Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody

IX

From the Earl of Montrose to Captain Dugald Dalgetty

Whoever has read the “Memoirs of Monsieur d’Artagnan” – a Marshal in the French King’s service – as they are published by Monsieur Alexandre Dumas in “Les Trois Mousquetaires,” will not have forgotten that duel behind the Luxembourg, in which, as is declared, an Englishman ran away from the Chevalier d’Herblay, called Aramis in his regiment. Englishmen have never held that Monsieur Dumas was well informed about this affair. The following letters of the Great Marquis and Captain Dalgetty from the “Kirkhope Papers” prove that Englishmen were in the right.

– , 164-.

Sir, – Touching that I did, to your apprehension, turn away from you with some show of coldness on your late coming, it may be that you but little misread me. But, for that no man is condemned without a hearing, I would fain know under your own hand the truth concerning that whereof a shameful report is bruited abroad, even in the “Gallo Belgicus” and the “Fliegender Mercoeur” of Leipsic – namely, that in a certain duel lately fought in Paris behind the Palace of the Luxembourg, four Englishmen encountering as many Musketeers of the French King’s, one out of this realm, to our disgrace, shamefully fled; and he (by report) Rittmaster Dugald Dalgetty. Till which, bruit be either abolished, and the stain – as an ill blot on a clean scutcheon – wiped away, or as shamefully acknowledged as it is itself shameful, I abide, as I shall hear from yourself,

Montrose.

From Captain Dugald Dalgetty, of Drumthwacket, to the Most Noble and Puissant Prince James, Earl of Montrose, commanding the musters of the King in Scotland. These—

My Lord, – As touching the bruit, or fama, as we said at the Mareschal College, I shall forthwith answer, and that peremptorie. For this story of the duello, as a man may say (though, indeed, they that fought in it were not in the dual number, as your Grecian hath it, but eight soldados – seven of them gallant men), truly the story is of the longest; but as your lordship will have it, though more expert with the sword than the goosequill, I must even buckle to.

Let your lordship conceive of your poor officer, once lieutenant and Rittmaster under that invincible monarch, the bulwark of the Protestant faith, Gustavus the Victorious; conceive, I say, Dugald Dalgetty, of Drumthwacket that should be, in Paris, concerned with a matter of weight and moment not necessary to be mooted or minted of. As I am sitting at my tavern ordinary, for I consider that an experienced cavalier should ever lay in provenant as occasion serveth, comes in to me a stipendiary of my Lord Winter, bidding me know that his master would speak to me: and that not coram populo, as I doubt not your lordship said at St. Leonard’s College in St. Andrews, but privily. Thereon I rise and wait on him; to be brief —brevis esse laboro, as we said lang syne – his lordship would have me to be of his backers in private rencontre with four gentlemen of the King’s Musketeers.

Concerning the cause of this duello, I may well say teterrima causa. His lordship’s own sister Milady Clarik was in question; she being, I fear me, rather akin in her way of life to Jean Drocheils (whom your lordship may remember; for, the Baillies expulsing her from Aberdeen, she migrated to St. Andrews, ad eundem, as the saying is) than like, in her walk and conduct, to a virtuous lady of a noble family. She was, indeed, as current rumour had it, the light o’love or belle amie of Monsieur d’Artagnan, his lordship’s adversary.

But of siclike least said soonest mended. I take cloak and sword, and follow with his lordship and two other experienced cavaliers unto the place of rencontre, being a waste croft whereon a loon was herding goats, behind the Palace of the Luxembourg. Here we find waiting us four soldados, proper tall men of their hands, who receive us courteously. He that first gave cause of quarrel to my Lord Winter bore a worthy name enough out of Gascony, that is arida nutrix, as we said at the Mareschal College, of honourable soldados – to wit, as I said, he was Monsieur d’Artagnan. To his friends, howbeit, he gave sic heathen titles as I never saw or heard of out of the Grecian books: namely, Monsieur Porthos, a very tall man, albeit something of a lourdaud; Monsieur Athos; and he that was to be mine own opposite, Monsieur Aramis. Hearing these outlandish and insolent appellations, I thought it becoming me, as an honourable cavalier, to resent this fashion of presenting: and demurred that a gentleman of the House of Dalgetty of Drumthwacket could neither take affront from, nor give honourable satisfaction to, a nameless landlouper. Wherein your lordship, I doubt me not, will hold me justificate.

