“Another hopelessly wet day, I declare!”

This was the exclamation of Sir John Ellesmere as he stood at the window, having risen from the breakfast table before any of us. Then (aside, but quite audibly), “We shall be sure to have a long reading to-day. Would it not look pretty if I were to ask for it? (_Aloud._) I trust, Milverton, you will cheer us up to-day by giving us a good long spell of ‘Realmah.’ I like it more and more; for I perceive that the great author of that work has been considerably influenced by a much greater and wiser man. I need hardly say that I allude to myself. I have always complained that in all stories and novels love occupies too large a part. We have happily got rid of that foolish business in this story.”

_Johnson._ Do not be quite so sure of that, Sir John.

_Ellesmere._ Oh, Sandy, Sandy! It is your fault, then? You exercise a malign influence over your master, I can see. I really did think that Realmah, having got his wonderfully beautiful, but very disagreeable Talora, his work-a-day Varnah (I like that young woman best, and wish that a certain “party” with whom I am distantly connected bore more resemblance to her), and his subtle Cinderella (with a large glass slipper, though), the Ainah, would now be contented.

_Lady Ellesmere._ It is a great comfort to me that John does not sometimes take the place of Mr. Johnson, although it might relieve me from much of his company, for he would refuse to take down all the nice sentimental bits we women like so much.

_Ellesmere._ Now, look here: suppose we were to have biography written after the fashion of novels, it would be something of this kind:--

I will give you the life of a distinguished Jones. It will not take long.

Silence! The Biography commences.

As a boy, Jones was much like other boys. He was good at ringtaw, bad at Greek grammar; and he abominated those truly abominable things called decimal fractions. With that vivacity of expression and that sincerity of feeling which in after-life were always conspicuous in him, he one day, when quite a boy, observed to his friend Master Smith, that Homer was “a regular beast,” and he wished “the beggar” had never been born.

As a youth, he was much like other youths. He was justly proud of his peg-top trowsers; thought the governor a good fellow, but rather slow; spoke his native language with a laboured incertitude which was the fashion amongst the gilded youth of the period; and he used the word “awful” on all occasions, informing those who cared to hear that Smith (observe how true he is in his friendships) was awfully jolly, while Robinson was awfully green. At this period of his life, his opinions did not admit of any nice differences of colour. His black was the blackest of blacks; his white the whitest of whites; and he always thought, and generally said, a fellow was a fool who did not see things exactly as he saw them. That nice appreciation of character which had enabled him to describe so tersely and so faithfully the nature of old Homer, was extended now to sundry other personages, and embraced Aristotle, Tacitus, John Mill, Sir William Hamilton, Paley, and Colenso. It is but justice to Jones to conjecture that he had already perceived a want of orthodoxy in that last-named personage, although his depreciatory remarks upon that divine chiefly applied to him as an author of certain arithmetical and algebraical works.

When Jones arrived at the age of twenty-three, he was seized with a fever, not uncommon at that age, called the _Febris amantium_.

Then come a hundred and seventy-three pages in which there is nothing but a minute description of the symptoms and progress of the disease. We are spared none of the details. The only thing that in the least degree relieves this painfully medical description is that another person, in the next street, of the other sex, is smitten at the same time with the disease, and the symptoms of the patients are frequently contrasted.

At last they both get over the disease by means of a potent medicine found very efficacious in such complaints, and called marriage.

Then come a few sentences like the following:--

He was a great lawyer, and therefore naturally--indeed I may say inevitably--a great, good, and humane man. His study of the law, the greatest of all studies, had opened his mind for the reception of all arts, sciences, and literatures, including poetry, political economy, metaphysics, theology, and the science of book-keeping by double-entry.

That the human race has advanced to its present pitch of comfort and civilization, to which no one but Mr. Mauleverer can do full justice; that our streets are rendered beautiful by lovely works of art in the shape of statues, fountains, and columns; that smoke is banished from our towns; and that war, according to Mr. Milverton, is a thing unknown amongst the European family of nations--are benefits greatly owing to the labours of this incomparable man.--_End of the Biography_.

Now a dull prosaic person such as I am would like to hear a few details about the manner in which the incomparable Jones accomplished these great objects. But Lady Ellesmere maintains that the fever was the only interesting thing in his life, and would not have a page omitted from that part of the biography.

_Cranmer._ I suppose, Sir John, that as Realmah’s love affairs are over, or nearly over, he is now to become an inventor; and you have shown such a sympathy for inventors that you will delight in that.

_Ellesmere._ I never said, Mr. Cranmer, that the lives of inventors were uninteresting. The more mischievous the man, the more interesting in general is his life. Witness that of any great conqueror. It is not easy, let me tell you, to catch me in an inconsistency.

