Gallantry: Dizain des Fetes Galantes. James Branch Cabell
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estimable needs conform a little to the custom of his day, whether it be Caractacus painting himself sky-blue or Galileo on his knees at Santa Maria. And accordingly, many of my comedians will lie when it seems advisable, and will not haggle over a misdemeanor when there is anything to be gained by it; at times their virtues will get them what they want, and at times their vices, and at other times they will be neither punished nor rewarded; in fine, Madam, they will be just human beings stumbling through illogical lives with precisely that lack of common-sense which so pre-eminently distinguishes all our neighbors from ourselves.
For the life that moved in old Manuel of Poictesme finds hereinafter in his descendants, in these later Allonbys and Bulmers and Heleighs and Floyers, a new milieu to conform and curb that life in externes rather than in essentials. What this life made of chivalrous conditions has elsewhere been recorded: with its renewal in gallant circumstances, the stage is differently furnished and lighted, the costumes are dissimilar; but the comedy, I think, works toward the same dénouement, and certainly the protagonist remains unchanged. My protagonist is still the life of Manuel, as this life was perpetuated in his descendants; and my endeavor is (still) to show you what this life made (and omitted to make) of its tenancy of earth. 'Tis a drama enactable in any setting.
Yet the comedy of gallantry has its conventions. There must be quite invaluable papers to be stolen and juggled with; an involuntary marriage either threatened or consummated; elopements, highwaymen, and despatch-boxes; and a continual indulgence in soliloquy and eavesdropping. Everybody must pretend to be somebody else, and young girls, in particular, must go disguised as boys, amid much cut-and-thrust work, both ferric and verbal. For upon the whole, the comedy of gallantry tends to unfold itself in dialogue, and yet more dialogue, with just the notice of a change of scene or a brief stage direction inserted here and there. All these conventions, Madam, I observe.
A word more: the progress of an author who alternates, in turn, between fact and his private fancies (like unequal crutches) cannot in reason be undisfigured by false steps. Therefore it is judicious to confess, Madam, that more than once I have pieced the opulence of my subject with the poverty of my inventions. Indisputably, to thrust words into a dead man's mouth is in the ultimate as unpardonable as the axiomatic offence of stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if I have sometimes erred in my surmise at what Ormskirk or de Puysange or Louis de Soyecourt really said at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, Madam, less to malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; and the accomplished shade of Garendon, at least, I have not travestied, unless it were through some too prudent item of excision.
Remains but to subscribe myself—in the approved formula of dedicators—as,
MADAM,
Your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR.
THE PROLOGUE
SPOKEN BY LADY ALLONBY, WHO ENTERS IN A FLURRY
The author bade we come—Lud, I protest!— He bade me come—and I forget the rest. But 'tis no matter; he's an arrant fool That ever bade a woman speak by rule.
Besides, his Prologue was, at best, dull stuff,
And of dull writing we have, sure, enough.
A book will do when you've a vacant minute,
But, la! who cares what is, and isn't, in it?
And since I'm but the Prologue of a book,
What I've omitted all will overlook,
And owe me for it, too, some gratitude,
Seeing in reason it cannot be good
Whose author has as much but now confessed—
For, Who'd excel when few can make a test Betwixt indifferent writing and the best? He said but now.
And I:—La, why excel, When mediocrity does quite as well? 'Tis women buy the books—and read 'em, say, What time a person nods, en négligée, And in default of gossip, cards, or dance, Resolves t' incite a nap with some romance.
The fool replied in verse—I think he said
'Twas verses the ingenious Dryden made,
And trust 'twill save me from entire disgrace
To cite 'em in his foolish Prologue's place.
Yet, scattered here and there, I some behold, Who can discern the tinsel from the gold; To these he writes; and if by them allowed, 'Tis their prerogative to rule the crowd, For he more fears, like, a presuming man, Their votes who cannot judge, than theirs can.
I
SIMON'S HOUR
As Played at Stornoway Crag, March 25, 1750
"You're a woman—one to whom Heaven gave beauty, when it grafted roses on a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at you is sunk. You were all white, a sheet of lovely spotless paper, when you first were born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill."
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
LORD ROKESLE, a loose-living, Impoverished nobleman, and loves Lady
Allonby.
SIMON ORTS, Vicar of Heriz Magna, a debauched fellow, and Rokesle's creature.
PUNSHON, servant to Rokesle.
LADY ALLONBY, a pleasure-loving, luxurious woman, a widow, and rich.
SCENE
The Mancini Chamber at Stornoway Crag, on Usk.
SIMON'S HOUR
PROEM:—The Age and a Product of It
We begin at a time when George the Second was permitting Ormskirk and the Pelhams to govern England, and the Jacobites had not yet ceased to hope for another Stuart Restoration, and Mr. Washington was a promising young surveyor in the most loyal colony of Virginia; when abroad the Marquise de Pompadour ruled France and all its appurtenances, and the King of Prussia and the Empress Maria Theresa had, between them, set entire Europe by the ears; when at home the ladies, if rumor may be credited, were less unapproachable than their hoop-petticoats caused them to appear, [Footnote: "Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail, Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale."] and gentlemen wore swords, and some of the more reckless bloods were daringly beginning to discard the Ramillie-tie and the pigtail for their own hair; when politeness was obligatory, and morality a matter of taste, and when well-bred people went about the day's work with an ample leisure and very few scruples. In fine, we begin toward the end of March, in the year 1750, when Lady Allonby and her brother, Mr. Henry Heleigh, of Trevor's Folly, were the guests of Lord Rokesle, at Stornoway Crag, on Usk.
As any person of ton could have informed you, Anastasia Allonby was the widow (by his second marriage) of Lord Stephen Allonby, the Marquis of Falmouth's younger brother; and it was conceded by the most sedate that Lord Stephen's widow, in consideration of her liberal jointure, possessed inordinate comeliness.
She was tall for a woman. Her hair, to-night unpowdered, had the color of amber and something, too, of its glow; her eyes, though not profound, were large and in hue varied, as the light fell or her emotions shifted, through a wide gamut of blue shades. But it was her mouth you remembered: the fulness and brevity of it, the deep indentation