While we were thus pleasantly engaged, the servant announced Mrs.
Fentham; and a fashionable looking woman, about the middle of life,
rather youthfully dressed, and not far from handsome, made her
appearance. Instead of breaking forth into the usual modish jargon, she
politely entered into the subject in which she found us engaged; envied
Lady Belfield the happiness of elegant quiet, which she herself might
have been equally enjoying at her own house, and professed herself a
warm admirer of poetry. She would probably have professed an equal
fondness for metaphysics, geometry, military tactics, or the Arabic
language, if she had happened to have found us employed in the study of
either.
From poetry the transition to painting was easy and natural. Mrs.
Fentham possessed all the phraseology of connoisseurship, and asked me
if I was fond of pictures. I professed the delight I took in them in
strong, that is in true terms. She politely said that Mr. Fentham had a
very tolerable collection of the best masters, and particularly a
Titian, which she would be happy to have the honor of showing me next
morning. I bowed my thankful assent; she appointed the hour, and soon
after, looking at her watch, said she was afraid she must leave the
delights of such a select and interesting society for a far less
agreeable party.
When she was gone, I expressed my obligations to her politeness, and
anticipated the pleasure I should have in seeing her pictures. "She is
much more anxious that you should see her _Originals_," said Lady
Belfield smiling; "the kindness is not _quite_ disinterested; take care
of your heart." Sir John, rather gravely, said, "It is with reluctance
that I ever say any thing to the prejudice of any body that I receive in
my house; but as the son of my valued friend, I think it fair to tell
you that this vigilant matron keeps a keen look out after all young men
of fortune. This is not the first time that the Titian has been made the
bait to catch a promising acquaintance. Indeed it is now grown so stale,
that had you not been a new man, she would hardly have risked it. If you
had happened not to like painting, some book would have been offered
you. The return of a book naturally brings on a visit. But all these
devices have not yet answered. The damsels still remain, like
Shakspeare's plaintive maid, 'in single blessedness.' They do not,
however, like her, spend gloomy nights
Chaunting cold hymns to the pale, lifeless moon,
but in singing sprightlier roundelays to livelier auditors."
I punctually attended the invitation, effectually shielded from danger
by the friendly intimation, and a still more infallible AEgis, the charge
of my father never to embark in any engagement till I had made my visit
to Mr. Stanley. My veneration for his memory operated as a complete
defence.
I saw and admired the pictures. The pictures brought on an invitation to
dinner. I found Mrs. Fentham to be in her conversation, a sensible,
correct, knowing woman. Her daughters were elegant in their figures,
well instructed in the usual accomplishments, well-bred, and apparently
well tempered. Mr. Fentham was a man of business, and of the world. He
had a great income from a place under government, out of which the
expenses of his family permitted him to save nothing. Private fortune he
had little or none. His employment engaged him almost entirely, so that
he interfered but little with domestic affairs. A general air of
elegance, almost amounting to magnificence, pervaded the whole
establishment.
I at first saw but little to excite any suspicion of the artificial
character of the lady of the house. The first gleam of light which let
in the truth was the expressions most frequent in Mrs. Fentham's
mouth--"What will the world say?" "What will people think?" "How will
such a thing appear?" "Will it have a good look?" "The world is of
opinion." "Won't such a thing be censured?" On a little acquaintance I
discovered that human applause was the motive of all she said, and
reputation her great object in all she did. Opinion was the idol to
which she sacrificed. Decorum was the inspirer of her duties, and praise
the reward of them. The standard of the world was the standard by which
she weighed actions. She had no higher principle of conduct. She adopted
the forms of religion, because she saw that, carried to a certain
degree, they rather produced credit than censure. While her husband
adjusted his accounts on the Sunday morning, she regularly carried her
daughters to church, except a head-ache had been caught at the
Saturday's opera; and as regularly exhibited herself and them afterward
in Hyde-Park. As she said it was Mr. Fentham's leisure day, she
complimented him with always having a great dinner on Sundays, but
alleged her piety as a reason for not having cards in the evening at
home, though she had no scruple to make one at a private party at a
friend's house; soberly conditioning, however, that there should not be
more than _three tables_; the right or wrong, the decorum or
impropriety, the gayety or gravity always being made specifically to
depend on the number of tables.
She was, in general, extremely severe against women who had lost their
reputation; though she had no hesitation in visiting a few of the most
dishonorable, if they were of high rank or belonged to a certain set.
