Coelebs In Search of a Wife Part 13

"I have often contrasted it," replied he, "with the manners of some other ladies of my acquaintance, who are sometimes of our quiet evening party. When one is reading history, or any ordinary book, aloud to them, I am always pleased that they should pursue their little employments. It amuses themselves, and gives ease and familiarity to the social circle.

But while I have been reading, as has sometimes happened, a pa.s.sage of the highest sublimity, or most tender interest, I own I feel a little indignant to see the shuttle plied with as eager a.s.siduity as if the Destinies themselves were weaving the thread. I have known a lady take up the candlestick to search for her netting-pin, in the midst of Cato's soliloquy; or stoop to pick up her scissors while Hamlet says to the ghost, 'I'll go no further.' I remember another who would whisper across the table to borrow thread while Lear has been raving in the storm, or Macbeth starting at the spirit of Banquo; and make signs for a thread-paper while cardinal Beaufort 'dies, and makes no sign.' Nay, once I remember when I was with much agitation hurrying through the gazette of the battle of Trafalgar, while I p.r.o.nounced, almost agonized, the last memorable words of the immortal Nelson, I heard one lady whisper to another that she had broken her needle."

"It would be difficult to determine," replied I, "whether this inattention most betrays want of sense, of feeling, or of good breeding.

The habit of attention should be carefully formed in early life, and then the mere force of custom would teach these ill-bred women 'to a.s.sume the virtue if they have it not.'"

The family at the Grove was, with us, an inexhaustible topic whenever we met. I observed to Sir John, "that I had sometimes noticed in charitable families a display, a bustle, a kind of animal restlessness, a sort of mechanical _besoin_ to be charitably busy. That though they fulfilled conscientiously one part of the apostolic injunction, that of 'giving,'

yet they failed in the other clause, that of doing it 'with simplicity.'"

"Yes," replied he, "I visit a charitable lady in town, who almost puts me out of love with benevolence. Her own bounties form the entire subject of her conversation. As soon as the breakfast is removed, the table is regularly covered with plans, and proposals, and subscription papers. This display conveniently performs the threefold office of publis.h.i.+ng her own charities, furnis.h.i.+ng subjects of altercation, and raising contributions on the visitor. Her narratives really cost me more than my subscription. She is so full of debate, and detail, and opposition; she makes you read so many papers of her own drawing up, and so many answers to the schemes of other people, and she has so many objections to every other person's mode of doing good, and so many arguments to prove that her own is the best, that she appears less like a benevolent lady than a chicaning attorney."

"Nothing," said I, "corrects this bustling bounty so completely, as when it is mixed up with religion, I should rather say, as when it flows from religion. This motive, so far from diminis.h.i.+ng the energy, augments it; but it cures the display, and converts the irritation into a principle.

It transfers the activity from the tongue to the heart. It is the only sort of charity which 'blesses twice.' All charity, indeed, blesses the receiver; but the blessing promised to the giver, I have sometimes trembled to think, may be forfeited even by a generous mind, from ostentation and parade in the manner, and want of purity in the motive."

"In Stanley's family," replied he, in a more serious tone, "I have met with a complete refutation of that favorite maxim in the world, that religion is a dull thing itself, and makes its professors gloomy and morose. Charles! I have often frequented houses where pleasure was the avowed object of idolatry. But to see the votaries of the 'reeling G.o.ddess,' after successive nights pa.s.sed in her temples! to see the languor, the listlessness, the discontent--you would rather have taken them for her victims than her wors.h.i.+pers. So little mental vivacity, so little gayety of heart! In short, after no careless observations, I am compelled to declare, that I never saw two forms less alike than those of Pleasure and Happiness."

"Your testimony, Sir John," said I, "is of great weight in a case of which you are so experienced a judge. What a different scene do we now contemplate! Mr. Stanley seems to have diffused his own spirit through the whole family. What makes his example of such efficacy is, that he considers the Christian _temper_ as so considerable a part of Christianity. This temper seems to imbue his whole soul, pervade his whole conduct, and influence his whole conversation. I see every day some fresh occasion to admire his candor, his humility, his constant reference, not as a topic of discourse, but as a principle of conduct, to the gospel as the standard by which actions are to be weighed. His conscientious strictness of speech, his serious reproof of calumnies, his charitable construction of every case which has two sides; 'his simplicity and G.o.dly sincerity;' his rule of referring all events to providential direction, and his invariable habit of vindicating the divine goodness under dispensations apparently the most unfavorable."

