Old Friends, Epistolary Parody | Page 8

in "Comus." It is curious, indeed, that men have drawn
women more true and charming than women themselves have invented,
and the heroines of George Eliot, of George Sand (except Consuelo),
and even of Miss Austen, do not subdue us like Di Vernon, nor win our
sympathies like Rebecca of York. They may please and charm for their
hour, but they have not the immortality of the first heroines of all--of
Helen, or of that Alcmena who makes even comedy grave when she
enters, and even Plautus chivalrous. Poetry, rather than prose fiction, is
the proper home of our spiritual mistresses; they dwell where Rosalind

and Imogen are, with women perhaps as unreal or as ideal as
themselves, men's lost loves and unforgotten, in a Paradise apart.

LETTER: From Mr. Clive Newcome to Mr. Arthur Pendennis.

Mr. Newcome, a married man and an exile at Boulogne, sends Mr.
Arthur Pendennis a poem on his undying affection for his cousin, Miss
Ethel Newcome. He desires that it may be published in a journal with
which Mr. Pendennis is connected. He adds a few remarks on his
pictures for the Academy.
Boulogne, March 28.
Dear Pen,--I have finished Belisarius, and he has gone to face the
Academicians. There is another little thing I sent--"Blondel" I call it--a
troubadour playing under a castle wall. They have not much chance;
but there is always the little print-shop in Long Acre. My sketches of
mail-coaches continue to please the public; they have raised the price to
a guinea.
Here we are not happier than when you visited us. My poor wife is no
better. It is something to have put my father out of hearing of her
mother's tongue: that cannot cross the Channel. Perhaps I am as well
here as in town. There I always hope, I always fear to meet HER . . .
my cousin, you know. I think I see her face under every bonnet. God
knows I don't go where she is likely to be met. Oh, Pen, haeret lethalis
arundo; it is always right--the Latin Delectus! Everything I see is full of
her, everything I do is done for her. "Perhaps she'll see it and know the
hand, and remember," I think, even when I do the mail-coaches and the
milestones. I used to draw for her at Brighton when she was a child.
My sketches, my pictures, are always making that silent piteous appeal
to her, WON'T YOU LOOK AT US? WON'T YOU REMEMBER? I
dare say she has quite forgotten. Here I send you a little set of rhymes;
my picture of Blondel and this old story brought them into my mind.
They are gazes, as the drunk painter says in "Gerfaut;" they are veiled,
a mystery. I know she's not in a castle or a tower or a cloistered cell
anywhere; she is in Park Lane. Don't I read it in the "Morning Post?"
But I can't, I won't, go and sing at the area- gate, you know. Try if F. B.
will put the rhymes into the paper. Do they take it in in Park Lane? See
whether you can get me a guinea for these tears of mine: "Mes

Larmes," Pen, do you remember?--Yours ever, C. N.
The verses are enclosed.
THE NEW BLONDEL.
O ma Reine!
Although the Minstrel's lost you long, Although for bread the Minstrel
sings, Ah, still for you he pipes the song, And thrums upon the crazy
strings!
As Blondel sang by cot and hall, Through town and stream and forest
passed, And found, at length, the dungeon wall, And freed the
Lion-heart at last -
So must your hapless minstrel fare, By hill and hollow violing; He
flings a ditty on the air, He wonders if you hear him sing!
For in some castle you must dwell Of this wide land he wanders
through - In palace, tower, or cloistered cell - He knows not; but he
sings to YOU!
The wind may blow it to your ear, And you, perchance, may understand;
But from your lattice, though you hear, He knows you will not wave a
hand.
Your eyes upon the page may fall, More like the page will miss your
eyes; You may be listening after all, So goes he singing till he dies.

LETTER: From the Hon. Cecil Bertie to the Lady Guinevere.

Mr. Cecil Tremayne, who served "Under Two Flags," an officer in her
Majesty's Guards, describes to the Lady Guinevere the circumstances
of his encounter with Miss Annie P. (or Daisy) Miller. The incident has
been omitted by Ouida and Mr. Henry James.
You ask me, Camarada, what I think of the little American donzella,
Daisy Miller? Hesterna Rosa, I may cry with the blind old bard of
Tusculum; or shall