companion; she has lived with Lady Pash since the peace. Nor does my
Lady take any more notice of her than of the dust of the earth. She
calls her “poor Muchit,” and considers her a half-witted creature. Mrs.
Berry hates her cordially, and thinks she is a designing toad-eater,
who has formed a conspiracy to rob her of her aunt's fortune. She never
spoke a word to poor Muchit during the whole of dinner, or offered to
help her to anything on the table.
In respect to Dobus, he is an old Peninsular man, as you are made to
know before you have been very long in his company; and, like most army
surgeons, is a great deal more military in his looks and conversation,
than the combatant part of the forces. He has adopted the
sham-Duke-of-Wellington air, which is by no means uncommon in veterans;
and, though one of the easiest and softest fellows in existence, speaks
slowly and briefly, and raps out an oath or two occasionally, as it is
said a certain great captain does. Besides the above, we sat down to
table with Captain Goff, late of the ---- Highlanders; the Reverend
Lemuel Whey, who preaches at St. Germains; little Cutler, and the
Frenchman, who always WILL be at English parties on the Continent, and
who, after making some frightful efforts to speak English, subsides and
is heard no more. Young married ladies and heads of families generally
have him for the purpose of waltzing, and in return he informs his
friends of the club or the cafe that he has made the conquest of a
charmante Anglaise. Listen to me, all family men who read this! and
never LET AN UNMARRIED FRENCHMAN INTO YOUR DOORS. This lecture alone is
worth the price of the book. It is not that they do any harm in one case
out of a thousand, Heaven forbid! but they mean harm. They look on our
Susannas with unholy dishonest eyes. Hearken to two of the grinning
rogues chattering together as they clink over the asphalte of
the Boulevard with lacquered boots, and plastered hair, and waxed
moustaches, and turned-down shirt-collars, and stays and goggling eyes,
and hear how they talk of a good simple giddy vain dull Baker
Street creature, and canvass her points, and show her letters, and
insinuate--never mind, but I tell you my soul grows angry when I think
of the same; and I can't hear of an Englishwoman marrying a Frenchman
without feeling a sort of shame and pity for her. [4]
To return to the guests. The Reverend Lemuel Whey is a tea-party man,
with a curl on his forehead and a scented pocket-handkerchief. He ties
his white neckcloth to a wonder, and I believe sleeps in it. He brings
his flute with him; and prefers Handel, of course; but has one or two
pet profane songs of the sentimental kind, and will occasionally lift
up his little pipe in a glee. He does not dance, but the honest fellow
would give the world to do it; and he leaves his clogs in the passage,
though it is a wonder he wears them, for in the muddiest weather he
never has a speck on his foot. He was at St. John's College, Cambridge,
and was rather gay for a term or two, he says. He is, in a word, full of
the milk-and-water of human kindness, and his family lives near Hackney.
As for Goff, he has a huge shining bald forehead, and immense bristling
Indian-red whiskers. He wears white wash-leather gloves, drinks fairly,
likes a rubber, and has a story for after dinner, beginning, “Doctor, ye
racklackt Sandy M'Lellan, who joined us in the West Indies. Wal, sir,”
etc. These and little Cutler made up the party.
Now it may not have struck all readers, but any sharp fellow conversant
with writing must have found out long ago, that if there had been
something exceedingly interesting to narrate with regard to this dinner
at Frank Berry's, I should have come out with it a couple of pages
since, nor have kept the public looking for so long a time at the
dish-covers and ornaments of the table.
But the simple fact must now be told, that there was nothing of the
slightest importance occurred at this repast, except that it gave me an
opportunity of studying Mrs. Berry in many different ways; and, in spite
of the extreme complaisance which she now showed me, of forming, I am
sorry to say, a most unfavourable opinion of that fair lady. Truth to
tell, I would much rather she should have been civil to Mrs. Muchit,
than outrageously complimentary to your humble servant; and as she
professed not to know what on earth there was for dinner, would it not
have been much more natural for her not to frown, and bob, and wink,
and point, and pinch her lips as often as Monsieur Anatole, her French
domestic, not knowing the ways of English dinner-tables, placed anything
out of its due order? The allusions to Boodle Hall were innumerable,
and I don't know any greater bore than to be obliged to talk of a place
which belongs to one's elder brother. Many questions were likewise asked
about the dowager and her Scotch relatives, the Plumduffs, about whom
Lady Pash knew a great deal, having seen them at Court and at Lord
Melville's. Of course she had seen them at Court and at Lord Melville's,
as she might have seen thousands of Scotchmen besides; but what mattered
it to me, who care not a jot for old Lady Fitz-Boodle? “When you write,
you'll say you met an old friend of her Ladyship's,” says Mrs. Berry,
and I faithfully promised I would when I wrote; but if the New Post
Office paid us for writing letters (as very possibly it will soon), I
could not be bribed to send a line to old Lady Fitz.
In a word, I found that Berry, like many simple fellows before him, had
made choice of an imperious, ill-humoured, and underbred female for a
wife, and could see with half an eye that he was a great deal too much
her slave.
The struggle was not over yet, however. Witness that little encounter
before dinner; and once or twice the honest fellow replied rather
smartly during the repast, taking especial care to atone as much
as possible for his wife's inattention to Jack and Mrs. Muchit, by
particular attention to those personages, whom he helped to everything
round about and pressed perpetually to champagne; he drank but little
himself, for his amiable wife's eye was constantly fixed on him.
Just at the conclusion of the dessert, madame, who had bouded Berry
during dinner-time, became particularly gracious to her lord and master,
and tenderly asked me if I did not think the French custom was a good
one, of men leaving table with the ladies.
“Upon my word, ma'am,” says I, “I think it's a most abominable
practice.”
“And so do I,” says Cutler.
“A most abominable practice! Do you hear THAT?” cries Berry, laughing,
and filling his glass.
“I'm sure, Frank, when we are alone you always come to the
drawing-room,” replies the lady, sharply.
“Oh, yes! when we're alone, darling,” says Berry, blushing; “but now
we're NOT alone--ha, ha! Anatole, du Bordeaux!”
“I'm sure they sat after the ladies at Carlton House; didn't they, Lady
Pash?” says Dobus, who likes his glass.
“THAT they did!” says my Lady, giving him a jolly nod.
“I racklackt,” exclaims Captain Goff, “when I was in the Mauritius, that
Mestress MacWhirter, who commanded the Saxty-Sackond, used to say, 'Mac,
if ye want to get lively, ye'll not stop for more than two hours after
the leddies have laft ye: if ye want to get drunk, ye'll just dine at
the mass.' So ye see, Mestress Barry, what was Mac's allowance--haw,
haw! Mester Whey, I'll trouble ye for the o-lives.”
But although we were in a clear majority, that indomitable woman, Mrs.
Berry, determined to make us all as uneasy as possible, and would take
the votes all round. Poor Jack, of course, sided with her, and Whey said
he loved a cup of tea and a little music better than all the wine of
Bordeaux. As for the Frenchman, when Mrs. Berry said, “And what do you
think, M. le Vicomte?”
“Vat you speak?” said M. de Blagueval, breaking silence for the first
time during two hours. “Yase--eh? to me you speak?”
