Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  Captain Fitzchrome. If he print you in your own likeness, which is that of an angel, you need not fear him. If he print you in any other, I will cut his throat. But proceed —

  Lady Clarinda. Next to him is Mr. Henbane, the toxicologist, I think he calls himself. He has passed half his life in studying poisons and antidotes. The first thing he did on his arrival here was to kill the cat; and while Miss Crotchet was crying over her, he brought her to life again. I am more shy of him than the other.

  Captain Fitzchrome. They are two very dangerous fellows, and I shall take care to keep them both at a respectful distance. Let us hope that Eavesdrop will sketch off Henbane, and that Henbane will poison him for his trouble.

  Lady Clarinda. Well, next to him sits Mr. Mac Quedy, the Modern Athenian, who lays down the law about everything, and therefore may be taken to understand everything. He turns all the affairs of this world into questions of buying and selling. He is the Spirit of the Frozen Ocean to everything like romance and sentiment. He condenses their volume of steam into a drop of cold water in a moment. He has satisfied me that I am a commodity in the market, and that I ought to set myself at a high price. So you see, he who would have me must bid for me.

  Captain Fitzchrome. I shall discuss that point with Mr. Mac Quedy.

  Lady Clarinda. Not a word for your life. Our flirtation is our own secret. Let it remain so.

  Captain Fitzchrome. Flirtation, Clarinda! Is that all that the most ardent —

  Lady Clarinda. Now, don’t be rhapsodical here. Next to Mr. Mac Quedy is Mr. Skionar, a sort of poetical philosopher, a curious compound of the intense and the mystical. He abominates all the ideas of Mr. Mac Quedy, and settles everything by sentiment and intuition.

  Captain Fitzchrome. Then, I say, he is the wiser man.

  Lady Clarinda. They are two oddities, but a little of them is amusing, and I like to hear them dispute. So you see I am in training for a philosopher myself.

  Captain Fitzchrome. Any philosophy, for Heaven’s sake, but the pound-shilling-and-pence philosophy of Mr. Mac Quedy.

  Lady Clarinda. Why, they say that even Mr. Skionar, though he is a great dreamer, always dreams with his eyes open, or with one eye at any rate, which is an eye to his gain: but I believe that in this respect the poor man has got an ill name by keeping bad company. He has two dear friends, Mr. Wilful Wontsee, and Mr. Rumblesack Shantsee, poets of some note, who used to see visions of Utopia, and pure republics beyond the Western deep: but, finding that these El Dorados brought them no revenue, they turned their vision-seeing faculty into the more profitable channel of espying all sorts of virtues in the high and the mighty, who were able and willing to pay for the discovery.

  Captain Fitzchrome. I do not fancy these virtue-spyers.

  Lady Clarinda. Next to Mr. Skionar sits Mr. Chainmail, a good-looking young gentleman, as you see, with very antiquated tastes. He is fond of old poetry, and is something of a poet himself. He is deep in monkish literature, and holds that the best state of society was that of the twelfth century, when nothing was going forward but fighting, feasting, and praying, which he says are the three great purposes for which man was made. He laments bitterly over the inventions of gunpowder, steam, and gas, which he says have ruined the world. He lives within two or three miles, and has a large hall, adorned with rusty pikes, shields, helmets, swords, and tattered banners, and furnished with yew-tree chairs, and two long old worm-eaten oak tables, where he dines with all his household, after the fashion of his favourite age. He wants us all to dine with him, and I believe we shall go.

  Captain Fitzchrome. That will be something new, at any rate.

  Lady Clarinda. Next to him is Mr. Toogood, the co-operationist, who will have neither fighting nor praying; but wants to parcel out the world into squares like a chess-board, with a community on each, raising everything for one another, with a great steam-engine to serve them in common for tailor and hosier, kitchen and cook.

  Captain Fitzchrome. He is the strangest of the set, so far.

  Lady Clarinda. This brings us to the bottom of the table, where sits my humble servant, Mr. Crotchet the younger. I ought not to describe him.

  Captain Fitzchrome. I entreat you do.

  Lady Clarinda. Well, I really have very little to say in his favour.

  Captain Fitzchrome. I do not wish to hear anything in his favour; and I rejoice to hear you say so, because —

  Lady Clarinda. Do not flatter yourself. If I take him, it will be to please my father, and to have a town and country house, and plenty of servants and a carriage and an opera-box, and make some of my acquaintance who have married for love, or for rank, or for anything but money, die for envy of my jewels. You do not think I would take him for himself. Why, he is very smooth and spruce as far as his dress goes; but as to his face, he looks as if he had tumbled headlong into a volcano, and been thrown up again among the cinders.

  Captain Fitzchrome. I cannot believe, that, speaking thus of him, you mean to take him at all.

  Lady Clarinda. Oh! I am out of my teens. I have been very much in love; but now I am come to years of discretion, and must think, like other people, of settling myself advantageously. He was in love with a banker’s daughter, and cast her off at her father’s bankruptcy, and the poor girl has gone to hide herself in some wild place.