Here Sir John left me, and I could not forbear pursuing the subject in soliloquy as I proceeded in my walk. I reflected with admiration that Mr. Stanley, in his religious conversation, rendered himself so useful, because instead of the uniform nostrum of _the drop and the pill_, he applied a different cla.s.s of arguments, as the case required, to objectors to the different parts of Christianity; to ill informed persons who adopted a partial gospel without understanding it as a scheme, or embracing it as a whole; to those who allow its truth merely on the same ground of evidence that establishes the truth of any other well authenticated history, and who, satisfied with this external evidence, not only do not feel its power on their own heart, but deny that it has any such influence on the hearts of others; to those who believe the gospel to be a mere code of ethics; to their antipodes, who a.s.sert that Christ has lowered the requisitions of the law; to Lady Belfield, who rests on her charities--Sir John, on his correctness--Lady Aston, on her austerities; to this man, who values himself solely on the stoutness of his orthodoxy; to another, on the firmness of his integrity; to a third, on the peculiarities of his party, he addresses himself with a particular view to their individual errors. This he does with such a discriminating application to the case as might lead the ill-informed to suspect that he was not equally earnest in those other points, which, not being attacked, he does not feel himself called on to defend, but which, had they been attacked, he would then have defended with equal zeal as relative to the discussion. To crown all, I contemplated that affectionate warmth of heart, that sympathizing kindness, that tenderness of feeling, of which the gay and the thoughtless fancy that they themselves possess the monopoly, while they make over harshness, austerity, and want of charity to religious men, as their inseparable characteristics.

These qualities excite in my heart a feeling compounded of veneration, and of love. And oh! how impossible it is, even in religion itself, to be disinterested! All these excellences I contemplate with a more heartfelt delight from the presumptuous hope that I may one day have the felicity of connecting myself still more intimately with them.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Some days after, while we were conversing over our tea, we heard the noise of a carriage; and Mr. Stanley, looking out from a bow window in which he and I were sitting, said it was Lady and Miss Rattle driving up the avenue. He had just time to add, "These are our _fine_ neighbors.

They always make us a visit as soon as they come down, while all the gloss and l.u.s.tre of London is fresh upon them. We have always our regular routine of conversation. While her Ladys.h.i.+p is pouring the fas.h.i.+ons into Mrs. Stanley's ear, Miss Rattle, who is about Ph[oe]be's age, entertains my daughters and me with the history of her own talents and acquirements."

Here they entered. After a few compliments, Lady Rattle seated herself between Lady Belfield and Mrs. Stanley at the upper end of the room; while the fine, sprightly, boisterous girl of fifteen or sixteen threw herself back on the sofa at nearly her full length between Mr. Stanley and me, the Miss Stanleys and Sir John sitting near us, within hearing of her lively loquacity.

"Well, Miss Amelia," said Mr. Stanley, "I dare say you have made good use of your time this winter; I suppose you have ere now completed the whole circle of the arts. Now let me hear what you have been doing, and tell me your whole achievements as frankly as you used to do when you were a little girl." "Indeed," replied she, "I have not been idle, if I must speak the truth. One has so many things to learn, you know. I have gone on with my French and Italian of course, and I am beginning German.

Then comes my drawing-master; he teaches me to paint flowers and sh.e.l.ls, and to draw ruins and buildings, and to take views. He is a good soul, and is finis.h.i.+ng a set of pictures, and half a dozen fire-screens, which I began for mamma. He _does_ help me to be sure, but indeed I do some of it myself, don't I, mamma?" calling out to her mother, who was too much absorbed in her own narratives to attend to her daughter.

"And then," pursued the young prattler, "I learn varnis.h.i.+ng, and gilding, and j.a.paning. And next winter I shall learn modeling, and etching, and engraving in mezzotinto and aquatinta; for Lady Di. Dash learns etching, and mamma says, as I shall have a better fortune than Lady Di., she vows I shall learn every thing she does. Then I have a dancing-master, who teaches me the Scotch and Irish steps; and another who teaches me att.i.tudes, and I shall soon learn the waltz, and I can stand longer on one leg already than Lady Di. Then I have a singing-master, and another who teaches me the harp, and another for the piano-forte. And what little time I can spare from these _princ.i.p.al_ things, I give by odd minutes to ancient and modern history, and geography, and astronomy, and grammar, and botany. Then I attend lectures on chemistry, and experimental philosophy, for as I am not yet come out, I have not much to do in the evenings; and mamma says there is nothing in the world that money can pay for but what I shall learn. And I run so delightfully fast from one thing to another that I am never tired. What makes it so pleasant is, as soon as I am fairly set in with one master, another arrives. I should hate to be long at the same thing.

