It immediately occurred to him that the best mode he could adopt of elucidating the mystery would be to call on Miss Melincourt, whom, besides, Sir Telegraph’s enthusiastic description had given him some curiosity to see; and the present appeared a favourable opportunity to indulge it.
He therefore asked Mr. Fax if he were disposed for a very long walk. Mr. Fax expressed a cordial assent to the proposal, and no time was lost in preparation.
Mr. Forester, though he had built stables for the accommodation of his occasional visitors, kept no horses himself, for reasons which will appear hereafter.
They set forth accordingly, accompanied by Sir Oran, who joined them without waiting for an invitation.
‘We shall see Sir Telegraph Paxarett,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘and, perhaps, his phoenix, Miss Melincourt.’
Mr. Fax. If a woman be the object, and a lover’s eyes the medium, I should say there is nothing in nature so easily found as a phoenix.
Mr. Forester. My eyes have no such magical property. I am not a lover, it is true, but it is because I have never found a phoenix.
Mr. Fax. But you have one in your mind, a beau idealy I doubt not.
Mr. Forester. Not too ideal to exclude the possible existence of its material archetype, though I have never found it yet.
Mr. Fax. You will, however, find a female who has some one at least of the qualities of your imaginary damsel, and that one quality will serve as a peg on which your imagination will suspend all the others. This is the usual process of mental hallucination. A little truth forms the basis, and the whole superstructure is falsehood.
Mr. Forester. I shall guard carefully against such selfdeception; though, perhaps, a beautiful chimera is better than either a hideous reality or a vast and formless void.
Mr. Fax. As an instrument of transitory pleasure, probably; but very far from it as a means of permanent happiness, which is only consistent with perfect mental tranquillity, which again is only consistent with the calm and dispassionate contemplation of truth.
Mr. Forester. What say you, then, to the sentiment of Voltaire? —
Le raisonneur tristement s’accrédite:
On court, dit-on, après la vérité,
Ah! croyez-moi, l’erreur a son mérite.
Mr. Fax. You will scarcely coincide with such a sentiment, when you consider how much this doctrine of happy errors, and pleasing illusions, and salutary prejudices, has tended to rivet the chains of superstition on the necks of the grovelling multitude.
Mr. Forester. And yet, if you take the colouring of imagination from the objects of our mental perception, and pour the full blaze of daylight into all the dark recesses of selfishness and cunning, I am afraid a refined and enthusiastic benevolence will find little to interest or delight in the contemplation of the human world.
Mr. Fax. That should rather be considered the consequence of morbid feelings, and exaggerated expectations of society and human nature. It is the false colouring in which youthful enthusiasm depicts the scenes of futurity that throws the gloom of disappointment so deeply on their actual presence. You have formed to yourself, as you acknowledge, a visionary model of female perfection, which has rendered you utterly insensible to the real attractions of every woman you have seen. This exaggerated imagination loses more than it gains. It has not made a fair calculation of the mixture of good and evil in every constituent portion of the world of reality. It has utterly excluded the latter from the objects of its hope, and has magnified the former into such gigantic proportions, that the real goodness and beauty, which would be visible and delightful to simpler optics, vanish into imperceptibility in the infinity of their diminution.
Mr. Forester. I desire no phantasm of abstract perfection — no visionary creation of a romantic philosophy: I seek no more than I know to have existed — than, I doubt not, does exist, though in such lamentable rarity that the calculations of probability make the search little better than desperate. I would have a woman that can love and feel poetry, not only in its harmony and decorations, which limit the admiration of ordinary mortals, but in the deep sources of love, and liberty, and truth, which are its only legitimate springs, and without which, well-turned periods and glittering images are nothing more nor less than the vilest and most mischievous tinsel. She should be musical, but she should have music in her soul as well as her fingers: her voice and her touch should have no one point in common with that mechanical squalling and jingling which are commonly dignified with the insulted name of music: they should be modes of the harmony of her mind.
