Diana of the Crossways | Page 3

pretend
to know the whole, or naked body of the facts; it knows enough for its
furry dubiousness; and excepting the sentimental of men, a

rocket-headed horde, ever at the heels of fair faces for ignition, and up
starring away at a hint of tearfulness; excepting further by chance a
solid champion man, or some generous woman capable of faith in the
pelted solitary of her sex, our temporary world blows direct East on her
shivering person. The scandal is warrant for that; the circumstances of
the scandal emphasize the warrant. And how clever she is! Cleverness
is an attribute of the selecter missionary lieutenants of Satan. We pray
to be defended from her cleverness: she flashes bits of speech that catch
men in their unguarded corner. The wary stuff their ears, the stolid bid
her best sayings rebound on her reputation. Nevertheless the world, as
Christian, remembers its professions, and a portion of it joins the burly
in morals by extending to her a rough old charitable mercifulness;
better than sentimental ointment, but the heaviest blow she has to bear,
to a character swimming for life.
That the lady in question was much quoted, the Diaries and Memoirs
testify. Hearsay as well as hearing was at work to produce the
abundance; and it was a novelty in England, where (in company) the
men are the pointed talkers, and the women conversationally fair
Circassians. They are, or they know that they should be; it comes to the
same. Happily our civilization has not prescribed the veil to them. The
mutes have here and there a sketch or label attached to their names:
they are 'strikingly handsome'; they are 'very good-looking';
occasionally they are noted as 'extremely entertaining': in what manner,
is inquired by a curious posterity, that in so many matters is left
unendingly to jump the empty and gaping figure of interrogation over
its own full stop. Great ladies must they be, at the web of politics, for
us to hear them cited discoursing. Henry Wilmers is not content to
quote the beautiful Mrs. Warwick, he attempts a portrait. Mrs. Warwick
is 'quite Grecian.' She might 'pose for a statue.' He presents her in
carpenter's lines, with a dab of school-box colours, effective to those
whom the Keepsake fashion can stir. She has a straight nose, red lips,
raven hair, black eyes, rich complexion, a remarkably fine bust, and she
walks well, and has an agreeable voice; likewise 'delicate extremities.'
The writer was created for popularity, had he chosen to bring his art
into our literary market.

Perry Wilkinson is not so elaborate: he describes her in his
'Recollections' as a splendid brune, eclipsing all the blondes coming
near her: and 'what is more, the beautiful creature can talk.' He
wondered, for she was young, new to society. Subsequently he is rather
ashamed of his wonderment, and accounts for it by 'not having known
she was Irish.' She 'turns out to be Dan Merion's daughter.'
We may assume that he would have heard if she had any whiff of a
brogue. Her sounding of the letter R a trifle scrupulously is noticed by
Lady Pennon: 'And last, not least, the lovely Mrs. Warwick, twenty
minutes behind the dinner-hour, and r-r-really fearing she was late.'
After alluding to the soft influence of her beauty and ingenuousness on
the vexed hostess, the kindly old marchioness adds, that it was no
wonder she was late, 'for just before starting from home she had broken
loose from her husband for good, and she entered the room absolutely
houseless!' She was not the less 'astonishingly brilliant.' Her
observations were often 'so unexpectedly droll I laughed till I cried.'
Lady Pennon became in consequence one of the stanch supporters of
Mrs. Warwick.
Others were not so easily won. Perry Wilkinson holds a balance when
it goes beyond a question of her wit and beauty. Henry Wilmers puts
the case aside, and takes her as he finds her. His cousin, the clever and
cynical Dorset Wilmers, whose method of conveying his opinions
without stating them was famous, repeats on two occasions when her
name appears in his pages, 'handsome, lively, witty'; and the stressed
repetition of calculated brevity while a fiery scandal was abroad
concerning the lady, implies weighty substance--the reservation of a
constable's truncheon, that could legally have knocked her character
down to the pavement. We have not to ask what he judged. But Dorset
Wilmers was a political opponent of the eminent Peer who yields the
second name to the scandal, and politics in his day flushed the
conceptions of men. His short references to 'that Warwick-Dannisburgh
affair' are not verbally malicious. He gets wind of the terms of Lord
Dannisburgh's will and testament, noting them without comment. The
oddness of the instrument in one respect