Part 3 (1/2)
Surely there must be among us artists as cunning in the use of brush and puff as any who lived at Versailles. Surely the splendid, impalpable advance of good taste, as shown in dress and in the decoration of houses, may justify my hope of the preeminence of Englishwomen in the cosmetic art. By their innate delicacy of touch they will accomplish much, and much, of course, by their swift feminine perception. Yet it were well that they should know something also of the theoretical side of the craft. Modern authorities upon the mysteries of the toilet are, it is true, rather few; but among the ancients many a writer would seem to have been fascinated by them. Archigenes, a man of science at the Court of Cleopatra, and Criton at the Court of the Emperor Trajan, both wrote treatises upon cosmetics--doubtless most scholarly treatises that would have given many a precious hint. It is a pity they are not extant.
From Lucian or from Juvenal, with his bitter picture of a Roman levee, much may be learnt; from the staid pages of Xenophon and Aristophanes'
dear farces. But best of all is that fine book of the Ars Amatoria that Ovid has set aside for the consideration of dyes, perfumes, and pomades. Written by an artist who knew the allurement of the toilet and understood its philosophy, it remains without rival as a treatise upon Artifice. It is more than a poem, it is a manual; and if there be left in England any lady who cannot read Latin in the original, she will do well to procure a discreet translation. In the Bodleian Library there is treasured the only known copy of a very poignant and delightful rendering of this one book of Ovid's masterpiece. It was made by a certain Wye Waltonstall, who lived in the days of Elizabeth, and, seeing that he dedicated it to 'the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen of Great Britain,' I am sure that the gallant writer, could he know of our great renaissance of cosmetics, would wish his little work to be placed once more within their reach. 'Inasmuch as to you, ladyes and gentlewomen,'
so he writes in his queer little dedication, 'my booke of pigments doth first addresse itself, that it may kisse your hands and afterward have the lines thereof in reading sweetened by the odour of your breath, while the dead letters formed into words by your divided lips may receive new life by your pa.s.sionate expression, and the words marryed in that Ruby coloured temple may thus happily united, multiply your contentment.' It is rather sad to think that, at this crisis in the history of pigments, the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen cannot read the libellus of Wye Waltonstall, who did so dearly love pigments.
But since the days when these great critics wrote their treatises, with what gifts innumerable has Artifice been loaded by Science! Many little part.i.tions must be added to the narthecium before it can comprehend all the new cosmetics that have been quietly devised since cla.s.sical days, and will make the modern toilet chalks away more splendid in its possibilities. A pity that no one has devoted himself to the compiling of a new list; but doubtless all the newest devices are known to the admirable unguentarians of Bond Street, who will impart them to their clients. Our thanks, too, should be given to Science for ridding us of the old danger that was latent in the use of cosmetics. Nowadays they cannot, being purged of any poisonous element, do harm to the skin that they make beautiful. There need be no more sowing the seeds of destruction in the furrows of time, no martyrs to the cause like Maria, Countess of Coventry, that fair dame but infelix, who died, so they relate, from the effect of a poisonous rouge upon her lips. No, we need have no fears now. Artifice will claim not another victim from among her wors.h.i.+ppers.
Loveliness shall sit at the toilet, watching her oval face in the oval mirror. Her smooth fingers shall flit among the paints and powder, to tip and mingle them, catch up a pencil, clasp a phial, and what not and what not, until the mask of vermeil tinct has been laid aptly, the enamel quite hardened. And, heavens, how she will charm us and ensorcel our eyes! Positively rouge will rob us for a time of all our reason; we shall go mad over masks. Was it not at Capua that they had a whole street where nothing was sold but dyes and unguents? We must have such a street, and, to fill our new Seplasia, our Arcade of the Unguents, all herbs and minerals and live creatures shall give of their substance.
The white cliffs of Albion shall be ground to powder for Loveliness, and perfumed by the ghost of many a little violet. The fluffy eider-ducks, that are swimming round the pond, shall lose their feathers, that the powder-puff may be moonlike as it pa.s.ses over Loveliness' lovely face.