“Apry deeny, aimy-voo ally avec les dam?”
“Comment avec les dames?”
“Ally avec les dam com a Parry, ou resty avec les Messew com on
Onglyterre?”
“Ah, madame! vous me le demandez?” cries the little wretch, starting up
in a theatrical way, and putting out his hand, which Mrs. Berry took,
and with this the ladies left the room. Old Lady Pash trotted after her
niece with her hand in Whey's, very much wondering at such practices,
which were not in the least in vogue in the reign of George III.
Mrs. Berry cast a glance of triumph at her husband, at the defection;
and Berry was evidently annoyed that three-eighths of his male forces
had left him.
But fancy our delight and astonishment, when in a minute they all three
came back again; the Frenchman looking entirely astonished, and the
parson and the painter both very queer. The fact is, old downright Lady
Pash, who had never been in Paris in her life before, and had no notion
of being deprived of her usual hour's respite and nap, said at once to
Mrs. Berry, “My dear Angelica, you're surely not going to keep these
three men here? Send them back to the dining-room, for I've a thousand
things to say to you.” And Angelica, who expects to inherit her aunt's
property, of course did as she was bid; on which the old lady fell into
an easy chair, and fell asleep immediately,--so soon, that is, as
the shout caused by the reappearance of the three gentlemen in the
dining-room had subsided.
I had meanwhile had some private conversation with little Cutler
regarding the character of Mrs. Berry. “She's a regular screw,”
whispered he; “a regular Tartar. Berry shows fight, though, sometimes,
and I've known him have his own way for a week together. After dinner
he is his own master, and hers when he has had his share of wine; and
that's why she will never allow him to drink any.”
Was it a wicked, or was it a noble and honourable thought which came
to us both at the same minute, to rescue Berry from his captivity? The
ladies, of course, will give their verdict according to their gentle
natures; but I know what men of courage will think, and by their jovial
judgment will abide.
We received, then, the three lost sheep back into our innocent fold
again with the most joyous shouting and cheering. We made Berry (who
was, in truth, nothing loth) order up I don't know how much more claret.
We obliged the Frenchman to drink malgre lui, and in the course of
a short time we had poor Whey in such a state of excitement, that he
actually volunteered to sing a song, which he said he had heard at some
very gay supper-party at Cambridge, and which begins:
“A pye sat on a pear-tree,
A pye sat on a pear-tree,
A pye sat on a pear-tree,
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho!”
Fancy Mrs. Berry's face as she looked in, in the midst of that
Bacchanalian ditty, when she saw no less a person than the Reverend
Lemuel Whey carolling it!
“Is it you, my dear?” cries Berry, as brave now as any Petruchio. “Come
in, and sit down, and hear Whey's song.”
“Lady Pash is asleep, Frank,” said she.
“Well, darling! that's the very reason. Give Mrs. Berry a glass, Jack,
will you?”
“Would you wake your aunt, sir?” hissed out madame.
“NEVER MIND ME, LOVE! I'M AWAKE, AND LIKE IT!” cried the venerable Lady
Pash from the salon. “Sing away, gentlemen!”
At which we all set up an audacious cheer; and Mrs. Berry flounced back
to the drawing-room, but did not leave the door open, that her aunt
might hear our melodies.
Berry had by this time arrived at that confidential state to which a
third bottle always brings the well-regulated mind; and he made a clean
confession to Cutler and myself of his numerous matrimonial annoyances.
He was not allowed to dine out, he said, and but seldom to ask his
friends to meet him at home. He never dared smoke a cigar for the life
of him, not even in the stables. He spent the mornings dawdling in
eternal shops, the evenings at endless tea-parties, or in reading
poems or missionary tracts to his wife. He was compelled to take physic
whenever she thought he looked a little pale, to change his shoes and
stockings whenever he came in from a walk. “Look here,” said he, opening
his chest, and shaking his fist at Dobus; “look what Angelica and that
infernal Dobus have brought me to.”
I thought it might be a flannel waistcoat into which madame had
forced him; but it was worse: I give you my word of honour it was a
PITCH-PLASTER!
We all roared at this, and the doctor as loud as anyone; but he vowed
that he had no hand in the pitch-plaster. It was a favourite family
remedy of the late apothecary Sir George Catacomb, and had been put on
by Mrs. Berry's own fair hands.
When Anatole came in with coffee, Berry was in such high courage, that
he told him to go to the deuce with it; and we never caught sight of
Lady Pash more, except when, muffled up to the nose, she passed through
the salle-a-manger to go to her carriage, in which Dobus and the parson
were likewise to be transported to Paris. “Be a man, Frank,” says she,
“and hold your own”--for the good old lady had taken her nephew's part
in the matrimonial business--“and you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, come and see him
often. You're a good fellow, take old one-eyed Callipash's word for it.
Shall I take you to Paris?”
Dear kind Angelica, she had told her aunt all I said!
“Don't go, George,” says Berry, squeezing me by the hand. So I said I
was going to sleep at Versailles that night; but if she would give a
convoy to Jack Butts, it would be conferring a great obligation on him;
with which favour the old lady accordingly complied, saying to him,
with great coolness, “Get up and sit with John in the rumble, Mr.
What-d'ye-call-'im.” The fact is, the good old soul despises an artist
as much as she does a tailor.
Jack tripped to his place very meekly; and “Remember Saturday,” cried
the Doctor; and “Don't forget Thursday!” exclaimed the divine,--“a
bachelor's party, you know.” And so the cavalcade drove thundering down
the gloomy old Avenue de Paris.
The Frenchman, I forgot to say, had gone away exceedingly ill long
before; and the reminiscences of “Thursday” and “Saturday” evoked by
Dobus and Whey, were, to tell the truth, parts of our conspiracy; for in
the heat of Berry's courage, we had made him promise to dine with us all
round en garcon; with all except Captain Goff, who “racklacted” that he
was engaged every day for the next three weeks: as indeed he is, to
a thirty-sous ordinary which the gallant officer frequents, when not
invited elsewhere.
Cutler and I then were the last on the field; and though we were for
moving away, Berry, whose vigour had, if possible, been excited by the
bustle and colloquy in the night air, insisted upon dragging us back
again, and actually proposed a grill for supper!
We found in the salle-a-manger a strong smell of an extinguished lamp,
and Mrs. Berry was snuffing out the candles on the sideboard.
“Hullo, my dear!” shouts Berry: “easy, if you please; we've not done
yet!”
“Not done yet, Mr. Berry!” groans the lady, in a hollow sepulchral tone.
“No, Mrs. B., not done yet. We are going to have some supper, ain't we,
George?”
“I think it's quite time to go home,” said Mr. Fitz-Boodle (who, to say
the truth, began to tremble himself).
“I think it is, sir; you are quite right, sir; you will pardon me,
gentlemen, I have a bad headache, and will retire.”
“Good-night, my dear!” said that audacious Berry. “Anatole, tell the
cook to broil a fowl and bring some wine.”
