Of the rest of the building it will be sufficient to say that the kitchen would have done honour to the Abbot of Glastonbury.
Local attachment had always been very strong in the Cotswold family, and from father to son, during three centuries, every successive proprietor had carefully abstained from altering what his predecessor had left. The few novelties in the house were chiefly in books and music.
The three rooms above mentioned were appropriated in the morning, one to ladies, one to gentlemen, and the middle room to both. In the evening the three were common to all. But the present young proprietor had not as yet had any lady visitors. He had meditated on the means of inviting them through some matronly friend: but he had not fixed on one to his mind, nor pre-arranged in his thoughts whom he should like to invite; scarcely venturing to acknowledge to himself that he thought only of one.
“I have been thinking,” said Charles in the evening after dinner, “of what you have told me of the Lady of Beechwoods, and I cannot reconcile the admiration you express of her with the total absence of love.”
RICHARD
There is a mystery about her, and I hate mystery.
CHARLES
How do you know there is a mystery?
RICHARD
How can it be otherwise? A young woman living in absolute solitude, never visiting, never receiving a visit even from one of her own sex. It is not natural: it is not rational: there must be a mystery. Affable to all who speak to her out of doors: kind to her dependents: generous to her tenants: bountiful to the poor: yet to all appearance without a friend in the world. There must be a mystery.
CHARLES
If there is one, I will be bound to solve it.
RICHARD
No, Charles, you must not interfere between her and me.
CHARLES
How interfere? You are not in love, and your intercourse consists in exchanging “How d’ ye do” on the Wold. I shall not interrupt your “How d’ ye dos.”
RICHARD
Charles, Charles, do not torment me. The world is wide enough, and there are plenty of women in it besides Miss Dorimer. I like to contemplate her as she is: the one rose of my wilderness: the one star of my twilight: the one ænigma of my study —
CHARLES
The one divinity of your temple: the one goddess of your idolatry. May I not worship at the same shrine with the same unpresuming and unpretending adoration? May I not even say: “Great is Diana of the Ephesians”?
RICHARD
It is not an unpresuming adoration to seek to penetrate the heart of her mystery. I cannot think of your doing what I have not myself dared to attempt.
CHARLES
Well, Richard, if you are not in love, you have a sort of feeling in its place which it would puzzle you to analyse. Set your heart at rest for me. I will not interfere. But I hope if we meet her on the Wold, you will introduce me to her, and allow me to raise my hat.
RICHARD
I am not in love, Charles. But I have no wish to analyse my feelings. I dare say I am very absurd, but I am satisfied with your assurance that you will respect my absurdity.
CHARLES
I will. I not only promise it, but swear it.
He filled a bumper of claret, and making a libation of a few drops on the floor said: “To Bacchus!” Then lifting up the glass he exclaimed: “By Proserpine!” And having drunk the wine with much apparent solemnity and turned down his glass, he replaced it on the table in its proper position.
RICHARD
I see, Charles, you keep up the habit which you adopted when a school-boy of showing a sort of poetical devotion to the ancient deities: and I remember that your two favourites were Bacchus and Proserpine. I shall hold an oath by her to be as binding on you as one by the Styx was on Jupiter.
CHARLES
You may, and I hope now your mind is at ease. I honour Bacchus as the giver of the vine, and I adore Proserpine as the Queen of Beauty: more beautiful even than Venus, by Venus’s own acknowledgment.
RICHARD
You were fond of carving the names of deities on trees. I well recollect a day when we took shelter from a storm in a thick grove of beech-trees, and while the wind was roaring in their summits you cut on the bark of one of them BPOMIQL And another, a burning dog-day, when we lay under a wild cherry-tree among heath by the side of a lake, and you wove a garland of heath while I read to you the second epistle of the second book of Horace. My reading and your weaving came to an end together: and you asked me: “To what deity is heath consecrated?” I answered: “To none, so far as I know.”
“Then,” you said, “we will consecrate it to Diana.” You carved APTEMIAI on the tree, and suspended the wreath above the inscription. Those were pleasant days. I do not think we grow happier as we grow older: as the bloom of novelty fades from life.
CHARLES
The bloom of antiquity, I think you should say, for all novelty seems abhorrent to you.
RICHARD
I mean the impressions which we receive “when life itself is new.” The objects themselves may be new or old: but the first impressions from them are vivid: and their bloom and brilliancy fade as we advance in life.
CHARLES
I do not find it so. I have always delighted in anniversaries. I eat Easter buns, Michaelmas goose, and Christmas turkey with as much relish as when I was a boy. Turkey, yes, and its old companions, roast beef, plumb-pudding, mince-pies: a merry party round the table: old wine: not without old October and a wassail-bowl: dancing, singing, kissing under the misletoe: acting a comedy: a new diversion for every night: a huge cake and a children’s ball for Twelfth Night. I wish you would let me get up a merry Christmas for you: and if I do not bring the lady of Beechwoods to join it, may I never consecrate a new wreath to a goddess.
RICHARD
Why, you have just vowed not to interfere.
