“Bravo! well jumped to a conclusion, Granville, as usual,” said Lady Davenant, “But go on, general, tell us what you have heard from this precious lord; can you have better than what Beauclerc, his own witness, gives in evidence?”
“Better I think, and in the same line,” said the general: “his lordship has the merit of consistency. At table, servants of course present, and myself a stranger, I heard Lord Beltravers begin by cursing England and all that inhabit it. ‘But your country!’ remonstrated his aunt. He abjured England; he had no country, he said, no liberal man ever has; he had no relations—what nature gave him without his consent he had a right to disclaim, I think he argued. But I can swear to these words, with which he concluded—‘My father is an idiot, my mother a brute, and my sister may go to the devil her own way.’”
“Such bad taste!” said the aid-de-camp.
Lady Davenant smiled at the unspeakable astonishment in Helen’s face. “When you have lived one season in the world, my dear child, this power of surprise will be worn out.”
“But even to those who have seen the world,” said the aide-de-camp, who had seen the world, “as it strikes me, really it is such extraordinary bad taste!”
“Such ordinary bad taste! as it strikes me,” said Lady Davenant; “base imitation, and imitation is always a confession of poverty, a want of original genius. But then there are degrees among the race of imitators. Some choose their originals well, some come near them tolerably; but here, all seems equally bad, clumsy, Birmingham counterfeit; don’t you think so, Beauclerc? a counterfeit that falls and makes no noise. There is the worst of it for your protégé, whose great ambition I am sure it is to make a noise in the world. However, I may spare my remonstrances, for I am quite aware that you would never let drop a friend.”
“Never, never!” cried Beauclerc.
“Then, my dear Granville, do not take up this man, this Lord Beltravers, for, depend upon it, he will never do. If he had made a bold stroke for a reputation, like a great original, and sported some deed without a name, to work upon the wonder-loving imagination of the credulous English public, one might have thought something of him. But this cowardly, negative sin, not honouring his father and mother! so commonplace, too, neutral tint—no effect. Quite a failure, one cannot even stare, and you know, Granville, the object of all these strange speeches is merely to make fools stare. To be the wonder of the London world for a single day, is the great ambition of these ephemeral fame-hunters ‘insects that shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the setting sun.’”
Beauclerc pushed away his tea-cup half across the table, exclaiming, “How unjust! to class him among a tribe he detests and despises as much as you can, Lady Davenant. And all for that one unfortunate speech—Not quite fair, general, not quite philosophical, Lady Davenant, to decide on a man’s character from the specimen of a single speech: this is like judging of a house from the sample of a single brick. All this time I know how Beltravers came to make that speech—I know how it was, as well as if I had been present—better!”
“Better!” cried Lady Cecilia.