If the loving couple had been alone, or if Cutler had not been an
attache to the embassy, before whom she was afraid of making herself
ridiculous, I am confident that Mrs. Berry would have fainted away on
the spot; and that all Berry's courage would have tumbled down lifeless
by the side of her. So she only gave a martyrised look, and left the
room; and while we partook of the very unnecessary repast, was good
enough to sing some hymn-tunes to an exceedingly slow movement in the
next room, intimating that she was awake, and that, though suffering,
she found her consolations in religion.
These melodies did not in the least add to our friend's courage. The
devilled fowl had, somehow, no devil in it. The champagne in the glasses
looked exceedingly flat and blue. The fact is, that Cutler and I were
now both in a state of dire consternation, and soon made a move for
our hats, and lighting each a cigar in the hall, made across the little
green where the Cupids and nymphs were listening to the dribbling
fountain in the dark.
“I'm hanged if I don't have a cigar too!” says Berry, rushing after us;
and accordingly putting in his pocket a key about the size of a shovel,
which hung by the little handle of the outer grille, forth he sallied,
and joined us in our fumigation.
He stayed with us a couple of hours, and returned homewards in perfect
good spirits, having given me his word of honour he would dine with us
the next day. He put his immense key into the grille, and unlocked it;
but the gate would not open: IT WAS BOLTED WITHIN.
He began to make a furious jangling and ringing at the bell; and in
oaths, both French and English, called upon the recalcitrant Anatole.
After much tolling of the bell, a light came cutting across the crevices
of the inner door; it was thrown open, and a figure appeared with a
lamp,--a tall slim figure of a woman, clothed in white from head to
foot.
It was Mrs. Berry, and when Cutler and I saw her, we both ran away as
fast as our legs could carry us.
Berry, at this, shrieked with a wild laughter. “Remember to-morrow, old
boys,” shouted he,--“six o'clock;” and we were a quarter of a mile off
when the gate closed, and the little mansion of the Avenue de Paris was
once more quiet and dark.
The next afternoon, as we were playing at billiards, Cutler saw Mrs.
Berry drive by in her carriage; and as soon as rather a long rubber was
over, I thought I would go and look for our poor friend, and so went
down to the Pavilion. Every door was open, as the wont is in France, and
I walked in unannounced, and saw this:
He was playing a duet with her on the flute. She had been out but for
half-an-hour, after not speaking all the morning; and having seen Cutler
at the billiard-room window, and suspecting we might take advantage
of her absence, she had suddenly returned home again, and had flung
herself, weeping, into her Frank's arms, and said she could not bear to
leave him in anger. And so, after sitting for a little while sobbing on
his knee, she had forgotten and forgiven every thing!
The dear angel! I met poor Frank in Bond Street only yesterday; but he
crossed over to the other side of the way. He had on goloshes, and is
grown very fat and pale. He has shaved off his moustaches, and, instead,
wears a respirator. He has taken his name off all his clubs, and lives
very grimly in Baker Street. Well, ladies, no doubt you say he is right:
and what are the odds, so long as YOU are happy?
DENNIS HAGGARTY'S WIFE.
There was an odious Irishwoman who with her daughter used to frequent
the “Royal Hotel” at Leamington some years ago, and who went by the name
of Mrs. Major Gam. Gam had been a distinguished officer in His Majesty's
service, whom nothing but death and his own amiable wife could overcome.
The widow mourned her husband in the most becoming bombazeen she could
muster, and had at least half an inch of lampblack round the immense
visiting tickets which she left at the houses of the nobility and gentry
her friends.
Some of us, I am sorry to say, used to call her Mrs. Major Gammon; for
if the worthy widow had a propensity, it was to talk largely of herself
and family (of her own family, for she held her husband's very cheap),
and of the wonders of her paternal mansion, Molloyville, county of Mayo.
She was of the Molloys of that county; and though I never heard of the
family before, I have little doubt, from what Mrs. Major Gam stated,
that they were the most ancient and illustrious family of that part of
Ireland. I remember there came down to see his aunt a young fellow
with huge red whiskers and tight nankeens, a green coat, and an awful
breastpin, who, after two days' stay at the Spa, proposed marriage to
Miss S----, or, in default, a duel with her father; and who drove a
flash curricle with a bay and a grey, and who was presented with much
pride by Mrs. Gam as Castlereagh Molloy of Molloyville. We all agreed
that he was the most insufferable snob of the whole season, and were
delighted when a bailiff came down in search of him.
Well, this is all I know personally of the Molloyville family; but at
the house if you met the widow Gam, and talked on any subject in life,
you were sure to hear of it. If you asked her to have peas at dinner,
she would say, “Oh, sir, after the peas at Molloyville, I really don't
care for any others,--do I, dearest Jemima? We always had a dish in the
month of June, when my father gave his head gardener a guinea (we had
three at Molloyville), and sent him with his compliments and a quart of
peas to our neighbour, dear Lord Marrowfat. What a sweet place Marrowfat
Park is! isn't it, Jemima?” If a carriage passed by the window, Mrs.
Major Gammon would be sure to tell you that there were three carriages
at Molloyville, “the barouche, the chawiot, and the covered cyar.” In
the same manner she would favour you with the number and names of the
footmen of the establishment; and on a visit to Warwick Castle (for this
bustling woman made one in every party of pleasure that was formed from
the hotel), she gave us to understand that the great walk by the river
was altogether inferior to the principal avenue of Molloyville Park.
I should not have been able to tell so much about Mrs. Gam and her
daughter, but that, between ourselves, I was particularly sweet upon a
young lady at the time, whose papa lived at the “Royal,” and was under
the care of Doctor Jephson.
The Jemima appealed to by Mrs. Gam in the above sentence was, of course,
her daughter, apostrophised by her mother, “Jemima, my soul's darling?”
or, “Jemima, my blessed child!” or, “Jemima, my own love!” The
sacrifices that Mrs. Gam had made for that daughter were, she said,
astonishing. The money she had spent in masters upon her, the illnesses
through which she had nursed her, the ineffable love the mother bore
her, were only known to Heaven, Mrs. Gam said. They used to come into
the room with their arms round each other's waists: at dinner between
the courses the mother would sit with one hand locked in her daughter's;
and if only two or three young men were present at the time, would be
pretty sure to kiss her Jemima more than once during the time whilst the
bohea was poured out.
As for Miss Gam, if she was not handsome, candour forbids me to say she
was ugly. She was neither one nor t'other. She was a person who wore
ringlets and a band round her forehead; she knew four songs, which
became rather tedious at the end of a couple of months' acquaintance;
she had excessively bare shoulders; she inclined to wear numbers of
cheap ornaments, rings, brooches, ferronnieres, smelling-bottles, and
was always, we thought, very smartly dressed: though old Mrs. Lynx
hinted that her gowns and her mother's were turned over and over again,
and that her eyes were almost put out by darning stockings.
These eyes Miss Gam had very large, though rather red and weak, and used
to roll them about at every eligible unmarried man in the place. But
though the widow subscribed to all the balls, though she hired a fly
to go to the meet of the hounds, though she was constant at church, and
Jemima sang louder than any person there except the clerk, and though,
probably, any person who made her a happy husband would be invited down
to enjoy the three footmen, gardeners, and carriages at Molloyville, yet
no English gentleman was found sufficiently audacious to propose.
