Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

tilling other people's;-affording a proof, even in this declining age, when the circumstances of so many worthy members of the community seem to have "an alacrity in sinking," that it is possible to amend them by sheer industry. He, who was born in the workhouse, and bred up as a parish boy, has now, by mere manual labour, risen to the rank of a land-owner, pays rates and taxes, grumbles at the times, and is called Master Welles, the title next to Mister -that by which Shakspeare was called;what would man have more? His wife, besides being the best laundress in the county, is a comely woman still. There she stands at the spring, dipping up water for to-morrow,the clear, deep, silent spring, which sleeps so peacefully under its high flowery bank, red with the tall spiral stalks of the foxglove and their rich pendent bells, blue with the beautiful forget-me-not, that gem-like blossom, which looks like a living jewel of turquoise and topaz. It is almost too late to see its beauty; and here is the pleasant shady lane, where the high elms will shut out the little twilight that remains. Ah, but we shall have the fairies' lamps to guide us, the stars of the earth, the glow-worms! Here they are, three almost together. Do you not see them? One seems tremulous, vibrating, as if on the extremity of a leaf of grass; the others are deeper in the hedge, in some green cell on which their light falls with an emerald lustre. I hope my friends the cricketers will not come this way home. I would not have the pretty creatures removed for more than I care to say, and in this matter I would hardly trust Joe Kirbyboys so love to stick them in their hats. But this lane is quite deserted. It is only a road from field to field. No one comes here at this hour. They are quite safe; and I shall walk here to-morrow and visit them again. And now, good night! beautiful insects, lamps of the fairies, good night!

THE TALKING GENTLEMAN.

I only mean to assert that one gentleman does exist, (whom I have the pleasure of knowing intimately,) who stands pre-eminent and unrivalled in the art of talking,-unmatched and unapproached by man, woman, or child. Since the decease of my poor friend "the Talking Lady," who dropped down speechless in the midst of a long story about nine weeks ago, and was immediately known to be dead by her silence, I should be at a loss where to seek a competitor to contend with him in a race of words, and I should be still more puzzled to find one that can match him in wit, pleasantry, or good-humour.

My friend is usually called Harry L., for, though a man of substance, a lord of land, a magistrate, a field officer of militia, nobody ever dreamed of calling him Mister or major, or by any such derogatory title-he is and will be all his life plain Harry, the name of universal good-will. He is indeed the pleasantest fellow that lives. His talk (one can hardly call it conversation, as that would seem to imply another interlocutor, something like reciprocity) is an incessant flow of good things, like Congreve's comedies without a replying speaker, or Joe Miller laid into one; and its perpetual stream is not lost and dispersed by diffusion, but runs in one constant channel, playing and sparkling like a fountain, the delight and ornament of our good town of B.

Harry L. is a perfect example of provincial reputation, of local fame. There is not an urchin in the town that has not heard of him, nor an old woman that does not chuckle by anticipation at his approach. The citizens of B. are as proud of him as the citizens of Antwerp were of the Chapeau de Paille, and they have the advantage of the luckless Flemings in the certainty that their boast is not to be purchased. Harry, like the Flemish Beauty, is native to the spot; for he was born at B., educated at B., married at B.,-though, as his beautiful wife brought him a good estate in a distant part of the country, there seemed at that epoch of his history some danger of his being lost to our ancient borough; but he is a social and gregarious animal; so he leaves his pretty place in Devonshire to take care of THE lords of the creation, who are generally itself, and lives here in the midst of a hive. (to do them justice) tenacious enough of their His tastes are not at all rural. He is no distinctive and peculiar faculties and powers, sportsman, no farmer, no lover of strong exhave yet by common consent made over to the ercise. When at B., his walks are quite refemales the single gift of loquacity. Every gular; from his own house, on one side of the man thinks and says that every woman talks town, to a gossip-shop called "literary" on more than he: it is the creed of the whole the other, where he talks and reads newspasex,-the debates and law reports notwith-pers, and others read newspapers and listen: standing. And every masculine eye that has scanned my title has already, I doubt not, looked to the errata, suspecting a mistake in the gender; but it is their misconception, not my mistake. I do not (Heaven forbid !) intend to impugn or abrogate our female privilege; I do not dispute that we do excel, geLerally speaking, in the use of the tongue;

