The Doctor’s letter had informed us of the liberation of Mr. Stallabras and Sir Miles Lackington; but we were not prepared for their arrival at Epsom. They came, however, travelling together by the coach, their object being not so much, I believe, to visit the watering-place of Epsom or to enjoy its amusements, as to renew certain honourable proposals, formerly made in less happy times, to Kitty Pleydell.

Naturally, we were at first somewhat perturbed, fearing the scandal should certain tongues spread abroad the truth as to our residence in the Fleet.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Esther, with a little sigh, “my mind is made up. We will go to Tunbridge out of their way.”

This was impossible, because they would follow us. For my own part, I looked upon the Fleet Rules with less shame than poor Mrs. Esther. To her, the memory of the long degradation was infinitely painful. For everybody, certainly, a time of degradation, however unmerited, is never a pleasant thing to remember. I think that the whole army of martyrs must agree together in forgetting the last scenes of their earthly pilgrimage. The buffetings, strippings, scourgings, roastings, burnings, and hangings, the long time of prison, the starvation, the expectancy and fear—the going forth to meet the hungry lion and the ruthless tiger—surely it cannot be comfortable to remember these? No martyr on the roll had ever been more innocent or undeserving of punishment than Mrs. Esther Pimpernel: no sufferer ever complained less: but she loved not to think of the past, nor to be reminded of it by the arrival of one whom she had known there.

Nevertheless, when Sir Miles Lackington presented himself at our lodging, he was received with a gracious friendliness.

His newly recovered liberty made little alteration in the appearance of this prodigal son. His dress was worn in the same easy disorder, the ruffles being limp, his wig tied carelessly, the lace upon his hat torn, as if in some scuffle, and the buckles of his shoes were an odd pair. His face preserved the same jolly content, as if the gifts of Fortune were to be regarded no more than her buffeting.

“We are always,” said my guardian, with a little hesitation, “we are always glad to welcome old friends—even friends in common misfortune. But, Sir Miles, it is not well to remind us—or—or to talk to others of those unhappy days.”

He laughed.

“I remember them not,” he said. “I never remember any day but the present. Why should we remember disagreeable things? Formerly we borrowed; now we lend: let us go on lending till we have to borrow again. Do you remember Mr. Stallabras the poet?”

Surely, we remembered Solomon.

“He goes abroad now in a silk-lined coat with lace ruffles. He has bought a new wig and started a subscription list for a new poem, having eaten up the last before the poem was written. I subscribed for three copies yesterday, and we pretended, both of us, he that he did not want the money, and I that I had always had it. Without forgetting and pretending, where should we be?”

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Esther, “one would not willingly either forget or pretend. But some things are best remembered in silence. The memory of them should keep us humble, Sir Miles.”

“I do not wish to be humble,” replied the baronet. “Humble people do not sing and drink, nor gamble, nor make love. They go in sadness and with hanging heads. I would still go proud.”

While he was with us came Solomon himself, bravely dressed indeed, with about an ell of ribbon tied around his throat, a new and fashionable wig, and bearing himself with all the dignity possible in a poet of five-feet-three. His chin was in the air and his hat under his arm when he marched into the little room.

I shook hands with him, and whispered to him not to mention the word Fleet. Thereupon he advanced to Mrs. Esther with such a bow as would have graced a court, saying—

“Madam, I have had the honour of being presented to you in London, but I know not if I am still distinguished by your recollection.”

“Sir,” said Mrs. Esther, “that person must indeed be blind to merit who can forget Mr. Stallabras, the favourite of the Muses.”

“O madam! this compliment——”

“O sir! our hearts are not so insensible as to forget those delightful verses, which should be the glory of an unthinking age.”

I asked him then if he had received a bequest.

