I think these very characteristics of mine repelled my father and jarred on his nervous temperament, endangering that outward calm which it was his pride and care to preserve as necessary to high-bred demeanor, and thus intrenching on his ideas of personal dignity. Yet, with strange inconsistency, it was her very indulgence of these peculiarities that inclined him most strongly to Constance Glen, and finally, I am well convinced, determined him on making her his wife, as one well suited to secure the welfare of his turbulent and incomprehensible child, his "rebellious Miriam," as he sometimes called me when milder words availed not.
He had, as I have said, an "English" horror of scenes and excitement of any kind. He was conservative in every way. He believed in the British classics, and would not admit that any thing could ever equal, far less surpass them (dreary bores that many of them are to me!). Walter Scott's novels were the only ones of later days he ever allowed himself to read approvingly; for, once being beguiled, against his will almost, into sitting up late at night to finish a new work called "Pelham," he frowned down all allusion to the book or its author ever afterward, as derogatory to his dignity.
"Bulwer and Disraeli are literary coxcombs," he said, "who ought not to be encouraged, and who are trying to undermine wholesome English literature."
"O father," I ventured to observe on one occasion, "'Vivian Grey' is splendid. It is a delightful dream, more vivid than life itself; it is like drinking champagne, smelling tuberoses, inhaling laughing-gas, going to the opera, all at one time, and, if you once take it in your hand, nothing short of a stroke of lightning could rend it away, I am convinced. Do read it, sir, to please me, and retract your denunciation."
"Never," he said firmly, solemnly even, "and I counsel you, Miriam, in turn, to seek your draughts of soul from our pure 'wells of English undefiled,' rather than such high-flown fancies and maudlin streams as flow from the pen of this accomplished Hebrew. There is a little too much of the Jeremiah and Isaiah style about such extracts as I have seen, to suit my taste."
"The idea of a Jew writing novels!" said Evelyn, derisively as she sipped her wine.
"Or the grandest poem in the world!" added Mr. Bainrothe, who was dining with us that day, coming to the rescue quite magnanimously as it seemed, and for once receiving as his recompense a grateful look from the stray lamb of the tribe of Judah, reposing quietly in a Christian fold.
"What poem do you allude to?" said Evelyn, superciliously. "'Paradise Lost?'—Oh, I thought Milton was a Unitarian, not quite a Jew; almost as bad though!"
"No, the book of Job," replied Mr. Bainrothe. "It was that I alluded to."
"And the Psalms," I added, breathlessly.