madam,—it is surely fitting that a book which harks back to the manners of the second george should have its dedication and its patron. and these comedies claim naturally your protection, since it likewise appears a custom of that era for the poet to dedicate his book to his most influential acquaintance and the one least likely to value it.
indeed, it is as proper that the plaudits of great persons be reserved for great performances as it is undeniable these
tiny pictures of that tiny time
aim little at the lofty and sublime.
yet cognoscenti still esteem it an error in the accomplished shakespeare that he introduced a game of billiards into his portrayal of queen cleopatra's court; and the impropriety had been equal had i linked the extreme of any passion with an age and circle wherein abandonment to the emotions was adjudged bucolic, nay, madam, the eumenides were very terrifying at delphi, no doubt, but deck them with paint, patch, and panniers, send them howling among the beau monde on the pantiles, and they are only figures of fun; nor may, in reason, the high woes of a second lear, or of a new prometheus, be adequately lighted by the flambeaux of louis quinze.
conceive, then, the overture begun, and fear not, if the action of the play demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of peter quince's picking. the ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish people of a time when gallantry prevailed.
now the essence of gallantry, i take it, was to accept the pleasures of life leisurely and its inconveniences with a shrug. as requisites, a gallant person will, of course, be "amorous, but not too constant, have a pleasant voice, and possess a talent for love-letters." he will always bear in mind that in love-affairs success is less the ultima thule of desire than its coup de grâce, and he will be careful never to admit the fact, especially to himself. he will value ceremony, but rather for its comeliness than for its utility, as one esteeming the lily, say, to be a more applaudable bulb than the onion. he will prink; and he will be at his best after sunset. he will dare to acknowledge the shapeliness of a thief's leg, to contend that the commission of murder does not necessarily impair the agreeableness of the assassin's conversation; and to insist that at bottom god is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational. he will, in fine, sin on sufficient provocation, and repent within the moment, quite sincerely, and be not unconscionably surprised when he repeats the progression: and he will consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and heaven with a smile that is not distrustful.
this particular attitude toward life may have its merits, but it is not conducive to meticulous morality; therefore, in advance, i warn you that my dramatis personæ will in their display of the cardinal virtues evince a certain parsimony. theirs were, in effect, not virtuous days. and the great man who knew these times au fond, and loved them, and wrote of them as no other man may ever hope to do, has said of these same times, with perfect truth:
"fiddles sing all through them; wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle: never was there such a brilliant, jigging, smirking vanity fair. but wandering through that city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and struggling,—rouged, and lying, and fawning,—i have wanted some one to be friends with. i have said, show me some good person about that court; find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute gay people, some one being that i can love and regard." and thackeray confesses that, for all his research, he could not find anybody living irreproachably, at this especial period….
where a giant fails one may in reason hesitate to essay. i present, then, people who, as people normally do, accepted their times and made the best of them, since the most estimable needs conform a little to the custom of his day, whether it be caractacus painting himself sky-blue or galileo on his knees at santa maria. and accordingly, many of my comedians will lie when it seems advisable, and will not haggle over a misdemeanor when there is anything to be gained by it; at times their virtues will get them what they want, and at times their vices, and at other times they will be neither punished nor rewarded; in fine, madam, they will be just human beings stumbling through illogical lives with precisely that lack of common-sense which so pre-eminently distinguishes all our neighbors from ourselves.
for the life that moved in old manuel of poictesme finds hereinafter in his descendants, in these later allonbys and bulmers and heleighs and floyers, a new milieu to conform and curb that life in externes rather than in essentials. what this life made of chivalrous conditions has elsewhere been recorded: with its renewal in gallant circumstances, the stage is differently furnished and lighted, the costumes are dissimilar; but the comedy, i think, works toward the same dénouement, and certainly the protagonist remains unchanged. my protagonist is still the life of manuel, as this life was perpetuated in his descendants; and my endeavor is (still) to show you what this life made (and omitted to make) of its tenancy of earth. 'tis a drama enactable in any setting.
yet the comedy of gallantry has its conventions. there must be quite invaluable papers to be stolen and juggled with; an involuntary marriage either threatened or consummated; elopements, highwaymen, and despatch-boxes; and a continual indulgence in soliloquy and eavesdropping. everybody must pretend to be somebody else, and young girls, in particular, must go disguised as boys, amid much cut-and-thrust work, both ferric and verbal. for upon the whole, the comedy of gallantry tends to unfold itself in dialogue, and yet more dialogue, with just the notice of a change of scene or a brief stage direction inserted here and there. all these conventions, madam, i observe.
a word more: the progress of an author who alternates, in turn, between fact and his private fancies (like unequal crutches) cannot in reason be undisfigured by false steps. therefore it is judicious to confess, madam, that more than once i have pieced the opulence of my subject with the poverty of my inventions. indisputably, to thrust words into a dead man's mouth is in the ultimate as unpardonable as the axiomatic offence of stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if i have sometimes erred in my surmise at what ormskirk or de puysange or louis de soyecourt really said at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, madam, less to malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; and the accomplished shade of garendon, at least, i have not travestied, unless it were through some too prudent item of excision.
remains but to subscribe myself—in the approved formula of dedicators—as,
madam,
your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant,
the author.
