Crotchet Castle

“Well, Captain,” said Lady Clarinda, “I perceive you can still manœuvre.”

“What could possess you,” said the Captain, “to send two unendurable and inconceivable bores to intercept me with rubbish about which I neither know nor care any more than the man in the moon?”

“Perhaps,” said Lady Clarinda, “I saw your design, and wished to put your generalship to the test.  But do not contradict anything I have said about you, and see if the learned will find you out.”

“There is fine music, as Rabelais observes, in the cliquetis d’asssiettes, a refreshing shade in the ombre de salle à manger, and an elegant fragrance in the fumée de rôti,” said a voice at the Captain’s elbow.  The Captain turning round, recognised his clerical friend of the morning, who knew him again immediately, and said he was extremely glad to meet him there; more especially as Lady Clarinda had assured him that he was an enthusiastic lover of Greek poetry.

“Lady Clarinda,” said the Captain, “is a very pleasant young lady.”

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—So she is, sir: and I understand she has all the wit of the family to herself, whatever that totum may be.  But a glass of wine after soup is, as the French say, the verre de santé.  The current of opinion sets in favour of Hock: but I am for Madeira; I do not fancy Hock till I have laid a substratum of Madeira.  Will you join me?

Captain Fitzchrome.—With pleasure.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Here is a very fine salmon before me: and May is the very point nommé to have salmon in perfection.  There is a fine turbot close by, and there is much to be said in his behalf: but salmon in May is the king of fish.

Mr. Crotchet.—That salmon before you, doctor, was caught in the Thames, this morning.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Παπαπαῖ!  Rarity of rarities!  A Thames salmon caught this morning.  Now, Mr. Mac Quedy, even in fish your Modern Athens must yield.  Cedite Graii.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Eh! sir, on its own around, your Thames salmon has two virtues over all others; first, that it is fresh; and, second, that it is rare; for I understand you do not take half a dozen in a year.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—In some years, sir, not one.  Mud, filth, gas-dregs, lock-weirs, and the march of mind, developed in the form of poaching, have ruined the fishery.  But, when we do catch a salmon, happy the man to whom he falls.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—I confess, sir, this is excellent: but I cannot see why it should be better than a Tweed salmon at Kelso.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Sir, I will take a glass of Hock with you.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—With all my heart, sir.  There are several varieties of the salmon genus: but the common salmon, the salmo salar, is only one species, one and the same everywhere, just like the human mind.  Locality and education make all the difference.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Education!  Well, sir, I have no doubt schools for all are just as fit for the species salmo salar as for the genus homo.  But you must allow that the specimen before us has finished his education in a manner that does honour to his college.  However, I doubt that the salmo salar is only one species, that is to say, precisely alike in all localities.  I hold that every river has its own breed, with essential differences; in flavour especially.  And as for the human mind, I deny that it is the same in all men.  I hold that there is every variety of natural capacity from the idiot to Newton and Shakespeare; the mass of mankind, midway between these extremes, being blockheads of different degrees; education leaving them pretty nearly as it found them, with this single difference, that it gives a fixed direction to their stupidity, a sort of incurable wry neck to the thing they call their understanding.  So one nose points always east, and another always west, and each is ready to swear that it points due north.

Mr. Crotchet.—If that be the point of truth, very few intellectual noses point due north.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Only those that point to the Modern Athens.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Where all native noses point southward.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Eh, sir, northward for wisdom, and southward for profit.

Mr. Crotchet, jun.  Champagne, doctor?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Most willingly.  But you will permit my drinking it while it sparkles.  I hold it a heresy to let it deaden in my hand, while the glass of my compotator is being filled on the opposite side of the table.  By-the-bye, Captain, you remember a passage in Athenæus, where he cites Menander on the subject of fish-sauce: ὀψάριον ἐπὶ ἰχθύος.  (The Captain was aghast for an answer that would satisfy both his neighbours, when he was relieved by the divine continuing.)  The science of fish-sauce, Mr. Mac Quedy, is by no means brought to perfection; a fine field of discovery still lies open in that line.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Nay, sir, beyond lobster-sauce, I take it, ye cannot go.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—In their line, I grant you, oyster and lobster-sauce are the pillars of Hercules.  But I speak of the cruet sauces, where the quintessence of the sapid is condensed in a phial.  I can taste in my mind’s palate a combination, which, if I could give it reality, I would christen with the name of my college, and hand it down to posterity as a seat of learning indeed.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Well, sir, I wish you success, but I cannot let slip the question we started just now.  I say, cutting off idiots, who have no minds at all, all minds are by nature alike.  Education (which begins from their birth) makes them what they are.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—No, sir, it makes their tendencies, not their power.  Cæsar would have been the first wrestler on the village common.  Education might have made him a Nadir Shah; it might also have made him a Washington; it could not have made him a merry-andrew, for our newspapers to extol as a model of eloquence.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Now, sir, I think education would have made him just anything, and fit for any station, from the throne to the stocks; saint or sinner, aristocrat or democrat, judge, counsel, or prisoner at the bar.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—I will thank you for a slice of lamb, with lemon and pepper.  Before I proceed with this discussion,—Vin de Grave, Mr. Skionar,—I must interpose one remark.  There is a set of persons in your city, Mr. Mac Quedy, who concoct, every three or four months, a thing, which they call a review: a sort of sugar-plum manufacturers to the Whig aristocracy.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—I cannot tell, sir, exactly, what you mean by that; but I hope you will speak of those gentlemen with respect, seeing that I am one of them.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Sir, I must drown my inadvertence in a glass of Sauterne with you.  There is a set of gentlemen in your city—

