Tancred
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Benjamin Disraeli >> Tancred
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Seven years, to such people, was half a century of social experience.
They had half a dozen seasons in every year. Still, it was hard work,
and not rapid. At a certain point they stuck, as all do. Most people,
then, give it up; but patience, Buff on tells us, is genius, and Mrs.
Guy Flouncey was, in her way, a woman of genius. Their dinners were, in
a certain sense, established: these in return brought them to a certain
degree into the dinner world; but balls, at least balls of a high
calibre, were few, and as for giving a ball herself, Mrs. Guy Flouncey
could no more presume to think of that than of attempting to prorogue
Parliament. The house, however, got really celebrated for 'the best
men.' Mrs. Guy Flouncey invited all the young dancing lords to dinner.
Mothers will bring their daughters where there are young lords. Mrs. Guy
Flouncey had an opera-box in the best tier, which she took only to lend
to her friends; and a box at the French play, which she took only to
bribe her foes. They were both at everybody's service, like Mr. Guy
Flouncey's yacht, provided the persons who required them were members
of that great world in which Mrs. Guy Flouncey had resolved to plant
herself.
Mrs. Guy Flouncey was pretty; she was a flirt on principle; thus she had
caught the Marquess of Beaumanoir, who, if they chanced to meet,
always spoke to her, which gave Mrs. Guy Flouncey fashion. But Mrs. Guy
Flouncey was nothing more than a flirt, She never made a mistake; she
was born with strong social instincts. She knew that the fine ladies
among whom, from the first, she had determined to place herself, were
moral martinets with respect to any one not born among themselves.
That which is not observed, or, if noticed, playfully alluded to in
the conduct of a patrician dame, is visited with scorn and contumely if
committed by some 'shocking woman,' who has deprived perhaps a countess
of the affections of a husband who has not spoken to her for years.
But if the countess is to lose her husband, she ought to lose him to a
viscountess, at least. In this way the earl is not lost to 'society.'
A great nobleman met Mrs. Guy Flouncey at a country-house, and was
fairly captivated by her. Her pretty looks, her coquettish manner, her
vivacity, her charming costume, above all, perhaps, her imperturbable
good temper, pierced him to the heart. The great nobleman's wife had the
weakness to be annoyed. Mrs. Guy Flouncey saw her opportunity. She threw
over the earl, and became the friend of the countess, who could never
sufficiently evince her gratitude to the woman who would not make love
to her husband. This friendship was the incident for which Mrs. Guy
Flouncey had been cruising for years. Men she had vanquished; they had
given her a sort of _ton_ which she had prudently managed. She had not
destroyed herself by any fatal preference. Still, her fashion among men
necessarily made her unfashionable among women, who, if they did not
absolutely hate her, which they would have done had she had a noble
lover, were determined not to help her up the social ladder. Now she had
a great friend, and one of the greatest of ladies. The moment she had
pondered over for years had arrived. Mrs. Guy Flouncey determined at
once to test her position. Mrs. Guy Flouncey resolved on giving a ball.
But some of our friends in the country will say, 'Is that all? Surely
it required no very great resolution, no very protracted pondering, to
determine on giving a ball! Where is the difficulty? The lady has but to
light up her house, hire the fiddlers, line her staircase with American
plants, perhaps enclose her balcony, order Mr. Gunter to provide plenty
of the best refreshments, and at one o'clock a superb supper, and, with
the company of your friends, you have as good a ball as can be desired
by the young, or endured by the old.'
Innocent friends in the country! You might have all these things. Your
house might be decorated like a Russian palace, blazing with the most
brilliant lights and breathing the richest odours; you might have
Jullien presiding over your orchestra, and a banquet worthy of the
Romans. As for your friends, they might dance until daybreak, and agree
that there never was an entertainment more tasteful, more sumptuous,
and, what would seem of the first importance, more merry. But, having
all these things, suppose you have not a list? You have given a ball,
you have not a list. The reason is obvious: you are ashamed of your
guests. You are not in 'society.'
But even a list is not sufficient for success. You must also get a
day: the most difficult thing in the world. After inquiring among your
friends, and studying the columns of the _Morning Post_, you discover
that, five weeks hence, a day is disengaged. You send out your cards;
your house is dismantled; your lights are arranged; the American plants
have arrived; the band, perhaps two bands, are engaged. Mr. Gunter has
half dressed your supper, and made all your ice, when suddenly, within
eight-and-forty hours of the festival which you have been five weeks
preparing, the Marchioness of Deloraine sends out cards for a ball in
honour of some European sovereign who has just alighted on our isle, and
means to stay only a week, and at whose court, twenty years ago, Lord
Deloraine was ambassador. Instead of receiving your list, you are
obliged to send messengers in all directions to announce that your
ball is postponed, although you are perfectly aware that not a single
individual would have been present whom you would have cared to welcome.
