"'Twas pretty though a plague
To see him ev'ry hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls
In our heart's table, heart too capable
Of every line and trick in his sweet favor."
SHAKSPEARE.
Seeing that the Hon. Philip Martindale is married to an heiress,
and has become Earl of Trimmerstone, our readers of course ought not
to care any more about him, but to leave him to the enjoyment of his
honors. At all events, we will dismiss him at present; and by going
back a little way, bring to notice again the grand-daughter of old John
Martindale. We have stated that when Horatio Markham left England to
take possession of the office to which he had been appointed, he was
in low spirits at leaving his native land, and that he more especially
regretted the necessity under which he was placed of leaving Clara
Rivolta; and more particularly so, as he had not ascertained the state
of her feelings towards him, and was, till the very hour of departure,
scarcely aware of the state of his own heart. It is not to be supposed
that under these circumstances Clara should be totally indifferent;
nor indeed was she. It was not for her to be what is called in love,
but she had very much enjoyed Markham's company, and she thought him a
well-informed and agreeable man. And when he was gone away she thought
so much more, and she regretted his absence very much, and was very
well pleased at reading again those passages which he had read to her
in their favourite books. Signora Rivolta observed this attachment,
and as circumstances then were, rather rejoiced at it, because she
considered that it would be the means of preventing the formation of
a hasty attachment among the numerous new acquaintances to which they
were by their altered condition thus introduced. That Clara should be
without lovers, was not a supposable case. Her person and manners were
highly attractive and engaging; and when to these were added large
expectations, it is not to be wondered at that many should pay her the
homage of attention. Against these she was guarded, as Signora Rivolta
apprehended she would be, by means of the undefined and unrecognised
attachment to Markham. But there was a danger against which neither
Signora Rivolta nor her daughter were at all guarded, and of which
neither of them was suspicious. That danger was a female friend. There
was not indeed in that case the immutability of the marriage-bond, but
there was while it should last a very powerful impression.
Clara was young, susceptible, romantic, well informed by means of
books, was possessed of good judgment and discernment; she was more
familiar with standard writers than most young women, and was not
aware that there was any pedantry in talking about them; she had also
a taste for science; she had seen and observed but little of the world
of humanity, but she had observed more of the world of nature; botany
had been one of her studies, so had astronomy, and even geology; she
had also a knowledge of the Latin tongue. To say the least of it, she
was pleased with her knowledge. Whatever she had acquired had been by
means of books, and those books were not numerous; and whatever came
to her knowledge through that medium, came with all the authority
of an oracle, so that any one who contradicted what her elementary
instructions had taught her, or started any different theory from that
in which she had nursed her own mind, appeared ignorant of the matter
altogether. Coming forth into the world, she was surprised to find that
her knowledge was beyond that of many with whom she conversed, and then
she placed too high a value on that knowledge. A mind constituted and
situated as that of Clara Rivolta, was in great danger of receiving
from the vanity and conceit with which would-be knowing ones are
gifted, an impulse not favorable to its graceful and proper development.
Lady Woodstock and her daughters had been introduced to the female
part of his family by Mr. John Martindale, with the view of supplying
them with certain intimates, to prevent accidental or disagreeable
acquaintance. But it is not easy to manage such matters precisely
according to preconcerted theory and design, for these very young
ladies were the means of introducing Clara to a young lady who tried
very hard to make her as great a simpleton as herself. The young lady
to whom we refer was Miss Henderson, eldest daughter of Mr. Henderson,
the popular preacher above-named.
Mr. Henderson not knowing what means he might have to provide for
his family, very wisely gave them as good an education as was in his
power; and at the same time, in order to have that education for
them all as cheap as possible, it was his plan that the elder should
teach the younger, that she might be thus partly prepared, should
need be, to undertake with a greater stock of experience the task of
instructing others. The young lady took instruction kindly and well.
Her progress in every thing was really astonishing. Her music-master,
her drawing-master, her French-master, never had such a pupil in the
whole course of their experience. Masters say the same of all their
pupils who are not paragons of stupidity. But in this instance there
really was somewhat more truth in the commendations than is usually the
case. Mr. Henderson was of course highly delighted with his daughter's
talents. Mrs. Henderson was lavish in her praise of them, and profuse
in her exhibition of them. The young lady was puffed into a mighty
conceit of herself, and she very kindly pitied the ignorance and
incapacity of the great mass of mankind. The young lady and her father
and mother were not aware, that it was to a constitution of mind by no
means enviable or desirable, that Miss Henderson was indebted for the
great rapidity of her progress and the multitude of her acquirements.
