Coelebs In Search of a Wife Part 5

You took in sounds that might create a soul Under the ribs of death.

"For fear, however, that your heart of adamant should hold out against all these perilous a.s.saults, its vulnerability was tried in other quarters. The t.i.tian would naturally lead to Livinia's drawings. A beautiful sketch of the lakes would be produced, with a gentle intimation, what a sweet place Westmoreland must be to live in! When you had exhausted all proper raptures on the art and on the artist, it would be recollected, that as Westmoreland was so near Scotland, you would naturally be fond of a reel. The reel of course succeeded." Then, putting himself into an att.i.tude and speaking theatrically, he continued,

"Then universal Pan Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance--

"Oh! no, I forgot universal Pan could not join, but he could admire. Then all the perfections of all the nymphs burst on you in full blaze. Such a concentration of attractions you never could resist! You are _but_ a man, and now, doubtless, a lost man." Here he stopped to finish his laugh, and I was driven reluctantly to acknowledge that his picture, though a caricature, was, notwithstanding, a resemblance.

"And so," said Sir John, "you were brought under no power of incantation by this dangerous visit. You will not be driven, like the tempted Ithacan, to tie yourself to a mast, or to flee for safety from the enchantment of these Sirens."

While we were at supper, with more gravity, he said, "Among the various objects of ambition, there are few in life which bring less accession to its comfort, than an unceasing struggle to rise to an elevation in society very much above the level of our own condition, without being aided by any stronger ascending power than mere vanity. Great talents, of whatever kind, have a natural tendency to rise, and to lift their possessor. The flame in mounting does but obey its impulse. But when there is no energy more powerful than the pa.s.sion to be great, dest.i.tute of the gifts which confer greatness, the painful efforts of ambition are like water, forced above its level by mechanical powers. It requires constant exertions of art, to keep up what art first set a-going. Poor Mrs. Fentham's head is perpetually at work to maintain the elevation she has reached. And how little after all is she considered by those on whose caresses her happiness depends! She has lost the esteem of her original circle, where she might have been respected, without gaining that of her high a.s.sociates, who, though they receive her, still refuse her claims of equality. She is not considered as of their _establishment_; it is but _toleration_ at best.

"At Mrs. Fentham's, I encountered Lady Bab Lawless, a renowned modish dowager, famous for laying siege to the heart of every distinguished man, with the united artillery of her own wit and her daughters' beauty.

How many ways there are of being wrong! She was of a character diametrically opposite to that of Mrs. Fentham. She had the same end in view, but the means she used to accomplish it were of a bolder strain.

Lady Bab affected no delicacy, she laughed at reserve; she had shaken hands with decorum.

She held the _noisy_ tenor of her way

with no a.s.sumed refinement; and, so far from shielding her designs behind the mask of decency, she disdained the obsolete expedient. Her plans succeeded the more infallibly, because her frankness defeated all suspicion. A man could never divine that such gay and open a.s.saults could have their foundation in design, and he gave her full credit for artless simplicity, at the moment she was catching him in her toils. If she now and then had gone too far, and by a momentary oversight, or excessive levity had betrayed too much, with infinite address she would make a crane-neck turn, and fall to discussing, not without ability, some moral or theological topic. Thus she affected to establish the character of a woman, thoughtless through wit, indiscreet through simplicity, but religious on principle.

As there is no part of the appendage to a wife, which I have ever more dreaded than a Machiavelian mother, I should have been deaf to wit and blind to beauty, and dead to advances, had their united batteries been directed against me. But I had not the ambition to aspire to that honor.

I was much too low a mark for her lofty aim. She had a natural antipathy to every name that could not be found in the red book. She equally shrunk from unt.i.tled opulence and indigent n.o.bility. She knew by instinct if a younger son was in the room, and by a petrifying look checked his most distant approaches; while with her powerful spells she never failed to draw within her magic circle the splendid heir, and charm him to her purpose.

Highly born herself, she had early been married to a rich man of inferior rank, for the sake of a large settlement. Her plan was, that her daughters (who, by the way, are modest and estimable), should find in the man they married, still higher birth than her own, and more riches than her husband's.

