CHARLEY LEICESTER’S IDEAS ON MATRIMONY.
IT was the morning of Twelfth-day, and in Broadhurst’s ancient mansion
confusion reigned supreme; for Twelfth-night to be celebrated with
high festivities. A grand ball was about to be given to the county,
and legions of upholsterers’ men had taken the house by storm, and were
zealously employed in turning it out of the windows. Minerva was
great upon the occasion; starched to the nth, she rustled through the
apartments like an austere whirlwind, striking an icy terror into
the hearts of the stoutest workmen, and leading the chief upholsterer
himself the life of a convicted felon on the treadmill--solitary
confinement, implying separation from Minerva, would have been a boon
to that harassed tradesman. Whatever he put up she instantly had taken
down; all his suggestions she violently opposed; he never gave an order
that she did not contradict; when he was downstairs she required him at
the top of the house; if he appeared without his hat, she took him
out of doors. Foxe’s Martyrs would seem a mere book of sports beside a
faithful chronicle of all that upholsterer suffered on the occasion
at the hands of Minerva Livingstone. Had he not been endowed with
remarkable tenacity of life, ere he had set that house in order he would
have died.
Amongst others of the dispossessed, Charley Leicester, having retreated
from room to room before the invaders, at last, fairly driven out, was
fain to seek refuge in the garden. In this extremity he betook himself
to a certain terrace-walk, where he trusted to find sunshine and quiet.
Having, as he fondly imagined, secured these necessary ingredients to
his happiness, he was proceeding to recruit exhausted nature with a mild
cigar, when a footstep was heard approaching, and immediately afterwards
the erect and portly form of _the_ De Grandeville hove in sight and bore
down upon him. Now it must be known that these two gentlemen regarded
each other with very different feelings--Leicester, albeit by no means
given to discovering faults of character in his acquaintances, could not
but perceive the absurd self-consequence and pompous pride which were so
palpably displayed in De Grandeville’s every look and action, and while
this revolted his good taste and produced in him a passive feeling of
dislike, the style of conversation usually adopted by the redoubtable
Marmaduke, which, however it might begin, invariably ended in some form
of self-glorification, actively bored him. Accordingly, it was with
anything but a feeling of satisfaction that he now witnessed his
approach. De Grandeville, on the other hand, looked up to Leicester on
account of his connection with the peerage, and knowing his popularity
among the best set of men about town, regarded him as an oracle on all
points of _etiquette_ and _bienséance_. Being, therefore, at that moment
in the act of revolving in his anxious mind a most weighty matter on
which he required good advice, Charley was the man of all others he most
wished to meet with. Marching vigorously onward he soon reached the
spot where, half-sitting, half-lying, on the broad top of a low stone
balustrade, Leicester was ruminating over his cigar. Having halted
immediately in front of his victim, De Grandeville raised his hand to
his forehead in a military salute, which manouvre, acquired partly in
jest, partly in earnest, had now become habitual to him.
“Ar--enjoying a weed? eh! Mr. Leicester?” he began. “ ’Pon my word,
you’ve selected a most picturesque spot for your bivouac. If it’s not
against the standing orders to smoke here, I’ll join you in a cigar,
for--ar--to tell you the truth, I rather want five minutes’ conversation
with you.”
“I’m in for it,” thought Leicester. “Well, what must be, must; the sun
will be off here in about half-an-hour, and I suppose I can endure
him for that space of time.” He only said, however, holding out his
cigar-case languidly, “Can I offer you one?”
“Ar--many thanks, you’re one of the few men whose taste I can, rely on;
but--ar--really, the things they sell now, and pretend to call genuine,
are such trash, that--ar--I am forced to import my own.
I sent out an agent to Cuba express--ar--at least, Robinson, who
supplies my club--ar--the Caryatides, you know--sent him on a hint from
me, and I can’t match the cigars he brought me anywhere; I’ve never met
with anything like them. Ask your brother; he knows them--ar--I let him
have half a box as the greatest favour.”
