Frank Henley to Oliver Trenchard

London, Grosvenor Street

How violent and reiterated are the conflicts, between truth and error, in every mind of ardour!—And, of all errors, the love of self is the most rooted, the least easy to detect, and supremely difficult to eradicate. We can pardon ourselves any thing, except a want of self-respect; but that is intolerable.

I described, in my last,[1] the dissatisfied state of mind of Mr. Clifton. But, while he imagined he should die and soon lose all memory of a scene become so irksome to him, his dissatisfaction was trifling, compared to what it is at present. Repugnant as the idea was to his habitual feelings, still I have more than half convinced him that suicide is an act as cowardly as it is criminal. Yet to live and face the world, loaded as he imagines with unpardonable crimes and everlasting ignominy, is a thing to which he knows not how to consent. To combat this new mistake, into which he has fallen, has for some time past been my chief employment. No common efforts could assuage the turbulence of his tempestuous soul. Energy superior even to his own was necessary, to subject and calm this perturbation. But, in the simplicity of truth, this energy was easy to be found: it is from self-distrust, confusion or cowardice, if it ever fail.

[Footnote 1: Omitted.]

I have just left him, and our conversation will give you the best history of his mind, which is well worthy our study. I found him verging even toward delirium, and a fever coming on, which if not impeded might soon be fatal. He keeps his bed; but instead of lying at his ease, he remained raised on his elbow, having just finished a letter to his friend. Louisa had described the state of his mind, and I resolved to catch its tone, that I might the more certainly command his attention. Without preface, and as if continuing a chain of reasoning, he addressed me; with his eye fixed, in all the ardour of enquiry.

What is man?—What are his functions, qualities, and uses?—Does he not sleep trembling, live envying, and die cursing?—And is this worth aught?—Is it to be endured?—Why do I suffer life thus to be imposed upon me?

It is not suffering: or, if it be, such sufferings are of our own creation—To the virtuous and the wise, life is joy and bliss.

Perhaps so—Wisdom there may be, and truth and virtue. And, for the virtuous and the wise, the full stream of pleasure may richly flow: but not for me! Pretend not that I may walk with the gods! I who have been the inmate of fiends! I, who proposed glory to myself from the most contemptible of pursuits! I, who could dangle after coquettes and prudes; feed on and inflate myself with the baubles of a beauty's toilette; and, in the book of vanity, inscribe myself a great hero, a mighty conqueror, for having heaped ridicule on the ridiculous; or brought innocence to shame, misery, and destruction! And this I did with a light and vain heart! Did it laughing, boasting, exulting! Satanic dog! Pest of hell! What! Stretch souls on the rack, and then girn and mock at them for lying there! 'Tis the sport of devils, and by devils invented!

Your present indignation is honourable both to your heart and understanding.

Oh, flatter me not!—Vain, supercilious coxcomb!—I spread my wings, crowed in conceit, threatened, resolved, laughed at opposition, and kicked the world before me!—Oh, it was who but I!—And what was it I proposed?—Fair conquest?—Honourable opposition?—No!—It was treachery, covert malice, and cowardly conspiracy!—A league with hell-dogs!—Horrible, blood-thirsty villains!—And baffled too; defeated, after all this infernal enginery! Nay, had I been so wholly devil as to have joined in murder, what would have followed? Why they would next have murdered me; and for the justice of the second murder would have hoped pardon, even for the hell-born guilt of the first!

Do not, while you detest and shun one crime, plunge into a greater. This agony is for having been unjust to others; you are now still more unjust to yourself. You will not suppose yourself capable of a single virtue: yet, in your most mistaken moments, you never could be so illiberal to your enemies.

Would you persuade me I am not a most guilty, foul, and hateful monster?—Oh be more worthy of yourself, avoid me, detest me, curse me!

I will answer when you are more calm.

Calm?—Never, while this degraded being shall continue, shall such a moment come!—I calm? Sleeping or waking, I at peace? I pardon hypocrisy, treachery, blows, bruises, prisons, chains, poison, rape and murder? Ministers of wrath descend, point here your flaming swords, annihilate all memory of what manhood and honour were, and fit me for the society of the damned!

Forbear!—(Never before did I address him in such a voice—The last dreadful word of his sentence was drowned, by my stern and awful violence; which reason dictated as the only means of recalling his maddening thoughts, from the despair and horror into which they were hurrying—I continued)—Frantic man, forbear! Recall your wild spirits and command them to order. How long will you suffer this petty slavery? How long shall the giant rage, and expend his strength, in tearing up stubble and rending straws?—Stretch forth your hand, and grasp the oak—Labours worthy of your Herculean mind await and invite you. Away to the temple of Error; shake its pillars, and make its foundations totter!—Be yourself—Shall the soaring eagle swoop at reptiles, the prey of bats and owls?

Do not mock me with impossible hopes—What! Have you not held the mirror up to me, and shewn me my own hatefulness?