It was a curious speculation to compare these two friends, and to observe how much less the refined maneuvers of Mrs. Fentham answered, than the open a.s.saults of the intrepid Lady Bab. All the intricacies and labyrinths which the former has been so skillful and so patient in weaving, have not yet enthralled one captive, while the composed effrontery, the affecting to take for granted the offer which was never meant to be made, and treating that as concluded, which was never so much as intended, drew the unconscious victim of the other into the trap, before he knew it was set: the depth of her plot consisting in not appearing to have any. It was a novelty in intrigue. An originality which defied all compet.i.tion, and in which no imitator had any chance of success.

CHAPTER X.

Sir John carried me one morning to call on Lady Denham, a dowager of fashion, who had grown old in the trammels of the world. Though she seems resolved to die in the harness, yet she piques herself on being very religious, and no one inveighs against infidelity or impiety with more pointed censure. "She has a grand-daughter," said Sir John, "who lives with her, and whom she has trained to walk precisely in her own steps, and which, she thinks, _is the way she should go_. The girl,"

added he, smiling, "is well looking, and will have a handsome fortune, and I am persuaded that, as a friend, I could procure you a good reception."

We were shown into her dressing-room, where we found her with a book lying open before her. From a glance which I caught of the large black letter, I saw it was a _Week's Preparation_. This book, it seems, constantly lay open before her from breakfast to dinner, at this season. It was Pa.s.sion week. But as this is the room in which he sees all her morning visitors, to none of whom is she ever denied, even at this period of retreat, she could only pick up momentary s.n.a.t.c.hes of reading in the short intervals between one person bowing out and another courtesying in. Miss Denham sat by, painting flowers.

Sir John asked her ladyship if she would go and dine in a family way with Lady Belfield. She drew up, looked grave, and said with much solemnity, that she should never think of dining abroad at this holy season. Sir John said, "As we have neither cards nor company, I thought you might as well have eaten your chicken in my house as in your own."

But though she thought it a sin to dine with a sober family, she made herself amends for the sacrifice, by letting us see that her heart was brimful of the world, pressed down and running over. She indemnified herself for her abstinence from its diversions, by indulging in the only pleasures which she thought compatible with the sanct.i.ty of the season, uncharitable gossip, and unbounded calumny. She would not touch a card for the world, but she played over to Sir John the whole game of the preceding Sat.u.r.day night: told him by what a shameful inattention her partner had lost the odd trick; and that she should not have been beaten after all, had not her adversary, she verily believed, contrived to look over her hand.

Sir John seized the only minute in which we were alone, to ask her to add a guinea to a little sum he was collecting for a poor tradesman with a large family, who had been burned out a few nights ago. "His wife,"

added he, "was your favorite maid Dixon, and both are deserving people."

"Ah, poor Dixon! She was always unlucky," replied the lady. "How could they be so careless? Surely they might have put the fire out sooner.

They should not have let it get ahead. I wonder people are not more active." "It is too late to inquire about that," said Sir John; "the question now is, not how their loss might have been prevented, but how it may be repaired." "I am really quite sorry," said she, "that I can give you nothing. I have had so many calls lately, that my charity purse is completely exhausted--and that abominable property-tax makes me quite a beggar."

While she was speaking, I glanced at the open leaf at, "Charge them that are rich in this world that they be ready to give;" and directing my eye further, it fell on, "Be not deceived. G.o.d is not mocked." These were the awful pa.s.sages which formed a part of her _Preparation_; and this was the practical use she made of them!

A dozen persons of both s.e.xes "had their exits and their entrances"

during our stay; for the scene was so strange, and the character so new to me, that I felt unwilling to stir. Among other visitors was Signor Squallini, a favorite opera singer, whom she patronized. Her face was lighted up with joy at the sight of him. He brought her an admired new air in which he was preparing himself, and sung a few notes, that she might say she had heard it the first. She felt all the dignity of the privilege, and extolled the air with all the phrases, cant, and rapture of _dilettanteism_.