CHARLES
Neither will I, personally. Authorise me to invite the Beomonds, and you shall see how pleasantly things will travel.
RICHARD
Our aunt and uncle. They are mere people of the world.
CHARLES
The better for the purpose. If they have not already pre-arranged their Christmas.
RICHARD
Do as you please, Charles. I am not unsocial, though society as it is now constituted is not much to my mind. If you can get up an old-fashioned Christmas, do so — but let it be as old-fashioned as possible.
CHAPTER III
THE BEOMONDS WERE invited, and accepted the invitation. The lady was the youngest sister of Richard’s father. The register of her birth made her forty: her looks showed scarcely more than thirty. She had been married at an early age. Her husband was only two years her senior: he had been passionately in love with her, and was still a conspicuous example of a man in love with his wife. The lady was unimpassioned but affectionate, even-tempered, uniformly cheerful: the same today as yesterday. Her husband would have wished her to be as much in love with him as he was with her: he wanted something more than affection: there was no place in her heart for more: she gave it frankly and truly: but the hope of more ardent love supplied him with a perpetual pursuit. His married life was one long courtship, and his home was a happy one.
The lady had retained little taste for the antiquities among which she had been brought up, and would have preferred society as it is to society as it was, if the world as it is could have given her the choice of both. Her husband and herself were alike fond of company, joining in all the gaieties of the London season: roaming about the continent in the autumn: passing the winter in the country, visiting at other country houses or receiving visits at their own. They had one daughter, whom they had educated at home, who accompanied them everywhere, and whom they brought with them on this occasion: a pretty, merry, tripping, skipping, light-hearted damsel, whose voice was often heard on the stairs or in the hall, announcing her approach by scraps of cheerful melody.
Mrs. Beomond gladly undertook the task o
f filling the house with company: and succeeded in doing so, with an ample party: leaving one suite of rooms for the Lady of Beechwoods: which were to remain unoccupied, if not graced by the presence of Miss Dorimer. Cotswold of Cotswold scarcely knew himself and his house, under this irruption of the modern world.
Now the great difficulty remained, or rather the series of difficulties: — to obtain access to Miss Dorimer: to invite her to the Chace: to induce her to accept the invitation. Richard could not suggest an idea on the subject. Charles was not to interfere, ft devolved on Mrs. Beomond not only to conduct the intricate and delicate business, but to devise the means of doing so with any prospect of success.
To attempt introducing herself by calling at the young lady’s house she was aware would be hopeless. She would not be told that Miss Dorimer was not at home: the lady’s maid would receive her very courteously, and inform her with all imaginable civility that Miss Dorimer did not receive visitors. To write seemed scarcely more promising: but she could think of no third course.
The Plays
The Abbey House, Chertsey. Following his father’s death, Peacock lived with his mother and grandfather in a cottage named Gogmoor Hall, at Chertsey. Little is known of this period of Peacock’s life and the exact location of the ‘Hall’ has been lost; but in an essay written in old age, Peacock recalls fondly his close friendship with the Barwell family that lived at the nearby Abbey House.
The Dilettanti
A FARCE IN TWO ACTS
Assumed by scholars to have been written some time during the 1810’s, The Dilettanti, a prose farce in two acts, is one of three original plays known to have been composed by Peacock, along with The Three Doctors and The Circle of Loda. They remained unperformed and unpublished during Peacock’s lifetime, eventually seeing print in 1910 in an edition edited by A.B. Young – although Peacock had published, in 1862, a translation of the Italian comedy Gl’Ingannati (The Deceived). The publication of Peacock’s plays was a major literary event in 1910, at which time they were little known and presumed lost.
As with Peacock’s novels, the characters have names representing their pet obsessions or characteristic (e.g. Tactic, Shadow, Chromatic) and gather in a country house where their interactions and debates are the vehicle for a satirical look at contemporary ideas and events.
Title page of the first collected edition of Peacock’s previously unpublished plays
CONTENTS
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
ACT I.
ACT II.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
COMFIT.
TACTIC.
SIR HARRY FLOURISH.
METAPHOR.
CHROMATIC.
SHADOW.
O’PROMPT.
MRS. COMFIT.
MISS COMFIT.
EMMA.
MISS CADENCE.
MISS MELPOMENE DASHALL.
Waiter, Servants, Masks, &c.
SCENE: Warwickshire.
ACT I.
SCENE I. — AN INN.
ENTER COMFIT, DISGUISED.