The ball is postponed; and next day the _Morning Post_ informs us it is
postponed to that day week; and the day after you have circulated this
interesting intelligence, you yourself, perhaps, have the gratification
of receiving an invitation, for the same day, to Lady St. Julians': with
'dancing' neatly engraved in the corner. You yield in despair; and
there are some ladies who, with every qualification for an excellent
ball-guests, Gunter, American plants, pretty daughters have been
watching and waiting for years for an opportunity of giving it; and at
last, quite hopeless, at the end of the season, expend their funds in
a series of Greenwich banquets, which sometimes fortunately produce the
results expected from the more imposing festivity.
You see, therefore, that giving a ball is not that matter-of-course
affair you imagined; and that for Mrs. Guy Flouncey to give a ball and
succeed, completely, triumphantly to succeed, was a feat worthy of that
fine social general. Yet she did it. The means, like everything that is
great, were simple. She induced her noble friend to ask her guests. Her
noble friend canvassed for her as if it were a county election of the
good old days, when the representation of a shire was the certain
avenue to a peerage, instead of being, as it is now, the high road to a
poor-law commissionership.
Many were very glad to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Guy Flouncey; many
only wanted an excuse to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Guy Flouncey;
they went to her party because they were asked by their dear friend,
Lady Kingcastle. As for the potentates, there is no disguise on these
subjects among them. They went to Mrs. Guy Flouncey's ball because one
who was their equal, not only in rank, but in social influence, had
requested it as a personal favour, she herself, when the occasion
offered, being equally ready to advance their wishes. The fact was, that
affairs were ripe for the recognition of Mrs. Guy Flouncey as a member
of the social body. Circumstances had been long maturing. The Guy
Flounceys, who, in the course of their preparatory career, had hopped
from Park Crescent to Portman Square, had now perched upon their
'splendid mansion' in Belgrave Square. Their dinners were renowned. Mrs.
Guy Flouncey was seen at all the 'best balls,' and was always surrounded
by the 'best men.' Though a flirt and a pretty woman, she was a discreet
parvenue, who did not entrap the affections of noble husbands. Above
all, she was the friend of Lady Kingcastle, who called her and her
husband 'those good Guy Flounceys.'
The ball was given; you could not pass through Belgrave Square that
night. The list was published; it formed two columns of the Morning
Post. Lady Kingcastle was honoured by the friendship of a royal duchess.
She put the friendship to the proof, and her royal highness was seen at
Mrs. Guy Flouncey's ball. Imagine the reception, the canopy, the scarlet
cloth, the 'God save the King' from the band of the first guards,
bivouacked in the hall, Mrs. Guy Flouncey herself performing her part
as if she had received princesses of the blood all her life; so reverent
and yet so dignified, so very calm and yet with a sort of winning,
sunny innocence. Her royal highness was quite charmed with her hostess,
praised her much to Lady Kingcastle, told her that she was glad that she
had come, and even stayed half an hour longer than Mrs. Guy Flouncey
had dared to hope. As for the other guests, the peerage was gutted.
The Dictator himself was there, and, the moment her royal highness had
retired, Mrs. Guy Flouncey devoted herself to the hero. All the great
ladies, all the ambassadors, all the beauties, a full chapter of the
Garter, a chorus among the 'best men' that it was without doubt the
'best ball' of the year, happy Mrs. Guy Flouncey! She threw a glance at
her swing-glass while Mr. Guy Flouncey, who 'had not had time to get
anything the whole evening,' was eating some supper on a tray in her
dressing-room at five o'clock in the morning, and said, 'We have done it
at last, my love!'
She was right; and from that moment Mrs. Guy Flouncey was asked to all
the great houses, and became a lady of the most unexceptionable _ton_.
But all this time we are forgetting her _dejeuner_, and that Tancred
is winding his way through the garden lanes of Fulham to reach Craven
Cottage.
CHAPTER XIV.
