Love and AEsthetics.

Spring had returned, primroses and violets were being sold at the street-corners, Parliament was assembled, and London had reawakened from its wintry hibernation to new life and vigour. The Dovedales were at their Kensington mansion. The Duchess had sent forth her cards for alternate Thursday evenings of a quasi-literary and scientific character. Lady Mabel was polishing her poems with serious thoughts of publication, but with strictest secrecy. No one but her parents and Roderick Vawdrey had been told of these poetic flights. The book would be given to the world under a nom de plume. Lady Mabel was not so much a Philistine as to suppose that writing good poetry could be a disgrace to a duke’s daughter; but she felt that the house of Ashbourne would be seriously compromised were the critics to find her guilty of writing doggerel; and critics are apt to deal harshly with the titled muse. She remembered Brougham’s savage onslaught upon the boy Byron.
Mr. Vawdrey was in town. He rode a good deal in the Row, spent an hour or so daily at Tattersall’s, haunted three or four clubs of a juvenile and frivolous character, drank numerous bottles of Apolinaris, and found the task of killing time rather hard labour. Of course there were certain hours in which he was on duty at Kensington. He was expected to eat his luncheon there daily, to dine when neither he nor the ducal house had any other engagement, and to attend all his aunt’s parties. There was always a place reserved for him at the dinner-table, however middle-aged and politically or socially important the assembly might me.
He was to be married early in August. Everything was arranged. The honeymoon was to be spent in Sweden and Norway — the only accessible part of Europe which Lady Mabel had not explored. They were to see everything remarkable in the two countries, and to do Denmark as well, if they had time. Lady Mabel was learning Swedish and Norwegian, in order to make the most of her opportunities.
“It is so wretched to be dependent upon couriers and interpreters,” she said. “I shall be a more useful companion for you, Roderick, if I thoroughly know the language of each country.”
“My dear Mabel, you are a most remarkable girl,” exclaimed her betrothed admiringly. “If you go on at this rate, by the time you are forty you will be as great a linguist as Cardinal Wiseman.”
“Languages are very easy to learn when one has the habit of studying them, and a slight inclination for etymology,” Lady Mabel replied modestly.
Now that the hour of publication was really drawing nigh, the poetess began to feel the need of a confidante. The Duchess was admiring but somewhat obtuse, and rarely admired in the right place. The Duke was out of the question.
If a new Shakespeare had favoured him with the first reading of a tragedy as great as “Hamlet,” the Duke’s thoughts would have wandered off to the impending dearth of guano, or the probable exhaustion of Suffolk punches, and the famous breed of Chillingham oxen. So, for want of anyone better, Lady Mabel was constrained to read her verses to her future husband; just as Molière reads his plays to his housekeeper, for want of any other hearer, the two Béjarts, aunt and niece, having naturally plays enough and to spare in the theatre.
Now, in this crucial hour of her poetic career, Mabel Ashbourne wanted something more than a patient listener. She wanted a critic with a fine ear for rhythm and euphony. She wanted a judge who could nicely weigh the music of a certain combination of syllables, and who could decide for her when she hesitated between two epithets of equal force, but varying depths of tone.
To this nice task she invited her betrothed sometimes on a sunny April afternoon, when luncheon was over, and the lovers were free to repair to Lady Mabel’s own particular den — an airy room on an upper floor, with quaint old Queen Anne casements opening upon a balcony crammed with flowers, and overlooking the umbrageous avenues of Kensington Garden, with a glimpse of the old red palace in the distance.
Rorie did his best to be useful, and applied himself to his duty with perfect heartiness and good-temper; but luncheon and the depressing London atmosphere made him sleepy, and he had sometimes hard work to stifle his yawns, and to keep his eyes open, while Lady Mabel was deep in the entanglement of lines which soared to the seventh heaven of metaphysics. Unhappily Rorie knew hardly anything about metaphysics. He had never read Victor Cousin, or any of the great German lights; and a feeling of despair took possession of him when his sweetheart’s poetry degenerated into diluted Hegelism, or rose to a feeble imitation of Browning’s obscurest verse.
