 | CHAPTER XX.
CAKES AND ALE. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts |  |
20. CHAPTER XX.
CAKES AND ALE.
SOME happy, but ludicrous people are romantic all
their lives; others, like myself for instance, are only
romantic when they are in love. Just now I was
uncommonly subject to my imagination, and might have been
led by it to almost any extremity, nice or naughty. I had
been reading that singular autobiography, that unparalleled
narrative of crime and criminals, the Memoirs of Vidocq, the
famous agent of the French secret police; and the artful
dodges by which he detected and entrapped villains, the
bloodhound scent, by which he followed them even into the
caverns of their purposes, had strongly excited my fancy. It
occurred to me that I would be a Vidocq to Somerville, and
beguile that pickpocket of reputations into some predicament
where his rascality would become palpable, or he would himself
confess it. My starting conception was to play the
eavesdropper; but in the first place this was a disagreeably
nasty character to assume, even for good ends; and in the
second I had already watched him, half unconsciously, for a
month or more without any practical result. I had heard
compromising things from him, indeed, but others had not
heard them with me, and so they were not evidence. At
last, after having sifted my brains to the bottom, and given
myself more worry than it would have cost Vidocq to circumvent
a galley-load of ruffians, I devised a dirty sort of
pit, by no means bottomless, into which I hoped to entice my
about this my masterpiece of subtlety. It was nothing but the
simple, clumsy, vulgar idea of getting Somerville drunk, and
then trying to make him babble. I know that I shall obtain
no mercy from my total-abstinence reader, and I am not so
uninformed of the nature of my transgression as to plead
with him for any; but to all less virtuous persons I stretch
out deprecating hands, imploring them to remember how
young I was, and what a villain this man was, and what
he had made me suffer, as well as others who were dear
to me.
My plot once formed, I became very polite to Somerville
in order to disarm his suspicions. An opponent is always
beaten the easiest when you bring his own favorite weapon
to bear upon him; if you can out-compliment a flatterer, or
out-bluster a bully, you gain a seeming of advantage, which
wins you the game in the first flush of your adversary's perplexity.
It will be observed that Shakespeare has plagiarized
this idea from me and embodied it in his Taming of the
Shrew. From how many of us moderns has not that man
plagiarized! Somerville was not easily outdone in graciousness;
he always responded readily and melodiously to the
touch of civility; and thus for some days we made a duet of
politeness which was ravishing to the ear; or, to change the
figure, we commingled like two purling rivers of “soft sawder.”
Fortune soon favored my plot by sending off the Westervelts
to eat the birthday dinner of Westervelt senior, and by
inspiring Cousin Jule to take their escort down to New York
for the purpose of a shopping foray. The two Van Leers,
Hunter, and Somerville were left to keep bachelor's hall at
Seacliff. Now I could give my debauch without much risk
that any excesses which might result from it would come
under the eyes or reach the ears of that young person whose
good opinion I still coveted.
“Mr. Somerville,” said I, “I owe you and your friends
have helped me kill my greatest enemy, Time. I never
expect to repay you, but I have hit on an awkward way of
showing my sense of the obligation. Suppose, gentlemen,
you all take dinner with me at the Rockford Hotel to-morrow.”
Somerville accepted with that air of frank gratitude which
was so charming in him. The Van Leers and Hunter accepted
also, each after his fashion; the brothers in their undemonstrative,
heavy way,—not exactly stony,—more like
timber; Hunter with a jump into the air and a cock-a-doodle-doo
of defiance for my champagne bottles.
I rode over to Rockford, and bespoke a five o'clock dinner
of birds and whatever other delicacies were in season.
The appointed hour came, and we found ourselves at table.
The bill of fare consisted of soup, trout, bass, partridges,
woodcock, squirrels, all the vegetables of Yankeedom, and
a dessert of such things as one generally finds far away from
pavements. As for the wine, I had attended to that myself,
and felt sure that I could not be left adry.
“Claret and champagne!” exclaimed Hunter, glancing at
my platoon of bottles. “Those are drinks to offer to a gentleman.
May the blessing of Bacchus abide with you, Fitz
Hugh! May the immortal gods be your most humble servants!”
“Some of them are hard masters,” observed Somerville.
“That rum old Bacchus, for example,” added Henry Van
Leer. “Don't he lay it on sometimes!”
