Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Volume I Part 28

"Can't bear to be doing nothing.--'Can I do anything for any body any where?'--'Have been to the Secretary--written to the Treasury.'--'Must proceed to meet the Commissioners, and write Mr. Price's little boy's exercise.'--The most active idler and laborious trifler.

"He does not in reality love business--only the appearance of it. 'Ha!

ha! did my Lord say that I was always very busy? What, plagued to death?'

"Keeps all his letters and copies--' Mem. to meet the Hackney-coach Commissioners--to arbitrate between,' &c. &c.

"Contrast with the man of indolence, his brother.--'So, brother, just up! and I have been,' &c. &c.--one will give his money from indolent generosity, the other his time from restlessness--' 'Twill be shorter to pay the bill than look for the receipt.'--Files letters, answered and unanswered--'Why, here are more unopened than answered!'

"He regulates every action by a love for fashion--will grant annuities though he doesn't want money--appear to intrigue, though constant; to drink, though sober--has some fashionable vices--affects to be distressed in his circ.u.mstances, and, when his new vis-a-vis comes out, procures a judgment to be entered against him--wants to lose, but by ill-luck wins five thousand pounds.

"One who changes sides in all arguments the moment any one agrees with him.

"An irresolute arguer, to whom it is a great misfortune that there are not three sides to a question--a libertine in argument; conviction, like enjoyment, palls him, and his rakish understanding is soon satiated with truth--more capable of being faithful to a paradox--'I love truth as I do my wife; but sophistry and paradoxes are my mistresses--I have a strong domestic respect for her, but for the other the pa.s.sion due to a mistress.'

"One, who agrees with every one, for the pleasure of speaking their sentiments for them--so fond of talking that he does not contradict only because he can't wait to hear people out.

"A tripping casuist, who veers by others' breath, and gets on to information by tacking between the two sides--like a hoy, not made to go straight before the wind.

"The more he talks, the further he is off the argument, like a bowl on a wrong bias.

"What are the affectations you chiefly dislike?

"There are many in this company, so I'll mention others.--To see two people affecting intrigue, having their a.s.signations in public places only; he affecting a warm pursuit, and the lady, acting the hesitation of retreating virtue--'Pray, ma'am, don't you think,' &c.--while neither party have words between 'em to conduct the preliminaries of gallantry, nor pa.s.sion to pursue the object of it.

"A plan of public flirtation--not to get beyond a profile.

"Then I hate to see one, to whom heaven has given real beauty, settling her features at the gla.s.s of fashion, while she speaks--not thinking so much of what she says as how she looks, and more careful of the action of her lips than of what shall come from them.

"A pretty woman studying looks and endeavoring to recollect an ogle, like Lady ----, who has learned to play her eyelids like Venetian blinds. [Footnote: This simile is repeated in various shapes through his ma.n.u.scripts--"She moves her eyes up and down like Venetian blinds"-- "Her eyelids play like a Venetian blind," &c &c.]

"An old woman endeavoring to put herself back to a girl.

"A true-trained wit lays his plan like a general--foresees the circ.u.mstances of the conversation--surveys the ground and contingencies --detaches a question to draw you into the palpable ambuscade of his ready-made joke.

"A man intriguing, only for the reputation of it--to his confidential servant: 'Who am I in love with now?'--'The newspapers give you so and so--you are laying close siege to Lady L., in the Morning Post, and have succeeded with Lady G. in the Herald--Sir F. is very jealous of you in the Gazetteer.'--'Remember to-morrow the first thing you do, to put me in love with Mrs. C.'

"'I forgot to forget the billet-doux at Brooks's'--'By the bye, an't I in love with you?'--'Lady L. has promised to meet me in her carriage to- morrow--where is the most public place?'

"'You were rude to her!'--'Oh, no, upon my soul, I made love to her directly.'

"An old man, who affects intrigue, and writes his own reproaches in the Morning Post, trying to scandalize himself into the reputation of being young, as if he could obscure his age by blotting his character--though never so little candid as when he's abusing himself.

"'Shall you be at Lady ----'s? I'm told the Bramin is to be there, and the new French philosopher.'--'No--it will be pleasanter at Lady ----'s conversazione--the cow with two heads will be there.'

