Farquhar

“ Farquhar describes himself in the ‘Miscellanies,’ insisting chiefly upon his easy-going and diffident temperament, and asserting that he is habitually melancholy, ‘very splenetic, and yet very amorous.’ Such self-portraiture is not very trustworthy. As he appears in his work he is the most attractive, as he is the last, of the school generally associated with Congreve: full of real gaiety, and a gentleman in spite of recklessness and an affectation of the fashionable tone of morals. Without the keen wit or the sardonic force of his rivals, he has more genuine high spirits and good nature. ”

“ Farquhar has what Vanbrugh wants—individuality. He seems to identify himself with his favourite characters, the heedless, dissolute, but gentlemanly and good-hearted sparks about town whom he so delights to portray, and hence wins a firmer place in our affections than his wittier and in every way stronger rival, who might have been a comic automaton for any idea of his personality that we are able to form. Whether the inevitable conception of Farquhar is really correct may be doubted; it is not in harmony with the few particulars which we possess of his manners and personal appearance. ”

“ It was fortunate for him that the language of the eye cannot be put in as evidence, for Lucian knew that he had detected, in Farquhar’s too candid orbs, a tacit acknowledgment of all the deceit wherewith he was desirous of charging him.
Next morning in country and city men awoke to a white, silent world under a dome of blue, immaculate sky. There was no wind; and the breath of horse and rider hung still in the air [29] after Noel Farquhar as he rode up to Burnt House. A huge sweep of bare, white country lay outspread, sparkling in the sun ”

“ Even he, however, can rant and deviate into rhetoric, as soon as his lovers drop upon one knee. More plainly in Farquhar’s work than in that of any contemporary, we mark the glamour of the Caroline literature fading, and the breath of life blowing in. An essentially Protestant nationalism began to settle down upon England for good and all with William and Mary, and it brought subtle changes to bear upon the arts, the trades, the sports, and the manners of the people. In Farquhar’s comedies we have the reflex of a dulling and strengthening age ”

“ How Old Farquhar came to be a member of Big Malcolm MacDonald's family no one could quite tell. He was one of those unattached fragments of humanity often found in a new country. A sort of wandering minstrel was Farquhar, content so long as he could pay for a meal or a night's lodging at a wayside tavern by a song, or a tune on his fiddle. Thus he had drifted musically for years through the Canadian backwoods, until homeless old age had overtaken him. ”

“ We were in luck, as it turned out, for not only was Farquhar in the drawing-room, but there was no one else in the long, stiff, splendid room. He looked up from his writing, and saw us piloting our way towards him between the chairs and tables. And I think he turned green. At any rate, my last doubt left me at the sight of his face.
"A word with you, Mr. Farquhar," the Colonel said grimly, keeping a tight hand on my arm, for I confess I had been in favour of more drastic measures. "It is about a photograph."
"A photograph?" the startled wretch exclaimed, his mouth ajar. ”

“ Even as Farquhar wished it, the contemptuous and insulting reference displeased Lucian; the letter was still sacred in his eyes. But he would not, and he did not, allow the feeling to be seen. Farquhar’s measure of reserve was matched by his present openness; but Lucian, whose affairs were everybody’s business, kept his mind as a fenced garden and a fountain sealed. Action and reaction are always equal [72] and opposite; the law is true in the moral as well as the physical world. ”

“ By this time Farquhar had come back from saying good by to Macdonald Dubh and Mr. and Mrs. Murray, who were remaining till the last.
“You will be a man yet,” said Farquhar, shaking Ranald's hand. “You have got the patience and the endurance.” These were great virtues in Farquhar's opinion.
“Not much patience, I am afraid,” said Ranald. “But I am glad you trusted me with your team.”
“And any day you want them you can have them,” said Farquhar, his reckless mood leading him to forget Kirsty for the moment. ”

“ Lucian had no wish to face the sun before he was forced to; he waited with Charlesworth under the rock. Both were excited. Farquhar, standing beside the igniter thirty feet away, was noticeably nonchalant. The warning whistle sounded at five minutes to two; and, as so often before, the workers swarmed away to places of shelter, some to the summit of the pit, others into chambers cut in the [248] rock where no shock of explosion could reach them. Farquhar gave them five minutes’ grace. A bell sounded; and the watchers saw him stoop and fire the fuse. ”

“ Arch. Ha! ha! ha! now comes my turn to be ravished. —You see now, madam, you must use men one way or other; but take this by the way; good madam, that none but a fool will give you the benefit of his courage, unless you'll take his love along with it. —How are they armed, friend?
Scrub. With sword and pistol, sir.
Arch. Hush!—I see a dark lantern coming through the gallery—Madam, be assured I will protect you, or lose my life.
Mrs. Sul. Your life! no, sir, they can rob me of nothing that I value half so much; therefore now, sir, let me entreat you to be gone. ”

“ In love, and marriage, his enterprises were still more unhappily terminated.—And merely as an author, and a soldier, can any events of his life be accounted prosperous.
As a dramatic writer, Farquhar was eminently successful; and in his military capacity, he was ever honoured and beloved—whether fighting with a great army in Flanders, or recruiting with a small party in Shropshire. ”

“ He was horribly bruised; another man would have been disabled. But Farquhar was by nature insensitive to suffering, and, besides, his will scorned to submit to the weakness of his body; he refused to be fettered by pain. This man of many sins was not planning for his own safety; he was remembering only that Lucian had been standing under the rock destroyed, and he swore at the impediments that delayed him as though he could wither them up by the fire of his curses. He struggled free, and saw lying under him the fragments of the detonator, with a length of fuse attached. ”