_The Coningsbys_
THE day was brilliant: music, sunshine, ravishing bonnets, little
parasols that looked like large butterflies. The new phaetons glided
up, then carriages-and-four swept by; in general the bachelors were
ensconced in their comfortable broughams, with their glasses down and
their blinds drawn, to receive the air and to exclude the dust; some
less provident were cavaliers, but, notwithstanding the well-watered
roads, seemed a little dashed as they cast an anxious glance at the
rose which adorned their button-hole, or fancied that they felt a flying
black from a London chimney light upon the tip of their nose.
Within, the winding walks dimly echoed whispering words; the lawn was
studded with dazzling groups; on the terrace by the river a dainty
multitude beheld those celebrated waters which furnish flounders to
Richmond and whitebait to Blackwall.
'Mrs. Coningsby shall decide,' said Lord Beaumanoir.
Edith and Lady Theresa Lyle stood by a statue that glittered in the sun,
surrounded by a group of cavaliers; among them Lord Beaumanoir, Lord
Mil-ford, Lord Eugene de Vere. Her figure was not less lithe and
graceful since her marriage, a little more voluptuous; her rich
complexion, her radiant and abounding hair, and her long grey eye, now
melting with pathos, and now twinkling with mockery, presented one of
those faces of witchery which are beyond beauty.
'Mrs. Coningsby shall decide.'
'It is the very thing,' said Edith, 'that Mrs. Coningsby will never do.
Decision destroys suspense, and suspense is the charm of existence.'
'But suspense may be agony,' said Lord Eugene de Vere, casting a glance
that would read the innermost heart of Edith.
'And decision may be despair,' said Mrs. Coningsby.
'But we agreed the other night that you were to decide everything for
us,' said Lord Beaumanoir; 'and you consented.'
'I consented the other night, and I retract my consent to-day; and I am
consistent, for that is indecision.'
'You are consistent in being charming,' said Lord Eugene.
'Pleasing and original!' said Edith. 'By-the-bye, when I consented that
the melancholy Jaques should be one of my aides-de-camp I expected him
to maintain his reputation, not only for gloom but wit. I think you had
better go back to the forest, Lord Eugene, and see if you cannot
stumble upon a fool who may drill you in repartee. How do you do, Lady
Riddlesworth?' and she bowed to two ladies who seemed inclined to stop,
but Edith added, 'I heard great applications for you this moment on the
terrace.'
'Indeed!' exclaimed the ladies; and they moved on.
'When Lady Riddlesworth joins the conversation it is like a stoppage in
the streets. I invented a piece of intelligence to clear the way, as
you would call out Fire! or The queen is coming! There used to be things
called _vers de societe_, which were not poetry; and I do not see why
there should not be social illusions which are not fibs.'
'I entirely agree with you,' said Lord Milford; 'and I move that we
practise them on a large scale.'
'Like the verses, they might make life more light,' said Lady Theresa.
'We are surrounded by illusions,' said Lord Eugene, in a melancholy
tone.
'And shams of all descriptions,' said Edith; 'the greatest, a man who
pretends he has a broken heart when all the time he is full of fun.'
'There are a great many men who have broken hearts,' said Lord
Beaumanoir, smiling sorrowfully.
'Cracked heads are much commoner,' said Edith, 'you may rely upon it.
The only man I really know with a broken heart is Lord Fitz-Booby. I do
think that paying Mount-Dullard's debts has broken his heart. He takes
on so; 'tis piteous. "My dear Mrs. Coningsby," he said to me last night,
"only think what that young man might have been; he might have been a
lord of the treasury in '35; why, if he had had nothing more in '41,
why, there's a loss of between four and five thousand pounds; but with
my claims--Sir Robert, having thrown the father over, was bound on
his own principle to provide for the son--he might have got something
better; and now he comes to me with his debts, and his reason for paying
his debts, too, Mrs. Coningsby, because he is going to be married; to
be married to a woman who has not a shilling. Why, if he had been in
office, and only got 1,500L. a year, and married a woman with only
another 1,500L., he would have had 3,000L. a year, Mrs. Coningsby; and
now he has nothing of his own except some debts, which he wants me to
pay, and settle 3,000L. a year on him besides."'
They all laughed.
'Ah!' said Mrs. Coningsby, with a resemblance which made all start, 'you
should have heard it with the Fitz-Booby voice.'
The character of a woman rapidly develops after marriage, and sometimes
seems to change, when in fact it is only complete. Hitherto we have
known Edith only in her girlhood, bred up in a life of great simplicity,
and under the influence of a sweet fancy, or an absorbing passion.
