Book: Marriage

S >> Susan Edmonstone Ferrier >> Marriage




"Well, certainly, Mary, you must allow Mrs. Pullens is an astonishing
clever woman! Indeed, I think nobody can dispute it--only think of her
never using a bit of soap in her house--everything is washed by steam.
To be sure, as Mrs Jekyll said, the table linen was remarkably
ill-coloured--but no wonder, considering--it must be a great saving, I'm
sure--and she always stands and sees it done herself, for there's no
trusting these things to servants. Once when she trusted it to them,
they burned a dozen of Mr. Pullens's new shirts, just from carelessness,
which I'm sure was very provoking. To be sure, as Mrs. Jekyll said, if
she had used soap like other people that wouldn't have happened; and
then it is wonderful how well she contrives to keep things. I declare I
can't think enough of these green peas that we had at dinner today
having been kept since summer was a year. To be sure, as Mrs. Jekyll
said, they certainly were hard--nobody can deny that--but then, you
know, anything would be hard that had been kept since summer was a year;
and I'm sure I thought they ate wonderfully well considering--and these
red currants, too--I'm afraid you didn't taste them--I wish to
goodness you had tasted them, Mary. They were sour and dry, certainly, as
Mrs. Jekyll said; but no wonder, anything would be sour and dry that had
been kept in bottles for three years."

Grizzy was now obliged to change the current of her ideas, for the
carriage had stopped at Mrs. Bluemits's.




CHAPTER XXX.

"It is certain great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most
severe bridle of the tongue. For so have I heard, that all the noises
and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and
appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or
torch. Every beam of reason, and ray of knowledge, checks the
dissolutions of the tongue."-JEREMY TAYLOR.

THEY were received by Mrs. Bluemits with that air of condescension
which great souls practise towards ordinary mortals, and which is
intended, at one and the same time, to encourage and to repel; to show
the extent of their goodness, even while they make, or try to make,
their _protege_ feel the immeasurable distance which nature or fortune
has placed between them.

It was with this air of patronising grandeur that Mrs. Bluemits took
her guests by the hand, and introduced them to the circle of females
already assembled.

Mrs. Bluemits was not an avowed authoress; but she was a professed
critic, a well-informed woman, a woman of great conversational powers,
etc., and, to use her own phrase, nothing but conversation was spoken in
her house. Her guests were therefore, always expected to be
distinguished, either for some literary production or for their taste in
the _belles lettres._ Two ladies from Scotland, the land of poetry and
romance, were consequently hailed as new stars in Mrs. Bluemits's
horizon. No sooner were they seated than Mrs. Bluemits began--

"As I am a friend to ease in literary society, we shall, without
ceremony, resume our conversation; for, as Seneca observes, the 'comfort
of life depends upon conversation.'"

"I think," said Miss Graves, "it is Rochefoucault who says, 'The great
art of conversation is to hear patiently and answer precisely.'"

"A very poor definition for so profound a philosopher," remarked Mrs.
Apsley.

"The amiable author of what the gigantic Johnson styles the melancholy
and angry "Night Thoughts," gives a nobler, a more elevated, and, in my
humble opinion, a juster explication of the intercourse of mind," said
Miss Parkins; and she repeated the following lines with pompous
enthusiasm:--

Speech ventilates our intellectual fire,
Speech burnishes our mental magazine,
Brightens for ornament, and whets for use.
What numbers, sheath'd in erudition, lie,
Plung'd to the hilts in venerable tomes,
And rusted in, who might have borne an edge,
And play'd a sprightly beam, if born to speech---
If born blest heirs of half their mother's tongue!"

Mrs. Bluemits proceeded:

"'Tis thought's exchange, which, like the alternate push
Of waves conflicting, breaks the learned scum,
And defecates the student's standing pool."

"The sensitive poet of Olney, if I mistake not," said Mrs. Dalton,
"steers a middle course, betwixt the somewhat bald maxim of the Parisian
philosopher and the mournful pruriency of the Bard of Night, when he
says,

'Conversation, in its better part,
May be esteem'd a gift, and not an art.'"

Mary had been accustomed to read, and to reflect upon what she read, and
to apply it to the purpose for which it is valuable, viz. in enlarging
her mind and cultivating her taste; but she had never been accustomed to
prate, or quote, or sit down for the express purpose of displaying her
acquirements; and she began to tremble at hearing authors' names
"familiar in their mouths as household words;" but Grizzy, strong in
ignorance, was no wise daunted. True, she heard what she could not
comprehend, but she thought she would soon make things clear; and she
therefore turned to her neighbour on her righthand, and accosted her
with--"My niece and I are just come from dining at Mrs. Pullens's--I
daresay you have heard of her--she was Miss Flora Macfuss; her father,
Dr. Macfuss, was a most excellent preacher, and she is a remarkable
clever woman."

