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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Godolphin, Complete," Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton intricately weaves a narrative imbued with Romantic ethos, masterfully blending adventure, romance, and philosophical inquiry. The novel centers on the titular character, Godolphin, a young man entrenched in the social and political tumult of early Victorian England. Through Lytton's vivid prose and dramatic characterizations, the story explores the themes of ambition, disillusionment, and the quest for personal identity within a rapidly changing society, reflecting the preoccupations of his era with modernity and moral scrutiny. Bulwer Lytton, a prominent literary figure of the 19th century, was not only a novelist but also a playwright, politician, and social critic. His forays into various genres, including historical novels and science fiction, notably influenced literary traditions. His experiences in public life and his fascination with the metaphysical and metaphoric deeply informed the complexities of characters such as Godolphin, who embodies the writer's own struggles with identity and societal constraints. This compelling narrative is highly recommended for readers interested in exploring the nuances of human nature and societal dynamics through the lens of Victorian literature. "Godolphin, Complete" serves not only as a captivating story but also as a mirror reflecting the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during an era poised on the brink of modernity. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Godolphin, Complete
Table of Contents
Introduction
At the glittering crossroads of ambition and affection, a gifted aristocrat discovers that the very qualities which elevate him in salons, studios, and political circles may also estrange him from the quiet, durable forms of happiness that a life of display cannot buy, as fortune, fashion, and feeling contest his loyalty and expose how success in the public eye can deepen private uncertainties and complicate the search for a life that is truly one’s own.
Godolphin is a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), first published in 1833, during the author’s early, prolific phase. Blending the novel of manners with romantic and satirical elements, it moves between Britain and the Continent in the early nineteenth century, where aristocratic life, political aspiration, and aesthetic refinement overlap. The book belongs to a moment in British fiction fascinated by high society, its codes, and its moral ambiguities. Without relying on historical pageant, it anchors itself in recognizable social milieus—drawing rooms, galleries, and political antechambers—where reputation functions as currency and the individual must decide how much of the self can be spent in pursuit of influence, admiration, or love.
The premise turns on a cultivated man of birth and sensibility whose encounters with beauty, power, and affection present irreconcilable invitations to live differently. Early travels shape his taste; fashionable circles challenge his integrity; political opportunities test his resolve; and a deepening attachment confronts him with the costs of choosing one path at the expense of another. By design, the novel offers an experience that alternates between movement and stillness: restless scenes of society and travel offset by reflective pauses in which motives, scruples, and ideals are weighed. Readers encounter a story that is less about events than about the moral weather that those events create around a susceptible, observant mind.
Bulwer-Lytton’s voice is polished, omniscient, and unabashedly analytic, suffused with aphoristic turns and philosophical aside. The style balances social sparkle with introspective gravity, allowing the bright surfaces of fashion to coexist with a more somber reckoning of desire, disappointment, and compromise. Scenes unfold with theatrical poise—drawing rooms arranged like stages, landscapes sketched to mirror temperament—while the narrator’s commentary draws connections between private impulses and public consequences. The mood is elegant yet unsettled: amusement sharpened by irony, romance tempered by skepticism. This poise gives the novel its distinctive cadence, inviting readers to savor its sentences even as they sense the fragility of what the characters pursue.
At its core, the book considers the tension between self-culture and worldly success. It probes how taste, talent, and sensibility can be both gifts and temptations, encouraging a life measured by admiration rather than conviction. Wealth and rank appear not as guarantees of fulfillment but as conditions that complicate choice, especially where marriage, reputation, and political advancement intersect. Art enters as a counterforce to utility, consoling yet potentially escapist; politics offers purpose while demanding accommodation. Chance and circumstance intervene, but character—formed by habit and hope—ultimately governs the meaning of those accidents. The result is a study in how ideals erode or endure under the pressure of opportunity.
These questions remain pertinent. Readers today will recognize the novel’s fascination with visibility, performance, and the economics of attention—the subtle bargains one makes to be seen, praised, or powerful. The conflict between public role and private contentment is rendered without sermon, allowing space to reflect on careerism, social aspiration, and the fragile ethics of networking. The book invites consideration of how taste can refine life yet also narrow it, how love can redeem ambition yet also resist domestication, and how the pursuit of distinction risks masking what one might actually value when applause fades.
Approached now, Godolphin offers a cultivated, psychologically attentive journey through early nineteenth-century high life, guided by a narrator alert to the clatter of salons and the hush of conscience. It rewards readers who enjoy social satire threaded with romantic introspection, finely wrought sentences, and characters whose dilemmas feel intimate rather than merely emblematic. As a work from Bulwer-Lytton’s early period, it helps map the evolution of the English novel between fashionable portraiture and later realism, illuminating continuities in how fiction interrogates choice, identity, and success. For those drawn to the art of balance—between beauty and duty, display and inwardness—this novel remains an instructive, elegant companion.
Synopsis
Set in early nineteenth-century England and on the Continent, Godolphin follows a young heir of a fallen house, refined, proud, and averse to routine ambition. When Godolphin encounters Constance Vernon, a brilliant and resolute beauty burdened by family reverses, attraction is immediate but complicated. She is determined to recover station and influence; he prefers taste, art, and independence to office or trade. Their early meetings, in drawing rooms and country walks, establish the central tension: love that appeals to the heart versus calculations demanded by rank and security. Each recognizes the other's power, yet neither will bend to the other's terms. Whispers of their attachment surround them, while patrons and guardians weigh prospects.
Constance measures prospects and concludes that affection without fortune risks lifelong sacrifice. Godolphin, unwilling to solicit patronage or to disguise his disdain for careers he deems mechanical, cannot offer the guarantees she requires. She therefore accepts a brilliant alliance, exchanging personal hope for public position. Wounded and proud, Godolphin leaves England, passing through Rome and Naples, studying art, indulging in gaming and society, and acquiring the polish of a cosmopolitan idler. Along the way he meets world-weary mentors who reinforce his creed of enjoyment without responsibility, even as memory of Constance remains a steady undertone to his drifting life.