Old Lynx used to say that the pair had been at Tunbridge, Harrogate,
Brighton, Ramsgate, Cheltenham, for this eight years past; where they
had met, it seemed, with no better fortune. Indeed, the widow looked
rather high for her blessed child: and as she looked with the contempt
which no small number of Irish people feel upon all persons who get
their bread by labour or commerce; and as she was a person whose
energetic manners, costume, and brogue were not much to the taste of
quiet English country gentlemen, Jemima--sweet, spotless flower--still
remained on her hands, a thought withered, perhaps, and seedy.
Now, at this time, the 120th Regiment was quartered at Weedon Barracks,
and with the corps was a certain Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty, a large,
lean, tough, raw-boned man, with big hands, knock-knees, and carroty
whiskers, and, withal, as honest a creature as ever handled a lancet.
Haggarty, as his name imports, was of the very same nation as Mrs. Gam,
and, what is more, the honest fellow had some of the peculiarities which
belonged to the widow, and bragged about his family almost as much as
she did. I do not know of what particular part of Ireland they were
kings; but monarchs they must have been, as have been the ancestors of
so many thousand Hibernian families; but they had been men of no small
consideration in Dublin, “where my father,” Haggarty said, “is as well
known as King William's statue, and where he 'rowls his carriage, too,'
let me tell ye.”
Hence, Haggarty was called by the wags “Rowl the carriage,” and several
of them made inquiries of Mrs. Gam regarding him: “Mrs. Gam, when you
used to go up from Molloyville to the Lord Lieutenant's balls, and had
your townhouse in Fitzwilliam Square, used you to meet the famous Doctor
Haggarty in society?”
“Is it Surgeon Haggarty of Gloucester Street ye mean? The black Papist!
D'ye suppose that the Molloys would sit down to table with a creature of
that sort?”
“Why, isn't he the most famous physician in Dublin, and doesn't he rowl
his carriage there?”
“The horrid wretch! He keeps a shop, I tell ye, and sends his sons out
with the medicine. He's got four of them off into the army, Ulick and
Phil, and Terence and Denny, and now it's Charles that takes out the
physic. But how should I know about these odious creatures? Their mother
was a Burke, of Burke's Town, county Cavan, and brought Surgeon Haggarty
two thousand pounds. She was a Protestant; and I am surprised how she
could have taken up with a horrid odious Popish apothecary!”
From the extent of the widow's information, I am led to suppose that the
inhabitants of Dublin are not less anxious about their neighbours than
are the natives of English cities; and I think it is very probable that
Mrs. Gam's account of the young Haggartys who carried out the medicine
is perfectly correct, for a lad in the 120th made a caricature of
Haggarty coming out of a chemist's shop with an oilcloth basket under
his arm, which set the worthy surgeon in such a fury that there would
have been a duel between him and the ensign, could the fiery doctor have
had his way.
Now, Dionysius Haggarty was of an exceedingly inflammable temperament,
and it chanced that of all the invalids, the visitors, the young squires
of Warwickshire, the young manufacturers from Birmingham, the young
officers from the barracks--it chanced, unluckily for Miss Gam and
himself, that he was the only individual who was in the least smitten
by her personal charms. He was very tender and modest about his love,
however, for it must be owned that he respected Mrs. Gam hugely, and
fully admitted, like a good simple fellow as he was, the superiority of
that lady's birth and breeding to his own. How could he hope that he, a
humble assistant-surgeon, with a thousand pounds his Aunt Kitty left
him for all his fortune--how could he hope that one of the race of
Molloyville would ever condescend to marry him?
Inflamed, however, by love, and inspired by wine, one day at a picnic at
Kenilworth, Haggarty, whose love and raptures were the talk of the whole
regiment, was induced by his waggish comrades to make a proposal in
form.
“Are you aware, Mr. Haggarty, that you are speaking to a Molloy?”
was all the reply majestic Mrs. Gam made when, according to the usual
formula, the fluttering Jemima referred her suitor to “Mamma.” She left
him with a look which was meant to crush the poor fellow to earth; she
gathered up her cloak and bonnet, and precipitately called for her fly.
She took care to tell every single soul in Leamington that the son of
the odious Papist apothecary had had the audacity to propose for her
daughter (indeed a proposal, coming from whatever quarter it may,
does no harm), and left Haggarty in a state of extreme depression and
despair.
His down-heartedness, indeed, surprised most of his acquaintances in and
out of the regiment, for the young lady was no beauty, and a doubtful
fortune, and Dennis was a man outwardly of an unromantic turn, who
seemed to have a great deal more liking for beefsteak and whisky-punch
than for women, however fascinating.
But there is no doubt this shy uncouth rough fellow had a warmer and
more faithful heart hid within him than many a dandy who is as handsome
as Apollo. I, for my part, never can understand why a man falls in love,
and heartily give him credit for so doing, never mind with what or
whom. THAT I take to be a point quite as much beyond an individual's own
control as the catching of the small-pox or the colour of his hair. To
the surprise of all, Assistant-Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty was deeply and
seriously in love; and I am told that one day he very nearly killed the
before-mentioned young ensign with a carving-knife, for venturing to
make a second caricature, representing Lady Gammon and Jemima in a
fantastical park, surrounded by three gardeners, three carriages, three
footmen, and the covered cyar. He would have no joking concerning them.
He became moody and quarrelsome of habit. He was for some time much more
in the surgery and hospital than in the mess. He gave up the eating, for
the most part, of those vast quantities of beef and pudding, for which
his stomach used to afford such ample and swift accommodation; and when
the cloth was drawn, instead of taking twelve tumblers, and singing
Irish melodies, as he used to do, in a horrible cracked yelling voice,
he would retire to his own apartment, or gloomily pace the barrack-yard,
or madly whip and spur a grey mare he had on the road to Leamington,
where his Jemima (although invisible for him) still dwelt.
The season at Leamington coming to a conclusion by the withdrawal of the
young fellows who frequented that watering-place, the widow Gam retired
to her usual quarters for the other months of the year. Where these
quarters were, I think we have no right to ask, for I believe she had
quarrelled with her brother at Molloyville, and besides, was a great
deal too proud to be a burden on anybody.
Not only did the widow quit Leamington, but very soon afterwards the
120th received its marching orders, and left Weedon and Warwickshire.
Haggarty's appetite was by this time partially restored, but his love
was not altered, and his humour was still morose and gloomy. I am
informed that at this period of his life he wrote some poems relative to
his unhappy passion; a wild set of verses of several lengths, and in
his handwriting, being discovered upon a sheet of paper in which a
pitch-plaster was wrapped up, which Lieutenant and Adjutant Wheezer was
compelled to put on for a cold.
Fancy then, three years afterwards, the surprise of all Haggarty's
acquaintances on reading in the public papers the following
announcement:
“Married, at Monkstown on the 12th instant, Dionysius Haggarty, Esq.,
of H.M. 120th Foot, to Jemima Amelia Wilhelmina Molloy, daughter of the
late Major Lancelot Gam, R.M., and granddaughter of the late, and niece
of the present Burke Bodkin Blake Molloy, Esq., Molloyville, county
Mayo.”