“I have found what is better,” he said, “a female MÆcenas. The virtues of antiquity linger only in the breasts of the fair. She is a person of singularly cold and calm judgment. DesprÉaux himself had not a cooler head or a sounder critical faculty. Therefore, when such a lady prophesies immortal renown to a poet, that poet may congratulate himself. I am poet laureate to Lady Tamarind, relict of Sir Joseph Tamarind, brewer and sometime sheriff in the City of London. Her ladyship’s taste is considered infallible in all subjects, whether china, tulips, plays, pictures, fans, snuff-boxes, black boys, or poets.”

His eyes twinkled so brightly, his turn-up nose seemed so joyfully to sniff the incense of praise, prosperity had already made his cheeks so sleek and fat, that we could hardly recognise our starveling poet.

“The taste,” said Mrs. Esther, “of a woman who recognises the merit of your verses, Mr. Stallabras, is beyond a doubt.”

He rubbed his hands and laughed.

“I was already out—” he began, but as we all manifested the greatest confusion at the beginning of this confession, he stopped and turned red. “I mean I was—I was——”

“You were beginning, I think,” I interrupted, “to open a new subscription.”

“Thank you, Miss Kitty,” he replied. “I was—as soon as I left the Ru—I mean, as soon as I could, I went round among my patrons with my project. This lady immediately bought all my previous poems, including the translation of ‘Lucretius,’ which the rascal publisher declared had been his ruin, when he went bankrupt, and presented me with a hundred guineas, with which I was enabled”—here he surveyed his person with satisfaction, and raised one leg to get a better view of his stockings and shoe-buckles—“I was enabled to procure garments more suitable to a personage of ambition, and to present myself to the honourable company assembled at Epsom on a footing of easy equality.”

“But a hundred guineas will not last for ever,” I said, thinking of the sums of money which I had already spent on frocks and ribbons since we came from London.

“That is not all,” he said; “I have my new volume of poems, which has been subscribed by Lady Tamarind and her friends. This is a change, is it not, Miss Kitty? Formerly, when I was in the Ru—I mean, before my good fortune came—a sixpenny ordinary was beyond me: I have lived upon half-a-crown for a week: I have written lines on a ‘Christian’s Joys’ when starving: and I have composed the ‘Lamentations of a Sinner’ when contemplating suicide as the only relief from my troubles. Now—now—how different! Fortune’s wheel has turned—Fame is mine. And as for poems, I can write as many as I please to give the world, and always find a subscription list ready to my hand. This brain, Miss Kitty, like the Fountain of Helicon, will run for ever: that is, while life and Lady Tamarind remain.”

“The stream may get muddy sometimes,” said Sir Miles, with a smile.

Fate, which condemns poets to poverty, also compensates them with hope. If they are in present sunshine, it will last for ever: if in cold neglect, the future will give what the past has refused: posterity will continue to wave the censing-pot and send up wreaths of spicy smoke, a continual flow, grateful to the blessed Spirit above: so that, fortunate or in neglect, they dwell in a perpetual dream, which keeps them ever happy.

Then the sanguine bard drew forth his new subscription list.

“I call it,” he said, “by the modest title of a ‘Project for the Publication of a New Collection of Odes and Heroic Pieces,’ by Solomon Stallabras, Esquire. I am aware that my birth gives no warrant for the assumption of the rank of Esquire, but Lady Tamarind is good enough to say that the possession of genius lifts a man to the level of the gentry, if not the nobility of the country.”

“It does, Solomon; it does,” said Sir Miles.

“I venture, ladies, therefore,” he said, taking a pencil from his pocket, “to solicit your honoured names as subscribers for this poor effort of a (perhaps) too ambitious brain. The poems, when completed, will be printed in royal quarto, with the portrait of the author as he appears crowned by Fame, while the Graces (draped for the occasion in the modern taste) stand behind him: Cupid will raise aloft the trumpet of Fame: the Muses will be seen admiring from a gentle eminence which represents Parnassus: Apollo will be figured presenting the poet with his own lyre, and the sacred stream will flow at his feet—my own design. In the distance the skin of Marsyas will hang upon a tree, as a warning to the presumption of rivals. The work will be bound in calf, and will be issued at the price of two guineas. For that small sum, ladies, Solomon Stallabras offers a copy of his poems.”