Years pass. Constance, now set high in the social sphere, uses her wit and presence to gather influence, presiding over salons where policy and fashion mingle. Ferrers, an acute and unromantic man of affairs, advances rapidly and becomes her frequent ally; he sees people as instruments and events as opportunities. Godolphin returns to London with a reputation for taste and fortune's hazards but no fixed purpose. Their restrained reunion tests poise and pride: words are courteous, eyes are eloquent, and the old choice—between love informed by ambition and love indifferent to it—reappears, sharpened by time and public circumstance.
Disenchanted with the capital's glitter, Godolphin withdraws to quieter scenes and meets Lucilla, a solitary and impassioned young woman nurtured in seclusion. Surrounded by rustic superstition and haunted by presentiments, she lives with a fervor that has little to do with salons or office. Her simplicity and depth awaken in Godolphin a gentler ambition—the desire for domestic peace and a love unshadowed by worldly contests. Their attachment grows quickly. A private union, guarded from the gaze of society, seems to promise escape from the demands that once divided him from Constance, and to anchor his wandering tastes in home.
Yet the conditions that shaped Godolphin do not release him easily. The costs of elegance, pride of independence, and lingering restlessness reassert themselves. London's summons returns in invitations, debts, and the chance of distinction that Ferrers dangles with calculated skill. Constance, balancing public role with private memory, exerts a subtler pull by her mere presence in the world he cannot wholly renounce. Lucilla, sensitive and unused to courtly forms, finds the city's noise and scrutiny bewildering, her forebodings quickened by every rumor. Misinterpretations multiply, and the practical ties of money and station begin to strain the delicate domestic bond.
Pressure mounts around play-tables, elections, and drawing rooms. Godolphin's disdain for routine obligation collides with necessities he can no longer postpone. A famous night of hazard underscores the perilous alliance of fortune and pride. He refuses the most obvious remedies, unwilling to purchase security with dependence; travel and temporary retreats follow. Lucilla's spirit, intense and imaginative, proves vulnerable to anxiety and separation, while her old belief in omens colors events with a fatal hue. Unexpected absences and delayed letters widen distances that affection struggles to bridge, and the conflict between private duty and public allure sharpens inexorably.
Meanwhile Ferrers thrives on turbulence. Shifts in parties and ministries advance his designs, and Constance becomes a recognized power in his circle, conducting assemblies where reputations rise or fall. A public crisis brings Godolphin again into their orbit. Old attachment, newly complicated by obligations elsewhere, presses on all three. The narrative tracks interviews in crowded rooms and quiet gardens, where half-spoken promises and guarded confessions leave characters poised between disclosure and retreat. An incident of public consequence abruptly forces private decisions, making concealment untenable and compelling each to weigh ambition, honor, and affection under the glare of society.
The story moves through reversals that follow logically from earlier choices. Misunderstandings find their outlet; long-avoided explanations occur under harrowing circumstances. Scenes of illness, storm, and hurried travel concentrate the emotional reckoning without lingering on spectacle. Godolphin confronts the cost of his fastidious indecision; Constance measures the worth of power against the claims of feeling; Lucilla's intensity proves both strength and peril. Positions once thought secure yield to events that no one fully commands. Outward losses and inward recognitions occur together, and relationships are recast in terms that acknowledge both the allure and the sterility of worldly success.
In closing, the novel offers a sober verdict rather than a sensational twist. It contrasts the transient gleam of fashion and power with the steadier claims of affection and duty, suggesting that character amplifies or defeats circumstance. Without moralizing, it shows how pride, ambition, and the appetite for distinction can unsettle happiness more surely than open vice. The principal figures arrive at outcomes consistent with their guiding impulses, and the tone settles into reflective gravity. Godolphin, Complete thus unites romance, manners, and political portraiture to convey a central message: distinction without inward purpose leaves the heart unsatisfied.
Historical Context
Set principally in the late Georgian and Regency milieu and sliding into the early 1830s, the novel inhabits London’s West End drawing rooms, St James’s clubland, and great country houses, with episodes on the Continent in Rome, Naples, and Paris. The atmosphere is one of aristocratic display, political patronage, and fashionable ennui under George IV (reigned 1820–1830) and William IV (1830–1837). The social world revolves around salons, elections controlled by patrons, and the alluring cosmopolitan circuit known as the Grand Tour. This setting positions the characters amid shifting British power structures, as the ancien electoral order faces agitation that culminates in parliamentary reform and a chastened, modernizing elite.
The crisis and passage of the Reform Act of 1832 anchor the period. Before 1832, representation was distorted by rotten boroughs such as Old Sarum and pocket seats controlled by magnates; only about 400,000 men in England and Wales could vote out of millions. After mass mobilization and the Grey ministry’s push, the bill received Royal Assent on 7 June 1832, disfranchising many tiny boroughs (Schedule A), redistributing seats to growing towns like Manchester and Leeds, and broadening the franchise for householders. The novel’s depictions of drawing-room influence, patronage bargains, and anxious electioneering mirror the pre-Reform system, while its tone anticipates the recalibration of power that reform imposed on aristocratic politics.
Popular unrest sharpened the demand for change. The Peterloo Massacre on 16 August 1819 in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, saw cavalry charge a peaceful crowd of roughly 60,000–80,000 calling for representation; at least 11 were killed and hundreds injured. The government responded with the repressive Six Acts (December 1819), curbing meetings and the press. A decade later, the Swing Riots (1830–1831) swept southern and eastern counties, with machine-breaking and incendiary protests against wages and poor relief. The novel’s contrast between elite nonchalance and nervous talk of “the country” channels these disturbances, using the characters’ fears and complacencies to register the pressures that forced the ruling class toward moderated reform.
Regency high society’s gaming culture and club life defined the elite’s habits. Clubs such as White’s and Brooks’s in St James’s, and particularly Crockford’s, opened in 1828 by William Crockford at 50 St James’s Street, became arenas where fortunes were won and lost overnight. The era’s code of fashion, reputation, and calculated risk intertwined with political networking over supper tables and hazard banks. The novel’s protagonist moves through this world of sheen and stake, using gaming rooms and salons to show how aesthetic pose, credit, and patronage could elevate or ruin a gentleman, and how such spectacle insulated the privileged from the mounting social realities beyond Pall Mall.