“Has the course of true love at last begun to run smooth?” thought I, as
I laid down the paper; and the old times, and the old leering bragging
widow, and the high shoulders of her daughter, and the jolly days with
the 120th, and Doctor Jephson's one-horse chaise, and the Warwickshire
hunt, and--and Louisa S----, but never mind HER,--came back to my mind.
Has that good-natured simple fellow at last met with his reward? Well,
if he has not to marry the mother-in-law too, he may get on well enough.
Another year announced the retirement of Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty
from the 120th, where he was replaced by Assistant-Surgeon Angus
Rothsay Leech, a Scotchman, probably; with whom I have not the least
acquaintance, and who has nothing whatever to do with this little
history.
Still more years passed on, during which time I will not say that I kept
a constant watch upon the fortunes of Mr. Haggarty and his lady; for,
perhaps, if the truth were known, I never thought for a moment about
them; until one day, being at Kingstown, near Dublin, dawdling on
the beach, and staring at the Hill of Howth, as most people at that
watering-place do, I saw coming towards me a tall gaunt man, with a pair
of bushy red whiskers, of which I thought I had seen the like in former
years, and a face which could be no other than Haggarty's. It was
Haggarty, ten years older than when we last met, and greatly more grim
and thin. He had on one shoulder a young gentleman in a dirty tartan
costume, and a face exceedingly like his own peeping from under a
battered plume of black feathers, while with his other hand he was
dragging a light green go-cart, in which reposed a female infant of some
two years old. Both were roaring with great power of lungs.
As soon as Dennis saw me, his face lost the dull puzzled expression
which had seemed to characterise it; he dropped the pole of the go-cart
from one hand, and his son from the other, and came jumping forward to
greet me with all his might, leaving his progeny roaring in the road.
“Bless my sowl,” says he, “sure it's Fitz-Boodle? Fitz, don't you
remember me? Dennis Haggarty of the 120th? Leamington, you know? Molloy,
my boy, hould your tongue, and stop your screeching, and Jemima's too;
d'ye hear? Well, it does good to sore eyes to see an old face. How fat
you're grown, Fitz; and were ye ever in Ireland before? and a'n't ye
delighted with it? Confess, now, isn't it beautiful?”
This question regarding the merits of their country, which I have
remarked is put by most Irish persons, being answered in a satisfactory
manner, and the shouts of the infants appeased from an apple-stall
hard by, Dennis and I talked of old times; I congratulated him on his
marriage with the lovely girl whom we all admired, and hoped he had a
fortune with her, and so forth. His appearance, however, did not bespeak
a great fortune: he had an old grey hat, short old trousers, an old
waistcoat with regimental buttons, and patched Blucher boots, such as
are not usually sported by persons in easy life.
“Ah!” says he, with a sigh, in reply to my queries, “times are changed
since them days, Fitz-Boodle. My wife's not what she was--the beautiful
creature you knew her. Molloy, my boy, run off in a hurry to your mamma,
and tell her an English gentleman is coming home to dine; for you'll
dine with me, Fitz, in course?” And I agreed to partake of that meal;
though Master Molloy altogether declined to obey his papa's orders with
respect to announcing the stranger.
“Well, I must announce you myself,” said Haggarty, with a smile. “Come,
it's just dinner-time, and my little cottage is not a hundred yards
off.” Accordingly, we all marched in procession to Dennis's little
cottage, which was one of a row and a half of one-storied houses, with
little courtyards before them, and mostly with very fine names on the
doorposts of each. “Surgeon Haggarty” was emblazoned on Dennis's gate,
on a stained green copper-plate; and, not content with this, on the
door-post above the bell was an oval with the inscription of “New
Molloyville.” The bell was broken, of course; the court, or garden-path,
was mouldy, weedy, seedy; there were some dirty rocks, by way of
ornament, round a faded glass-plat in the centre, some clothes and
rags hanging out of most part of the windows of New Molloyville, the
immediate entrance to which was by a battered scraper, under a broken
trellis-work, up which a withered creeper declined any longer to climb.
“Small, but snug,” says Haggarty: “I'll lead the way, Fitz; put your hat
on the flower-pot there, and turn to the left into the drawing-room.”
A fog of onions and turf-smoke filled the whole of the house, and gave
signs that dinner was not far off. Far off? You could hear it frizzling
in the kitchen, where the maid was also endeavouring to hush the crying
of a third refractory child. But as we entered, all three of Haggarty's
darlings were in full roar.
“Is it you, Dennis?” cried a sharp raw voice, from a dark corner in
the drawing-room to which we were introduced, and in which a dirty
tablecloth was laid for dinner, some bottles of porter and a cold
mutton-bone being laid out on a rickety grand piano hard by. “Ye're
always late, Mr. Haggarty. Have you brought the whisky from Nowlan's?
I'll go bail ye've not, now.”
“My dear, I've brought an old friend of yours and mine to take pot-luck
with us to-day,” said Dennis.
“When is he to come?” said the lady. At which speech I was rather
surprised, for I stood before her.
“Here he is, Jemima my love,” answered Dennis, looking at me. “Mr.
Fitz-Boodle: don't you remember him in Warwickshire, darling?”
“Mr. Fitz-Boodle! I am very glad to see him,” said the lady, rising and
curtseying with much cordiality.
Mrs. Haggarty was blind.
Mrs. Haggarty was not only blind, but it was evident that smallpox
had been the cause of her loss of vision. Her eyes were bound with a
bandage, her features were entirely swollen, scarred and distorted by
the horrible effects of the malady. She had been knitting in a corner
when we entered, and was wrapped in a very dirty bedgown. Her voice to
me was quite different to that in which she addressed her husband. She
spoke to Haggarty in broad Irish: she addressed me in that most odious
of all languages--Irish-English, endeavouring to the utmost to disguise
her brogue, and to speak with the true dawdling distingue English air.
“Are you long in I-a-land?” said the poor creature in this accent. “You
must faind it a sad ba'ba'ous place, Mr Fitz-Boodle, I'm shu-ah! It was
vary kaind of you to come upon us en famille, and accept a dinner sans
ceremonie. Mr. Haggarty, I hope you'll put the waine into aice, Mr.
Fitz-Boodle must be melted with this hot weathah.”
For some time she conducted the conversation in this polite strain, and
I was obliged to say, in reply to a query of hers, that I did not find
her the least altered, though I should never have recognised her but for
this rencontre. She told Haggarty with a significant air to get the wine
from the cellah, and whispered to me that he was his own butlah; and the
poor fellow, taking the hint, scudded away into the town for a pound of
beefsteak and a couple of bottles of wine from the tavern.
“Will the childhren get their potatoes and butther here?” said a
barefoot girl, with long black hair flowing over her face, which she
thrust in at the door.
“Let them sup in the nursery, Elizabeth, and send--ah! Edwards to me.”
“Is it cook you mane, ma'am?” said the girl.
“Send her at once!” shrieked the unfortunate woman; and the noise of
frying presently ceasing, a hot woman made her appearance, wiping her
brows with her apron, and asking, with an accent decidedly Hibernian,
what the misthress wanted.
“Lead me up to my dressing-room, Edwards: I really am not fit to be seen
in this dishabille by Mr. Fitz-Boodle.”