Are you a man? Will you never shake off this bondage? Oh it is base! it is beneath you! Of what have you been guilty? Why of ignorance, mistakes of the understanding, false views, which you wanted knowledge enough, truth enough, to correct. Have not many of the godlike men whom we admire most been guilty, in their youth, of equal or of greater errors?—Thus, alas, it happens that minds of the highest hope, and most divine stamp and coinage, are cut off daily; swept away by that other grand mistake of man-kind—'Exemplary punishment is necessary'—So they say—But no—'Tis exemplary reformation! Can the world be better warned by a body in gibbets, than by the active virtues of a once misguided but now enlightened understanding? The gibbet will remain an object of terror to the traveller, who dreads being robbed and murdered; but an incitement to despair, in the mind of the murderer!—Banish then these black pictures from your mind, by which it continues darkened and misled; and in their stead behold a soul-inspiring prospect, of all that is great and glorious, rising to your view! Feel yourself a man! Nay you shall feel it, in your own despite! A man capable of high and noble actions!

Here, Oliver, I at this time left him. His eye remained fixed, and he was silent; but its wildness was diminished: the frown of his brow disappeared, and his countenance became more clear. Such associations as these tokens denoted ought not to meet interruption. However I took care to return in less than an hour; fearful lest he should decline into his former gloom, which was little short of phrensy. I had been fortunate enough to reduce his discordant feelings to something like harmony; and the moment I entered his room the second time he exclaimed—

You are a generous fellow! A magnanimous fellow! You can work miracles!—I know you of old—Can bring the dead to life!—Can almost persuade me that even I, by living, may now and then effect some trifling, pitiful good; may snatch some of the remnants, the offals of honour—But aught eminent, aught worthy of—

Be calm.

No! It cannot be forgotten, or forgiven!—Cruel, malignant, remorseless wretch!

Can you speak thus of the present?—You know you cannot!—And wherefore unjustly insist on the past? Be firm! Conquer this pride of heart!

Why, ay—Pride of heart! It is the very damning sin of my soul!

Exorcise the foul fiend then, and in its stead give welcome to firm but unassuming self-respect. Arise! Shake torpor from you, and feel your strength! It is Atlean; made to bear a world! Cherish life, and become worthy of yourself! What! Would you kill a mind so mighty? Do you not feel it, now; possessing you, emanating, flaming, bursting to spread itself?

Why, that were something!—Could I but once again get into my own good liking—! You are a strange fellow!—You will not hate me! Nay, will not suffer me to hate myself!—Damnation! To be cast at such an immense distance! Oh it is intolerable! It is contemptible!—But I will have my revenge!—Some how or another I will yet have my revenge! And, since hate must not be the word, why—! But no matter—I will have no more vaunting—Yet, if I do not—! I have had a glimpse, and begin to know you—The soul of benevolence, of tenderness, of attention, of love, of all the divine faculties that make men deities, infuses itself and pervades you—Had I but been wholly fool, I had been but partly villain—But I!—Oh monstrous!—The fiends with whom I was leagued to me were angels!

Why, ay; contemplate the picture, but do not forget it is that of a man you once knew, who is now no more. He has disappeared, and in his stead an angel of light is come!

Stop!—Go not too fast!—I promise nothing—Mark that!—I promise nothing—Do not imagine I am now in the feverish repentance of white wine whey—You would have me stay in a world which I myself have rendered hateful—I will think of it—I know your arts—You would realize the fable of Pygmalion, and would infuse soul into marble!

There is no need; you have a soul already; inventive, capacious, munificent, sublime!

Ay, ay—I know—You have a choice collection of words.

A soul of ten thousand! Nay, an army of souls in one!

And must I submit? Are you determined to make a rascal like me admire, and love, and give place to all the fine affections of the heart?

Ay, determined!

Oh, sister!—(Louisa at this moment entered.) To you too I have behaved like a scoundrel! A tyrant! A petulant, ostentatious, imperious braggart!

You mistake! replied Louisa, eagerly. You mistake! You are talking of a very different man! A being I could not understand. You are my brother!—My brother!—I have found the way to your heart! Will make it all my own! Will twine myself round it! Shake me off if you can!

The energy with which she spoke, and looked, and kissed him, was irresistible! He was overpowered: the tears gushed to his eyes, but he repressed them; he thought them unmanly; and, seeing his medical friend enter, exclaimed—I have surgeons for the body, and surgeons for the mind, who cut with so deep yet so steady a hand that they take away the noxious, and leave the wound to suppurate and heal!

Can we do less? said I. Ours is no common task! We are acting in behalf of society: we have found a treasure, by which it is to be enriched. Few indeed are those puissant and heavenly endowed spirits, that are capable of guiding, enlightening, and leading the human race onward to felicity! What is there precious but mind? And when mind, like a diamond of uncommon growth, exceeds a certain magnitude, calculation cannot find its value!

I once more left him; and never did I quit the company of human being, no not of Anna St. Ives herself, with a more glowing and hoping heart. But why describe sensations to thee, Oliver, with which thou art so intimately acquainted? To bid thee rejoice, to invite thee to participate in felicity, which may and must so widely diffuse itself, were equally to wrong thy understanding and thy heart.

F. HENLEY

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