Volume I Part 8 (2/2)
The Duke and d.u.c.h.ess having attentively perused this brief inscription, fondly and affectionately embraced their lovely and much beloved child, no less pleased with the religious feeling which had called forth their warm approbation, and which they distinctly expressed, than delighted as they were with the poetic feeling (for thus their partial fondness adjudged) with which it was written; considering it as no unfavourable specimen of the expanding powers of a youthful mind. Adelaide was infinitely far more delighted by this praise of her parents, an incense so grateful to her heart, than any aspirant to fame in these our degenerate days could receive from the partial praise and prejudiced columns of any literary critick.
Time rapidly moved onward, the winter had pa.s.sed over with an uncommon mildness; but the spring, which had now succeeded, proved unusually harsh, tardy, and severe. The cold north-east wind had incessantly blown, and vegetation had consequently been chillingly repelled; while the usual flowers that form the chaplet of spring were chained in their petals, or wholly destroyed by the frost. And when the merry month of June arrived, it was indeed unusual and extraordinary to behold the blossoms of the wild rose, hawthorn, and the laburnum, all mingling their beauties and their perfumes amid the numerous hedge-rows, and presenting a diversified ma.s.s of colours and foliage, like to the bloom of a Russian spring, when, melted by a genial vernal sun, trees, plants, and flowers bud, and immediately burst forth into luxuriant and varied vegetation; the annual resurrection of nature vigorously springing forth in renovated youth from the tomb of winter!
One morning while Lady Adelaide was seated in the library reading some interesting work with that deep attention and wrapt enthusiasm with which she always dwelt upon a book of merit, she was suddenly interrupted in her studies by the approach of that important person, (as in her own estimation she considered herself;) we here speak of the redoubtable Mrs. Judith Braingwain, who, rus.h.i.+ng incontinently into the library, and quite out of breath, exclaimed, ”Oh, my Lady, who would have thought it? But however marvellous it is, see, yonder they come; see, there they are, Bishop Rocket along with his tall wife, who, by the bye, is hardy as a seagull; and, moreover, a whole flock, aye, a beautiful bevy of dainty damozels besides! See, my Lady, there--there they are; they are now just entering the porch; aye, there they come, sure enough!”
”How strange!” replied Lady Adelaide, ”we left them at Tyrconnel; what unaccountable anomaly brings the bishop and family from his palace to this retired spot?”
Here Mrs. Judith catching at the word _anomaly_, and wholly uncomprehending it, while she thought proper to confound its meaning, thus rejoined:--”Anne O'Mally! Oh yes, my dear young Lady, just as if now before my eyes, I ken that sweet and charming creature, worth a whole fleet and cargo of such like ladies as Dame Rocket. I remember, ay faith do I, she was the finest----Oh no, not the finest--that belongs to another; but as fine a girl as a body might see on a fair May-day in ould Connaught, any how! And beside, and moreover, she was right loyally discended [lineally descended] from the great bould pirate princess, Grace O'Malley, in troth, and sure enough, far and near, and abroad and at home, far better known, mavourneen, by the famous name of Grana Uile, who (it is a storical fact) visited Elizabeth,[18] the grand and conquering queen of all England, in her gallipot [galliot,] afar across the salt water seas. Oh, Lady Adelaide! Anne O'Malley was indeed a promising young lady--the finest----”
[18] Queen Elizabeth received her graciously at court, and offered to create her a Countess.--See _Notes_ v. III.
”Nay, nay, nurse,” said Lady Adelaide, ”be not so flippant in thy praise, else I shall grow positively jealous. I therefore must stop you just now, for it seems your tongue runs riot quite with your discretion; and has bounced off at a tangent in full gallop, jumping pell-mell, hop and step, from the young and lovely Anne O'Malley to grey-head old Grana Uile, (of neither of whom, by the bye, did I speak,) until in most crab-like motion you pounce upon the majestic Elizabeth; and all this in most manifest and notable contempt of time, place, and circ.u.mstance.
