Part 2 (1/2)
She stared, and said she had never heard of the person I mentioned, but that she had read Tears of Sensibility, and Rosa Matilda, and Sympathy of Souls, and Too Civil by Half, and the Sorrows of Werter, and the Stranger, and the Orphans of Snowdon.
”Yes, sir,” joined in the younger sister, who did not rise to so high a pitch of literature, ”and we have read Perfidy Punished, and Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, and the Fortunate Footman, and the Ill.u.s.trious Chambermaid.” I blushed and stared in my turn; and here the conversation, through the difficulty of our being intelligible to each other, dropped; and I am persuaded that I sunk much lower in their esteem for not being acquainted with their favorite authors, than they did in mine for having never heard of Virgil.
I arose from the table with a full conviction that it is very possible for a woman to be totally ignorant of the ordinary but indispensable, duties of common life without knowing one word of Latin; and that her being a bad companion is no infallible proof of her being a good economist.
I am afraid the poor father saw something of my disappointment in my countenance, for when we were alone in the evening, he observed, that a heavy addition to his other causes of regret for the loss of his wife, was her excellent management of his family. I found afterward that, though she had brought him a great fortune, she had had a very low education. Her father, a coa.r.s.e country esquire, to whom the pleasures of the table were the only pleasures for which he had any relish, had no other ambition for his daughter but that she should be the most famous housewife in the country. He gloried in her culinary perfections, which he understood; of the deficiencies of her mind he had not the least perception. Money and good eating, he owned, were the only things in life which had a real intrinsic value; the value of all other things, he declared, existed in the imagination only.
The poor lady, when she became a mother, and was brought out into the world, felt keenly the deficiencies of her own education. The dread of Scylla, as is usual, wrecked her on Charybdis. Her first resolution, as soon as she had daughters, was, that they should _learn every thing_.
All the masters who teach things of little intrinsic use were extravagantly paid for supernumerary attendance; and as no one in the family was capable of judging of their improvements, their progress was but slow. Though they were taught much, they learned but little, even of these unnecessary things; and of things necessary they learned nothing.
Their well-intentioned mother was not aware that her daughters'
education was almost as much calculated to gratify the senses, though in a different way, and with more apparent refinement, as her own had been; and that _mind_ is left nearly as much out of the question in making an ordinary artist as in making a good cook.
CHAPTER IV.
From my fondness for conversation, my imagination had been early fired with Dr. Johnson's remark, that there is no pleasure on earth comparable to the _fine full flow of London talk_. I, who, since I had quitted college had seldom had my mind refreshed, but with the petty rills and penurious streams of knowledge which country society afforded, now expected to meet it in a strong and rapid current, fertilizing wherever it flowed, producing in abundance the rich fruits of argument, and the gay flowers of rhetoric. I looked for an uninterrupted course of profit and delight. I flattered myself that every dinner would add to my stock of images; that every debate would clear up some difficulty, every discussion elucidate some truth; that every allusion would be purely cla.s.sical, every sentence abound with instruction, and every period be pointed with wit.
On the tiptoe of expectation I went to dine with Sir John Belfield, in Cavendish-square. I looked at my watch fifty times. I thought it would never be six o'clock. I did not care to show my country breeding, by going too early, to incommode my friend, nor my town breeding, by going too late, and spoiling his dinner. Sir John is a valuable, elegant-minded man, and, next to Mr. Stanley, stood highest in my father's esteem for his mental accomplishments and correct morals. As I knew he was remarkable for a.s.sembling at his table men of sense, taste, and learning, my expectations of pleasure were very high. ”Here, at least,” said I as I heard the name of one clever man announced after another, ”here at least, I can not fail to find
The feast of reason and the flow of soul:
here, at least, all the energies of my mind will be brought into exercise. From this society I shall carry away doc.u.ments for the improvement of my taste; I shall treasure up hints to enrich my understanding, and collect aphorisms for the conduct of life.”
At first there was no fair opportunity to introduce any conversation beyond the topics of the day, and to those, it must be confessed, this eventful period gives a new and powerful interest. I should have been much pleased to have had my country politics rectified, and any prejudices, which I might have contracted, removed or softened, could the discussion have been carried on without the frequent interruption of the youngest man in the company. This gentleman broke in on every remark, by descanting successively on the merits of the various dishes; and, if it be true that experience only can determine the judgment, he gave proof of that best right to peremptory decision by not trusting to delusive theory, but by actually eating of every dish at table.
