John Davenant

“ My life has been a strange one. As was said of Randolph of Roanoke’s, ‘the fictions of romance cannot surpass it.’ These two persons alluded to it—I understand more than you possibly can—but I do not understand the allusions made to General Davenant. I am not the suitor of his daughter—or of any one. I am not in love—I do not intend to be—to be frank with you, friend, I have little confidence in women—and you no doubt comprehend that this strange one whom you have thrice met, on the Rappahannock, in Pennsylvania, and near Buckland, is the cause. ”

“ Thomas Bond, knew him) : the witt came by the mother.
Quaere Dr. Busby if he was not of Westminster schoole? he might be about his time. I have heard Sir William Davenant say that he went to the university of Cambridge at eleaven yeares of age, where he studied three or four yeares (I thinke, four) . By 18 he had well travelled France and Italie, and part of Germany, and (I thinke also) of Spaine.
He returned into England an extraordinary accomplished gentleman, grew famous at court for his readie sparkling witt which was envyed, and he was (Sir William sayd) the bull that was bayted. ”

“ Anno Domini 1637 Sir John Suckling, William Davenant, poet laureat (not then knighted) , and Jack Young came to the Bathe. Sir John came like a young prince for all manner of equipage and convenience, and Sir W. Davenant [Pg 243] told me that he had a cart-load of bookes carried downe, and 'twas there, at Bath, that he writt the little tract in his booke about Socinianism. 'Twas as pleasant a journey as ever men had; in the heighth of a long peace and luxury, and in the venison season. ”

“ It was what a fastidious observer of life might call "low," but Davenant's judgments had no severity of that kind. He looked at the merry groups, composed for the most part of chance acquaintances, here to-day and gone to-morrow, swift and light of love, with a curious craving for fellowship. From the gatherings of friends he felt himself invariably the one shut out.
It was this sense of exclusion that finally sent him away from the cheerful quay to wander down the jetty which marks the line where the Harbor of Grace, with its intricate series of basins and docks, becomes the sea. ”

“ After all, which was the real Krishn Davenund, which the ideal? One was the older certainly; but change must come to all things.
They had reached the river steps by this time, and he paused--making Râm Nâth pause also--to look down on a scene which had not changed a hair-breadth in essentials for thousands of years. Yet Chris Davenant's eye noted one change of detail, in a moment, as a woman passed him on her way to fill her waterpot. ”

“ That other—he whose face was always with her, was going there!
“At Hurst Leigh,” repeated Mrs. Davenant. “Do you know it?”
Una shook her head silently. She longed to ask more, to ask if Mrs. Davenant knew the youth who had taken shelter in the cottage, but she simply could not. Love is a wondrous schoolmaster—he had already taught her frank, out-spoken nature the art of concealment.
“It is a grand place,” continued Mrs. Davenant. “A great, huge place,” and she shivered faintly, “and—and if Squire Davenant has left it to Stephen, he will live there.” ”

“ Davenant, in very early life, gave promise of a taste for literature, and one of his first attempts at composition was "An Ode in Remembrance of Master William Shakespeare." He acquired the rudiments of knowledge at the grammar school of his native parish, then flourishing under the management of Edward Sylvester, and in 1621, he matriculated at Lincoln College, his father being Mayor of the city that year. ”

“ Sir William Davenant (1606-1668) was more interesting as a man, and in his relations with greater men of letters, than as a poet. His vast "epic" "Gondibert," concerned with the heroic age of Lombardy, and written in quatrains of alternately rhyming decasyllabic lines, is a monument of misplaced ambition. Davenant's father was landlord of the Crown Inn, at Oxford, and Davenant did not discourage the legend that Shakespeare was his mother's admirer. At a very early age, Davenant wrote the briefest of elegiac odes on Shakespeare's death. ”