“ He has eulogy for his heroes when they deserve it, and when they do not you may trust him to find a compassionate excuse; as when poor Leanthe feelingly says of her lover that “his follies are weakly founded upon the principles of honor, where the very foundation helps to undermine the structure.” Even Squire Sullen, for his lumpishness, is divorced without derision, and in a peal of harmless laughter. Farquhar, indeed, is all gentleness, all kindness. ”

“ If he was not a man of the highest genius, he seems to have had excellent moral qualities, of which his behaviour to his wife and tenderness to his children are proofs, and deserved a better fate than to die oppressed with want, and under the calamitous apprehensions of leaving his family destitute: While Farquhar will ever be remembered with pleasure by people of taste, the name of the courtier who thus inhumanly ruined him, will be for ever dedicated to infamy. ”

“ Captain George Farquhar, in 1702, was four-and-twenty years of age. He was a smart, soldier-like Irishman, of "a splenetic and amorous complexion," half an actor, a quarter a poet, and altogether a very honest and gallant gentleman. He had taken to the stage kindly enough, and at twenty-one had written Love and a Bottle. Since then, two other plays, The Constant Couple and Sir Harry Wildair, had proved that he had wit and fancy, and knew how to knit them together into a rattling comedy. ”

“ In their conversations, glistening with epigram and irony, malevolence has no part; they sneer at no virtue, they tamper with none; and at every turn of a selfish campaign they find opportunity for honorable behavior. From the mouths of these worldlings comes satire, hot and piping, against worldliness; for Farquhar is as moralizing, if not as moral, as he dares be. ”

“ The evening set the pattern of many evenings following. Charlesworth came in with Farquhar to dinner; he had been lodging at Petit-Fays, but now talked of transferring himself to the hotel, which, though as primitive as the pious farmers whose name it bore, was certainly cleaner than they. The dinner made Farquhar sigh for the flesh-pots of England; he permitted himself to be a bon-vivant, to tone down his excessive virtues. Sorrel soup, beefsteak which never grew on an ox, tongue stewed with cherries, and a baba made by the eldest son of the house, who was a pâtissier ”

“ Philosophy can support us in hard fortune, but who can have patience in prosperity?” Over his men and women in middle life Farquhar lingers with complacence entirely foreign to his colleagues, to whom mothers, guardians, husbands, and other apple-guarding dragons were uniformly ridiculous and odious. Justice Balance is as attractive as a hearth-fire on a December night; so is Lady Bountiful. Over Fairbank, the good goldsmith, Farquhar gets fairly sentimental, and permits him to drop unaware into decasyllabics, like the pastoral author of Lorna Doone. ”

“ All would have gone well if Farquhar had only looked where he was going, but he did not, being deeply engaged in making love to a young Fairy Maiden by his side, so he never saw a cottage that was standing right in his way, till he struck against the chimney and stuck fast in the thatch. ”

“ Farquhar hastily cast to the winds his modest reserve. “I am not giving in; I do mean to make up the difference,” he said.
[38]
“You do?” said Dolly, fastening her eyes upon him.
“You’re very charitable, Miss Fane,” said Farquhar, smiling.
“Not in the least. I am sorry for Mrs. Searle; but I did not ask you for that reason. I wanted to see what you are like. You’ve spoken to my brother Bernard once or twice, haven’t you?”
“I have; but he did not seem interested in my conversation.”
“Oh, that’s Bernard’s way; he always thinks people mean to patronise him. You know London well, don’t you?” ”

“ Farquhar glanced angrily over his shoulder; but, seeing only Lucian de Saumarez, he went [289] on with his reading, after taking the precaution of drawing his blotter across the revolver to hide it. With an indescribably guilty and shamefaced air, like a dog that has been caught stealing, Lucian went and lay down on the sofa. He was holding a handkerchief to his lips.
Farquhar closed the letter and took the revolver, glancing again at Lucian. Lucian heard the movement, turned his head, and for the moment took away the stained handkerchief. ”

“ Criticism of The Beaux-Stratagem. Each play that Farquhar produced was an improvement on its predecessors, and all critics have been unanimous in pronouncing The Beaux-Stratagem his best, both in the study and on the stage, of which it retained possession much the longest. Except The Recruiting Officer and The Inconstant, revived at Covent Garden in 1825, and also by Daly in America in 1885, none of Farquhar's other [vii] plays has been put on the stage for upwards of a century. ”

“ A practical talent like Farquhar’s was bound to provoke hard little words from the Popes who shrank from his spontaneous style, and the Steeles who could not approve of the gross themes he had inherited. For sheer good-breeding, some scenes in The Way of the World can never be surpassed; they prove that one cannot hold the stage [132] by talk alone. It is fortunate for Farquhar that he could not emulate the exquisitely civilized depravities of Congreve’s urban Muse. But his dialogue is not “low” to modern tastes ”

“ It's the child's one great chance for happiness. But I wish to the deuce he wasn't a highgrader."
"She shan't sacrifice herself if I can prevent it," Lady Farquhar insisted stanchly.
"I 'member a girl who sacrificed herself for a line lieutenant without a shilling to call his own," he soliloquized aloud. "Would have him, and did, by Jove! Three deaths made him Lord Farquhar later, but she married the penniless subaltern."
"I've always been glad I did." She squeezed his arm fondly. "But this is different, James."
Kilmeny and Moya stopped. The young man doffed his gray felt hat and bowed. ”

“ Farquhar asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."
"Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow." ”

“ The last and most important service performed by Captain Farquhar and his gallant companions was the reduction of Gluckstadt, an extremely strong fortress, which had been several times besieged by powerful armies, but never taken until Jan. 5, 1814; when it surrendered to a division of the Crown Prince of Sweden’s army, under the command of Baron de Boyé, and that part of the British squadron then remaining with Captain Farquhar, after an investment of sixteen, and a most effectual bombardment of six days. ”