This really is not to be endured. Besides, I pray you to remember, that _once_, however, _there was a time_ when no one was so handsome, so good, and all so angelic and so forth, as _your own Adelaide_! And, in undisguised truth, I was in a very fair and hopeful way of being utterly spoiled, but that happily I turned a deaf and obdurate ear to all your too partial praise, as well I knew that your commendations all sprung from overweening kindness. However, just now I am happy to find that you are converted from your former heresies, and that at length you behold your poor idol in its mortal shape, imbued with all its natural and perverse imperfections; and that you are now free to confess that, in sooth, I am not, as I never was, that angel of excellence, and that paragon of beauty, which your early devotions conceived me to be. You have broken your idol, and it has fallen from the pedestal upon which you had proudly placed it, s.h.i.+vered into atoms on the earth!”
This Lady Adelaide said in a playful way, half pretendedly serious, and the other half wholly comic.
”Ah, my dear young Lady! and so you are still the idol of goodness, and the very dragon of beauty! none who ever saw you, who ever knew you, can think otherwise; this I ever thought you were; and I defy Guy of Warwig, the seven Champions of Chrysostom, and Saint Patrick himself, to boot, to deny it if they durst, but that you are the best, the brightest, and finest young lady in the 'varsal world; and I challenge ould England and ould Ireland to gainsay me!
It now becomes necessary to say a word or two of this said Bishop Rocket, who came a visitor to the Duke. Patronage--all powerful patronage--had placed the mitre upon his brow, as it too often has done upon the head of many an unmeritorious aspirant to the hierarchy. His cla.s.sic acquirements and literary attainments will best be told by the subsequent details:--Three friends who came to dine _en famille_ one day at his house in Dublin, sat down, previously to dinner, to play a snug rubber of whist, thus to pa.s.s the intermediate time. It happened to be of a Friday, during a parliament winter; the printed proceedings of the House of Lords of the preceding day were brought in, and, as is always the case, the day of the week and the date of the month surmounted the top of the page, as the head and front of these transactions. It ran thus:--”_Die jovis_,” &c. ”What?” inquired the prelate, addressing one whom his Lords.h.i.+p considered as the most cla.s.sic of the trio, ”pray, what is the meaning of _Die jovis_?”
And in order that such of our fair readers who are not conversant with the Latin tongue may not burst in ignorance with the hierarchical inquirant, we shall give, _in totidem verbis_, the answer of the learned Theban, the bishop's friend:--”Why, my good Lord,” said the facetious gentleman, smiling withal, ”'fore Jove, my Lord, the two words conjoined mean nothing more nor less than _Thursday_! upon which day your Lords.h.i.+p gave your _benedicite_ to the House of Peers!”
His Lords.h.i.+p lost the odd trick, looked all quite discomposed; nor did he recover himself again until the sumptuous and savoury dinner smoked upon the board.
Bishop Rocket had enlarged the palace at the See-house of----and had built, or caused to be built, with his usual want of tact and judgment, a grand and heavy portico, which fronted the north! Upon the final completion of this most notable and extraordinary structure the prelate seemed quite pleased; in which it was conceived that he remained solely in the singular number. However, he thought fit most condescendingly to write to a friend, then residing at Rome, a long letter, the burden of which ran to the following tenor:--”Now, dear and Reverend Sir, as you are seated, or I, who am a bishop, may say, enthroned at the fountain head of the fine arts, I have to request that you would have the goodness to purchase for me twelve statues of the heathen G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses to adornate my grand portico, which I have built at an immense expense; and it is allowed by all the curates in my diocese to have been accomplished with no inconsiderable portion of taste! And by so doing you will vastly oblige me.”
