There are many more such studies of light in home landscape, and not least in Lothair. And these are all renderings of scenery, and not scene-painting. In those abroad I might have included, too, the German Twilight from Vivian Grey, and the Grecian Sunset from Contarini, each dashed off with speed, yet each breathing a delicate and pensive peace.
Another feature of his pencil is its fondness for and studied conversance with the forms, and even the sounds, of trees. Their “various voices” are introduced with effect into the storm in Vivian Grey. As years went on, this love of trees grew stronger. It is expressly mentioned as the hobby of his old age by Lady John Manners. There is not one of his novels where the varieties of wood and forest are not handled with distinctness and affectionate observation. “Contarini’s” pet tree is oak. In Endymion is a park entirely of ilex. A glade at “Hurstley” is “bounded on each side with masses of yew, their dark green forms now studded with crimson berries.” “Nigel Penruddock,” the Tractarian, lolls “on the turf amid the old beeches and the juniper;” and in the woods of a castle in Vivian Grey, “There was the elm with its rich branches bending down like clustering grapes; there was the wide-spreading oak with its roots fantastically gnarled; there was the ash with its smooth bark, and the silver beech, and the gracile birch, and the dark fir affording with its rough foliage a contrast to the trunks of its more beautiful companions, or shooting far above their branches with a spirit of freedom worthy of a rough child of the mountains.” “Elegant” and “gracile” in this boyish sketch are Johnsonese, it is true; but its romantic faculty is evident. He delighted, too, in Elizabethan gardens and Italian parterres; and he has drawn, both in outward and inward outline, suggestive and romantic presentments of Oxford, Cambridge, and Eton.
And he could paint the marvellous to perfection. In Alroy, the magic ravine over which the hero must cross to win his talisman, rises before the view with the detail of reality: so does the ideal island of Popanilla. So—and they really belong to the marvellous—do the great country seats of “Montacute,” “Hellingsley,” “Beaumanoir,” “Alhambra,” “Château Désir,” “Hainault,” “Princewood,” and “Muriel Towers.” There are pictures, besides, of Seville, Cairo, and the Frankfort Fair. I could have subjoined the flaming castle in Sybil, the Derby in Endymion, the bull-fight in Contarini, the desert in Alroy, the mountain storm in Vivian Grey. But I prefer his tranquil pictures, and perhaps one of the best is the “Cherbury” in Venetia.
Another prominent characteristic of his romance was its fondness for London and the suburbs, the beauty of which, he always held, was only half appreciated. “Airy” Brompton and “merry” Kensington, with its young Queen “in a palace in a garden,” touched his fancy; and the Georgian pleasaunces of Roehampton, the antiquer abodes of Sheen dedicated to Swift, Temple, and Stella, and the deer-haunted woodland of Richmond Park still breathing of Anne, and Ormonde, Pope, and Thomson, and Walpole; even, too, the Regency villas of Wimbledon. A few romantic strokes in Henrietta Temple thus etch the Park of London:—
“At the end of a long sunny morning, ... where can we see such beautiful women and gallant cavaliers, such fine horses and such brilliant equipages? The scene, too, is worthy of such agreeable accessories; the groves, the gleaming waters, and the triumphal arches. In the distance the misty heights of Surrey and the bowery glades of Kensington.” And readers of Lothair will remember with what romance he clothes an early June morning in Bond Street, and how, out of the prismatic hues of the fishmonger’s shop, he weaves a garland of gay fancies; nor will he forget St. James’s Street—that “celebrated eminence” in Endymion. But it was more serious London that he admired most. The foreign crannies of Soho and the dingy length of Marylebone have both been explored by him. The Strand and the City purlieus, however, were his favourites. The quaint sites, the busy romances of the now grimy riverside, the historic names, the contrast of outside flurry with inside repose, the dwelling-houses of a past age rich with its art but now reserved for musty parchments or massive ledgers, fascinated him. “It is at Charing Cross,” he avers, that “London becomes more interesting.” This is how he limns one of finance’s headquarters:—
“In a long, dark, narrow, crooked street, which is still called a lane, and which runs from the south side of the street of the Lombards towards the river, there is one of these old houses of a century past.... A pair of massy iron gates of elaborate workmanship separates the street from its spacious and airy courtyard, which is formed on either side by a wing of the mansion, itself a building of deep red brick, with a pediment and pilasters and copings of stone; in the middle of the plot there is a small garden plot inclosing a fountain, and a very fine plane tree. The stillness, doubly effective after the tumult just quitted, the lulling voice of the water, the soothing aspect of the quivering foliage, the noble building and the cool and spacious quadrangle—the aspect even of those who enter, and frequently enter, the precincts, and who are generally young men gliding in and out earnest and full of thought—all contribute to give to this locality something of the classic repose of a college, instead of a place agitated with the most urgent interests of the current hour.”
London’s motley vastness, too, and magnetism of attraction were constantly his themes. “... It is a wonderful place, ... this London; a nation, not a city; with a population greater than some kingdoms, and districts as different as if they were under different governments, and spoke different languages.” And yet (of “Lothair”), “I have been living here six months, and my life has been passed in a park, two or three squares, and half a dozen streets!”
In Vivian Grey Disraeli whimsically observed that literature was declining in the ’twenties through a wealth grown so luxurious as to rank it with “ottomans, bonbons, and pier-glasses.” “Consols at a hundred were the origin of all book societies. There is nothing like a fall in consols to bring the blood of our good people of England into good order.”
Consols have now fallen, and maybe literature is reviving. Certain I am that, when its revival becomes pronounced, it will be through the invigoration of romance. The strange need not be sought in the remote. Wordsworth found it in “laughing daffodils,” as truly as Byron in the Corsair. Unromantic matter, romantically treated, is more refreshing than romantic matter unquickened by personal feeling—by
“Quod latet arcanâ non enarrabile fibrâ.”