But I sha'n't have a great while to work so hard, for as soon as I come out, I shall give it all up, except music and dancing."

All this time Lucilla sat listening with a smile, behind the complacency of which she tried to conceal her astonishment. Ph[oe]be, who had less self-control, was on the very verge of a broad laugh. Sir John, who had long lived in a soil where this species is indigenous, had been too long accustomed to all its varieties to feel much astonishment at this specimen, which, however, he sat contemplating with philosophical but discriminating coolness.

For my own part, my mind was wholly absorbed in contrasting the coa.r.s.e manners of this voluble and intrepid, but good-humored girl, with the quiet, cheerful, and una.s.suming elegance of Lucilla.

"I should be afraid, Miss Rattle," said Mr. Stanley, "if you did not look in such blooming health, that, with all these incessant labors, you did not allow yourself time for rest. Surely you never sleep?"

"O yes, that I do, and eat too," said she; "my life is not quite so hard and moping as you fancy. What between shopping and morning visits with mamma, and seeing sights, and the park, and the gardens (which, by the way, I hate, except on a Sunday when they are crowded), and our young b.a.l.l.s, which are four or five in a week after Easter, and mamma's music parties at home, I contrive to enjoy myself tolerably, though after I have been presented, I shall be a thousand times better off, for then I sha'n't have a moment to myself. Won't that be delightful?" said she, twitching my arm rather roughly, by way of recalling my attention, which, however, had seldom wandered.

As she had now run out her London materials, the news of the neighborhood next furnished a subject for her volubility. After she had mentioned in detail one or two stories of low village gossip, while I was wondering how she could come at them, she struck me dumb by quoting the coachman as her authority. This enigma was soon explained. The mother and daughter having exhausted their different topics of discourse nearly at the same time, they took their leave, in order to enrich every family in the neighborhood, on whom they were going to call, with the same valuable knowledge which they had imparted to us.

Mr. Stanley conducted Lady Rattle, and I led her daughter; but as I offered to hand her into the carriage she started back with a sprightly motion, and screamed out, "O no, not in the inside, pray help me up to the _d.i.c.key_; I always protest I never _will_ ride with any body but the coachman, if we go ever so far." So saying, with a spring which showed how much she despised my a.s.sistance, the little hoyden was seated in a moment, nodding familiarly at me as if I had been an old friend.

Then with a voice, emulating that which, when pa.s.sing by Charing Cross, I have heard issue from an over-stuffed vehicle, when a robust sailor has thrust his body out at the window, the fair creature vociferated, "Drive on, coachman!" He obeyed, and turning round her whole person, she continued nodding at me till they were out of sight.

"Here is a ma.s.s of accomplishments," said I, "without one particle of mind, one ray of common sense, or one shade of delicacy! Surely somewhat less time and less money might have sufficed to qualify a companion for the coachman!"

"What poor creatures are we men," said I to Mr. Stanley as soon as he came in. "We think it very well, if, after much labor and long application, we can attain to one or two of the innumerable acquirements of this gay little girl. Nor is this I find the rare achievement of one happy genius--there is a whole cla.s.s of these miraculous females. Miss Rattle

"Is knight of the s.h.i.+re, and represents them all."

"It is only young ladies," replied he, "whose vast abilities, whose mighty grasp of mind can take in every thing. Among men, learned men, talents are commonly directed into some one channel, and fortunate is he who, in that one, attains to excellence. The linguist is rarely a painter, nor is the mathematician often a poet. Even in one profession, there are divisions and subdivisions. The same lawyer never thinks of presiding both in the King's Bench, and in the Court of Chancery. The science of healing is not only divided into its three distinct branches, but in the profession of surgery only, how many are the subdivisions!

One professor undertakes the eye, another the ear, and a third the teeth. But woman, ambitious, aspiring, universal, triumphant, glorious woman, even at the age of a school-boy, encounters the whole range of arts, attacks the whole circle of sciences!"

"A mighty maze, and _quite_ without a plan," replied Sir John, laughing.

"But the truth is, the misfortune does not so much consist in their learning every thing, as in their knowing nothing; I mean nothing well.