In that case, she excused herself by saying, "That as fashionable people
continued to countenance them, it was not for her to be scrupulous; one
must sail with the stream; I can't set my face against the world." But
if an unhappy girl had been drawn aside, or one who had not rank to bear
her out had erred, that altered the case, and she then expressed the
most virtuous indignation. When modesty happened to be in repute, not
the necks of Queen Elizabeth and her courtly virgins were more
entrenched in ruffs and shrouded in tuckers, than those of Mrs. Fentham
and her daughters; but when _display_ became the order of the day, the
Grecian Venus was scarcely more unconscious of a vail.
With a very good understanding she never allowed herself one original
thought, or one spontaneous action. Her ideas, her language, and her
conduct were entirely regulated by the ideas, language, and conduct of
those who stood well in the world. Vanity in her was a steady, inward,
but powerfully pervading principle. It did not evaporate in levity or
indiscretion, but was the hidden, though forcible spring of her whole
course of action. She had all the gratification which vanity affords in
secret, and all the credit which its prudent operation procures in
public. She was apparently guilty of no excess of any kind. She had a
sober scale of creditable vices, and never allowed herself to exceed a
few stated degrees in any of them. She reprobated gaming, but could not
exist without cards. Masquerades she censured as highly extravagant and
dangerous, but when given by ladies of high quality, at their own
houses, she thought them an elegant and proper amusement. Though she
sometimes went to the play, she did not care for what passed on the
stage, for she confessed the chief pleasure the theatre afforded was to
reckon up when she came home, how many duchesses and countesses had
bowed to her across the house.
A complete despot at home, her arbitrariness is so vailed by correctness
of manner, and studied good breeding, that she obtains the credit of
great mildness and moderation. She is said not to love her daughters,
who come too near her in age, and go too much beyond her in beauty to be
forgiven; yet like a consummate politician, she is ever laboring for
their advancement. She has generally several schemes in hand, and always
one scheme under another, the under-plot ready to be brought forward if
the principal one fails. Though she encourages pretenders, yet she is
afraid to accept of a tolerable proposal, lest a better should present
itself; but if the loftier hope fails, she then contrives to lure back
the inferior offer. She can balance to a nicety, in the calculation of
chances, the advantages or disadvantages of a higher possibility against
a lower probability.
Though she neither wants reading nor taste, her mind is never
sufficiently disengaged to make her an agreeable companion. Her head is
always at work conjecturing the event of every fresh ball and every new
acquaintance. She can not even
Take her tea without a stratagem.
She set out in life with a very slender acquaintance, and clung for a
while to one or two damaged peeresses, who were not received by women of
their own rank. But I am told it was curious to see with what adroitness
she could extricate herself from a disreputable acquaintance, when a
more honorable one stepped in to fill the niche. She made her way
rapidly, by insinuating to one person of note how intimate she was with
another, and to both what handsome things each said of the other. By
constant attentions, petty offices, and measured flattery, she has got
footing into almost every house of distinction. Her decorum is
invariable. She boasts that she was never guilty of the indecency of
violent passion. Poor woman! she fancies there is no violent passion but
that of anger. Little does she think that ambition, vanity, the hunger
of applause, a rage for being universally known, are all violent
passion, however modified by discretion or varnished by art. She suffers
too all that "vexation of spirit" which treads on the heels of "vanity."
Disappointment and jealousy poison the days devoted to pleasure. The
party does not answer. The wrong people never stay away, and the right
ones never come. The guest for whom the fete is made is sure to fail.
Her party is thin, while that of her competitor overflows; or there is a
plenty of dowagers and a paucity of young men. When the costly and
elaborate supper is on the table excuses arrive; even if the supper is
crowded, the daughters remain upon hands. How strikingly does she
exemplify the strong expression of--"laboring in the fire for very
vanity"--"of giving her money for that which is not bread, and her labor
for that which satisfieth not!"
After spending the day at Mrs. Fentham's, I went to sup with my friends
in Cavendish-square. Lady Belfield was impatient for my history of the
dinner. But Sir John said, laughing, "You shall not say a word,
Charles--I can tell how it was as exactly as if I had been there.
Charlotte, who has the best voice, was brought out to sing, but was
placed a little behind, as her person is not quite perfect; Maria, who
is the most picturesque figure, was put _to attitudinize_ at the harp,
arrayed in the costume, and assuming the fascinating graces of Marmion's
Lady Heron:
Fair was her rounded arm, as o'er
The strings her fingers flow.
"Then, Charles, was the moment of peril! then, according to your favorite
Milton's most incongruous image,
You took in sounds that might create a soul
Under the ribs of death.
