In commencing this chapter, I must say something about Mr. Mauleverer.

To me, with his undisguised love of eating, and his dreary depreciation of all human affairs, he was certainly a disagreeable character. I intimated something of this kind to Mr. Milverton. He replied, “My dear boy, what I dislike in you young people, is your terrible want of tolerance. Certainly, as a man grows older, he loses some of the refinement and some of the absolute straightforwardness that belong to youth; but he generally gains something that is of more worth than what he loses--namely, tolerance, or to use a more Christian word, charity. Now, that sensual man, as I know you think him to be, is a most devoted friend, and would lay down his fortune and his life, and even his truffles, for us, his friends. Shall I tell you what he did a few months ago? He had half his fortune placed in one of those banks about which there were the worst rumours. He came to me, and talked about it. I naturally advised him to withdraw some of the money. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I cannot do it. This banker’s father once aided my father, and I will partake the fall of the house, if it does fall.’ And he has partaken it; and, what is more, you will never hear a murmur from him upon the subject.

“Now, you know, I am not going to dislike such a man as that, merely because he has an inordinate love of truffles--which, by the way, I think a most overrated fungus.”

I never said anything more against Mr. Mauleverer.

There is another of our companions about which I must say something. Everybody, I imagine, supposes that he, or she, has the most wonderful dog in existence; but I do believe that it is no delusion on our part to declare that we have the most unapproachable dog--I mean unapproachable in a good sense. She is a bull-terrier. All the ladies vow that, with her white body, red eyes, and protruding lower lip, she is hideously ugly; whereas, on the other hand, all the gentlemen maintain that she is “beautiful exceedingly.” And Mr. Milverton will become quite eloquent about the tenderness and the pathos that are expressed in her face. He has given her the rather inappropriate name of “Fairy.” She is the only dog I ever knew that could kiss. Most dogs slobber over you, and make you very uncomfortable, while you are receiving their most affectionate attentions; but Fairy can give you a dry kiss. Another most extraordinary thing about her is that, when she is very happy and comfortable, she purrs like a cat, only with a noble and more sonorous purring.[7] Of course, she and Sir John Ellesmere became good friends on the first day they met, and nothing could be prettier to see than the way in which, when she was walking off with him, and was recalled by Mr. Milverton, she would leave Sir John Ellesmere, wagging her tail, looking back occasionally at him, and almost saying--at least in very distinct dog language--“I should like to go with you of all things, but I must stay with my master; he always works better when I am at his feet in the study.”

Footnote 7:

It may seem trivial, my mention of this animal, but I think that the ways of a household are never understood unless one knows all about their domestic animals,--their cats and dogs, and babies, as Sir John Ellesmere would say. And we are all so fond of animals in our house. My master dotes upon them, and so do I, and so does Sir John. I often observe, that our conversation at dinner-time, when we are alone, turns a great deal upon Fairy’s wonderful sayings and doings.

We have a cat named Bijou, a perfect prodigy (of course the world will think that all our pets are prodigies, but so they are). This cat, also entirely white, like Fairy, with eyes of different colours, is chatty, affectionate, and companionable. Sir John says that it is the only perfectly happy and wise creature, not being a fish, he has ever known, ready to forget its anxieties and cares, and go to sleep at all times. It does not know what scratching means: it will walk out with you like a dog, and is really more attached to the people it lives with than to the house it lives in.

There is no knowing what those animals whom we are pleased to nominate “the lower creation” would become, if they lived with more rational and more humane human beings than those whom they generally have as masters. This is a saying of my master’s, not of mine; but I thoroughly agree with it.

Mr. Milverton would not humour Sir John Ellesmere in his wish to have the readings always in the library, and to-day he resolved to have it on a lake that is not far from Worth-Ashton. We call it a lake; but, really, it is only a pond of about thirteen acres. Ellesmere pretended to dislike this arrangement, but I suspect approved of it thoroughly.

As we were punting up and down the lake, before taking up our abode in a new duck-house, which the benevolent proprietor (with whom Mr. Milverton was acquainted) had built for the wild ducks, but which they had not yet inhabited, Ellesmere startled us by the most violent exclamations of surprise, and entreated us to stop.

_Ellesmere._ Don’t hurry on in that way, I see a buried lake city.

We will change the _venue_ from Switzerland to Hampshire; and here is the city. How clear the water is! I declare I see at the bottom a dead cat, an old spade, and a decaying basket. Here are quite enough remains to indicate a lake city. What would not Milverton deduce from a dead cat, a spade, and a basket? Intercourse with Persia, abundant iron foundries, and the textile arts carried out to perfection. If osier twigs can be woven into baskets, why not silk, or cotton, or linen thread, into their respective fabrics? I do believe there is a bit of rag attached to the basket, and, if so, what a field of civilization lies before his imaginative mind!

_Sir Arthur._ What a beautiful thing even this small lake is! Look at the exquisite roundings off of all corners of the land.

Then the water weeds, the water insects, the lazy, happy fish----

_Ellesmere._ The water-rats too--those engaging little creatures! How Fairy would like to get at them! For my part, I should like to be a fish. Fishes seem to have so little bother with their relations and their families. Now what a life Fairy led us, as long as she had that pup of hers!