“Either I must be intensely stupid or this must be rather difficult to understand,” he thought helplessly, when Mabel had favoured him with the perusal of the first act of a tragedy or poetic dialogue, in which the hero, a kind of milk-and-watery Faustus, held converse, and argued upon the deeper questions of life and faith, with a very mild Mephisto.
“I’m afraid you don’t like the opening of my ‘Tragedy of the Sceptic Soul’,” Lady Mabel said with a somewhat offended air, as she looked up at the close of the act, and saw poor Rorie gazing at her with watery eyes, and an intensely despondent expression of countenance.
“I’m afraid I’m rather dense this afternoon,” he said with hasty apology, “I think your first act is beautifully written — the lines are full of music; nobody with an ear for euphony could doubt that; but I— forgive me, I fancy you are sometimes a shade too metaphysical — and those scientific terms which you occasionally employ, I fear will be a little over the heads of the general public ——”
“My dear Roderick, do you suppose that in an age whose highest characteristic is the rapid advance of scientific knowledge, there can be anybody so benighted as not to understand the terminology of science?”
“Perhaps not, dear. I fear I am very much behind the times. I have lived too much in Hampshire. I frankly confess that some expressions in your — er — Tragedy of — er — Soulless Scept — Sceptic Soul — were Greek to me.”
“Poor dear Roderick, I should hardly take you as the highest example of the Zeitgeist; but I won’t allow you to call yourself stupid. I’m glad you like the swing of the verse. Did it remind you of any contemporary poet?”
“Well, yes, I think it dimly suggested Browning.”
“I am glad of that. I would not for worlds be an imitator; but Browning is my idol among poets.”
“Some of his minor pieces are awfully jolly,” said the incorrigible Rorie. “That little poem called ‘Youth and Art,’ for instance. And ‘James Lee’s Wife’ is rather nice, if one could quite get at what it means. But I suppose that is too much to expect from any great poet?”
“There are deeper meanings beneath the surface — meanings which require study,” replied Mabel condescendingly. “Those are the religion of poetry ——”
“No doubt,” assented Rorie hastily; “but frankly, my dear Mabel, if you want your book to be popular ——”
“I don’t want my book to be popular. Browning is not popular. If I had wanted to be popular, I should have worked on a lower level. I would even have stooped to write a novel.”
“Well then I will say, if you want your poem to be understood by the average intellect, I really would sink the scientific terminology, and throw overboard a good deal of the metaphysics. Byron has not a scientific or technical phrase in all his poems.”
“My dear Roderick, you surely would not compare me to Byron, the poet of he Philistines. You might as well compare me with the author of ‘Lalla Rookh,’ or advise me to write like Rogers or Campbell.”
“I beg your pardon, my dear Mabel. I’m afraid I must be an out and out Philistine, for to my mind Byron is the prince of poets. I would rather have written ‘The Giaour’ than anything that has ever been published since it appeared.”
“My poor Roderick!” exclaimed Mabel, with a pitying sigh. “You might as well say you would be proud of having written ‘The Pickwick Papers’.”
“And so I should!” cried Rorie heartily. “I should think no end of myself if I had invented Winkle. Do you remember his ride from Rochester to Dingley Dell? — one of the finest things that was ever written.”
And this incorrigible young man flung himself back in the low arm-chair, and laughed heartily at the mere recollection of that episode in the life of the famous Nathaniel. Mabel Ashbourne closed her manuscript volume with a sigh, and registered an oath that she would never read any more of her poetry to Roderick Vawdrey. It was quite useless. The poor young man meant well, but he was incorrigibly stupid — a man who admired Byron and Dickens, and believed Macaulay the first of historians.