"For fear, however, that your heart of adamant should hold out against
all these perilous assaults, its vulnerability was tried in other
quarters. The Titian would naturally lead to Livinia's drawings. A
beautiful sketch of the lakes would be produced, with a gentle
intimation, what a sweet place Westmoreland must be to live in! When you
had exhausted all proper raptures on the art and on the artist, it would
be recollected, that as Westmoreland was so near Scotland, you would
naturally be fond of a reel. The reel of course succeeded." Then,
putting himself into an attitude and speaking theatrically, he
continued,
"Then universal Pan
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance--
"Oh! no, I forgot universal Pan could not join, but he could admire. Then
all the perfections of all the nymphs burst on you in full blaze. Such a
concentration of attractions you never could resist! You are _but_ a
man, and now, doubtless, a lost man." Here he stopped to finish his
laugh, and I was driven reluctantly to acknowledge that his picture,
though a caricature, was, notwithstanding, a resemblance.
"And so," said Sir John, "you were brought under no power of incantation
by this dangerous visit. You will not be driven, like the tempted
Ithacan, to tie yourself to a mast, or to flee for safety from the
enchantment of these Sirens."
While we were at supper, with more gravity, he said, "Among the various
objects of ambition, there are few in life which bring less accession
to its comfort, than an unceasing struggle to rise to an elevation in
society very much above the level of our own condition, without being
aided by any stronger ascending power than mere vanity. Great talents,
of whatever kind, have a natural tendency to rise, and to lift their
possessor. The flame in mounting does but obey its impulse. But when
there is no energy more powerful than the passion to be great, destitute
of the gifts which confer greatness, the painful efforts of ambition are
like water, forced above its level by mechanical powers. It requires
constant exertions of art, to keep up what art first set a-going. Poor
Mrs. Fentham's head is perpetually at work to maintain the elevation she
has reached. And how little after all is she considered by those on
whose caresses her happiness depends! She has lost the esteem of her
original circle, where she might have been respected, without gaining
that of her high associates, who, though they receive her, still refuse
her claims of equality. She is not considered as of their
_establishment_; it is but _toleration_ at best.
"At Mrs. Fentham's, I encountered Lady Bab Lawless, a renowned modish
dowager, famous for laying siege to the heart of every distinguished
man, with the united artillery of her own wit and her daughters' beauty.
How many ways there are of being wrong! She was of a character
diametrically opposite to that of Mrs. Fentham. She had the same end in
view, but the means she used to accomplish it were of a bolder strain.
Lady Bab affected no delicacy, she laughed at reserve; she had shaken
hands with decorum.
She held the _noisy_ tenor of her way
with no assumed refinement; and, so far from shielding her designs
behind the mask of decency, she disdained the obsolete expedient. Her
plans succeeded the more infallibly, because her frankness defeated all
suspicion. A man could never divine that such gay and open assaults
could have their foundation in design, and he gave her full credit for
artless simplicity, at the moment she was catching him in her toils. If
she now and then had gone too far, and by a momentary oversight, or
excessive levity had betrayed too much, with infinite address she would
make a crane-neck turn, and fall to discussing, not without ability,
some moral or theological topic. Thus she affected to establish the
character of a woman, thoughtless through wit, indiscreet through
simplicity, but religious on principle.
As there is no part of the appendage to a wife, which I have ever more
dreaded than a Machiavelian mother, I should have been deaf to wit and
blind to beauty, and dead to advances, had their united batteries been
directed against me. But I had not the ambition to aspire to that honor.
I was much too low a mark for her lofty aim. She had a natural antipathy
to every name that could not be found in the red book. She equally
shrunk from untitled opulence and indigent nobility. She knew by
instinct if a younger son was in the room, and by a petrifying look
checked his most distant approaches; while with her powerful spells she
never failed to draw within her magic circle the splendid heir, and
charm him to her purpose.
Highly born herself, she had early been married to a rich man of
inferior rank, for the sake of a large settlement. Her plan was, that
her daughters (who, by the way, are modest and estimable), should find
in the man they married, still higher birth than her own, and more
riches than her husband's.
It was a curious speculation to compare these two friends, and to
observe how much less the refined maneuvers of Mrs. Fentham answered,
than the open assaults of the intrepid Lady Bab. All the intricacies
and labyrinths which the former has been so skillful and so patient in
weaving, have not yet enthralled one captive, while the composed
effrontery, the affecting to take for granted the offer which was never
meant to be made, and treating that as concluded, which was never so
much as intended, drew the unconscious victim of the other into the
trap, before he knew it was set: the depth of her plot consisting in not
appearing to have any. It was a novelty in intrigue. An originality
which defied all competition, and in which no imitator had any chance of
success.