Lord Winter homologating mine opinion, he that called himself Athos drew each of us apart, and whispered the true names and qualities territorial of these gentlemen; the whilk, as may befall honourable soldados, they had reason sufficient to conceal while serving as private gentlemen in a regiment, though disdaining to receive halberds, as unbecoming their birth. He that aligned himself forenenst me was styled the Chevalier d’Herblay; and, the word being given, we fell to.

Now, mine adversary declining to fight comminus gladio, but breaking ground in a manner unworthy of a gallant soldado, and the place, saving your presence, being somewhat slippery and treacherous because of the goats that were fed there, I delivered a sufficient onslaught; and he fell, his sword flying from his hand. When I had taken his weapon – the spolia opima, as we said at Mareschal College – I bid him rise, and then discoursed him on the dishonour of such a hasty defeat. Then, he confessing himself to me that, though under arms, he was a young fledgeling priest in Popish orders, I began upon him with such words on his disgracing the noble profession of arms as might have made him choose to return to his cloister; when suddenly he fled, and, being young and light-footed, robbed me, not only of such caduacs and casualties as an experienced cavalier might well take from his prisoner for ransom, but also, as now it appears, of my good name. For I doubt not that this musketeer priest, Monsieur Aramis, or l’Abbé d’Herblay (for he hath as many names as I have seen campaigns), was the loon that beguiled with a lying tale the newsman of the “Gallo Belgicus.” And I have ever seen that an honourable soldado will give the go-by to these newsmen and their flying sheets, as unworthy of the notice of honourable cavaliers; of whom (recommending your lordship for the truth of my tale to my Lord Winter, now with his gracious Majesty the King) I am fain to subscribe myself one, and your lordship’s poor officer, as ye shall entreat him,

Dugald Dalgetty, of Drumthwacket,

Late Commander of the whole stift of Dunklespiel

on the Lower Rhine.

X

From Mr. Lovelace to John Belford, Esq

The following letter must have been omitted from the papers to which Mr. Samuel Richardson, the editor of “Clarissa,” had access. It was written, apparently, after the disgraceful success of Lovelace’s disgraceful adventure, and shows us that scoundrel in company not choice, indeed, but better than he deserved, the society of Mr. Thomas Jones, a Foundling. Mr. Jones’s admirable wife (née Western), having heard of Lovelace’s conduct, sent her husband to execute that revenge which should have been competed for by every man of heart. It will be seen that Mr. Jones was no match for the perfidies of Mr. Lovelace. The cynical reflections of that bad man on Lord Fellamar, and his relations with Mrs. Jones, will only cause indignation and contempt among her innumerable and honourable admirers. They will remember the critical and painful circumstances as recorded in Mr. Henry Fielding’s biography of Mr. Jones.

 
Parcius junctas quatiunt fenestras
Ictibus crebris juvenes protervi.
 

Curse upon thy stars, Jack! How long wilt thou beat me about the head with thy musty citations from Nat Lee and thy troop of poetical divines? Thou hast driven me to motto-hunting for the comeliness of mine epistle, like the weekly scribblers. See, Jack, I have an adventure to tell thee! It is not the avenging Morden that hath flashed through the window, sword in hand, as in my frightful dream; nor hath the statue of the Commandant visited me, like Don Juan, that Rake of Spain; but a challenger came hither that is not akin to my beloved Miss. Dost remember a tall, fresh-coloured, cudgel-playing oaf that my Lady Bellaston led about with her – as maids lead apes in hell, though he more of an ape than she of a maid – ’tis a year gone? This brawny-beefed chairman hath married a fortune and a delicious girl, you dog, Miss Sophia Western, of Somerset, and is now in train, I doubt not, to beget as goodly a tribe of chuckle-headed boys and whey-faced wenches as you shall see round an old squire’s tomb in a parish church. Wherefore does he not abide at this his appointed lawful husbandry, I marvel; but not a whit!