Comfit. This disguise is the very thing. I defy any living soul to recognise me now. My wife and her dilettanti friends think I am snug in Ireland; and there are rare fooleries going on in my absence. I understand there’s to be a masked ball at my house this evening. I detest the idea of a masked ball. Am I really old Gregory Comfit, the plodding man of business, that was once fortunate enough to have a wife without a particle of taste in her whole composition? Ah! those were happy times! But she took it into her head to pop off the perch, and I took it into mine to marry a girl, and be cursed to me! A fashionable girl! Poor dear delicate soul! she could not exist in the city: so I was obliged to leave my business, and purchase an estate in Warwickshire. She talked a great deal about the Avon, and Shakespeare, and rural tranquillity. A pretty sort of tranquillity truly! First, she could not live comfortably till she had beautified our residence with all the absurdities of the world. I must turn it into a Gothic chateau, with Egyptian apartments and Grecian furniture; and an Italian garden, on the principles of the picturesque. And no sooner was this precious chateau finished, as she called it, in perfect taste, than I was agreeably surprised by the arrival of a new set of fashionable articles, a whole cargo of dilettanti! My house was turned into Bedlam! No rest for me by day or night, with them fiddling, and singing, and dancing, and painting; their private theatricals, and Italian recitations! Nothing to be heard of but Mozart, and Pleyel, and Signora Catalani! Raphael, Correggio, and Michael Angelo! Hamlet, Metastasio, and Orlando Furioso! I suspect too all is not as it should be between them and my wife: but this disguise will enable me to watch their proceedings while they think I am out of the way. Who comes here? Another dilettante, I suppose, on his way to my house. I must keep snug, but I shall look sharply after him as I can find opportunity. [Exit.
Enter WAITER, showing in TACTIC and O’PROMPT.
Tactic. Let me have breakfast immediately. (Waiter bows and exit.) Well, here we are at last in Warwickshire, safe for a time at least from duns and attornies.
O’Prompt. Ah! burn ’em both! They’re cunning hands, and will ferret us out before we’re aware. But there’s one advantage. I always know a bailey when I see him. I have been pretty well used to the rascals ever since I left my father’s house in Kilkenny to become a tragedy-player in Mr. O’Tagrag’s company. Oh! I was a great loss to the stage. My Coriolanus was a fine piece of acting. My Polonius was a grand performance.
Tactic. Ridiculous.
O’Prompt. There you’re out. My Polonius had nothing ridiculous about it. I made it quite another thing. Not a creature in the house had the impudence to laugh at me. They laughed a little, though, when I performed Richard the Third; but whether it was at me or my hump, for the life of me I could not tell.
Tactic. Absurd enough!
O’Prompt. That’s just what I said to Mr.
O’Tagrag. Says I, ‘It’s absurd enough for me to stick a great oven on my shoulder to set the people grinning.’ So I left it off next time.
Tactic. Mr. O’Tagrag is never out of your head.
O’Prompt. Oh! he was a great man! He was rather old and dingy, but that was just the thing for Othello.
Tactic. Which he acted to your Iago.
O’Prompt. Sure now and did I not play it divinely! Everybody said that my manner of drinking was perfectly natural.
Tactic. You will one day or other, my fine fellow, sit on the stool of repentance.
O’Prompt. I’ve too much manners to sit on the same seat with my master.
Tactic. You are eternally fancying yourself on the stage; and involving yourself and me in perpetual scrapes, by searching for what you call dramatic adventures.
O’Prompt. I love fun and despise danger. To be sure, I do sometimes get into a scrape; but I’ve a very happy knack of getting out again.
Tactic. Remember, I caution you in time.
O’Prompt. Ohone! Your money and your spirits seem to be both gone one way. You have fallen in with a set of dirty old blacklegs, and are what the knowing ones call pigeoned.
Tactic. I am a miserable fellow! deep in love and deep in debt! With as little chance of finding my mistress as I have of escaping my creditors.
O’ Prompt. Oh! your Southampton flame that you danced with so often, and never found out who she was. For anything you know to the contrary, she may be a Cheapside milliner from Cranbourne Alley.
Tactic. Impossible! She had so much beauty, modesty, and elegance —
O’Prompt. Those are three points in her favour; and there are just three against her.
Tactic. How so?
O’Prompt. The first is, you may never see her again. The second is, she may not care a whistle for you; and the third is, she may not be worth a thirteen.
Tactic. There is some reason in two of your arguments, but as to the third —
O’Prompt. That’s the very best of all. Put her out of your head, and try if you can’t pick up a thirty-thousand-
pounder in this part of the world.
Tactic. What chance have I of success in such a pursuit?
O’Prompt. Oh! trust to that agreeable little phiz of your own to captivate the daughter of some rich country codger.
Re-enter COMFIT, behind.
Comfit (aside). Yes, yes; this is a dilettante, and that is his man. Deuce take their cunning looks. I dare say they are at this moment plotting my dishonour.
Tactic. Well, that is an affair in which chance may befriend me.
Comfit (aside). He means with my wife.
Tactic. If an opportunity present itself, it shall not be lost.
Comfit (aside). Opportunity —
O’Prompt. That’s right; if you stand shillyshallying with Fortune, you lose her for ever; attack her boldly, and she’s yours.
Comfit (aside). Oh, the Irish rascal!
Tactic. But the old country codger may stand in the way.
Comfit (aside). That’s me.
O’Prompt. Never mind an old codger: knock him down.
Comfit (aside). There’s a bloodthirsty villain!
Tactic. But we must find the lady first, before we arrange our proceedings.
Comfit (aside). Confound your proceedings!
O’Prompt. And then let me alone to contrive: I’m a rare hand at a scheme.
Comfit. I’ll cross your schemes. (Aside.)
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 106