"Pray, ma'am, has she come out, or is she simply _bel esprit?_"
inquired the lady.

Grizzy was rather at a loss; and, indeed, to answer a question put in an
unknown language, would puzzle wiser brains than hers; but Grizzy was
accustomed to converse without being able to comprehend, and she
therefore went on.

"Her mother, Mrs. Macfuss--but she is dead--was a very clever woman too;
I'm sure I declare I don't know whether the Doctor or her was the
cleverest; but many people, I know, think Mrs. Pullens beats them both."

"Indeed! may I ask in what department she chiefly excels?"

"Oh, I really think in everything. For one thing, everything in her
house is done by steam; and then she can keep everything, I can't tell
how long, just in paper bags and bottles; and she is going to publish a
book with all her receipts in it. I'm sure it will be very interesting."

"I beg ten thousand pardons for the interruption," cried Mrs. Bluemits
from the opposite side of the room; "but my ear was smote with the
sounds of _publish,_ and _interesting,--words _which never fail to
awaken a responsive chord in my bosom. Pray," addressing Grizzy, and
bringing her into the full blaze of observation, "may I ask, was it of
_the_ Campbell these electric words were spoken? To you, Madam, I am
sure I need not apologise for my enthusiasm--you who claim the proud
distinction of being a country woman, need I ask--an acquaintance?"

All that poor Grizzy could comprehend of this harangue was that it was
reckoned a great honour to be acquainted with a Campbell; and chuckling
with delight at the idea of her own consequence, she briskly replied--

"Oh, I know plenty of Campbells; there's the Campbells of Mireside,
relations of ours; and there's the Campbells of Blackbrae, married into
our family; and there's the Campbells of Windlestrae Glen, are not very
distant by my mother's side."

Mary felt as if perforated by bullets in all directions, as she
encountered the eyes of the company, turned alternately upon her aunt
and her; but they were on opposite sides of the room; therefore to
interpose betwixt Grizzy and her assailants was impossible.

"Possibly," suggested Mrs. Dalton, "Miss Douglas prefers the loftier
strains of the mighty Minstrel of the Mountains to the more polished
periods of the Poet of the Transatlantic Plain."

"Without either a possibility or a perhaps," said Mrs. Apsley, "the
probability is, Miss Douglas prefers the author of the 'Giaour' to all
the rest of her poetical countrymen. Where, in either Walter Scott or
Thomas Campbell, will you find such lines as these;--

'Wet with their own best blood, shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip!'"

"Pardon me, madam," said Miss Parkin; "but I am of opinion you have
scarcely given a fair specimen of the powers of the Noble Bard in
question. The image here presented is a familiar one; 'the gnashing
tooth' and 'haggard lip' we have all witnessed, perhaps some of us may
even have experienced. There is consequently little merit in presenting
it to the mind's eye. It is easy, comparatively speaking, to portray the
feelings and passions of our own kind. We have only, as Dryden expresses
it, to descend into ourselves to find the secret imperfections of our
mind. It is therefore in his portraiture of the canine race that the
illustrious author has so far excelled all his contemporaries--in fact,
he has given quite a dramatic cast to his dogs," and she repeated, with
an air of triumph--

"And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall,
Hold o'er the dead their carnival;
Gorging and growling o'er carcase and limb,
They were too busy to bark at him!
From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh,
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull,
As it slipped through their jaws when their edge grew dull;
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,
When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed."

"Now, to enter into the conception of a dog--to embody one's self, as it
were, in the person of a brute--to sympathise in its feelings--to make
its propensities our own--to 'lazily mumble the bones of the dead,' with
our own individual 'white tusks'! Pardon me, madam, but with all due
deference to the genius of a Scott, it is a thing he has not dare to
attempt. Only the finest mind in the universe as capable of taking so
bold a flight. Scott's dogs, madam, are tame, domestic animals--mere
human dogs, if I may say so. Byron's dogs--But let them speak for
themselves!

'The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,
The hair was tangled round his jaw.'

Show me, if you can, such an image in Scott?"

"Very fine, certainly!" was here uttered by five novices, who were only
there as probationers, consequently not privileged to go beyond a
response.

"Is it the dancing dogs they are speaking about?" asked Grizzy. But
looks of silent contempt were the only replies she received.