Coningsby had been a hero to her before they met, the hero of nursery
hours and nursery tales. Experience had not disturbed those dreams.
From the moment they encountered each other at Millbank, he assumed that
place in her heart which he had long occupied in her imagination; and,
after their second meeting at Paris, her existence was merged in love.
All the crosses and vexations of their early affection only rendered
this state of being on her part more profound and engrossing.
But though Edith was a most happy wife, and blessed with two children
worthy of their parents, love exercises quite a different influence
upon a woman when she has married, and especially when she has assumed
a social position which deprives life of all its real cares. Under any
circumstances, that suspense, which, with all its occasional agony, is
the great spring of excitement, is over; but, generally speaking, it
will be found, notwithstanding the proverb, that with persons of a noble
nature, the straitened fortunes which they share together, and
manage, and mitigate by mutual forbearance, are more conducive to the
sustainment of a high-toned and romantic passion, than a luxurious
prosperity.
The wife of a man of limited fortune, who, by contrivance, by the
concealed sacrifice of some necessity of her own, supplies him with some
slight enjoyment which he has never asked, but which she fancies he may
have sighed for, experiences, without doubt, a degree of pleasure far
more ravishing than the patrician dame who stops her barouche at Storr
and Mortimer's, and out of her pin-money buys a trinket for the husband
whom she loves, and which he finds, perhaps, on his dressing-table, on
the anniversary of their wedding-day. That's pretty too and touching,
and should be encouraged; but the other thrills, and ends in an embrace
that is still poetry.
The Coningsbys shortly after their marriage had been called to the
possession of a great fortune, for which, in every sense, they were well
adapted. But a great fortune necessarily brings with it a great change
of habits. The claims of society proportionately increase with your
income. You live less for yourselves. For a selfish man, merely looking
to his luxurious ease, Lord Eskdale's idea of having ten thousand a
year, while the world suppose you have only five, is the right thing.
Coningsby, however, looked to a great fortune as one of the means,
rightly employed, of obtaining great power. He looked also to his wife
to assist him in this enterprise.
Edith, from a native impulse, as well as from love for him, responded
to his wish. When they were in the country, Hellingsley was a perpetual
stream and scene of splendid hospitality; there the flower of London
society mingled with all the aristocracy of the county. Leander was
often retained specially, like a Wilde or a Kelly, to renovate the
genius of the habitual chief: not of the circuit, but the kitchen.
A noble mansion in Park Lane received them the moment Parliament
assembled. Coningsby was then immersed in affairs, and counted entirely
on Edith to cherish those social influences which in a public career
are not less important than political ones. The whole weight of the
management of society rested on her. She had to cultivate his alliances,
keep together his friends, arrange his dinner-parties, regulate his
engagements. What time for romantic love? They were never an hour alone.
Yet they loved not less; but love had taken the character of enjoyment
instead of a wild bewitchment; and life had become an airy bustle,
instead of a storm, an agony, a hurricane of the heart.
In this change in the disposition, not in the degree, of their
affection, for there was the same amount of sweet solicitude, only it
was duly apportioned to everything that interested them, instead of
being exclusively devoted to each other, the character of Edith, which
had been swallowed up by the absorbing passion, rapidly developed itself
amid the social circumstances. She was endued with great vivacity, a
sanguine and rather saucy spirit, with considerable talents, and a large
share of feminine vanity: that divine gift which makes woman charming.
Entirely sympathising with her husband, labouring with zeal to advance
his views, and living perpetually in the world, all these qualities
came to light. During her first season she had been very quiet, not less
observant, making herself mistress of the ground. It was prepared
for her next campaign. When she evinced a disposition to take a lead,
although found faultless the first year, it was suddenly remembered that
she was a manufacturer's daughter; and she was once described by a great
lady as 'that person whom Mr. Coningsby had married, when Lord Monmouth
cut him off with a shilling.'
But Edith had anticipated these difficulties, and was not to be daunted.
Proud of her husband, confident in herself, supported by a great
establishment, and having many friends, she determined to exchange
salutes with these social sharp-shooters, who are scarcely as courageous
as they are arrogant. It was discovered that Mrs. Coningsby could be
as malicious as her assailants, and far more epigrammatic. She could
describe in a sentence and personify in a phrase. The _mot_ was
circulated, the _nom de nique_ repeated. Surrounded by a brilliant
band of youth and wit, even her powers of mimickry were revealed to the
initiated. More than one social tyrant, whom all disliked, but whom
none had ventured to resist, was made ridiculous. Flushed by success and
stimulated by admiration, Edith flattered herself that she was assisting
her husband while she was gratifying her vanity. Her adversaries soon
vanished, but the powers that had vanquished them were too choice to
be forgotten or neglected. The tone of raillery she had assumed for
the moment, and extended, in self-defence, to persons, was adopted as a
habit, and infused itself over affairs in general.