Our cursed adventure hath spread from the flippanti of both sexes down to the heathenish parts of Somerset; where it hath reached Madam Jones’s ears, and inflamed this pretty vixen with a desire to avenge Miss Harlowe on me, and by the cudgel of Mr. Jones, his Sophia having sent him up to town for no other purpose. De la Tour, my man, came to me yesterday morning with the tidings that the New Giant, as he supposes, waits on me to solicit the favour of my patronage. I am in the powdering closet, being bound for a rout, and cry, “Let the Giant in!” Then a heavy tread: and, looking up, what do I see but a shoulder-of-mutton fist at my nose, and lo! a Somerset tongue cries, “Lovelace, thou villain, thou shalt taste of this!” A man in a powdering closet cannot fight, even if he be a boxing glutton like your Figs and other gladiators of the Artillery Ground. Needs must I parley. “What,” says I, “what, the happy Mr. Jones from the West! What brings him here among the wicked, and how can the possessor of the beauteous Sophia be a moment from her charms?”

“Take not her name,” cries my clod-hopper, “into thy perjured mouth. ’Tis herself sends me here to avenge the best, the most injured.. ” Here he fell a-blubbering! Oh, Belford, the virtue of this world is a great discourager of repentance.

“If Mr. Jones insists on the arbitrament of the sword.. ” I was beginning – “Nay, none of thy Frenchified blades,” cries he, “come out of thy earth, thou stinking fox, and try conclusions with an English cudgel!”

Belford, I am no cudgel-player, and I knew not well how to rid myself of this swasher.

“Mr. Jones!” I said, “I will fight you how you will, where you will, with what weapon you will; but first inform me of the nature of our quarrel. Would you blazon abroad yet further the malignant tales that have injured both me and a lady for whom I have none but the most hallowed esteem? I pray you sit down, Sir; be calm, the light is ill for any play with cudgel or sword. De la Tour, a bottle of right Burgundy; Mr. Jones and I have business, and he hath travelled far.”

In a trice there was a chicken, a bottle, a set of knives and forks, a white cloth, and a hungry oaf that did eat and swear! One bottle followed another. By the third Mr. Jones embraced me, saying that never had a man been more belied than I; that it was Lord Fellamar, not I, was the villain. To this effect I own that I did myself drop a hint; conceiving that the divine Sophia must often have regretted our friend Fellamar when once she was bound to the oaf, and that Jones was capable of a resentful jealousy. By midnight I had to call a chair for my besotted challenger, and when the Avenger was there safely bestowed, I asked him where the men should carry him? His tongue being now thick, and his brains bemused, he could not find the sign of his inn in his noddle. So, the merry devil prompting me, I gave the men the address of his ancient flame, my Lady Bellaston, and off they jogged with Jones.

Was there ever, Belford, a stranger amoris redintegratio than this must have been, when our Lydia heard the old love at the rarely shaken doors:

Me tuo longas pereunte noctes,

Lydia, dormis?

Ah, how little hath Madam Sophia taken by despatching her lord to town, and all to break my head. My fellow, who carries this to thee, has just met Fellamar’s man, and tells me that Fellamar yesterday went down into Somerset. What bodes this rare conjunction and disjunction of man and wife and of old affections? and hath “Thomas, a Foundling,” too, gone the way of all flesh?

Thy Lovelace.

No news of the dear fugitive! Ah, Belford, my conscience and my cousins call me a villain! Minxes all.

XI

From Miss Catherine Morland to Miss Eleanor Tilney

Miss Catherine Morland, of “Northanger Abbey,” gives her account of a visit to Mr. Rochester, and of his governess’s peculiar behaviour. Mrs. Rochester (née Eyre) has no mention of this in her Memoirs.

