Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (book club reads txt) 📖

Gives the victor’s palm its rareness; Simplest tokens can impart Noble throb to noble heart: Graecia, prize thy parsley crown, Boast thy laurel, Caesar’s town; Moorland myrtle still shall be Badge of Devon’s Chivalry!”

 

And so ending, she took the wreath of fragrant gale from her own head, and stooping from the car, placed it on the head of Amyas Leigh, who made answer—

“There is no place like home, my fair mistress and no scent to my taste like this old home-scent in all the spice-islands that I ever sailed by!”

“Her song was not so bad,” said Sir Richard to Lady Bath—“but how came she to hear Plymouth bells at Tamar-head, full fifty miles away? That’s too much of a poet’s license, is it not?”

“The river-nymphs, as daughters of Oceanus, and thus of immortal parentage, are bound to possess organs of more than mortal keenness; but, as you say, the song was not so bad—erudite, as well as prettily conceived—and, saving for a certain rustical simplicity and monosyllabic baldness, smacks rather of the forests of Castaly than those of Torridge.”

So spake my Lady Bath; whom Sir Richard wisely answered not; for she was a terribly learned member of the college of critics, and disputed even with Sidney’s sister the chieftaincy of the Euphuists; so Sir Richard answered not, but answer was made for him.

“Since the whole choir of Muses, madam, have migrated to the Court of Whitehall, no wonder if some dews of Parnassus should fertilize at times even our Devon moors.”

The speaker was a tall and slim young man, some five-and-twenty years old, of so rare and delicate a beauty, that it seemed that some Greek statue, or rather one of those pensive and pious knights whom the old German artists took delight to paint, had condescended to tread awhile this work-day earth in living flesh and blood. The forehead was very lofty and smooth, the eyebrows thin and greatly arched (the envious gallants whispered that something at least of their curve was due to art, as was also the exceeding smoothness of those delicate cheeks). The face was somewhat long and thin; the nose aquiline; and the languid mouth showed, perhaps, too much of the ivory upper teeth; but the most striking point of the speaker’s appearance was the extraordinary brilliancy of his complexion, which shamed with its whiteness that of all fair ladies round, save where open on each cheek a bright red spot gave warning, as did the long thin neck and the taper hands, of sad possibilities, perhaps not far off; possibilities which all saw with an inward sigh, except she whose doting glances, as well as her resemblance to the fair youth, proclaimed her at once his mother, Mrs. Leigh herself.

Master Frank, for he it was, was dressed in the very extravagance of the fashion,—not so much from vanity, as from that delicate instinct of self-respect which would keep some men spruce and spotless from one year’s end to another upon a desert island; “for,” as Frank used to say in his sententious way, “Mr. Frank Leigh at least beholds me, though none else be by; and why should I be more discourteous to him than I permit others to be? Be sure that he who is a Grobian in his own company, will, sooner or later, become a Grobian in that of his friends.”

So Mr. Frank was arrayed spotlessly; but after the latest fashion of Milan, not in trunk hose and slashed sleeves, nor in “French standing collar, treble quadruple daedalian ruff, or stiffnecked rabato, that had more arches for pride, propped up with wire and timber, than five London Bridges;” but in a close-fitting and perfectly plain suit of dove-color, which set off cunningly the delicate proportions of his figure, and the delicate hue of his complexion, which was shaded from the sun by a broad dove-colored Spanish hat, with feather to match, looped up over the right ear with a pearl brooch, and therein a crowned E, supposed by the damsels of Bideford to stand for Elizabeth, which was whispered to be the gift of some most illustrious hand. This same looping up was not without good reason and purpose prepense; thereby all the world had full view of a beautiful little ear, which looked as if it had been cut of cameo, and made, as my Lady Rich once told him, “to hearken only to the music of the spheres, or to the chants of cherubim.” Behind the said ear was stuck a fresh rose; and the golden hair was all drawn smoothly back and round to the left temple, whence, tied with a pink ribbon in a great true lover’s knot, a mighty love-lock, “curled as it had been laid in press,” rolled down low upon his bosom. Oh, Frank! Frank! have you come out on purpose to break the hearts of all Bideford burghers’ daughters? And if so, did you expect to further that triumph by dyeing that pretty little pointed beard (with shame I report it) of a bright vermilion? But we know you better, Frank, and so does your mother; and you are but a masquerading angel after all, in spite of your knots and your perfumes, and the gold chain round your neck which a German princess gave you; and the emerald ring on your right forefinger which Hatton gave you; and the pair of perfumed gloves in your left which Sidney’s sister gave you; and the silver-hilted Toledo which an Italian marquis gave you on a certain occasion of which you never choose to talk, like a prudent and modest gentleman as you are; but of which the gossips talk, of course, all the more, and whisper that you saved his life from bravoes—a dozen, at the least; and had that sword for your reward, and might have had his beautiful sister’s hand beside, and I know not what else; but that you had so many lady-loves already that you were loath to burden yourself with a fresh one. That, at least, we know to be a lie, fair Frank; for your heart is as pure this day as when you knelt in your little crib at Burrough, and said—

 

“Four corners to my bed Four angels round my head; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on.”