“Henry, you are a blasphemer,” cried Hunter, who seemed
to get lively on the mere smell of the corks. “Henry, I am
afraid you are not a religious man. How dare a mortal utter
such a sentiment in the face of a gold seal! Henry, remember
that you may die at any moment. By the way, couldn't
a fellow get up a pun on gold seals and seal fishing? Fitz
Hugh, the soup is excellent. I will propose the landlord for
an honorary member of our P. B. society at college. No
claret. Mr. Somerville, what is your opinion of eating and
drinking?”
Hunter talked beyond himself when he was happy, and
two glasses made him happy. Four were enough for his susceptible
brain, and the sixth became to him that fearful though
diminutive enemy, that little thing which has done so great
harm in the world, a drop too much. I looked at him with
a presentiment of remorse as I thought how soon he would
be under my table.
“I have the greatest respect for eaters and drinkers,” said
Somerville. “In the first place, there are so many of them!
Vox populi, vox Dei. You are quite right, Mr. Hunter, in
demanding reverence for the things and men of the table.
The gastronomist has never received justice from mankind
except in France; and the consequence is that the French
are the most refined people in the world. One of the blessedest
results of the French revolutions is that they dispense
such a number of good cooks throughout other countries. A
good cook, gentlemen, is a philanthropist; he is a missionary
of digestion, happiness, and virtue; and the gastronomist is
his patron, his Mæcenas. But I beg you, Mr. Hunter, as
you value your reputation for politeness and savoir vivre, not
to confound the gastronomist with the glutton. The glutton
has no taste, but simply a capacity for containing. All his
acquaintance with the mysteries of the table amounts to
knowing the solids from the fluids. Anything that goes down
answers his brute purpose. Then there is the unfortunate
practical eater, who supposes that we eat to live, and who
judges of a dinner not so much while he tastes it as when
he comes to digest it. Compared with such commonplace,
Gradgrind people as these, the gastronomist is an artist, a
poet. I wish there was a nation of epicures to conquer the
world and teach it cookery, as the Greeks taught it art,
and the Romans law. Gentlemen, I propose the gastronomist
as an object of our reverential meditation.”
Hunter's mouth had been open and his tongue trembling
for some seconds. In general this youth was a miserably
poor listener, granting small appreciation to the wit or wisdom
of others, and only hearing you so far as you afforded him
opportunity for what he considered a brilliant reply. But
Somerville had put a bit in his jaw, and could hold him to
silence as long as he chose to speak; for it is a matter of
necessity with the would-be scapegrace and man of the world
that he should fall down before the real one and worship
him; the instinct is one of his moral vitals, and he cannot be
supposed to exist without it. Hunter drank the toast, and
then, bowing pointedly to Somerville, offered another.
“To the gastronomist of conversation!”
“A nice compliment and a tolerable figure; but somehow
I have a vague sensation that I have heard it from you
before; perhaps in some former state of existence, now,”
responded Somerville, with that combined irony of thought
and flattery of smile which I had often noticed in him.
“You know, my friend, that the better a remark is, the less
you can repeat it; while, the more commonplace it is, the
more allowable is iteration. You may say, `Fine morning'
—`Beautiful weather,' day after day, without being considered
a bore. But throw out a truly good joke, and you
must never utter it again, at least not in the same company.”
“Gentlemen,” said Hunter, smiling joyously around the
table, “I call on you to reprove Mr. Somerville for despising
my poverty out of the midst of his abundance.”
The today absolutely purred under his rebuke; as pleased
as Boswell when badgered by the great lexicographer; as
submissive as a good dog when kicked by his master. Robert
Van Leer was far from being in so heavenly a humor.
Disgusted, perhaps, with Hunter's sycophancy, and at all
events disliking the object of it, he would not trouble himself
to restrain a growl.
“I say, I'd never brag of being a gourmy,” he remarked.
nice dish and eat it!”
“Please to consider the Protean nature of vanity, Robert,”
observed Somerville. “It takes all sorts of whimsical
shapes. Why, I have known people to boast of their imperfections,
such as not caring a rush for scenery, not knowing
one tune from another, &c.”
“Oh—yes,” returned Bob, who felt himself hit, but did not
know how to retaliate.
“The fact is, that every man is proud of being himself,” I
remarked, by way of giving the subject generality and putting
a stop to these personal applications.
“Very true and a very proper feeling,” said Somerville.