The post-Napoleonic settlement shaped the economy and politics that the book’s society takes for granted. After Waterloo (1815), Britain demobilized, confronted high grain prices protected by the Corn Laws of 1815, and endured cyclical crises, notably in 1816–1817 and 1825–1826. Protectionist landowners and mercantile interests clashed with urban manufacturers and reformers advocating freer trade and relief from distress. Governments under Lord Liverpool, George Canning (Prime Minister in 1827), and the Duke of Wellington navigated these pressures with cautious liberalization and stern order. The novel’s portrayal of wealth rooted in land, rents, and speculation, and its background conversations about policy and patronage, reflect the contests unleashed by postwar adjustment and economic volatility.
Catholic Emancipation (1829) reconfigured party alignments and elite conscience. After Daniel O’Connell’s victory in the Clare by-election (1828), Wellington and Robert Peel pushed the Roman Catholic Relief Act through Parliament in April 1829, allowing Catholics to sit at Westminster and holding offices previously barred. The move split sections of the Tory party and signaled pragmatic concession to avoid broader unrest in Ireland. In the novel, political salons weigh questions of conscience, expediency, and national interest in tones reminiscent of emancipation debates, while the protagonist’s continental sojourns and encounters with Catholic ceremony frame the period’s negotiation between an established Protestant order and a more plural public sphere.
The cosmopolitan circuit of British travel in Italy and the Mediterranean, and parallel humanitarian currents at home, colored the era’s sensibility. Rome and Naples attracted aristocrats, artists, and connoisseurs; British visitors frequented the Corso, the Carnival, and ruins, while excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum stirred antiquarian fascination. Simultaneously, mass petitioning propelled the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which ended slavery in most of the British Empire, compensated owners with £20 million, and instituted an apprenticeship system that ended fully by 1838. The novel’s admiration for art and antiquity, alongside its moral unease with privilege, echoes a society enchanted by beauty yet compelled toward public reform.
As a social and political critique, the book exposes the complacencies of rank, the corrosions of patronage, and the ethical vacuity of status won at the card table or by borough influence. It scrutinizes how drawing-room power mediates legislation, how marriages and alliances substitute for merit, and how aesthetic refinement can mask civic indifference. By staging characters who oscillate between worldly success and private disillusion, it indicts elite insularity during a period of mass agitation, religious emancipation, and humanitarian reform. The narrative registers class divides, the precariousness of female influence within rigid hierarchies, and the necessity—and insufficiency—of cautious reform to meet a modern nation’s claims.
Godolphin, Complete
PREFACE TO GODOLPHIN.
In the Prefaces to this edition of my works, I have occasionally so far availed myself of that privilege of self-criticism which the French comic writer, Mons. Picord[1], maintains or exemplifies in the collection of his plays,—as, if not actually to sit in judgment on my own performances, still to insinuate some excuse for their faults by extenuatory depositions as to their character and intentions. Indeed, a writer looking back to the past is unconsciously inclined to think that he may separate himself from those children of his brain which have long gone forth to the world; and though he may not expatiate on the merits his paternal affection would ascribe to them, that he may speak at least of the mode in which they were trained and reared—of the hopes he cherished, or the objects he entertained, when he finally dismissed them to the opinions of others and the ordeal of Fate or Time.
For my part, I own that even when I have thought but little of the value of a work, I have always felt an interest in the author’s account of its origin and formation, and, willing to suppose that what thus affords a gratification to my own curiosity, may not be wholly unattractive to others, I shall thus continue from time to time to play the Showman to my own machinery, and explain the principle of the mainspring and the movement of the wheels.
This novel was begun somewhere in the third year of my authorship, and completed in the fourth. It was, therefore, composed almost simultaneously with Eugene Aram[2], and afforded to me at least some relief from the gloom of that village tragedy. It is needless to observe how dissimilar in point of scene, character, and fable, the one is from the other; yet they are alike in this—that both attempt to deal with one of the most striking problems in the spiritual history of man, viz., the frustration or abuse of power in a superior intellect originally inclined to good. Perhaps there is no problem that more fascinates the attention of a man of some earnestness at that period of his life, when his eye first disengages itself from the external phenomena around him, and his curiosity leads him to examine the cause and account for the effect;—when, to cite reverently the words of the wisest, “He applies his heart to know and to search, and to seek out wisdom and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness.”
In Eugene Aram, the natural career of genius is arrested by a single crime; in Godolphin, a mind of inferior order, but more fanciful colouring, is wasted away by the indulgence of those morbid sentiments which are the nourishment of egotism, and the gradual influence of the frivolities which make the business of the idle. Here the Demon tempts or destroys the hermit in his solitary cell. There, he glides amidst the pomps and vanities of the world, and whispers away the soul in the voice of his soft familiars, Indolence and Pleasure.
Of all my numerous novels, Pelham and Godolphin are the only ones which take their absolute groundwork in what is called “The Fashionable World[3].” I have sought in each to make the general composition in some harmony with the principal figure in the foreground. Pelham is represented as almost wholly unsusceptible to the more poetical influences. He has the physical compound, which, versatile and joyous, amalgamates easily with the world—he views life with the lenient philosophy that Horace commends in Aristippus: he laughs at the follies he shares; and is ever ready to turn into uses ultimately (if indirectly) serious, the frivolities that only serve to sharpen his wit, and augment that peculiar expression which we term “knowledge of the world.” In a word, dispel all his fopperies, real or assumed, he is still the active man of crowds and cities, determined to succeed, and gifted with the ordinary qualities of success. Godolphin, on the contrary, is the man of poetical temperament, out of his place alike among the trifling idlers and the bustling actors of the world—wanting the stimulus of necessity—or the higher motive which springs from benevolence, to give energy to his powers, or definite purpose to his fluctuating desires; not strong enough to break the bonds that confine his genius—not supple enough to accommodate its movements to their purpose. He is the moral antipodes to Pelham. In evading the struggles of the world, he grows indifferent to its duties—he strives with no obstacles—he can triumph in no career. Represented as possessing mental qualities of a higher and a richer nature than those to which Pelham can pretend, he is also represented as very inferior to him in constitution of character, and he is certainly a more ordinary type of the intellectual trifler.