  Captain Fitzchrome. She must have a strange taste, if she pines for the loss of him.

  Lady Clarinda. They say he was good-looking, till his bubble schemes, as they call them, stamped him with the physiognomy of a desperate gambler. I suspect he has still a penchant towards his first flame. If he takes me, it will be for my rank and connection, and the second seat of the borough of Rogueingrain. So we shall meet on equal terms, and shall enjoy all the blessedness of expecting nothing from each other.

  Captain Fitzchrome. You can expect no security with such an adventurer.

  Lady Clarinda. I shall have the security of a good settlement, and then if andare al diavolo be his destiny, he may go, you know, by himself. He is almost always dreaming and distrait. It is very likely that some great reverse is in store for him: but that will not concern me, you perceive.

  Captain Fitzchrome. You torture me, Clarinda, with the bare possibility.

  Lady Clarinda. Hush! Here is music to soothe your troubled spirit. Next to him, on this side, sits the dilettante composer, Mr. Trillo; they say his name was O’Trill, and he has taken the O from the beginning, and put it at the end. I do not know how this may be. He plays well on the violoncello, and better on the piano; sings agreeably; has a talent at versemaking, and improvises a song with some felicity. He is very agreeable company in the evening, with his instruments and music-books. He maintains that the sole end of all enlightened society is to get up a good opera, and laments that wealth, genius, and energy are squandered upon other pursuits, to the neglect of this one great matter.

  Captain Fitzchrome. That is a very pleasant fancy at any rate.

  Lady Clarinda. I assure you he has a great deal to say for it. Well, next to him, again, is Dr. Morbific, who has been all over the world to prove that there is no such thing as contagion; and has inoculated himself with plague, yellow fever, and every variety of pestilence, and is still alive to tell the story. I am very shy of him, too; for I look on him as a walking phial of wrath, corked full of all infections, and not to be touched without extreme hazard.

  Captain Fitzchrome. This is the strangest fellow of all.

  Lady Clarinda. Next to him sits Mr. Philpot, the geographer, who thinks of nothing but the heads and tails of rivers, and lays down the streams of Terra Incognita as accurately as if he had been there. He is a person of pleasant fancy, and makes a sort of fairy land of every country he touches, from the Frozen Ocean to the Deserts of Sahara.

  Captain Fitzchrome. How does he settle matters with Mr. Firedamp?

  Lady Clarinda. You see Mr. Firedamp has got as far as possible out of his way. Next to him is Sir Simon Steeltrap, of Steeltrap Lodge, Member for Crouchin
g-Curtown, Justice of Peace for the county, and Lord of the United Manors of Spring-gun-and-Treadmill; a great preserver of game and public morals. By administering the laws which he assists in making, he disposes, at his pleasure, of the land and its live stock, including all the two-legged varieties, with and without feathers, in a circumference of several miles round Steeltrap Lodge. He has enclosed commons and woodlands; abolished cottage gardens; taken the village cricket-ground into his own park, out of pure regard to the sanctity of Sunday; shut up footpaths and alehouses (all but those which belong to his electioneering friend, Mr. Quassia, the brewer); put down fairs and fiddlers; committed many poachers; shot a few; convicted one-third of the peasantry; suspected the rest; and passed nearly the whole of them through a wholesome course of prison discipline, which has finished their education at the expense of the county.

  Captain Fitzchrome. He is somewhat out of his element here: among such a diversity of opinions he will hear some he will not like.

  Lady Clarinda. It was rather ill-judged in Mr. Crotchet to invite him to-day. But the art of assorting company is above these parvenus. They invite a certain number of persons without considering how they harmonise with each other. Between Sir Simon and you is the Reverend Doctor Folliott. He is said to be an excellent scholar, and is fonder of books than the majority of his cloth; he is very fond, also, of the good things of this world. He is of an admirable temper, and says rude things in a pleasant half-earnest manner, that nobody can take offence with. And next to him again is one Captain Fitzchrome, who is very much in love with a certain person that does not mean to have anything to say to him, because she can better her fortune by taking somebody else.

  Captain Fitzchrome. And next to him again is the beautiful, the accomplished, the witty, the fascinating, the tormenting, Lady Clarinda, who traduces herself to the said Captain by assertions which it would drive him crazy to believe.

  Lady Clarinda. Time will show, sir. And now we have gone the round of the table.

  Captain Fitzchrome. But I must say, though I know you had always a turn for sketching characters, you surprise me by your observation, and especially by your attention to opinions.

  Lady Clarinda. Well, I will tell you a secret: I am writing a novel.

  Captain Fitzchrome. A novel!

  Lady Clarinda. Yes, a novel. And I shall get a little finery by it: trinkets and fal-lals, which I cannot get from papa. You must know I have been reading several fashionable novels, the fashionable this, and the fashionable that; and I thought to myself, why I can do better than any of these myself. So I wrote a chapter or two, and sent them as a specimen to Mr. Puffall, the book-seller, telling him they were to be a part of the fashionable something or other, and he offered me, I will not say how much, to finish it in three volumes, and let him pay all the newspapers for recommending it as the work of a lady of quality, who had made very free with the characters of her acquaintance.

  Captain Fitzchrome. Surely you have not done so?

  Lady Clarinda. Oh, no! I leave that to Mr. Eavesdrop. But Mr. Puffall made it a condition that I should let him say so.

  Captain Fitzchrome. A strange recommendation.

  Lady Clarinda. Oh, nothing else will do. And it seems you may give yourself any character you like, and the newspapers will print it as if it came from themselves. I have commended you to three of our friends here as an economist, a transcendentalist, and a classical scholar; and if you wish to be renowned through the world for these, or any other accomplishments, the newspapers will confirm you in their possession for half-a-guinea a piece.

  Captain Fitzchrome. Truly, the praise of such gentry must be a feather in any one’s cap.

  Lady Clarinda. So you will see, some morning, that my novel is “the most popular production of the day.” This is Mr. Puffall’s favourite phrase. He makes the newspapers say it of everything he publishes. But “the day,” you know, is a very convenient phrase; it allows of three hundred and sixty-five “most popular productions” in a year. And in leap-year one more.

  CHAPTER VI. THEORIES.

  But when they came to shape the model,

  Not one could fit the other’s noddle. Butler.

  Meanwhile, the last course, and the dessert, passed by. When the ladies had withdrawn, young Crotchet addressed the company.

  Mr. Crotchet, jun. There is one point in which philosophers of all classes seem to be agreed: that they only want money to regenerate the world.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. No doubt of it. Nothing is so easy as to lay down the outlines of perfect society. There wants nothing but money to set it going. I will explain myself clearly and fully by reading a paper. (Producing a large scroll.) “In the infancy of society—”

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. Pray, Mr. Mac Quedy, how is it that all gentlemen of your nation begin everything they write with the “infancy of society?”

  Mr. Mac Quedy. Eh, sir, it is the simplest way to begin at the beginning. “In the infancy of society, when government was invented to save a percentage; say two and a half per cent.”

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. I will not say any such thing.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. Well, say any percentage you please.

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. I will not say any percentage at all.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. “On the principle of the division of labour—”

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. Government was invented to spend a percentage.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. To save a percentage.

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. No, sir, to spend a percentage; and a good deal more than two and a half percent. Two hundred and fifty per cent.: that is intelligible.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. “In the infancy of society—”

  Mr. Toogood. Never mind the infancy of society. The question is of society in its maturity. Here is what it should be. (Producing a paper.) I have laid it down in a diagram.

  Mr. Skionar. Before we proceed to the question of government, we must nicely discriminate the boundaries of sense, understanding, and reason. Sense is a receptivity —

  Mr. Crotchet, jun. We are proceeding too fast. Money being all that is wanted to regenerate society, I will put into the hands of this company a large sum for the purpose. Now let us see how to dispose of it.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. We will begin by taking a committee-room in London, where we will dine together once a week, to deliberate.

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. If the money is to go in deliberative dinners, you may set me down for a committee man and honorary caterer.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. Next, you must all learn political economy, which I will teach you, very compendiously, in lectures over the bottle.

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. I hate lectures over the bottle. But pray, sir, what is political economy?

  Mr. Mac Quedy. Political economy is to the state what domestic economy is to the family.

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. No such thing, sir. In the family there is a paterfamilias, who regulates the distribution, and takes care that there shall be no such thing in the household as one dying of hunger, while another dies of surfeit. In the state it is all hunger at one end, and all surfeit at the other. Matchless claret, Mr. Crotchet.

  Mr. Crotchet. Vintage of fifteen, Doctor.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. The family consumes, and so does the state.

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. Consumes, air! Yes: but the mode, the proportions: there is the essential difference between the state and the family. Sir, I hate false analogies.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. Well, sir, the analogy is not essential. Distribution will come under its proper head.

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. Come where it will, the distribution of the state is in no respect analogous to the distribution of the family. The paterfamilias, sir: the paterfamilias.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. Well, sir, let that pass. The family consumes, and in order to consume, it must have supply.

  The Rev. Dr. Folliott. Well, sir, Adam and Eve knew that, when they delved and span.

  Mr. Mac Quedy. Very true, sir (reproducing his scroll). “In the infancy of society—”
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  Mr. Toogood. The reverend gentleman has hit the nail on the head. It is the distribution that must be looked to; it is the paterfamilias that is wanting in the State. Now here I have provided him. (Reproducing his diagram.)

  Mr. Trillo. Apply the money, sir, to building and endowing an opera house, where the ancient altar of Bacchus may flourish, and justice may be done to sublime compositions. (Producing a part of a manuscript opera.)