The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper | Page 3

past them, whether in his wild career
or on foot. Elizabeth took a side-shot, as one looks at a wayside tree.
Their speech concerning Lady Camper was an exchange of
commonplaces over her loneliness: and this condition of hers was the
more perplexing to General Ople on his hearing from his daughter that
the lady was very fine-looking, and not so very old, as he had fancied
eccentric ladies must be. The rector's account of her, too, excited the
mind. She had informed him bluntly, that she now and then went to
church to save appearances, but was not a church-goer, finding it
impossible to support the length of the service; might, however, be
reckoned in subscriptions for all the charities, and left her pew open to
poor people, and none but the poor. She had travelled over Europe, and

knew the East. Sketches in watercolours of the scenes she had visited
adorned her walls, and a pair of pistols, that she had found useful, she
affirmed, lay on the writing- desk in her drawing-room. General Ople
gathered from the rector that she had a great contempt for men: yet it
was curiously varied with lamentations over the weakness of women.
'Really she cannot possibly be an example of that,' said the General,
thinking of the pistols.
Now, we learn from those who have studied women on the chess-board,
and know what ebony or ivory will do along particular lines, or
hopping, that men much talked about will take possession of their
thoughts; and certainly the fact may be accepted for one of their moves.
But the whole fabric of our knowledge of them, which we are taught to
build on this originally acute perception, is shattered when we hear,
that it is exactly the same, in the same degree, in proportion to the
amount of work they have to do, exactly the same with men and their
thoughts in the case of women much talked about. So it was with
General Ople, and nothing is left for me to say except, that there is
broader ground than the chessboard. I am earnest in protesting the
similarity of the singular couples on common earth, because otherwise
the General is in peril of the accusation that he is a feminine character;
and not simply was he a gallant officer, and a veteran in gunpowder
strife, he was also (and it is an extraordinary thing that a genuine
humility did not prevent it, and did survive it) a lord and conqueror of
the sex. He had done his pretty bit of mischief, all in the way of honour,
of course, but hearts had knocked. And now, with his bright white hair,
his close-brushed white whiskers on a face burnt brown, his clear-cut
features, and a winning droop of his eyelids, there was powder in him
still, if not shot.
There was a lamentable susceptibility to ladies' charms. On the other
hand, for the protection of the sex, a remainder of shyness kept him
from active enterprise and in the state of suffering, so long as
indications of encouragement were wanting. He had killed the soft ones,
who came to him, attracted by the softness in him, to be killed: but
clever women alarmed and paralyzed him. Their aptness to question
and require immediate sparkling answers; their demand for fresh wit, of

a kind that is not furnished by publications which strike it into heads
with a hammer, and supply it wholesale; their various reading; their
power of ridicule too; made them awful in his contemplation.
Supposing (for the inflammable officer was now thinking, and deeply
thinking, of a clever woman), supposing that Lady Camper's pistols
were needed in her defence one night: at the first report proclaiming her
extremity, valour might gain an introduction to her upon easy terms,
and would not be expected to be witty. She would, perhaps, after the
excitement, admit his masculine superiority, in the beautiful old fashion,
by fainting in his arms. Such was the reverie he passingly indulged, and
only so could he venture to hope for an acquaintance with the
formidable lady who was his next neighbour. But the proud society of
the burglarious denied him opportunity.
Meanwhile, he learnt that Lady Camper had a nephew, and the young
gentleman was in a cavalry regiment. General Ople met him outside his
gates, received and returned a polite salute, liked his appearance and
manners and talked of him to Elizabeth, asking her if by chance she had
seen him. She replied that she believed she had, and praised his
horsemanship. The General discovered that he was an excellent sculler.
His daughter was rowing him up the river when the young gentleman
shot by, with a splendid stroke, in an outrigger, backed, and floating
alongside presumed to enter into