When gold is beaten out so wide, the lamina must needs be very thin. And you may observe, the more valuable attainments, though they are not to be left out of the modish plan, are kept in the background; and are to be picked up out of the odd remnants of that time, the sum of which is devoted to frivolous accomplishments. All this gay confusion of acquirements, these holiday splendors, this superfluity of enterprise, enumerated in the first part of her catalogue, is the _real business_ of education, the latter part is incidental, and if taught is not learned.

"As to the lectures so boastfully mentioned, they may doubtless be made very useful subsidiaries to instruction. They most happily ill.u.s.trate book-knowledge; but if the pupil's instructions in private do not precede, and keep pace with these useful public exhibitions, her knowledge will be only presumptuous ignorance. She may learn to talk of oxygen and hydrogen, and deflagration, and trituration but she will know nothing of the science except the terms. It is not knowing the name of his tools that makes an artist; and I should be afraid of the vanity which such superficial information would communicate to a mind not previously prepared, nor exercised at home in corresponding studies. But as Miss Rattle honestly confessed, as soon as she _comes out_, all these things will die away of themselves, and dancing and music will be almost all which will survive of her multifarious pursuits."

"I look upon the great predominance of music in female education," said Mr. Stanley, "to be the source of more mischief than is suspected; not from any evil in the thing itself, but from its being such a gulf of time, as really to leave little room for solid acquisitions. I love music, and, were it only cultivated as an amus.e.m.e.nt, should commend it.

But the monstrous proportion, or rather disproportion of life which it swallows up, even in many religious families--and this is the chief subject of my regret--has converted an innocent diversion into a positive sin. I question if many gay men devote more hours in a day to idle purposes, than the daughters of many pious parents spend in this amus.e.m.e.nt. All these hours the mind lies fallow, improvement is at a stand, if even it does not retrograde. Nor is it the shreds and sc.r.a.ps of time, stolen in the intervals of better things, that are so devoted; but it is the morning, the prime, the profitable, the active hours, when the mind is vigorous, the spirits light, the intellect awake and fresh, and the whole being wound up by the refreshment of sleep, and animated by the return of light and life, for n.o.bler services."

"If," said Sir John, "music were cultivated to embellish retirement, to be practiced where pleasures are scarce, and good performers are not to be had, it would quite alter the case. But the truth is, these highly taught ladies are not only living in public where they constantly hear the most exquisite professors, but they have them also at their own houses. Now one of these two things must happen. Either the performance of the lady will be so inferior as not to be worth hearing on the comparison, or so good that she will fancy herself the rival, instead of the admirer of the performer, whom she had better pay and praise than fruitlessly emulate."

"This anxious struggle to reach the unattainable excellence of the professor," said Mr. Stanley, "often brings to my mind the contest for victory between the ambitious nightingale and the angry lutanist in the beautiful Prolusion of Strada."

"It is to the predominance of this talent," replied I, "that I ascribe that want of companionableness of which I complain. The excellence of musical performance is a decorated screen, behind which all defects in domestic knowledge, in taste, judgment, and literature, and the talents which make an elegant companion, are creditably concealed."

"I have made," said Sir John, "another remark. Young ladies, who from apparent shyness do not join in the conversation of a small select party, are always ready enough to entertain them with music on the slightest hint. Surely it is equally modest to _say_ as to _sing_, especially to sing those melting strains we sometimes hear sung, and which we should be ashamed to hear said. After all, how few hours are there in a week, in which a man engaged in the pursuits of life, and a woman in the duties of a family, wish to employ in music. I am fond of it myself, and Lady Belfield plays admirably; but with the cares inseparable from the conscientious discharge of her duty with so many children, how little time has she to play, or I to listen! But there is no day, no hour, no meal in which I do not enjoy in her the ever ready pleasure of an elegant and interesting companion. A man of sense, when all goes smoothly, wants to be entertained; under vexation to be soothed; in difficulties to be counseled; in sorrow to be comforted. In a mere artist can he reasonably look for these resources?"

"Only figure to yourself," replied Mr. Stanley, "my six girls daily playing their four hours a piece, which is now a moderate allowance! As we have but one instrument they must be at it in succession, day and night, to keep pace with their neighbors. If I may compare light things with serious ones, it would resemble," added he, smiling, "the perpetual psalmody of good Mr. Nicholars Ferrar, who had relays of musicians every six hours to sing the whole Psalter through every day and night! I mean not to ridicule that holy man; but my girls thus keeping their useless vigils in turn, we should only have the melody without any of the piety.

No, my friend! I will have but two or three singing birds to cheer my little grove. If all the world are performers, there will soon be no hearers. Now, as I am resolved in my own family that some shall listen, I will have but few to perform."