Mrs. Coningsby was the fashion; she was a wit as well as a beauty; a
fascinating droll; dazzling and bewitching, the idol of every youth.
Eugene de Vere was roused from his premature exhaustion, and at last
found excitement again. He threw himself at her feet; she laughed at
him. He asked leave to follow her footsteps; she consented. He was
only one of a band of slaves. Lord Beaumanoir, still a bachelor, always
hovered about her, feeding on her laughing words with a mild melancholy,
and sometimes bandying repartee with a kind of tender and stately
despair. His sister, Lady Theresa Lyle, was Edith's great friend. Their
dispositions had some resemblance. Marriage had developed in both
of them a frolic grace. They hunted in couple; and their sport was
brilliant. Many things may be said by a strong female alliance, that
would assume quite a different character were they even to fall from the
lips of an Aspasia to a circle of male votaries; so much depends upon
the scene and the characters, the mode and the manner.
The good-natured world would sometimes pause in its amusement, and,
after dwelling with statistical accuracy on the number of times Mrs.
Coningsby had danced the polka, on the extraordinary things she said to
Lord Eugene de Vere, and the odd things she and Lady Theresa Lyle were
perpetually doing, would wonder, with a face and voice of innocence,
'how Mr. Coningsby liked all this?' There is no doubt what was the
anticipation by the good-natured world of Mr. Coningsby's feelings. But
they were quite mistaken. There was nothing that Mr. Coningsby liked
more. He wished his wife to become a social power; and he wished his
wife to be amused. He saw that, with the surface of a life of levity,
she already exercised considerable influence, especially over the young;
and independently of such circumstances and considerations, he was
delighted to have a wife who was not afraid of going into society by
herself; not one whom he was sure to find at home when he returned
from the House of Commons, not reproaching him exactly for her social
sacrifices, but looking a victim, and thinking that she retained her
husband's heart by being a mope. Instead of that Con-ingsby wanted to be
amused when he came home, and more than that, he wanted to be instructed
in the finest learning in the world.
As some men keep up their Greek by reading every day a chapter in the
New Testament, so Con-ingsby kept up his knowledge of the world, by
always, once at least in the four-and-twenty hours, having a delightful
conversation with his wife. The processes were equally orthodox.
Exempted from the tax of entering general society, free to follow his
own pursuits, and to live in that political world which alone interested
him, there was not an anecdote, a trait, a good thing said, or a bad
thing done, which did not reach him by a fine critic and a lively
narrator. He was always behind those social scenes which, after all,
regulate the political performers, knew the springs of the whole
machinery, the chang-ings and the shiftings, the fiery cars and golden
chariots which men might mount, and the trap-doors down which men might
fall.
But the Marquess of Montacute is making his reverence to Mrs. Guy
Flouncey.
There was not at this moment a human being whom that lady was more glad
to see at her _dejeuner_; but she did not show it in the least. Her
self-possession, indeed, was the finest work of art of the day, and
ought to be exhibited at the Adelaide Gallery. Like all mechanical
inventions of a high class, it had been brought to perfection very
gradually, and after many experiments. A variety of combinations, and
an almost infinite number of trials, must have been expended before the
too-startling laugh of Con-ingsby Castle could have subsided into the
haughty suavity of that sunny glance, which was not familiar enough for
a smile, nor foolish enough for a simper. As for the rattling vein which
distinguished her in the days of our first acquaintance, that had long
ceased. Mrs. Guy Flouncey now seemed to share the prevalent passion for
genuine Saxon, and used only monosyllables; while Fine-ear himself would
have been sometimes at fault had he attempted to give a name to her
delicate breathings. In short, Mrs. Guy Flouncey never did or said
anything but in 'the best taste.' It may, however, be a question,
whether she ever would have captivated Lord Monmouth, and those who
like a little nature and fun, if she had made her first advances in this
style. But that showed the greatness of the woman. Then she was ready
for anything for promotion. That was the age of forlorn hopes; but now
she was a general of division, and had assumed a becoming carriage.
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