The Tatler Volume Iii Part 36

From _Sat.u.r.day, June 10_, to _Tuesday, June 13, 1710_.

Una de multis face nuptiali Digna.--HOR., 3 Od. xi. 33.

_From my own Apartment, June 12._

There are certain occasions of life which give propitious omens of the future good conduct of it, as well as others which explain our present inward state, according to our behaviour in them. Of the latter sort are funerals; of the former, weddings. The manner of our carriage when we lose a friend, shows very much our temper, in the humility of our words and actions, and a general sense of our dest.i.tute condition, which runs through all our deportment. This gives a solemn testimony of the generous affection we bore our friends, when we seem to disrelish everything now we can no more enjoy them, or see them partake in our enjoyments. It is very proper and human to put ourselves as it were in their livery after their decease, and wear a habit unsuitable to prosperity, while those we loved and honoured are mouldering in the grave. As this is laudable on the sorrowful side; so on the other, incidents of success may no less justly be represented and acknowledged in our outward figure and carriage. Of all such occasions, that great change of a single life into marriage is the most important, as it is the source of all relations, and from whence all other friendship and commerce do princ.i.p.ally arise. The general intent of both s.e.xes is to dispose of themselves happily and honourably in this state; and as all the good qualities we have are exerted to make our way into it, so the best appearance, with regard to their minds, their persons, and their fortunes, at the first entrance into it, is a due to each other in the married pair, as well as a compliment to the rest of the world. It was an instruction of a wise lawgiver, that unmarried women should wear such loose habits which, in the flowing of their garb, should incite their beholders to a desire of their persons; and that the ordinary motion of their bodies might display the figure and shape of their limbs in such a manner, as at once to preserve the strictest decency, and raise the warmest inclinations.

This was the economy of the legislator for the increase of people, and at the same time for the preservation of the genial bed. She who was the admiration of all who beheld her while unmarried, was to bid adieu to the pleasure of shining in the eyes of many, as soon as she took upon her the wedded condition. However, there was a festival of life allowed the new-married, a sort of intermediate state between celibacy and matrimony, which continued certain days. During that time, entertainments, equipages, and other circ.u.mstances of rejoicing, were encouraged, and they were permitted to exceed the common mode of living, that the bride and bridegroom might learn from such freedoms of conversation to run into a general conduct to each other, made out of their past and future state, so to temper the cares of the man and the wife with the gaieties of the lover and the mistress.

In those wise ages the dignity of life was kept up, and on the celebration of such solemnities there were no impertinent whispers and senseless interpretations put upon the unaffected cheerfulness or accidental seriousness of the bride; but men turned their thoughts upon the general reflections, upon what issue might probably be expected from such a couple in the succeeding course of their life, and felicitated them accordingly upon such prospects.

I must confess, I cannot from any ancient ma.n.u.scripts, sculptures, or medals, deduce the rise of our celebrated custom of throwing the stocking; but have a faint memory of an account a friend gave me of an original picture in the palace of Aldobrandini in Rome. This seems to show a sense of this affair very different from what is usual among us.

It is a Grecian wedding, and the figures represented are, a person offering sacrifice, a beautiful damsel dancing, and another playing on the harp. The bride is placed in her bed, the bridegroom sits at the foot of it, with an aspect which intimates his thoughts were not only entertained with the joys with which he was surrounded, but also with a n.o.ble grat.i.tude, and divine pleasure in the offering, which was then made to the G.o.ds to invoke their influence on his new condition. There appears in the face of the woman a mixture of fear, hope, and modesty; in the bridegroom, a well-governed rapture. As you see in great spirits grief which discovers itself the more by forbearing tears and complaints, you may observe also the highest joy is too big for utterance, the tongue being of all the organs the least capable of expressing such a circ.u.mstance. The nuptial torch, the bower, the marriage song, are all particulars which we meet with in the allusions of the ancient writers; and in every one of them something is to be observed which denotes their industry to aggrandise and adorn this occasion above all others.

With us all order and decency in this point is perverted by the insipid mirth of certain animals we usually call "wags." These are a species of all men the most insupportable. One cannot without some reflection say, whether their flat mirth provokes us more to pity or to scorn; but if one considers with how great affectation they utter their frigid conceits, commiseration immediately changes itself into contempt.