His animadversions were uttered with the gravity of a German philosopher, and the science of a French cook. If any of his opinions happened to be controverted, he quoted in confirmation of his own judgment, _l'Almanac des Gourmands_, which he a.s.sured us was the most valuable work that had appeared in France since the Revolution. The author of this book he seemed to consider of as high authority in the science of eating, as c.o.ke or Hale in that of jurisprudence, or Quintilian in the art of criticism. To the credit of the company, however, be it spoken, he had the whole of this topic to himself. The rest of the party were, in general, of quite a different calibre, and as little acquainted with his favorite author, as he probably was with theirs.
The lady of the house was perfectly amiable and well-bred. Her dinner was excellent; and every thing about her had an air of elegance and splendor; of course she completely escaped the disgrace of being thought a scholar, but not the suspicion of having a very good taste. I longed for the removal of the cloth, and was eagerly antic.i.p.ating the pleasure and improvement which awaited me.
As soon as the servants were beginning to withdraw, we got into a sort of att.i.tude of conversation; all except the eulogist of l'Almanac des Gourmands, who, wrapping himself up in the comfortable consciousness of his own superior judgment, and a little piqued that he had found neither support nor opposition (the next best thing to a professed talker), he seemed to have a perfect indifference to all topics except that on which he had shown so much eloquence with so little effect.
The last tray was now carried out, the last lingering servant had retired. I was beginning to listen with all my powers of attention to an ingenious gentleman who was about to give an interesting account of Egypt, where he had spent a year, and from whence he was lately returned. He was just got to the catacombs,
When on a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
the mahogany folding doors, and in at once, struggling who should be first, rushed half a dozen children, lovely, fresh, gay, and noisy. This sudden and violent irruption of the pretty barbarians necessarily caused a total interruption of conversation. The sprightly creatures ran round the table to choose where they would sit. At length this great difficulty of courts and cabinets, _the choice of places_, was settled.
The little things were jostled in between the ladies, who all contended who should get possession of the _little beauties_. One was in raptures with the rosy cheeks of a sweet girl she held in her lap. A second exclaimed aloud at the beautiful lace with which the frock of another was trimmed, and which she was sure mamma had given her for being good.
A profitable, and doubtless a lasting and inseparable a.s.sociation was thus formed in the child's mind between lace and goodness. A third cried out, ”Look at the pretty angel!--do but observe--her bracelets are as blue as her eyes. Did you ever see such a match?” ”Surely, Lady Belfield,” cried a fourth, ”you carried the eyes to the shop, or there must have been a shade of difference.” I myself, who am pa.s.sionately fond of children, eyed the sweet little rebels with complacency, notwithstanding the unseasonableness of their interruption.
At last, when they were all disposed of, I resumed my inquiries about the resting-place of the mummies. But the grand dispute who should have oranges and who should have almonds and raisins, soon raised such a clamor that it was impossible to hear my Egyptian friend. This great contest was, however, at length settled, and I was returning to the antiquities of Memphis, when the important point, who should have red wine, and who should have white, who should have half a gla.s.s, and who a whole one, set us again in an uproar. Sir John was visibly uneasy, and commanded silence. During this interval of peace, I gave up the catacombs and took refuge in the pyramids. But I had no sooner proposed my question about the serpent said to be found in one of them, than the son and heir, a fine little fellow just six years old, reaching out his arm to dart an apple across the table at his sister, roguishly intending to overset her gla.s.s, unluckily overthrew his own, brimful of port wine.
The whole contents were discharged on the elegant drapery of a white-robed nymph.
All was now agitation, and distress, and disturbance, and confusion; the gentlemen ringing for napkins, the ladies a.s.sisting the dripping fair one; each vying with the other who should recommend the most approved specific for getting out the stain of red wine, and comforting the sufferer by stories of similar misfortunes. The poor little culprit was dismissed, and all difficulties and disasters seemed at last surmounted.
But you can not heat up again an interest which has been so often cooled. The thread of conversation had been so frequently broken that I despaired of seeing it tied together again. I sorrowfully gave up catacombs, pyramids, and serpent, and was obliged to content myself with a little desultory chat with my next neighbor; sorry and disappointed to glean only a few scattered ears where I had expected so abundant a harvest; and the day from which I had promised myself so much benefit and delight pa.s.sed away with a very slender acquisition of either.
CHAPTER V.
I went almost immediately after, at the invitation of Mr. Ranby, to pa.s.s a few days at his villa at Hampstead. Mr. and Mrs. Ranby were esteemed pious persons, but having risen to great affluence by a sudden turn of fortune in a commercial engagement, they had a little self-sufficiency, and not a little disposition to ascribe an undue importance to wealth.