CHAPTER LV.
Clar.--How, two letters?--The Lover's Progress.
LETTER FROM CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ., TO THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.
HOTEL ----, CALAIS.
My Dear Duke,--After your kind letter, you will forgive me for not
having called upon you before I left England, for you have led me to
hope that I may dispense with ceremony towards you; and, in sad and
sober earnest, I was in no mood to visit even you during the few days
I was in London, previous to my departure. Some French philosopher
has said that, 'the best compliment we can pay our friends, when in
sickness or misfortune, is to avoid them.' I will not say how far I
disagree with this sentiment, but I know that a French philosopher
will be an unanswerable authority with you; and so I will take shelter
even under the battery of an enemy.
I am waiting here for some days in expectation of Lord Aspeden's
arrival. Sick as I was of England and all that has lately occurred to
me there, I was glad to have an opportunity of leaving it sooner than
my chief could do; and I amuse myself very indifferently in this dull
town, with reading all the morning, plays all the evening, and dreams
of my happier friends all the night.
And so you are sorry that I did not destroy Lord Borodaile. My dear
duke, you would have been much more sorry if I had! What could you
then have done for a living Pasquin for your stray lampoons and
vagrant sarcasms? Had an unfortunate bullet carried away--
"That peer of England, pillar of the state,"
as you term him, pray on whom could 'Duke Humphrey unfold his
griefs'?--Ah, Duke, better as it is, believe me; and, whenever you are
at a loss for a subject for wit, you will find cause to bless my
forbearance, and congratulate yourself upon the existence of its
object.
Dare I hope that, amidst all the gayeties which court you, you will
find time to write to me? If so, you shall have in return the
earliest intelligence of every new soprano, and the most elaborate
criticisms on every budding figurante of our court.
Have you met Trollolop lately, and in what new pursuit are his
intellectual energies engaged? There, you see, I have fairly
entrapped your Grace into a question which common courtesy will oblige
you to answer.
Adieu, ever, my dear Duke. Most truly yours, etc.
LETTER FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD TO CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ.
A thousand thanks, mon cher, for your letter, though it was certainly
less amusing and animated than I could have wished it for your sake,
as well as my own; yet it could not have been more welcomely received,
had it been as witty as your conversation itself. I heard that you
had accepted the place of secretary to Lord Aspeden, and that you had
passed through London on your way to the Continent, looking (the
amiable Callythorpe, 'who never flatters,' is my authority) more like
a ghost than yourself. So you may be sure, my dear Linden, that I was
very anxious to be convinced under your own hand of your carnal
existence.
Take care of yourself, my good fellow, and don't imagine, as I am apt
to do, that youth is like my hunter, Fearnought, and will carry you
over everything. In return for your philosophical maxim, I will give
you another. "In age we should remember that we have been young, and
in youth that we are to be old." Ehem!--am I not profound as a
moralist? I think a few such sentences would become my long face
well; and, to say truth, I am tired of being witty; every one thinks
he can be that: so I will borrow Trollolop's philosophy,--take snuff,
wear a wig out of curl, and grow wise instead of merry.
A propos of Trollolop; let me not forget that you honour him with your
inquiries. I saw him three days since, and he asked me if I had been
impressed lately with the idea vulgarly called Clarence Linden; and he
then proceeded to inform me that he had heard the atoms which composed
your frame were about to be resolved into a new form. While I was
knitting my brows very wisely at this intelligence, he passed on to
apprise me that I had neither length, breadth, nor extension, nor
anything but mind. Flattered by so delicate a compliment to my
understanding, I yielded my assent: and he then shifted his ground,
and told me that there was no such thing as mind; that we were but
modifications of matter; and that, in a word, I was all body. I took
advantage of this doctrine, and forthwith removed my modification of
matter from his.
Findlater has just lost his younger brother in a duel. You have no
idea how shocking it was. Sir Christopher one day heard his brother,
who had just entered the ---- Dragoons, ridiculed for his want of
spirit, by Major Elton, who professed to be the youth's best friend.
The honest heart of our worthy baronet was shocked beyond measure at
this perfidy, and the next time his brother mentioned Elton's name
with praise, out came the story. You may guess the rest: young
Findlater called out Elton, who shot him through the lungs! "I did it
for the best," cried Sir Christopher.
La pauvre petite Meronville! What an Ariadne! Just as I was thinking
to play the Bacchus to your Theseus, up steps an old gentleman from
Yorkshire, who hears it is fashionable to marry bonas robas, proposes
honourable matrimony, and deprives me and the world of La Meronville!
The wedding took place on Monday last, and the happy pair set out to
their seat in the North. Verily, we shall have quite a new race in
the next generation; I expect all the babes will skip into the world
with a pas de zephyr, singing in sweet trebles,--
"Little dancing loves we are!
Who the deuce is our papa?"
I think you will be surprised to hear that Lord Borodaile is beginning
to thaw; I saw him smile the other day! Certainly, we are not so near
the North Pole as we were! He is going, and so am I, in the course of
the autumn, to your old friends the Westboroughs. Report says that he
is un peu epris de la belle Flore; but, then, Report is such a liar!
For my own part I always contradict her.
I eagerly embrace your offer of correspondence, and assure you that
there are few people by whose friendship I conceive myself so much
honoured as by yours. You will believe this; for you know that, like
Callythorpe, I never flatter. Farewell for the present.
Sincerely yours, HAVERFIELD.
