Devereux : a tale ; The disowned

Chap. II. — A Family Consultation. — A Priest, and an JEra. in Life 15

CHAP. II T. — A Change in Conduct and in Character — our evil Passions will sometimes produce good Effects ; and, on the contrary, an Alteration for the better in Manners will, not unfrequently, have amongst its Causes a little Corruption ot Mind ; for the Feelings are so blended, that in suppressing those disagreeable to others, we often suppress those which are amiable in themselves - - 19

CHAP. IV. — A Content of Art, and a League of Friendship — Two Characters in mutual Ignorance of each other, and the reader no wiser than either of them 27

CHAP. V. — Royal Hospitality — an extraordinary Guest. — A Fine

Gentleman is not necessarily a Fool 32

Chap. VI. — A Dialogue, which might be dull if it were longer - 36V

Chap. VII. — A change of Prospects — a new insight into the character

of the Hero — a Conference between two Brothers - - - 39

CHAP. VIII.— First Love 44

Chap. IX. — A Discovery, and a Departure 54

Chap. X. — A very short Chapter — containing a Valet 60

Chap. XI. — The Hero acquits himself honorably as a Coxcomb — a Fine Lady of the Eighteenth Century, and a fashionable Dialogue— the Substance of fashionable Dialogue being in all Centuries the same - 6r

Chap. XII. — The Abbe's return — a Sword, and a Soliloquy - - 67

Chap. XIII. — A mysterious Letter — a Duel — the Departure of one of

the Family -- 69

Chap. XIV.— Being a Chapter of Trifles 78

Chap. XV.— The Mother and Son— Virtue should be the Sovereign of

the Feelings, not their Destroyer .... - 80

Hi

J.V CONTENTS.

Book II

PAGS Chap. I. — The Hero in London — Pleasure is often the shortest, as it is the earliest road to Wisdom, and we may say of the World what Zeal-of-the-Land-Busy says of the Pig-Booth, "We escape so much of the other vanities by our early entering" - - - 84

CHAP. II. — Gay Scenes and Conversations: — the New Exchange and

the Puppet Show: — The Actor, the Sexton, and the Beauty - 88

Chap. VI. — An Universal Genius — Pericles turned Barber — Names of

Beauties in 171 the Toasts of the Kit-Cat Club - - - 107

Chap. VII. — A Dialogue of Sentiment succeeded by the Sketch of a Character, in whose eyes Sentiment was to Wise Men what Religion is to Fools, viz. — a subject of ridicule - - - - in

Chap. VIII. — Lightly won — lightly lost. — A Dialogue of equal Instruction and Amusement. — A Visit to Sir Godfrey Kneller - 116

Chap. IX. — A Development of Character, and a long Letter — a Chapter, on the whole, more important than it seems - - - 120

Chap. X. — Being a short Chapter, containing a most important Event 129

Chap. XI. — Containing more than any other Chapter in the Second

Book of this History 133

Chap. I. — Wherein the History makes great Progress and is marked

by one important Event in Human Life 149

Chap. II.— Love— Parting— a Death Bed.— After all Human Nature is a beautiful Fabric ; and even its Imperfections are not odious to him who has studied the Science of its Architecture, and formed a reverent Estimate of its Creator 160

Chap. VI. — A Court, Courtiers, and a King 235

Chap. VII. — Reflections — A Soiree — The appearance of one important in the History — A Conversation with Madame de Balzac highly satisfactory and cheering — A Rencontre with a curious old Soldier — The extinction of a once great Luminary .... 246

Chap. VIII. — In which there is reason to fear that Princes are not invariably free from Human Peccadillos 260

Chap. IX. — A Prince — an Audience — and a Secret Embassy - - 264

Chap. X. — Royal Exertions for the good of the People - - - 271

Chap. XL— An Interview 276

Book V

Chap. L— A Portrait 279

Chap. II. — The entrance into Petersburgh — a Rencontre with an inquisitive and mysterious Stranger — Nothing like Travel - - - 284

