Man is naturally the most awkward animal that inhales the breath of
life. There is nothing, however simple, which he can perform with the
smallest approach to gracefulness or ease. If he walks,--he hobbles, or
jumps, or limps, or trots, or sidles, or creeps--but creeping, sidling,
limping, hobbling, and jumping, are by no means walking. If he sits,--he
fidgets, twists his legs under his chair, throws his arm over the back
of it, and puts himself into a perspiration, by trying to be at ease. It
is the same in the more complicated operations of life. Behold that
individual on a horse! See with what persevering alacrity he hobbles up
and down from the croupe to the pommel, while his horse goes quietly at
an amble of from four to five miles in the hour. See how his knees,
flying like a weaver's shuttle, from one extremity of the saddle to
another, destroy, in a pleasure-ride from Edinburgh to Roslin, the good,
gray kerseymeres, which were glittering a day or two ago in Scaife and
Willis's shop. The horse begins to gallop--Bless our soul! the gentleman
will decidedly roll off. The reins were never intended to be pulled like
a peal of Bob Majors; your head, my friend ought to be on your own
shoulders, and not poking out between your charger's ears; and your
horse ought to use _its_ exertions to move on, and not you. It is a very
cold day, you have cantered your two miles, and now you are wiping your
brows, as if you had run the distance in half the time on foot.
People think it a mighty easy thing to roll along in a carriage. Step
into this noddy. That creature in the corner is evidently in a state of
such nervous excitement that his body is as immovable as if he had
breakfasted on the kitchen poker; every jolt of the vehicle must give
him a shake like a battering-ram; do you call this coming in to give
yourself a rest? Poor man, your ribs will ache for this for a month to
come! But the other gentleman opposite: see how flexible he has rendered
his body. Every time my venerable friend on the coach-box extends his
twig with a few yards of twine at the end of it, which he denominates "a
whupp," the suddenness of the accelerated motion makes his great, round
head flop from the centre of his short, thick neck, and come with such
violence on the unstuffed back, that his hat is sent down upon the
bridge of his nose with a vehemence which might well nigh carry it away.
Do you say that man is capable of taking a _pleasure_ ride? Before he
has been bumped three miles, every pull of wind will be jerked out of
his body, and by the time he has arrived at Roslin, he will be a dead
man. If that man prospers in the world, he commits suicide the moment he
sets up his carriage.
We go to a ball. Mercy upon us! is this what you call dancing? A man of
thirty years of age, and with legs as thick as a gate-post, stands up in
the middle of the room, and gapes, and fumbles with his gloves, looking
all the time as if he were burying his grandmother. At a given signal,
the unwieldy animal puts himself in motion; he throws out his arms,
crouches up his shoulders, and, without moving a muscle of his face,
kicks out his legs, to the manifest risk of the bystanders, and goes
back to the place puffing and blowing like an otter, after a half-hour's
burst. Is this dancing? Shades of the filial and paternal Vestris! can
this be a specimen of the art which gives elasticity to the most inert
confirmation, which sets the blood glowing with a warm and genial flow,
and makes beauty float before our ravished senses, stealing our
admiration by the gracefulness of each new motion, till at last our
souls thrill to each warning movement, and dissolve into ecstasy and
love?
People seem even to labour to be awkward. One would think a gentleman
might shake hands with a familiar friend without any symptoms of
cubbishness. Not at all. The hand is jerked out by the one with the
velocity of a rocket, and comes so unexpectedly to the length of its
tether, that it nearly dislocates the shoulder bone. There it stands
swaying and clutching at the wind, at the full extent of the arm, while
the other is half poked out, and half drawn in, as if rheumatism
detained the upper moiety and only below the elbow were at liberty to
move. After you have shaken the hand, (but for what reason you squeeze
it, as if it were a sponge, I can by no means imagine,) can you not
withdraw it to your side, and keep it in the station where nature and
comfort alike tell you it ought to be? Do you think your breeches'
pocket the most proper place to push your daddle into? Do you put it
there to guard the solitary half-crown from the rapacity of your friend;
or do you put it across your breast in case of an unexpected winder from
your apparently peaceable acquaintance on the opposite side?