"It must be confessed," said Sir John, "that Miss Rattle is no servile imitator of the vapid tribe of the superficially accomplished. Her violent animal spirits prevent her from growing smooth by attrition. She is as rough and angular as rusticity itself could have made her. Where strength of character, however, is only marked by the worst concomitant of strength, which is coa.r.s.eness, I should almost prefer inanity itself."

"I should a little fear," said I, "that I lay too much stress on companionableness; on the _positive duty of being agreeable at home_, had I not early learned the doctrine from my father, and seen it exemplified so happy in the practice of my mother."

"I entirely agree with you, Charles," said Mr. Stanley, "as to the absolute _morality_ of being agreeable and even entertaining in one's own family circle. Nothing so soon, and so certainly wears out the happiness of married persons, as that too common bad effect of familiarity, the sinking down into dullness and insipidity; neglecting to keep alive the flame by the delicacy which first kindled it; want of vigilance in keeping the temper cheerful by Christian discipline, and the faculties bright by constant use. Mutual affection decays of itself, even where there is no great moral turpitude, without mutual endeavors, not only to improve, but to amuse.

"This," continued he, "is one of the great arts of _home enjoyment_.

That it is so little practiced, accounts in a good measure for the undomestic turn of too many married persons. The man meets abroad with amus.e.m.e.nts, and the woman with attentions, to which they are not accustomed at home. Whereas a capacity to please on the one part, and a disposition to be pleased on the other, in their own house, would make most visits appear dull. But then the disposition and the capacity must be cultivated antecedently to marriage. A woman, whose whole education has been rehearsal, will always be dull, except she lives on the stage, constantly displaying what she has been sedulously acquiring. Books, on the contrary, well chosen books, do not lead to exhibition. The knowledge a woman acquires in private, desires no witnesses; the possession is the pleasure. It improves herself, it embellishes her family society, it entertains her husband, it informs her children. The gratification is cheap, is safe, is always to be had at home."

"It is superfluous," said Sir John, "to decorate women so highly for early youth; youth is itself a decoration. We mistakingly adorn most that part of life which least requires it, and neglect to provide for that which will want it most. It is for that sober period when life has lost its freshness, the pa.s.sions their intenseness, and the spirits their hilarity, that we should be preparing. Our wisdom would be to antic.i.p.ate the wants of middle life, to lay in a store of notions, ideas, principles, and habits, which may preserve or transfer to the mind that affection which was at first partly attracted by the person.

But to add a vacant mind to a form which has ceased to please; to provide no subsidiary aid to beauty while it lasts, and especially no subst.i.tute when it is departed, is to render life comfortless, and marriage dreary."

"The reading of a cultivated woman," said Mr. Stanley, "commonly occupies less time than the music of a musical woman, or the idleness of an indolent woman, or the dress of a vain woman, or the dissipation of a fluttering woman; she is therefore likely to have more leisure for her duties, as well as more inclination, and a sounder judgment for performing them. But pray observe, that I a.s.sume my reading woman to be a religious woman; and I will not answer for the effect of a literary vanity, more than for that of any other vanity, in a mind not habitually disciplined by Christian principle, the only safe and infallible antidote for knowledge of every kind."

Before we had finished our conversation, we were interrupted by the arrival of the post. Sir John eagerly opened the newspaper; but, instead of gratifying our impatience with the intelligence for which we panted from the glorious Spaniards, he read a paragraph which stated "that Miss Denham had eloped with Signor Squallini, that they were on their way to Scotland, and that Lady Denham had been in fits ever since."

Lady Belfield with her usual kindness was beginning to express how much she pitied her old acquaintance. "My dear Caroline," said Sir John, "there is too much substantial and inevitable misery in the world, for you to waste much compa.s.sion on this foolish woman. Lady Denham has little reason to be surprised at an event which all reasonable people must have antic.i.p.ated. Provoking and disgraceful as it is, what has she to blame but her own infatuation? This Italian was the a.s.sociate of all her pleasures; the constant theme of her admiration. He was admitted when her friends were excluded. The girl was continually hearing that music was the best gift, and that Signor Squallini was the best gifted.

Miss Denham," added, he laughing, "had more wit than your Strada's nightingale. Instead of dropping down dead on the lute for envy, she thought it better to run away with the lutanist for love. I pity the poor girl, however, who has furnished such a commentary to our text, and who is rather the victim of a wretched education than of her own bad propensities."