Chap. III. — The Czar — the Czarina — a Feast at a Russian Nobleman's 289

Chap. IV. — Conversation with the Czar — if Cromwell was the greatest man (Caesar excepted) who ever rose to the Supreme Power, Peter was the greatest man ever born to it 293

Chap. V. — Return to Paris — Interview with Bolingbroke — A gallant Adventure — Affair with Dubois — Public Life is a Drama, in which private Vices generally play the part of the scene-shifters 298

Chap. VI. — A long Interval of Years — a Change of Mind and its

Causes 3°8

Vt

Chap. VIII.— The Catastrophe 401 DEDICATORY EPISTLE TO JOHN AULDJO, Esq., &c

AT NAPLES.

London.

My Dear Auldjo :

Permit me, as a memento of the pleasant hours we passed together, and the intimacy we formed, by the winding shores and the rosy seas of -the old Parthenope, to dedicate to you this romance. — It was written in, perhaps, the happiest period of my literary life — when success began to brighten upon my labors, and it seemed to me a fine thing to make a name. Reputation, like all possessions, fairer in the hope than in the reality, shone before me, in the gloss of novelty — and I had neither felt the envy it excites, the weariness it occasions, nor (worse than all) that coarse and painful notoriety, that something between the gossip and the slander, which attends every man whose writings become known — surrendering the grateful privacies of life to

The gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day.

In short — yet almost a boy — (for, in years at least, I was little more, when "Pelham" and "The Disowned" were conceived and composed), and full of the sanguine arrogance of hope, I pictured to myself far greater triumphs ihan it will ever be mine to achieve : and never did architect of dreams build his pyramid upon (alas !) a narrower base, or a more crumbling soil ! . . . . Time cures us effectually of these self-conceits, and brings us, somewhat harshly, from the gay extravagance of confounding the much that we design with the little that we can accomplish.

"The Disowned" and " Devereux " were both completed in retirement — and in the midst of metaphysical studies and investigations, varied and miscellaneous enough, if not very deeply conned. — At that time I was indeed engaged in preparing for the press a Philosophical Work, which I had afterwards the good sense to postpone to a riper age and a more sobered mind. But the effect of these studies is somewhat prejudicially visible in both the romances I have referred to ; and the external and dramatic colorings which belong to fiction are too often forsaken for the inward and subtle analysis of motives, characters, and actions. — The workman was not sufficiently master of his art to forbear the vanity of parading the wheels of the mechanism, and was too fond of calling attention to the minute and tedious operations by which the movements were to be performed, and the result obtained. I believe that an author is generally pleased with his work, less in proportion as it fulfils the idea with which he commenced it. He is rarely, perhaps, an accurate judge how far the execution is in itself faulty or meritorious— but he judges with tolerable success how far it accomplishes the end and objects of the conception. — He is pleased with his work, in short, according as he can say, "This has expressed what I meant to convey." — But the reader, who is not in the secret of the author's original design, usually views the work through a different medium — and is perhaps, in this, the wiser crkic of the two ; for the Book that wanders the most from the idea which originated it, may often be better than that which is rigidly limited to the unfolding and de?wuement of a single conception. If we accept this solution, we may be enabled to understand why an author not unfrequently makes favorites of some of his productions most condemned by the public. For my own part, I remember that " Devereux" pleased me better than "Pelham" or "The Disowned," because the execution more exactly corresponded with the design. It expressed with tolerable fidelity what I

IV DEDICATORY EPISTLE.

meant it to express. That was a happy age, my dear Auldjo, when, on finishing a work, we could feel contented with our labor, and fancy we had done our best ! Now, alas ! I have learned enough of the wonders of the Art to recognize all the deficiencies of the Disciple ; and to know that no author, worth the reading — can ever in one single work do half of which he is capable.