_Sir Arthur._ I did not meddle much the other day in your talk about modern inventors, and modern inventions, but I had a good deal to say about telegraphic communication. Only I am half afraid to say it, for anything seems dull after the sparkling fun with which Sir John always enlivens our conversations.

_Cranmer._ I really should be glad to hear you upon this point, Sir Arthur.

_Ellesmere._ Cranmer means to say that anything is a relief from Sir John Ellesmere’s nonsense. But proceed, Sir Arthur, to instruct us. Conversations should be instructive. See Pinnock, Mrs. Barbauld, and Mangnall, who doubtless confirm this maxim.

_Sir Arthur._ There are four drawbacks at present on telegraphic communication. 1. A telegram is often inaccurate, and you are in the greatest state of doubt and bewilderment as to the exact meaning of the thing to which you are very likely asked to give an immediate answer.

2. This mode of communication throws a great additional burthen upon those who most require rest, as being the chief directors of the world’s affairs. Now they can never feel that their work is done for the day. Telegrams pursue them to their homes, and rout them out of their beds.

3. (And this is most important.) It dwarfs the powers and diminishes the energies of distant agents, who, feeling that they can always throw the responsibility and the difficulty upon the Head Centre (to borrow an expression from the Fenians), cease to think or act for themselves; and yet often they are the persons who, from intimate knowledge of the circumstances, could act more wisely than the Head Centre.

4. (This fourth I did not learn from my own experience, but from a man who receives more important telegrams than almost any other person in England.) That having heard the main result by telegram, the despatches and reports when they come to hand are comparatively uninteresting. “You think you have heard it all before,” he said, “or at least you do not know what your knowledge really is about the matter; or at any rate you are confused with partial knowledge. The result is that you do not take things up in their right order, and that details have not their proper interest for you.”

_Ellesmere._ All this is admirable. What good sense my poor foolish sayings do sometimes elicit!

_Cranmer._ Sir Arthur’s words are weighty. I may be permitted, however, to remark, that all his objections rest upon the abuse and not the use of telegraphic communication.

_Ellesmere._ If I dared to be so singular as to do so, how often I should protest against that play upon the words “use” and “abuse!” Moreover, it seemed to me that a great deal of what Sir Arthur said applied most closely to the use, and not to the abuse. But, there, we shall never agree upon this subject of telegrams. Let us pass to other great inventions, and their inventors. I will engage to name an inventor in whose favour not one of you, not even Cranmer, can say anything.

By the way, I did not know that official men, like our friend Cranmer, were so fond of inventors, and so much inclined to take their part. When I was Attorney-General I used to see a good many inventors, and the ungrateful dogs did not burst out into raptures of praise, either of the Admiralty, the War Office, or the Treasury.

But to return to this particular inventor. I have read private Commination Services over him--not using the strong word “cursed,” but merely saying _unblessed_.

_Milverton._ Who can this unfortunate man be?

_Mauleverer._ He will not be found to be much worse than the others. I dislike all of them. The fact is, the more you elevate and beautify human life in one direction, the more you render striking the sordidness of it in other directions, and so magnify the painful contrast.

_Ellesmere._ That is cheering, certainly. I am glad to have brother Mauleverer on my side. But I am not prepared to say _ditto_ to everything that he says.

_Sir Arthur._ I should say, or at least I should say that Sir John Ellesmere would say, that it was the man who invented superlatives.

_Milverton._ Ellesmere is a very mischievous person. I have observed that when anybody has been much in his society, and they want to say a severe thing, they are very apt to put it as a quotation from him.

That puts me in mind of an anecdote which I must tell you, for it is a very droll one. There was a great musician who had a dreadful habit of swearing. But he was very much ashamed of this habit, and so, to excuse himself, always put it as a quotation from the manager of the theatre, who at that time was Mr. Bunn. The great musician would exclaim, “I’ll be d--d (as Mr. Bunn would say) if I will be led by that fellow;” or “D--n the thing (as Mr. Bunn would say), there’s not a single good note of music in it.” I never heard that Mr. Bunn was in the least given to swearing, but the great musician thought that if he quoted his manager, whom he considered the greatest personage in the world, it would keep him harmless from the consequences of this evil habit of swearing.

In like manner, people father their severe sayings upon Ellesmere. You remember that some man said (I think it was a judge), “David said in his haste, I say deliberately, All men are liars.” Had Ellesmere lived in that judge’s time, the sentence would have run thus:--

“David said in his haste; I say, with brother Ellesmere, deliberately, All men are liars.”

_Ellesmere._ Commend me to an intimate friend--he must be very intimate--for saying the bitterest things in the softest manner about one. But I’ll pay it all off some fine day upon Realmah.

