_For the Table Book._
There is a story in the Rambler of a lady whom the great moralist calls
Althea, who perversely destroyed all the satisfaction of a party of
pleasure, by not only finding, but seeking for fault upon every
occasion, and affecting a variety of frivolous fears and apprehensions
without cause. Female follies, like “states and empires, have their
periods of declension;” and nearly half a century has passed away since
it has been deemed elegant, or supposed interesting, to scream at a
spider, shudder in a boat, or assert, with vehemence of terror, that a
gun, though ascertained not to be charged, may still “go off.” The
tendency to fly from one extreme to the other has ever been the
characteristic of weak minds, and the party of weak minds will always
support itself by a considerable majority, both among women and men.
Something may be done by those minor moralists, modestly termed
essayists and novelists, who have brought wisdom and virtue to dwell in
saloons and drawing-rooms. Mrs. H. More and Miss Edgeworth have pretty
well written down the affectation of assuming “the cap, the whip, the
masculine attire,” and the rage for varnishing and shoe-making has of
itself subsided, by the natural effect of total incongruity between the
means and the end. Ladies are now contented to be ladies, that is,
rational beings of the softer sex, and do not affect to be artists or
mechanics. Nevertheless, some peculiarities of affectation do from time
to time shoot up into notice, and call for the pruning-knife of the
friendly satirist.
AGRESTILLA is an agreeable, well-informed person of my own sex, from
whose society I have derived great pleasure and advantage both in London
and Paris. A few weeks since, she proposed to me to accompany her to
spend some time in a small town in Normandy, for the benefit of country
air: to this plan I acceded with great readiness; an apartment was
secured by letter, and we proceeded on our journey.
I have lived too long in the world ever to expect unmixed satisfaction
from any measure, and long enough never to neglect any precaution by
which personal comfort is to be secured. To this effect I had
represented, that perhaps it might be better to delay fixing on lodgings
till we arrived, lest we should find ourselves bounded to the view of a
market-place or narrow street, with, perchance, a butcher’s shop
opposite our windows, and a tin-man or tallow-chandler next door to us.
Agrestilla replied, that in London or Paris it was of course essential
to one’s consideration in society to live in a fashionable
neighbourhood, but that nobody minded those things “in the country.” In
vain I replied, that _consideration_ was not what I considered, but
freedom from noise and bad smells: I was then laughed at for my
fastidiousness,--“Who in the world would make difficulties about such
trifles in the _country_, when one might be out of doors from morning
till night!”
We arrived at the place of our destination; my mind expanded with
pleasure at the sight of large rooms, wide staircases, and windows
affording the prospect of verdure. The stone-floors and the paucity of
window curtains, to say nothing of blinds to exclude the sun, appeared
to me inconveniences to be remedied by the expenditure of a few francs;
but Agrestilla, as pertinacious in her serenity as Althea in her
querulousness, decided that we ought to take things in the rough, and
make anything do “in the country.” Scraps of carpet and ells of muslin
are attainable by unassisted effort, stimulated by necessity, and I
acquired and maintained tolerable ease of mind and body, till we came to
discuss together the grand article of society. My maxim is, the best or
none at all. I love conversation, but hate feasting and visiting.
Agrestilla lays down no maxim, but her practice is, good if possible--if
not, second-best; at all events, a number of guests and frequent
parties. Though she is not vain of her mind or of her person, yet the
display of fine clothes and good dishes, and the secret satisfaction of
shining forth the queen of her company, make up her enjoyment:
Agrestilla’s taste is gregarious. To my extreme sorrow and apprehension,
we received an invitation to dine with a family unknown to me, and
living nine miles off! To refuse was impossible, the plea of
preengagement is inadmissible with people who tell you to “choose your
day,” and as to pretending to be sick, I hold it to be presumptuous and
wicked. The conveyance was to be a cart! the time of departure six in
the morning! Terrified and aghast, I demanded, “How are we to get
through the day?” No work! no books! no subjects of mutual interest to
talk upon!--“Oh! dear me, time soon passes ‘in the country;’ we shall be
three hours going, the roads are very bad, then comes breakfast, and
then walking round the garden, and then dinner and coming home early.”
This invitation hung over my mind like an incubus,--like an eye-tooth
firm in the head to be wrenched out,--like settling-day to a defaulter,
or auricular confession to a ceremonious papist and bad liver. My only
hope was in the weather. The clouds seemed to be for ever filling and
for ever emptying, like the pitchers of the Danaides. The street, court,
and garden became all impassable, without the loan of Celestine’s
_sabots_ (anglice wooden shoes.) Celestine is a stout Norman girl, who
washes the dishes, and wears a holland-mob and a linsey-woolsey
petticoat. Certainly, thought I, in my foolish security, while this
deluge continues nobody will think of visiting “in the country.” But
vain and illusive was my hope! Agrestilla declared her intention of
keeping her engagement “if it rained cats and dogs;” and the weather
cleared up on the eve of my execution, and smiled in derision of my woe.
The cart came. Jemmy Dawson felt as much anguish in his, but he did not
feel it so long. We were lumbered with inside packages, bundles, boxes,
and baskets, accumulated by Agrestilla; I proposed their being secured
with cords (_lashed_ is the sea-term) to prevent them from rolling
about, crushing our feet and grazing our legs at every jolt.
