Imprudent Lady (15 page)

“Have you subscribed to it, Uncle?"

“Indeed I have. I have been letting up on my reading a bit lately, but there is nothing like books when you come down to it. I daresay all the titles would be listed there, and a word or two to tell you about them. I shall certainly put a book in Dr. Ashington's hand when I paint him. What a lot of books the man reads. He is worn to the bone with them."

Two days later, the day of Dr. Ashington's dinner party, the monthly copy of
Blackwood's Magazine
was published and the Doctor personally brought a copy to Prudence. He caught her at work with her cap off and looked a little surprised. “Well, Miss Mallow,” he said, “I have caught you
en dishabille.
But we are old friends now, and you needn't blush at my finding you so."

She looked questioningly at him, and he stood staring at her pretty little face, as he found it. “You are without your cap,” he chided.

“Oh, yes, I sometimes work without it.” Especially when I am expecting Lord Dammler, she thought. He hadn't been to see her in several days.

“I shall leave the door open,” he said, carefully opening the door wide behind him. Prudence felt he was surprised that she didn't call her mother to chaperone them. Strange, even with the door open, the place seemed stuffy today.

“You see what I have here?” he asked, handing her the magazine. “Your name in print."

She accepted it and thanked him.

“I came to bring it to you, and to tell you there is no need for you to have your uncle's carriage wait for you this evening, or return for you.
I
will be happy to conduct you home after the evening is over. You will hear some good talk. Coleridge is an interesting speaker, and Dammler makes a good joke."

“Is Dammler coming?” she asked. Not having seen him lately, she had not heard this before.

“He did not send in an acceptance until yesterday. He is a bit careless of the formalities, I fear. I should have been out in my numbers had he not accepted, but someone could always be found at the last minute. There are many writers who would be happy to accept a last-minute invitation from me, and would not feel ill-used to do so."

“I am sure they would be happy to come."

“I shall leave you in peace to peruse the article. Until tonight then. I quite look forward to having you at my table."

His smile was warmer than formerly, and Prudence had a sinking feeling that there was some significance to all these marks of attention the great man was bestowing on her. But she was curious to see how the same words she had read in handwriting looked in print, and soon forgot it. She read the whole thing again, and set it aside with not a smile, but not a frown either.

In his rooms in the Albany, Dammler was similarly occupied in reading his copy of the review. He read his own first, shrugged his shoulders and turned to Miss Mallow's. He began with a smile that rapidly faded, then became a frown. His indignation turned to wrath as he read, and when he flung it aside he said, “The swine!” in a contemptuous voice.

He was in a foul mood when he left for Ashington's, and his mood did not improve to find Prudence there before him, seated between Ashington and his mother, and being treated as quite a member of the family. Nor did she seem the least incensed at the carving Ashington had given her work, but was smiling agreeably and hanging on the old fool's every word, as if he were Solomon, spouting off some words of wisdom. The final straw was that she wore her damned cap, and a grandmother's gown that made her look forty. She was fixing herself up to appeal to that great pretentious ass of an Ashington. He wanted to shake her.

“Ah, Lord Dammler, we are just discussing the latest issue of
Blackwood's,
” the host said, making him welcome.

“Can we not find a more interesting subject?” Dammler asked with a charming smile and a bow to all the assembled company. He was the last to arrive.

Ashington's eyes narrowed at this remark, and Prudence's widened. “It cannot be of interest to the other writers among us—and
non-writers,"
he added, acknowledging Mrs. Ashington and a Mr. Pithy, neither of whom was in the field of writing. There was another woman present to whom no one introduced him.

“I hope Mr. Coleridge and Miss Burney are broad-minded enough to be interested in writing other than their own,” Ashington said in reply.

“Do you?” Dammler asked, and took up the last spare seat in the room. “You expect too much of people, Doctor. One would not have thought from your writing that you expected the ladies to be interested in anything but food and frocks."

“Oh, more than that, Dammler. You are too hard on me. They may legitimately lay claim to an interest in society and human relationships. I fancy they know as much about that as any of us."