“Fait' I can't!” says Edwards; “sure the masther's at the butcher's, and
can't look to the kitchen-fire!”
“Nonsense, I must go!” cried Mrs. Haggarty; and Edwards, putting on a
resigned air, and giving her arm and face a further rub with her apron,
held out her arm to Mrs. Dennis, and the pair went upstairs.
She left me to indulge my reflections for half-an-hour, at the end of
which period she came downstairs dressed in an old yellow satin, with
the poor shoulders exposed just as much as ever. She had mounted a
tawdry cap, which Haggarty himself must have selected for her. She had
all sorts of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings in gold, in garnets,
in mother-of-pearl, in ormolu. She brought in a furious savour of musk,
which drove the odours of onions and turf-smoke before it; and she
waved across her wretched angular mean scarred features an old cambric
handkerchief with a yellow lace-border.
“And so you would have known me anywhere, Mr. Fitz-Boodle?” said she,
with a grin that was meant to be most fascinating. “I was sure you
would; for though my dreadful illness deprived me of my sight, it is a
mercy that it did not change my features or complexion at all!”
This mortification had been spared the unhappy woman; but I don't
know whether, with all her vanity, her infernal pride, folly, and
selfishness, it was charitable to leave her in her error.
Yet why correct her? There is a quality in certain people which is
above all advice, exposure, or correction. Only let a man or woman have
DULNESS sufficient, and they need bow to no extant authority. A dullard
recognises no betters; a dullard can't see that he is in the wrong;
a dullard has no scruples of conscience, no doubts of pleasing, or
succeeding, or doing right; no qualms for other people's feelings, no
respect but for the fool himself. How can you make a fool perceive he is
a fool? Such a personage can no more see his own folly than he can see
his own ears. And the great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably
contented with itself. What myriads of souls are there of this admirable
sort,--selfish, stingy, ignorant, passionate, brutal; bad sons, mothers,
fathers, never known to do kind actions!
To pause, however, in this disquisition, which was carrying us far off
Kingstown, New Molloyville, Ireland--nay, into the wide world wherever
Dulness inhabits--let it be stated that Mrs. Haggarty, from my brief
acquaintance with her and her mother, was of the order of persons just
mentioned. There was an air of conscious merit about her, very hard to
swallow along with the infamous dinner poor Dennis managed, after
much delay, to get on the table. She did not fail to invite me to
Molloyville, where she said her cousin would be charmed to see me; and
she told me almost as many anecdotes about that place as her mother used
to impart in former days. I observed, moreover, that Dennis cut her
the favourite pieces of the beefsteak, that she ate thereof with great
gusto, and that she drank with similar eagerness of the various strong
liquors at table. “We Irish ladies are all fond of a leetle glass of
punch,” she said, with a playful air, and Dennis mixed her a powerful
tumbler of such violent grog as I myself could swallow only with some
difficulty. She talked of her suffering a great deal, of her sacrifices,
of the luxuries to which she had been accustomed before marriage,--in
a word, of a hundred of those themes on which some ladies are in the
custom of enlarging when they wish to plague some husbands.
But honest Dennis, far from being angry at this perpetual, wearisome,
impudent recurrence to her own superiority, rather encouraged the
conversation than otherwise. It pleased him to hear his wife discourse
about her merits and family splendours. He was so thoroughly beaten
down and henpecked, that he, as it were, gloried in his servitude, and
fancied that his wife's magnificence reflected credit on himself. He
looked towards me, who was half sick of the woman and her egotism, as
if expecting me to exhibit the deepest sympathy, and flung me glances
across the table as much as to say, “What a gifted creature my Jemima
is, and what a fine fellow I am to be in possession of her!” When the
children came down she scolded them, of course, and dismissed them
abruptly (for which circumstance, perhaps, the writer of these pages
was not in his heart very sorry), and, after having sat a preposterously
long time, left us, asking whether we would have coffee there or in her
boudoir.
“Oh! here, of course,” said Dennis, with rather a troubled air, and
in about ten minutes the lovely creature was led back to us again by
“Edwards,” and the coffee made its appearance. After coffee her husband
begged her to let Mr. Fitz-Boodle hear her voice: “He longs for some of
his old favourites.”
“No! DO you?” said she; and was led in triumph to the jingling old
piano, and with a screechy wiry voice, sang those very abominable old
ditties which I had heard her sing at Leamington ten years back.
Haggarty, as she sang, flung himself back in the chair delighted.
Husbands always are, and with the same song, one that they have heard
when they were nineteen years old probably; most Englishmen's tunes have
that date, and it is rather affecting, I think, to hear an old gentleman
of sixty or seventy quavering the old ditty that was fresh when HE was
fresh and in his prime. If he has a musical wife, depend on it he thinks
her old songs of 1788 are better than any he has heard since: in fact
he has heard NONE since. When the old couple are in high good-humour the
old gentleman will take the old lady round the waist, and say, “My dear,
do sing me one of your own songs,” and she sits down and sings with her
old voice, and, as she sings, the roses of her youth bloom again for a
moment. Ranelagh resuscitates, and she is dancing a minuet in powder and
a train.
This is another digression. It was occasioned by looking at poor
Dennis's face while his wife was screeching (and, believe me, the former
was the more pleasant occupation). Bottom tickled by the fairies could
not have been in greater ecstasies. He thought the music was divine;
and had further reason for exulting in it, which was, that his wife was
always in a good humour after singing, and never would sing but in that
happy frame of mind. Dennis had hinted so much in our little colloquy
during the ten minutes of his lady's absence in the “boudoir;” so, at
the conclusion of each piece, we shouted “Bravo!” and clapped our hands
like mad.
Such was my insight into the life of Surgeon Dionysius Haggarty and his
wife; and I must have come upon him at a favourable moment too, for poor
Dennis has spoken, subsequently, of our delightful evening at Kingstown,
and evidently thinks to this day that his friend was fascinated by
the entertainment there. His inward economy was as follows: he had his
half-pay, a thousand pounds, about a hundred a year that his father
left, and his wife had sixty pounds a year from the mother; which the
mother, of course, never paid. He had no practice, for he was absorbed
in attention to his Jemima and the children, whom he used to wash, to
dress, to carry out, to walk, or to ride, as we have seen, and who
could not have a servant, as their dear blind mother could never be left
alone. Mrs. Haggarty, a great invalid, used to lie in bed till one, and
have breakfast and hot luncheon there. A fifth part of his income was
spent in having her wheeled about in a chair, by which it was his duty
to walk daily for an allotted number of hours. Dinner would ensue, and
the amateur clergy, who abound in Ireland, and of whom Mrs. Haggarty
was a great admirer, lauded her everywhere as a model of resignation and
virtue, and praised beyond measure the admirable piety with which she
bore her sufferings.
Well, every man to his taste. It did not certainly appear to me that SHE
was the martyr of the family.
