Imprudent Lady

Chapter 11

On Sunday, Prudence went to tea and met Mrs. Ashington, an invalid, half crippled, who obviously doted on her clever son.

“Lawrence tells me you are a writer,” the woman said in awed accents, though in her position she must surely have met many writers.

“Yes, ma’am, I write novels.”

“Very good ones,” Dr. Ashington added. “Very good indeed for a woman. I shall bring Miss Mallow’s works home for you to read, Mama. You like to read a good lady’s book.”

“Oh, yes, I read all Miss Burney’s books. Such nice stories, and Hannah More’s. Lawrence has written a very good piece about you, Miss Mallow. I copied it out for him. He says you write very well. Quite complimentary.”

“Perhaps Miss Mallow would like to scan the article before it goes in for publication,” Ashington suggested. Before he took her home, he gave her his own copy, and as soon as it was possible she read it with great eagerness.

There was not a single word of abuse in it, yet when she put it down, she was disappointed. It sounded as though he were reviewing books for children. The whole tone was condescending. She wrote “very well for a lady,” “did not concern herself with the serious problems of society,” “had a knack for turning a telling phrase,” “stuck to what she knew and did so well,” and “was a careful craftsman.” Had she been reading the article without knowing herself the subject, she would not have been tempted to run out and buy the books. She felt a bit dispirited. She gave it to her mama and Clarence to look over, and they expressed a view exactly contrary to hers. They were delighted with the criticism, and congratulated her on her good luck in being brought to public attention.

She was talked around to thinking she was fortunate. She had expected too much. She knew her canvas to be small, that point was well taken. To a learned man like Dr. Ashington, her stories must indeed seem childish. Any lingering sense of pique she felt against the Doctor was banished when he called to pick up his copy a day later and invited her to a dinner party. Coleridge would be there, and Miss Burney, he told her.

“It is time you met the other writers of your generation. One cannot write in a vacuum.”

“I have met Miss Burney,” she replied.

“Indeed?” He did not appear pleased with this. He had wanted to confer the treat himself. He stayed to tea, and impressed the family with his talk of philosophy and history, half of it in Latin quotations. Goethe and Kant rolled off his tongue, too, as easily as Smith and Brown and Jones. He mentioned rare tomes of which he had the only copies in existence. His library numbered five thousand volumes, he announced.

Clarence didn’t bother mentioning the two shelves he had installed in his niece’s study, or take the Doctor to see them. In fact, Clarence was reduced to near silence, saying only ‘indeed,’ or ‘you are quite right,’ or ‘I have often thought so’ at suitable pauses, or nearly suitable. He sometimes erred, being Clarence. Prudence was invited to view the five thousand books and glean what knowledge she could from surveying their Morocco leather bindings and reading a dozen titles. Within the hour three books were opened for her inspection, but as they were in Latin, Greek and Russian, she could do no more than comment on the clarity of the print and say she wished she could read those languages. Ashington smiled grandly, saying that he would be happy to translate any passage she was interested in, as he was quite familiar with all three tongues, and three others. But one set of foreign symbols looked very much like another, and she selected no passage for translation.

“A lady is better off not bothering her head with these things,” he said, nodding in approval, and they went to take a glass of sherry and a stale macaroon with his mother.

When Prudence arrived home, she was told that Dammler had called, and taken his manuscript with him.

“He will speak to you about it another time,” Clarence told her. “He is anxious to hear what you have to say about it. I told him he would do better to hand it over to Dr. Ashington for criticism. He would know whether there is anything in it, but he declined. He was in a bad skin about something or other. Didn’t stay a minute.”

“Did he say when he would come back?” Prudence asked.

“No, but he will likely come by later in the day, or tomorrow. We had a little chat about Goethe and Kant, but he only stayed a minute.” Prudence’s eyes rounded at this, and she wished more than ever that she had been home, instead of inhaling dust and wisdom in Dr. Ashington’s library.

“I have been thinking, Prue,” Clarence continued, “we ought to add another row of shelves in your study. I see you have those two shelves all filled up, and I daresay there are a dozen more books lying around the house that might be there. I have a Bible in my room, and there is a dictionary somewhere that Anne used to use, to say nothing of the Backwoods Review I have subscribed to. We will want to keep those issues to refer to.”

“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 wasa 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.

How neatly she handled that, Prudence thought. She knew in her bones this squabble was all to do with herself. Dammler and Ashington were like two dogs fighting over a bone, and with about as much concern for the object over which they battled. If she were at all experienced, she would have known how to handle them, but dinner with Uncle Clarence and her mama had not developed any latent powers of diplomacy she possessed, and she waited in dread to see what the next horrible development would be.

Within half an hour, the gentlemen came to join the ladies in the saloon. Prudence died inside to see both Dammler and the Doctor walk at a jealous pace towards the one seat beside her. She arose at once, and flew to a chair beside Miss Burney, to engage her in a spirited discussion of bonnets, from which the gentlemen were excluded. A dozen times she heard slurs and innuendos exchanged between them, and at the end of an hour she arose with a very real headache to say she must leave.

As the party was going so poorly, the others quickly seconded her idea, and there was a general commotion of thanking and leaving.

“I’ll take you home, Prudence,” Dammler said.

“I am taking Miss Mallow home,” Ashington stated triumphantly.

“You will not want to leave your mother alone,” he countered.

“She is not alone. Miss Gimble lives here for the purpose of looking after her.”

“There is no need for you to put your horses to for nothing. I know very well where Prudence lives, and will be passing by her door.”

"I shall be stopping at her door,” Ashington topped him. “And step in to say good evening to Mr. Elmtree and your dear mother, Miss Mallow, if it is not too late. Shall we go?”

“Well, Prudence?” Dammler said to her, throwing the whole decision of choice on her unwilling back.

“It was arranged beforehand that Dr. Ashington would take me home,” she said, and gave the Doctor her arm, with an apologetic smile at Dammler.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Dammler replied, and turned away with an air of the keenest indifference to offer Miss Burney his company. She had her own carriage coming, but sent it away empty for the honour of a drive on Dammler's tiger skin seats.

Ashington did not accompany Miss Mallow into the house, nor ever have the least intention of doing so, only to be cornered by Elmtree and be made to drink a glass of wine. His sole purpose in claiming he meant to do so was to take Dammler down a peg, and claim his ownership of Miss Mallow. Prudence, naturally not unaware of the bickering between the two the whole evening, undertook an apology on her absent friend’s behalf.

“I fear Lord Dammler was not himself tonight. He seemed in a very bad mood. I have never seen him so out of curl.”

“It is typical of him. His head is swollen with all the praise heaped on him for those shoddy verses. I would not have written him up but for Blackwood wanting a piece on him. Dammler was in his cups, very likely. It is the only thing to account for such behavior.”

“It did not seem to me he drank to excess,” Prudence offered as a pacifier.

“I think he was foxed before ever he came. He was grossly offensive from the beginning. You will not want to have much to do with him. He makes himself too familiar, using your first name.”

The party, so looked forward to, had been a disaster. Dammler had behaved abominably, and incomprehensibly, as well. Why had he taken such a dislike to Ashington? The strange thought entered Prudence’s mind that he was jealous of her. He acted very like a jealous lover, but that was not possibly the reason, unless it was jealousy of her writing, and not herself. Yet he had implied Ashington’s article did not do her writing justice. That he was not jealous of her as a woman was clear-he had thought her mad not to accept Mr. Seville’s offer of marriage. That had not bothered him in the least. There was some other explanation, and she was curious to hear it. He had said he would see her tomorrow. She could hardly wait. And she would also tell him what she thought of his performance.