What man ever wrote anything really good, who did not feel that he had the ability to write something better ? — Writing, after all, is a cold and a coarse interpreter of thought. — How much of the imagination — how much of the intellect, evaporates and is lost while we seek to embody it in words ! — Man made language, and God the genius. Nothing short of an eternity could enable men who imagine, think, and feel, to express all they have imagined, thought, and felt. Immortality, the spiritual desire, is the intellectual necessity.

In "Devereux," I wished to portray a man flourishing in the last century, with the train of mind and sentiment peculiar to the present ; — describing a life, and not its dramatic epitome, the historical characters introduced are not closely woven with the main plot, like those in the fictions of Sir Walter Scott — but are rather, like the narrative romances of an earlier school, designed to relieve the predominant interest, and give a greater air of truth and actuality to the supposed memoir. It is a fiction which deals less with the Picturesque than the Real. — Of the principal character thus introduced (the celebrated and graceful, but charlatanic, Bolingbroke) I still think that my sketch, upon the whole, is substantially just. We must not judge of the politicians of one age by the lights of another. Happily we now demand in a statesman a desire for other aims than his own advancement ; but, at that period, ambition was almost universally selfish — the Statesman was yet a Courtier — a man whose very destiny it was to intrigue, to plot, to glitter, to deceive. It is in proportion as politics have ceased to be a secret science — in proportion as courts are less to be flattered, and tools to be managed, that politicians have become useful and honest men : and the statesman now directs a people, where once he outwitted an antechamber. Compare Bolingbroke— not with the men and by the rules of this day — but with the men and by the rules of the last. He will lose nothing in comparison with a Walpole, with a Marlborough on the one side — with an Oxford or a Swift upon the other.

And now, my dear Auldjo — you have had enough of my egotisms. As our works grow up — like old parents, we grow garrulous, and love to recur to the happier days of their childhood ; — we talk over the pleasant pain they cost us in their rearing — and memory renews the season of dreams and hopes ; we speak of their faults as of things past — of their merits as of things enduring : — we are proud to see them still living, and, after many a harsh ordeal and rude assault, keeping a certain station in the world ; — we hoped perhaps something better for them in their cradle — but, as it is, we have good cause to be contented. You, a fellow-author, and one whose spirited and charming sketches embody so much of personal adventure, and therefore so much connect themselves with associations of real life as well as of the studious closet ; you know, and must feel, with me, that these our books are a part of us, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh ! They treasure up the thoughts which stined us — the affections which warmed us, years ago — they are the mirrors of how much of what we were ! To the world, they are but as a certain number of pages — good or bad — tedious or diverting; but to ourselves, the authors, they are as marks in the wild maze of life by which we can retrace our steps — and be with our youth again. What would I not give to feel as I felt — to hope as I hoped — to believe as I believed — when this work was first launched upon the world ! But time gives, while it takes away — and, amongst its recompenses for many losses, are the memories I referred to in commencing this letter, and gratefully revert to at its close. — From the land of cloud and the life of toil, I turn to that golden clime and the happy indolence that so well accords with it — and hope once more, ere I die, with a companion whose knowledge can recall the past, and whose gayety can enliven the present, to visit the Disburied City of Pompeii — and see the moonlight sparkle over the waves of Naples. Adieu, my dear Auldjo,

And believe me

Your obliged and attached friend,

E. B. LYTTON.

DEVEREUX.

Chapter I

Of the Hero's Birth and Parentage. Nothing can Differ more from the End of Things than their Beginning.

My grandfather, Sir Arthur Devereux (peace be with his ashes !) was a noble old knight and cavalier, possessed of a property sufficiently large to have maintained in full dignity half a dozen peers — such as peers have been since the days of the First James. Nevertheless, my grandfather loved the equestrian order better than the patrieian, rejected all offers of advancement, and left his posterity no titles but those to his estate.

