THE HERO ACQUITS HIMSELF HONOURABLY AS A COXCOMB.—A FINE LADY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND A FASHIONABLE DIALOGUE; THE SUBSTANCE OF FASHIONABLE DIALOGUE BEING IN ALL CENTURIES THE SAME.
“I AM thinking, Morton,” said my uncle, “that if you are to go to town, you should go in a style suitable to your rank. What say you to flying along the road in my green and gold chariot? ‘Sdeath! I’ll make you a present of it. Nay—no thanks; and you may have four of my black Flanders mares to draw you.”
“Now, my dear Sir William,” cried Lady Hasselton, who, it may be remembered, was the daughter of one of King Charles’s Beauties, and who alone shared the breakfast-room with my uncle and myself,—“now, my dear Sir William, I think it would be a better plan to suffer the Count to accompany us to town. We go next week. He shall have a seat in our coach, help Lovell to pay our post-horses, protect us at inns, scold at the drawers in the pretty oaths of the fashion, which are so innocent that I will teach them to his Countship myself; and unless I am much more frightful than my honoured mother, whose beauties you so gallantly laud, I think you will own, Sir William, that this is better for your nephew than doing solitary penance in your chariot of green and gold, with a handkerchief tied over his head to keep away cold, and with no more fanciful occupation than composing sonnets to the four Flanders mares.”
“‘Sdeath, Madam, you inherit your mother’s wit as well as beauty,” cried my uncle, with an impassioned air.
“And his Countship,” said I, “will accept your invitation without asking his uncle’s leave.”
“Come, that is bold for a gentleman of—let me see, thirteen—are you not?”
“Really,” answered I, “one learns to forget time so terribly in the presence of Lady Hasselton that I do not remember even how long it has existed for me.”
“Bravo!” cried the knight, with a moistening eye; “you see, Madam, the boy has not lived with his old uncle for nothing.”
“I am lost in astonishment!” said the lady, glancing towards the glass; “why, you will eclipse all our beaux at your first appearance; but—but—Sir William—how green those glasses have become! Bless me, there is something so contagious in the effects of the country that the very mirrors grow verdant. But—Count—Count—where are you, Count? [I was exactly opposite to the fair speaker.] Oh, there you are! Pray, do you carry a little pocket-glass of the true quality about you? But, of course you do; lend it me.”
“I have not the glass you want, but I carry with me a mirror that reflects your features much more faithfully.”
“How! I protest I do not understand you!”
“The mirror is here!” said I, laying my hand to my heart.
“‘Gad, I must kiss the boy!” cried my uncle, starting up.
“I have sworn,” said I, fixing my eyes upon the lady,—“I have sworn never to be kissed, even by women. You must pardon me, Uncle.”
“I declare,” cried the Lady Hasselton, flirting her fan, which was somewhat smaller than the screen that one puts into a great hall, in order to take off the discomfort of too large a room,—“I declare, Count, there is a vast deal of originality about you. But tell me, Sir William, where did your nephew acquire, at so early an age—eleven, you say, he is—such a fund of agreeable assurance?”
“Nay, Madam, let the boy answer for himself.”
“Imprimis, then,” said I, playing with the ribbon of my cane,—“imprimis, early study of the best authors,—Congreve and Farquhar, Etherege and Rochester; secondly, the constant intercourse of company which gives one the spleen so overpoweringly that despair inspires one with boldness—to get rid of them; thirdly, the personal example of Sir William Devereux; and, fourthly, the inspiration of hope.”
“Hope, sir?” said the Lady Hasselton, covering her face with her fan, so as only to leave me a glimpse of the farthest patch upon her left cheek,—“hope, sir?”
“Yes, the hope of being pleasing to you. Suffer me to add that the hope has now become certainty.”
“Upon my word, Count—”
“Nay, you cannot deny it; if one can once succeed in impudence, one is irresistible.”
“Sir William,” cried Lady Hasselton, “you may give the Count your chariot of green and gold, and your four Flanders mares, and send his mother’s maid with him. He shall not go with me.”
“Cruel! and why?” said I.
“You are too”—the lady paused, and looked at me over her fan. She was really very handsome—“you are too old, Count. You must be more than nine.”
“Pardon me,” said I, “I am nine,—a very mystical number nine is too, and represents the Muses, who, you know, were always attendant upon Venus—or you, which is the same thing; so you can no more dispense with my company than you can with that of the Graces.”
“Good morning, Sir William,” cried the Lady Hasselton, rising.
I offered to hand her to the door; with great difficulty, for her hoop was of the very newest enormity of circumference; I effected this object. “Well, Count,” said she, “I am glad to see you have brought so much learning from school; make the best use of it while it lasts, for your memory will not furnish you with a single simile out of the mythology by the end of next winter.”
“That would be a pity,” said I, “for I intend having as many goddesses as the heathens had, and I should like to worship them in a classical fashion.”
“Oh, the young reprobate!” said the beauty, tapping me with her fan. “And pray, what other deities besides Venus do I resemble?”
“All!” said I,—“at least, all the celestial ones!”
Though half way through the door, the beauty extricated her hoop, and drew back. “Bless me, the gods as well as the goddesses?”
“Certainly.”
“You jest: tell me how.”
“Nothing can be easier; you resemble Mercury because of your thefts.”
“Thefts!”
“Ay; stolen hearts, and,” added I, in a whisper, “glances; Jupiter, partly because of your lightning, which you lock up in the said glances,—principally because all things are subservient to you; Neptune, because you are as changeable as the seas; Vulcan, because you live among the flames you excite; and Mars, because—”
“You are so destructive,” cried my uncle.