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Not in our city, exactly; neither are they a set.  There is an editor, who forages for articles in all quarters, from John o’ Groat’s house to the Land’s End.  It is not a board, or a society: it is a mere intellectual bazaar, where A, B, and C, bring their wares to market.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Well, sir, these gentlemen among them, the present company excepted, have practised as much dishonesty as, in any other department than literature, would have brought the practitioner under the cognisance of the police.  In politics, they have ran with the hare and hunted with the hound.  In criticism, they have, knowingly and unblushingly, given false characters, both for good and for evil; sticking at no art of misrepresentation, to clear out of the field of literature all who stood in the way of the interests of their own clique.  They have never allowed their own profound ignorance of anything (Greek for instance) to throw even an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the matter.  They set an example of profligate contempt for truth, of which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; and when their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, they cried out against their own reflected sin, as if they had never committed it, or were entitled to a monopoly of it.  The latter, I rather think, was what they wanted.

Mr. Crotchet.—Hermitage, doctor?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Nothing better, sir.  The father who first chose the solitude of that vineyard, knew well how to cultivate his spirit in retirement.  Now, Mr. Mac Quedy, Achilles was distinguished above all the Greeks for his inflexible love of truth; could education have made Achilles one of your reviewers?

Mr. Mac Quedy.—No doubt of it, even if your character of them were true to the letter.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—And I say, sir—chicken and asparagus—Titan had made him of better clay.  I hold with Pindar, “All that is most excellent is so by nature.”  Τὸ δὲ φυᾷ κράτιστον ἅπαν.  Education can give purposes, but not powers; and whatever purposes had been given him, he would have gone straight forward to them; straight forward, Mr. Mac Quedy.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—No, sir, education makes the man, powers, purposes, and all.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—There is the point, sir, on which we join issue.

Several others of the company now chimed in with their opinions, which gave the divine an opportunity to degustate one or two side dishes, and to take a glass of wine with each of the young ladies.

CHAPTER V

CHARACTERS

Ay imputé a honte plus que médiocre être vu spectateur ocieux de tant vaillans, disertz, et chevalereux personnaiges.

Rabelais.

Lady Clarinda (to the Captain).—I declare the creature has been listening to all this rigmarole, instead of attending to me.  Do you ever expect forgiveness?  But now that they are all talking together, and you cannot make out a word they say, nor they hear a word that we say, I will describe the company to you.  First, there is the old gentleman on my left hand, at the head of the table, who is now leaning the other way to talk to my brother.  He is a good-tempered, half-informed person, very unreasonably fond of reasoning, and of reasoning people; people that talk nonsense logically: he is fond of disputation himself, when there are only one or two, but seldom does more than listen in a large company of illuminés.  He made a great fortune in the city, and has the comfort of a good conscience.  He is very hospitable, and is generous in dinners; though nothing would induce him to give sixpence to the poor, because he holds that all misfortune is from imprudence, that none but the rich ought to marry, and that all ought to thrive by honest industry, as he did.  He is ambitious of founding a family, and of allying himself with nobility; and is thus as willing as other grown children to throw away thousands for a gew-gaw, though he would not part with a penny for charity.  Next to him is my brother, whom you know as well as I do.  He has finished his education with credit, and as he never ventures to oppose me in anything, I have no doubt he is very sensible.  He has good manners, is a model of dress, and is reckoned ornamental in all societies.  Next to him is Miss Crotchet, my sister-in-law that is to be.  You see she is rather pretty, and very genteel.  She is tolerably accomplished, has her table always covered with new novels, thinks Mr. Mac Quedy an oracle, and is extremely desirous to be called “my lady.”  Next to her is Mr. Firedamp, a very absurd person, who thinks that water is the evil principle.  Next to him is Mr. Eavesdrop, a man who, by dint of a certain something like smartness, has got into good society.  He is a sort of bookseller’s tool, and coins all his acquaintance in reminiscences and sketches of character.  I am very shy of him, for fear he should print me.

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 Crouching-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.