Sir Arthur had two children by wedlock — both sons : at his death, my father, the you»ger, bade adieu to the old hall and his only brother, prayed to the grim portraits of his ancestors to inspire him, and set out — to join as a volunteer the armies of that Zouis, afterwards surnamed le grand. Of him I shall say but little ; the life of a soldier has only two events worth recording, his first campaign and his last. My uncle did as his ancestors had done before him, and, cheap as the dignity had grown, went up to court to be knighted by Charles II. He was so delighted with what he saw of the metropolis that he forswore all intention of leaving it, took to Sedley and champagne, flirted with Nell Gwynne, lost double the value of his brother's portion at one sitting to the chivalrous Grammont, wrote a comedy corrected by Etherege, and took a wife recommended by Rochester. The wife brought him a child six months after marriage, and the infant was born on the same day the comedy was acted. Luckily for the honor of the house, my uncle shared the fate of Plimneus, king of Sicyon, and all the offspring he ever had (that is to say, the child and

II the play), "died as soon as they were born." My uncle was now only at a loss what to do with his wife — that remaining treasure, whose readiness to oblige him had been so miraculously evinced. She saved him the trouble of long cogitation — an exercise of intellect to which he was never too ardently inclined. There was a gentleman of the court, celebrated for his sedateness and solemnity ; my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and, six weeks after her confinement, she put this rock into motion — they eloped. Poor gentleman ! — it must have been a severe trial of patience to a mail never known before to trangress the very slowest of all possible walks — to have had two events of the most rapid nature happen to him in the same week : scarcely had he recovered the shock of being run away with by my aunt, before, terminating for ever his vagrancies, he was run through by my uncle. The wits made an epigram upon the event, and my uncle, who was as bold as a lion at the point of a sword, was, to speak frankly, terribly disconcerted by the point of a jest. He retired to the country in a fit of disgust and gout. Here his natural goodness soon recovered the effects of the artificial atmosphere to which it had been exposed, and he solaced himself by righteously governing domains worthy of a prince, for the mortifications he had experienced in the dishonorable career of a courtier.

Hitherto I have spoken somewhat slightingly of my uncle, and in his dissipation he deserved it, for he was both too honest and too simple to shine in that galaxy of prostituted genius of which Charles II. was the centre. But in retirement he was no longer the same person ; and I do not think that the elements of human nature could have furnished forth a more amiable character than Sir William Devereux presiding at Christmas over the merriment of his great hall.

Good old man ! his very defects were what we loved best in him — vanity was so mingled with good nature that it became graceful, and we reverenced one the most, while we most smiled at the other.

One peculiarity had he, which the age he had lived in and his domestic history rendered natural enough, viz., an exceed ing distaste to the matrimonial state : early marriages were misery, imprudent marriages idiotism, and marriage, at the best, he was wont to say, with a kindling eye and a heightened color, marriage at the best — was the devil ! Yet it must not be supposed that Sir William Devereux was an ungallant man. On the contrary, never did the beau sexe have a humbler or more devoted servant. As nothing in his estimation was less becoming to a wise man than matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental than flirtation.

He had the old man's weakness, garrulity ; and he told the wittiest stories in the world, without omitting anything in them but the point. This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or humor ; but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to all jesters. He could not persuade his lips to repeat a sarcasm hurting even the dead or the ungrateful ; and when he came to the drop of gall which should have given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier, despite of himself — and washed it away. He was a fine wreck, a little prematurely broken by dissipation, but not perhaps the less interesting on that account ; tall, and somewhat of the jovial old English girth, with a face where good nature and good living mingled their smiles and glow. He wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiously particular in the choice of his silk stockings. Between you and me, he was not a little vain of his leg, and a compliment on that score was always sure of a gracious reception.

