Devereux — Complete

“It is true, Monsieur, that it is above his own understanding. He knows not what sly conclusions may be drawn from his premises; but I beg Monsieur’s pardon, I shall be tedious and intrusive.”

“Not a whit! speak out, and at length. So you conceive that Leibnitz makes ropes which others will make into ladders?”

“Exactly so,” said Desmarais; “all his arguments go to swell the sails of the great philosophical truth,—‘Necessity!’ We are the things and toys of Fate, and its everlasting chain compels even the Power that creates as well as the things created.”

“Ha!” said I, who, though little versed at that time in these metaphysical subtleties, had heard St. John often speak of the strange doctrine to which Desmarais referred, “you are, then, a believer in the fatalism of Spinoza?”

“No, Monsieur,” said Desmarais, with a complacent smile, “my system is my own: it is composed of the thoughts of others; but my thoughts are the cords which bind the various sticks into a fagot.”

“Well,” said I, smiling at the man’s conceited air, “and what is your main dogma?”

“Our utter impotence.”

“Pleasing! Mean you that we have no free will?”

“None.”

“Why, then, you take away the very existence of vice and virtue; and, according to you, we sin or act well, not from our own accord, but because we are compelled and preordained to it.”

Desmarais’ smile withered into the grim sneer with which, as I have said, it was sometimes varied.

“Monsieur’s penetration is extreme; but shall I not prepare his nightly draught?”

“No; answer me at length; and tell me the difference between good and ill, if we are compelled by Necessity to either.”

Desmarais hemmed, and began. Despite of his caution, the coxcomb loved to hear himself talk, and he talked, therefore, to the following purpose:

“Liberty is a thing impossible! Can you will a single action, however simple, independent of your organization,—independent of the organization of others,—independent of the order of things past,—independent of the order of things to come? You cannot. But if not independent, you are dependent; if dependent, where is your liberty? where your freedom of will? Education disposes our characters: can you control your own education, begun at the hour of birth? You cannot. Our character, joined to the conduct of others, disposes of our happiness, our sorrow, our crime, our virtue. Can you control your character? We have already seen that you cannot. Can you control the conduct of others,—others perhaps whom you have never seen, but who may ruin you at a word; a despot, for instance, or a warrior? You cannot. What remains? that if we cannot choose our characters, nor our fates, we cannot be accountable for either. If you are a good man, you are a lucky man; but you are not to be praised for what you could not help. If you are a bad man, you are an unfortunate one; but you are not to be execrated for what you could not prevent.”[16 - Whatever pretensions Monsieur Desmarais may have had to originality, this tissue of opinions is as old as philosophy itself.—ED.]

“Then, most wise Desmarais, if you steal this diamond loop from my hat, you are only an unlucky man, not a guilty one, and worthy of my sympathy, not anger?”

“Exactly so; but you must hang me for it. You cannot control events, but you can modify man. Education, law, adversity, prosperity, correction, praise, modify him,—without his choice, and sometimes without his perception. But once acknowledge Necessity, and evil passions cease; you may punish, you may destroy others, if for the safety and good of the commonwealth; but motives for doing so cease to be private: you can have no personal hatred to men for committing actions which they were irresistibly compelled to commit.”

I felt that, however I might listen to and dislike these sentiments, it would not do for the master to argue with the domestic, especially when there was a chance that he might have the worst of it. And so I was suddenly seized with a fit of sleepiness, which broke off our conversation. Meanwhile I inly resolved, in my own mind, to take the first opportunity of discharging a valet who saw no difference between good and evil, but that of luck; and who, by the irresistible compulsion of Necessity, might some day or other have the involuntary misfortune to cut the throat of his master!

I did not, however, carry this unphilosophical resolution into effect. Indeed, the rogue, doubting perhaps the nature of the impression he had made on me, redoubled so zealously his efforts to please me in the science of his profession that I could not determine upon relinquishing such a treasure for a speculative opinion, and I was too much accustomed to laugh at my Sosia to believe there could be any reason to fear him.

