The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper — John Shaqi
The Case of General Ople and Lady CamperMeredith, George
General
The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper
Meredith, George
English fiction -- 19th century
Sunday afternoon, walking in the park with his daughter on his arm,
General Ople met Mr. Rolles. He saw that the young man and Elizabeth
were mortally pale, and as the very idea of wretchedness directed his
attention to himself, he addressed them conjointly on the subject of his
persecution, giving neither of them a chance of speaking until they were
constrained to part.
A sketch was the consequence, in which a withered Cupid and a fading
Psyche were seen divided by Wilsonople, who keeps them forcibly asunder
with policeman's fists, while courteously and elegantly entreating them
to hear him. 'Meet,' he tells them, 'as often as you like, in my
company, so long as you listen to me'; and the pathos of his aspect makes
hungry demand for a sympathetic audience.
Now, this, and not the series representing the martyrdom of the old
couple at Douro Lodge Gates, whose rigid frames bore witness to the close
packing of a gentlemanly residence, this was the sketch General Ople, in
his madness from the pursuing bite of the gadfly, handed about at Mrs.
Pollington's lawn-party. Some have said, that he should not have
betrayed his daughter; but it is reasonable to suppose he had no idea of
his daughter's being the Psyche. Or if he had, it was indistinct, owing
to the violence of his personal emotion. Assuming this to have been the
very sketch; he handed it to two or three ladies in turn, and was heard
to deliver himself at intervals in the following snatches: 'As you like,
my lady, as you like; strike, I say strike; I bear it; I say I bear it
. . . . If her ladyship is unforgiving, I say I am enduring . . .
I may go, I was saying I may go mad, but while I have my reason I walk
upright, I walk upright.'
Mr. Pollington and certain City gentlemen hearing the poor General's
renewed soliloquies, were seized with disgust of Lady Camper's conduct,
and stoutly advised an application to the Law Courts.
He gave ear to them abstractedly, but after pulling out the whole chapter
of the caricatures (which it seemed that he kept in a case of morocco
leather in his breast-pocket), showing them, with comments on them, and
observing, 'There will be more, there must be more, I say I am sure there
are things I do that her ladyship will discover and expose,' he declined
to seek redress or simple protection; and the miserable spectacle was
exhibited soon after of this courtly man listening to Mrs. Barcop on the
weather, and replying in acquiescence: 'It is hot.--If your ladyship will
only abstain from colours. Very hot as you say, madam,--I do not
complain of pen and ink, but I would rather escape colours. And I dare
say you find it hot too?'
Mrs. Barcop shut her eyes and sighed over the wreck of a handsome
military officer.
She asked him: 'What is your objection to colours?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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