She was always bringing it in her mouth, and introducing it, saying as plainly as possible, “My son, sir,” “My eldest son,” “Quite a genius:” and, in fact, she introduced it so early into good society, and so overwhelmed the poor little creature with her attentions, that it died prematurely.

_Johnson._ It was a most curious thing to see how, if you asked her, “Where is your pup, Fairy?” she led the way at once, wagging her tail like a pendulum all the time, to her kennel. Now, how could she know what was the meaning of those words?

_Ellesmere._ Some wit has said, “Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.” I should like to invert the Darwinian theory, and to say that all good men and women, when they die, have, for a time, the honour of becoming dogs. On second thoughts, the women never: they become cats.

But, to return to my ambition to become a fish. You see, fish fathers seem never to have anything analogous to paying college debts for their eldest sons; but that is not all. Oh, the life Lady Ellesmere led me, after little Johnny was born, about his teeth! Nine times a day at least did she drag me up to the nursery, to show me the advent of two little teeth. Never before, I was informed, had any child been known at that age to have two teeth. I was obliged to swear that I felt them, otherwise I saw that Lady Ellesmere and the nurse would declare that I was a perfect brute. Now, you know, if you were a fish father, and had about a million of children, the mother could not be lugging you about for ever to feel for the teeth of the little darlings, and compelling you to swear that you felt these interesting molars, whether you did or not; but I must say that Fairy was quite as tiresome as Lady Ellesmere, and you see the consequence.

After punting about till we were tired, we took refuge in the duck-house from the sun, and, having had the precaution to bring camp-stools with us, we were soon very comfortable. This building was therefore inaugurated in a way which, I should think, no duck-house had ever been before.

We had hardly seated ourselves, before the conversation was commenced by Sir John Ellesmere.

_Ellesmere._ Let us have a cigar. Mrs. Milverton and Lady Ellesmere are very like ordinary women. Womanity is strong in them. They scold like the rest of their sex; they delight, in a delicate way, to show forth the weaknesses of their respective husbands; they can, both of them, pout and look injured; and they can cry at you. At least Lady Ellesmere can; but I do not care now a bit about women’s tears, since I have ascertained from Faraday[8]--a glorious fellow that--that tears are merely chloride of sodium, carbonate of lime, and general folly. I do not know whether I have the chemicals quite right; but, at any rate, since I have heard of this chemical analysis, I do not care for tears.

Footnote 8:

This was said long before Faraday’s death.

_Lady Ellesmere._ I never cried at you but once, John; and then you know you were most cruel to me. We were travelling abroad, and though I was tired to death, he would not stop at a particular place where I wanted him to stop. He said it would interfere with his arrangements, and that I must go on. I never knew him, before or since, to be so hard-hearted, and I confess to having cried.

_Ellesmere._ Now, my lady, I am not going to be thought a brute by this intelligent company. You know, if you have a weakness in the way of fear, it is being afraid of the cholera; and I had heard that they had the cholera very badly at the place where you wanted to stop.

_Lady Ellesmere._ Well, really, John, you might have told me that afterwards, and not have allowed me to think you so very unkind.

[Here she took his hand, and made a playful bite at it.]

_Ellesmere._ You see the form that gratitude takes with women. But where was I? Oh, that Lady Ellesmere and Mrs. Milverton are not angels in a general way, but ordinary women--except in the article of smoking, and there they are regular angels, for both of them pretend to like it.

[Ellesmere lit a paper and proffered it for the general cigar-lighting of the company.]

You do not know what I offer you in this lighted paper: a possible Ellesmerian fortune. This paper is good enough to inform me, that if I will take any of the numbers from 3,142 to 4,296, all of them lucky numbers, in the Vienna Lottery, I might get a chateau in Styria. I really believe I should take some tickets, for the fun of the thing; but the awkward part of it would be, if one were to get the prize. I am sure I should not know what to do with a chateau in Styria. I should feel like Winkle in “Pickwick” with a dreadful horse, possessing a property which I was obliged to retain, but could neither make use of, nor govern.

_Cranmer._ You would not really encourage the wickedness of lotteries?

_Ellesmere._ I don’t want to quarrel with you, Mr. Cranmer; and, in fact, it is agreed that we are to be fast friends--if, indeed, Mr. Cranmer can be fast in any way. I must, however, deny your main proposition about the wickedness of lotteries.

_Milverton._ So do I. I remember I was once condemning lotteries in the presence of one of the wisest and best informed men of the day; and, to my astonishment, he put me down effectually, and showed me that I had never considered the subject.

But let me take you away from lotteries for a moment, and talk to you about this man, for he always offered to my mind a problem which I have never been able to solve, and which I should like to submit to this worshipful company. We will discuss lotteries afterwards.

Well, what I want to lay before you is, how some men know so much as they do about books, and how they retain in their minds such a quantity of information, upon all manner of subjects.