CHAPTER VI

A UNIVERSAL GENIUS.—PERICLES TURNED BARBER.—NAMES OF BEAUTIES IN 171-.—THE TOASTS OF THE KIT-CAT CLUB

As I was riding with Tarleton towards Chelsea, one day, he asked me if I had ever seen the celebrated Mr. Salter. “No,” said I, “but I heard Steele talk of him the other night at Wills’s. He is an antiquarian and a barber, is he not?”

“Yes, a shaving virtuoso; really a comical and strange character, and has oddities enough to compensate one for the debasement of talking with a man in his rank.”

“Let us go to him forthwith,” said I, spurring my horse into a canter.

“Quod petis hic est,” cried Tarleton, “there is his house.” And my companion pointed to a coffee-house.

“What!” said I, “does he draw wine as well as teeth?”

“To be sure: Don Saltero is a universal genius. Let us dismount.”

Consigning our horses to the care of our grooms, we marched into the strangest-looking place I ever had the good fortune to behold. A long narrow coffee-room was furnished with all manner of things that, belonging neither to heaven, earth, nor the water under the earth, the redoubted Saltero might well worship without incurring the crime of idolatry. The first thing that greeted my eyes was a bull’s head, with a most ferocious pair of vulture’s wings on its neck. While I was surveying this, I felt something touch my hat; I looked up and discovered an immense alligator swinging from the ceiling, and fixing a monstrous pair of glass eyes upon me. A thing which seemed to me like an immense shoe, upon a nearer approach expanded itself into an Indian canoe; and a most hideous spectre with mummy skin, and glittering teeth, that made my blood run cold, was labelled, “Beautiful specimen of a Calmuc Tartar.”

While lost in wonder, I stood in the middle of the apartment, up walks a little man as lean as a miser, and says to me, rubbing his hands,—

“Wonderful, Sir, is it not?”

“Wonderful, indeed, Don!” said Tarleton; “you look like a Chinese Adam surrounded by a Japanese creation.”

“He, he, he, Sir, you have so pleasant a vein,” said the little Don, in a sharp shrill voice. “But it has been all done, Sir, by one man; all of it collected by me, simple as I stand.”

“Simple, indeed,” quoth Tarleton; “and how gets on the fiddle?”

“Bravely, Sir, bravely; shall I play you a tune?”

“No, no, my good Don; another time.”

“Nay, Sir, nay,” cried the antiquarian, “suffer me to welcome your arrival properly.”

And, forthwith disappearing, he returned in an instant with a marvellously ill-favoured old fiddle. Throwing a penseroso air into his thin cheeks, our Don then began a few preliminary thrummings, which set my teeth on edge, and made Tarleton put both hands to his ears. Three sober-looking citizens, who had just sat themselves down to pipes and the journal, started to their feet like so many pieces of clockwork; but no sooner had Don Saltero, with a degage air of graceful melancholy, actually launched into what he was pleased to term a tune, than a universal irritation of nerves seized the whole company. At the first overture, the three citizens swore and cursed, at the second division of the tune, they seized their hats, at the third they vanished. As for me, I found all my limbs twitching as if they were dancing to St. Vitus’s music; the very drawers disappeared; the alligator itself twirled round, as if revivified by so harsh an experiment on the nervous system; and I verily believe the whole museum, bull, wings, Indian canoe, and Calmuc Tartar, would have been set into motion by this new Orpheus, had not Tarleton, in a paroxysm of rage, seized him by the tail of the coat, and whirled him round, fiddle and all, with such velocity that the poor musician lost his equilibrium, and falling against a row of Chinese monsters, brought the whole set to the ground, where he lay covered by the wrecks that accompanied his overthrow, screaming and struggling, and grasping his fiddle, which every now and then, touched involuntarily by his fingers, uttered a dismal squeak, as if sympathizing in the disaster it had caused, until the drawer ran in, and, raising the unhappy antiquarian, placed him on a great chair.