A wag is the last order even of pretenders to wit and good humour. He has generally his mind prepared to receive some occasion of merriment, but is of himself too empty to draw any out of his own set of thoughts, and therefore laughs at the next thing he meets, not because it is ridiculous, but because he is under a necessity of laughing. A wag is one that never in its life saw a beautiful object, but sees what it does see in the most low and most inconsiderable light it can be placed.

There is a certain ability necessary to behold what is amiable and worthy of our approbation, which little minds want, and attempt to hide by a general disregard to everything they behold above what they are able to relish. Hence it is, that a wag in an a.s.sembly is ever guessing how well such a lady slept last night, and how much such a young fellow is pleased with himself. The wag's gaiety consists in a certain professed ill-breeding, as if it were an excuse for committing a fault, that a man knows he does so. Though all public places are full of persons of this order, yet, because I will not allow impertinence and affectation to get the better of native innocence and simplicity of manners, I have, in spite of such little disturbers of public entertainments, persuaded my brother Tranquillus and his wife my sister Jenny, in favour of Mr. Wilks, to be at the play to-morrow evening.

They, as they have so much good sense as to act naturally, without regard to the observation of others, will not, I hope, be discomposed if any of the fry of wags should take upon them to make themselves merry upon the occasion of their coming, as they intend, in their wedding clothes. My brother is a plain, worthy, and honest man, and as it is natural for men of that turn to be mightily taken with sprightly and airy women, my sister has a vivacity which may perhaps give hopes to impertinents, but will be esteemed the effect of innocence among wise men. They design to sit with me in the box, which the house have been so complaisant to offer me whenever I think fit to come thither in my public character.[308]

I do not in the least doubt, but the true figure of conjugal affection will appear in their looks and gestures. My sister does not affect to be gorgeous in her dress, and thinks the happiness of a wife is more visible in a cheerful look than a gay apparel. It is a hard task to speak of persons so nearly related to one with decency, but I may say, all who shall be at the play will allow him to have the mien of a worthy English gentleman; her, that of a notable and deserving wife.

[Footnote 308: See Nos. 120, 122. "I remember Mr. Bickerstaff at the playhouse, and with what a modest, decent gravity he behaved himself"

(_Examiner_, vol. iii. No. 46). This pa.s.sage occurs in a notice of Addison's "Cato," where it is said that on the first night a crowd of silly people "were drawn up under the leading of the renowned Ironside, and appointed to clap at his signals.... The _Spectator_ never appeared in public with a worse grace."]

No. 185. [STEELE.

From _Tuesday, June 13_, to _Thursday, June 15, 1710_.

Not.i.tiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit; Tempore crevit amor, taedae quoque jure coissent; Sed vetuere patres, quod non potuere vetare, Ex aequo captis ardebant mentibus ambo.

OVID, Met. iv. 59.

_From my own Apartment, June 14._

As soon as I was up this morning, my man gave me the following letter, which, since it leads to a subject that may prove of common use to the world, I shall take notice of with as much expedition as my fair pet.i.tioner could desire:

"MR. BICKERSTAFF,

"Since you have so often declared yourself a patron of the distressed, I must acquaint you, that I am daughter to a country gentleman of good sense, and may expect 3000 or 4000 for my fortune. I love and am beloved by Philander, a young gentleman who has an estate of 500 per annum, and is our near neighbour in the country every summer. My father, though he has been a long time acquainted with it, constantly refuses to comply with our mutual inclinations: but what most of all torments me, is, that if ever I speak in commendation of my lover, he is much louder in his praises than myself; and professes that it is out of pure love and esteem for Philander, as well as his daughter, that he can never consent we should marry each other; when (as he terms it) we may both do so much better. It must indeed be confessed, that two gentlemen of considerable fortunes, made their addresses to me last winter, and Philander (as I have since learned) was offered a young heiress with 15,000, but it seems we could neither of us think, that accepting those matches would be doing better than remaining constant to our first pa.s.sion. Your thoughts upon the whole may perhaps have some weight with my father, who is one of your admirers, as is

"Your humble Servant, "SYLVIA.

"P.S. You are desired to be speedy, since my father daily presses me to accept of what he calls an 'advantageous offer.'"