“In the realm of thought we must dwell apart all our lives,” Mabel told herself despairingly.
“The horses are ordered for five,” she said, as she locked the precious volume in her desk; “will you get yours and come back for me?”
“I shall be delighted,” answered her lover, relieved at being let off so easily.
It was about this time that Lord Mallow, who was working with all his might for the regeneration of his country, made a great hit in the House by his speech on the Irish land question. He had been doing wonderful things in Dublin during the winter, holding forth to patriotic assemblies in the Round Room of the Rotunda, boldly declaring himself a champion of the Home Rulers’ cause, demanding Repeal and nothing but Repeal. He was one of the few Repealers who had a stake in the country, and who was likely to lose by the disruption of social order. If foolish, he was at least disinterested, and had the courage of his opinions. This was in the days when Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister, and when Irish Radicals looked to him as the one man who could and would give them Home Rule.
In the House of Commons Lord Mallow was not ashamed to repeat the arguments he had used in the Round Room. If his language was less vehement at Westminster than it had been in Dublin, his opinions were no less thorough. He had his party here, as well as on the other side of the Irish Channel; and his party applauded him. Here was a statesman and a landowner willing to give an ell, where Mr. Gladstone’s Land Act gave only an inch. Hibernian newspapers sung his praises in glowing words, comparing him to Burke, Curran, and O’Connell. He had for some time been a small lion at evening parties; he now began to be lionised at serious dinners. He was thought much of in Carlton Gardens, and his name figured at official banquets in Downing Street. The Duchess of Dovedale considered it a nice trait in his character that, although he was so much in request, and worked so hard in the House, he never missed one of her Thursday evenings. Even when there was an important debate on he would tear up Birdcage Walk in a hansom, and spend an hour in the Duchess’s amber drawing-rooms, enlightening Lady Mabel as to the latest aspect of the Policy of Conciliation, or standing by the piano while she played Chopin.
Lord Mallow had never forgotten his delight at finding a young lady thoroughly acquainted with the history of his native land, thoroughly interested in Erin’s struggles and Erin’s hopes; a young lady who knew all about the Protestants of Ulster, and what was meant by Fixity of Tenure. He came to Lady Mabel naturally in his triumphs, and he came to her in his disappointments. She was pleased and flattered by his faith in her wisdom, and was always ready to lend a gracious ear. She, whose soul was full of ambition, was deeply interested in the career of an ambitious young man — a man who had every excuse for being shallow and idle, and yet was neither.
“If Roderick were only like him there would be nothing wanting in my life,” she thought regretfully. “I should have felt much a pride in a husband’s fame, I should have worked so gladly to assist him in his career. The driest blue-books would not have been too weary for me — the dullest drudgery of parliamentary detail would have been pleasant work, if it could have helped him in his progress to political distinctions.”
One evening, when Mabel and Lord Mallow were standing in the embrasure of a window, walled in by the crowd of aristocratic nobodies and intellectual eccentricities, talking earnestly of poor Erin and her chances of ultimate happiness, the lady, almost unawares, quoted a couplet of her own which seemed peculiarly applicable to the argument.
“Whose lines are those?” Lord Mallow asked eagerly; “I never heard them before.”
Mabel blushed like a schoolgirl detected in sending a valentine.
“Upon my soul,” cried the Irishman, “I believe they are your own! Yes, I am sure of it. You, whose mind is so high above the common level, must sometimes express yourself in poetry. They are yours, are they not?”
“Can you keep a secret?” Lady Mabel asked shyly.
“For you? Yes, on the rack. Wild horses should not tear it out of my heart; boiling lead, falling on me drop by drop, should not extort it from me.”
“The lines are mine. I have written a good deal — in verse. I am going to publish a volume, anonymously, before the season is over. It is quite a secret. No one — except mamma and papa, and Mr. Vawdrey — knows anything about it.”
“How proud they — now especially proud Mr. Vawdrey mu............