“O Lord!” groaned Don Saltero, “O Lord! my monsters—my monsters—the pagoda—the mandarin, and the idol where are they?—broken—ruined— annihilated!”

“No, Sir; all safe, Sir,” said the drawer, a smart, small, smug, pert man; “put ‘em down in the bill, nevertheless, Sir. Is it Alderman Atkins, Sir, or Mr. Higgins?”

“Pooh,” said Tarleton, “bring me some lemonade; send the pagoda to the bricklayer, the mandarin to the surgeon, and the idol to the Papist over the way! There’s a guinea to pay for their carriage. How are you, Don?”

“Oh, Mr. Tarleton, Mr. Tarleton! how could you be so cruel?”

“The nature of things demanded it, my good Don. Did I not call you a Chinese Adam? and how could you bear that name without undergoing the fall?”

“Oh, Sir, this is no jesting matter,—broke the railing of my pagoda, bruised my arm, cracked my fiddle, and cut me off in the middle of that beautiful air!—no jesting matter.”

“Come, Mr. Salter,” said I, “‘tis very true! but cheer up. ‘The gods,’ says Seneca, ‘look with pleasure on a great man falling with the statesmen, the temples, and the divinities of his country;’ all of which, mandarin, pagoda, and idol, accompanied your fall. Let us have a bottle of your best wine, and the honour of your company to drink it.”

“No, Count, no,” said Tarleton, haughtily; “we can drink not with the Don; but we’ll have the wine, and he shall drink it. Meanwhile, Don, tell us what possible combination of circumstances made thee fiddler, barber, anatomist, and virtuoso!”

Don Saltero loved fiddling better than anything in the world, but next to fiddling he loved talking. So being satisfied that he should be reimbursed for his pagoda, and fortifying himself with a glass or two of his own wine, he yielded to Tarleton’s desire, and told us his history. I believe it was very entertaining to the good barber, but Tarleton and I saw nothing extraordinary in it; and long before it was over, we wished him an excellent good day, and a new race of Chinese monsters.

That evening we were engaged at the Kit-Cat Club, for though I was opposed to the politics of its members, they admitted me on account of my literary pretensions. Halifax was there, and I commended the poet to his protection. We were very gay, and Halifax favoured us with three new toasts by himself. O Venus! what beauties we made, and what characters we murdered! Never was there so important a synod to the female world as the gods of the Kit-Cat Club. Alas! I am writing for the children of an after age, to whom the very names of those who made the blood of their ancestors leap within their veins will be unknown. What cheek will colour at the name of Carlisle? What hand will tremble as it touches the paper inscribed by that of Brudenel? The graceful Godolphin, the sparkling enchantment of Harper, the divine voice of Claverine, the gentle and bashful Bridgewater, the damask cheek and ruby lips of the Hebe Manchester,—what will these be to the race for whom alone these pages are penned? This history is a union of strange contrasts! like the tree of the Sun, described by Marco Polo, which was green when approached on one side, but white when perceived on the other: to me it is clothed in the verdure and spring of the existing time; to the reader it comes covered with the hoariness and wanness of the Past!

CHAPTER VII

A DIALOGUE OF SENTIMENT SUCCEEDED BY THE SKETCH OF A CHARACTER, IN WHOSE EYES SENTIMENT WAS TO WISE MEN WHAT RELIGION IS TO FOOLS; NAMELY, A SUBJECT OF RIDICULE

ST. JOHN was now in power, and in the full flush of his many ambitious and restless schemes. I saw as much of him as the high rank he held in the state, and the consequent business with which he was oppressed, would suffer me,—me, who was prevented by religion from actively embracing any political party, and who, therefore, though inclined to Toryism, associated pretty equally with all. St. John and myself formed a great friendship for each other, a friendship which no after change or chance could efface, but which exists, strengthened and mellowed by time, at the very hour in which I write.