Thornfield, Midnight

At length, my dear Eleanor, the terrors on which you have so often rallied me are become realities, and your Catherine is in the midst of those circumstances to which we may, without exaggeration, give the epithet “horrible.” I write, as I firmly believe, from the mansion of a maniac! On a visit to my Aunt Ingram, and carried by her to Thornfield, the seat of her wealthy neighbour, Mr. Rochester, how shall your Catherine’s trembling pen unfold the mysteries by which she finds herself surrounded! No sooner had I entered this battlemented mansion than a cold chill struck through me, as with a sense of some brooding terror. All, indeed, was elegance, all splendour! The arches were hung with Tyrian-dyed curtains. The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red Bohemian glass. Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey carpets and large mirrors. Elegance of taste and fastidious research of ornament could do no more; but what is luxury to the mind ill at ease? or can a restless conscience be stilled by red Bohemian glass or pale Parian mantelpieces?

No, alas! too plainly was this conspicuous when, on entering the library, we found Mr. Rochester – alone! The envied possessor of all this opulence can be no happy man. He was seated with his head bent on his folded arms, and when he looked up a morose – almost a malignant – scowl blackened his features! Hastily beckoning to the governess, who entered with us, to follow him, he exclaimed, “Oh, hang it all!” in an accent of despair, and rushed from the chamber. We distinctly heard the doors clanging behind him as he flew! At dinner, the same hollow reserve; his conversation entirely confined to the governess (a Miss Eyre), whose position here your Catherine does not understand, and to whom I distinctly heard him observe that Miss Blanche Ingram was “an extensive armful.”

The evening was spent in the lugubrious mockery of pretending to consult an old gipsy-woman who smoked a short black pipe, and was recognised by all as Mr. Rochester in disguise. I was conducted by Miss Eyre to my bedroom – through a long passage, narrow, low, and dim, with two rows of small black doors, all shut; ’twas like a corridor in some Blue Beard’s castle. “Hurry, hurry, I hear the chains rattling,” said this strange girl; whose position, my Eleanor, in this house causes your Catherine some natural perplexity. When we had reached my chamber, “Be silent, silent as death,” said Miss Eyre, her finger on her lip and her meagre body convulsed with some mysterious emotion. “Speak not of what you hear, do not remember what you see!” and she was gone.

I undressed, after testing the walls for secret panels and looking for assassins in the usual place, but was haunted all the time by an unnatural sound of laughter. At length, groping my way to the bed, I jumped hastily in, and would have sought some suspension of anguish by creeping far underneath the clothes. But even this refuge was denied to your wretched Catherine! I could not stretch my limbs; for the sheet, my dear Eleanor, had been so arranged, in some manner which I do not understand, as to render this impossible. The laughter seemed to redouble. I heard a footstep at my door. I hurried on my frock and shawl and crept into the gallery. A strange dark figure was gliding in front of me, stooping at each door; and every time it stooped, came a low gurgling noise! Inspired by I know not what desperation of courage, I rushed on the figure and seized it by the neck. It was Miss Eyre, the governess, filling the boots of all the guests with water, which she carried in a can. When she saw me she gave a scream and threw herself against a door hung with a curtain of Tyrian dye. It yielded, and there poured into the passage a blue cloud of smoke, with a strong and odious smell of cigars, into which (and to what company?) she vanished. I groped my way as well as I might to my own chamber: where each hour the clocks, as they struck, found an echo in the apprehensive heart of

The Ill-Fated

Catherine Morland.

XII

From Montague Tigg, Esq., to Mr. David Crimp

The following letter needs no explanation for any who have studied the fortunes and admired the style of that celebrated and sanguine financier, Mr. Montague Tigg, in “Martin Chuzzlewit.” His chance meeting with the romantic Comte de Monte Cristo naturally suggested to him the plans and hopes which he unfolds to an unsympathetic capitalist.