“Bell lives on cigars and gin-and-water when he’s in his native state,”
returned Leicester, slightly altering his position so that he could rest
his back more conveniently against a statue. “If he’s been going too
fast, and gets out of condition, he takes a course of that sort of
thing, and it always brings him right again; it’s like turning a screwy
horse out to grass.”
De Grandeville, who had appeared somewhat abstracted during this
interesting record of the domestic habits of Lord Bellefield,
changed the conversation by observing, “Ar--you see, when a man of a
certain--ar--position in society gets--ar--towards middle life--ar--say,
three or four-and-thirty, it appears to me that it adds very much to his
weight to--ar--to----”
“To drink brown stout instead of pale ale,” exclaimed Leicester more
eagerly than his wont. “I observed you did so at----, when we were
treating the incorruptible electors, and it struck me as a decided
mistake.”
“Ar--yes, I believe--that is, of course--you are right; but that was not
exactly what I was going to observe,” returned De Grandeville, slightly
embarrassed. “In fact, I was going to say that it adds to a man’s weight
in society, increases his influence, and improves his general position
to be--ar--well married!”
“About that I scarcely know; it’s not a matter to decide on hastily,”
returned Leicester, coolly lighting a fresh cigar, which, being of
an obstinate disposition, required much scientific management and
considerable hard puffing to induce it to perform properly. “In
regard to (puff) marriage, Mr. De Grandeville, looking at it
philosophically--and I can assure you it’s a subject on which I’ve
expended much (puff, puff) serious thought,--looking at it in a
reasonable businesslike point of view, it becomes a mere (puff) affair
of debtor and creditor,--a question of what you lose and what you gain.
Let us try the matter by various tests and see how the account stands.
We’ll begin with the watchwords of the day, for instance: ‘Liberty,
Fraternity, and Equality.’ Liberty,--a single man can do as he likes
without consulting anybody; a married man can do as he likes only when
his wife shares the inclination, which, as no two people ever look at
anything in exactly the same point of view, appears a somewhat stringent
restriction. Fraternity,--a single man may choose his friends where he
feels inclined, male or female, as it may have pleased Providence to
create them; a married man dare not, unless he has a taste for domestic
misery, and possesses eyes which are nail-proof, cultivate a female
friendship, and somehow one feels if one were married one should not
exactly wish to have a set of men always dangling about one’s house.
Equality,--a single man, if he has received a gentleman’s education,
wears a good coat, and has wit enough to keep himself warm, is anybody’s
equal; a married man must bear all his wife’s burdens as well as his
own, and doesn’t get asked by the Browns because the Smiths have told
them her great-grandfather was transported for stealing a pewter pot.
Now, let us look at the per contra side. A single man soon gets tired of
his unlimited Liberty; there’s no fun in having your own way if you’ve
no one to contradict you. A little opposition becomes a positive luxury,
and this you’re sure to obtain _by_ matrimony. Then, as to Fraternity,
friends are better than acquaintances, certainly, just as a mule is
preferable to a jackass, but they’re not much comfort to one after all.
My most intimate friend lives in Ceylon and writes to me once in five
years about hunting elephants. Now, your wife is part of your goods and
chattels, belongs to you as completely as your bootjack, and when in
hours of indolence you wish to sit with your soul in slippers, she, if
she is worth her salt, is ready to pull off the psychological boots that
are pinching your mind, and prevent the _dolce far niente_ from becoming
meaningless and insipid. Lastly, there’s no such Equality in the world
as between husband and wife when they are really suited to each other,
appreciate their relative positions justly, and endeavour to make
practice and principle coincide. These are my ideas regarding the
marriage state, Mr. De Grandeville; but ’tis no use discussing
the matter. Society has long since decided the question in favour of
wedlock, and there are only enough exceptions to prove the rule. Byron
enunciated a great truth when he declared:
“‘Man was not formed to live alone;’
the animal’s gregarious, sir, and the solitary system is totally opposed
to all its tastes and habits.”
So saying, Charley emitted a long puff of smoke, and caressing his
whiskers, calmly awaited his companion’s reply; but this demands a fresh
chapter.