“Every man has reason to thank God that he is not as other
men; not in the sense of the Pharisee, because he is better;
simply because he is different. Nature has been careful to
give each of us a distinct character, and it is nothing more
than common gratitude and common sense to be proud of it
and keep it intact. I should hate to be a twin. Twinship
demolishes one's apparent individuality so disgracefully! I
believe that every man hates to have a namesake about him.
In general we like to be known as ourselves, and valued for
our own peculiarities. Nature has implanted the feeling universally,
and it is a good feeling to have. Show me an
original, an eccentric, and I will show you a more natural
man than you can find among the lackeys of conventionalism.
Why, I would rather be a remarkable blockhead than be
indistinguishable from my sensible, ordinary neighbors.”
Robert was vaguely troubled; he always had an uneasy
sense that he was a slow fellow; he felt just now that his
late attack had not placed Somerville at a disadvantage; he
feared that he had been hit somewhere without being sensible
of it; and so, to defend himself, he defined his position.
“Well,” he says, sturdily, “I consider myself just about as
sharp as the average; no sharper, but just as sharp.”
“My dear friend, you flatter us,” observed Somerville,
of wine with you.”
I know that the remark puzzled Robert at the time, and I
doubt if he ever decided whether it was irony or compliment.
We were far along in the courses by this time, for I pass
over much of our conversation. I drank as little as might
be, but pushed the bottles about vigorously, and engaged my
guests in those vinous comparisons of brands and vintages,
which so few men esteem odious until the next morning.
Somerville took his liquor without stint, but was not at all
the worse for it. From course to course, from bottle to bottle,
I watched him sedulously, though cautiously, without discovering
that his wits wandered, that his tongue tripped, or that
his eye had a more humid sparkle than usual. I did not
despair, however, but encouraging myself with the words of
the heroic Taylor, “A little more grape,” continued to bring
up my bacchanalian artillery. The Van Leers strove on, like
the two Ajaxes, side by side, stubborn, victorious. Perhaps
it might be set down as a general rule, that timber heads are
not easily mellowed and that the fewer ideas a man has, the
less likely they are to be muddled by alcohol. Hunter
fought as adventurous a battle as any of them, but with far
inferior success. The claret staggered him; the first glass
of champagne penetrated a vital part; and by the time we
reached the dessert he lost his sense of decency and began
to tell vulgar stories.
“Capital, my dear friend,” said Somerville. “Very brilliant
in its way, that was; but then, don't you see that you
are discouraging the rest of us? I have always noticed that
fat or profane stories kill conversation. After such a piece
of voluptuousness as that, for instance, there is a ridiculous
but natural feeling in the company, that to offer anything of
a modest nature would be to insure ill-success. It is like
hock after brandy; nobody can taste it. So now, be modest,
my good fellow, and suffer us to be modest.”
“All right, Somerville,” maundered Hunter. “But I wish
Junes!”
“But I say, I think swearing helps out a thing sometimes,”
remarked Henry Van Leer.
“A poor thing, yes; but not a good one,” said Somerville.
“A really good thing needs nothing but a clear, concise statement
in decent English to make it tell.”
“Oh, but suppose a feller hasn't got the gift of the gab.”
“Well, let him acquire it. Let him, to begin with, get rid
of such conversational awkwardnesses as profanity and vulgarity.
I feel positive that in general the hardest swearer is
the poorest talker, intellect being equal. He depends chiefly
on a list of stupid oaths to give his jokes point. Now let him
quit all that sort of thing; let him throw aside his unmeaning
balderdash of damns, and allow his mother-tongue a fair
chance; and, depend upon it, he will soon have a decorous
vocabulary sufficient for any man's social necessities. His
words will represent ideas; they will be really vigorous,
sharp-edged, and picturesque; and not, like the language of
beasts, mere physical clamor. I believe it is conceded that
in literature nothing is witty which depends for its point upon
blasphemy. The cleverest talkers that I know of swear not
at all.”
It was all admirable; it was all according to Somerville's
usual practice; but I still believed that the man was secretly
given to cakes and ale.
“Well, I've been to Washington,” observed Van Leer.
“Pretty much all the Congressmen swear.”
“A set of vulgar snobs,” said Somerville. “Three quarters
of them have neither talent nor breeding; they are just
fit to lead in a Tammany caucus; they are the merest roarers
and wire-pullers.”