1542 Park Lane, May 27, 1848.

My Premium Pomegranate, – Oracles are not in it, David, with you, my pippin, as auspicious counsellors of ingenious indigence. The remark which you uttered lately, when refusing to make the trumpery advance of half-a-crown on a garment which had been near to the illustrious person of my friend Chevy Slime, that remark was inspired. “Go to Holborn!” you said, and the longest-bearded of early prophets never uttered aught more pregnant with Destiny. I went to Holborn, to the humble establishment of the tuneful tonsor, Sweedle-pipe. All things come, the poet says, to him who knows how to wait – especially, I may add, to him who knows how to wait behind thin partitions with a chink in them. Ensconced in such an ambush – in fact, in the back shop – I bided my time, intending to solicit pecuniary accommodation from the barber, and studying human nature as developed in his customers.

There are odd customers in Kingsgate Street, Holborn – foreign gents and refugees. Such a cove my eagle eye detected in a man who entered the shop wearing a long black beard streaked with the snows of age, and who requested Poll to shave him clean. He was a sailor-man to look at; but his profile, David, might have been carved by a Grecian chisel out of an iceberg, and that steel grey eye of his might have struck a chill, even through a chink, into any heart less stout than beats behind the vest of Montague Tigg. The task of rasping so hirsute a customer seemed to sit heavy on the soul of Poll, and threatened to exhaust the resources of his limited establishment. The barber went forth to command, as I presume, a fresher strop, or more keenly tempered steel, and glittering cans of water heated to a fiercer heat. No sooner was the coast clear than the street-door opened, and my stranger was joined by a mantled form, that glided into Poll’s emporium. The new-comer doffed a swart sombrero, and disclosed historic features that were not unknown to the concealed observer – meaning me. Yes, David, that aquiline beak, that long and waxed moustache, that impassible mask of a face, I had seen them, Sir, conspicuous (though their owner be of alien and even hostile birth) among England’s special chivalry. The foremost he had charged on the Ides of April (I mean against the ungentlemanly Chartist throng) and in the storied lists of Eglinton. The new-comer, in short, was the nephew of him who ate his heart out in an English gaol (like our illustrious Chiv) – in fact, he was Prince Louis N – B – .

Gliding to the seat where, half-lathered, the more or less ancient Mariner awaited Poll’s return, the Prince muttered (in the French lingo, familiar to me from long exile in Boulogne):

“Hist, goes all well?”

“Magnificently, Sire!” says the other chap.

“Our passages taken?”

“Ay, and private cabins paid for to boot, in case of the storm’s inclemency.”

The Prince nodded and seemed pleased; then he asked anxiously,

“The Bird? You have been to Jamrach’s?”

“Pardon me, Sire,” says the man who was waiting to be shaved, “I can slip from your jesses no mercenary eagle. These limbs have yet the pith to climb and this heart the daring to venture to the airiest crag of Monte d’Oro, and I have ravished from his eyrie a true Corsican eagle to be the omen of our expedition. Wherever this eagle is your uncle’s legions will gather together.”

“’Tis well; and the gold?”

“Trust Monte Cristo!” says the bearded man; and then, David, begad! I knew I had them!

“We meet?”

“At Folkestone pier, 7.45, tidal train.”

“I shall be there without fail,” says the Prince, and sneaks out of the street-door just as Poll comes in with the extra soap and strop.

Well, David, to make it as short as I can, the man of the icy glance was clean-shaved at last, and the mother who bore him would not have known him as he looked in the glass when it was done. He chucked Poll a diamond worth about a million piastres, and, remarking that he would not trouble him for the change, he walked out. By this characteristic swagger, of course, he more than confirmed my belief that he was, indeed, the celebrated foreigner the Count of Monte Cristo; whose name and history even you must be acquainted with, though you may not be what I have heard my friend Chevy Slime call himself, “the most literary man alive.” A desperate follower of the star of Austerlitz from his youth, a martyr to the cause in the Château d’If, Monte Cristo has not deserted it now that he has come into his own – or anybody else’s.

Of course I was after him like a shot. He walked down Kingsgate Street and took a four-wheeler that was loitering at the corner. I followed on foot, escaping the notice of the police from the fact, made only too natural by Fortune’s cursed spite, that under the toga-like simplicity of Montague Tigg’s costume these minions merely guessed at a cab-tout.