“Exactly so; and because,” added I—as I shut the door upon the beauty—“because, thanks to your hoop, you cover nine acres of ground.”
“Ods fish, Morton,” said my uncle, “you surprise me at times: one while you are so reserved, at another so assured; to-day so brisk, to-morrow so gloomy. Why now, Lady Hasselton (she is very comely, eh! faith, but not comparable to her mother) told me, a week ago, that she, gave you up in despair, that you were dull, past hoping for; and now, ‘Gad, you had a life in you that Sid himself could not have surpassed. How comes it, Sir, eh?”
“Why, Uncle, you have explained the reason; it was exactly because she said I was dull that I was resolved to convict her in an untruth.”
“Well, now, there is some sense in that, boy; always contradict ill report by personal merit. But what think you of her ladyship? ‘Gad, you know what old Bellair said of Emilia. ‘Make much of her: she’s one of the best of your acquaintance. I like her countenance and behaviour. Well, she has a modesty not i’ this age, a-dad she has.’ Applicable enough; eh, boy?”
“‘I know her value, Sir, and esteem her accordingly,’” answered I, out of the same play, which by dint of long study I had got by heart. “But, to confess the truth,” added I, “I think you might have left out the passage about her modesty.”
“There, now; you young chaps are so censorious; why, ‘sdeath, sir, you don’t think the worse of her virtue because of her wit?”
“Humph!”
“Ah, boy! when you are my age, you’ll know that your demure cats are not the best; and that reminds me of a little story; shall I tell it you, child?”
“If it so please you, Sir.”
“Zauns—where’s my snuff-box?—oh, here it is. Well, Sir, you shall have the whole thing, from beginning to end. Sedley and I were one day conversing together about women. Sid was a very deep fellow in that game: no passion you know; no love on his own side; nothing of the sort; all done by rule and compass; knew women as well as dice, and calculated the exact moment when his snares would catch them, according to the principles of geometry. D——d clever fellow, faith; but a confounded rascal: but let it go no further; mum’s the word! must not slander the dead; and ‘tis only my suspicion, you know, after all. Poor fellow: I don’t think he was such a rascal; he gave a beggar an angel once,—well, boy, have a pinch?—Well, so I said to Sir Charles, ‘I think you will lose the widow, after all,—‘Gad I do.’ ‘Upon what principle of science, Sir William?’ said he. ‘Why, faith, man, she is so modest, you see, and has such a pretty way of blushing.’ ‘Hark ye, friend Devereux,’ said Sir Charles, smoothing his collar and mincing his words musically, as he was wont to do,—‘hark ye, friend Devereux, I will give you the whole experience of my life in one maxim: I can answer for its being new, and I think it is profound; and that maxim is—,’ no, faith, Morton—no, I can’t tell it thee: it is villanous, and then it’s so desperately against all the sex.”
“My dear uncle, don’t tantalize me so: pray tell it me; it shall be a secret.”
“No, boy, no: it will corrupt thee; besides, it will do poor Sid’s memory no good. But, ‘sdeath, it was a most wonderfully shrewd saying,—i’ faith, it was. But, zounds, Morton, I forgot to tell you that I have had a letter from the Abbe to-day.”
“Ha! and when does he return?”
“To-morrow, God willing!” said the knight, with a sigh.
“So soon, or rather after so long an absence! Well, I am glad of it. I wish much to see him before I leave you.”
“Indeed!” quoth my uncle; “you have an advantage over me, then! But, ods fish, Morton, how is it that you grew so friendly with the priest before his departure? He used to speak very suspiciously of thee formerly; and, when I last saw him, he lauded thee to the skies.”
“Why, the clergy of his faith have a habit of defending the strong and crushing the weak, I believe; that’s all. He once thought I was dull enough to damn my fortune, and then he had some strange doubts for my soul; now he thinks me wise enough to become prosperous, and it is astonishing what a respect he has conceived for my principles.”
“Ha! ha! ha!—you have a spice of your uncle’s humour in you; and, ‘Gad, you have no small knowledge of the world, considering you have seen so little of it.”
A hit at the popish clergy was, in my good uncle’s eyes, the exact acme of wit and wisdom. We are always clever with those who imagine we think as they do. To be shallow you must differ from people: to be profound you must agree with them. “Why, Sir,” answered the sage nephew, “you forget that I have seen more of the world than many of twice my age. Your house has been full of company ever since I have been in it, and you set me to making observations on what I saw before I was thirteen. And then, too, if one is reading books about real life, at the very time one is mixing in it, it is astonishing how naturally one remarks and how well one remembers.”
“Especially if one has a genius for it,—eh, boy? And then too, you have read my play; turned Horace’s Satires into a lampoon upon the boys at school; been regularly to assizes during the vacation; attended the county balls, and been a most premature male coquette with the ladies. Ods fish, boy! it is quite curious to see how the young sparks of the present day get on with their lovemaking.”
“Especially if one has a genius for it,—eh, sir?” said I.
“Besides, too,” said my uncle, ironically, “you have had the Abbe’s instructions.”
“Ay, and if the priests would communicate to their pupils their experience in frailty, as well as in virtue, how wise they would make us!”
“Ods fish! Morton, you are quite oracular. How got you that fancy of priests?—by observation in life already?”
“No, Uncle: by observation in plays, which you tell me are the mirrors of life; you remember what Lee says,—
“‘‘Tis thought
That earth is more obliged to priests for bodies
Than Heaven for souls.’”
And my uncle laughed, and called me a smart fellow.
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