Mr. Fax. I do not very well understand that; but I think I have a glimpse of your meaning. Pray proceed.
Mr. Forester. She should have charity — not penny charity —
Mr. Fax. I hope not.
Mr. Forester. But a liberal discriminating practical philanthropy, that can select with justice the objects of its kindness, and give that kindness a form of permanence equally delightful and useful to its object and to society, by increasing the aggregate mass of intelligence and happiness.
Mr. Fax. Go on.
Mr. Forester. She should have no taste for what are called public pleasures. Her pleasures should be bounded in the circle of her family, and a few, a very few congenial friends, her books, her music, her flowers — she should delight in flowers — the uninterrupted cheerfulness of domestic concord, the delightful effusions of unlimited confidence. The rocks, and woods, and mountains, boundaries of the valley of her dwelling, she should be content to look on as the boundaries of the world.
Mr. Fax. Anything more?
Mr. Forester. She should have a clear perception of the beauty of truth. Every species of falsehood, even in sportiveness, should be abhorrent to her. The simplicity of her thoughts should shine through the ingenuousness of her words. Her testimony should convey as irresistible conviction as the voice of the personified nature of things. And this ingenuousness should comprise, in its fullest extent, that perfect conformity of feelings and opinions which ought to be the most common, but is unfortunately the most rare, of the qualities of the female mind.
Mr. Fax. You say nothing of beauty.
Mr. Forester. As to what is usually called beauty, mere symmetry of form and features, it would be an object with me in purchasing a statue, but none whatever in choosing a wife. Let her countenance be the mirror of such qualities as I have described, and she cannot be otherwise than beautiful. I think with the Athenians, that beauty and goodness are inseparable. I need not remind you of the perpetual KOAOÇ KayaOos.
Mr. Fax. You have said nothing of the principal, and, indeed, almost the only usual consideration in marriage — fortune.
Mr. Forester. I am rich enough myself to dispense with such considerations. Even were I not so, I doubt if worldly wisdom would ever influence me to bend my knee with the multitude at the shrine of the omnipotence of money. Nothing is more uncertain, more transient, more perishable, than riches. How many prudent marriages of interest and convenience were broken to atoms by the French revolution! Do you think there was one couple, among all those calculating characters, that acted in those trying times like Louvet and his Lodoiska? But without looking to periods of public convulsion, in no state of society is any individual secure against the changes of fortune. What becomes of those ill-assorted unions, which have no basis but money, when, as is very often the case, the money departs, and the persons remain? The qualities of the heart and of the mind are alone out of the power of accident; and by these, and these only, shall I be guided in the choice of the companion of my life.
Mr. Fax. Are there no other indispensable qualities that you have omitted in your enumeration?
Mr. Forester. None, I think, but such as are implied in See Louvet’s Récit de mes Périls, those I have mentioned, and must necessarily be co-existent with them; an endearing sensibility, an agreeable cheerfulness, and that serenity of temper which is truly the balm of being, and the absence of which, in the intercourse of domestic life, obliterates all the radian
ce of beauty, all the splendour of talent, and all the dignity of virtue.
Mr. Fax. I presume, then, you seriously purpose to marry, when you can find such a woman as this you have described?
Mr. Forester. Seriously I do.
Mr. Fax. And not till then?
Mr. Forester. Certainly not.
Mr. Fax. Then your present heir-presumptive has nothing to fear for his reversion.
LOVE AND POVERTY
‘WE shall presently,’ said Mr. Fax, as they pursued their walk, ‘come in sight of a cottage, which I remarked two years ago: a deplorable habitation! A picture of its exterior and interior suspended in some public place, in every town in the kingdom, with a brief commentary subjoined, would operate in terrorem in favour of the best interests of political economy, by placing before the eyes of the rising generation the lamentable consequences of imprudent marriage, and the necessary result of attachment, of which romance is the foundation and marriage the superstructure, without the only cement which will make it wind and water tight — money.
