"Not unprosperous is your Erasmus in England," wrote that man of wiles
to one Faustus, a poet; and then--"To touch upon one among many
delights, there are girls in this land divinely fair--soft, easy, and
more wooing than any of your Muses. Moreover, they have a custom which
cannot be too much honoured. Wheresoever you go a-visiting, the girls
all kiss you. With kisses you come in, with kisses depart; returning,
they kiss you again. Cometh one to you, the kisses fly between; doth she
go away, with kisses you are torn asunder; meeting in any place, kisses
abound. Go where you will, it is all kisses. Indeed, my Faustus, had you
but once tasted of lips so fragrant and so soft, not for a time only,
but to your end of days, you would choose to be a pilgrim in this
England." By no means the only stranger to be charmed by our welcoming
girls was Erasmus. Amilcare Passavente, of a darker blood, found such
kisses sweet: those of one at least he vowed to call his own. What he
made of them, what they of him, what other diverting matter appertains
to the kisser and the kissed, you shall understand who care to read.
Mary was her name in our Lord, Lovel that of her father in the flesh, a
respectable wharfinger of Bankside. Molly, Mawkin, Moll Lovel, "Long
Moll Lovel," and other things similar she was to her kinsfolk and
acquaintance, who had seen her handsome body outstrip her simple mind.
Good girl that she was, she carried her looks as easily as a packet of
groceries about the muddy ways of Wapping, went to church, went to
market, gossiped out the dusk at the garden gate, or on the old wharf,
after the 'prentices had gone, linked herself waist to waist with maiden
friends. Up river or down, she trafficked in a wherry, and took the
waterman's tender glances as part receipt for his hire. In a word, this
winsome, rosy creature, grown hardy in a kind soil, adventured herself
at ease among them that might have been her poets, adorers, or raveners,
nor thought to be cheapened by the liberty she employed. She was rather
shy with strangers, conscious of her height, awkward under observation,
blushing to know she blushed; but simple as the day, pleased with
flattery, pleased with other trifles,--trinkets, snatched kisses, notes
slipped into the prayer-book, etc. She told her mother everything before
she went to bed, sat on her father's knee when she was too old and much
too tall for it, dreamed of lovers, hid trembling when they came, had
palpitations, never told a fib or refused a sweetmeat; she was, in fact,
just the honest, red-cheeked, pretty, shy simpleton of a lass you will
meet by the round dozen in our country, who grows into the plump wife of
Master Church-warden-in-broadcloth, bears a half-score children, gets
flushed after midday dinner, and would sooner miss church than the
postman any day in the year. Such was Molly Lovel at nineteen, honestly
handsome and honestly a fool, whom in Bankside they knew as Long-legged
Moll.
To Amilcare Passavente, the young merchant-adventurer from Leghorn,
ravished as he was by the spell of her cool lips, she became at once "La
divina Maria," or shorter, "La Diva"; and in a very light space of time,
when his acquaintance with her and hers with his tongue had ripened, she
had quite a nosegay of names: Madonna Collebianca (my Lady Whitethroat),
Donna Fiordispina, La Bella Rosseggiante, were three among three dozen
flowers of speech, picked from a highly scented garden of such for her
adorning. Amilcare translated them in his hoarse, eager voice, helped on
by his hands (which were rapid) and his beseeching eyes (which had the
flattery of deference), not only to Molly apart, but to all or any of
her acquaintance who could listen without giggling. Molly pressed her
bosom; her friends, as they loitered home, said in each other's ears,
"Blessed Lord, what will become of Gregory Drax?" Gregory Drax was the
broad-girthed young master of a trading-smack which coasted between
London and Berwick, and was even at that hour in Kirkley Roads, standing
off Yarmouth.
All a summer this endured, but went no further while Amilcare, new to
the blunt ways of the English, was unable to stomach their cropped
speech any better than their sour beer. Those who heard his florid
paraphrase took it gravely, yet held by their "Moll Lovel." They wished
that Gregory Drax might have a fair wind home; they wondered what Master
Lovel was about; trusted that the black-eyed rascal (whose speech was
too glib, surely, to be honest) would not make a fool of the girl. He
very soon showed them that, whatever else he did, he intended to make a
woman of her. Let them hold, said he (for once expressing his contempt),
to their "Molly Lovel"--the name was the Shadow. He would hold, as at
that moment he was very devoutly holding, Molly herself--aha! the
blessed Substance. And when the young Molly let herself go whither her
soft desires had long since fled; when she felt the heart of Amilcare
jumping against hers, his cheek, his lips, his soft syllabling, her own
breathless replies--then at last Amilcare, quite enraptured, finding
everything about her wonder and delight, made shift to catch up some
waft of her very tongue, closer savour of her very home, and called her
on high his adorable, his unending, his altogether soul-devastating,
destroying mistress, "Madonna Mollavella." Good Master Lovel the
wharfinger neither knew his daughter nor his father's name in this
long-drawn compound of liquids; he was troubled, very doubtful, anxious
for Gregory Drax; but all Lombardy and the Emilian March came to know it
in time. Amilcare rode down opposition. Eloquence! Were ever such cries
to great Heaven, such invitations to Olympus, slappings of the
forehead, punchings of ribs, in Wapping before? Molly in tears on her
mother's breast, Amilcare on his knees, the neighbours at the door:
Master Lovel, good man, abominated such scenes. Father Pounce married
them at St. Saviour's in Southwark; money abounded, the dowry passed
from hand to hand. On a gusty November morning there sailed out of the
London river the barque _Santa Fina_ of Leghorn, having on board
Amilcare Passavente and Donna Maria his wife, bound (as all believed)
for that port, and thence by long roads to their country of
adoption--not Pisa, nor Lucca, nor any place Tuscan; but Nona in the
March of Emilia. No; Erasmus was not the only traveller whirled about by
English kisses, nor Molly Lovel the only simple witch in turn bewitched.