“I remonshrate, Somerville,” exclaimed Hunter, with that
pathetic solemnity which Nature vouchsafes to man when he
is half drunk. “I beg your pardon for correcting you, my
eshteemed friend. But I love my country; I reshpect the
and Adams; I reshpect Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.
Daniel Webster was the greatest orator that ever lived. I
heard him shpeak when he addreshed our fellahs when I was
a Fresh.”
“Now stop that, Hunter,” put in Robert. “That was
when I was in college. Webster died the year before you
entered.”
“No he didn't,” asseverated Hunter. “I entered before
him. I was there when he entered,—I mean when he shpoke.
I tell you, fellahs, I've shaken hands with mosht all our big-bugs,
and I reshpect 'em. I can't bear to hear even my
eshteemed friend Mr. Somerville talk dishreshpectfully.”
“I apologize, Hunter,” smiled Somerville. “I ought to
have remembered, when I spoke of Congress, that you are
behind the scenes.”
The Van Leer throats trumpeted forth a gust of satiric
laughter, as unfeeling as a northeaster howling over a shipwreck.
Hunter, even when sober, had such a mania for
representing himself as generally known, and for indulging
in personal reminiscences of distinguished characters, extending
even to things which happened before his birth, that,
judging him by his own stories, you would have supposed
him to be sixty or eighty years old, if not an outright centenarian.
He went on with his antiquarian recollections, and
presently described Webster as being shix feet and a half
high in his shtockings feet. “What will you bet on it?”
he asked, looking round the table domineeringly.
“You forget, Hunter; you mean shixteen feet and a half,”
roared Henry Van Leer, mimicking the poor young fellow's
stammering speech.
“Mr. Hunter is quite correct, in one light,” observed Somerville.
“We do instinctively associate the ideas of mental
and physical greatness. I have myself seen Webster when
he seemed to be seven feet high. I have seen Rachel look
loftier still. Every kind of sublimity produces this same illusion.
I have heard it a dozen times; I am as disgracefully ignorant
of the notes as if I were a Yahoo; but I am sensible to the
exaltation of music, as I am to the exaltation of wine, although
I cannot produce it. I tell you that I have heard strains in
the Grand Opera of Paris, and many other places, that made
me feel as if I were a hundred feet high,—as if I could rise
up and stick my head through the roof,—as if I were lofty
enough to have snow on my summits. Only two or three
notes, perhaps, but in an instant I was above the atmosphere
and could hardly breathe.”
Somerville had already drunk two bottles, and yet he could
talk thus rationally, if I may not say brilliantly. There
seemed to be little hope indeed of bringing him to that friendly
mellowness, that confidential irrationality, which lets out the
inner man in a full stream. I would have pressed him to
drink deeper, but in order to do that effectually, it was necessary
that I should myself imbibe recklessly; and the champagne
had already mounted to my head, prudently as I had
tippled. It was pretty clear that, whatever else he might be,
he was no drunkard, chiefly, perhaps, from a difficulty in
holding enough to disorder him. As a last resource, I turned
the conversation on women, hoping that he might himself
bring it around to the ladies of Seacliff, and utter some indiscretion
which would open the eyes of my companions to the
nature of his objects in the Westervelt family. It may be
that it was a clever idea, but it succeeded exactly as ill as if
it had been a stupid one.
“What is your opinion of this Woman's Rights movement?”
was my cunning inquiry.
“Absurd! The only essential woman's rights are the
rites of marriage. If she gets those, she asks no other. It
is chiefly old maids and females under the ban of ugliness
who are carried away by this shrieking. Don't you see why?
They want revenge on the men for not offering themselves.
The whole thing has been arranged very properly by Providence.
the women must bear the little ones. So it always has been,
and so it always will be. Why, the superiority of manhood
is evident in the mere brute circumstance of avoirdupois.
Wouter Van Twiller would be quite up to the question. Do
you remember his ingenious method of settling the accounts
of two litigious tradesmen by weighing their books against
each other? Well, put that rule to work on our modern
puzzle. Suppose there are seven million grown men in this
country, and the same number of women. Now estimate
each man at one hundred and forty-six pounds, or fourteen
men to the ton, and you will have a gross masculine avoirdupois
of about five hundred thousand tons. Estimating the
women at one hundred and twenty-two pounds each, or
eighteen to the ton, and you have only three hundred and
eighty-eight thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight tons of
female flesh. Can't a blind man see that the greater tonnage
ought to make the smaller kick the beam? Why should
Nature put so much more material into man, if he was not to
lead? Of course, elephants, oxen, and so forth are excluded
from this argument, as they have no souls. Gentlemen,
here's to the memory of Wouter Van Twiller! Hunter, did
you happen to know him?”