"'I shall order my valet to shoot me the very first thing he does in the morning.'

"'You are yourself affected and don't know it--you would pa.s.s for morose.'

"He merely wanted to be singular, and happened to find the character of moroseness unoccupied in the society he lived with.

"He certainly has a great deal of fancy and a very good memory; but with a perverse ingenuity he employs these qualities as no other person does --for he employs his fancy in his narratives, and keeps his recollections for his wit--when he makes his jokes you applaud the accuracy of his memory, and 'tis only when he states his facts that you admire the flights of his imagination. [Footnote: The reader will find how much this thought was improved upon afterwards.]

"A fat woman trundling into a room on castors--in sitting can only lean against her chair--rings on her fingers, and her fat arms strangled with bracelets, which belt them like corded brawn--rolling and heaving when she laughs with the rattles in her throat, and a most apoplectic ogle-- you wish to draw her out, as you would an opera-gla.s.s.

"A long lean man with all his limbs rambling--no way to reduce him to compa.s.s, unless you could double him like a pocket rule--with his arms spread, he'd lie on the bed of Ware like a cross on a Good Friday bun-- standing still, he is a pilaster without a base--he appears rolled out or run up against a wall--so thin that his front face is but the moiety of a profile--if he stands cross-legged, he looks like a caduceus, and put him in a fencing att.i.tude, you will take him for a piece of chevaux- de-frise--to make any use of him, it must be as a spontoon or a fishing- rod--when his wife's by, he follows like a note of admiration--see them together, one's a mast, and the other all hulk--she's a dome and he's built like a gla.s.s-house--when they part, you wonder to see the steeple separate from the chancel, and were they to embrace, he must hang round her neck like a skein of thread on a lace-maker's bolster--to sing her praise you should choose a rondeau, and to celebrate him you must write all Alexandrines.

"I wouldn't give a pin to make fine men in love with me--every coquette can do that, and the pain you give these creatures is very trifling. I love out-of-the-way conquests; and as I think my attractions are singular, I would draw singular objects.

"The loadstone of true beauty draws the heaviest substances--not like the fat dowager, who frets herself into warmth to get the notice of a few _papier mache_ fops, as you rub Dutch sealing-wax to draw paper.

"If I were inclined to flatter I would say that, as you are unlike other women, you ought not to be won as they are. Every woman can be gained by time, therefore you ought to be by a sudden impulse. Sighs, devotion, attention weigh with others; but they are so much your due that no one should claim merit from them....

"You should not be swayed by common motives--how heroic to form a marriage for which no human being can guess the inducement--what a glorious unaccountableness! All the world will wonder what the devil you could see in me; and, if you should doubt your singularity, I pledge myself to you that I never yet was endured by woman; so that I should owe every thing to the effect of your bounty, and not by my own superfluous deserts make it a debt, and so lessen both the obligation and my grat.i.tude. In short, every other woman follows her inclination, but you, above all things, should take me, if you do not like me. You will, besides, have the satisfaction of knowing that we are decidedly the worst match in the kingdom--a match, too, that must be all your own work, in which fate could have no hand, and which no foresight could foresee.

"A lady who affects poetry.--'I made regular approaches to her by sonnets and rebusses--a rondeau of circ.u.mvallation--her pride sapped by an elegy, and her reserve surprised by an impromptu--proceeding to storm with Pindarics, she, at last, saved the further effusion of ink by a capitulation.'

"Her prudish frowns and resentful looks are as ridiculous as 'twould be to see a board with notice of spring-guns set in a highway, or of Steel- traps in a common--because they imply an insinuation that there is something worth plundering where one would not, in the least, suspect it.

"The expression of her face is at once a denial of all love-suit, and a confession that she never was asked--the sourness of it arises not so much from her aversion to the pa.s.sion, as from her never having had an opportunity to show it.--Her features are so unfortunately formed that she could never dissemble or put on sweetness enough to induce any one to give her occasion to show her bitterness.--I never saw a woman to whom you would more readily give credit for perfect chast.i.ty.

"_Lady Clio._ 'What am I reading?'--'have I drawn nothing lately?-- is the work-bag finished?--how accomplished I am!--has the man been to untune the harpsichord?--does it look as if I had been playing on it?