 

And who could doubt it (if being pure themselves, they have instinctive sympathy with what is pure), who ever looked into those great deep blue eyes of yours, “the black fringed curtains of whose azure lids,” usually down-dropt as if in deepest thought, you raise slowly, almost wonderingly each time you speak, as if awakening from some fair dream whose home is rather in your platonical “eternal world of supra-sensible forms,” than on that work-day earth wherein you nevertheless acquit yourself so well? There—I must stop describing you, or I shall catch the infection of your own euphuism, and talk of you as you would have talked of Sidney or of Spenser, or of that Swan of Avon, whose song had just begun when yours—but I will not anticipate; my Lady Bath is waiting to give you her rejoinder.

“Ah, my silver-tongued scholar! and are you, then, the poet? or have you been drawing on the inexhaustible bank of your friend Raleigh, or my cousin Sidney? or has our new Cygnet Immerito lent you a few unpublished leaves from some fresh Shepherd’s Calendar?”

“Had either, madam, of that cynosural triad been within call of my most humble importunities, your ears had been delectate with far nobler melody.”

“But not our eyes with fairer faces, eh? Well, you have chosen your nymphs, and had good store from whence to pick, I doubt not. Few young Dulcineas round but must have been glad to take service under so renowned a captain?”

“The only difficulty, gracious countess, has been to know where to fix the wandering choice of my bewildered eyes, where all alike are fair, and all alike facund.”

“We understand,” said she, smiling;—

 

“Dan Cupid, choosing ‘midst his mother’s graces, Himself more fair, made scorn of fairest faces.”

 

The young scholar capped her distich forthwith, and bowing to her with a meaning look,

 

“‘Then, Goddess, turn,’ he cried, ‘and veil thy light; Blinded by thine, what eyes can choose aright?’”

 

“Go, saucy sir,” said my lady, in high glee: “the pageant stays your supreme pleasure.”

And away went Mr. Frank as master of the revels, to bring up the ‘prentices’ pageant; while, for his sake, the nymph of Torridge was forgotten for awhile by all young dames, and most young gentlemen: and his mother heaved a deep sigh, which Lady Bath overhearing—

“What? in the dumps, good madam, while all are rejoicing in your joy? Are you afraid that we court-dames shall turn your Adonis’s brain for him?”

“I do, indeed, fear lest your condescension should make him forget that he is only a poor squire’s orphan.”

“I will warrant him never to forget aught that he should recollect,” said my Lady Bath.

And she spoke truly. But soon Frank’s silver voice was heard calling out—

“Room there, good people, for the gallant ‘prentice lads!”

And on they came, headed by a giant of buckram and pasteboard armor, forth of whose stomach looked, like a clock-face in a steeple, a human visage, to be greeted, as was the fashion then, by a volley of quips and puns from high and low.

Young Mr. William Cary, of Clovelly, who was the wit of those parts, opened the fire by asking him whether he were Goliath, Gogmagog, or Grantorto in the romance; for giants’ names always began with a G. To which the giant’s stomach answered pretty surlily—

“Mine don’t; I begin with an O.”

“Then thou criest out before thou art hurt, O cowardly giant!”

“Let me out, lads,” quoth the irascible visage, struggling in his buckram prison, “and I soon show him whether I be a coward.”

“Nay, if thou gettest out of thyself, thou wouldst be beside thyself, and so wert but a mad giant.”

“And that were pity,” said Lady Bath; “for by the romances, giants have never overmuch wit to spare.”

“Mercy, dear lady!” said Frank, “and let the giant begin with an O.”

“A –-”

“A false start, giant! you were to begin with an O.”

“I’ll make you end with an O, Mr. William Cary!” roared the testy tower of buckram.

“And so I do, for I end with ‘Fico!’”

“Be mollified, sweet giant,” said Frank, “and spare the rash youth of yon foolish knight. Shall elephants catch flies, or Hurlo-Thrumbo stain his club with brains of Dagonet the jester? Be mollified; leave thy caverned grumblings, like Etna when its windy wrath is past, and discourse eloquence from thy central omphalos, like Pythoness ventriloquizing.”

“If you do begin laughing at me too, Mr. Leigh –-” said the giant’s clock-face, in a piteous tone.

“I laugh not. Art thou not Ordulf the earl, and I thy humblest squire? Speak up, my lord; your cousin, my Lady Bath, commands you.”

And at last the giant began:—

 

“A giant I, Earl Ordulf men me call,— ‘Gainst Paynim foes Devonia’s champion tall; In single fight six thousand Turks I slew; Pull’d off a lion’s head, and ate it too: With one shrewd blow, to let St. Edward in, I smote the gates of Exeter in twain; Till aged grown, by angels warn’d in dream, I built an abbey fair by Tavy stream. But treacherous time hath tripped my glories up, The stanch old hound must yield to stancher pup; Here’s one so tall as I, and twice so bold, Where I took only cuffs, takes good red gold. From pole to pole resound his wondrous works, Who slew more Spaniards than I e’er slew Turks; I strode across the Tavy stream: but he Strode round the