H

thence he proceeds to another house of news, similar in kind, though differing in name, in an opposite quarter, where he and his hearers undergo the same process, and then he returns home, forming a pretty exact triangle of about half a mile. This is his daily exercise, or rather his daily walk; of exercise he takes abundance, not only in talking, (though that

is nearly as good to open the chest as the man of forty, or thereabout; rather thin and dumb-bells,) but in a general restlessness and rather pale, but with no appearance of illfidgetiness of person, the result of his ardent health, or any other peculiarity, except the reand nervous temperament, which can hardly markable circumstance of the lashes of one endure repose of mind or body. He neither eye being white, which gives a singular nongives rest nor takes it. His company is, in- resemblance to his organs of vision. Every deed, in one sense (only one) fatiguing. Lis-one perceives the want of uniformity, and few tening to him tires you like a journey. You detect the cause. Some suspect him of what laugh till you are forced to lie down. The farriers call a wall-eye; some think he squints. medical gentlemen of the place are aware of He himself talks familiarly of his two eyes, this, and are accustomed to exhort delicate the black and the white, and used to liken patients to abstain from Harry's society, just them to those of our fine Persian cat, (now, as they caution them against temptations in alas! no more,) who had, in common with his point of amusement or of diet-pleasant but feline countrymen, one blue as a sapphire, the dangerous. Choleric gentlemen should al- other yellow as a topaz. The dissimilarity ways avoid him, and such as love to have the certainly rather spoils his beauty, but greatly last word; for, though never provoked him- improves his wit,-I mean the sense of his self, I cannot deny that he is occasionally wit in others. It arrests attention and predistolerably provoking,-in politics especially poses to laughter; is an outward and visible (and he is an ultra-liberal, quotes Cobbett, sign of the comical. No common man has and goes rather too far)-in politics he loves two such eyes. They are made for fun. to put his antagonist in a fume, and generally succeeds, though it is nearly the only subject on which he ever listens to an answer-chiefly I believe for the sake of a reply, which is commonly some trenchant repartee, that cuts off the poor answer's head like a razor. Very determined speakers would also do well to eschew his company-though in general I never met with any talker to whom other talkers were so ready to give way; perhaps because he keeps them in such incessant laughter, that they are not conscious of their silence. To himself the number of his listeners is altogether unimportant. His speech flows not from vanity or lust of praise, but from sheer necessity;-the reservoir is full, and runs over. When he has no one else to talk to, he can be content with his own company, and talks to himself, being beyond a doubt greater in soliloquy than any man off the stage. Where he is not known, this habit sometimes occasions considerable consternation, and very ridiculous mistakes. He has been taken alternately for an actor, a poet, a man in love, and a man beside himself. Once in particular, at Windsor, he greatly alarmed a philanthropic sentinel, by holding forth at his usual rate whilst pacing the terrace alone; and but for the opportune arrival of his party, and their assurances that it was only "the gentleman's way," there was some danger that the benevolent soldier might have been tempted to desert his post to take care of him. Even after this explanation, he gazed with a doubtful eye at our friend, who was haranguing himself in great style, sighed and shook his head, and finally implored us to look well after him till he should be safe off the terrace." You see, ma'am," observed the philanthropist in scarlet, "it is an awkward place for any body troubled with vagaries. Suppose the poor soul should take a fancy to jump over the wall ?"

In his occupations and pleasures Harry is pretty much like other provincial gentlemen; loves a rubber, and jests all through, at aces, kings, queens, and knaves, bad cards, and good, at winning and losing, scolding and praise ;-loves a play, at which he out-talks the actors whilst on the stage, to say nothing of the advantage he has over them in the intervals between the acts;-loves music, as a good accompaniment to his grand solo;-loves a contested election above all. That is his real element,-that din and uproar, and riot and confusion! To ride that whirlwind and direct that storm is his triumph of triumphs! He would make a great sensation in parliament himself, and a pleasant one. (By the way, he was once in danger of being turned out of the gallery for setting all around him in a roar.) Think what a fine thing it would be for the members to have mirth introduced into the body of the house! to be sure of an honest, hearty, good-humoured laugh during the session! Besides, Harry is an admirable speaker, in every sense of the word. Jesting is indeed his forte, because he wills it so to be; and therefore, because he chooses to play jigs and country dances upon a noble organ, even some of his stanchest admirers think he can play nothing else. There is no quality of which men so much grudge the reputation as versatility of talent. Because he is so humorous, they will hardly allow him to be eloquent; and, because he is so very witty, find it difficult to account him wise. But let him go where he has not that mischievous fame, or let him bridle his jests and rein in his humour only for one short hour, and he will pass for a most reverend orator,-logical, pathetic, and vigorous above all. But how can I wish him to cease jesting even for an hour? Who would exchange the genial fame of good-humoured wit for the stern reputation of wisdom? Who would choose to be Socrates, if with a In his externals he is a well-looking gentle- | wish he could be Harry L.?