The characters grouped around Godolphin are those with which such a man usually associates his life. They are designed to have a certain grace—a certain harmony with one form or the other of his twofold temperament:—viz., either its conventional elegance of taste, or its constitutional poetry of idea. But all alike are brought under varying operations of similar influences; or whether in Saville, Constance, Fanny, or Lucilla—the picture presented is still the picture of gifts misapplied—of life misunderstood. The Preacher who exclaimed, “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity,” perhaps solved his own mournful saying, when he added elsewhere, “This only have I found, that God made men upright—but they have sought out many inventions.”
This work was first published anonymously, and for that reason perhaps it has been slow in attaining to its rightful station amongst its brethren—whose parentage at first was openly acknowledged. If compared with Pelham, it might lose, at the first glance, but would perhaps gain on any attentive reperusal.
For although it must follow from the inherent difference in the design of the two works thus referred to, that in Godolphin there can be little of the satire or vivacity which have given popularity to its predecessor, yet, on the other hand, in Godolphin there ought to be a more faithful illustration of the even polish that belongs to luxurious life,—of the satiety that pleasure inflicts upon such of its votaries as are worthy of a higher service. The subject selected cannot adroit the same facility for observation of things that lie on the surface—but it may well lend itself to subtler investigation of character—allow more attempt at pathos, and more appeal to reflection.
Regarded as a story, the defects of Godolphin most apparent to myself, are in the manner in which Lucilla is re-introduced in the later chapters, and in the final catastrophe of the hero. There is an exaggerated romance in the one, and the admission of accident as a crowning agency in the other, which my maturer judgment would certainly condemn, and which at all events appear to me out of keeping with the natural events, and the more patient investigation of moral causes and their consequences, from which the previous interest of the tale is sought to be attained. On the other hand, if I may presume to conjecture the most probable claim to favour which the work, regarded as a whole, may possess—it may possibly be found in a tolerably accurate description of certain phases of modern civilisation, and in the suggestion of some truths that may be worth considering in our examination of social influences or individual conduct.
CHAPTER I.
THE DEATH-BED OF JOHN VERNON.—HIS DYING WORDS.—DESCRIPTION OF HIS DAUGHTER, THE HEROINE.—THE OATH.
“Is the night calm, Constance?”
“Beautiful! the moon is up.”
“Open the shutters wider, there. It is a beautiful night. How beautiful! Come hither, my child.”
The rich moonlight that now shone through the windows streamed on little that it could invest with poetical attraction. The room was small, though not squalid in its character and appliances. The bed-curtains, of a dull chintz, were drawn back, and showed the form of a man, past middle age, propped by pillows, and bearing on his countenance the marks of approaching death. But what a countenance it still was! The broad, pale, lofty brow; the fine, straight, Grecian nose; the short, curved lip; the full, dimpled chin; the stamp of genius in every line and lineament;—these still defied disease, or rather borrowed from its very ghastliness a more impressive majesty. Beside the bed was a table spread with books of a motley character. Here an abstruse system of Calculations on Finance; there a volume of wild Bacchanalian Songs; here the lofty aspirations of Plato’s Phaedon; and there the last speech of some County Paris on a Malt Tax: old newspapers and dusty pamphlets completed the intellectual litter; and above them rose, mournfully enough, the tall, spectral form of a half-emptied phial, and a chamber-candlestick, crested by its extinguisher.
A light step approached the bedside, and opposite the dying man now stood a girl, who might have seen her thirteenth year. But her features—of an exceeding, and what may be termed a regal beauty—were as fully developed as those of one who had told twice her years; and not a trace of the bloom or the softness of girlhood could be marked on her countenance. Her complexion was pale as the whitest marble, but clear, and lustrous; and her raven hair, parted over her brow in a fashion then uncommon, increased the statue-like and classic effect of her noble features. The expression of her countenance seemed cold, sedate, and somewhat stern; but it might, in some measure, have belied her heart; for, when turned to the moonlight, you might see that her eyes were filled with tears, though she did not weep; and you might tell by the quivering of her lip, that a little hesitation in replying to any remark from the sufferer arose from her difficulty in commanding her emotions.
“Constance,” said the invalid, after a pause, in which he seemed to have been gazing with a quiet heart on the soft skies, that, blue and eloquent with stars, he beheld through the unclosed windows:—“Constance, the hour is coming; I feel it by signs which I cannot mistake. I shall die this night.”
“Oh, God!—my father!—my dear, dear father!” broke from Constance’s lips; “do not speak thus—do not—I will go to Doctor ——”
“No, child, no!—I loathe—I detest the thought of help. They denied it me while it was yet time. They left me to starve or to rot in gaol, or to hang myself! They left me like a dog, and like a dog I will die! I would not have one iota taken from the justice—the deadly and dooming weight of my dying curse.” Here violent spasms broke on the speech of the sufferer; and when, by medicine and his daughter’s attentions, he had recovered, he said, in a lower and calmer key:—“Is all quiet below, Constance? Are all in bed? The landlady—the servants—our fellow-lodgers?”
“All, my father.”
“Ay; then I shall die happy. Thank Heaven, you are my only nurse and attendant. I remember the day when I was ill after one of their rude debauches. Ill!—a sick headache—a fit of the spleen—a spoiled lapdog’s illness! Well: they wanted me that night to support one of their paltry measures—their parliamentary measures. And I had a prince feeling my pulse, and a duke mixing my draught, and a dozen earls sending their doctors to me. I was of use to them then! Poor me! Read me that note, Constance—Flamborough’s note. Do you hesitate? Read it, I say!”
Constance trembled and complied.
“My dear Vernon,
“I am really au desespoir to hear of your melancholy state;—so sorry I cannot assist you: but you know my embarrassed circumstances. By the by, I saw his Royal Highness yesterday. ‘Poor Vernon!’ said he; ‘would a hundred pounds do him any good?’ So we don’t forget you, mon cher. Ah! how we missed you at the Beefsteak! Never shall we know again so glorious a bon vivant. You would laugh to hear L—— attempting to echo your old jokes. But time presses: I must be off to the House. You know what a motion it is! Would to Heaven you were to bring it on instead of that ass T——. Adieu! I wish I could come and see you; but it would break my heart. Can I send you any books from Hookham’s?
“Yours ever,
“FLAMBOROUGH.”