“O Mr. Stallabras!” cried Mrs. Esther, “for so charming a picture I would give not two but twenty guineas, to say nothing of the poems. Go on, dear sir; raise our thoughts to virtue, and strengthen our inclinations in the path of duty. Poets, indeed, make the way to heaven a path of roses.”

Now here was a change from old times! Solomon flourishing a subscription list in lace and silk, and Mrs. Esther offering guineas by the dozen! Sir Miles, who was leaning by the window just as he had been wont to do in our poor lodging, nodded and laughed, unseen by Mrs. Esther.

“Permit me, sir,” she said, “if you will be so good, to put my name down for——”

“O madam!”

The poet bowed low and brandished his pencil.

“For ten copies of this immortal work, in one of which I would ask you to write your name, in your own hand, for the enrichment of the volume and the admiration of posterity.”

“Madam,” said Solomon, with emotion, “I will write my name in the whole ten.”

“And, dear sir, one copy for Miss Kitty.”

“Such generosity! such princessly, noble patronage of the Poetical Art!” he fairly chuckled as he wrote down the names. “Eleven copies! Twenty-two guineas! This is indeed to realise fame.”

He received the money, which Mrs. Esther paid him with a countenance all smiles, although he vainly tried to throw into his expression the pride of the poet, to whom money is but filthy lucre.

We then conversed on Epsom and its beauties, and as the gentlemen had as yet seen none of them, I proposed to lead them to the Downs, whence I promised them such a landscape as should infinitely rejoice their eyes. They accepted with expressions of gratitude, and we started. When, however, we came to the doors of the Spread Eagle, Sir Miles recollected that at twelve he always took a tankard of cool October for the good of his health. He therefore left us, promising to follow. But as he did not come, and we saw him no more that day, I suppose he found the society of the tankard more enchanting than that of Kitty Pleydell. We therefore walked up the hill alone, and presently stood upon the open down, which commands so noble a view. The place was quite deserted that day, save for a single group of gentlemen, who were conducting a match, but so far off that we heard not their voices.

I took advantage of this solitude to convey to the poet an instruction that it would be better not to talk freely at Epsom concerning such vicissitudes of fortune as we had experienced. I pointed out to him that until Mrs. Esther’s position was securely fixed it might do her injury to have her story garbled by censorious tongues; that, for his own sake, his late connection with the Liberties of the Fleet would be better concealed; and that, for myself, although it mattered less, because I was never a prisoner while yet an inmate of the Rules, I did not wish my story, such as it was, to be passed about the Wells, and mangled in the telling.

Mr. Stallabras declared stoutly that he would not for worlds reveal one word about the past—for my sake.

“Nay,” I said, “not for mine, but for the sake of that dear lady to whom you owe so much.”

“It is true,” he said; “I owe her even life. She hath fed me from her slender stores when I was starving. And when no one would even read my verses she would learn them by heart and repeat them with tears. For her sake, then, if not for yours.”

Then his face assumed an expression like unto that with which he had once before made me an offer of his hand, and I knew that he was going to do it again. If such a thing is going to be done, the sooner it is over the better. Therefore I waited with calmness, hoping that the paroxysm would be short and not violent.

“Miss Kitty,” he began, turning very red, “some time ago I was penniless, almost starving, and detained in the (absurdly called) Liberties of the Fleet for the amount of forty pounds sixteen shillings and eightpence—a sum so small that it made me blush to confess it, most of my friends in the same place being incarcerated for substantial sums of hundreds and even thousands. In this difficult position, which required the philosophy of a Stoic to endure with resignation, I had the temerity to offer my hand to the most beautiful woman in the world. I have often, since, wondered at my own audacity and her gentleness while she refused so presumptuous a proposal.”

