 Lady Wathin's
table, and vowed never more to repeat that offence to his patience, lamented
bitterly to Henry Wilmers that the sole woman worthy of sitting at a little
Sunday evening dinner with the cream of the choicest men of the time was away
wasting herself in that insane modern chase of the picturesque! He called her a
perverted Célimène.
    Redworth had less to regret than the rest of her male friends, as he was
receiving at intervals pleasant descriptive letters, besides manuscript sheets
of ANTONIA'S new piece of composition, to correct the proofs for the press, and
he read them critically, he thought. He read them with a watchful eye to guard
them from the critics. ANTONIA, whatever her faults as a writer, was not one of
the order whose Muse is the Public Taste. She did at least draw her inspiration
from herself, and there was much to be feared in her work, if a sale was the
object. Otherwise Redworth's highly critical perusal led him flatly to admire.
This was like her, and that was like her, and here and there a phrase gave him
the very play of her mouth, the flash of her eyes. Could he possibly wish, or
bear, to have anything altered? But she had reason to desire an extended sale of
the work. Her aim, in the teeth of her independent style, was at the means of
independence - a feminine method of attempting to conciliate contraries; and
after despatching the last sheets to the printer, he meditated upon the several
ways which might serve to assist her; the main way running thus in his mind: -
We have a work of genius. Genius is good for the public. What is good for the
public should be recommended by the critics. It should be. How then to come at
them to get it done? As he was not a member of the honourable literary craft,
and regarded its arcana altogether externally, it may be confessed of him that
he deemed the Incorruptible corruptible; - not, of course, with filthy coin slid
into sticky palms. Critics are human, and exceedingly, beyond the common lot,
when touched; and they are excited by mysterious hints of loftiness in
authorship; by rumours of veiled loveliness; whispers of a general anticipation;
and also Editors can jog them. Redworth was rising to be a Railway King of a
period soon to glitter with rails, iron in the concrete, golden in the
visionary. He had already his Court, much against his will. The powerful
magnetic attractions of those who can help the world to fortune, was
