FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   202   203   204   205   206   207   208   209   210   211   212   213   214   215   216  
217   218   219   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   227   228   229   230   231   232   233   234   235   236   237   238   239   240   241   >>   >|  
dversary's frown on Fleetwood reading. Lady Arpington was more politic; she wrote of 'a healthy boy,' and 'the healthy mother giving him breast,' this being 'the way for the rearing of strong men.' She condescended to the particulars, that she might touch him. The earl had not been so reared: his mother was not the healthy mother. One of his multitudinous, shifty, but ineradicable ambitions was to exhibit an excellingly vigorous, tireless constitution. He remembered the needed refreshment of the sea-breezes aboard his yacht during the week following the sleep-discarded nights at Scrope's and the green tables. For a week he hung to the smell of brine, in rapturous amity with Feltre, until they yellowed, differed, wrangled, hated. A powerful leaven was put into him by the tidings out of Wales. Gower, good fellow, had gone down to see the young mother three weeks after the birth of her child. She was already renewing her bloom. She had produced the boy in the world's early manner, lightly, without any of the tragic modern hovering over death to give the life. Gower compared it to a 'flush of the vernal orchard after a day's drink of sunlight.' That was well: that was how it should be. One loathes the idea of tortured women. The good fellow was perhaps absurdly poetical. Still we must have poetry to hallow this and other forms of energy: or say, if you like, the right view of them impels to poetry. Otherwise we are in the breeding yards, among the litters and the farrows. It is a question of looking down or looking up. If we are poor creatures--as we are if we do but feast and gamble and beget--we shall run for a time with the dogs and come to the finish of swine. Better say, life is holy! Why, then have we to thank her who teaches it. He gazed at the string of visions of the woman naming him husband, making him a father: the imagined Carinthia--beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus; the Carinthia of the precipice tree-shoot; Carinthia of the ducal dancing-hall; and she at the altar rails; she on the coach box; she alternately softest of brides, doughtiest of Amazons. A mate for the caress, an electrical heroine, fronted him. Yes, and she was Lord Fleetwood's wife, cracking sconces,--a demoiselle Moll Flanders,--the world's Whitechapel Countess out for an airing, infernally earnest about it, madly ludicrous; the schemer to catch his word, the petticoated Shylock to bind him to the letter of it; now persecuting, haunting
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   202   203   204   205   206   207   208   209   210   211   212   213   214   215   216  
217   218   219   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   227   228   229   230   231   232   233   234   235   236   237   238   239   240   241   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
mother
 

Carinthia

 

healthy

 

poetry

 

fellow

 
Fleetwood
 
finish
 

gamble

 
Better
 

string


visions

 

naming

 
teaches
 

reading

 
energy
 

Arpington

 
impels
 
Otherwise
 

question

 

husband


farrows

 

breeding

 

litters

 

creatures

 

imagined

 

Whitechapel

 

Flanders

 

Countess

 

airing

 

infernally


demoiselle

 
cracking
 

sconces

 

earnest

 

letter

 
persecuting
 

haunting

 
Shylock
 

petticoated

 
ludicrous

schemer
 

fronted

 
heroine
 
precipice
 

dancing

 

haggard

 
hallow
 

father

 
dversary
 

beautiful