"I trust I shall not be esteemed presumptuous," said Miss Graves, "or
supposed capable of entertaining views of detracting from the merits of
the Noble Author at present under discussion, if I humbly but firmly
enter my caveat against the word 'crunch,' as constituting an innovation
in our language, the purity of which cannot be too strictly preserved or
pointedly enforced. I am aware that by some I may be deemed
unnecessarily fastidious; and possibly Christina, Queen of Sweden, might
have applied to me the celebrated observation, said to have been
elicited from her by the famed work of the laborious French
Lexicographer, viz. that he was the most troublesome person in the
world, for he required of every word to produce its passport, and to
declare whence it came and whither it was going. I confess, I too, for
the sake of my country, would wish that every word we use might be
compelled to show its passport, attested by our great lawgiver, Dr.
Samuel Johnson."

"Unquestionably," said Mrs. Bluemits, "purity of language ought to be
preserved inviolate at any price; and it is more especially incumbent to
those who exercise a sway over our minds--those are, as it were, the
moulds in which our young imaginations are formed, to be the watchful
guardians of our language. But I lament to say that in fact it is not so;
and that the aberrations of our vernacular tongue have proceeded solely
from the licentious use made of it by those whom we are taught to
reverence as the fathers of the Sock and Lyre."

"Yet in familiar colloquy, I do not greatly object to the use of a word
occasionally, even although unsanctioned by the authority of our mighty
Lexicographer," said a new speaker.

"For my part," said Miss Parkins, "a genius fettered by rules always
reminds me of Gulliver in the hairy bonds of the Lilliputians; and the
sentiment of the elegant and enlightened bard of Twickenham is also
mine--

'Great wits sometimes may glorious offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And match a grace beyond the reach of art.'

So it is with the subject of our argument: a tamer genius than the
illustrious Byron would not have dared to 'crunch' the bone. But where,
in the whole compass of the English language, will you find a word
capable of conveying the same idea?"

"Pick," modestly suggested one of the novices in a low key, hoping to
gain some celebrity by this her first effort; but this dawn of intellect
passed unnoticed.

The argument was now beginning to run high; parties were evidently
forming of crunchers and anticrunchers, and etymology was beginning to
be called for, when a thundering knock at the door caused a cessation of
hostilities.

"That, I flatter myself, is my friend Miss Griffon," said Mrs. Bluemits,
with an air of additional importance; and the name was whispered round
the circle, coupled with "Celebrated Authoress--'Fevers of the Heart'--
'Thoughts of the Moment,'" etc. etc.

"Is she a _real_ authoress that is coming?" asked Miss Grizzy at the
lady next her. And her delight was great at receiving an answer in the
affirmative; for Grizzy thought to be in company with an authoress was
the next thing to being an authoress herself; and, like some other
people, she had a sort of vague mysterious reverence for everyone whose
words had been printed in a book.

"Ten thousand thousand pardons, dearest Mrs. Bluemits!" exclaimed Miss
Griffon, as she entered. "I fear a world of intellect is lost to me by
this cruel delay." Then in an audible whisper--"But I was detained by
my publisher. He quite persecutes me to write. My 'Fevers of the Heart'
has had a prodigious run; and even my 'Thoughts,' which, in fact, cost
me no thought, are amazingly _recherche._ And I actually had to
force my way to you to-night through a legion of printer's devils, who
were lying in wait for me with each a sheet of my 'Billows of Love.'"

"The title is most musical, most melancholy," said Mrs. Bluemits, "and
conveys a perfect idea of what Dryden terms 'the sweeping deluge of the
soul;' but I flatter myself we shall have something more than a name
from Miss Griffon's genius. The Aonian graces, 'tis well known, always
follow in her train."

"They have made a great hole in it then," said Grizzy, officiously
displaying a fracture in the train of Miss Griffon's gown, and from
thence taking occasion to deliver her sentiments on the propriety of
people who tore gowns always being obliged to mend them.

After suitable entreaties had been used, Miss Griflon was at last
prevailed upon to favour the company, with some specimens of the
"Billows of Love" (of which we were unable to procure copies) and the
following sonnet, the production of a friend;--

"Hast thou no note for joy, thou weeping lyre?
Doth yew and willow ever shade thy string
And melancholy sable banners fling,
Warring 'midst hosts of elegant desire?
How vain the strife--how vain the warlike gloom!
Love's arms are grief--his arrows sighs and tears;
And every moan thou mak'st, an altar rears,
To which his worshippers devoutly come.
Then rather, lyre, I pray thee, try thy skill,
In varied measure, on a sprightlier key:
Perchance thy gayer tones' light minstrelsy
May heal the poison that thy plaints distil.
But much I fear that joy is danger still;
And joy, like woe, love's triumph must fulfil."