After this, she drew a paper from between the leaves of her still open book, which she showed him. It contained a list of all the company she had engaged to attend his benefit. "I will call on some others," said she, "to-morrow after prayers. I am sorry this is a week in which I can not see my friends at their a.s.semblies, but on Sunday you know it will be over, and I shall have my house full in the evening. Next Monday will be Easter, and I shall be at our dear d.u.c.h.ess's private masquerade, and then I hope to see and engage the whole world. Here are ten guineas,"

said she in a half whisper to the obsequious Signor; "you may mention what I gave for _my_ ticket, and it may set the fashion going." She then pressed a ticket on Sir John and another on me. Ho declined, saying with great _sang froid_, "You know we are _Handelians_." What excuse I made I do not well know; I only know that I saved my ten guineas with a very bad grace, but felt bound in conscience to add them to what I had before subscribed to poor Dixon.

Hitherto I had never seen the gnat-strainer and the camel-swallower so strikingly exemplified. And it is observable how forcibly the truth of Scripture is often ill.u.s.trated by those who live in the boldest opposition to it. If you have any doubt while you are reading, go into the world and your belief will be confirmed.

As we took our leave, she followed us to the door, I hoped it was with the guinea for the fire; but she only whispered Sir John, though he did not go himself, to prevail on such and such ladies to go to Squallini's benefit. "Pray do," said she, "it will be charity. Poor fellow! he is sadly out at elbows; he has a fine liberal spirit, and can hardly make his large income do."

When we got into the street we admired the splendid chariot and laced liveries of this _indigent_ professor, for whom our charity had been just solicited, and whose "liberal spirit," my friend a.s.sured me, consisted in sumptuous living and the indulgence of every fashionable vice.

I could not restrain my exclamations as soon as we got out of hearing.

To Sir John, the scene was amusing, but to him it had lost the interest of novelty. "I have known her ladyship about twelve years," said he, "and of course have witnessed a dozen of these annual paroxysms of devotion. I am persuaded that she is a gainer by them on her own principle, that is, in the article of pleasure. This short periodical abstinence whets her appet.i.te to a keener relish for suspended enjoyment; and while she fasts from amus.e.m.e.nts, her blinded conscience enjoys a feast of self-gratulation. She feeds on the remembrance of her self-denial, even after she has returned to those delights which she thinks her retreat has fairly purchased. She considers religion as a system of pains and penalties, by the voluntary enduring of which, for a short time, she shall compound for all the indulgences of the year. She is persuaded that something must be annually forborne, in order to make her peace. After these periodical atonements, the Almighty being in her debt, will be obliged at last to pay her with heaven. This composition, which rather brings her in on the creditor side, not only quiets her conscience for the past, but enables her joyfully to enter on a new score."

I asked Sir John how Lady Belfield _could_ a.s.sociate with a woman of a character so opposite to her own? "What can we do?" said he, "we can not be singular. We must conform a _little_ to the world in which we live."

Trusting to his extreme good nature, and fired at the scene to which I had been a witness, I ventured to observe that non-conformity to such a world as that of which this lady was a specimen, was the very criterion of the religion taught by Him who had declared by way of pre-eminent distinction, that "his kingdom was not of this world."

"You are a young man," answered he mildly, "and this delicacy and these prejudices would soon wear off if you were to live some time in the world." "My dear Sir John," said I, warmly, "by the grace of G.o.d, I never _will_ live in the world; at least, I never will a.s.sociate with that part of it whose society would be sure to wear off that delicacy and remove those prejudices. Why this is retaining all the worst part of popery. Here is the abstinence without the devotion; the outward observance without the interior humiliation; the suspending of sin, not only without any design of forsaking it, but with a fixed resolution of returning to it, and of increasing the gust by the forbearance. Nay, the sins she retains in order to mitigate the horrors of forbearance, are as bad as those she lays down. A postponed sin, which is fully intended to be resumed, is as much worse than a sin persisted in, as deliberate hypocrisy is worse than the impulse of pa.s.sion. I desire not a more explicit comment on a text which I was once almost tempted to think unjust; I mean, the greater facility of the entrance of gross and notorious offenders into heaven than of these formalists. No! If Miss Denham were sole heiress to Cr[oe]sus, and joined the beauty of Cleopatra to the wit of Sappho, I never would connect myself with a disciple of that school."

