“A failure? Good God!” exclaimed Lord Elton at this juncture—“Why, if you played like that in public, you’d drive everyone frantic!”
“With alarm?” queried Lucio, laughing—“Or with disgust?”
“Nonsense! you know what I mean very well. I have always had a contempt for the piano as an instrument, but by Jove! I never heard such music as yours even in a full orchestra. It is extraordinary!—it is positively magnificent! Where in the world did you study?”
“In Nature’s conservatoire;”—replied Rimânez lazily. “My first ‘maestro’ was an amiable nightingale. He, singing on a branch of fir when the moon was full, explained with liquid-noted patience, how to construct and produce a pure roulade, cadenza and trill,—and when I had learned thus far, he showed me all the most elaborate methods of applying rhythmic tune to the upward and downward rush of the wind, thus supplying me with [p 155] perfect counterpoint. Chords I learned from old Neptune, who was good enough to toss a few of his largest billows to the shore for my special benefit. He nearly deafened me with his instructions, being somewhat excitable and loud-voiced,—but on finding me an apt pupil, he drew back his waves to himself with so much delicacy among the pebbles and sand, that at once I mastered the secret of playing arpeggi. Once too I had a finishing lesson from a Dream,—a mystic thing with wild hair and wings—it sang one word in my ears, and the word was unpronounceable in mortal speech,—but after many efforts I discovered it lurking in the scale of sound. The best part of it all was, that my instructors asked no fees!”
“I think you are a poet as well as a musician,”—said Lady Sibyl.
“A poet! Spare me!—my dear young lady, why are you so cruel as to load me with so vile an imputation! Better be a murderer than a poet,—one is treated with much more respect and courteous consideration,—by the press at anyrate. The murderer’s breakfast-menu will be given due place in many of the most estimable journals,—but the poet’s lack of both breakfast and dinner will be deemed his fitting reward. Call me a live-stock producer, a horse-breeder, a timber-merchant,—anything but a poet! Why even Tennyson became an amateur milkman to somewhat conceal and excuse the shame and degradation of writing verse!”
We all laughed.
“Well, you must admit,” said Lord Elton, “that we’ve had rather too much of poets lately. It’s no wonder we’re sick of them, and that poetry has fallen into disrepute. Poets are such a quarrelsome lot too—effeminate, puling, unmanly humbugs!”
“You are speaking of the newly ‘discovered’ ones of course,
” said Lucio—“Yes, they are a weedy collection. I have sometimes thought that out of pure philanthropy I would start a bon-bon manufactory, and employ them to [p 156] write mottoes for the crackers. It would keep them out of mischief and provide them with a little pocket-money, for as matters stand they do not make a farthing by their books. But I do not call them ‘poets’ at all,—they are mere rhymers. One or two real poets do exist, but, like the prophets of Scripture, they are not ‘in society,’ nor can they get their logs rolled by any of their contemporaries. They are not favourites with any ‘set’; that is why I am afraid my dear friend Tempest will never be accepted as the genius he is; society will be too fond of him to let him go down into dust and ashes to gather the laurel.”