Bernard Le Bouyer de Lesage

“ Said I, ‘my dear Lord Howe, you shall not speak
To a printing woman who has lost her place,
(The sweet safe corner of the household fire
Behind the heads of children) compliments
As if she were a woman. We who have clipt
The curls before our eyes, may see at least
As plain as men do: speak out, man to man;
No compliments, beseech you.’
⁠‘Friend to friend,
Let that be. We are sad to-night, I saw,
(—Good night, Sir Blaise! Ah, Smith—he has slipped away)
I saw you across the room, and stayed, Miss Leigh,
To keep a crowd of lion-hunters off,
With faces toward your jungle. ”

“ Leech’s chief contributions to Punch at this time were the large cuts, in which Peel, Brougham, the great Duke of Wellington, and others, play political parts in matters that would be of little interest to the reader of to-day, nor are the drawings of exceptional merit. ”

“ While all the dead keep whispering through the withes,
‘You would be better in your place with us,
‘You pitiful corruption!’ At the thought,
The damps break out on me like leprosy,
Although I’m clean. Ay, clean as Marian Erle:
As Marian Leigh, I know, I were not clean:
I have not so much life that I should love,
. . Except the child. Ah God! ”

“ In that case,—and the noble house of Leigh
Must henceforth with its good roof shelter you:
I cannot speak and burn you up between
Those rafters, I who am born a Leigh,—nor speak
And pierce your breast through Romney’s, I who live
His friend and cousin!—so, you are safe. You two
Must grow together like the tares and wheat
Till God’s great fire.—But make the best of time.
‘And hide this letter! let it speak no more
Than I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erle,
And set her own love digging her own grave
Within her green hope’s pretty garden-ground ”

“ In 1726, if not before, he was journeyman to William Bowyer [q. v.] , the 'learned' printer, and he ever acknowledged the kindness with which he had been treated, in proof of which he left by his will ten guineas to Bowyer for a mourning wig. ”

“ For me, I’d rather see a rick on fire Than such a woman angry. Then a youth Fresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs, Asks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe, And adds, he has an epic, in twelve parts, Which when you’ve read, you’ll do it for his boot,— All which I saved you, and absorb next week Both manuscript and man,—because a lord [211] Is still more potent than a poetess, With any extreme republican. ”

“ Lefarge thanked the polite shopman and, following his advice, called on the avocat. Here he learned that M. Boirac was one of the directors of a large private bank, the Crédit Mazières, in the Boulevard de la Senne, in Brussels.
He was half tempted to return at once to the capital, but a long experience had convinced him of the folly of accepting any statement without investigation. To be on the safe side, he felt he should go out and see for himself if the house was indeed empty. He therefore hired a small car and drove out along the Louvain road. ”

“ So, righting His creation’s balance-scale
(You pulled as low as Tophet) to the top
Of most celestial innocence! For me
Who am not as bold, I own those infant eyes
Have set me praying.
⁠‘While they look at heaven,
No need of protestation in my words
Against the place you’ve made them! let them look!
They’ll do your business with the heavens, be sure:
I spare you common curses.
⁠‘Ponder this.
If haply you’re the wife of Romney Leigh,
(For which inheritance beyond your birth
You sold that poisonous porridge called your soul)
I charge you, be his faithful and true wife! ”

“ Why, Leigh Himself, although our ablest man, I said, Is scarce advanced to see as far as this, Which some are: he takes up imperfectly The social question—by one handle—leaves The rest to trail. A Christian socialist, Is Romney Leigh, you understand.’ ‘Not I. I disbelieve in Christian-pagans, much As you in women-fishes. If we mix Two colours, we lose both, and make a third Distinct from either. Mark you! to mistake A colour is the sign of a sick brain, And mine, I thank the saints, is clear and cool: A neutral tint is here impossible. ”

“ Well, he had some right On his side probably; men always have, Who go absurdly wrong. The living boor Who brews your ale, exceeds in vital worth Dead Cæsar who ‘stops bungholes’ in the cask; And also, to do good is excellent, For persons of his income, even to boors: I sympathise with all such things. But he Went mad upon them ... madder and more mad, From college times to these,—as, going down hill, The faster still, the farther! you must know Your Leigh by heart: he has sown his black young curls With bleaching cares of half a million men Already. ”