“The circumstances of my marriage with Jemima,” Dennis said to me, in
some after conversations we had on this interesting subject, “were the
most romantic and touching you can conceive. You saw what an impression
the dear girl had made upon me when we were at Weedon; for from the
first day I set eyes on her, and heard her sing her delightful song of
'Dark-eyed Maiden of Araby,' I felt, and said to Turniquet of ours, that
very night, that SHE was the dark-eyed maid of Araby for ME--not that
she was, you know, for she was born in Shropshire. But I felt that I had
seen the woman who was to make me happy or miserable for life. You know
how I proposed for her at Kenilworth, and how I was rejected, and how I
almost shot myself in consequence--no, you don't know that, for I said
nothing about it to anyone, but I can tell you it was a very near thing;
and a very lucky thing for me I didn't do it: for,--would you believe
it?--the dear girl was in love with me all the time.”
“Was she really?” said I, who recollected that Miss Gam's love of those
days showed itself in a very singular manner; but the fact is, when
women are most in love they most disguise it.
“Over head and ears in love with poor Dennis,” resumed that worthy
fellow, “who'd ever have thought it? But I have it from the best
authority, from her own mother, with whom I'm not over and above good
friends now; but of this fact she assured me, and I'll tell you when and
how.
“We were quartered at Cork three years after we were at Weedon, and it
was our last year at home; and a great mercy that my dear girl spoke
in time, or where should we have been now? Well, one day, marching
home from parade, I saw a lady seated at an open window, by another who
seemed an invalid, and the lady at the window, who was dressed in the
profoundest mourning, cried out, with a scream, 'Gracious, heavens! it's
Mr. Haggarty of the 120th.'
“'Sure I know that voice,' says I to Whiskerton.
“'It's a great mercy you don't know it a deal too well,' says he: 'it's
Lady Gammon. She's on some husband-hunting scheme, depend on it, for
that daughter of hers. She was at Bath last year on the same errand, and
at Cheltenham the year before, where, Heaven bless you! she's as well
known as the “Hen and Chickens.”'
“'I'll thank you not to speak disrespectfully of Miss Jemima Gam,' said
I to Whiskerton; 'she's of one of the first families in Ireland, and
whoever says a word against a woman I once proposed for, insults me,--do
you understand?'
“'Well, marry her, if you like,' says Whiskerton, quite peevish: 'marry
her, and be hanged!'
“Marry her! the very idea of it set my brain a-whirling, and made me a
thousand times more mad than I am by nature.
“You may be sure I walked up the hill to the parade-ground that
afternoon, and with a beating heart too. I came to the widow's house. It
was called 'New Molloyville,' as this is. Wherever she takes a house for
six months she calls it 'New Molloyville;' and has had one in Mallow,
in Bandon, in Sligo, in Castlebar, in Fermoy, in Drogheda, and the deuce
knows where besides: but the blinds were down, and though I thought I
saw somebody behind 'em, no notice was taken of poor Denny Haggarty,
and I paced up and down all mess-time in hopes of catching a glimpse of
Jemima, but in vain. The next day I was on the ground again; I was just
as much in love as ever, that's the fact. I'd never been in that way
before, look you; and when once caught, I knew it was for life.
“There's no use in telling you how long I beat about the bush, but when
I DID get admittance to the house (it was through the means of young
Castlereagh Molloy, whom you may remember at Leamington, and who was
at Cork for the regatta, and used to dine at our mess, and had taken a
mighty fancy to me)--when I DID get into the house, I say, I rushed in
medias res at once; I couldn't keep myself quiet, my heart was too full.
“Oh, Fitz! I shall never forget the day,--the moment I was inthrojuiced
into the dthrawing-room” (as he began to be agitated, Dennis's brogue
broke out with greater richness than ever; but though a stranger may
catch, and repeat from memory, a few words, it is next to impossible for
him to KEEP UP A CONVERSATION in Irish, so that we had best give up all
attempts to imitate Dennis). “When I saw old mother Gam,” said he, “my
feelings overcame me all at once. I rowled down on the ground, sir, as
if I'd been hit by a musket-ball. 'Dearest madam,' says I, 'I'll die if
you don't give me Jemima.'
“'Heavens, Mr. Haggarty!' says she, 'how you seize me with surprise!
Castlereagh, my dear nephew, had you not better leave us?' and away he
went, lighting a cigar, and leaving me still on the floor.
“'Rise, Mr. Haggarty,' continued the widow. 'I will not attempt to deny
that this constancy towards my daughter is extremely affecting, however
sudden your present appeal may be. I will not attempt to deny that,
perhaps, Jemima may have a similar feeling; but, as I said, I never
could give my daughter to a Catholic.'
“'I'm as good a Protestant as yourself, ma'am,' says I; 'my mother was
an heiress, and we were all brought up her way.'
“'That makes the matter very different,' says she, turning up the whites
of her eyes. 'How could I ever have reconciled it to my conscience to
see my blessed child married to a Papist? How could I ever have taken
him to Molloyville? Well, this obstacle being removed, _I_ must put
myself no longer in the way between two young people. _I_ must sacrifice
myself; as I always have when my darling girl was in question. YOU shall
see her, the poor dear lovely gentle sufferer, and learn your fate from
her own lips.'
“'The sufferer, ma'am,' says I; 'has Miss Gam been ill?'
“'What! haven't you heard?' cried the widow. 'Haven't you heard of the
dreadful illness which so nearly carried her from me? For nine weeks,
Mr. Haggarty, I watched her day and night, without taking a wink of
sleep,--for nine weeks she lay trembling between death and life; and I
paid the doctor eighty-three guineas. She is restored now; but she is
the wreck of the beautiful creature she was. Suffering, and, perhaps,
ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT--but we won't mention that NOW--have so pulled
her down. But I will leave you, and prepare my sweet girl for this
strange, this entirely unexpected visit.'
“I won't tell you what took place between me and Jemima, to whom I was
introduced as she sat in the darkened room, poor sufferer! nor describe
to you with what a thrill of joy I seized (after groping about for it)
her poor emaciated hand. She did not withdraw it; I came out of that
room an engaged man, sir; and NOW I was enabled to show her that I had
always loved her sincerely, for there was my will, made three years
back, in her favour: that night she refused me, as I told ye. I would
have shot myself, but they'd have brought me in non compos; and my
brother Mick would have contested the will, and so I determined to live,
in order that she might benefit by my dying. I had but a thousand pounds
then: since that my father has left me two more. I willed every shilling
to her, as you may fancy, and settled it upon her when we married, as we
did soon after. It was not for some time that I was allowed to see
the poor girl's face, or, indeed, was aware of the horrid loss she had
sustained. Fancy my agony, my dear fellow, when I saw that beautiful
wreck!”
There was something not a little affecting to think, in the conduct of
this brave fellow, that he never once, as he told his story, seemed to
allude to the possibility of his declining to marry a woman who was not
the same as the woman he loved; but that he was quite as faithful to
her now, as he had been when captivated by the poor tawdry charms of the
silly Miss of Leamington. It was hard that such a noble heart as this
should be flung away upon yonder foul mass of greedy vanity. Was it
hard, or not, that he should remain deceived in his obstinate humility,
and continue to admire the selfish silly being whom he had chosen to
worship?
“I should have been appointed surgeon of the regiment,” continued
Dennis, “soon after, when it was ordered abroad to Jamaica, where it now
is. But my wife would not hear of going, and said she would break her
heart if she left her mother. So I retired on half-pay, and took this
cottage; and in case any practice should fall in my way--why, there is
my name on the brass plate, and I'm ready for anything that comes. But
the only case that ever DID come was one day when I was driving my wife
in the chaise; and another, one night, of a beggar with a broken head.