“Indeed, Mr. Stallabras,” I said, “you conferred great honour upon me.”

He bowed.

“The position of affairs,” he went on, “is now changed. The poet’s brows are crowned with bays by the hand of a lady as skilled in poets as she is in pug-dogs; his pockets are lined with guineas; as for the Fleet Rules—I whistle the memory of the place to the winds. Phew! it is gone, never to return: I see before me a long and great future, when booksellers will compete for the honour of publishing me, and the greatest lords and ladies in the land will rush to subscribe for copies. Like Shakespeare, I shall amass a fortune: like Prior, I shall receive offers of embassies: like Addison and Chaucer, I shall be placed in posts of honour and profit.”

“I hope, Mr. Stallabras,” I said, “that such will indeed be your future.”

“Do you really hope so, Miss Kitty?” His face flushed again, and I was quite sorry for him, knowing the pain I was about to inflict upon him. “Do you hope so? Then that emboldens me to say—Fairest of your sex, divine nymph, accept the homage of a poet: be celebrated for ever in his immortal verse. Be my Laura! Let me be thy Petrarch!”

“I will,” I replied. “I accept that offer joyfully. I will be to you what Laura was to Petrarch, if that will content you.”

I gave him my hand, which he seized with rapture.

“Oh, beautiful Kitty!” he cried, with such joy in his eyes that I repented having said so much, “fortune has now bestowed upon me all I ask. When, goddess, wilt thou crown my happiness!”

“It is already crowned,” I replied. “I have given you, Mr. Stallabras, all you asked for. Let me remind you that you yourself told me the story of Petrarch’s love. I will be your Laura, but I must have the liberty of doing what Laura did—namely, the right to marry some one else.”

His face fell.

“Oh!” he murmured. “Why did I not say HeloÏse?”

“Because she was shut up in a convent. Come, Mr. Stallabras, let us remain friends, which is far better for both of us, and less trying to the temper than being lovers. And I will help you with your subscription-book. As for being married, you would tire of me in a week.”

Upon this he fell to protesting that it was impossible for any man to tire of such a paragon among women, and I dare say the poor deluded creature really meant what he said, because men in love are blind. When this failed to move me, he lamented his ill-fortune in having placed his hopes upon the heart of a beautiful statue as cold as Dian. Nor was it until he had prophesied death to himself and prayed for ruin and loss of his fame, both of which, he said, were now useless, or comparatively useless to him, that I succeeded in making him, to a certain extent, reasonable, and calming his anger. He really had thought that so grand an offer of marriage with a poet, whom he placed on about the same level with Homer, would tempt any woman. According to some detractors of the fair sex, every woman believes that every man must fall in love with her: but I am sure that there is no man who does not believe that he is irresistible when once he begins to show a preference or an inclination.

I then persuaded him, with honeyed words, to believe in my sorrow that I was not able to accept his proposals; and I added that as he had by this time sufficiently admired the beauties of the landscape, we might return to the town, when I should have the honour of presenting him to some of the better sort among the visitors.

He came down the hill with me, sighing after the manner of poets in love, and panting a little, because he was fat and short of breath, and I walked fast.

We found the Terrace crowded with people congregated for the morning talk; the breakfasts being all eaten, the tea-drinking over, morning prayers finished, and the music playing merrily.

I presented the poet to Lady Levett as an ingenious gentleman whose verses, known all over town, were doubtless already well known to her ladyship. She had not the hardness of heart to deny knowledge of the poet, and gave him a kindly welcome to Epsom, where, she said, she had no doubt whatever but that he would meet with the reception due to qualities of such distinction.

Then I ventured to suggest that Mr. Stallabras was receiving names for a subscription edition of his new poems. Lady Levett added hers, and begged the poet to visit her at her lodging, where she would discharge her debt.

