“The Admiral in command of H.M.’s naval forces in China, has been directed to send up with you to the mouth of the Peiho a sufficient naval force.
“You will insist on your being received at Peking, and will refuse to exchange ratifications at any other place.”—Despatch of Lord Malmesbury, 1st March, 1859.
Lovel the Widower.
CHAPTER I.
The Bachelor of Beak Street.
Who shall be the hero of this tale? Not I who write it. I am but the Chorus of the Play. I make remarks on the conduct of the characters: I narrate their simple story. There is love and marriage in it: there is grief and disappointment: the scene is in the parlour, and the region beneath the parlour. No: it may be the parlour and kitchen, in this instance, are on the same level. There is no high life, unless, to be sure, you call a baronet’s widow a lady in high life; and some ladies may be, while some certainly are not. I don’t think there’s a villain in the whole performance. There is an abominable selfish old woman, certainly: an old highway robber; an old sponger on other people’s kindness; an old haunter of Bath and Cheltenham boarding-houses (about which how can I know anything, never having been in a boarding-house at Bath or Cheltenham in my life?); an old swindler of tradesmen, tyrant of servants, bully of the poor—who, to be sure, might do duty for a villain, but she considers herself as virtuous a woman as ever was born. The heroine is not faultless (ah! that will be a great relief to some folks, for many writers’ good women are, you know, so very insipid). The principal personage you may very likely think to be no better than a muff. But is many a respectable man of our acquaintance much better? and do muffs know that they are what they are, or, knowing it, are they unhappy? Do girls decline to marry one if he is rich? Do we refuse to dine with one? I listened to one at Church last Sunday, with all the women crying and sobbing; and, oh, dear me! how finely he preached! Don’t we give him great credit for wisdom and eloquence in the House of Commons? Don’t we give him important commands in the army? Can you, or can you not, point out one who has been made a peer? Doesn’t your wife call one in the moment any of the children are ill? Don’t we read his dear poems, or even novels? Yes; perhaps even this one is read and written by—Well? Quid rides? Do you mean that I am painting a portrait which hangs before me every morning in the looking-glass when I am shaving? Après? Do you suppose that I suppose that I have not infirmities like my neighbours? Am I weak? It is notorious to all my friends there is a certain dish I can’t resist; no, not if I have already eaten twice too much at dinner. So, dear sir, or madam, have you your weakness—your irresistible dish of temptation? (or if you don’t know it, your friends do). No, dear friend, the chances are that you and I are not people of the highest intellect, of the largest fortune, of the most ancient family, of the most consummate virtue, of the most faultless beauty in face and figure. We are no heroes nor angels; neither are we fiends from abodes unmentionable, black assassins, treacherous Iagos, familiar with stabbing and poison—murder our amusement, daggers our playthings, arsenic our daily bread, lies our conversation, and forgery our common handwriting. No, we are not monsters of crime, or angels walking the earth—at least I know one of us who isn’t, as can be shown any day at home if the knife won’t cut or the mutton comes up raw. But we are not altogether brutal and unkind, and a few folks like us. Our poetry is not as good as Alfred Tennyson’s, but we can turn a couplet for Miss Fanny’s album: our jokes are not always first-rate, but Mary and her mother smile very kindly when papa tells his story or makes his pun. We have many weaknesses, but we are not ruffians of crime. No more was my friend Lovel. On the contrary, he was as harmless and kindly a fellow as ever lived when I first knew him. At present, with his changed position, he is, perhaps, rather fine (and certainly I am not asked to his best dinner-parties as I used to be, where you hardly see a commoner—but stay! I am advancing matters). At the time when this story begins, I say, Lovel had his faults—which of us has not? He had buried his wife, having notoriously been henpecked by her. How many men and brethren are like him! He had a good fortune—I wish I had as much—though I daresay many people are ten times as rich. He was a good-looking fellow enough; though that depends, ladies, upon whether you like a fair man or a dark one. He had a country house, but it was only at Putney. In fact, he was in business in the city, and being a hospitable man, and having three or four spare bed-rooms, some of his friends were always welcome at Shrublands, especially after Mrs. Lovel’s death, who liked me pretty well at the period of her early marriage with my friend, but got to dislike me at last and to show me the cold shoulder. That is a joint I never could like (though I have known fellows who persist in dining off it year after year, who cling hold of it, and refuse to be separated from it). I say, when Lovel’s wife began to show me that she was tired of my company, I made myself scarce: used to pretend to be engaged when Fred faintly asked me to Shrublands; to accept his meek apologies, proposals to dine en garçon at Greenwich, the club, and so forth; and never visit upon him my wrath at his wife’s indifference—for after all, he had been my friend at many a pinch: he never stinted at Hart’s or Lovegrove’s, and always made a point of having the wine I liked, never mind what the price was. As for his wife, there was, assuredly, no love lost between us—I thought her a lean, scraggy, lackadaisical, egotistical, consequential, insipid creature: and as for his mother-in-law, who stayed at Fred’s as long and as often as her daughter would endure her, has anyone who ever knew that notorious old Lady Baker at Bath, at Cheltenham, at Brighton,—wherever trumps and frumps were found together; wherever scandal was cackled; wherever fly-blown reputations were assembled, and dowagers with damaged titles trod over each other for the pas;—who, I say, ever had a good word for that old woman? What party was not bored where she appeared? What tradesman was not done with whom she dealt? I wish with all my heart I was about to narrate a story with a good mother-in-law for a character; but then you know, my dear madam, all good women in novels are insipid. This woman certainly was not. She was not only not insipid, but exceedingly bad tasted. She had a foul, loud tongue, a stupid head, a bad temper, an immense pride and arrogance, an extravagant son, and very little money. Can I say much more of a woman than this? Aha! my good Lady Baker! I was a mauvais sujèt, was I?—I was leading Fred into smoking, drinking, and low bachelor habits, was I? I, his old friend, who have borrowed money from him any time these twenty years, was not fit company for you and your precious daughter? Indeed! I paid the money I borrowed from him like a man; but did you ever pay him, I should like to know? When Mrs. Lovel was in the first column of The Times, then Fred and I used to go off to Greenwich and Blackwall, as I said; then his kind old heart was allowed to feel for his friend; then we could have the other bottle of claret without the appearance of Bedford and the coffee, which in Mrs. L.’s time used to be sent in to us before we could ring for a second bottle, although she and Lady Baker had had three glasses each out of the first. Three full glasses each, I give you my word! No, madam, it was your turn to bully me once—now it is mine, and I use it. No, you old Catamaran, though you pretend you never read novels, some of your confounded good-natured friends will let you know of this one. Here you are, do you hear? Here you shall be shown up. And so I intend to show up other women and other men who have offended me. Is one to be subject to slights and scorn, and not have revenge? Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?