“This is the man whom I made Secretary of State,” said Vernon. “Very well!—oh, it’s very well,—very well indeed. Let me kiss thee, my girl. Poor Constance! You will have good friends when I am dead! they will be proud enough to be kind to Vernon’s daughter, when Death has shown them that Vernon is a loss. You are very handsome. Your poor mother’s eyes and hair—my father’s splendid brow and lip; and your figure, even now so stately! They will court you: you will have lords and great men enough at your feet; but you will never forget this night, nor the agony of your father’s death-bed face, and the brand they have burned in his heart. And now, Constance, give me the Bible in which you read to me this morning: that will do:—stand away from the light and fix your eyes on mine, and listen as if your soul were in your ears.
“When I was a young man, toiling my way to fortune through the labours of the Bar,—prudent, cautious, indefatigable, confident of success,—certain lords, who heard I possessed genius, and thought I might become their tool, came to me, and besought me to enter parliament. I told them I was poor—was lately married—that my public ambition must not be encouraged at the expense of my private fortunes. They answered, that they pledged themselves those fortunes should be their care. I yielded; I deserted my profession; I obeyed their wishes; I became famous—and a ruined man! They could not dine without me; they could not sup without me; they could not get drunk without me; no pleasure was sweet but in my company. What mattered it that, while I ministered to their amusement, I was necessarily heaping debt upon debt—accumulating miseries for future years—laying up bankruptcy, and care, and shame, and a broken heart, and an early death? But listen, Constance! Are you listening?—attentively?—Well! note now, I am a just man. I do not blame my noble friends, my gentle patrons, for this. No: if I were forgetful of my interests, if I preferred their pleasure to my happiness and honour, that was my crime, and I deserve the punishment! But, look you,—time went by, and my constitution was broken; debts came upon me; I could not pay; men mistrusted my word; my name in the country fell: With my health, my genius deserted me; I was no longer useful to my party; I lost my seat in parliament; and when I was on a sick-bed—you remember it, Constance—the bailiffs came, and tore me away for a paltry debt—the value of one of those suppers the Prince used to beg me to give him. From that time my familiars forsook me!—not a visit, not a kind act, not a service for him whose day of work was over! ‘Poor Vernon’s character was gone! Shockingly involved—could not perform his promises to his creditors—always so extravagant—quite unprincipled—must give him up!’
“In those sentences lies the secret of their conduct. They did not remember that for them, by them, the character was gone, the promises broken, the ruin incurred! They thought not how I had served them; how my best years had been devoted to advance them—to ennoble their cause in the lying page of History! All this was not thought of: my life was reduced to two epochs—that of use to them—that not. During the first, I was honoured; during the last, I was left to starve—to rot! Who freed me from prison?—who protects me now? One of my ‘party’—my ‘noble friends’—my ‘honourable, right honourable friends’? No! a tradesman whom I once served in my holyday, and who alone, of all the world, forgets me not in my penance. You see gratitude, friendship, spring up only in middle life; they grow not in high stations!
“And now, come nearer, for my voice falters, and I would have these words distinctly heard. Child, girl as you are—you I consider pledged to record, to fulfil my desire—my curse! Lay your hand on mine: swear that through life to death,—swear! You speak not! repeat my words after me:”—Constance obeyed:—“through life to death; through good, through ill, through weakness, through power, you will devote yourself to humble, to abase that party from whom your father received ingratitude, mortification, and death! Swear that you will not marry a poor and powerless man, who cannot minister to the ends of that solemn retribution I invoke! Swear that you will seek to marry from amongst the great; not through love, not through ambition, but through hate, and for revenge! You will seek to rise that you may humble those who have betrayed me! In the social walks of life you will delight to gall their vanities in state intrigues, you will embrace every measure that can bring them to their eternal downfall. For this great end you will pursue all means. What! you hesitate? Repeat, repeat, repeat!—You will lie, cringe, fawn, and think vice not vice, if it bring you one jot nearer to Revenge! With this curse on my foes, I entwine my blessing, dear, dear Constance, on you,—you, who have nursed, watched, all but saved me! God, God bless you, my child!” And Vernon burst into tears.
It was two hours after this singular scene, and exactly in the third hour of morning, that Vernon woke from a short and troubled sleep. The grey dawn (for the time was the height of summer) already began to labour through the shades and against the stars of night. A raw and comfortless chill crept over the earth, and saddened the air in the death-chamber. Constance sat by her father’s bed, her eyes fixed upon him, and her cheek more wan than ever by the pale light of that crude and cheerless dawn. When Vernon woke, his eyes, glazed with death, rolled faintly towards her, fixing and dimming in their sockets as they gazed;—his throat rattled. But for one moment his voice found vent; a ray shot across his countenance as he uttered his last words—words that sank at once and eternally to the core of his daughter’s heart—words that ruled her life, and sealed her destiny: “Constance, remember—the Oath—Revenge!”
CHAPTER II.
REMARK ON THE TENURE OF LIFE.—THE COFFINS OF GREAT MEN SELDOM NEGLECTED.—CONSTANCE TAKES REFUGE WITH LADY ERPINGHAM.—THE HEROINE’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND CHARACTER.—THE MANOEUVRING TEMPERAMENT.
What a strange life this is! what puppets we are![1q] How terrible an enigma is Fate! I never set my foot without my door, but what the fearful darkness that broods over the next moment rushes upon me. How awful an event may hang over our hearts! The sword is always above us, seen or invisible!
And with this life—this scene of darkness and dreadsome men would have us so contented as to desire, to ask for no other!
Constance was now without a near relation in the world. But her father predicted rightly: vanity supplied the place of affection. Vernon, who for eighteen months preceding his death had struggled with the sharpest afflictions of want—Vernon, deserted in life by all, was interred with the insulting ceremonials of pomp and state. Six nobles bore his pall: long trains of carriages attended his funeral: the journals were filled with outlines of his biography and lamentations at his decease. They buried him in Westminster Abbey, and they made subscriptions for a monument in the very best sort of marble. Lady Erpingham, a distant connection of the deceased, invited Constance to live with her; and Constance of course consented, for she had no alternative.
On the day that she arrived at Lady Erpingham’s house, in Hill Street, there were several persons present in the drawing-room.