_Mrs. Milverton._ But we have never heard who is this inventor so odious to Sir John, for whom we are not to be able to say a good word.

[I believe that Mrs. Milverton, who never thoroughly understands Sir John, thought that he was really angry with her husband, and so strove to change the conversation.]

_Ellesmere._ I will not keep you longer in suspense.

I say then “deliberately,” Unblessed be the man who invented starch.

[Great laughter.]

Has he not been an unbounded nuisance to mankind? What shirts, what collars, what torturing neckcloths he has made the human race endure! It will be ninety years before we get rid of his detestable invention. Everything about the human body should be loose, flowing, soft, and curvable; and this wretch has made us to some extent, and our poor forefathers entirely, like hogs in armour.

I often picture to myself the kind of man he was. I am sure he was an official man, Mr. Cranmer, who had vexed a department for thirty years, and then, retiring into private life, spent his remaining years in considering how he could best curb, and oppress, and stiffen up the whole human race.

His life would be interesting, Mr. Cranmer, especially during the inventing period, when he narrowly escaped strangulation from his newly-invented neckcloth, which he first tried on upon himself. But you must admit that he was a villain of the deepest dye.

_Milverton._ I have nothing to say for him.

_Sir Arthur._ Nor I.

_Mr. Mauleverer._ I have. These minor miseries are very useful in diverting men’s minds from the contemplation of their great afflictions.

_Ellesmere._ For my part, I prefer contemplating my great afflictions without having to wear a collar that is both stiff and jagged--such a one as Lady Ellesmere sets for me when we have quarrelled. I assure you that this collar does not make me think less of her.

_Lady Ellesmere._ Will anybody say anything sensible, and prevent John from going on, and talking his nonsense?

_Sir Arthur._ I rush to the rescue like a gallant knight. I want to say something about the Varnah in “Realmah,” who is Ellesmere’s favourite. It is very characteristic of such a woman that she should be always wishing “poor Realmah” to be like other people, and that she should be always thinking what people will say.

_Ellesmere._ Now we really will be serious. I have always maintained, Sir Arthur, that “what people will say” is the one great tyrant, and that the united tyrannies of kings, priests, newspapers, and kaisers, sink into insignificance when compared with Mrs. Grundy’s.

_Sir Arthur._ Mrs. Grundy is an ill-used woman. Long before her time people were ruled by the thought of what other people would say.

I have been always very much struck by the fact that some great baron, ages ago, put up, as a motto, upon some place he built, I suppose his castle,[14] “They have said: let them say.”

Footnote 14:

It was one of the Lords Marischal.

“On Marischal College, Aberdeen, which the Earl founded in 1593, and endowed with a portion of the doomed spoil, the inscription in large letters remained on the building till 1836, when these were taken down to make room for the present structure:--

‘They say? Quhat say thay? Thay haif sayd? Lat thame say.’”

--_Buchan_, by the Rev. John B. Pratt. 1858.

_Milverton._ This certainly goes to show that the tyranny, that this good baron stood up against, is not of recent origin.

I suppose it existed in all ages, till we get back to the early days of Paradise, when Adam and Eve had no neighbours to comment upon them.

_Ellesmere._ Perhaps you are mistaken about that, Milverton. In those early and innocent days there might have been much more communion between man and the lower animals than there is now; and perhaps our first parents said to one another, “What will the jackals say?” or “This will be unpleasantly remarked upon by the spotted snakes;” or coming home, after a long sweet ramble, to their bower, and seeing a good many toads about (taking care, however, not to hurt them), one spouse would observe to the other, “We will come home earlier to-morrow, dear; I know that the toads comment severely upon our always being out so late of an evening.”

_Lady Ellesmere._ (To Mrs. Milverton.) He is becoming irreverent as well as silly. I think we will leave the gentlemen, dear.

And so the breakfast party broke up.

When we met again to hear the reading, Ellesmere descanted upon what he was pleased to call the delusion that besets men of poetic minds, when they are considering the past, and comparing anything done in it with any similar thing done at the present time. Sir Arthur and Milverton might talk to him for ever about the wonderful speeches in the “Araucana.” He did not believe there was one of them to be compared to any great charge to a jury by Chief Justice Cockburn. In fact, he believed he had made better speeches himself than any savage that was ever born. But perhaps I had better let him speak for himself.

_Ellesmere._ Now I believe that when Realmah made his speech you were all called into council. At any rate there were four of you--Milverton, Sandy, Mrs. Milverton, and my wife. I know it was so, because Lady Ellesmere was very mysterious and kept me out of the study, though she went in herself; and in the distance I heard a pompous noise of rolling, rumbling sentences.