The solitude of my uncle's household was broken by an invasion of three boys — none of the quietest ; and their mother, who, the gentlest and saddest of womankind, seemed to follow them, the emblem of that primeval Silence from which all noise was born. These three boys were my two brothers and myself. My father, who had conceived a strong personal attachment for Louis Quaiorze, never quitted his service, and the great King repaid him by orders and favors without number ; he died of wounds received in battle — a Count and a Marshal, full of renown, and destitute of money. He had married twice : his first wife, who died without issue, was a daughter of the noble house of La Tremouille — his second, our mother, was of a younger branch of the English race of Howard. Brought up in her native country, and influenced by a primitive and retired education, she never loved that gay land which her husband had adopted as his own. Upon his death, she hastened her return to England, and refusing, with somewhat of honorable pride, the magnificent pension which Louis wished to settle upon the widow of his favorite, came to throw herself and her children upon those affections which she knew they were entitled to claim.

My uncle was unaffectedly rejoiced to receive us. — To say nothing of his love for my father, and his pride at the honors the latter had won to their ancient house — the good gentleman was very well pleased with the idea of obtaining four new listeners, out of whom he might select an heir, and he soon grew as fond of us as we were of him. At the time of our new settlement, I had attained the age of twelve ; my second brother (we were twins) was born an hour after me; my third was about fifteen months younger. I had never been the favorite of the three. In the first place, my brothers (the youngest especially) were uncommonly handsome, and, at most, I was but tolerably good-looking ; in the second place, my mind was considered as much inferior to theirs as my body — I was idle and dull, sullen and haughty — the only wit 1 ever displayed was in sneering at my friends, and the only spirit, in quarrelling with my twin brother ; so said or so thought all who saw us in our childhood; and it follows, therefore, that I was either very unamiable or very much misunderstood.

But, to the astonishment of myself and my relations, my fate was now to be reversed, and I was no sooner settled at Devereux Court, than I became evidently the object of Sir William's pre-eminent attachment. The fact was, that I really liked both the knight and his stories better than my brothers did ; and the very first time I had seen my uncle, I had commented on the beauty of his stocking, and envied the constitution of his leg; from such trifles spring affection ! In truth, our attachment to each other so increased that we grew to be constantly together; and while my childish anticipations of the world made me love to listen to stories of courts and courtiers, my uncle returned the compliment, by declaring of my wit, as the angler declared of the River Lea, that one would find enough in it, if one would but angle sufficiently long.

Nor was this all ; my uncle and myself were exceedingly like the waters of Alpheus and Arethusa — nothing was thrown into the one without being seen very shortly afterwards floating upon the other. Every witticism or legend Sir William imparted to me (and some, to say truth, were a little tinged with the licentiousness of the times he had lived in), I took the first opportunity of retailing, whatever might be the audience ; and few boys, at the age ot thirteen, can boast of having so often as myself excited the laughter of the men and the blushes of the women. This circumstance, while it aggravated my own vanity, delighted my uncle's ; and as I was always getting into scrapes on his account, so he was perpetually bound, by duty, to defend me from the charges of which he was the cause. No man defends another long without loving him the better for it; and perhaps Sir William Devereux and his eldest nephew were the only allies in the world who had no jealousy of each other.

.

Chapter II

A Family Consultation. — A Priest, and an Era in Life.

"You are ruining the children, my dear Sir William, "said my gentle mother, one day, when I had been particularly witty, "and the Abbe Montreuil declares it absolutely neeessary that they should go to school."

44 To school ! " said my uncle, who was caressing his right leg, as it lay over his left knee — " to school, Madam ! you are joking. What for, pray ? "

" Instruction, my dear Sir William," replied my mother.

" Ah, ah ; I forgot that ; true, true ! " said my uncle despondingly, and there was a pause. My mother counted her rosary; my uncle sank into a reverie ; my twin brother pinched my leg under the table, to which I replied by a silent kick : and my youngest fixed his large, dark, speaking eyes upon a picture of the Holy Family, which hung opposite to him.

My uncle broke silence ; he did it with a start.

" Od's fish, Madam," — (my uncle dressed his oaths, like himself, a little after the example of Charles II.) — " od's fish, Madam. I have thought of a better plan than that ; they shall have instruction without going to school for it."

" And how, Sir William ? "

" I will instruct them myself, Madam," and Sir William slapped the calf of the leg he was caressing.

My mother smiled.