The Reverend friend thus wrote back a letter, the chief paragraph of which, in reply to Bishop Rocket, ran to this effect:--”Most dear and Right Reverend Lord, as your Lords.h.i.+p requires the statues which you specify, to adorn the portico of a Christian bishop's palace, what would your Lords.h.i.+p think--(and oh, good, my Lord, I pray you not to be offended at the voice of truth, which is seldom heard with patience either within the precincts of courts or the palaces of prelates!)--what, I pray, my Lord, would you think if I should select for you, instead of the heathen G.o.ds of antiquated Greece and Rome, _videlicet_: Jupiter, Vulcan, Mars, Venus, Apollo, Bacchus, and Co., shall I, most dear and Reverend Lord, transmit to you statues of the twelve apostles, which surely, most venerated Prelate, you will find to be, upon mature deliberation, every way far more episcopal, apostolical, more in good taste, and indeed I must add, quite orthodox. And a.s.suredly, my good Lord, I feel, and am most fully confident to say and p.r.o.nounce it, that the Reverend Head of the holy see would most freely and cheerfully acquiesce in yielding his a.s.sent and consent to permit these said apostolical statues to be removed and transported to 'the Island of Saints,' so soon as His Holiness shall be informed that these stone-sculptured saints are destined for a brother bishop!”
But know, gentle reader, that Bishop Rocket, whatever might have been the cause, never even deigned to return any answer to this remonstrative letter of his too candid friend; and here consequently the proposal fell to the ground, and never was again resumed. The portico, however, still stood, presenting its dark _facade_ to the bleak northern blast, unsurmounted by statue either mythological or apostolical.
Mrs. Rocket _had been_--we must speak here historically in the past tense--had once been a fine woman, and still a portion of that beauty, though somewhat clipped by the shears of old Father Chronos, still remained. It was this attracted the bishop when only a curate, and
”Pa.s.sing rich on forty pounds a year.”
But all powerful love, whose transcendant sway remains undisputed from the days of the Teian bard down to those of the mighty minstrel of our own time, in whose own words we are told,
”Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and saints above, For love is heaven, and heaven is love!”
This potent urchin slily sprung a shaft, which securely settled in the curate's reverend breast, but which was not long permitted by the compa.s.sionate lady hopelessly to rankle in the bosom of her accepted mate; for ere long the ”happy, happy pair” were indissolubly united in the bands of holy wedlock. Some folks however, and, by the bye, not few in number, gave it as their opinion, that the lady happening to be the niece and nearest relative to the bishop of----who was unmarried, and besides much attached to his niece, that there appeared to be more of prudent calculation for the future, than ardent love at the present, in the transaction; inasmuch, that a large portion of the uncle's fortune, if not the entire, would ultimately vest in the selected fair one; and perchance, moreover, a rich benefice to boot, which might be expected from his Lords.h.i.+p's great episcopal patronage, that in the developement of time would be bestowed upon Curate Rocket. And all these conjectures, in due and ordinary course, finally and fully occurred. Indeed, in confirmation of these conjectures, there existed an additional cause for n.o.body's doubting the truth of this popular surmise; it was no less a cogent reason than this, that the lady was by some ten years, at least, elder than the man to whom she was affianced. This was indeed an objection not to be overruled by any thesis or syllogism of the schools; there was here
”No quirk left, no quiddit,”
to defeat its truth. It was in contradiction to sense, to propriety, and meet discretion. Upon this subject thus speaks the immortal Shakespeare, the great moral bard, and poet of nature:--
”Too old, by heaven; let still the woman take An elder than herself; so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart.
For----however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost or worn, Than women's are!”
We must now attempt to present to the reader's eye a just description of the peripatetic, or walking-dress, of Mrs. Rocket, which no doubt pertained to a strange, peculiar, and extraordinary costume, which was in vogue in the times to which we advert. Upon her head she wore a small cap of Valenciennes lace, which was enveloped in a large and ponderous machine, ycleped a _calash_; which was so denominated from its structure and conformation, bearing a close similitude to the head or leather covering of the French vehicle which is called by a similar name. This structure was formed of various hoops of whalebone, arranged in equidistant, semicircular, parallels, forming _en ma.s.se_ a huge and outlandish head-gear; the outside was covered with black lutestring; and the penultimate circle of this pent-house was adornated and fringed with deep lace; the interior was lined with rose-coloured silk, which artfully threw a bloom upon the wearer's visage, whether wife or widow.
<script>