Even the camels shall become ministers of delight, giving many tufts of their hair to be stained in her splendid colour-box, and across her cheek the swift hares foot shall fly as of old. The sea shall offer her the phucus, its scarlet weed. We shall spill the blood of mulberries at her bidding. And, as in another period of great ecstasy, a dancing wanton, la belle Aubrey, was crowned upon a church's lighted altar, so a.r.s.enic, that 'greentress'd G.o.ddess,' ashamed at length of skulking between the soup of the unpopular and the test-tubes of the Queen's a.n.a.lyst, shall be exalted to a place of consummate honour upon the toilet-table of Loveliness.
All these things shall come to pa.s.s. Times of jolliness and glad indulgence! For Artifice, whom we drove forth, has returned among us, and, though her eyes are red with crying, she is smiling forgiveness.
She is kind. Let us dance and be glad, and trip the c.o.c.kawhoop!
Artifice, sweetest exile, is come into her kingdom. Let us dance her a welcome!
Oxford, 1894.
Poor Romeo!
Even now Bath glories in his legend, not idly, for he was the most fantastic animal that ever stepped upon her pavement. Were ever a statue given him (and indeed he is worthy of a grotesque in marble), it would be put in Pulteney Street or the Circus. I know that the palm trees of Antigua overshadowed his cradle, that there must be even now in Boulogne many who set eyes on him in the time of his less fatuous declension, that he died in London. But Mr. Coates (for of that Romeo I write) must be claimed by none of these places. Bath saw the laughable disaster of his debut, and so, in a manner, his whole life seems to belong to her, and the story of it to be a part of her annals.
The Antiguan was already on the brink of middle-age when he first trod the English sh.o.r.e. But, for all his thirty-seven years, he had the heart of a youth, and his purse being yet as heavy as his heart was light, the English sun seemed to s.h.i.+ne gloriously about his path and gild the letters of introduction that he scattered everywhere. Also, he was a gentleman of amiable, nearly elegant mien, and something of a scholar.
His father had been the most respectable resident Antigua could show, so that little Robert, the future Romeo, had often sat at dessert with distinguished travellers through the Indies. But in the year 1807 old Mr. Coates had died. As we may read in vol. lxxviii. of The Gentleman's Magazine, 'the Almighty, whom he alone feared, was pleased to take him from this life, after having sustained an untarnished reputation for seventy-three years,' a pa.s.sage which, though objectionable in its theology, gives the true story of Romeo's antecedents and disposes of the later calumnies that declared him the son of a tailor. Realising that he was now an orphan, an orphan with not a few grey hairs, our hero had set sail in quest of amusing adventure.
For three months he took the waters of Bath, un.o.btrusively, like other well-bred visitors. His attendance was solicited for all the most fas.h.i.+onable routs, and at a.s.semblies he sat always in the shade of some t.i.tled turban. In fact, Mr. Coates was a great success. There was an air of most romantic mystery that endeared his presence to all the damsels fluttering fans in the Pump Room. It set them vying for his conduct through the mazes of the Quadrille or of the Triumph, and blus.h.i.+ng at the sound of his name. Alas! their tremulous rivalry lasted not long.
Soon they saw that Emma, sole daughter of Sir James Tylney Long, that wealthy baronet, had cast a magic net about the warm Antiguan heart. In the wake of her chair, by night and day, Mr. Coates was obsequious. When she cried that she would not drink the water without some delicacy to banish the iron taste, it was he who stood by with a box of vanilla-rusks. When he shaved his great moustachio, it was at her caprice. And his devotion to Miss Emma was the more noted for that his own considerable riches were proof that it was true and single. He himself warned her, in some verses written for him by Euphemia Boswell, against the crew of penniless admirers who surrounded her:
'Lady, ah! too bewitching lady! now beware Of artful men that fain would thee ensnare Not for thy merit, but thy fortunes sake. Give me your hand--your cash let venals take.'