"How many ways there are of being unhappy!" said Sir John, as we returned one day from a ride we had taken some miles out of town, to call on a friend of his. "Mr. Stanhope, whom we have just quitted, is a man of great elegance of mind. His early life was pa.s.sed in liberal studies, and in the best company. But his fair prospects were blasted by a disproportionate marriage. He was drawn in by a vanity too natural to young men, that of fancying himself preferred by a woman who had no one recommendation but beauty. To be admired by her whom all his acquaintance admired, gratified his _amour propre_. He was overcome by her marked attentions so far as to declare himself, without knowing her real disposition. It was some time before his prepossession allowed him to discover that she was weak and ill-informed, selfish and bad-tempered. What she wanted in understanding, she made up in spirit.

The more she exacted, the more he submitted; and her demands grew in proportion to his sacrifices. My friend, with patient affection, struggled for a long time to raise her character, and to enlighten her mind; but finding that she pouted whenever he took up a book, and that she even hid the newspaper before he had read it, complaining that he preferred any thing to her company; the softness of his temper and his habitual indolence at length prevailed. His better judgment sunk in the hopeless contest. For a quiet life, he has submitted to a disgraceful life. The compromise has not answered. He has incurred the degradation which, by a more spirited conduct, he might have avoided, and has missed the quiet which he sacrificed his dignity to purchase. He compa.s.sionates her folly, and continues to translate her wearisome interruptions into the flattering language of affection.

"In compliment to her, no less than in justification of his own choice, he has persuaded himself that all women are pretty much alike. That in point of capacity, disposition, and knowledge he has but drawn the common lot, with the balance in his favor, of strong affection and unsullied virtue. He hardly ever sees his fine library, which is the object of her supreme aversion, but wastes his days in listless idleness and his evenings at cards, the only thing in which she takes a lively interest. His fine mind is, I fear, growing mean and disingenuous. The gentleness of his temper leads him not only to sacrifice his peace, but to infringe on his veracity in order to keep her quiet. All the entertainment he finds at dinner is a recapitulation of the faults of her maids, or the impertinence of her footmen, or the negligence of her gardener. If to please her he joins in the censure, she turns suddenly about, and defends them. If he vindicates them, she insists on their immediate dismission; and no sooner are they irrevocably discharged, than she is continually dwelling on their perfections, and then it is only their successors who have any faults.

"He is now so afraid of her driving out his few remaining old servants, if she sees his partiality for them, that in order to conceal it, he affects to reprimand them as the only means for them to secure her favor. Thus the integrity of his heart is giving way to a petty duplicity, and the openness of his temper to shabby artifices. He could submit to the loss of his comfort, but sensibly feels the diminution of his credit. The loss of his usefulness too is a constant source of regret. She will not even suffer him to act as a magistrate, lest her doors should be beset with vagabonds, and her house dirtied by men of business. If he chance to commend a dish he has tasted at a friend's house--Yes, every body's things are good but hers, she can never please.

He had always better dine abroad, if nothing is fit to be eaten at home.

"Though poor Stanhope's conduct is so correct, and his attachment to his wife so notorious, he never ventures to commend any thing that is said or done by another woman. She has, indeed, no definitive object of jealousy, but feels an uneasy vague sensation of envy at any thing or person he admires. I believe she would be jealous of a fine day, if her husband praised it.

"If a tale reaches her ears of a wife who has failed of her duty, or if the public newspapers record a divorce, then she awakens her husband to a sense of his superior happiness, and her own irreproachable virtue. O Charles, the woman who, reposing on the laurels of her boasted virtue, allows herself to be a disobliging, a peevish, a gloomy, a discontented companion, defeats one great end of the inst.i.tution, which is happiness.

The wife who violates the marriage vow, is indeed more criminal; but the very magnitude of her crime emanc.i.p.ates her husband; while she who makes him not dishonorable, but wretched, fastens on him a misery for life, from which no laws can free him, and under which religion alone can support him."