This called forth unanimous applause--"delicate imagery"--"smooth
versification" --"classical ideas"--"Petrarchian sweetness," etc. etc.,
resounded from all quarters.

But even intellectual joys have their termination, and carriages and
servants began to be announced in rapid succession.

"Fly not yet, 'tis just the hour," said Mrs. Bluemits to the first of
her departing guests, as the clock struck ten.

"It is gone, with its thorns and its roses," replied er friend with a
sigh, and a farewell pressure of the hand.

Another now advanced--"Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day."

"I have less will to go than care to stay," was the reply.

"_Parta ti lascio adio,_" warbled Miss Parkins.

"I vanish," said Mrs. Apsley, snatching up her tippet, reticule, etc.,
"and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind."

"Fare-thee-well at once--Adieu, adieu, adieu, remember me!" cried the
last of the band, as she slowly retreated.

Mrs. Bluemits waved her hand with a look of tender reproach, as she
repeated--

"An adieu should in utterance die,
Or, if written, should faintly appear--
Should be heard in the sob of a sigh,
Or be seen in the blot of a teal."

"I'm sure, Mary," said Grizzy, when they were in the carriage, "I
expected, when all the ladies were repeating, that you would have
repeated something too. You used to have the Hermit and all Watts's
Hymns by heart, when you was little. It's a thousand pities, I declare,
that you should have forgot them; for I declare I was quite affronted to
see you sitting like a stick, and not saying a word, when all the ladies
were speaking and turning up their eyes, and moving their hands so
prettily; but I'm sure I hope next time you go to Mrs. Bluemits's you
will take care to learn something by heart before you go. I'm sure I
haven't a very good memory, but I remember some things; and I was very
near going to repeat 'Farewell to Lochaber' myself, as we were coming
away; and I'm sure I wish to goodness I had done it; but I suppose it
wouldn't do to go back now; and at any rate all the ladies are away, and
I dare say the candles will be out by this time."

Mary felt it a relief to have done with this surfeit of soul, and was of
opinion that learning, like religion, ought never to be forced into
conversation; and that people who only read to talk of their reading
might as well let it alone. Next morning she gave so ludicrous an
account of her entertainment that Lady Emily was quite charmed.

"Now I begin to have hopes of you," said she, "since I see you can laugh
at your friends as well as me."

"Not at my friends, I hope," answered Mary; "only at folly."

"Call it what you will--I only wish I had been there. I should certainly
have started a controversy upon the respective merits of Tom Thumb and
Puss in Boots, and so have called them off Lord Byron. Their pretending
to measure the genius of a Scott or a Byron must have been something
like a fly attempting to take the altitude of Mont Blanc. How I detest
those idle disquisitions about the colour of a goat's beard, or the
blood of an oyster."'

Mary had seen in Mrs. Douglas the effects of a highly cultivated
understanding shedding its mild radiance on the path of domestic life,
heightening its charms, and softening its asperities, with the benign
spirit of Christianity. Her charity was not like that of Mrs. Fox; she
did not indulge herself in the purchase of elegant ornaments, and then,
seated in the easy chair of her drawing-room, extort from her visitors
money to satisfy the wants of those who had claims on her own bounty.
No: she gave a large portion of her time, her thoughts, her fortune,
to the most sacred of all duties--charity, in its most comprehensive
meaning. Neither did her knowledge, like that of Mrs. Bluemits,
evaporate in pedantic discussion or idle declamation, but showed itself
in the tenor of a well-spent life, and in the graceful discharge of
those duties which belonged to her sex and station. Next to goodness
Mary most ardently admired talents. She knew there were many of her own
sex who were justly entitled to the distinction of literary fame. Her
introduction to the circle at Mrs. Bluemits's had disappointed her; but
they were mere pretenders to the name. How different from those
described by one no less amiable and enlightened herself!--"Let such
women as are disposed to be vain of their comparatively petty
attainments look up with admiration to those contemporary shining
examples, the venerable Elizabeth Carter and the blooming Elizabeth
Smith. In them let our young ladies contemplate profound and various
learning, chastised by true Christian humility. In them let them
venerate acquirements which would have been distinguished in a
university, meekly softened, and beautifully shaded by the exertion of
every domestic virtue, the unaffected exercise of every feminine
employment." [1]

[1] "Coelebs."





CHAPTER XXXI.

