would send you all sorts of messages, but I am not going to break in upon the room sacred to beetles and bones; so you must be content with my love and good wishes for the year.

  III Lady Midhurst to Lady Cheyne

  Ashton Hildred, Jan. 24th.

  MY DEAR CHILD:

  YOU are nervous about your husband’s part in the business; cela se voit; but I hardly see why you are to come crying to an old woman like me about the matter. Tears on paper are merely blots, please remember; you cannot write them out gracefully. Try to compress your style a little; be as sententious as you can-terse complaints are really effective. I never cried over a letter but once, and then it was over one of my husband’s! Poor good Sir Thomas was naturally given to the curt hard style, and yet one could see he was almost out of his mind with distress. I suppose you know we lived apart in a quiet way for the last ten years of his life. It was odd he should take it to heart in the way he did; for I know he was quite seriously in love with a most horrid little French actress that had been (I believe she was Irish myself, but she called herself Mlle des Grèves-such a name! I’m almost certain her real one was Ellen Greaves-a dreadful wretch of a woman, with a complexion like bad fruit, absolutely a greenish brown when you saw her in some lights); and the poor man used to whimper about Hélène to his friends in a perfectly abject way. Captain H. told me so; he was of my friends at that epoch; he was courting your mother, and in consequence hers also. Indeed, I believe he was in love with me at the time, though I am ten years older; however, I imagine it looks the other way now. When I saw him last he was greyer than Ernest Radworth. That wife of his (E. R.’s, I mean) is enough to turn any man’s hair grey; I assure you, my dear child, she makes my three hairs stand on end. Her style is something too awful, like the most detestable sort of young man. She will be the ruin of poor dear Redgie if we don’t pick him up somehow and keep him out of her way. He was quite the nicest boy I ever knew, and used to make me laugh by the hour; there was a splendid natural silliness in him, and quantities of verve and fun-what Mrs. Radworth, I suppose, calls pluck or go. Still, when one thinks she is breaking Ernest’s heart and bringing Captain Harewood’s first grey hairs to the grave with vexation, I declare I could forgive her a good deal if she were only a lady. But she isn’t in the least, and I am ashamed to remember she is my niece; her manners are exactly what Mlle Greaves’s must have been, allowing for the difference of times. I am quite certain she will be the death of poor Redgie. He was always the most unfortunate boy on this earth; I dare say you remember how he was brought up-always worried and punished and sermonized, ever since he was a perfect baby; enough to drive any boy mad, and get him into an infinity of the most awful scrapes when he grew up: but I did think he might have kept out of this one. Clara Radworth must be at least six years older than he is. I believe she has taken to painting already. If there was only a little bit of scandal in the matter! but that is past praying for. It is a regular quiet amicable innocent alliance; the very worst thing for such a boy in the world. I have gone on writing about your poor brother and all those dreadful people, and quite forgotten all I meant to say to you: but really I want you to exert your influence over Redgie. Get him to come and stay with you at once, before the Radworths arrive; I wish to Heaven he could come here to be talked round. I know I could manage him. Didn’t I manage him when he was fourteen, and ran away from home over here, and you brought him in? You were delicious at eleven, my dear, and fell in love with him on the spot, like your (and his) old grandmother. Didn’t I send him back at once, though I saw what a state he was in, poor dear boy, and in spite of you and his mother? I could cry to this day when I think what a beautiful boy he was to look at, and how hard it was to pack him off in that way, knowing as we all did that he would be three-quarters murdered when he got home (and I declare Captain Harewood ought to have been put in the pillory for the way he used to whip that boy every day in the week-I firmly believe it was all out of spite to his mother and me); and you all thought me and your father desperately cruel people, you know, as bad as Redgie’s father; but I was nearly as soft at heart as either of you, and after he went away in the gig I cried for five minutes by myself. Never cry in public (that is, of course, not irrepressibly) as your mother did then, and if you ever have children don’t put your arms round their necks and make scenes; it never did any good, and people alw
ays get angry, for it makes them look fools, and they give you an absurd reputation in the boiled-milk line. Your father was quite put out with her after that demonstrative scene with Redgie, and it only made matters worse for the boy at parting, without saving him a single cut of the rod when he got home, poor fellow! I never was sorrier for anybody myself; he was such a pretty boy; you ought to remember: for after all he is your half-brother, and might have been a whole one if Captain H. had not been such a ruffian. Your poor mother never was the best of managers, but she had a great deal to bear. Here I have got off again on the subject of my stupid old affection for Redgie, and made you think me the most unbearable of grandmothers. I must try and show you that there are some sparks of sense left in the ashes of my old woman’s twaddle. But do you know you have made it really difficult for