Agrestilla’s politeness supprest an exclamation of amazement, that
people could mind such trifles “in the country!”--for her part, she
never made difficulties.--Being obliged to maintain the equilibrium of
my person by clinging to each side of the cart with my two hands, I had
much to envy those personages of the Hindû mythology, who are provided
with six or seven arms: as for my bonnet it was crushed into all manner
of shapes, my brain was jarred and concussed into the incapacity to tell
whether six and five make eleven or thirteen, and my feet were “all
murdered,” as the Irish and French say. What exasperated my sufferings
was the reflection on my own folly in incurring so much positive evil,
to pay and receive a mere compliment! Had it been to take a reprieve to
a dear friend going to be hanged, to carry the news of a victory, or
convey a surgeon to the wounded, I should have thought nothing and said
less of the matter; but for a mere dinner among strangers, a long day
without interest and occupation!--really I consider myself as having
half incurred the guilt of suicide. Six or seven times at least, the
horse, painfully dragging us the whole way by the strain of every nerve
and sinew, got stuck in the mud, and was to be flogged till he plunged
out of it. More than once we tottered upon ridges of incrusted mud, when
a very little matter would have turned us over. I say nothing about
_Rut_land--I abhor and disdain a pun--but we did nothing but cross ruts
to avoid puddles, and cross them back again to avoid stones, and the
ruts were all so deep as to leave but one semicircle of the wheel
visible. I never saw such roads--the Colossus of Rhodes would have been
knee-deep in them. At last we arrived--Agrestilla as much out of
patience at my calling it an evil to have my shins bruised black and
blue, while engaged in a party of pleasure “in the country,” as I to
find the expedition all pain and no pleasure. We turned out of the cart
in very bad condition; all our dress “clean put on,” as the housewives
say, rumpled and soiled, our limbs stiff, our faces flushed, and by far
too fevered to eat, and too weary to walk. How I thought, like a
shipwrecked mariner, not upon my own “fireside,” as English novelists
always say, but upon my quiet, comfortable room, books, work,
independence, and _otium_ with or without _dignitate_ (let others decide
that.) Oh! the _fag_ of talking when one has nothing to say, smiling
when one is ready to cry, and accepting civilities when one feels them
all to be inflictions! Of the habits, the manners, the appearance, and
the conversation of our hosts, I will relate nothing; I have eaten their
bread, as the Arabs say, and owe them the tribute of thanks and silence.
Agrestilla was as merry as possible all day; she has lived in the
company of persons of sense and education, but--nobody expects
refinement “in the country!” In vain I expostulate with her, pleading in
excuse of what she terms my fastidiousness, that I cannot change my
fixed notions of elegance, propriety, and comfort, to conform to the
habits of those to whom such terms are as _lingua franca_ to a Londoner,
what he neither understands nor cares for.
It is easy to conform one’s exterior to rural habits, by putting on a
coarse straw hat, thick shoes, and linen gown, but the taste and feeling
of what is right, the mental perception must remain the same. Nothing
can be more surprising to an English resident in a country-town of
France, than the jumble of ranks in society that has taken place since
the revolution. I know a young lady whose education and manners render
her fit for polished society in Paris; her mother goes about in a
woollen jacket, and dresses the dinner, not from necessity, for that I
should make no joke of, but from taste; and is as arrant an old gossip
as ever lolled with both elbows over the counter of a chandler’s
shop.--Her brother is a _garde du corps_, who spends his life in palaces
and drawing-rooms, and she has one cousin a little pastry-cook, and
another a washer-woman.--They have a lodger, a maiden lady, who lives on
six hundred francs per annum, (about twenty-four pounds,) and of course
performs every menial office for herself, and, except on Sundays, looks
like an old weeding-woman; her brother has been a judge, lives in a fine
house, buys books and cultivates exotics. Low company is tiresome in
England, because it is ignorant and stupid; in France it is gross and
disgusting. The notion of being merry and entertaining is to tell gross
stories; the _demoiselles_ sit and say nothing, simper and look pretty:
what a pity it is that time should change them into coarse,
hard-featured _commères_, like their mothers! The way in Normandy is to
dine very early, and remain all the evening in the dinner-room, instead
of going into a fresh apartment to take coffee. Agrestilla does not fail
to conform to the latter plan in Paris, because people of fashion do so,
and Agrestilla is a fashionable woman, but she wonders I should object
to the smell of the dinner “in the country.” I have been strongly
tempted to the crime of sacrilege by robbing the church for wax candles,
none being to be got at “the shop.” My incapacity for rural enjoyments
and simple habits is manifest to Agrestilla, from my absurdly objecting
to the smell of tallow-candles “in the country.” Agrestilla’s rooms are
profusely lighted with wax in Paris, “but nobody thinks of such a thing
‘in the country’ for nearly a month or two,”--as if life were not made
up of months, weeks, and hours!
I am afraid, Mr. Editor, that I may have wearied you by my prolixity,
but since all acumen of taste is to disappear, when we pass the bills of
mortality, I will hope that my communication may prove good enough to be
read--in the _country_.