There is no calamity in life that falls heavier upon human nature than a disappointment in love, especially when it happens between two persons whose hearts are mutually engaged to each other. It is this distress which has given occasion to some of the finest tragedies that were ever written, and daily fills the world with melancholy, discontent, frenzy, sickness, despair, and death. I have often admired at the barbarity of parents, who so frequently interpose their authority in this grand article of life. I would fain ask Sylvia's father, whether he thinks he can bestow a greater favour on his daughter, than to put her in a way to live happily? Whether a man of Philander's character, with 500 per annum, is not more likely to contribute to that end, than many a young fellow whom he may have in his thoughts with so many thousands? Whether he can make amends to his daughter by any increase of riches, for the loss of that happiness she proposes to herself in her Philander? Or whether a father should compound with his daughter to be miserable, though she were to get 20,000 by the bargain? I suppose he would have her reflect with esteem on his memory after his death: and does he think this a proper method to make her do so, when, as often as she thinks on the loss of her Philander, she must at the same time remember him as the cruel cause of it? Any transient ill-humour is soon forgotten; but the reflection of such a cruelty must continue to raise resentments as long as life itself; and by this one piece of barbarity, an indulgent father loses the merit of all his past kindnesses. It is not impossible but she may deceive herself in the happiness which she proposes from Philander; but as in such a case she can have no one to blame but herself, she will bear the disappointment with greater patience; but if she never makes the experiment, however happy she may be with another, she will still think she might have been happier with Philander. There is a kind of sympathy in souls that fits them for each other; and we may be a.s.sured, when we see two persons engaged in the warmths of a mutual affection, that there are certain qualities in both their minds which bear a resemblance to one another. A generous and constant pa.s.sion in an agreeable lover, where there is not too great a disparity in other circ.u.mstances, is the greatest blessing that can befall the person beloved; and if overlooked in one, may perhaps never be found in another. I shall conclude this with a celebrated instance of a father's indulgence in this particular, which, though carried to an extravagance, has something in it so tender and amiable, as may justly reproach the hardness of temper that is to be met with in many a British father.

Antiochus, a prince of great hopes, fell pa.s.sionately in love with the young Queen Stratonice, who was his mother-in-law, and had bore a son to the old King Seleucus his father. The prince finding it impossible to extinguish his pa.s.sion, fell sick, and refused all manner of nourishment, being determined to put an end to that life which was become insupportable.

Erasistratus the physician soon found that love was his distemper; and observing the alteration in his pulse and countenance whenever Stratonice made him a visit, was soon satisfied that he was dying for his young mother-in-law. Knowing the old king's tenderness for his son, when he one morning inquired of his health, he told him, that the prince's distemper was love; but that it was incurable, because it was impossible for him to possess the person whom he loved. The king, surprised at this account, desired to know how his son's pa.s.sion could be incurable? "Why, sir," replied Erasistratus, "because he is in love with the person I am married to."

The old king immediately conjured him by all his past favours to save the life of his son and successor. "Sir," said Erasistratus, "would your majesty but fancy yourself in my place, you would see the unreasonableness of what you desire!" "Heaven is my witness," said Seleucus, "I could resign even my Stratonice to save my Antiochus." At this the tears ran down his cheeks, which when the physician saw, taking him by the hand, "Sir," says he, "if these are your real sentiments, the prince's life is out of danger; it is Stratonice for whom he dies."

Seleucus immediately gave orders for solemnising the marriage; and the young queen, to show her obedience, very generously exchanged the father for the son.

No. 186. [STEELE.

From _Thursday, June 15_, to _Sat.u.r.day, June 17, 1710_.

Emitur sola virtute potestas.

CLAUDIAN, De Tertio Consulatu Honorii, 188.

_Sheer Lane, June 16._

As it has been the endeavour of these our labours to extirpate from among the polite or busy part of mankind, all such as are either prejudicial or insignificant to society; so it ought to be no less our study to supply the havoc we have made by an exact care of the growing generation. But when we begin to inculcate proper precepts to the children of this island, except we could take them out of their nurses'

arms, we see an amendment is almost impracticable; for we find the whole species of our youth and grown men is incorrigibly prepossessed with vanity, pride, or ambition, according to the respective pursuits to which they turn themselves: by which means the world is infatuated with the love of appearances instead of things. Thus the vain man takes praise for honour, the proud man ceremony for respect, the ambitious man power for glory. These three characters are, indeed, of very near resemblance, but differently received by mankind. Vanity makes men ridiculous; pride, odious; and ambition, terrible. The foundation of all which is, that they are grounded upon falsehood: for if men, instead of studying to appear considerable, were in their own hearts possessors of the requisites for esteem, the acceptance they otherwise unfortunately aim at would be as inseparable from them, as approbation is from truth itself. By this means they would have some rule to walk by; and they may ever be a.s.sured, that a good cause of action will certainly receive a suitable effect. It may be a useful hint in such cases for a man to ask of himself, whether he really is what he has a mind to be thought?[309] If he is, he need not give himself much further anxiety.