My wife makes me a present of a baby every year, and we've no debts; and
between you and me and the post, as long as my mother-in-law is out of
the house, I'm as happy as I need be.”
“What! you and the old lady don't get on well?” said I.
“I can't say we do; it's not in nature, you know,” said Dennis, with a
faint grin. “She comes into the house, and turns it topsy-turvy. When
she's here I'm obliged to sleep in the scullery. She's never paid her
daughter's income since the first year, though she brags about her
sacrifices as if she had ruined herself for Jemima; and besides, when
she's here, there's a whole clan of the Molloys, horse, foot, and
dragoons, that are quartered upon us, and eat me out of house and home.”
“And is Molloyville such a fine place as the widow described it?” asked
I, laughing, and not a little curious.
“Oh, a mighty fine place entirely!” said Dennis. “There's the oak park
of two hundred acres, the finest land ye ever saw, only they've cut all
the wood down. The garden in the old Molloys' time, they say, was the
finest ever seen in the West of Ireland; but they've taken all the glass
to mend the house windows: and small blame to them either. There's a
clear rent-roll of thirty-five hundred a year, only it's in the hand of
receivers; besides other debts, for which there is no land security.”
“Your cousin-in-law, Castlereagh Molloy, won't come into a large
fortune?”
“Oh, he'll do very well,” said Dennis. “As long as he can get credit,
he's not the fellow to stint himself. Faith, I was fool enough to put my
name to a bit of paper for him, and as they could not catch him in Mayo,
they laid hold of me at Kingstown here. And there was a pretty to do.
Didn't Mrs. Gam say I was ruining her family, that's all? I paid it by
instalments (for all my money is settled on Jemima); and Castlereagh,
who's an honourable fellow, offered me any satisfaction in life. Anyhow,
he couldn't do more than THAT.”
“Of course not: and now you're friends?”
“Yes, and he and his aunt have had a tiff, too; and he abuses her
properly, I warrant ye. He says that she carried about Jemima from place
to place, and flung her at the head of every unmarried man in England
a'most--my poor Jemima, and she all the while dying in love with me!
As soon as she got over the small-pox--she took it at Fermoy--God bless
her, I wish I'd been by to be her nurse-tender--as soon as she was
rid of it, the old lady said to Castlereagh, 'Castlereagh, go to the
bar'cks, and find out in the Army List where the 120th is.' Off she came
to Cork hot foot. It appears that while she was ill, Jemima's love for
me showed itself in such a violent way that her mother was overcome, and
promised that, should the dear child recover, she would try and bring us
together. Castlereagh says she would have gone after us to Jamaica.”
“I have no doubt she would,” said I.
“Could you have a stronger proof of love than that?” cried Dennis. “My
dear girl's illness and frightful blindness have, of course, injured her
health and her temper. She cannot in her position look to the children,
you know, and so they come under my charge for the most part; and her
temper is unequal, certainly. But you see what a sensitive, refined,
elegant creature she is, and may fancy that she's often put out by a
rough fellow like me.”
Here Dennis left me, saying it was time to go and walk out the children;
and I think his story has matter of some wholesome reflection in it for
bachelors who are about to change their condition, or may console some
who are mourning their celibacy. Marry, gentlemen, if you like; leave
your comfortable dinner at the club for cold-mutton and curl-papers at
your home; give up your books or pleasures, and take to yourselves wives
and children; but think well on what you do first, as I have no doubt
you will after this advice and example. Advice is always useful in
matters of love; men always take it; they always follow other people's
opinions, not their own: they always profit by example. When they see a
pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them,
they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money,
or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this
way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and
conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would
have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is
not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is
only fools who defy him.
I must come, however, to the last, and perhaps the saddest, part of poor
Denny Haggarty's history. I met him once more, and in such a condition
as made me determine to write this history.
In the month of June last I happened to be at Richmond, a delightful
little place of retreat; and there, sunning himself upon the terrace,
was my old friend of the 120th: he looked older, thinner, poorer,
and more wretched than I had ever seen him. “What! you have given up
Kingstown?” said I, shaking him by the hand.
“Yes,” says he.
“And is my lady and your family here at Richmond?”
“No,” says he, with a sad shake of the head; and the poor fellow's
hollow eyes filled with tears.
“Good heavens, Denny! what's the matter?” said I. He was squeezing my
hand like a vice as I spoke.
“They've LEFT me!” he burst out with a dreadful shout of passionate
grief--a horrible scream which seemed to be wrenched out of his heart.
“Left me!” said he, sinking down on a seat, and clenching his great
fists, and shaking his lean arms wildly. “I'm a wise man now, Mr.
Fitz-Boodle. Jemima has gone away from me, and yet you know how I loved
her, and how happy we were! I've got nobody now; but I'll die soon,
that's one comfort: and to think it's she that'll kill me after all!”
The story, which he told with a wild and furious lamentation such as is
not known among men of our cooler country, and such as I don't like now
to recall, was a very simple one. The mother-in-law had taken possession
of the house, and had driven him from it. His property at his marriage
was settled on his wife. She had never loved him, and told him this
secret at last, and drove him out of doors with her selfish scorn and
ill-temper. The boy had died; the girls were better, he said, brought up
among the Molloys than they could be with him; and so he was quite alone
in the world, and was living, or rather dying, on forty pounds a year.
His troubles are very likely over by this time. The two fools who caused
his misery will never read this history of him; THEY never read godless
stories in magazines: and I wish, honest reader, that you and I went to
church as much as they do. These people are not wicked BECAUSE of
their religious observances, but IN SPITE of them. They are too dull to
understand humility, too blind to see a tender and simple heart under
a rough ungainly bosom. They are sure that all their conduct towards my
poor friend here has been perfectly righteous, and that they have given
proofs of the most Christian virtue. Haggarty's wife is considered by
her friends as a martyr to a savage husband, and her mother is the angel
that has come to rescue her. All they did was to cheat him and desert
him. And safe in that wonderful self-complacency with which the fools
of this earth are endowed, they have not a single pang of conscience for
their villany towards him, consider their heartlessness as a proof and
consequence of their spotless piety and virtue.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: The words of this song are copyright, nor will the
copyright be sold for less than twopence-halfpenny.]
[Footnote 2: A French proverbe furnished the author with the notion of
the rivalry between the Barber and the Tailor.]
[Footnote 3: As it is very probable that many fair readers may not
approve of the extremely forcible language in which the combat is
depicted, I beg them to skip it and pass on to the next chapter, and to
remember that it has been modelled on the style of the very best writers
of the sporting papers.]
[Footnote 4: Every person who has lived abroad can, of course, point out
a score of honourable exceptions to the case above hinted at, and knows
many such unions in which it is the Frenchman who honours the English
lady by marrying her. But it must be remembered that marrying in France
means commonly fortune-hunting: and as for the respect in which marriage
is held in France, let all the French novels in M. Rolandi's library be
perused by those who wish to come to a decision upon the question.]
End of Project Gutenberg's Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray