The Place was old Bath, in the days immediately succeeding those of
Alexander Pope and William Hogarth, and dovetailing into those of Horace
Walpole and the Wesleys.
The Age was one of rackets and reaction from morning till night, and
Bath was the head-quarters of the first--the scene of the pump-room, the
raffle, the public breakfast, the junketing at mid-day, the ball at
midnight, the play, the ridotto.
The Scene was a private room in the "Bear," when it was crowded with
peers, bullies, rooks, highwaymen, leaders of fashion, waiting-women,
and stage stars. The "Bear" was held by great Mrs. Price, a hostess
large, shining, portly--a friendly great woman, too magnificent to be
fussy, or mean, or spiteful. The "Bear" looked out on the Parade, with
its throngs of beaux--veritable beaux, with Beau Nash at their
head--wigged, caned, and snuff-boxed, and belles with trains borne by
black boys, cambric caps and aprons, and abundance of velvet patches. In
and out of its yawning doorway strutted fine gentlemen, chaplains, and
wits, while grooms, public and private, swarmed round the house. Its
broad stairs and low wide corridors, traversed by the more private
company, led to sitting rooms of all degrees, panelled with oak or lined
with cedar, with worked worsted wonders in the shape of chairs, and
China monsters by way of ornaments.
The Person was a handsome woman, attired negligently in what was called
a sacque, with a mob-cap. She sat sipping a dish of tea, as sober women
will after fatigue or in anticipation of exertion, and making occasional
reference to some shabby, well-worn volumes and printed sheets piled up
beside her. Her attitude was studious, for days when a chapter of the
Bible, a cookery recipe, a paper by Addison or Dick Steele, or a copy of
verses, included all the knowledge after which the gentler sex aspired;
her retirement was remarkable at that gay era, and in that gadding
neighbourhood; and her morning dress, though it would not have offended
a Tabitha Tidy, looked plain among the silvered mazarines and the
tippets of pheasants' tails.
She was a woman of about five-and-twenty; but her beauty, though still
in its prime, showed the wear and tear of years. Had it not been that
its chief power lay in the intellect and goodness which sat on the
capacious but not cloudy brow, and gleamed out of the cordial dark
blue eyes, and hovered round the somewhat wide and somewhat lined but
never sensual mouth--you would have said this was a faded queen whom
the world was mad to worship. As it was, she did look faded this
spring afternoon, and occasionally fretted audibly enough as she
turned over the leaves of her volumes, and sighed "heigho!" as she
looked at her repeater--not quite so common an appendage as the little
Geneva story-tellers, though a footpad carried always a goodly supply,
and a gentleman's gentleman of very fine prestige would wear a couple,
"one in each fob"--and sipped her tea; which, by the way, she drank,
not out of one of the diminutive China cups, but out of an old
battered, but very shining little silver tankard.
Anon my lady rose and strolled to a back window. She looked across the
noisy, crowded stable-yard into the corner of a garden, where a lilac
bush was budding into dusty dim purple and a hoary apple-tree blossomed
white and pink like a blushing child, away over the green fields to a
farmhouse upon a hill, where russet and yellow stacks proved the
farmer's command of ready money, or caution in selling. From just such
another farmhouse as that on which our bright benevolent woman--even in
the dumps--was gazing wistfully, issued Caroline Inchbald, a beauty, and
a generous, virtuous woman under great temptations, a friend and rival
on equal terms with Amelia Opie.
But hark! an arrival in the next room: fresh guests--country people of
consequence, for they were ushered in by Mrs. Price herself, who
received in person their orders for an incongruous meal, neither dinner
nor supper, to recruit them for some gala in which they had the prospect
of figuring, to judge from a torrent of exclamations which pierced
through a convenient cupboard in the partition.
"Make haste, girls," in bass tones.
"Eat away, Fiddy," in treble, mimicking the bass.
"Uncle, don't attempt the game-pie. We'll be too late, as sure as our
heads. Didn't you hear Mrs. Price say there was a power of company
wanting seats; it would be too bad if we lost the sight after all."
"What, Prissy, worse than Admiral Byng's defeat, or my spoilt medal?"
"Oh! Uncle Rowland, how can you joke! Now, Fiddy, there's a dear
creature, don't have anything to say to the cream-tart. What although
we're as hungry as hawks, if we only get a good view to talk about at
the Vicarage and Larks' Hall."
"There--Prissy, dear, then I've done. I'll just run and shake our myrtle
crapes and fresh pinch our stomachers."
"Hold! no such thing, lasses. I'm not to be left here to feed in
solitude, and without e'er a portfolio or picture. You little geese, it
is two good hours to the exhibition. Are you to be frizzing, and
painting, and lacing, and mincing, and capering for two mortal hours,
and your poor country uncle left to spoil his digestion for want of
something else to do than eat? Is that your gratitude, when here have I
come against my will to introduce you to the wicked, gay world, and
spoil your Arcadian simplicity? Don't make faces, Prissy!"
"Oh! Uncle Rowland; you are making base pretences."
"Indeed, sir, I think you are as wild to see the wonders as we are."
But the remonstrance had its effect, for the young ladies evidently sat
down again, and, by the clatter of knives and forks, one could judge
they condescended to do some justice to the good things provided for
their solace, while the conversation went on in more regular order.
The lady in the Nankin sitting-room had decidedly the advantage in this
situation, as she did not soliloquize in private, and she heard through
the cupboard and the locked door of communication the chat of her
neighbours. They spoke no treason, and they ought to be more prudent if
they told secrets: it was a real benefit to a lonely wight, a little
irritated in nerve and temper, to be a party to their lively,
affectionate, simple intercourse; and, as the truth must be told, the
lady in the Nankin sitting-room crossed her hands with a motion of
indolent interest and turned her head with an air of listless pleasure,
nodding and beating her foot lightly on the floor now and then, in
interjection and commentary. She could figure the group perfectly. Two
rosy little girls brought into the town for a day and a night's shopping
and gadding, as they would call it, under the escort of an indulgent
uncle: a bachelor probably, else madam, his wife, would have been there
to keep them in order; and not so very elderly, for the good man was of
what is styled a sprightly turn, and though his nieces submitted to his
authority, there was a decidedly modified amount of reverence in the way
in which they insisted,
"You must comb out your curls, Uncle Rowland."
"And I'll tie your cravat for you, sir, and make you quite smart. We are
not to appear abroad with a country bumpkin or a fright of a student,
are we, Prissy?"
And mutual jokes were bandied pretty freely.
"Now, Prissy, are we to see the famous Traveller?"
"No, sir, it is to be the Virtuoso, with the mock copper coins."
"Bronze, child, bronze."
"We're to have nobody in particular, only Lady Betty," chimed in the
more girlish voice. "The company, the other gentlefolks, will be quite
sufficient besides."
"And Fiddy will scream when the blunderbusses are fired. Shall we
take the precaution of putting cotton in her ears beforehand?"
derided the man.
Then the single lady fixed further, that Prissy (Mistress Priscilla,
doubtless, in company down in Somersetshire) was the cleverest and most
forward, and that Fiddy (Mistress Fidelia) was the shyest and, perhaps,
the prettiest, for she was clearly Uncle Rowland's favourite. But then,
for all her rosy cheeks, poor child! she was delicate, since there was a
constant cry from the conductor of the party, "Fiddy, you vain doll,
remember your mantle; Madam is not here to wrap you up, nor Granny."
"Oh, sir! we've lots of scarfs and shawls, all for Fiddy; and she is to
tie on her Iris hood against the draughts."
"What! one of the poppies and bluebells that Will Honeycomb admired?
She'll beat you, Prissy, out and out. I would sicken and bear her
company."
"I wonder to hear you, sir. I can tell you, Granny would not coddle me
so. Granny is always preaching of hardening weakness."
"Ah, the old mother is no milksop!"
There, was she not right? Had she not full hints of the history of the
Vicarage and madam its mistress, the mother of these two little
girls; and of the parish priest her husband, their father--the younger
brother of the tolerably educated squire yonder, with his Larks' Hall;
and of Granny, who kept house there still for her elder son, where she
had once reigned queen paramount in the hearty days of her homely
goodman. It was a scroll fairly unfolded, and perfectly legible to the
experienced woman.
"Uncle Rowland," prefaced the soft voice, more quietly, "do you really
think the gay world of the town so much more vicious than the sober
world of the country?"
"Why, no, my dear," answered the manly voice, now graver, and with a
little sadness in its ring, "ignorance is not innocence, and depravity
is vastly more general than any mode. Nevertheless, there are customs of
which I would greatly prefer Prissy and Fiddy to remain unaware, like
their mother before them."
"But Granny lived in the great world, and there is not one of us like
Granny."
"The risk is too great, child; the fire is wondrous strong, though the
pure gold be sometimes refined in the process--as your father would
preach."
"And, sir, this Mistress Lumley, or Lady Betty, as they called her
downstairs, is as virtuous as she is clever."
"You may depend upon that, Miss, or you had not come to Bath to see her
play. They term the poor soul Lady Betty because she has turned on her
heel from the worthless London sparks, and taught them to keep their
distance."
"Uncle Rowland, I don't think you heartily sympathize with charming Lady
Betty."
"Tut! child, I have not seen her. You would not have me captivated ere I
ever set eyes on my enslaver? But, to speak honestly, little Fiddy, I
own I have no great leaning to actresses and authoresses. There are
perils enough in a woman's natural course, without her challenging the
extremes of a fictitious career. More than that, Fiddy, I have not much
faith in the passion that is ranted to the public; even if it were
always a creditable passion. Those who are sorely hurt don't bawl,
child: deep streams are still."
"I will play to him," the lady of the Nankin sitting-room says to
herself, her lips parting with a slight smile, and her colour rising at
the same time. Your true woman is easily pained, and, the more fully
furnished, the more finely skilled, she is all the more susceptible to
blame as to praise, and so on that account the less qualified for public
life. There was many a strong enough argument against the stage and the
desk which Master Rowland might have used instead of his weak one.
Lady Betty, in that bubbling, frothing, steaming London--Mistress Lumley
in the provinces--was a young actress of great repute and good
character, who had compelled success, like Mrs. Siddons after her, and
reigned for several seasons, and still her fame was paramount and her
respectability unquestioned. In those very dissipated days of Queen Anne
and the early Georges, the broad prejudices which darken the stage were
light in tint and slender in force. The great world was tumultuous,
giddy, reckless, with innumerable victims falling suddenly into its
yawning chasms, like the figures from the bridge in Mirza's vision; and
the theatre was not a more exposed sphere than many another, and that
made all the difference in the world. Very few save the strictest
Methodists condemned it, when Henry Brooke wrote for it, and Dr. Johnson
stood with his hands behind his back in the green room.
Mrs. Betty Lumley, tall, comely, high-principled, warm-hearted, and
ingenuous, was come of yeomen ancestors. She did not see a play in a
barn and run away after the drama, like Caroline Inchbald; but on the
death of her father and mother, she went up with an elder sister and
young brother to London to seek for an employment and a livelihood.
Encountering some person of dramatic pursuits--manager, stage-painter,
ticket-taker, or the like, or the wife of one or other--she was
recommended to the stage. She was supported in the idea by all her
connections, for then no one questioned the perfect respectability of
the profession. She studied hard in new, though not uncongenial fields;
she ventured; she tried again and again, with the "modest but
indomitable pluck" of genius, and she at last won a position and a
prospect of independence. In all this nobody blamed her; on the
contrary, the magnates of the hour--kings, councillors, bishops--awarded
her great credit for her parts, her industry, her integrity, her honour.
Not a lady of quality in London was more respected and admired, rightly
or wrongly, than Mistress Betty. At the same time it is possible that,
having reached the goal, could she have turned back and begun her walk
anew, she would have hesitated before following this thorny path. It was
a thorny path, for all its applause and success; nay, on account of
them; even with a good woman like Mistress Betty it required all her
sincerity, her sobriety, and, according to the prevailing standard, her
religion, to deliver her from imminent danger. Moreover, with the
attainment of the object, had come the bitter drops which qualified the
cup. Her plain, fond, innocent sister was in her grave; and so within
the two last years was the young brother, for whom her interest had
procured a post of some importance in the Colonies, whence he bequeathed
to Mistress Betty, his dear distinguished sister, his little savings.
She struggled to be resigned, and was not only weary, but tempted to
grasp at material rewards. This was the turning-point of her life. She
would be virtuous to the last. Her honest, clear character revolted at
vice; but she might harden, grow greedy of power, become imperious and
arrogant. For, remember, I do not say that Mistress Betty had contracted
no contamination. No, no; she had suffered from her selfish fits, her
vain fits, her malicious fits--she had experienced her hours of boldness
and levity--she had made her own way to eminence--she had struggled with
unscrupulous rivals--she had heard much which we would have wished her
not to have heard--she had been a member of that wild, ultra-fine,
coarse, scandalous society: but as we find saints in strange company
sometimes, so the cordial, faithful, generous woman remained with only a
slight coating of affectation and worldliness, thirst for praise, desire
after excitement, habit of command.
"I'll play to this horrid country Justice," whispers Mistress Betty,
quite roused, and looking animated and brilliant already. "I hear by the
gentleness of his voice, when he speaks of the sins and sorrows of
mankind, and when he addresses his little girl, that the fellow has a
heart; but he gave me no quarter, and he shall receive none in return.
I'll conquer him. To come within sight and sound of the boards with his
muddy boots and his snarls, spoiling the enjoyment of the lasses!"
Very true, Mistress Betty, it was neither very wise nor very gallant;
but you ought to remember that the most loyal prejudices are sometimes
as loyally abandoned.