The doctor thought this an odd question for the first salutation. He had expected that the first inquiry would have been for the fair convalescent. He divined that the evasion of this subject was the result of an inward struggle. He thought it would be best to fall in with the mood of the questioner, and said, ‘Charles Fox’s favourite is said to have been the second Olympic; I am not sure that there is, or can be, anything better. What say you?’
Mr. Falconer. It may be that something in it touches a peculiar tone of feeling; but to me there is nothing like the ninth Pythian.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I can understand your fancy for that ode. You see an image of ideal beauty in the nymph Cyrene.
Mr. Falconer. ‘Hidden are the keys of wise persuasion of sacred endearments,’ seems a strange phrase in English; but in Greek the words invest a charming sentiment with singular grace. Fit words to words as closely as we may, the difference of the mind which utters them fails to reproduce the true semblance of the thought. The difference of the effect produced, as in this instance, by exactly corresponding words, can only be traced to the essential difference of the Greek and the English mind.
1 (Greek passage) — Pindar?
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. And indeed, as with the words, so with the image. We are charmed by Cyrene wrestling with the lion; but we should scarcely choose an English girl so doing as the type of ideal beauty.
Mr. Falconer. We must draw the image of Cyrene, not from an English girl but from a Greek statue.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Unless a man is in love, and then to him all images of beauty take something of the form and features of his mistress.
Mr. Falconer. That is to say, a man in love sees everything through a false medium. It must be a dreadful calamity to be in love.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Surely not when all goes well with it.
Mr. Falconer. To me it would be the worst of all mischances.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Every man must be subject to Love once in his life. It is useless to contend with him. ‘Love,’ says Sophocles, ’is unconquered in battle, and keeps his watch in the soft cheeks of beauty.’
Mr. Falconer. I am afraid, doctor, the Morgana to whom you have introduced me is a veritable enchantress. You find me here, determined to avoid the spell.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Pardon me. You were introduced, as Jupiter was to Semele, by thunder and lightning, which was, happily, not quite as fatal.
Mr. Falconer. I must guard against its being as fatal in a different sense; otherwise I may be myself the triste bidental. I have aimed at living, like an ancient Epicurean, a life of tranquillity. I had thought myself armed with triple brass against the folds of a three-formed Chimaera. What with classical studies, and rural walks, and a domestic society peculiarly my own, I led what I considered the perfection of life: ‘days so like each other they could not be remembered.’
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. It is vain to make schemes of life. The world will have its slaves, and so will Love.
Say, if you can, in what you cannot change. For such the mind of man, as is the day The Sire of Gods and men brings over him.
1 (Greek passage) — Antigone.
2 Bidental is usually a place struck by lightning: thence
enclosed, and the soil forbidden to be moved. Persius uses
it for a person so killed.
3 Wordsworth: The Brothers.
4 Quid placet aut odio est, quod non mutabile credas?
(Greek phrase) These two quotations form the motto of
Knight’s Principles of Taste.
Mr. Falconer. I presume, doctor, from the complacency with which you speak of Love, you have had no cause to complain of him.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Quite the contrary. I have been an exception to the rule that ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ Nothing could run more smooth than mine. I was in love. I proposed. I was accepted. No crossings before. No bickerings after. I drew a prize in the lottery of marriage.
Mr. Falconer. It strikes me, doctor, that the lady may say as much.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I have made it my study to give her cause to say so. And I have found my reward.
Mr. Falconer. Still, yours is an exceptional case. For, as far as my reading and limited observation have shown me, there are few happy marriages. It has been said by an old comic poet that ‘a man who brings a wife into his house, brings into it with her either a good or an evil genius.’ And I may add from Juvenal: ‘The Gods only know which it will be.’
1 (Greek passage)
Theodectes: apud Stobaeum.
2 Conjugium petimus partumque uxoris, at illis
Notum, qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor.
JUV. Sat. x. 352-3.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Well, the time advances for the rehearsals of our Aristophanic comedy, and, independently of your promise to visit the Grange, and their earnest desire to see you, you ought to be there to assist in the preliminary arrangements.
Mr. Falconer. Before you came, I had determined not to go; for, to tell you the truth, I am afraid of falling in love.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. It is not such a fearful matter. Many have been the better for it. Many have been cured of it. It is one of those disorders which every one must have once.
Mr. Falconer. The later the better.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. No; the later the worse, if it falls into a season when it cannot be reciprocated.
Mr. Falconer. That is just the season for it. If I were sure that it would not be reciprocated, I think I should be content to have gone through it.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Do you think it would be reciprocated?
Mr. Falconer. Oh no. I only think it possible that it might be.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Well, there is a gentleman doing his best to bring about your wish.
Mr. Falconer. Indeed! Who?
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. A visitor at the Grange, who seems in great favour with both uncle and niece — Lord Curryfin.
Mr. Falconer. Lord Curryfin! I never heard you speak of him, but as a person to be laughed at.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. That was my impression of him before I knew him. Barring his absurdities, in the way of lecturing on fish, and of shining in absurd company in the science of pantopragmatics, he has very much to recommend him: and I discover in him one quality which is invaluable. He does all he can to make himself agreeable to all about him, and he has great tact in seeing how to do it. In any intimate relation of life — with a reasonable wife, for instance — he would be the pink of a good husband.