MRS. MOSSE.

Mossy (for by that fondling nursery name she best liked to be called) had never been married, so that the family of her master and mistress had no rival in her heart, and on me, their only child, was concentrated that intensity of affection which distinguishes the attachments of age. I loved her dearly too, as dearly as a spoiled child can love its prime spoiler,-but, oh! how selfish was my love, compared to the depth, the purity, the indulgence, the self-denial of hers! Dear Mossy! I shall never do her justice; and yet I must try.

ference in dress, many an old woman's head might pass for that of an old man. This misfortune could never have happened to Mossy. No one could mistake the sex of that sweet countenance.

I Do not know whether I ever hinted to the courteous reader that I had been in my younger days, without prejudice to my present condi- Her dress manifested a good deal of laudation, somewhat of a spoiled child. The person ble coquetry, a nice and minute attention to who, next after my father and mother, contri- the becoming. I do not know at what precise buted most materially to this melancholy ca- date her costume was fixed: but, as long as I tastrophe, was an old female domestic, Mrs. | remember her fixed it was, and stood as invaElizabeth Mosse, who, at the time of her riably at one point of fashion, as the hand of death, had lived nearly sixty years in our an unwound clock stands at one hour of the house and that of my maternal grandfather. day. It consisted (to begin from the feet and Of course, during the latter part of this long describe upwards) of black shoes of shining period, the common forms and feelings of ser- stuff, with very pointed toes, high heels, and vant and master were entirely swept away. a peak up the instep, showing to advantage She was a member of the family, an humble her delicately white cotton stockings, and friend-happy are they who have such a friend! peeping beneath petticoats so numerous and -living as she liked, up stairs or down, in the substantial, as to give a rotundity and projeckitchen or the nursery, considered, consulted, tion almost equal to a hoop. Her exterior garand beloved by the whole household. ment was always quilted, varying according to the season or the occasion, from simple stuff, or fine white dimity, or an obsolete manufacture called Marseilles, up to silk and satin;for, as the wardrobes of my three grandmothers (pshaw! I mean my grandfather's three wives!) had fallen to her lot, few gentlewomen of the last century could boast a greater variety of silks that stood on end.-Over the quilted petticoat came an open gown, whose long waist reached to the bottom of her stiff stays, and whose very full tail, about six inches longer than the petticoat, would have formed a very inconvenient little train, if it had been Mrs. Mosse, in her appearance, was in the permitted to hang down; but that inconvehighest degree what is called respectable. nience never happened, and could scarcely She must have been tall when young; for have been contemplated by the designer. The even when bent with age, she was above the tail was constantly looped up, so as to hang middle height, a large-made though meagre behind in a sort of bunchy festoon, exhibiting woman. She walked with feebleness and dif- on each side the aforesaid petticoat. In mateficulty, from the attacks of hereditary gout,rial the gown also varied with the occasion, which not even her temperance and activity could ward off. There was something very interesting in this tottering helplessness, clinging to the balusters, or holding by doors and chairs like a child. It had nothing of vulgar lameness; it told of age, venerable age. Out of doors she never ventured, unless on some sunny afternoon I could entice her into the air, and then once round the garden, or to the lawn gate and back again, was the extent of her walk, propped by a very aristocratic walkingstick (once the property of a duchess) as tall as herself, with a hooked ivory handle, joined to the cane by a rim of gold. Her face was as venerable as her person. She must have been very handsome; indeed she was so still, as far as regular and delicate features, a pale brown complexion, dark eyes, still retaining the intelligence and animation of youth, and an expression perfectly gentle and feminine, could make her so. It is one of the worst penalties that woman pays to age, that often, when advanced in life, the face loses its characteristic softness; in short, but for the dif

although it was always either composed of dark cotton or of the rich silks and satins of my grandmamma's wardrobe. The sleeves came down just below the elbow, and were finished by a narrow white ruffle meeting her neat mittens. On her neck she wore a snow white double muslin kerchief, pinned over the gown in front, and confined by an apron also of muslin; and, over all, a handsome silk shawl, so pinned back as to show a part of the snowy neck-kerchief. Her head-dress was equally becoming, and more particularly precise; for, if ever she betrayed an atom of oldmaidishness, it was on the score of her caps. From a touch of the gout in her hands whieh had enlarged and stiffened the joints, she could do no work which required nicety, and the successive lady's maids, on whom the operation devolved, used to say that they would rather make up ten caps for their mistress than one for Mrs. Mosse; and yet the construction seemed simple enough. A fine clear-starched caul, sticking up rather high and peaked in front, was plaited on a Scotch gauze headpiece;