Mr. Forester. Nothing but money! The resemblance Fluellen found between Macedon and Monmouth, because both began with an M, holds equally true of money and marriage: but there seems to be a much stronger connection in the latter case; for marriage is but a body, of which money is the soul.
Mr. Fax. It is so. It must be so. The constitution of society imperiously commands it to be so. The world of reality is not the world of romance. When a lover talks of lips of coral, teeth of pearl, tresses of gold, and eyes of diamonds, he knows all the while that he is lying by wholesale; and that no baker in England would give him credit for a penny roll on all this display of his Utopian treasury. All the aerial castles that are founded in the contempt of worldly prudence have not half the solidity of the cloud-built towers that surround the setting of the autumnal sun.
Mr. Forester. I maintain, on the contrary, that, let all possible calamities be accumulated on two affectionate and congenial spirits, they will find more true happiness in weeping together than they would have found in all the riches of the world, poisoned by the disunion of hearts?
Mr. Fax. The disunion of hearts is an evil of another kind. It is not a comparison of evils I wish to institute. That two rich people fettered by the indissoluble bond of marriage, and hating each other cordially, are two as miserable animals as any on the face of the earth, is certain; but that two poor ones, let them love each other ever so fondly, starving together in a garret, are therefore in a less positively wretched condition, is an inference which no logic, I think, can deduce. For the picture you must draw in your mind’s eye is not that of a neatly-dressed, young, healthy-looking couple, weeping in each other’s arms in a clean, however homely cottage, in a fit of tender sympathy; but you must surround them with all the squalid accompaniments of poverty, rags, and famine, the contempt of the world, the dereliction of friends, half a dozen hungry squalling children, all clothed perhaps in the cutting up of an old blanket, duns in presence, bailiffs in prospect, and the long perspective of hopelessness closed by the workhouse or the gaol.
Mr. Forester. You imagine an extreme case, which something more than the original want of fortune seems requisite to produce.
Mr. Fax. I have heard you declaim very bitterly against those who maintain the necessary connection between misfortune and imprudence.
Mr. Forester. Certainly. To assert that the unfortunate must necessarily have been imprudent, is to furnish an excuse to the cold-hearted and illiberal selfishness of a state of society, which needs no motive superadded to its own miserable narrow-mindedness, to produce the almost total extinction of benevolence and sympathy. Good and evil fortune depend so much on the combination of external circumstances, that the utmost skill and industry cannot command success; neither is the result of the most imprudent actions always fatal:
Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well, When our deep plots do pall.
Mr. Fax. Sometimes, no doubt; but not so often as to equalise the probable results of indiscretion and prudence.
‘Where there is prudence,’ says Juvenal, ‘fortune is powerless’; and this doctrine, though liable to exceptions, is replete with general truth. We have a nice balance to adjust. To check the benevolence of the rich, by persuading them that all misfortune is the result of imprudence, is a great evil; but it would be a much greater evil to persuade the poor that indiscretion may have a happier result than prudence; for where this appears to be true in one instance, it is manifestly false in a thousand. It is certainly not enough to possess industry and talent; there must be means for exerting them; and in a redundant population these means are often wanting, even to the most skilful and the most industrious: but though calamity sometimes seizes those who use their best efforts to avoid her, yet she seldom disappoints the intentions of those who leap headlong into her arms.