There were two causes of that progress; one was a prodigious share
of vanity which would undergo any exertion or painful application in
order to gratify itself; and the other was a total want of all power
of imagination or principle of original and investigating thought,
so that there was nothing to interfere with an undivided and close
attention to any object of pursuit. The natural result of acquiring
knowledge on these principles and from these causes was, that the
knowledge was at last and best the mere lumber of memory, and the theme
of vain prate and idle boasting, it was not food for the mind, it was
not digested. There was scarcely a piece of music which Miss Henderson
could not play at sight; but her style of playing was such as to weary
rather than to fascinate; and to listen to the young lady's mechanical
dexterity on the piano-forte, was called undergoing one of Miss
Henderson's sonatas. There was the same hardness and absence of poetry
also in her paintings. The outline was very correct, the colouring was
accurate, the transcript complete, but there was no life in the living,
no animation in the scenery. There was a provoking likeness in the
portraits which she sometimes drew of her friends; and so proud was she
of her skill in portrait-painting, that few of her acquaintance could
keep their countenances safe from the harsh and wooden mockery of her
pencil. Deriving a rich gratification to her vanity from her various
accomplishments and miscellaneous acquirements, she fancied that her
greatest happiness was in the pursuit of knowledge and the pleasures of
science. Much did she despise the follies of the fashionable world, and
very contemptuously did she regard the ignorant and half-educated part
of the community, and that part in her judgment consisted of nearly all
the world, her own self and one or two particular friends excepted.
Into this select number Clara Rivolta was most graciously admitted.
Miss Henderson, though gifted with a most ample and comfortable
conceit of her own superior powers and acquirements, was still not
backward, but rather liberal and dexterous in administering the
delicious dose of flattery to those whom she honored with her notice
and approbation, as being superior to the ordinary mass of mortals.
Clara Rivolta received the homage paid to her mind and acquirements
as the effusions of a warm heart and generous spirit. It is possible,
however, to mistake heat of head for warmth of heart. This was a
mistake into which Miss Henderson was perpetually falling, both as it
related to herself and to others. Not only was the young lady liberal
in her praises of those whom she would condescend to flatter with the
honor of her approbation, but she absolutely praised them at her own
expense, expressing her high sense of their superiority to herself. But
it should be added, that this kind of homage always expected a return
with interest, and the language in which she praised her friends was
only put forth as a model and specimen of that kind of homage which she
should be best pleased to receive from her dear dear friends.
To the vanity of intellect Miss Henderson added the vanity of
sentiment. She had read something in books about the heart, and
about sentiment and feeling, and so on; and she thought that there
must be something fine in that concerning which so many fine words
had been used. Thereupon, with that conceit she added sentimentality
to the rest of her acquirements; and an acquirement in good truth
it really was, seeing that it was by no means natural. Not the less
fluently could the young lady discourse on that subject, because she
knew nothing about it; but, on the other hand, she set herself up as
a judge and censor-general on all her acquaintances and the world
beside on the subject of sensibility of heart. She had enjoyed many
opportunities of falling in love, and those which she had enjoyed she
had not overlooked. Many and many a time was her heart lost, but never
irrecoverably. Few were the gentlemen who thought it very prudent to
venture to pay serious court to a young lady of lofty thoughts and
lowly means. A very slight degree of notice was sufficient however to
set if not her heart in flames, at least her tongue in motion to her
confidential friends concerning sentiment and sensibility, and all that
sort of thing.
Such a companion as this was by no means fit for Clara Rivolta. But
Mr. Martindale saw not the real character of the young lady, and Miss
Henderson was wise enough to flatter the old gentleman into a conceit
that she considered him as one of the few enlightened men of the age;
and as Mr. Martindale himself was one of those oddities who think all
the world blockheads but themselves, he was not displeased with that
kind of homage which Miss Henderson paid him: and as Mr. Martindale
was one of the very few single gentlemen whom Miss Henderson had seen
and had not fallen in love with, she was not quite so disagreeable to
him as she was to many others. Mr. Martindale, therefore, tolerated
the acquaintance with Clara; and as for Signora Rivolta, it appeared
that Miss Henderson had sagacity enough to see that she was not to
be imposed on or deceived by foolish talk, and therefore she avoided
exposing herself to her.