“A good deal more than some of us,” Dammler replied haughtily. “But as you are speaking of the magazine, let us hear what Miss Mallow thought of her review."

“I was pleased with it,” she answered promptly.

“Very complimentary,” Miss Burney took it up. “You were quite right in pointing out her craftsmanship, Dr. Ashington. Certainly Miss Mallow has mastered her craft remarkably well for such a young writer.” She saw she had been too hasty in cutting Miss Mallow, and had full intention of taking her up again.

“That would be just praise for a good carpenter,” Dammler parried, “but Miss Mallow does not deal in wood, fashioning tables and chairs. Craftsmanship in a writer is the polish on the diamond. You forget the quality of the stone, Doctor."

“I disagree with you, Dammler,” Coleridge spoke out in stentorian tones, looking very like a statue with his egg-shaped head and Grecian nose. “Craftsmanship is all in a writer.
My
subject matter has been considered odd by some, but the manner of writing has always given me a good audience."

“It is more important in a poet. Poetry must be musical, lyrical, for the truth of the matter is we aren't saying anything of much import, but a serious novelist has a point to make, and if the point is well taken, the craftsmanship is the icing on the cake."

“But a
female
writer is not working with serious ideas, but merely a story,” Ashington pointed out.

“What, no
theme?"
Dammler asked, quizzing Prudence, who lowered her brows at him, with a face like a thunder cloud.

Observing this, he behaved civilly for a short space, until he happened to glance over and see Ashington patting Miss Mallow's hand, and she not scolding him as she ought for his patronising gall, but accepting it calmly. He arose abruptly, just as Mr. Pithy was about to impart to him his views on the latest session of Parliament, and walked over to Prudence. “I haven't managed to find out from you what you thought of my first act, Prudence,” he said, casually throwing in her first name, as he never did but when they were alone. “So odd the way the chairs are set up in this room, as though the company were not meant to converse except in little clusters."

“I was about to see if dinner is ready,” Ashington said, and arose with a cool glance at the interruption. “I believe
this
is the seat you want, is it not, milord?"

“How discerning of you, Doctor,” he smiled icily, and sat down.

“My opinion of your
first act
upon entering this room, Dammler, and every act that has followed it, is just what you are about to hear. What has gotten into you tonight?"

“I referred to Shilla and the Mogul."

“I know what
you
referred to, and I trust you read me as clearly."

“What a boring party this promises to be.” He looked around the room with disdain, not answering her question. “Coleridge waiting for a chance to give us all a lecture on his new literary philosophy that is now twenty years old, and that long-nosed Burney toadying to anyone she thinks might do her any good. And as to you and Ashington..."

“Be quiet. His mother will hear you."

“I don't care who hears me. I won't have you fawning on him in this manner. It's disgusting!"

Fortunately, dinner was called. Ashington made straight for Miss Mallow and took her arm, while Dammler looked on, seething, and offered his arm to the crippled mother. Mr. Pithy was required to bolster her up on the other side, which left a Miss Gimble, who appeared to be a deaf-mute relation of the family, to enter unescorted.

Conversation at the table began auspiciously enough with Coleridge entering on a longish tale of how he and Wordsworth had come to hit on their idea of writing in a more modern, everyday manner than had been fashionable when they began to write. He was roundly applauded by Miss Burney, who evened out her praise by mentioning that Dammler had taken it a step further in his
Cantos from Abroad.

But from there, the party disintegrated. Ashington, a confirmed classicist who acknowledged other writing only under duress from his colleagues, stated that he did not like to see form abandoned so entirely as it was by the modem poets.

“If you refer to myself,” Dammler took him up, “it cannot have escaped your notice that I write in the classical rhymed couplet of Pope."

“We are comparing apples and oranges,” Ashington objected. “Pope was a philosopher, a scholar. His theme was classic. A very serious writer, he did not tell wild tales of imaginary trips around the world."

“
Bad
apples and oranges you mean?” Dammler asked with a raised brow. “It is news to me that my trip around the world was an illusion. I was quite convinced it took place, and have the scars to prove it."