"What will the world say?" is the common question in matters of difficulty; as if the terror lay wholly in the sense which others, and not we ourselves, shall have of our actions. From this one source arise all the impostors in every art and profession, in all places, among all persons in conversation, as well as in business. Hence it is, that a vain fellow takes twice as much pains to be ridiculous, as would make him sincerely agreeable.

Can any one be better fashioned, better bred, or has any one more good nature, than Damasippus? But the whole scope of his looks and actions tends so immediately to gain the good opinion of all he converses with, that he loses it for that only reason. As it is the nature of vanity to impose false shows for truths, so does it also turn real possessions into imaginary ones. Damasippus, by a.s.suming to himself what he has not, robs himself of what he has.

There is nothing more necessary to establish reputation, than to suspend the enjoyment of it. He that cannot bear the sense of merit with silence, must of necessity destroy it: for fame being the general mistress of mankind, whoever gives it to himself, insults all to whom he relates any circ.u.mstances to his own advantage. He is considered as an open ravisher of that beauty, for whom all others pine in silence. But some minds are so incapable of any temperance in this particular, that on every second in their discourse you may observe an earnestness in their eyes, which shows they wait for your approbation, and perhaps the next instant cast an eye on a gla.s.s to see how they like themselves.

Walking the other day in a neighbouring Inn of Court, I saw a more happy and more graceful orator than I ever before had heard or read of. A youth, of about nineteen years of age, was in an Indian nightgown and laced cap pleading a cause before a gla.s.s: the young fellow had a very good air, and seemed to hold his brief in his hand rather to help his action, than that he wanted notes for his further information. When I first began to observe him, I feared he would soon be alarmed; but he was so zealous for his client, and so favourably received by the court, that he went on with great fluency to inform the bench, that he humbly hoped they would not let the merit of the cause suffer by the youth and inexperience of the pleader; that in all things he submitted to their candour; and modestly desired they would not conclude, but that strength of argument and force of reason may be consistent with grace of action and comeliness of person.

To me, who see people every day in the midst of crowds (whomsoever they seem to address to) talk only to themselves and of themselves, this orator was not so extravagant a man as perhaps another would have thought him; but I took part in his success, and was very glad to find he had in his favour judgment and costs without any manner of opposition.

The effects of pride and vanity are of consequence only to the proud and the vain, and tend to no further ill than what is personal to themselves, in preventing their progress in anything that is worthy and laudable, and creating envy instead of emulation of superior virtue.

These ill qualities are to be found only in such as have so little minds, as to circ.u.mscribe their thoughts and designs within what properly relates to the value which they think due to their dear and amiable selves: but ambition, which is the third great impediment to honour and virtue, is a fault of such as think themselves born for moving in a higher orb, and prefer being powerful and mischievous to being virtuous and obscure. The parent of this mischief in life, so far as to regulate it into schemes, and make it possess a man's whole heart, without his believing himself a demon, was Machiavelli. He first taught, that a man must necessarily appear weak to be honest. Hence it gains upon the imagination, that a great is not so despicable as a little villain; and men are insensibly led to a belief, that the aggravation of crimes is the diminution of them. Hence the impiety of thinking one thing and speaking another. In pursuance of this empty and unsatisfying dream, to betray, to undermine, to kill in themselves all natural sentiments of love to friends or country, is the willing practice of such as are thirsty of power, for any other reason than that of being useful and acceptable to mankind.

ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT.

Whereas Mr. Bickerstaff has lately received a letter out of Ireland, dated June 9, importing that he is grown very dull, for the postage of which Mr. Morphew charges one shilling; and another without date of place or time, for which he the said Morphew charges twopence: it is desired, that for the future his courteous and uncourteous readers will go a little further in expressing their good and ill-will, and pay for the carriage of their letters, otherwise the intended pleasure or pain which is designed for Mr. Bickerstaff will be wholly disappointed.