“I fear, poor girl,” said Lady Erpingham,—for they were talking of Constance’s expected arrival,—“I fear that she will be quite abashed by seeing so many of us, and under such unhappy circumstances.”
“How old is she?” asked a beauty.
“About thirteen, I believe.”
“Handsome?”
“I have not seen her since she was seven years old. She promised then to be very beautiful: but she was a remarkably shy, silent child.”
“Miss Vernon,” said the groom of the chambers, throwing open the door.
With the slow step and self-possessed air of womanhood, but with a far haughtier and far colder mien than women commonly assume, Constance Vernon walked through the long apartment, and greeted her future guardian. Though every eye was on her, she did not blush; though the Queens of the London World were round her, her gait and air were more royal than all. Every one present experienced a revulsion of feeling. They were prepared for pity; this was no case in which pity could be given. Even the words of protection died on Lady Erpingham’s lip, and she it was who felt bashful and disconcerted.
I intend to pass rapidly over the years that elapsed till Constance became a woman. Let us glance at her education. Vernon had not only had her instructed in the French and Italian; but, a deep and impassioned scholar himself, he had taught her the elements of the two great languages of the ancient world. The treasures of those languages she afterwards conquered of her own accord.
Lady Erpingham had one daughter, who married when Constance had reached the age of sixteen. The advantages Lady Eleanor Erpingham possessed in her masters and her governess Constance shared. Miss Vernon drew well, and sang divinely; but she made no very great proficiency in the science of music. To say truth, her mind was somewhat too stern, and somewhat too intent on other subjects, to surrender to that most jealous of accomplishments the exclusive devotion it requires.
But of all her attractions, and of all the evidences of her cultivated mind, none equalled the extraordinary grace of her conversation. Wholly disregarding the conventional leading-strings in which the minds of young ladies are accustomed to be held—leading-strings, disguised by the name of “proper diffidence” and “becoming modesty,”—she never scrupled to share, nay, to lead, discussions even of a grave and solid nature. Still less did she scruple to adorn the common trifles that make the sum of conversation with the fascinations of a wit, which, playful, yet deep, rivalled even the paternal source from which it was inherited.
It seems sometimes odd enough to me, that while young ladies are so sedulously taught the accomplishments that a husband disregards, they are never taught the great one he would prize. They are taught to be exhibitors; he wants a companion. He wants neither a singing animal, nor a drawing animal, nor a dancing animal: he wants a talking animal. But to talk they are never taught; all they know of conversation is slander, and that “comes by nature.”
But Constance did talk beautifully; not like a pedant, or a blue, or a Frenchwoman. A child would have been as much charmed with her as a scholar; but both would have been charmed. Her father’s eloquence had descended to her; but in him eloquence commanded, in her it won. There was another trait she possessed in common with her father: Vernon (as most disappointed men are wont) had done the world injustice by his accusations. It was not his poverty and his distresses alone which had induced his party to look coolly on his declining day. They were not without some apparent excuse for desertion—they doubted his sincerity. It is true that it was without actual cause. No modern politician had ever been more consistent. He had refused bribes, though poor; and place, though ambitious. But he was essentially—here is the secret—essentially an intriguant. Bred in the old school of policy, he thought that manoeuvring was wisdom, and duplicity the art of governing. Like Lysander,(1) he loved plotting, yet neglected self-interest. There was not a man less open, or more honest. This character, so rare in all countries, is especially so in England. Your blunt squires, your politicians at Bellamy’s, do not comprehend it. They saw in Vernon the arts which deceive enemies, and they dreaded lest, though his friends, they themselves should be deceived. This disposition, so fatal to Vernon, his daughter inherited. With a dark, bold, and passionate genius, which in a man would have led to the highest enterprises, she linked the feminine love of secrecy and scheming. To borrow again from Plutarch and Lysander, “When the skin of the lion fell short, she was quite of opinion that it should be eked out with the fox’s.”
(1) Plutarch’s Life of Lysander.
CHAPTER III.
THE HERO INTRODUCED TO OUR READER’S NOTICE.—DIALOGUE BETWEEN HIMSELF AND HIS FATHER.—PERCY GODOLPHIN’s CHARACTER AS A BOY.—THE CATASTROPHE OF HIS SCHOOL LIFE.
“Percy, remember that it is to-morrow you will return to school,” said Mr. Godolphin to his only son.
Percy pouted, and after a momentary silence replied, “No, father, I think I shall go to Mr. Saville’s. He has asked me to spend a month with him; and he says rightly that I shall learn more with him than at Dr. Shallowell’s, where I am already head of the sixth form.”
“Mr. Saville is a coxcomb, and you are another!” replied the father, who, dressed in an old flannel dressing-gown, with a worn velvet cap on his head, and cowering gloomily over a wretched fire, seemed no bad personification of that mixture of half-hypochondriac, half-miser, which he was in reality. “Don’t talk to me of going to town, sir, or—”
“Father,” interrupted Percy, in a cool and nonchalant tone, as he folded his arms, and looked straight and shrewdly on the paternal face—“father, let us understand each other. My schooling, I suppose, is rather an expensive affair?”
“You may well say that, sir! Expensive!—It is frightful, horrible, ruinous!—Expensive! Twenty pounds a year board and Latin; five guineas washing; five more for writing and arithmetic. Sir, if I were not resolved that you should not want education, though you may want fortune, I should—yes, I should—what do you mean, sir?—you are laughing! Is this your respect, your gratitude to your father?”
A slight shade fell over the bright and intelligent countenance of the boy.
“Don’t let us talk of gratitude,” said he sadly; “Heaven knows what either you or I have to be grateful for! Fortune has left to your proud name but these bare walls and a handful of barren acres; to me she gave a father’s affection—not such as Nature had made it, but cramped and soured by misfortunes.”
Here Percy paused, and his father seemed also struck and affected. “Let us,” renewed in a lighter strain this singular boy, who might have passed, by some months, his sixteenth year,—“let us see if we cannot accommodate matters to our mutual satisfaction. You can ill afford my schooling, and I am resolved that at school I will not stay. Saville is a relation of ours; he has taken a fancy to me; he has even hinted that he may leave me his fortune; and he has promised, at least, to afford me a home and his tuition as long as I like. Give me free passport hereafter to come and go as I list, and I in turn, will engage never to cost you another shilling. Come, sir, shall it be a compact?”