" Ay, Madam, you may smile ; but I and my Lord Dorset were the best scholars of the age ; you shall read my play."

"Do, mother," said I, "read the play. Shall I tell her some of the jests in it, uncle?"

My mother shook her head in anticipative horror, and raised her finger reprovingly. My uncle said nothing, but winked at me ; I understood the signal, and was about to begin, when the door opened, and the Abbe Montreuil entered. My uncle released his right leg, and my jest was cut off. Nobody ever inspired a more dim, religious awe than the Abbe Montreuil. The priest entered with a smile. My mother hailed the entrance of an ally.

"Father," said she, rising, "I have just represented to my good brother the necessity of sending my sons to school ; he has proposed an alternative which 1 will leave you to discuss with him."

" And what is it ? " said Montreuil, sliding into a chair, and patting Gerald's head with a benignant air.

" To educate them himself," answered my mother, with a sort of satirical gravity. My uncle moved uneasily in his seat, as if, for the first time, he saw something ridiculous in the proposal.

The smile, immediately fading from the thin lips of the priest, gave way to an expression of respectful approbation. "An admirable plan," said he slowly, "but liable to some little exceptions, which Sir William will allow me to point out."

My mother called to us, and we left the room with her. The next time we saw my uncle, the priest's reasonings had prevailed. The following week we all three went to school. My father had been a Catholic, my mother was of the same creed, and consequently we were brought up in that unpopular faith. But my uncle, whose religion had been sadly undermined at court, was a terrible caviller at the holy mysteries of Catholicism ; and while his friends termed him a Protestant, his enemies hinted, falsely enough, that he was a sceptic. When Montreuil first followed us to Devereux Court, many and bitter were the little jests my worthy uncle had provided for his reception ; and he would shake his head with a notable archness whenever he heard our reverential description of the expected guest. But, somehow or other, no sooner had he seen the priest, than all his purposed railleries deserted him. Not a single witticism came to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiastic seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious knight in the same manner as the human eye is supposed to awe into impotence the malignant intentions of the ignobler animals. Yet nothing could be blander than the demeanor of the Abb6 Montreuil — nothing more worldly, in their urbanity, than his manner and address. His garb was as little clerical as possible, his conversation rather familiar than formal, and he invariably listened to every syllable the good knight uttered, with a countenance and mien of the most attentive respect.

What then was the charm by which this singular man never failed to-obtain an ascendancy, in some measure allied with fear, over all in whose company he was thrown ? That was a secret my uncle never could solve, and which, only in later life, I myself was able to discover. It was partly by the magic of an extraordinary and powerful mind, partly by an expression of manner, if I may use such a phrase, that seemed to sneer most, when most it affected to respect ; and partly by an air like that of a man never exactly at his ease ; not that he was shy, or ungraceful, or even taciturn — no ! it was an indescribable em-

.

DEVEREbX. if

barrassment, resembling that of one playing a part, familiar to him, indeed, but somewhat distasteful. This embarrassment, however, was sufficient to be contagious, and to confuse that dignity in others which, strangely enough, never forsook himself.

He was of low origin, but his address and appearance did not betray his birth. Pride suited his mien better than familiarity— and his countenance, rigid, thoughtful, and cold, even through smiles, in expression was strikingly commanding. In person, he was slightly above the middle standard ; and had not the texture of his frame been remarkably hard, wiry, and muscular, the total absence of all superfluous flesh would have given the lean gauntness of his figure an appearance of almost spectral emaciation. In reality, his age did not exceed twenty-eight years ; but his high, broad forehead was already so marked with line and furrow, his hair was so staid and quiet, his figure so destitute of the roundness and elasticity of youth, that his appearance always impressed the beholder with the involuntary idea of a man more considerably advanced in life. Abstemious to habitual pertance, and regular to mechanical exactness in his frequent and severe devotions, he was as little inwardly addicted to the pleasures and pursuits of youth, as he was externally possessed of its freshness and its bloom.