Well, David, he led me a long chase. He got out of the four-wheeler (it was dark now) at the Travellers’, throwing the cabman a purse – of sequins, no doubt. At the door of the Travellers’ he entered a brougham; and, driving to the French Embassy in Albert Gate, he alighted, in different togs, quite the swell, and let himself in with his own latch-key.

In fact, Sir, this conspirator of barbers’ shops, this prisoner of the Château d’If, this climber of Corsican eyries, is to-day the French Minister accredited to the Court of St. James’s!

And now perhaps, David, you begin to see how the land lies, the Promised Land, the land where there is corn and milk and honey-dew. I hold those eminent and highly romantic parties in the hollow of my hand. A letter from me to M. Lecoq, of the Rue Jerusalem, and their little game is up, their eagle moults, the history of Europe is altered. But what good would all that do Montague Tigg? Will it so much as put that delightful coin, a golden sovereign, in the pocket of his nether garments? No, Tigg is no informer; a man who has charged at the head of his regiment on the coast of Africa is no vulgar spy. There is more to be got by making the Count pay through the nose, as we say; chanter, as the French say; “sing a song of sixpence” – to a golden tune.

But, as Fortune now uses me, I cannot personally approach his Excellency. Powdered menials would urge me from his portals. An advance, a small advance – say 30l.– is needed for preliminary expenses: for the charges of the clothier, the bootmaker, the hosier, the barber. Give me 30l. for the restoration of Tigg to the semblance of the Montagues, and with that sum I conquer millions. The diamonds of Monte Cristo, the ingots, the rubies, the golden crowns with the image and superscription of Pope Alexander VI. – all are mine: I mean are ours.

More, David; more, my premium tulip: we shall make the Count a richer man than ever he has been. We shall promote new companies, we shall put him on the board of directors. I see the prospectuses from afar.

UNIVERSAL INTERNATIONAL TREASURE RECOVERY COMPANY

Chairman

His Excellency the Comte de Monte Cristo. K.G., K.C.B., Knight of the Black Eagle.

Directors

Chevy Slime, Esq., Berkeley Square.

Montague Tigg, Esq., Park Lane.

M. Vautrin (Les Bagnes près de Toulon).

M. Jean Valjean.

The Chevalier Strong. (Would he come in?)

Hon. Secretary. – David Crimp, Esq.

Archæological Adviser. – Dr. Spiegelmann, Berlin.

Then the prospectus! Treasure-hunting too long left to individual and uneducated enterprise. Need of organised and instructed effort. Examples of treasure easily to be had. Grave of Alaric. Golden chain of Cuzco. Galleons of Vigo Bay. Loot of Delphi. Straits of Salamis. Advice of most distinguished foreign experts already secured. Paid-up capital, a 6 and as many 0’s as the resources of the printing establishment can command. The public will rush in by the myriad. And I am also sketching a

‘Disinterested Association for Securing the Rights of Foundlings,’ again with Monte Cristo in the chair. David, you have saved a few pounds; in the confidence of unofficial moments you have confessed as much (though not exactly how much) to me. Will you neglect one of those opportunities which only genius can discover, but which the humble capitalist can help to fructify? With thirty, nay, with twenty pounds, I can master this millionaire and tame this Earthly Providence. Behind us lies penury and squalor, before us glitters jewelled opulence. You will be at 1542 Park Lane to-morrow with the dibs? – Yours expectantly,

Montague Tigg.

From Mr. David Crimp to Montague Tigg, Esq

The Golden Balls, May 28.

Dear Mr. Tigg, – You always were full of your chaff, but you must have been drinking when you wrote all that cock-and-a-bull gammon. Thirty pounds! No; nor fifteen; nor as many pence. I never heard of the party you mention by the name of the Count of Monte Cristo; and as for the Prince, he’s as likely to be setting out for Boulogne with an eagle as you are to start a monkey and a barrel-organ in Jericho; or may be that’s the likeliest of the two. So stow your gammon, and spare your stamps, is my last word. – Yours respectfully to command,

D. Crimp.