“Who?” inquired Hunter, solemnly. “Can't say. What
shoshiety?”
The poor youth was by this time so far muddled, that, like
Brahma in his eternal calm, past, present, and future were all
one to him. He made a last effort now to shake off the evil
genius which had risen from the green, slender-necked bottle
at his elbow, and begun, Comus-like, to change him to a beast.
Starting up resolutely, he took several turns about the room
with the peculiar gait, composed of a skip and a shamble,
which characterizes a calf in that early period of his infancy
during which he is known to a certain order of naturalists as
a “staggering bob.”
“Excuse me, fellahs,” said he. “Don't notish me. I want
rush through another bottle eashily. Oh—h, we're Junes!
jaw—ly Junes!”
“Come, Hunter! don't sing; it goes to the head,” observed
Henry Van Leer, winking.
“I believe you, my boy,” returned the unfortunate. “I
feel a little queer a'ready. I guessh I'd better lie down.”
And down he laid himself, deliberately, just where he was,
first on his elbow, then on his back, sick, white and helpless.
“Ah! that is a sign that he has drunk too much,” observed
Somerville, calmly surveying the defunct. “I think,
Mr. Fitz Hugh, that he had better be put to bed.”
I rang the bell and ordered two porters and a bedroom.
The Jolly June was gently borne away to a pillowy sanctuary,
and left to that awful sleep which is one of the rewards of
the drunkard. The sight of Hunter's overthrow, combined
with a certain sense of rotation which came upon me when I
shut my eyes, frightened me now about myself; and calling a
waiter, I asked him if he could furnish us with some café
noir.
“Some what?” inquired the young man, who did not understand
the lingo of France.
“Café noir,—black coffee,” I explained.
“Black coffee!! You mean black tea, don't you?” said
he, evidently impressed with the idea that I was drunk.
No man likes to have this charge brought against him,
especially when there is some color for it; and accordingly
I proceeded to state in my most rational manner that café
noir was strong coffee without milk. In a few minutes we
had a huge pot-full of this mild antidote to wine, smoking
under our noses. Somerville resumed the subject of woman,
and I listened patiently, throwing in an insidious leading
question now and then, but without eliciting from him a
single remark which had a decided aroma of bad morals.
“Women can never govern; they have no administrative
talent,” he went on in his unobtrusively dictatorial style.
their adult inferiors. A merchant will employ a dozen
clerks, and as many porters, and never speak of trouble with
them, while his wife is perpetually fretting about the insubordination
of her three female domestics. (Pretty domestics
they are, who cannot be in the least domesticated, if the
word means taming.) Every lone woman at the South is
completely run over by her own niggers, her personal chattels,
whom she can whip or sell as she chooses. Let our
strong-minded angels give good proof of their administrative
abilities in the nursery and kitchen, before they demand the
Secretaryship of the Interior, or the middle seat of the Supreme
Court. For my part, I believe that women are a
weak set;—I know they are. They are easily flattered,
easily fooled by sophistry. Aaron Burr was quite right in
declaring that they craved flattery, and that every gentleman
ought to treat them to it. Aaron Burr was a great man.
The world has been hard upon him, when it would have done
better to boast of him. I shouldn't feel worthy to untie the
shoes of Aaron Burr. Of all men I owe him most, although
I never saw him. His manners, his conversation, have done
more to form me than any other influence which I can name.
Of course, I do not approve his libertine ideas,” he added,
while a cold sneer glittered for a moment on his face, and
then melted away in its prevailing blandness.
This was the style of his conversation that evening, and
generally. It was a mixture of truth and error, but it had
not the faintest leaven of drunkenness or dissoluteness.
We lighted our cigars as dusk came on, and thus my conspiracy
ended in smoke. The innocent Hunter had fallen
its only victim, and happily the innocent Hunter was one of
those enthusiastic natures who look upon inebriety as a proof
of the highest manliness.
| CHAPTER XX.
CAKES AND ALE. Seacliff, or, The mystery of the Westervelts | |