I don’t speak to you about your Macaulays, Hallams, Carlyles, Grotes, and Milmans, but about men who attain no great eminence in the world, yet who are as full of information upon all human subjects as an egg is of meat.

Now, this man--we will call him Carrick, for he is such a modest person that he would not like me to tell you his name--I assure you one never found him at fault upon any subject of conversation that came uppermost; and his knowledge was of the most accurate and minute kind. He knew everything that anybody had said about the currency. If you were to talk to him about the telescope, he would trace it from its earliest beginning, and give to every inventor and improver his due share of the great work. Upon all questions of history he was unrivalled. I don’t think he cared much about art, but he knew what every great painter had done, and how his works ought to be classified.

I remember once having got up some subject in history very carefully, having to write about it. Now, you know what pains one takes with all the details of a subject, when one is getting it up not merely for the sake of study, but to express one’s own opinion about it. I happened accidentally to talk to this man upon the subject. He had not studied it for twenty years, but there was not a point with which he was not familiar--how the King adopted a certain line of policy, while the Prime Minister opposed it--how, in the campaign that followed, the general, misled by false intelligence, most injudiciously threw forward his right wing, enabling the enemy to cross a river without resistance, &c. &c.

Now, how does any one ever acquire and retain accurately such a vast amount of knowledge?

_Sir Arthur._ I think I can do something towards explaining the phenomenon. Dr. Johnson let us a good deal into the secret of judicious reading. You know that he said he had never read a book through in his life. Of course, he understood the art of consummate skipping.

Well, then, the physical part of reading is an art in itself. Some men seem to read half a page at a time. And then again, as to memory, we know that some men possess memories such as can hardly be imagined by other men. Consider such a phenomenon as the calculating boy.

_Ellesmere._ I think a great part of the explanation rests in this, that the great readers know how to get at what we lawyers call the _charging_ parts of a Bill in Chancery. I am quite sure that I could, in twenty minutes, get up a case that would take any of you people two hours and a half, because I know where to look for the charging parts.

_Sir Arthur._ That is only another way of putting the explanation I have given.

_Cranmer._ I want to recall you to the subject of lotteries. I should like to hear anybody maintain that they are not very culpable transactions.

_Milverton._ Have you any hope of abolishing that spirit of speculation which is innate in mankind? If it does not break out here, it will break out there. You have horse-racing and roulette-tables. Now lotteries are much better than these, because they take up much less time, do not necessarily bring one into bad company, and require no knowledge of the subject.

_Sir Arthur._ Despair is the worst thing that can befall a human being. The heaviest stone that Fate can throw at a man is when she contrives that he can see no possible outlet from his misfortunes. While we are talking to-day, there are thousands of persons who do not see any way out of their troubles, even with all the aid of the sanguine imagination which has perhaps led them into those troubles. Every letter must bring additional difficulties and additional pressure; but give them a lottery ticket, and they have something to hope for which fortifies them for their real work.

_Ellesmere._ Poor Martha Broom; she loves the green-grocer’s man: he loves her; but the marriage cannot take place unless she can obtain some money. If she has put 1_l._ 10_s._ into a lottery with a chance of gaining 200_l._, she sweeps the steps before the house with an air and a grace, resulting from concealed hope. The ticket, in all probability, turns out a blank. On she goes, however, and invests a portion of another quarter’s wages in another lottery ticket. “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” She abridges her crinoline--no great harm in that--and the steps are still swept by a not utterly desponding person.

_Mauleverer._ Nothing can show more clearly the misery of the human race than that such intelligent people as you are should make such a defence for lotteries.

_Cranmer._ What do you say, Sir Arthur? Do you really mean--for you are a statesman--to vote with these gentlemen?

_Sir Arthur._ I am afraid I must lose somewhat of your good opinion, Mr. Cranmer. I am rather of Sir John’s way of thinking. You see such good incidents for plays and novels may come out of a system of lotteries: it adds another element of romance in the way of sudden changes of fortune.

_Ellesmere._ Mr. Cranmer respects the Stock Exchange and the Liverpool Cotton Market; but if a poor maid-servant, or a poor ex-Attorney-General, makes her or his little venture, it is an enormous crime. Clear your mind of cant, sir. If Dr. Johnson had said nothing else but that saying, it ought to have immortalized him. By the way, acting upon this principle of clearing our minds of cant, shall we cease to pretend to be interested in the fortunes of Realmah, and take the reading as having been read, and enjoy ourselves upon the lake?

_Lady Ellesmere._ Oh, no!

_Ellesmere._ Now, if I were a parson going to preach a charity sermon, and had calculated that the sermon would produce, say, on an average, three shillings and sixpence a-piece from every member of the congregation, and I were to say to them, “Make it five shillings, and I won’t preach the sermon,” don’t you suppose the congregation would close at once with this kind and judicious offer?

Well, if you _will_ have the reading, let us get it over quickly. Look at Fairy. Consider her feelings at being obliged to keep quiet, and the bank close to us alive with water-rats! Those are my sentiments, too, my dear Fairy; however, the sooner a thing is begun, the sooner it is over; so let us be quiet, Fairy, and listen to our master.

The Story of Realmah.