“If you refer to myself,” Dammler took him up, “it cannot have escaped your notice that I write in the classical rhymed couplet of Pope.”
“We are comparing apples and oranges,” Ashington objected. “Pope was a philosopher, a scholar. His theme was classic. A very serious writer, he did not tell wild tales of imaginary trips around the world.”
“Bad apples and oranges you mean?” Dammler asked with a raised brow. “It is news to me that my trip around the world was an illusion. I was quite convinced it took place, and have the scars to prove it.”
“As to illusion,” Coleridge mercifully interrupted, to regale them with his writing of the “Kubla Kahn” while under the influence of opium. A discussion of opium in all its uses and abuses followed, to get them over the first course.
The second course brought fresh problems. Ashington was at pains to select some particularly fine prawns for Miss Mallow and place them tenderly on her plate. Observing him, Dammler was at it again, but more obliquely this time. “What do you think of this fellow Shelley?” he asked, knowing the name was anathema to the doctor.
“He is a scoundrel and a knave,” Ashington charged bluntly. “He should be run out of the country, or locked up. To be seducing innocent young women and preaching atheism and anarchy… I suppose you approve of him, my lord?”
“I like him excessively,” Dammler agreed, smiling in anticipation.
“What is it you like so much, his defiance of the existence of God, or his embracing free love?”
“Of those two, his atheism, of course. I am an atheist myself, thank God.” There was a satirical gleam in his one flashing eye.
Prudence gasped, and Miss Burney emitted one sharp hoot of laughter. The rest of the audience was stunned into a moment’s silence.
“You have just contradicted yourself,” Ashington pointed out when he recovered from his shock.
“How clever of you to have noticed it already,” Dammler laughed. “But I spoke of him as a poet, whose morals are nothing to any of us. It is his odes I particularly admire. In poetry, though the same does not hold true for a novel, the mastery of craft is important. He is a true poet.”
Ashington reined in his temper, and relief came again from Coleridge, who set his posture to a good lecturing pose for a prolonged expounding on the matter. From there, he proceeded to air another of his views, having to do with the idea that Shakespeare hadn’t written a word of his own plays. He had delivered a series of lectures on Shakespeare and Milton to the Philosophical Society and was eager to repeat them. “It is clear from his background the man could not possibly have written them,” he propounded. “Look at who he was-a deer poacher, a profligate, an idiot.”
“What leads you to suppose he was an idiot?” Dammler drawled in his affected voice.
Interruptions were not welcome when Mr. Coleridge was lecturing. He scowled and continued, “Bacon, possibly, or Marlowe may have written such things…”
“Certainly Bacon was an idiot,” Dammler interrupted again. “Put a deal of faith in the philosopher’s stone. Spent years studying it. And as to profligacy, Donne, you know, was no angel-his sermons were to the contrary-nor Thomas Aquinas nor St. Paul, nor any of the great writers.”
“Your adherence to the principle of profligacy is pretty well known, Lord Dammler,” Ashington said, with a winning smile to Prudence, “but one may be a profligate without being a poet, and a poet without being a profligate.”
“Or one may be both, like William Shakespeare.”
“Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him!” Coleridge resumed. “As I said in my lectures in 1811."
“And have repeated so often since,” Dammler added.
Coleridge stared, as at a worm. “Well, it is generally acknowledged among intellectuals that he was incapable of writing anything of the sort.”
“Have you been speaking to some intellectuals?” Dammler asked in a bland manner. There was an uneasy pause before Dammler went on, “‘Repetitio est mater studiorum,’ as we scholars say. Shall I translate for the ladies? ‘Repetition is the mother of learning.’ If Mr. Coleridge tells us often enough the works of Shakespeare were not written by the author, but by some mysterious syndicate too ashamed to own up to their writing of the greatest masterpieces in the English language, we shall all learn it. Very well then, they were not written by Mr. Shakespeare, but by some other gentleman who happened to have the same name.”
Prudence had to suppress a smile, but there were heavy frowns from the literary gentlemen present, and she soon turned serious.
“As to their being the greatest things ever written,” Coleridge went on with his mangled lecture, “I firmly believe Milton stands head and shoulders above Shakespeare.”
“That old trump?” Dammler asked disparagingly. “He wasa Puritanical sham.”
“You confuse his personal life with his works,” Coleridge said.
“Not an uncommon error. Some confuse Shakespeare’s personal life with his works.”
“Whoever wrote the plays,” Fanny Burney intervened, “he did a marvelous job. Did you see Kean’s King Lear?” She managed to divert the irate gentlemen, and peace reigned till the meal was over.
How neatly she handled that, Prudence thought. She knew in her bones this squabble was all to do with herself. Dammler and Ashington were like two dogs fighting over a bone, and with about as much concern for the object over which they battled. If she were at all experienced, she would have known how to handle them, but dinner with Uncle Clarence and her mama had not developed any latent powers of diplomacy she possessed, and she waited in dread to see what the next horrible development would be.
Within half an hour, the gentlemen came to join the ladies in the saloon. Prudence died inside to see both Dammler and the Doctor walk at a jealous pace towards the one seat beside her. She arose at once, and flew to a chair beside Miss Burney, to engage her in a spirited discussion of bonnets, from which the gentlemen were excluded. A dozen times she heard slurs and innuendos exchanged between them, and at the end of an hour she arose with a very real headache to say she must leave.
As the party was going so poorly, the others quickly seconded her idea, and there was a general commotion of thanking and leaving.
“I’ll take you home, Prudence,” Dammler said.
“I am taking Miss Mallow home,” Ashington stated triumphantly.
“You will not want to leave your mother alone,” he countered.
“She is not alone. Miss Gimble lives here for the purpose of looking after her.”
“There is no need for you to put your horses to for nothing. I know very well where Prudence lives, and will be passing by her door.”
"I shall be stopping at her door,” Ashington topped him. “And step in to say good evening to Mr. Elmtree and your dear mother, Miss Mallow, if it is not too late. Shall we go?”
“Well, Prudence?” Dammler said to her, throwing the whole decision of choice on her unwilling back.
“It was arranged beforehand that Dr. Ashington would take me home,” she said, and gave the Doctor her arm, with an apologetic smile at Dammler.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Dammler replied, and turned away with an air of the keenest indifference to offer Miss Burney his company. She had her own carriage coming, but sent it away empty for the honour of a drive on Dammler's tiger skin seats.
Ashington did not accompany Miss Mallow into the house, nor ever have the least intention of doing so, only to be cornered by Elmtree and be made to drink a glass of wine. His sole purpose in claiming he meant to do so was to take Dammler down a peg, and claim his ownership of Miss Mallow. Prudence, naturally not unaware of the bickering between the two the whole evening, undertook an apology on her absent friend’s behalf.