Is it not quite absurd that a man can't even take a glass of wine
without an appearance of infinite difficulty and pain? Eating an egg at
breakfast, we allow, is a difficult operation, but surely a glass of
wine after dinner should be as easy as it is undoubtedly agreeable. The
egg lies under many disadvantages. If you leave the egg-cup on the
table, you have to steady it with the one hand, and carry the floating
nutriment a distance of about two feet with the other, and always in a
confoundedly small spoon, and sometimes with rather unsteady fingers. To
avoid this, you take the egg-cup in your hand, and every spoonful have
to lay it down again, in order to help yourself to bread; so, upon the
whole, we disapprove of eggs, unless, indeed, you take them in our old
mode at Oxford; that is two eggs mashed up with every cup of tea, and
purified with a glass of hot rum.
But the glass of wine--can anything be more easy? One would think
not--but if you take notice next time you empty a gallon with a friend,
you will see that, sixteen to one, he makes the most convulsive efforts
to do with ease what a person would naturally suppose was the easiest
thing in the world. Do you see, in the first place, how hard he grasps
the decanter, leaving the misty marks of five hot fingers on the
glittering crystal, which ought to be pure as Cornelia's fame? Then
remark at what an acute angle he holds his right elbow as if he were
meditating an assault on his neighbour's ribs; then see how he claps the
bottle down again as if his object were to shake the pure ichor, and
make it muddy as his own brains. Mark how the animal seizes his
glass,--by heavens he will break it into a thousand fragments! See how
he bows his lubberly head to meet half way the glorious cargo; how he
slobbers the beverage over his unmeaning gullet, and chucks down the
glass so as almost to break its stem after he has emptied it of its
contents as if they had been jalap or castor-oil! Call you that taking a
glass of wine? Sir, it is putting wine into your gullet as you would put
small beer into a barrel,--but it is not--oh, no! it is not taking, so
as to enjoy, a glass of red, rich port, or glowing, warm, tinted,
beautiful caveza!
A newly married couple are invited to a wedding dinner. Though the lady,
perhaps, has run off with a person below her in rank and station, see
when they enter the room, how differently they behave.--How gracefully
she waves her head in the fine recover from the withdrawing curtsy, and
beautifully extends her hand to the bald-pated individual grinning to
her on the rug! While the poor spoon, her husband, looks on, with the
white of his eyes turned up as if he were sea-sick, and his hands dangle
dangle on his thighs as if he were trying to lift his own legs. See how
he ducks to the lady of the house, and simpers across the fire-place to
his wife, who, by this time is giving a most spirited account of the
state of the roads, and the civility of the postilions near the Borders.
Is a man little? Let him always, if possible, stoop. We are sometimes
tempted to lay sprawling in the mud fellows of from five feet to five
feet eight, who carry the back of their heads on the extreme summit of
their back-bone, and gape up to heaven as if they scorned the very
ground. Let no little man wear iron heels. When we visit a friend of
ours in Queen-street we are disturbed from our labours or conversation
by a sound which resembles the well-timed marching of a file of infantry
or a troop of dismounted dragoons. We hobble as fast as possible to the
window, and are sure to see some chappie of about five feet high
stumping on the pavement with his most properly named cuddy-heels; and
we stake our credit, we never yet heard a similar clatter from any of
his majesty's subjects of a rational and gentlemanly height--We mean
from five feet eleven (our own height) up to six feet three.
Is a man tall? Let him never wear a surtout. It is the most unnatural,
and therefore the most awkward dress that ever was invented. On a tall
man, if he be thin, it appears like a cossack-trouser on a stick leg; if
it be buttoned, it makes his leanness and lankness still more appalling
and absurd; if it be open, it appears to be no part of his costume, and
leads us to suppose that some elongated habit-maker is giving us a
specimen of that rare bird, the flying tailor.