Mr. Forester. It seems, nevertheless, peculiarly hard that all the blessings of life should be confined to the rich. If you banish the smiles of love from the cottage of poverty, what remains to cheer its dreariness? The poor man has no friends, no amusements, no means of exercising benevolence, nothing to fill up the gloomy and desolate vacancy of his heart, if you banish love from his dwelling. ‘There is one alone, and there is not a second,’ says one of the greatest poets and philosophers of antiquity: ‘there is one alone, and there is not a second: yea, he hath neither child nor brother; yet is there no end of all his labour:... neither saith he, For whom do I labour and bereave my soul of good?... Two are better than one... for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.’ Society in poverty is better than mon gré deux souveraines puissances. C’est imprudence d’estimer que l’humaine prudence puisse remplir le roolle de la fortune. Et vaine est l’entreprinse de celuy qui presume d’embrasser et causes et consequences, et meiner par la main le progrez de son faict.... Qu’on reguarde qui sont les plus puissans aux villes, et qui font mieulx leurs besongnes, on trouvera ordinairement que ce sont les moins habiles.... Nous attribuons les effects de leur bonne fortune à leur prudence.... Parquoy je dy bien, en toutes façons, que les evenements sont maigres tesmoings de nostre prix et capacité.” — MONTAIGNE, liv iii chap. 8. solitude in wealth: but solitude and poverty together it is scarcely in human nature to tolerate.
Mr. Fax. This, if I remember rightly, is the cottage of which I was speaking.
The cottage was ruined and uninhabited. The roof had fallen in. The garden was choked with weeds. ‘What,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘can have become of its unfortunate inhabitants?’
Mr. Forester. What were they?
Mr. Fax. A couple for whom nature had done much, and fortune nothing. I took shelter in their cottage from a passing storm. The picture which you called the imagination of an extreme case falls short of the reality of what I witnessed here. It was the utmost degree of misery and destitution compatible with the preservation of life. A casual observer might have passed them by, as the most abject of the human race. But their physiognomy showed better things. It was with the utmost difficulty I could extract a word from either of them: but when I at last succeeded I was astonished, in garments so mean and a dwelling so deplorable, to discover feelings so generous and minds so enlightened. The semblance of human sympathy seemed strange to them; little of it as you may suppose could be discovered through my saturnine complexion, and the habitual language of what you call my frosty philosophy. By degrees I engaged their confidence, and he related to me his history, which I will tell you, as nearly as I can remember, in his own words.
CHAPTER XIII
DESMOND
MY NAME IS Desmond. My father was a naval officer, who in the prime of life was compelled by wounds to retire from the service on his half-pay and a small additional pension. I was his only son, and he submitted to the greatest personal privations to procure me a liberal education, in the hope that by these means he should live to see me making my way in the world: but he always
accompanied his wishes for this consummation with a hope that I should consider money as a means, and not as an end, and that I should remember the only real treasures of human existence were truth, health, and liberty. You will not wonder that, with such principles, the father had been twenty years a lieutenant, and that the son was looked on at College as a fellow that would come to nothing.
I profited little at the University, as you will easily suppose. The system of education pursued there appeared to me the result of a deep-laid conspiracy against the human understanding, a mighty effort of political and ecclesiastical machiavelism, to turn the energies of inquiring minds into channels, where they will either stagnate in disgust, or waste themselves in nugatory labour. To discover or even to illustrate a single moral truth, to shake the empire of a single prejudice, to apply a single blow of the axe of philosophy to the wide-spreading roots of superstition and political imposture, is to render a real service to the best hopes of mankind; but all this is diametrically opposed to the selfish interests of the hired misleaders of society, the chosen few, as they are called, before whom the wretched multitude grovel in the dust as before The children of a race, Mightier than they, and wiser, and by heaven Beloved and favoured more.
Moral science, therefore, moral improvement, the doctrines of benevolence, the amelioration of the general condition of mankind, will not only never form a part of any public institution for the performance of that ridiculous and mischievous farce called the Finishing of Educations but every art of clerical chicanery and fraudulent misrepresentation will be practised, to render odious the very names of philosophy and philanthropy, and to extinguish, by ridicule and persecution, that enthusiastic love of truth, which never fails to conduct its votaries to conclusions very little compatible with the views of those who have built, or intend to build, their own worldly prosperity on the foundation of hypocrisy and servility in themselves, and ignorance and credulity in others.
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 17