There were four of you, then, besides Realmah, and two or three attendant nymphs. Notwithstanding this agglomeration of sagacity, you contrived to make a most egregious blunder. In the first part of the speech Realmah treated external observance as if it were most unimportant: the devotion of the heart was everything.

In the second part of the speech, external observance was of the utmost importance. There were not two right ways of doing a thing, &c. &c.

_Mrs. Milverton._ I do believe that Sir John is jealous of Realmah’s powers of speaking.

_Sir Arthur._ As to an inconsistency of this kind, I think nothing of it. Show me any great modern speech, and the chances are that I will point out a similar inconsistency. In good public speaking the audience make half of the speech. The orator discerns what pleases them, and, to influence them, dwells upon that topic which he sees takes their fancy, and gains their applause, even if it militates somewhat against what he has said before.

_Mauleverer._ Very true! I want to return, however, to the point from which Sir John started, when he spoke of the delusion manifested by imaginative men in over-praising the past.

There is nothing so foolish as the praise of men, except it be their censure; and the man who thinks that the past _has been_ better than the present, is, if possible, a greater fool than he who expects that the future _will be_ better than the present.

The life of man is, I tell you, one dead level of stupidity and error. There may be slight inequalities at different periods of the world’s history; but these need no more be taken into account than the trifling inequalities in the earth’s surface, which, when compared with its main bulk, are absolutely inappreciable.

_Ellesmere._ Let us have the reading immediately. A stop must be put to Mauleverer’s dreary sayings. I believe he is hired by Milverton to reduce us to the proper state of depression for listening submissively to his story.

Besides I foresee that Realmah will fall into great trouble. That meddling sort of prematurely wise young fellow always does fall into trouble; and then we shall not be too much agitated by his misfortunes, Mauleverer having convinced us that a dead level of misfortune is the normal condition of mankind. There are no cheerful rapid rivers, bright up-springing fountains, merry cascades, resounding waterfalls, pellucid lakes, breezy, boisterous, jovial seas: but it is all one dull, turbid, changeless, level line of canal waters that we behold, and upon which we travel, towed by horses lean as Death, angry-eyed as Passion, and conducted by Fate as a bargeman, whence we know not, and whither we know not, except that the whither and the whence are alike abodes of misery and gloom. I believe, though, there are some good dinners to be had on the road.

_Milverton._ Do you know, Ellesmere, that was rather a fine sentence--that last but one of yours?

_Ellesmere._ Thank you, patron. I rather think it was: I meant it to be. I am not the rose, but I have lived near the rose, at any rate near the sweetbriar and the dog rose. I cannot write much myself, but I have my own poor ideas of what writing should be. I have even a scheme of what a sentence should be like--I do not mean an ordinary sentence, but one which is to convey some considerable meaning, and to do some work. I am not sure that even my good friends, Sir Arthur and Mr. Milverton, always fulfil my ideal; but then, we romantic men form such high ideals.

_Sir Arthur._ Pray lay down the lines for us, Ellesmere. We will endeavour henceforth to build our poor vessels in accordance with them. Pray tell us what a weighty sentence should be.

_Ellesmere._ It should be powerful in its substantives, choice and discreet in its adjectives, nicely correct in its verbs: not a word that could be added, nor one which the most fastidious would venture to suppress: in order lucid, in sequence logical, in method perspicuous; and yet with a pleasant and inviting intricacy which disappears as you advance in the sentence: the language, throughout, not quaint, not obsolete, not common, and not new: its several clauses justly proportioned and carefully balanced, so that it moves like a well-disciplined army organized for conquest: the rhythm, not that of music, but of a higher and more fantastic melodiousness, submitting to no rule, incapable of being taught: the substance and the form alike disclosing a happy union of the soul of the author to the subject of his thought, having, therefore, individuality without personal predominance: and withal, there must be a sense of felicity about it, declaring it to be the product of a happy moment, so that you feel that it will not happen again to that man who writes the sentence, or to any other of the sons of men, to say the like thing so choicely, tersely, mellifluously, and completely.

We all looked at one another amazed, for Sir John is not wont to talk to us in this way. It was pretty to see Lady Ellesmere. She got up and leaned over Sir John’s chair, and looked at us with a look of pleasant defiance, as much as to say, “You see that my husband, when he chooses, can talk better sense, as well as better nonsense, than any of you.”

He continued:--

_Ellesmere._ You may now, Milverton, proceed in your reading, and I trust that there may be a sentence here and there to which I may conscientiously give my approval.

_Milverton._ I have no such hope. To make such killingly complete sentences is far beyond my power.

[The reading then commenced.]

The Story of Realmah.