“ The next second she had slipped between the portières into the hail. He heard her pause there.
It was inevitable that Guion's words should return to him: "Half in love with him—as it is."
"That's rot," he assured himself. He had only to call up the image of Davenant's hulking figure and heavy ways to see what rot it was. He himself was not vain of his appearance; he had too much to his credit to be obliged to descend to that; but he knew he was a distinguished man, and that he looked it. The woman who could choose between him and Davenant would practically have no choice at all. ”

“ Davenant was too practised as a player of "the game" to pay a big price for a broken potsherd, unless he was tolerably sure in advance that within the potsherd or under it there lay more than its value. It was not easy to surmise the form of the treasure nor the spot where it was hidden, but that it was there—in kind satisfactory to Davenant himself—Guion had no doubt. It was his part, therefore, to be astute and wary, not to lose the chance of selling, and yet not to allow himself to be overreached. If Davenant was playing a deep game, he must play a deeper. ”

“ The wind increased in violence; the spray was salt on his mustache, and clung to the nap of his clothing. The radiance that marked Trouville and Honfleur grew dim almost to extinction. Along the quay the cafés began to diminish the number of their lights. The cheerful groups broke up, strolling home to the mansard or to the fo'castle, with bursts of drunken or drowsy song. Davenant continued to sit crouched, huddled, bowed. He ceased to argue, or to follow the conflict between self-interest and duty, or to put up a fight of any kind. He was content to sit still and suffer. ”

“ Besides, it is highly probable, his sympathies with rebellious Puritanism were already so far developed as to make him an object of aversion to the king. Davenant triumphed. The defeated candidate lived to see the court dispersed, king and Laureate alike fugitive, and to receive from the Long Parliament the place of Historiographer, as a compensation for the lost bays. ”

“ This melancholy event was a severe blow to the hopes of Davenant. He was thereby thrown upon his own resources; and, as frequently happens, misfortune begat success, as it necessitated the attempt to achieve it. Bereft of his patron, without fortune or position, he addressed himself seriously to the business of life, and his predilections pointed to the theatre. In the following year, he presented for representation his “Albovine, King of the Lombards,” a tragedy written in prose, the plot taken from a novel by Bandello. ”

“ And this contract was important to Davenant. He showed it even by his repression. He had about him a manner of well-bred awkwardness. He was dealing with things of which he knew nothing. Maybe the ease with which he had been fleeced by the Yankee skipper showed him how helpless he really was; but he was determined.
Perhaps this black-bearded Englishman wasn't helpless at all, but had to gamble at times, and risk a loss. One someway doesn't expect an Englishman to be black-bearded or to appear as Davenant did. But he was English—born so, anyway.
"Yes,” said Moore. "Settled. ”

“ Davenant."
"Davenant? Is that his name? Yes, I believe your papa did tell me so—the boy Tom Davenant fished out of the slums."
With some indignation Olivia told the story of Davenant's birth and adoption. "So you see," she went on, "he has goodness in his blood. There's no reason why that shouldn't be inherited as much as—as insanity—or a taste for alcohol."
"Stuff, dear! The man or the boy, or whatever he is, calculated on getting something better than he gave. We must simply pay him off and get rid of him. Noblesse oblige."
"We may get rid of him, Aunt Vic, but we can never pay him off." ”

“ Davenant had just a trifle hesitancy, naturally. He really had no surety that he would get full service for his money. But he was a man in earnest. Who dices with the devil must fling gold to the table.
At the first meeting Davenant had intimated that he wanted references. Moore told him they were the easiest of things to furnish—that there were plenty of people round about who would write them out, so much per word. ”

“ Among them would certainly be a blue-eyed ghost with an empty beer-bottle—and blood-covered hair.
Davenant, stiff and aloof, seemed to want loneliness. He had taken the air for a few minutes and gone. He was more unbending than ever of late. Nursing, perhaps, his injury from Williams's tongue. It had been reckless, crazy, of him to turn for even only a short time a man like Davenant to work.
Not because there was anything degrading about the work, but because Davenant was Davenant. Davenant was polite in the way of a man who seems a little startled when there is a call for his attention ”