We go on a visit to the country for a few days, and the neighbourhood is
famous for its beautiful prospects. Though, for our own individual
share, we would rather go to the catacombs alone, than to a splendid
view in a troop, we hate to balk young people! and as even now a
walking-stick chair is generally carried along for our behoof, we seldom
or ever remain at home when all the rest of the party trudge off to some
"bushy bourne or mossy dell." On these occasions how infinitely superior
the female is to the male part of the species! The ladies, in a quarter
of an hour after the proposal of the ploy, appear all in readiness to
start, each with her walking-shoes and parasol, with a smart reticule
dangling from her wrist. The gentlemen, on the other hand, get off with
their great, heavy Wellingtons, which, after walking half a mile, pinch
them at the toe, and make the pleasure excursion confine them to the
house for weeks. Then some fool, the first gate or stile we come to, is
sure to show off his vaulting, and upsets himself in the ditch on the
opposite side, instead of going quietly over and helping the damosels
across. And then, if he does attempt the polite, how awkwardly the
monster makes the attempt! We come to a narrow ditch with a plank across
it--He goes only half way, and standing in the middle of the plank,
stretches out his hand and pulls the unsuspecting maiden so forcibly,
that before he has time to get out of the way, the impetus his own tug
has produced, precipitates them both among the hemlock and nettles,
which, you may lay it down as a general rule, are to be found at the
thoroughfares in every field.
We hold that every man behaves with awkwardness when he is in love, and
the want of the one is a presumption of the absence of the other. When
people are fairly engaged, there is perhaps less of this directly _to
the object_, but there is still as much of it in her presence; but it is
wonderful how soon the most nervous become easy when marriage has
concluded all their hopes. Delicate girl! just budding into womanly
loveliness, whose heart, for the last ten minutes, has been trembling
behind the snowy wall of thy fair and beautiful bosom, hast thou never
remarked and laughed at a tall and much-be-whiskered young man for the
_mauvaise honte_ with which he hands to thee thy cup of half-watered
souchong? Laugh not at him again, for he will assuredly be thy husband.
Love, when successful is well enough, and perhaps it has treasures of
its own to compensate for its inconveniences; but a more miserable
situation than that of an unhappy individual before the altar, it is not
in the heart of man to conceive. First of all, you are marched with a
solitary male companion up the long aisle, which on this occasion
appears absolutely interminable; then you meet your future partner
dressed out in satin and white ribbons, whom you are sure to meet in
gingham gowns or calico prints, every morning of your life ever after.
There she is, supported by her old father, decked out in his
old-fashioned brown coat, with a wig of the same colour, beautifully
relieving the burning redness of his huge projecting ears; and the
mother, puffed up like an overgrown bolster, encouraging the trembling
girl, and joining her maiden aunts of full fifty years, in telling her
to take courage, for it is what they must all come to. Bride's-maids and
mutual friends make up the company; and there, standing out before this
assemblage, you assent to everything the curate, or, if you are rich
enough, the rector, or even the dean, may say, shewing your knock-knees
in the naked deformity of white kerseymeres, to an admiring bevy of the
servants of both families, laughing and tittering from the squire's pew
in the gallery. Then the parting!--The mother's injunctions to the
juvenile bride to guard herself from the cold, and to write within the
week. The maiden aunts' inquiries, of, "My dear, have you forgot
nothing?"--the shaking of hands, the wiping and winking of eyes! By
Hercules!--there is but one situation more unpleasant _in_ this world,
and that is, bidding adieu to your friends, the ordinary and jailor,
preparatory to swinging from the end of a halter _out_ of it. The lady
all this time seems not half so awkward. She has her gown to keep from
creasing, her vinaigrette to play with; besides, that all her
nervousness is interesting and feminine, and is laid to the score of
delicacy and reserve.
_Blackwood's Magazine_.
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