Miss Emma was his first love. To understand his subsequent behaviour, let us remember that Cupid's shaft pierces most poignantly the breast of middle-age. Not that Mr. Coates was laughed at in Bath for a love-a-lack-a-daisy. On the contrary, his mien, his manner, were as yet so studiously correct, his speech so reticent, that laughter had been unusually inept. The only strange taste evinced by him was his devotion to theatricals. He would hold forth, by the hour, upon the fine conception of such parts as Macbeth, Oth.e.l.lo and, especially, Romeo.
Many ladies and gentlemen were privileged to hear him recite, in this or that drawing-room, after supper. All testified to the real fire with which he inflamed the lines of love or hatred. His voice, his gesture, his scholars.h.i.+p, were all approved. A fine symphony of praise a.s.sured Mr. Coates that no suitor worthier than he had ever courted Thespis.
The l.u.s.t for the footlights' glare grew lurid in his mothish eye. What, after all, were these poor triumphs of the parlour? It might be that contemptuous Emma, hearing the loud salvos of the gallery and boxes, would call him at length her lord.
At this time there arrived at the York House Mr. Pryse Gordon, whose memoirs we know. Mr. Coates himself was staying at number ** Gay Street, but was in the habit of breakfasting daily at the York House, where he attracted Mr. Gordon's attention by 'rehearsing pa.s.sages from Shakespeare, with a tone and gesture extremely striking both to the eye and the ear.' Mr. Gordon warmly complimented him and suggested that he should give a public exposition of his art. The cheeks of the amateur flushed with pleasure. 'I am ready and willing,' he replied, 'to play Romeo to a Bath audience, if the manager will get up the play and give me a good ”Juliet”; my costume is superb and adorned with diamonds, but I have not the advantage of knowing the manager, Dimonds.' Pleased by the stranger's ready wit, Mr. Gordon scribbled a note of introduction to Dimonds there and then. So soon as he had 'discussed a brace of m.u.f.fins and so many eggs,' the new Romeo started for the playhouse, and that very day bills were posted to the effect that 'a Gentleman of Fas.h.i.+on would make his first appearance on February 9 in a role of Shakespeare.'
All the lower boxes were immediately secured by Lady Belmore and other lights of Bath. 'Butlers and Abigails,' it is said, 'were commanded by their mistresses to take their stand in the centre of the pit and give Mr. Coates a capital, hearty clapping.' Indeed, throughout the week that elapsed before the premiere, no pains were spared in a.s.suring a great success. Miss Tylney Long showed some interest in the arrangements.
Gossip spoke of her as a likely bride.
The night came. Fas.h.i.+on, Virtue, and Intellect thronged the house.
Nothing could have been more cordial than the temper of the gallery.
All were eager to applaud the new Romeo. Presently, when the varlets of Verona had brawled, there stepped into the square--what!--a mountebank, a monstrosity. Hurrah died upon every lip. The house was thunderstruck.
Whose legs were in those scarlet pantaloons? Whose face grinned over that bolster-cravat, and under that Charles II. wig and opera-hat? From whose shoulders hung that spangled sky-blue cloak? Was this bedizened scarecrow the Amateur of Fas.h.i.+on, for sight of whom they had paid their s.h.i.+llings? At length a voice from the gallery cried, 'Good evening, Mr.
Coates,' and, as the Antiguan--for he it was--bowed low, the theatre was filled with yells of merriment. Only the people in the boxes were still silent, staring coldly at the protege who had played them so odious a prank. Lady Belmore rose and called for her chariot. Her example was followed by several ladies of rank. The rest sat spellbound, and of their number was Miss Tylney Long, at whose rigid face many gla.s.ses were, of course, directed. Meanwhile the play proceeded. Those lines that were not drowned in laughter Mr. Coates spoke in the most foolish and extravagant manner. He cut little capers at odd moments. He laid his hand on his heart and bowed, now to this, now to that part of the house, always with a grin. In the balcony-scene he produced a snuff-box, and, after taking a pinch, offered it to the bewildered Juliet. Coming down to the footlights, he laid it on the cus.h.i.+on of the stage-box and begged the inmates to refresh themselves, and to 'pa.s.s the golden trifle on.'