“ Straight out of it, by looking, though ’twas clear,
Unless the generous lady, ’ware of this,
Had set her own house all a-fire for me,
To light me forwards? Leaning on my face
Her heavy agate eyes which crushed my will,
She told me tenderly, (as when men come
To a bedside to tell people they must die)
‘She knew of knowledge,—aye, of knowledge, knew,
‘That Romney Leigh had loved her formerly. ”

“ He stands on Right’s side; never flinch for him,
As if he stood on the other. You’ll be bound
By me? I am a woman of repute;
No fly-blow gossip ever specked my life;
My name is clean and open as this hand,
Whose glove there’s not a man dares blab about,
As if he had touched it freely:—here’s my hand
To clasp your hand, my Marian, owned as pure!
As pure,—I’m a woman and a Leigh!—
And, as I’m both, I’ll witness to the world
That Romney Leigh is honoured in his choice,
Who chooses Marian for his honoured wife.’
Her broad wild woodland eyes shot out a light ”

“ The Bowery is a mile of American life in which the nations of the earth meet for excitement and change. There is a business aspect of it which is permanent, but the many-colored throng surging up and down its side-walks all day and all night is ephemeral. It is the place for the homeless, for the out of kilter, for the rudderless wrecks who drift. ”

“ While all the aisles, alive and black with heads,
Crawled slowly toward the altar from the street,
As bruised snakes crawl and hiss out of a hole
With shuddering involutions, swaying slow
From right to left, and then from left to right,
In pants and pauses. What an ugly crest
Of faces, rose upon you everywhere,
From that crammed mass! you did not usually
See faces like them in the open day:
They hide in cellars, not to make you mad
As Romney Leigh is.—Faces?—O my God,
We call those, faces? men's and women's . . ”

“ For the parish stocks, and Romney will be there
To call you brother, sister, or perhaps
A tenderer name still. Had I any chance
With Mister Leigh, who am Lady Waldemar,
And never committed felony?’
⁠‘You speak
Too bitterly,’ I said, ‘for the literal truth.’
‘The truth is bitter. Here’s a man who looks
For ever on the ground! you must be low;
Or else a pictured ceiling overhead,
Good painting thrown away. For me, I’ve done
What women may, (we’re somewhat limited,
We modest women) but I’ve done my best.
—How men are perjured when they swear our eyes
Have meaning in them! ”

“ When cast in spasms out by the shuddering womb,
Was wrong against the social code,—forced wrong.
What business had the baby to cry there?
I tell her story and grow passionate.
She, Marian, did not tell it so, but used
Meek words that made no wonder of herself
For being so sad a creature. ‘Mister Leigh
Considered truly that such things should change.
They will, in heaven–but meantime, on the earth,
There’s none can like a nettle as a pink,
Except himself. ”

“ Full of poetry and art, and amiable humour, we argue always with full hearts on everything but religion and Bonaparte.... Though Leigh Hunt is not deep in knowledge, moral metaphysical or classical, yet he is intense in feeling and has an intellect forever on the alert. He is like one of those instruments on three legs, which, throw it how you will, always pitches on two, and has a spike sticking for ever up and ever ready for you. He “sets” at a subject with a scent like a pointer. He is a remarkable man, and created a sensation by his independence, his disinterestedness in public matters ”

“ In pity of what I am.’
⁠Ah friend, I thought,
As husband of the Lady Waldemar
You’re granted very sorely pitiable!
And yet Aurora Leigh must guard her voice
From softening in the pity of your case,
As if from lie or licence. Certainly
We’ll soak up all the slush and soil of life
With softened voices, ere we come to you.
At which I interrupted my own thought
And spoke out calmly. ‘Let us ponder, friend,
Whate’er our state, we must have made it first ”

“ Perhaps if fate had not presented Leigh with a desire for the theater that evening, Gun Metal and the vicissitudes of his career might have troubled him no more.
We eat, sleep, and out of ourselves perform little acts, and all the time the other thing that has no name puts our hand and our mind to that which is, or is to be. So Leigh, with the entanglement of this It enmeshing him, looked up from his seat in the stalls and saw Kathleen Braund in an upper box. ”

“ Ah, Vincent’s letter said how Leigh was moved
To hear that Vincent was betrothed to Kate.
With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells
In this world! Then I spoke,—’I did not think,
My cousin, you had ever known Kate Ward.’
‘In fact I never knew her. ’Tis enough
That Vincent did, before he chose his wife
For other reasons than those topaz eyes
I’ve heard of. Not to undervalue them,
For all that. One takes up the world with eyes.’
—Including Romney Leigh, I thought again,
Albeit he knows them only by repute.
How vile must all men be, since he’s a man. ”

