“And liked it as much as I do, no doubt.”
“More than I can tell you. You know I never was given to enthusiastic criticism. It was so new, so varied—the sentiment more than the incident, I mean. When ‘Alice’ was written, I should not have fancied the Caxton’s. I could not have understood the author’s reasonings—for you know it is, after all, more a philosophy than a romance.”
“Sound philosophy, too—nothing harsh or cynical in it, as one might naturally have expected from the domestic life of the author.”
“And that is the charm of ‘My Novel,’ it is the same subject continued; a homily against worldliness and selfishness, in the most charming guise, example as well as precept—and that so naturally drawn. Who does not pity Audley Egerton—giving life and soul to political ambition, or despise his sycophant Leslie, with his scheming, plotting brain.”
“Outwitted at last, of course. ‘Honesty the best policy,’ is the burden of the tale. Yet I pity Randall more than his dupe, your namesake, Frank; the one has mens conscia recti to support him in all his difficulties. I can fancy Leslie’s situation exactly. Ambitious by descent, as it were, and for the honor of his ancestors, as well as for personal ease and distinction, stung by the destitution and utter neglect of his home, refined in taste, one scarcely wonders that he becomes unscrupulous of means to the end.”
“And there is Frank, as you say, so honest and honorable, so generous—I have heard many objections to the possibility of his attractions to the brilliant Marchesa. But I can understand that, too. The world-wearied woman, longing for the honorable, generous love, for the repose of just such a heart, won most of all by the genuineness of the proffered love, accustomed as she had been so long to constant but unmeaning adulation.”
“Yes, I don’t think it at all unnatural; there is another thing some might think inconsistent, the union of the accomplished and elegant Riccobocca and his Jemima.”
“I confess, I cannot quite understand that. There is the same doctrine in the Caxtons—Mrs. Caxton, you know; and yet Pissistratus found sympathy in a mind attuned to his own; and L’Estrange must have his Violante, after all. In this, I think, our author contradicts himself a little.”
“I do not think so,” St. Julian said, more warmly. “Bulwer’s theory seems to me, that in the close friendship of domestic life, some natures need restraint, some repose, while others, on the contrary, would be ruined without stimulus. Harley’s was one of these—Riccobocca, on the contrary, needed his Jemima.”
“I see the theory, and I see it carried out in daily life. For my part, if ever I marry”—and here I involuntarily touched the rapidly thinning locks on my temples—“if ever I marry, it must be a brilliant, cultivated woman, one that would command general admiration—I hate your jealous, selfish men—one that would force me to keep up to her mark. I must confess, I wonder at half the marriages now-a-days—men of talent united to women who do not look as if they had ever opened a book in their lives, or would have the courage to criticise it if they had—good enough—amiable enough—but lacking spirit—originality.”