Some few years ago there was a regiment in London whose officers were the town talk, on account of their accustomed dandyism. They lisped; they could not bear the least fatigue; they were afraid alike of sunshine and rain; every thing that looked like manhood seemed to have abandoned them in despair. This regiment was ordered to the continent, and took part in the battle of Waterloo. These effeminate officers were in the hottest of the battle, fought like tigers, and were all cut to pieces. The character of Pelham, the hero of this work, seems to have been partially formed from the above model. He is possessed of great personal intrepidity and of high honor — of deep and generous feeling. Upon his entree into society, he assumes an air of high-toned dandyism; is exquisite in all things; and devoted in his attention to cosmetics and curls. At one moment he is languishing in all the effeminacy of a Sybarite, at the next he performs an act of unexampled prowess; and then in an instant he is looking round him with an air of ultra-feminine delicacy, and asking for a bottle of Eau de Cologne. The character is delightfully sustained, throughout. Witness the following:
“‘What do you think of our streets? said the old, yet still animated Madame de G—s. “You will not find them, I fear, so agreeable for walking as the trottoirs in London.”
‘Really,’ I answered,’ I have only been once out in your streets, at least a pied, since my arrival, and then I was nearly perishing for want of help.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Madame D’Anville.
‘Why, I fell into that intersecting stream which you call a kennel, and I a river. Pray, Mr. Aberton, what do you think I did in that dangerous dilemma?’
‘Why, you got out is fast as you could, said the literal attache.
‘No such thing, I was too frightened. I stood still and screamed for assistance.’
Madame D’Anville was delighted, and Miss Paulding astonished. Mr. Aberton muttered to a fat, foolish Lord Luscombe, ‘What a puppy,’ and every one, even to
the old Madame de G—s, looked at me, six times as attentively as they had done before.”
The above extract shows the assumed character of Pelham. The following throws additional light upon it. Our hero is playing off his effeminate airs in a full room of company:
“At this moment an elderly gentleman who had been lounging on a chaise longue near the window, and who was the only person in the room inattentive to my display, called out,
‘For Heaven’s sake come here! a poor man will certainly be thrown from his horse! Will nobody help him?’
‘That will I,’ I cried, starting up and hastening to the window, all the group crowding after me. One glance was sufficient to show me, that the horse was the one of Glanville’s I had so lately admired, and that his rider (the groom I had spoken to) was in the most imminent danger of being dashed to pieces. He was already half off his seat, with his head hanging down, and clinging to the mane and neck only by one hand. I sprang to the door, cleared the stairs at a bound, rushed through the hall door, and caught the enraged animal (whom no one else, of all the surrounding loiterers, dared approach) by the rein. The check, momentary as it was, gave the man, who had not lost all presence of mind, time to extricate himself from his situation, and the next instant I had sprung into the saddle. I found all my attention requisite to soothe my Bucephalus, who had recommenced kicking and plunging with redoubled vigor. There never was any situation in life in which I have lost the possession of myself. At first I was contented with bending my limbs and body, with every motion of the horse; nor was it till after several minutes of intense exertion on his part, that I used any evident authority upon my own; ten minutes more sufficed to begin and complete my triumph. I dismounted at the door with my usual air of nonchalance, and giving the panting but now tractable animal to the groom, I re-entered the hall.
The ‘mob of gentlemen’ and gentlewomen gathered round me as I sauntered into the drawing room. Lady Roseville gave me a smile that weighed more with me than the compliments and congratulations of all the rest.
‘Believe me,’ said I, escaping from them all, and throwing myself on a sofa in the next room, ‘riding is too severe an exercise for men, it is only fit for the robust nerves of women. Will any gentlemen present lend me his essence bottle ?’”