The doctor was playing, not altogether unconsciously, the part of an innocent Iago. He only said what was true, and he said it with a good purpose; for, with all his repeated resolutions against match-making, he could not dismiss from his mind the wish to see his young friends come together; and he would not have liked to see Lord Curryfin carry off the prize through Mr. Falconer’s neglect of his opportunity. Jealousy being the test of love, he thought a spice of it might be not unseasonably thrown in.
Mr. Falconer. Notwithstanding your example, doctor, love is to be avoided, because marriage is at best a dangerous experiment. The experience of all time demonstrates that it is seldom a happy condition. Jupiter and Juno to begin with; Venus and Vulcan. Fictions, to be sure, but they show Homer’s view of the conjugal state. Agamemnon in the shades, though he congratulates Ulysses on his good fortune in having an excellent wife, advises him not to trust even her too far. Come down to realities, even to the masters of the wise: Socrates with Xantippe; Euripides with his two wives, who made him a woman-hater; Cicero, who was divorced; Marcus Aurelius. Travel downwards: Dante, who, when he left Florence, left his wife behind him; Milton, whose first wife ran away from him; Shakespeare, who scarcely shines in the light of a happy husband. And if such be the lot of the lights of the world, what can humbler men expect?
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. You have given two or three heads of a catalogue which, I admit, might be largely extended. You can never read a history,
you can never open a newspaper, without seeing some example of unhappy marriage. But the conspicuous are not the frequent. In the quiet path of every-day life — the secretum iter et fallentis semita vita — I could show you many couples who are really comforts and helpmates to each other. Then, above all things, children. The great blessing of old age, the one that never fails, if all else fail, is a daughter.
Mr. Falconer. All daughters are not good.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Most are. Of all relations in life, it is the least disappointing: where parents do not so treat their daughters as to alienate their affections, which unhappily many do.
Mr. Falconer. You do not say so much for sons.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Young men are ambitious, self-willed, self-indulgent, easily corrupted by bad example, of which there is always too much. I cannot say much for those of the present day, though it is not absolutely destitute of good specimens.
Mr. Falconer. You know what Paterculus says of those of his own day.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. ‘The faith of wives towards the proscribed was great; of freed-men, middling; of slaves, some; of sons, none.’ So he says; but there were some: for example, of the sons of Marcus Oppius and Quintus Cicero. You may observe, by the way, he gives the first place to the wives.
1 Id tamen nolandum est, fuisse in proscriptos uxorum fidem
summam, libcriorum niediam, servorum ahquam, filiorum
nullam. Paterculus, 1. ii. c. 67.
2 A compendious and comprehensive account of these and other
instances of filial piety, in the proscription of the second
triumvirate, will be found in Freinihemius; Suppununta
Liviania, cxx. 77-80.
Mr. Falconer. Well, that is a lottery in which every man must take his chance. But my scheme of life was perfect.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Perhaps there is something to be said against condemning seven young women to celibacy.
Mr. Falconer. But if such were their choice —
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. No doubt there are many reasons why they should prefer the condition they are placed in to the ordinary chances of marriage: but, after all, to be married is the natural aspiration of a young woman, and if favourable conditions presented themselves —
Mr. Falconer. Conditions suitable to their education are scarcely compatible with their social position.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. They have been educated to be both useful and ornamental. The ornamental need not, and in their case certainly does not, damage the useful, which in itself would procure them suitable matches.
Mr. Falconer shook his head, and, after a brief pause, poured out a volume of quotations, demonstrating the general unhappiness of marriage. The doctor responded by as many, demonstrating the contrary. He paused to take breath. Both laughed heartily. But the result of the discussion and the laughter was, that Mr. Falconer was curious to see Lord Curryfin, and would therefore go to Gryll Grange.
CHAPTER XIII
LORD CURRYFIN — SIBERIAN DINNERS — SOCIAL MONOTONY
Ille potens sui
laetusque deget, cui licet in diem
dixisse, Vixi: eras vel atra
nube polum pater occupato,
vel sole puro: non tamen irritum
quodcumque retro est, efficiet; neque
diffinget infectumque reddet,
quod fugiens semel hora vexit.
— Hor. Carm. iii. 29.
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.
Be storm, or calm, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed in spite of fate are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
— Dryden.
A large party was assembled at the Grange. Among them were some of the young ladies who were to form the chorus; one elderly spinster, Miss Ilex, who passed more than half her life in visits, and was everywhere welcome, being always good-humoured, agreeable in conversation, having much knowledge of society, good sense in matters of conduct, good taste and knowledge in music; sound judgment in dress, which alone sufficed to make her valuable to young ladies; a fair amount of reading, old and new; and on most subjects an opinion of her own, for which she had always something to say; Mr. MacBorrowdale, an old friend of Mr. Gryll, a gentleman who comprised in himself all that Scotland had ever been supposed to possess of mental, moral, and political philosophy; ‘And yet he bore it not about’; not ‘as being loth to wear it out,’ but because he held that there was a time for all things, and that dinner was the time for joviality, and not for argument; Mr. Minim, the amateur composer of the music for the comedy; Mr. Pallet, the amateur painter of the scenery; and last, not least, the newly-made acquaintance, Lord Curryfin.