“As to illusion,” Coleridge mercifully interrupted, to regale them with his writing of the “Kubla Kahn” while under the influence of opium. A discussion of opium in all its uses and abuses followed, to get them over the first course.

The second course brought fresh problems. Ashington was at pains to select some particularly fine prawns for Miss Mallow and place them tenderly on her plate. Observing him, Dammler was at it again, but more obliquely this time. “What do you think of this fellow Shelley?” he asked, knowing the name was anathema to the doctor.

“He is a scoundrel and a knave,” Ashington charged bluntly. “He should be run out of the country, or locked up. To be seducing innocent young women and preaching atheism and anarchy ... I suppose
you
approve of him, my lord?"

“I like him excessively,” Dammler agreed, smiling in anticipation.

“What is it you like so much, his defiance of the existence of God, or his embracing free love?"

“Of
those
two, his atheism, of course. I am an atheist myself, thank God.” There was a satirical gleam in his one flashing eye.

Prudence gasped, and Miss Burney emitted one sharp hoot of laughter. The rest of the audience was stunned into a moment's silence.

“You have just contradicted yourself,” Ashington pointed out when he recovered from his shock.

“How clever of you to have noticed it
already,"
Dammler laughed. “But I spoke of him as a poet, whose morals are nothing to any of us. It is his odes I particularly admire. In poetry,
though the same does not hold true for a novel,
the mastery of craft is important. He is a true poet."

Ashington reined in his temper, and relief came again from Coleridge, who set his posture to a good lecturing pose for a prolonged expounding on the matter. From there, he proceeded to air another of his views, having to do with the idea that Shakespeare hadn't written a word of his own plays. He had delivered a series of lectures on Shakespeare and Milton to the Philosophical Society and was eager to repeat them. “It is clear from his background the man could not possibly have written them,” he propounded. “Look at who he was—a deer poacher, a profligate, an
idiot."

“What leads you to suppose he was an
idiot?"
Dammler drawled in his affected voice.

Interruptions were not welcome when Mr. Coleridge was lecturing. He scowled and continued, “Bacon, possibly, or Marlowe may have written such things..."

“Certainly Bacon was an idiot,” Dammler interrupted again. “Put a deal of faith in the philosopher's stone. Spent years studying it. And as to profligacy, Donne, you know, was no angel—his sermons were to the contrary—nor Thomas Aquinas nor St. Paul, nor any of the great writers."

“Your adherence to the principle of profligacy is pretty well known, Lord Dammler,” Ashington said, with a winning smile to Prudence, “but one may be a profligate without being a poet, and a poet without being a profligate."

“Or one may be both, like William Shakespeare."

“Shakespeare
did not write
the plays attributed to him!” Coleridge resumed. “As I said in my lectures in 1811."

“And have repeated
so often
since,” Dammler added.

Coleridge stared, as at a worm. “Well, it is generally acknowledged among intellectuals that he was incapable of writing anything of the sort."

“Have you been speaking to some intellectuals?” Dammler asked in a bland manner. There was an uneasy pause before Dammler went on,
"'Repetitio est mater studiorum,'
as we scholars say. Shall I translate for the ladies? ‘Repetition is the mother of learning.’ If Mr. Coleridge tells us often enough the works of Shakespeare were not written by the author, but by some mysterious syndicate too ashamed to own up to their writing of the greatest masterpieces in the English language, we shall all learn it. Very well then, they were not written by Mr. Shakespeare, but by some other gentleman who happened to have the same name."

Prudence had to suppress a smile, but there were heavy frowns from the literary gentlemen present, and she soon turned serious.

“As to their being the greatest things ever written,” Coleridge went on with his mangled lecture, “I firmly believe Milton stands head and shoulders above Shakespeare."

“That old trump?” Dammler asked disparagingly. “He was a Puritanical sham."

“You confuse his personal life with his works,” Coleridge said.

“Not an uncommon error.
Some
confuse
Shakespeare's
personal life with his works."

"Whoever
wrote the plays,” Fanny Burney intervened, “he did a marvelous job. Did you see Kean's
King Lear?"
She managed to divert the irate gentlemen, and peace reigned till the meal was over.