As a specimen of the author’s powers in a different style, take the following rich portrait of a bewitching woman:
“There was nothing about Miss Glanville like a heroine — I hate your heroines. She had none of that ‘modest ease,’ and ‘quiet dignity,’ and ‘ English grace’ (Lord help us) of which certain writers speak with such applause. Thank heaven, she was alive: she had great sense, but the playfulness of a child; extreme rectitude of mind, but with the tenderness of a gazelle ; if she laughed, all her countenance, lips, eyes, forehead, cheeks, laughed too: ‘Paradise seemed opened in her face;’ if she looked grave, it was such a lofty and upward, yet sweet and gentle gravity, that you might (had you been gifted with the least imagination) have supposed, from the model of her countenance, a new order of angels, between the cherubim and the seraphim, the angels of Love and Wisdom. She was not, perhaps, quite so silent in society as my individual taste would desire; but when she spoke, it was with a propriety of thought and diction which made me lament when her voice had ceased. It was as if something beautiful in creation had stopped suddenly.”
What can be more exquisite than that last compliment ?—” It was as if something beautiful in creation had stopped suddenly.’
But it is not alone in the description of beauty and the flashes of animated wit, that our author excels. In the dark and stormy emotions, in the whirlwind of the passions, in the wild and fearful scenes that arrest the breath and send the blood back to the heart, he is alike at home and alike pre-eminent. He follows the agony of human feelings through all its dark labyrinths, drags it from its deepest recesses, and holds it up to the clear view of the appalled spectator. Crime, and suffering and sorrow, and fear, and remorse, and revenge and despair, are his dark playthings. With the operations of them all, he is familiar; in the portraiture of all, he is great. We must also extend our praise to his description of inanimate nature, and to his reflections upon stirring events. As an evidence of both, take the following extract :—
“As I wound down the hill, the moonlight fell full upon the remarkable and lonely tree I had observed in the morning. Bare, wan, and giantlike, as it rose amidst the surrounding waste, it borrowed even a more startling and ghostly appearance from the cold and lifeless moonbeams which fell around and upon it like a shroud. The retreating animal I had driven before me, paused by this tree. I hastened my steps, as if by an involuntary impulse, as well as the enfeebled animal I was leading would allow me, and discovered a horseman galloping across the waste at full speed. The ground over which he passed was steeped in moonshine, and I saw the long and disguising cloak, in which he was enveloped, as clearly as by the light of day. I paused; and as I was following him with my looks, my eye fell upon some obscure object by the left side of the pool. I threw my horse’s rein over the hedge, and firmly – grasping my stick, hastened to the spot. As I approached the object, I perceived that it was a human figure; it was lying still and motionless; the limbs were half immersed in the water — the face was turned upwards — the side and throat were wet with a deep red stain — it was of blood; the thin, dark hairs of the head were clotted together over a frightful and disfiguring contusion. I bent over the face in a shuddering and freezing silence. It was the countenance of Sir John Tyrrell.
It is a fearful thing, even to the hardiest nerves, to find ourselves suddenly alone with the dead. How much more so, if we have, but a breathing interval before, moved and conversed with the warm and living likeness of the motionless clay before us.
And this was the man from whom I had parted in coldness — almost in anger — at a word — a breath! I took up the heavy hand — it fell from my grasp, and as it did so, I thought a change passed over the livid countenance. I was deceived; it was but a light cloud flitting over the moon; — it rolled away, and the placid and guiltless light shone over that scene of dread and blood, making more wild and chilling the eternal contrast of earth and heaven — man and his Maker — passion and immutability — dust and immortality.”
It would be an endless work were we to allude to one half of the marked and striking characters in “Pelham.” That of Sir Reginald Glanville, so deeply interesting throughout the dreadful and awful career on which an evil star is ever lord of the ascendant, is so perfect that we hardly dare meddle with it. A man of high feeling, of pride, of warm passions, irreparably injured by a callous villain, devoting his whole powers to the single object of revenge, seeking it at morn and eve, at noon and midnight, in solitude and in the festival, determined to offer up a fearful sacrifice on the altar of unappeaseable hatred, wasting away in the utter destitution of all hope, and yet gifted by nature with every quality that dignifies and adorns, is an object of the highest moral sublimity. Such is Sir Reginald Glanville — Morning Courier.
From: The cabinet of instruction, literature, and amusement. No. 6, Vol. 1, December 1, 1828.