We continued talking, till we reached home, on the mult.i.tude of marriages in which the parties are "joined not matched," and where the term union is a miserable misnomer. I endeavored to turn all these new acquaintances to account, and considered myself at every visit I made, as taking a lesson for my own conduct. I beheld the miscarriages of others, not only with concern for the individual, but as beacons to light me on my way. It was no breach of charity to use the aberrations of my acquaintance for the purpose of making my own course more direct.

I took care however, never to lose sight of the humbling consideration that my own deviations were equally liable to become the object of their animadversion, if the same motive had led them to the same scrutiny.

I remained some weeks longer in town, indulging myself in all its safe sights, and all its sober pleasures. I examined whatever was new in art, or curious in science. I found out the best pictures, saw the best statues, explored the best museums, heard the best speakers in the courts of law, the best preachers in the church, and the best orators in parliament; attended the best lectures, and visited the best company, in the most correct, though not always the most fashionable sense of the term. I a.s.sociated with many learned, sensible, and some pious men, commodities with which London, with all its faults, abounds, perhaps, more than any other place on the habitable globe. I became acquainted with many agreeable, well informed, valuable women, with a few who even seemed in a good measure to live above the world while they were living in it.

There is a large cla.s.s of excellent female characters who on account of that very excellence, are little known, because to be known is not their object. Their ambition has a better taste. They pa.s.s through life honored and respected in their own small, but not unimportant sphere, and approved by Him, "whose they are, and whom they serve," though their faces are hardly known in promiscuous society. If they occasion little sensation abroad, they produce much happiness at home. And when once a woman who has "all appliances and means to get it," _can_ withstand the intoxication of the flatterer, and the adoration of the fashionable; _can_ conquer the fondness for public distinction, _can_ resist the temptations of that magic circle to which she is courted, and in which she is qualified to shine--this is indeed a trial of firmness; a trial in which those who have never been called to resist themselves, can hardly judge of the merit of resistance in others.

These are the women who bless, dignify, and truly adorn society. The painter indeed does not make his fortune by their sitting to him; the jeweler is neither brought into vogue by furnishing their diamonds, nor undone by not being paid for them; the prosperity of the milliner does not depend on affixing their name to a cap or a color; the poet does not celebrate them; the novelist does not dedicate to them; but they possess the affection of their husbands, the attachment of their children, the esteem of the wise and good, and above all they possess _His_ favor, "whom to know is life eternal." Among these I doubt not I might have found objects highly deserving of my heart, but the injunction of my father was a sort of panoply which guarded it.

I am persuaded that such women compose a larger portion of the s.e.x, than is generally allowed. It is not the number, but the noise which makes a sensation, and a set of fair dependent young creatures who are every night forced, some of them reluctantly, upon the public eye; and a bevy of faded matrons rouged and repaired for an ungrateful public, dead to their blandishments, do not compose the whole female world! I repeat it--a hundred amiable women, who are living in the quiet practice of their duties, and the modest exertion of their talents, do not fill the public eye, or reach the public ear, like one aspiring leader, who, hungering for observation, and disdaining censure, dreads not abuse but oblivion; who thinks it more glorious to head a little phalanx of fashionable followers, than to hold out, as from her commanding eminence, and imposing talents she might have done, a shining example of all that is great, and good, and dignified in woman. These self-appointed queens maintain an absolute but ephemeral empire over that little _fantastic aristocracy_ which they call the world--admiration besets them, crowds attend them, conquests follow them, inferiors imitate them, rivals envy them, newspapers extol them, sonnets deify them. A few ostentatious charities are opposed as a large atonement for a _few amiable weaknesses_, while the unpaid tradesman is exposed to ruin by their vengeance if he refuses to trust them, and to a jail if he continue to do it.

CHAPTER XI.

The three days previous to my leaving London were pa.s.sed with Sir John and Lady Belfield. Knowing I was on the wing for Hampshire, they promised to make their long intended visit to Stanley Grove during my stay there.