“You wound me, Percy,” said the father, with a mournful pride in his tone; “I have not deserved this, at least from you. You know not, boy—you know not all that has hardened this heart; but to you it has not been hard, and a taunt from you—yes, that is the serpent’s tooth!”
Percy in an instant was at his father’s feet; he seized both his hands, and burst into a passionate fit of tears. “Forgive me,” he said, in broken words; “I—I meant not to taunt you. I am but a giddy boy!—send me to school!—do with me as you will!”
“Ay,” said the old man, shaking his head gently, “you know not what pain a son’s bitter word can send to a parent’s heart. But it is all natural, perfectly natural! You would reproach me with a love of money, it is the sin to which youth is the least lenient. But what! can I look round the world and not see its value, its necessity? Year after year, from my first manhood, I have toiled and toiled to preserve from the hammer these last remnants of my ancestor’s remains. Year after year fortune has slipped from my grasp; and, after all my efforts, and towards the close of a long life, I stand on the very verge of penury. But you cannot tell—no man whose heart is not seared with many years can tell or can appreciate, the motives that have formed my character. You, however,”—and his voice softened as he laid his hand on his son’s head, “you, however,—the gay, the bold, the young,—should not have your brow crossed and your eye dimmed by the cares that surround me. Go! I will accompany you to town; I will see Saville myself. If he be one with whom my son can, at so tender an age, be safely trusted, you shall pay him the visit you wish.”
Percy would have replied but his father checked him; and before the end of the evening, the father had resolved to forget as much as he pleased of the conversation.
The elder Godolphin was one of those characters on whom it is vain to attempt making a permanent impression. The habits of his mind were durably formed: like waters, they yielded to any sudden intrusion, but closed instantly again. Early in life he had been taught that he ought to marry an heiress for the benefit of his estate—his ancestral estate; the restoration of which he had been bred to consider the grand object and ambition of life. His views had been strangely baffled; but the more they were thwarted the more pertinaciously he clung to them. Naturally kind, generous, and social, he had sunk, at length, into the anchorite and the miser. All other speculations that should retrieve his ancestral honours had failed: but there is one speculation that never fails—the speculation of saving! It was to this that he now indissolubly attached himself. At moments he was open to all his old habits; but such moments were rare and few. A cold, hard, frosty penuriousness was his prevalent characteristic. He had sent this son, with eighteen pence in his pocket, to a school of twenty pounds a-year; where, naturally enough, he learned nothing but mischief and cricket: yet he conceived that his son owed him eternal obligations.
Luckily for Percy, he was an especial favourite with a certain not uncelebrated character of the name of Saville; and Saville claimed the privilege of a relation to supply him with money and receive him at his home. Wild, passionate, fond to excess of pleasure, the young Godolphin caught eagerly at these occasional visits; and at each his mind, keen and penetrating as it naturally was, took new flights, and revelled in new views. He was already the leader of his school, the torment of the master, and the lover of the master’s daughter. He was sixteen years old, but a character. A secret pride, a secret bitterness, and an open wit and recklessness of bearing, rendered him to all seeming a boy more endowed with energies than affections. Yet a kind word from a friend’s lips was never without its effect on him, and he might have been led by the silk while he would have snapped the chain. But these were his boyish traits of mind: the world soon altered them.
The subject of the visit to Saville was not again touched upon. A little reflection showed Mr. Godolphin how nugatory were the promises of a schoolboy that he should not cost his father another shilling; and he knew that Saville’s house was not exactly the spot in which economy was best learned. He thought it, therefore, more prudent that his son should return to school.
To school went Percy Godolphin; and about three weeks afterwards, Percy Godolphin was condemned to expulsion for returning, with considerable unction, a slap in the face that he had received from Dr. Shallowell. Instead of waiting for his father’s arrival, Percy made up a small bundle of clothes, let himself drop, by the help of the bed-curtains, from the window of the room in which he was confined, and towards the close of a fine summer’s evening, found himself on the highroad between and London, with independence at his heart and (Saville’s last gift) ten guineas in his pocket.
CHAPTER IV.
PERCY’S FIRST ADVENTURE AS A FREE AGENT.
It was a fine, picturesque outline of road on which the young outcast found himself journeying, whither he neither knew nor cared. His heart was full of enterprise and the unfledged valour of inexperience. He had proceeded several miles, and the dusk of the evening was setting in, when he observed a stage-coach[4] crawling heavily up a hill, a little ahead of him, and a tall, well-shaped man, walking alongside of it, and gesticulating somewhat violently. Godolphin remarked him with some curiosity; and the man, turning abruptly round, perceived, and in his turn noticed very inquisitively, the person and aspect of the young traveller.
“And how now?” said he, presently, and in an agreeable, though familiar and unceremonious tone of voice; “whither are you bound this time of day?”
“It is no business of yours, friend,” said the boy with the proud petulance of his age; “mind what belongs to yourself.”
“You are sharp on me, young sir,” returned the other; “but it is our business to be loquacious. Know, sir,”—and the stranger frowned—“that we have ordered many a taller fellow than yourself to execution for a much smaller insolence than you seem capable of.”
A laugh from the coach caused Godolphin to lift up his eyes, and he saw the door of the vehicle half-open, as if for coolness, and an arch female face looking down on him.
“You are merry on me, I see,” said Percy; “come out, and I’ll be even with you, pretty one.”
The lady laughed yet more loudly at the premature gallantry of the traveller; but the man, without heeding her, and laying his hand on Percy’s shoulder, said—
“Pray, sir, do you live at B——?” naming the town they were now approaching.
“Not I,” said Godolphin, freeing himself from the intrusion.
“You will, perhaps, sleep there?”
“Perhaps I shall.”
“You are too young to travel alone.”
“And you are too old to make such impertinent remarks,” retorted Godolphin, reddening with anger.
“Faith, I like this spirit, my Hotspur[5],” said the stranger, coolly. “If you are really going to put up for the night at B——, suppose we sup together?”
“And who and what are you?” asked Percy, bluntly.
“Anything and everything! in other words, an actor!”
“And the young lady——?’