me to advise you? You write asking what to do, and I have only to think what I want you to avoid; for of course you will do the reverse of what I tell you. And in effect it seems to me to matter very little what you do just now. However, read over this next paragraph; construe it carefully by contraries; and see what you think of that in the way of advice. Invite Frank to Lidcombe, as soon as the Radworths come; get up your plan of conduct after some French novel-Balzac is a good model if you can live up to him; encourage Mrs. Radworth, don’t snub her in any way, let her begin patronizing you again; she will if you manage her properly; be quite the child with her, and, if you can, be the fool with her husband; but you must play this stroke very delicately, just the least push in the world, so as to try for a cannon off the cushion; touch these two very lightly so as to get them into a nice place for you, when you must choose your next stroke. I should say, get the two balls into the middle pocket-if I thought there was a chance of your understanding. But I can hear you saying, “Middle pocket? such an absurd way of trying at wit!-and what does it mean after all? “My dear, there is a moral middle pocket in every nice well-regulated family; always remember and act on this. If Lord Cheyne or Mrs. Radworth, or either of them, can but be got into it quietly, there is your game. The lower pocket would spoil all, however neatly you played for it; but this I know you will never understand. And yet I assure you all the beauty of the game depends on it. If you don’t like this style-I should be very sorry if you did, and it would give me the worst opinion of your head-I can only give you little practical hints, on the chance of their being useful. You know I never had any great liking for my nephew Francis. His father was certainly the stupider of my two brothers; and, my dear, you have no idea what that implies. If you had known your husband’s father, your own greatuncle, you would not believe me when I say his brother was stupider. But John was; I suppose there never was a greater idiot than John. Rather a clever idiot, too, and used to work and live desperately hard on occasion; but, good Heavens! And I can’t help thinking the children take after him in some things. Clara to be sure is the image of her mother-a portentous image it is, and I do sometimes think one ought to try and be sorry for Ernest Radworth, but I positively cannot; and Frank is not without his points of likeness to her. Still the father will crop out, as people say nowadays in their ugly slang. Keep an eye on the father, my dear, and compare him with your husband when he does turn up. I don’t want you to be rude to anybody, or to put yourself out of the way in the least. Only not to trust either of those two cousins too far. As for Cheyne’s liking for Clara Radworth, I wouldn’t vex myself about that. She cares more just now for the younger bird-I declare the woman makes me talk her style, at sixty and a little over. There is certainly something very good about her, whatever we two may think. If you will hold her off Redgie while he is in the house (do, for my sake, I entreat of you) I will warrant your husband against her. She will not try anything in that quarter unless she has something else in hand. Cheyne is an admirable double; any pleasant sort of woman can attract him to her, but no human power will attract him from you. There is your comfort-or your curse, as you choose to make it. C. R. would never think of him except as a background in one of her pictures. He would throw out Redgie, for example, beautifully, and give immense life and meaning to the composition of her effects. But as I know you have no other visitor at Lidcombe who is human in any mentionable degree, I imagine she will rest on her oars-if you do but keep her off my poor Redgie. You see I want you to have a sight of them together, that you may study and understand her-on that ground only I authorize you to invite her and Ernest while Redgie is still with you (besides you will be better able to help him if you see it beginning again under your face); not in the least because the Radworths’ being there is a pretext for inviting Frank Cheyne, and Clara a good firescreen for you; à Dieu ne plaise, I am not quite such a liberal old woman as that. But I want you to be light in your handling of C. R.; give her play: it will be a charming education for you. If you do this-even supposing I am wrong about your husband’s devotion to you-you are sure of him. Item: if you can once come over her (but for Heaven’s sake don’t irritate or really frighten her) she will be a capital friend for you. Find out, too, how her brother feels towards her, and write me word, that I may form my own ideas as to him. If he appreciates without overrating her there must be some sense in him. She is one of those women who are usually overrated by the men, and underrated by the women, capable of appreciating them. Mind you never take to despising any character of that sort. I mean if there is a character in the case. I have written you a shamefully long letter, and hardly a word to the point in it I dare say you think; besides, I am not at all sure I should have written part of it to a good young married woman; there is one comfort, you won’t see what I mean in the least. One thing you must take on trust, that I do seriously with all my heart hope and mean to serve you, my dear child, and help you to live well and wisely and happilyas I must say you ought. Do take care of Redgie; I regard that boy as at least three years younger than you instead of three years older. Love to both of you, from your mother and