In person Miss Henderson was by no means disagreeable, she was rather
pretty. There was it is true a little deficiency in height and a little
redundancy in breadth; but still there was nothing remarkable one way
or the other. She dressed in very good taste, and her ordinary manner
was good. It is wicked, or at least very thoughtless, in young men to
pay unmeaning attentions to any young lady, but especially to such very
sentimental ones as Miss Henderson: frequently had she been rendered
unhappy by this thoughtlessness. Now it is very silly for young men to
boast of the hearts they win; and in winning such a heart as we are now
speaking of there is certainly nothing to boast of, for any one was
sure to succeed provided there was a vacancy. At the time of which we
are writing, the fragrant Henry Augustus Tippetson was the favored and
honored companion of Miss Henderson's walks; and it is difficult to say
which was the prettiest animal of the two, Mr. Tippetson or his little
white French dog. They were at one time always to be seen together at a
certain hour of the day in the Green Park. They seemed to have a great
fellow feeling, and both looked as spruce and neat as if they had both
been dressed by the same valet. Mr. Tippetson, though something of a
coxcomb, and considered to be vain of his person, still was so far
diffident of himself as to use the assistance of his little quadruped
companion to attract attention to himself. Often has he acknowledged,
or rather boasted, that his little dog has been the means of bringing
him into conversation with those whom otherwise he should not have had
an opportunity of addressing; and oftentimes it has been supposed that
it was Henry Augustus Tippetson's private opinion, that his little
French dog was considered by the ladies as a very pretty excuse for
taking notice of the pretty owner of the same.
Now it was the natural unsophisticated opinion of Clara Rivolta
that Mr. Tippetson was an empty-headed, effeminate coxcomb, not worth
notice, and absolutely incorrigible by any other discipline but that of
time. But Miss Henderson had discovered, or fancied she had discovered,
that Mr. Tippetson was not so great a coxcomb as he appeared to be. She
acknowledged, indeed, that he was very attentive to his dress and his
person; and very candidly did she make allowance for a little error
in that respect, as he was but young, and she had heard it said that
it is better to be too attentive in youth than too negligent in age
in that respect. As for Mr. Tippetson's lisping, she was very sure
that was perfectly natural and unavoidable. The use of perfumery was
become absolutely necessary from the frequency of crowded apartments.
As to the apparent diversity between the studying and the learned
Miss Henderson, and the lounging, indolent, unreading habits of Mr.
Tippetson, the difference was rather apparent than real, according to
the young lady's own account of the matter: for though Mr. Tippetson
was not at present much in the habit of reading, he had been formerly,
and his mind was by no means unfurnished; he was a man of very great
observation, and was constantly making remarks and observations on
every thing he saw or heard. So that Miss Henderson was quite sure that
when Clara came to be better acquainted with the young gentleman, she
must think better of him. Thus it is that foolery is tolerated. Look
at a coxcomb at a little distance, and observe his silly airs. The
animal is absolutely nauseous, and his whole manner and style villanous
and contemptible. But a more intimate acquaintance makes a discovery
of some bearable qualities; and familiarity renders the odious less
odious; and then it is thought that there are more qualities existing
in him than have been discovered, because more have been discovered
than were suspected. So foppery and foolery are tolerated from habit
and intimacy.
This process of mind, from contempt to toleration, has been
experienced by more disciplined minds than Clara's. No wonder that
a young woman so unacquainted with human society should be led to
sacrifice her better judgment to the plausibilities of so well-informed
a person as Miss Henderson. Clara was far from perfection, though she
was a most excellent and amiable creature, and was possessed of a
tolerably sound judgment. She was accessible to flattery, and loved
praise. It was not in her power or will to discriminate aright on that
matter. Signora Rivolta had instructed and educated her daughter very
much by the impulse of encouragement. That mode had produced many good
effects, but it had its evils. Clara had become too susceptible of
commendation, and her appetite was too strong to suffer her taste to
be delicate. Thus there arose a kind of sentimental friendship between
the two young ladies; in which intercourse of sentiment Miss Henderson
had the advantage and the greatest power, not from superior strength of
mind, or greater accuracy of discrimination, but because it had been
her lot to enjoy a larger portion of experience or knowledge of human
society.
It might be imagined that a woman of such superior mind as Signora
Rivolta, would have given to her only child, whose education she had by
herself totally conducted, such information and such views of society
and human nature, as to render her so well acquainted with life that
she might not be a dupe of its ordinary deceptions. But this is not
possible. Solitary education can never fit the mind for society; the
social education must commence when the solitary has finished. Young
people cannot understand the language of experience. Signora Rivolta
might even have described with the utmost truth and philosophic
accuracy the character of Miss Henderson, and might have given her
child the strictest and most earnest injunctions to guard herself
against its fascinations; and Clara might have been most attentive to
the instruction, and desirous of obeying it, but when the character
presented itself in real life she would not have recognised it.