“ Sweet heaven, she takes me up As if she had fingered me and dog-eared me And spelled me by the fireside, half a life! She knows my turns, my feeble points.—What then? The knowledge of a thing implies the thing; Of course, she found that in me, she saw that, Her pencil underscored this for a fault, And I, still ignorant. Shut the book up! close! And crush that beetle in the leaves. O heart, At last we shall grow hard too, like the rest, And call it self-defence because we are soft.
And after all, now, ... why should I be pained, That Romney Leigh, my cousin, should espouse This Lady Waldemar? ”

“ And so on. As for Romney Leigh, ’tis sure
He never loved her,—never. By the way,
You have not heard of her . .? quite out of sight.
And out of saving? lost in every sense?’
She might have gone on talking half-an-hour,
And I stood still, and cold, and pale, I think,
As a garden-statue a child pelts with snow
For pretty pastime. Every now and then
I put in ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ I scarce knew why;
The blind man walks wherever the dog pulls,
And so I answered. Till Lord Howe broke in ”

“ His bohemian world was mine—and I found it a very good world and very much to my taste—a clear, honest, wholesome, innocent, intellectual, and most industrious British bohemia, with lots of tobacco, lots of good music, plenty of talk about literature and art, and not too much victuals or drink. Many of its denizens, that were, have become Royal Academicians or have risen to fame in other ways; some have had to take a back seat in life; surprisingly few have gone to the bad.
This world, naturally, was not Leech's ”

“ Each looked at the other; but Leigh, who was a quick-witted man and an old courtier, forced a laugh instantly, and cried—“Nonsense, brave Jack Oxenham! Leave white birds for men who will show the white feather. Mrs. Leigh waits to pledge you.” ”

“ I’ve seen some men, veracious, nowise mad, Who have thought or dreamed, declared and testified, They’ve heard the Dead a-ticking like a clock Which strikes the hours of the eternities, Beside them, with their natural ears,—and known That human spirits feel the human way, And hate the unreasoning awe which waves them off From possible communion. It may be.
At least, earth separates as well as heaven. For instance, I have not seen Romney Leigh Full eighteen months ... add six, you get two years. They say he’s very busy with good works,— Has parted Leigh Hall into almshouses. ”

“ Help me! for myself I would not say so—but for him. He limps So certainly, he’ll fall into the pit A week hence,—so I lose him—so he is lost! And when he’s fairly married, he a Leigh, To a girl of doubtful life, undoubtful birth, Starved out in London, till her coarse-grained hands Are whiter than her morals,—you, for one, May call his choice most worthy.’ ‘Married! lost! He, ... Romney!’ ‘Ah, you’re moved at last,’ she said. ‘These monsters, set out in the open sun, Of course throw monstrous shadows: those who think Awry, will scarce act straightly. ”

“ And so a shipload of human beings had wandered for generations through the black deeps of interstellar space.
Across the room Browne was climbing groggily to his feet. He muttered, "... Better get back to ... control chair."
He had taken only a few uncertain steps when a realization seemed to strike him. He looked up then, and stared wildly at Lesbee. "Oh!" he said. The sound came from the gut level, a gasp of horrified understanding.
As he slapped a complex of tractor beams on Browne, Lesbee said, "That's right, you're looking at your enemy. Better start talking. We haven't much time." ”

“ Laid softly, each to each, her white-gloved palms,
And sighed for joy: or else (I thank your friend)
Aurora Leigh,—when some indifferent rhymes,
Like those the boys sang round the holy ox
On Memphis-road, have chanced, perhaps, to set
Our Apis-public lowing. Oh, he wants,
Instead of any worthy wife at home,
A star upon his stage of Eglinton!
Advise him that he is not overshrewd
In being so little modest: a dropped star
Makes bitter waters, says a Book I’ve read,—
And there’s his unread letter,’
⁠ ‘My dear friend,’
Lord Howe began . . ”

“ In 1724 Bowyer was a nonjuror; we know nothing more of his religious views except a few traces, in his early life, recorded by Ord in the 'History of Cleveland,' where it is said that he had a controversy with a priest who defended the conduct of his sister, a professed nun of the order of Poor Clares, at Dunkirk. The letters commence October 1696, and end in June 1697, at the time when he was a journeyman printer at Daniel Sheldon's in Bartholomew Close. He seems to have been a very kind-hearted man, and ever ready to show kindness to others. ”