1 We grant, although he had much wit,
H. was very shy of using it,
As being loth to wear it out;
And therefore bore it not about,
Except on holidays or so,
As men their best apparel do.
Hudibras.
Lord Curryfin was a man on the younger side of thirty, with a good person, handsome features, a powerful voice, and an agreeable delivery. He had a strong memory, much power of application, and a facility of learning rapidly whatever he turned his mind to. But with all this, he valued what he learned less for the pleasure which he derived from the acquisition, than from the effect which it enabled him to produce on others. He liked to shine in conversation, and there was scarcely a subject which could be mooted in any society, on which his multifarious attainments did not qualify him to say something. He was readily taken by novelty in doctrine, and followed a new lead with great pertinacity; and in this way he had been caught by the science of pantopragmatics, and firmly believed for a time that a scientific organisation for teaching everybody everything would cure all the evils of society. But being one of those ‘over sharp wits whose edges are very soon turned,’ he did not adhere to any opinion with sufficient earnestness to be on any occasion betrayed into intemperance in maintaining it. So far from this, if he found any unfortunate opinion in a hopeless minority of the company he happened to be in, he was often chivalrous enough to come to its aid, and see what could be said for it. When lecturing became a mania, he had taken to lecturing; and looking about for an unoccupied subject, he had lighted on the natural history of fish, in which he soon became sufficiently proficient to amuse the ladies, and astonish the fishermen in any seaside place of fashionable resort. Here he always arranged his lecture-room, so that the gentility of his audience could sit on a platform, and the natives in a gallery above, and that thus the fishy and tarry odours which the latter were most likely to bring with them might ascend into the upper air, and not mingle with the more delicate fragrances that surrounded the select company below. He took a summer tour to several watering-places, and was thoroughly satisfied with his success. The fishermen at first did not take cordially to him; but their wives attended from curiosity, and brought their husbands with them on nights not favourable to fishing; and by degrees he won on their attention, and they took pleasure in hearing him, though they learned nothing from him that was of any use in their trade. But he seemed to exalt their art in the eyes of themselves and others, and he told them some pleasant anecdotes of strange fish, and of perilous adventures of some of their own craft, which led in due time to the crowding of his gallery. The ladies went, as they always will go, to lectures, where they fancy they learn something, whether they learn anything or not; and on these occasions, not merely to hear the lecturer, but to be seen by him. To them, however attractive the lecture might have been, the lecturer was more so. He was an irresistible temptation to matrons with marriageable daughters, and wherever he sojourned he was overwhelmed with invitations. It was a contest who should have him to dinner, and in the simplicity of hi
s heart, he ascribed to admiration of his science and eloquence all the courtesies and compliments with which he was everywhere received. He did not like to receive unreturned favours, and never left a place in which he had accepted many invitations, without giving in return a ball and supper on a scale of great munificence; which filled up the measure of his popularity, and left on all his guests a very enduring impression of a desire to see him again.
So his time passed pleasantly, with a heart untouched by either love or care, till he fell in at a dinner party with the Reverend Doctor Opimian. The doctor spoke of Gryll Grange and the Aristophanic comedy which was to be produced at Christmas, and Lord Curryfin, with his usual desire to have a finger in every pie, expressed an earnest wish to be introduced to the squire. This was no difficult matter. The doctor had quickly brought it about, and Lord Curryfin had gone over in the doctor’s company to pass a few days at the Grange. Here, in a very short time, he had made himself completely at home; and had taken on himself the office of architect, to superintend the construction of the theatre, receiving with due deference instructions on the subject from the Reverend Doctor Opimian.
Sufficient progress had been made in the comedy for the painter and musician to begin work on their respective portions; and Lord Curryfin, whose heart was in his work, passed whole mornings in indefatigable attention to the progress of the building. It was near the house, and was to be approached by a covered way. It was a miniature of the Athenian theatre, from which it differed in having a roof, but it resembled it in the arrangements of the stage and orchestra, and in the graduated series of semicircular seats for the audience.
When dinner was announced, Mr. Gryll took in Miss Ilex. Miss Gryll, of course, took the arm of Lord Curryfin. Mr. Falconer took in one of the young ladies, and placed her on the left hand of the host. The Reverend Dr. Opimian took in another, and was consequently seated between her and Miss Ilex. Mr. Falconer was thus as far removed as possible from the young lady of the house, and was consequently, though he struggled as much as possible against it, frequently distrait, unconsciously and unwillingly observing Miss Gryll and Lord Curryfin, and making occasional observations very wide of the mark to the fair damsels on his right and left, who set him down in their minds for a very odd young man. The soup and fish were discussed in comparative silence; the entrées not much otherwise; but suddenly a jubilant expression from Mr. MacBorrowdale hailed the disclosure of a large sirloin of beef which figured before Mr. Gryll.
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 83