Lavengro - George Borrow (nice books to read TXT) 📗

as he can, and as dignifiedly, a great admirer of every genteel thing and genteel personage, the Duke in particular, whose Despatches, bound in red morocco, you will find on his table. A disliker of coarse expressions, and extremes of every kind, with a perfect horror for revolutions and attempts to revolutionise, exclaiming now and then, as a shriek escapes from whipped and bleeding Hungary, a groan from gasping Poland, and a half-stifled curse from downtrodden but scowling Italy, “Confound the revolutionary canaille, why can’t it be quiet!” in a word, putting one in mind of the parvenu in the Walpurgis Nacht. The writer is no admirer of Goethe, but the idea of that parvenu was certainly a good one⁠—yes, putting one in mind of the individual who says:⁠—

“Wir waren wahrlich auch nicht dumm,
Und thaten oft was wir nicht sollten;
Doch jetzo kehrt sich alles um und um,
Und eben da wir’s fest erhalten wollten.”

We were no fools, as everyone discern’d,
And stopp’d at nought our projects in fulfilling;
But now the world seems topsy-turvy turn’d,
To keep it quiet just when we were willing.

Now, this class of individuals entertain a mortal hatred for Lavengro and its writer, and never lose an opportunity of vituperating both. It is true that such hatred is by no means surprising. There is certainly a great deal of difference between Lavengro and their own sons; the one thinking of independence and philology, whilst he is clinking away at kettles, and hammering horseshoes in dingles; the others stuck up at public offices with gilt chains at their waistcoat-pockets, and giving themselves the airs and graces of females of a certain description. And there certainly is a great deal of difference between the author of Lavengro and themselves⁠—he retaining his principles and his brush; they with scarlet breeches on, it is true, but without their republicanism and their tails. Oh, the writer can well afford to be vituperated by your pseudo-Radicals of ’32!

Some time ago the writer was set upon by an old Radical and his wife; but the matter is too rich not to require a chapter to itself.

XI The Old Radical395

“This very dirty man, with his very dirty face,
Would do any dirty act, which would get him a place.”

Some time ago the writer was set upon by an old Radical and his wife; but before he relates the manner in which they set upon him, it will be as well to enter upon a few particulars tending to elucidate their reasons for so doing.

The writer had just entered into his eighteenth year, when he met at the table of a certain Anglo-Germanist an individual, apparently somewhat under thirty, of middle stature, a thin and weaselly figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a large pair of spectacles. This person, who had lately come from abroad, and had published a volume of translations,396 had attracted some slight notice in the literary world, and was looked upon as a kind of lion in a small provincial capital. After dinner he argued a great deal, spoke vehemently against the Church, and uttered the most desperate Radicalism that was perhaps ever heard, saying, he hoped that in a short time there would not be a king or queen in Europe, and inveighing bitterly against the English aristocracy, and against the Duke of Wellington in particular, whom he said, if he himself was ever president of an English republic⁠—an event which he seemed to think by no means improbable⁠—he would hang for certain infamous acts of profligacy and bloodshed which he had perpetrated in Spain. Being informed that the writer was something of a philologist, to which character the individual in question laid great pretensions, he came and sat down by him, and talked about languages and literature. The writer, who was only a boy, was a little frightened at first, but, not wishing to appear a child of absolute ignorance, he summoned what little learning he had, and began to blunder out something about the Celtic languages and their literature, and asked the Lion who he conceived Finn Ma Coul to be? and whether he did not consider the “Ode to the Fox,” by Red Rhys of Eryry,397 to be a masterpiece of pleasantry? Receiving no answer to these questions from the Lion, who, singular enough, would frequently, when the writer put a question to him, look across the table, and flatly contradict someone who was talking to some other person, the writer dropped the Celtic languages and literature, and asked him whether he did not think it a funny thing that Temugin, generally called Genghis Khan, should have married the daughter of Prester John?398 The Lion, after giving a side-glance at the writer through his left spectacle glass, seemed about to reply, but was unfortunately prevented, being seized with an irresistible impulse to contradict a respectable doctor of medicine,399 who was engaged in conversation with the master of the house at the upper and farther end of the table, the writer being a poor ignorant lad, sitting of course at the bottom. The doctor, who had served in the Peninsula, having observed that Ferdinand the Seventh was not quite so bad as had been represented, the Lion vociferated that he was ten times worse, and that he hoped to see him and the Duke of Wellington hanged together. The doctor, who, being a Welshman, was somewhat of a warm temper, growing rather red, said that at any rate he had been informed that Ferdinand the Seventh knew sometimes how to behave himself like a gentleman⁠—this brought on a long dispute, which terminated rather abruptly. The Lion having observed that the doctor must not talk about Spanish matters with one who had visited every part of Spain, the doctor bowed, and said he was