“ Davenant held a knife in his hand. He was examining it, and Williams held the lantern almost against the knife.
“As I said,” Davenant remarked, slowly turning the knife back and forth, “this looks—this is hers. Not that she wouldn't use it—her grandmother came from Sicily.
“This is very queer—very queer. Dula never spoke to the man in her life. I am sure of that. You don't think—” Davenant broke off. ”

“ Going up the stairs toward her father's room, the sound of voices reassured her. Davenant was there still. That was so much relief. She was able to collect herself, to put on something like her habitual air of quiet dignity, before she pushed open the door and entered.
Guion was lying on the couch with the rug thrown over him. Davenant stood by the fireplace, endangering with his elbow a dainty Chelsea shepherdess on the mantelpiece. He was smoking one of Guion's cigars, which he threw into an ash-tray as Olivia came in. ”

“ He retained the memory of a minute of intense astonishment once upon a time, followed by some weeks, some months perhaps, of angry humiliation; but the years between twenty-four and thirty-three are long and varied, generating in healthy natures plenty of saving common sense. Work, travel, and a widened knowledge of men and manners had so ripened Davenant's mind that he was able to see his proposal now as Miss Guion must have seen it then, as something so incongruous and absurd as not only to need no consideration, but to call for no reply. ”

“ How was she to explain to this frank, beautiful girl the laws of etiquette? “But everyone who speaks of those to whom they are not related say Mr., or Mrs., or Miss.”
“I see,” said Una. “Then Mr. Davenant expects to get his uncle’s money, and then he will be rich. I am very glad. And he does not live in the same house with you?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Davenant—and surely there was something like a tone of relief in her voice—“no; when he is in London he lives in chambers in rooms by himself; but he has been staying at Hurst Leigh.” ”

“ The interruption at the conference had not a little offended Davenport. A pompous and conceited man, any slight to himself, any failure to accord a deference he considered his due, he felt sensibly as an injury; much more, then, an open defiance and direct attack. That Holden or any one should have the hardihood, before an assemblage of his friends and acquaintances, to interrupt him and load him with reproaches, wounded his self love to the quick, and he fancied it would affect his reputation and influence in the community were the offence to be passed over without notice. ”

“ The gospel of Jasper Davenant was simple and sound. Never pull a horse, never forge a cheque, never get involved in the meshes of married women. Apart from that, nothing mattered: though to be his true disciple, you must never lose your head, never lose your temper, never be afraid of man or woman, brute or devil. He was the North [19] American Indian of chivalrous romance, transplanted to Cumberland with little loss of essential characteristics. ”

“ In course of time Mr and Mrs Davenant grew cold-hearted, calculating, and selfish; and as their fortunes flourished, more and more did they exult in their own wisdom, and condemn as foolish and Quixotic everything charitable and disinterested. To the best of their power they brought up their children in the same principles, and they succeeded to admiration with their eldest daughter, who was as shrewd and prudent as they could wish. Mrs Davenant would often express her maternal delight in her Selina: there never was a girl possessing such strong good sense—such wisdom. ”

“ They don't want any of us—not for ourselves. It's the sou!—the sou!—the everlasting sou! Noble or peasant—it makes no difference. But if my niece hadn't abandoned me—"
"Why shouldn't you come home, madame?" Davenant suggested, touched by so much that was tragic. "You wouldn't find any one after the sou there."
"They're all about me," she whispered—"the Melcourt. They're all over the house. They come and settle on me, and I can't shake them off. They suffocate me—waiting for the moment when—But I've made my will, and some'll be disappointed. Oh, I shall leave them Melcourt-le-Danois. ”

“ How often am I to tell you, my dear Reeves, that you are dealing with a genius? If Davenant had ordered a sleeper just at that moment, attention might have been directed to him. But ordering a sleeper for Brotherhood would merely strengthen the impression that Brotherhood had disappeared. If that was all—personally I believe the scheme was even more audacious. I believe Davenant did mean to go away, for a time at any rate, and by that very train. He would join it at Crewe, travelling in an ordinary first-class carriage. ”