"The gods, to curse Pamela with her pray'rs,
Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares;
The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state,
And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate.
She glares in balls, front boxes, and the ring--
A vain, unquiet, glitt'ring, wretched thing!
Pride, pomp, and state, but reach her outward part;
She sighs, and is no duchess at her heart."

POPE

FOR many months Mary was doomed to experience all the vicissitudes of
hope and fear, as she heard of battles and sieges in which her lover had
a part. He omitted no opportunity of writing to her; but scarcely had
she received the assurance of his safety from himself when her
apprehensions were again excited by rumours of fresh dangers he would
have to encounter; and it required all her pious confidence and strength
of mind to save her from yielding to the despondency of a
naturally sensitive heart. But in administering to the happiness of
others she found the surest alleviation to the misfortune that
threatened herself; and she often forgot her own cares in her benevolent
exertions for the poor, the sick, and the desolate. It was then she felt
all the tenderness of that divine precept which enjoins love of the
Creator as the engrossing principle of the soul. For, oh! the
unutterable anguish that heart must endure which lavishes all its best
affections on a creature mutable and perishable as itself, from whom a
thousand accidents may separate or estrange it, and from whom death must
one day divide it! Yet there is something so amiable, so exalting, in
the fervour of a pure and generous attachment, that few have been able
to resist its overwhelming influence; and it is only time and suffering
that can teach us to comprehend the miseries that wait on the excess,
even of our virtuous inclinations, where these virtues aspire not beyond
this transitory scene.

Mary seldom heard from her mother or sister. Their time was too precious
to be wasted on dull country correspondents; but she saw their names
frequently mentioned in the newspapers, and she flattered herself, from
the eclat with whioh the Duchess seemed to be attended, that she
had found happiness in those pleasures where she had been taught to
expect it. The Duchess was indeed surrounded with all that rank, wealth,
and fashion could bestow. She had the finest house, jewels, and
equipages in London, but she was not happy. She felt the draught bitter,
even though the goblet that held it was of gold. It is novelty only that
can lend charms to things in themselves valueless; and when that wears
off, the disenchanted baubles appear in all their native worthlessness.
There is even a satiety in the free indulgence of wealth, when that
indulgence centres solely in self, and brings no general self-approving
reflections along with it. So it was with the Duchess of Altamont. She
sought, in the gratification of every expensive whim, to stimulate the
languid sense of joy; and, by loading herself with jewels, she strove to
still the restless inquietude of a dissatisfied heart. But it is only
the vulgar mind which can long find enjoyment in the mere attributes of
wealth--in the contemplation of silk hangings, and gilded chairs, and
splendid dresses, and showy equipages. Amidst all these the mind of any
taste or refinement, "distrusting, asks if this be joy." And Adelaide
possessed both taste and refinement, though her ideas had been perverted
and her heart corrupted by the false maxims early instilled into her.
Yet, selfish and unfeeling as she was, she sickened at the eternal
recurrence of self-indulged caprices; and the bauble that had been
hailed with delight the one day as a charmed amulet to dispel her ennui,
was the next beheld with disgust or indifference. She believed, indeed,
that she had real sources of vexation in the self-will and obstinacy of
her husband, and that, had he been otherwise than he was, she should
then have been completely happy. She would not acknowledge, even to
herself, that she had done wrong in marrying a man whose person was
disagreeable to her, and whose understanding she despised; while her
preference was decidedly in favour of another. Even her style of life
was in some respects distasteful to her; yet she was obliged to conform
to it. The Duke retained exactly the same notions of things as had taken
possession of his brain thirty years before; consequently everything in
his establishment was conducted with a regularity and uniformity unknown
to those whose habits are formed on the more eccentric models of the
present day; or rather, who have no models save those of their own
capricious tastes and inclinations. He had an antipathy to balls,
concerts, and masquerades; for he did not dance, knew nothing of music,
and stil less of _badinage._ But he liked great dull dinners, for there
the conversation was generally adapted to his capacity; and it was a
pleasure to him to arrange the party--to look over the bill of fare--to
see all the family plate displayed--and to read an account of the grand
dinner at the Duke of Altamont's in the "Morning Post" of the following
day. All this sounds very vulgar for the pastimes of a Duke; but there
are vulgar-minded Dukes as there are gifted ploughmen, or any other
anomalies. The former Duchess, a woman of high birth, similar years, and
kindred spirit of his own in all matters of form and _etiquette,_ was
his standard of female propriety; and she would have deemed it highly
derogatory to her dignity to have patronised any other species of
entertainment than grand dinners and dull assemblies.

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