“Is our prima donna[6]. In fact, except the driver, the coach holds none but the ladies and gentlemen of our company. We have made an excellent harvest at A——, and we are now on our way to the theatre at B——; pretty theatre it is, too, and has been known to hold seventy-one pounds eight shillings.” Here the actor fell into a reverie; and Percy, moving nearer to the coach-door, glanced at the damsel, who returned the look with a laugh which, though coquettish, was too low and musical to be called cold.
“So that gentleman, so free and easy in his manners, is not your husband?”
“Heaven forbid! Do you think I should be so gay if he were? But, pooh! what can you know of married life? No!” she continued, with a pretty air of mock dignity; “I am the Belvidera, the Calista, of the company; above all control, all husbanding, and reaping thirty-three shillings a week.”
“But are you above lovers as well as husbands?” asked Percy with a rakish air, borrowed from Saville.
“Bless the boy! No: but then my lovers must be at least as tall, and at least as rich, and, I am afraid, at least as old, as myself.”
“Don’t frighten yourself, my dear,” returned Percy; “I was not about to make love to you.”
“Were you not? Yes, you were, and you know it. But why will you not sup with us?”
“Why not, indeed?” thought Percy, as the idea, thus more enticingly put than it was at first, pressed upon him. “If you ask me,” he said, “I will.”
“I do ask you, then,” said the actress; and here the hero of the company turned abruptly round with a theatrical start, and exclaimed, “To sup or not to sup? that is the question.”
“To sup, sir,” said Godolphin.
“Very well! I am glad to hear it. Had you not better mount and rest yourself in the coach? You can take my place—I am studying a new part. We have two miles farther to B—— yet.”
Percy accepted the invitation, and was soon by the side of the pretty actress. The horses broke into a slow trot, and thus delighted with his adventure, the son of the ascetic Godolphin, the pupil of the courtly Saville, entered the town of B——, and commenced his first independent campaign in the great world.
CHAPTER V.
THE MUMMERS.—GODOLPHIN IN LOVE.—THE EFFECT OF FANNY MILLINGER’S ACTING UPON HIM.—THE TWO OFFERS.—GODOLPHIN QUITS THE PLAYERS.
Our travellers stopped at the first inn in the outskirts of the town. Here they were shown into a large room on the ground-floor, sanded, with a long table in the centre; and, before the supper was served, Percy had leisure to examine all the companions with whom he had associated himself.
In the first place, there was an old gentleman, of the age of sixty-three, in a bob-wig, and inclined to be stout, who always played the lover. He was equally excellent in the pensive Romeo and the bustling Rapid. He had an ill way of talking off the stage, partly because he had lost all his front teeth: a circumstance which made him avoid, in general, those parts in which he had to force a great deal of laughter. Next, there was a little girl, of about fourteen, who played angels, fairies, and, at a pinch, was very effective as an old woman. Thirdly, there was our free-and-easy cavalier, who, having a loud voice and a manly presence, usually performed the tyrant. He was great in Macbeth, greater in Bombastes Furioso. Fourthly, came this gentleman’s wife, a pretty, slatternish woman, much painted. She usually performed the second female—the confidante, the chambermaid—the Emilia to the Desdemona. And fifthly, was Percy’s new inamorata,—a girl of about one-and-twenty, fair, with a nez retrousse[7]: beautiful auburn hair, that was always a little dishevelled; the prettiest mouth, teeth, and dimple imaginable; a natural colour; and a person that promised to incline hereafter towards that roundness of proportion which is more dear to the sensual than the romantic. This girl, whose name was Fanny Millinger, was of so frank, good-humoured, and lively a turn, that she was the idol of the whole company, and her superiority in acting was never made a matter of jealousy. Actors may believe this, or not, as they please.
“But is this all your company?” said Percy.
“All? no!” replied Fanny, taking off her bonnet, and curling up her tresses by the help of a dim glass. “The rest are provided at the theatre along with the candle-snuffer and scene-shifters part of the fixed property. Why won’t you take to the stage? I wish you would! you would make a very respectable—page.”
“Upon my word!” said Percy, exceedingly offended.
“Come, come!” cried the actress, clapping her hands, and perfectly unheeding his displeasure—“why don’t you help me off with my cloak?—why don’t you set me a chair?—why don’t you take this great box out of my way?—why don’t you——Heaven help me!” and she stamped her little foot quite seriously on the floor. “A pretty person for a lover you are!”
“Oho! then I am a lover, you acknowledge?”
“Nonsense!—get a chair next me at supper.”
The young Godolphin was perfectly fascinated by the lively actress; and it was with no small interest that he stationed himself the following night in the stage-box of the little theatre at ——, to see how his Fanny acted. The house was tolerably well filled, and the play was She Stoops to Conquer. The male parts were, on the whole, respectably managed; though Percy was somewhat surprised to observe that a man, who had joined the corps that morning, blessed with the most solemn countenance in the world—a fine Roman nose, and a forehead like a sage’s—was now dressed in nankeen tights, and a coat without skirts, splitting the sides of the gallery in the part of Tony Lumpkin. But into the heroine, Fanny Millinger threw a grace, a sweetness, a simple, yet dignified spirit of trite love that at once charmed and astonished all present. The applause was unbounded; and Percy Godolphin felt proud of himself for having admired one whom every one else seemed also resolved upon admiring.
When the comedy was finished, he went behind the scenes, and for the first time felt the rank which intellect bestows. This idle girl, with whom he had before been so familiar; who had seemed to him, boy as he was, only made for jesting and coquetry, and trifling, he now felt to be raised to a sudden eminence that startled and abashed him. He became shy and awkward, and stood at a distance stealing a glance towards her, but without the courage to approach and compliment her.
The quick eye of the actress detected the effect she had produced. She was naturally pleased at it, and coming up to Godolphin, she touched his shoulder, and with a smile rendered still more brilliant by the rouge yet unwashed from the dimpled cheeks, said—“Well, most awkward swain? no flattery ready for me? Go to! you won’t suit me: get yourself another empress.”
“You have pleased me into respecting you,” said Godolphin.
There was a delicacy in the expression that was very characteristic of the real mind of the speaker, though that mind was not yet developed; and the pretty actress was touched by it at the moment, though, despite the grace of her acting, she was by nature far too volatile to think it at all advantageous to be respected