In the course of an hour I presented Stallabras to young Lord Eardesley, Harry Temple, and half the gentlemen at the Wells, asking of each a subscription to the poems, so that the fortunate poet found himself some fifty guineas the richer by his morning’s work.

“Miss Kitty,” he said humbly, “I knew not, indeed, that you were so great a lady. The ‘Queen of the Wells,’ I am told. Not but all who know your worth and kindness must rejoice at this signal triumph. I now plainly see why I must be content with the lot of Petrarch.”

Once launched in society, the poet became quickly a kind of celebrity. Just as, in some years, a watering-place would boast of having among its visitors such famous men as Dr. Johnson, Mr. Garrick, or Mr. Richardson, so now it pointed to Mr. Stallabras, and said to strangers, “See! The great Mr. Stallabras! The illustrious poet!”

He, like all men born in London, was equal to the opportunity, and rose on the wave of fashion; his subscription-list kept mounting up; he sent his poems to the press; he received proofs and read them beneath the portico, which he compared to the columns where the Roman poets had been accustomed to read their compositions. We gathered round and listened; we cried, with our handkerchiefs to our eyes: “O Mr. Stallabras, how fine! how wondrous pathetic! how just!” Then would he bow and twist, and wave his hand, and wag his head.

He became an oracle, and, like all oracles in the matter of taste, he quickly learned to give the law. He affected to understand pictures, and talked about the “brio” of one painter, and the “three-lights” rule of another; he was very sarcastic in the matter of poetry, and would allow but two good poets in the century—himself and Mr. Alexander Pope; in the region of romance he would allow little credit to Fielding, but claimed immortality for Richardson.

“Oh, sir, pardon me,” he said to one who attributed the greater merit to the former writer. “Pardon me. The characters and the situations of Fielding are so wretchedly low and dirty that I cannot imagine any one being interested in them. There is, I admit, some strength of humour in him, but he hath over-written himself. I doubt he is a strong hulking sort of man.”

“But, sir,” said Lady Levett, “we ladies like men to be strong and hearty as becomes a man. You surely do not mean that every big man must have low tastes.”

“The mind and the body are united,” said the little poet, “they influence one another. Thus, in a weak frame we find delicacy, and in a strong frame, bluntness. Softness and tenderness of mind are often remarkable in a body possessed of the same qualities. Tom Jones could get drunk on the night of his uncle’s recovery—no doubt Mr. Fielding would manifest his joy in the same manner.”

He went on to assure us that Lady Bellaston was an intimate friend of Mr. Fielding’s; that Booth was himself; Tom Jones, again, himself; Amelia his first wife; his brawls, gaols, sponging-houses, and quarrels all drawn from his own personal experience.

“He who associates with low companions, ladies,” concluded the ex-prisoner of the Fleet, “must needs himself be low. Taste consorts only with tasteful persons.”

“Should not a lady be beautiful, Mr. Stallabras?” asked a bystander. “I always supposed so, but since a man is not to be strong, perhaps I was wrong.”

“Sir!” Mr. Stallabras drew himself up to his fall height, and his fingers closed upon the roll of proof-sheets as if it had been a sword-hilt. “Sir! all ladies—who have taste—are beautiful. I am ready to be the champion of the sex. Some are more beautiful than others,”—here he raised his eyes to me and sighed. “Some flowers are more beautiful than others. The man of taste loves to let his eyes rest on such a pleasing object,”—here two young gentlemen winked at each other—“she is a credit to her sex. When goodness is joined to such beauty, as is the case with——” Here he looked at me and hesitated.

“Oh!” cried Nancy, “say with me, Mr. Stallabras, or Miss Peggy Baker.”

“May I say Miss Pleydell?” he asked, with a comprehensive smile. “There, indeed, is all Clarissa, and the heart of sensibility, in contemplating her perfections, reverts to the scenes of our divine Richardson.”