(I remember there used to be exactly six plaits to be equalled by that which she professed toon each side-woe to the damsel who should wards a pearl edge; indeed I retain my disput more or less!) and, on the other side, a like to this hour;-it is such an exceedingly border, consisting of a strip of fine muslin, cross and frumpish-looking colour-and then edged with narrow lace, clear-starched and its ugliness! Show me a brown flower! No! crimped, was plaited on with equal precision. I could not bring myself to buy brown;-so In one part of this millinery I used to assist. after fighting many battles about grey and I dearly loved to crimp Mossy's frills, and she green, we at last settled on purple as a sort with her usual indulgence used frequently to of neutral tint, a hue which pleased both parlet me, keeping however a pretty close eye on ties. To return to the cap which we have her laces and muslins, whilst I was passing been so long making-the finish both to that them with triumphant rapidity between the and to my description was a strip of crimped small wooden machine notched longitudinally, muslin, with edging on both sides to match and the corresponding roller. Perhaps a great- the border, quilled on a piece of tape, and faster proof of indulgence could hardly have been ened on a cap at each ear. This she called shown, since she must, during this operation, the chinnum. A straight short row of hair have been in double fear for her own cap strips, rather grey, but still very dark for her age, which did occasionally get a rent, and for my just appeared under the plaited lace; and a fingers, which were sometimes well pinched-pair of silver-mounted spectacles completed then she would threaten that I should never her equipment. If I live to the age of sevencrimp her muslin again-a never which seldom ty, I will dress so too, with an exception of lasted beyond the next cap-making. The head- the stiff stays. Only a waist native to the piece was then concealed by a satin riband fashion could endure that whalebone armour. fastened in a peculiar bow, something between a bow and a puffing behind, whilst the front was adorned with an equally peculiar small knot, of which the two bows were pinned down flat and the two ends left sticking up, cut into scallops of a prodigious regularity. The purchase of the ribands formed another branch of the cap-making department to which I laid claim. From the earliest period at which I could distinguish one colour from another, I had been purveyor of ribands to Mossy, and indeed at all fairs, or whenever I received a present or entered a shop, (and I was so liberally supplied that there was nothing like generosity in the case,) it was the first and pleasantest destination of money that occurred to me: so that the dear woman used to complain, that Miss bought her so many ribands, that they spoiled in keeping. We did not quite agree either in our taste. White, as both acknowledged, was the only wear for Sundays and holidays; but then she loved plain white, and I could not always control a certain wandering inclination for figured patterns and pearl edges. If Mossy had an aversion to any thing, it was to a pearl edge. I never could persuade her to wear that simple piece of finery but once; and then she made as many wry faces as a child eating olives, and stood before a glass eyeing the obnoxious riband with so much discomposure, that I was fain to take it out myself, and promise to buy no more pearl edges. The every-day ribands were coloured; and there, too, we had our little differences of taste and opinion. Both agreed in the propriety of grave colours; but then my reading of a grave colour was not always the same as hers. My eyes were not old enough. She used to accuse my French greys of blueness, and my crimsons of redness, and my greens of their greenness. She had a penchant for brown, and to brown I had a repugnance only

Her employments were many and various. No work was required of her from her mistress; but idleness was misery to her habits of active usefulness, and it was astonishing how much those crippled fingers could do. She preferred coarse needle-work, as it was least difficult to her eyes and hands; and she attended also to those numerous and undefined avocations of a gentleman's family which come under the denomination of odd jobs-shelling peas, paring apples, splitting French beans, washing china, darning stockings, hemming and mending dusters and house-cloths, making cabbage-nets, and knitting garters. These were her daily avocations, the amusements which she loved. The only more delicate operation of needle-work that she ever undertook was the making of pincushions, a manufacture in which she delighted-not the quips and quiddities of these degenerate days, little bits of riband, and pasteboard, and gilt paper, in the shape of books or butterflies, by which, at charitable repositories, half-a-dozen pins are smuggled into a lady's pocket, and shillings and half-crowns are smuggled out; - no! Mossy's were real solid old-fashioned silken pincushions, such as Autolycus might have carried about amongst his pedlery-ware, square and roomy, and capable, at a moderate computation, of containing a whole paper of shortwhites, and another of middlings. It was delightful to observe her enjoyment of this playwork; the conscious importance with which she produced her satins and brocades, and her cards of sewing silks (she generally made a whole batch at once)-the deliberation with which she assorted the colours; - the care with which she tacked and fitted side to side, and corner to corner; the earnestness with which, when all was sewed up except one small aperture for the insertion of the stuffing, she would pour in the bran, or stow in

the wool:-then the care with which she poked the stuffing into every separate corner, ramming it down with all her strength, and making the little bag (so to say) hold more than it would hold, until it became almost as hard as a cricket-ball;-then how she drew the aperture together by main force, putting so many last stitches, fastening off with such care; and then distributing them to all around her (for her lady-like spirit would have scorned the idea of selling them), and always reserving the gayest and the prettiest for me. Dear old soul! I have several of them still.

But, if I should begin to enumerate all the instances of kindness which I experienced at her hands, through the changes and varieties of troublesome childhood and fantastic youth; from the time when I was a puling baby, to the still more exacting state of a young girl at home in the holidays, I should never know when to end. Her sweet and loving temper was self-rewarded. She enjoyed the happiness she gave. Those were pleasant evenings when my father and mother were engaged in the Christmas-dinner visits of gay and extensive neighbourhood, and Mrs. Mosse used to put on her handsomest shawl and her kindest smile, and totter up stairs to drink tea with me, and keep me company. From those evenings I imbibed, in the first place, a love of strong green tea, for which gentlewomanly excitation Mossy had a remarkable predilection; secondly, a very discreditable and unladylike partiality, of which I am quite ashamed, which I keep a secret from my most intimate friends, and would not mention for the world -a sort of sneaking kindness for her favourite game of cribbage; an old-fashioned vulgarity, which, in my mind, beats the genteeler pastimes of whist and picquet, and every game, except quadrille, out and out. I make no exception in favour of chess, because, thanks to my stupidity, I never could learn that recondite diversion; moreover, judging from the grave faces and fatiguing silence of the initiated, I cannot help suspecting that, board for board, we cribbage-players are as well amused as they. Dear Mossy could neither feel to deal and shuffle, nor see to peg; so that the greater part of the business fell to my share. The success was pretty equally divided. Three rubbers were our stint; and we were often game and game in the last before victory declared itself. She was very anxious to beat, certainly-(N. B. we never played for any thing) she liked to win; and yet she did not quite like that I should lose. If we could both have won-if it had been four-handed eribbage, and she my partner- still there would have been somebody to be beaten and pitied, but then that somebody would not have been "Miss."

The cribbage hour was pleasant; but I think the hours of chat which preceded and followed it were pleasanter still. Mossy was a most

agreeable companion, sensible, modest, simple, shrewd, with an exactness of recollection, an honesty of memory, that gave exceeding interest to her stories. You were sure that you heard the truth. There was one striking peculiarity in her manner of talking, or rather one striking contrast. The voice and accent were quite those of a gentlewoman, as sweettoned and correct as could be; the words and their arrangement were altogether those of a common person, provincial and ungrammatical in every phrase and combination. I believe it is an effect of association, from the little slips in her grammar, that I have contracted a most unscholar-like prejudice in favour of false syntax, which is so connected in my mind with right notions, that I no sooner catch the sound of bad English than I begin to listen for good sense; and really they often go together (always supposing that the bad English be not of the order called slang), and meet much more frequently than those exclusive people, ladies and gentlemen, are willing to allow. In her they were always united. But the charm of her conversation was in the old family stories, and the unconscious peeps at old manners which they afforded.

My grandfather, with whom she had lived in his first wife's time, full twenty years before my mother's birth, was a most respectable clergyman, who, after passing a few years in London amongst the wits and poets of the day, seeing the star of Pope in its decline, and that of Johnson in its rise, had retired into the country, where he held two adjoining livings of considerable value, both of which he served for above forty years, until the duty becoming too severe, he resigned one of them under an old-fashioned notion, that he who did the duty ought to receive the remuneration. I am very proud of my venerable ancestor. We have a portrait of him taken shortly after he was ordained, in his gown and band, with a curious flowing wig, something like that of a judge, fashionable doubtless, at the time, but which at present rather discomposes one's notions of clerical costume. He seems to have been a dark little man, with a sensible countenance, and a pair of black eyes, that even in the picture look you through. He was a votary of the Muses, too; a contributor to Lewis's Miscellany; (did my readers ever hear of that collection?) translated Horace, as all gentlemen do; and wrote love-verses, which had the unusual good fortune of obtaining their object, being, as Mrs. Mosse was wont to affirm, the chief engine and implement by which at fifty he gained the heart of his third wife, my real grandmamma, the beautiful daughter of a neighbouring 'squire. Of Dr. R., his wives, and his sermons, the bishops who visited, and the poets who wrote to him, Mossy's talk was mainly composed; chiefly of the wives.

Mrs. R., the first, was a fine London lady,

« НазадПродовжити »