THE formal couple are the most prim, cold, immovable, and unsatisfactory
people on the face of the earth. Their faces, voices, dress, house,
furniture, walk, and manner, are all the essence of formality, unrelieved
by one redeeming touch of frankness, heartiness, or nature.
Everything with the formal couple resolves itself into a matter of form.
They don’t call upon you on your account, but their own; not to see how
you are, but to show how they are: it is not a ceremony to do honour to
you, but to themselves,—not due to your position, but to theirs. If one
of a friend’s children die, the formal couple are as sure and punctual in
sending to the house as the undertaker; if a friend’s family be
increased, the monthly nurse is not more attentive than they. The formal
couple, in fact, joyfully seize all occasions of testifying their
good-breeding and precise observance of the little usages of society; and
for you, who are the means to this end, they care as much as a man does
for the tailor who has enabled him to cut a figure, or a woman for the
milliner who has assisted her to a conquest.
Having an extensive connexion among that kind of people who make
acquaintances and eschew friends, the formal gentleman attends from time
to time a great many funerals, to which he is formally invited, and to
which he formally goes, as returning a call for the last time. Here his
deportment is of the most faultless description; he knows the exact pitch
of voice it is proper to assume, the sombre look he ought to wear, the
melancholy tread which should be his gait for the day. He is perfectly
acquainted with all the dreary courtesies to be observed in a
mourning-coach; knows when to sigh, and when to hide his nose in the
white handkerchief; and looks into the grave and shakes his head when the
ceremony is concluded, with the sad formality of a mute.
‘What kind of funeral was it?’ says the formal lady, when he returns
home. ‘Oh!’ replies the formal gentleman, ‘there never was such a gross
and disgusting impropriety; there were no feathers.’ ‘No feathers!’
cries the lady, as if on wings of black feathers dead people fly to
Heaven, and, lacking them, they must of necessity go elsewhere. Her
husband shakes his head; and further adds, that they had seed-cake
instead of plum-cake, and that it was all white wine. ‘All white wine!’
exclaims his wife. ‘Nothing but sherry and madeira,’ says the husband.
‘What! no port?’ ‘Not a drop.’ No port, no plums, and no feathers!
‘You will recollect, my dear,’ says the formal lady, in a voice of
stately reproof, ‘that when we first met this poor man who is now dead
and gone, and he took that very strange course of addressing me at dinner
without being previously introduced, I ventured to express my opinion
that the family were quite ignorant of etiquette, and very imperfectly
acquainted with the decencies of life. You have now had a good
opportunity of judging for yourself, and all I have to say is, that I
trust you will never go to a funeral _there_ again.’ ‘My dear,’ replies
the formal gentleman, ‘I never will.’ So the informal deceased is cut in
his grave; and the formal couple, when they tell the story of the
funeral, shake their heads, and wonder what some people’s feelings _are_
made of, and what their notions of propriety _can_ be!
If the formal couple have a family (which they sometimes have), they are
not children, but little, pale, sour, sharp-nosed men and women; and so
exquisitely brought up, that they might be very old dwarfs for anything
that appeareth to the contrary. Indeed, they are so acquainted with
forms and conventionalities, and conduct themselves with such strict
decorum, that to see the little girl break a looking-glass in some wild
outbreak, or the little boy kick his parents, would be to any visitor an
unspeakable relief and consolation.
The formal couple are always sticklers for what is rigidly proper, and
have a great readiness in detecting hidden impropriety of speech or
thought, which by less scrupulous people would be wholly unsuspected.
Thus, if they pay a visit to the theatre, they sit all night in a perfect
agony lest anything improper or immoral should proceed from the stage;
and if anything should happen to be said which admits of a double
construction, they never fail to take it up directly, and to express by
their looks the great outrage which their feelings have sustained.
Perhaps this is their chief reason for absenting themselves almost
entirely from places of public amusement. They go sometimes to the
Exhibition of the Royal Academy;—but that is often more shocking than the
stage itself, and the formal lady thinks that it really is high time Mr.
Etty was prosecuted and made a public example of.
We made one at a christening party not long since, where there were
amongst the guests a formal couple, who suffered the acutest torture from
certain jokes, incidental to such an occasion, cut—and very likely dried
also—by one of the godfathers; a red-faced elderly gentleman, who, being
highly popular with the rest of the company, had it all his own way, and
was in great spirits. It was at supper-time that this gentleman came out
in full force. We—being of a grave and quiet demeanour—had been chosen
to escort the formal lady down-stairs, and, sitting beside her, had a
favourable opportunity of observing her emotions.
We have a shrewd suspicion that, in the very beginning, and in the first
blush—literally the first blush—of the matter, the formal lady had not
felt quite certain whether the being present at such a ceremony, and
encouraging, as it were, the public exhibition of a baby, was not an act
involving some degree of indelicacy and impropriety; but certain we are
that when that baby’s health was drunk, and allusions were made, by a
grey-headed gentleman proposing it, to the time when he had dandled in
his arms the young Christian’s mother,—certain we are that then the
formal lady took the alarm, and recoiled from the old gentleman as from a
hoary profligate. Still she bore it; she fanned herself with an
indignant air, but still she bore it. A comic song was sung, involving a
confession from some imaginary gentleman that he had kissed a female, and
yet the formal lady bore it. But when at last, the health of the
godfather before-mentioned being drunk, the godfather rose to return
thanks, and in the course of his observations darkly hinted at babies yet
unborn, and even contemplated the possibility of the subject of that
festival having brothers and sisters, the formal lady could endure no
more, but, bowing slightly round, and sweeping haughtily past the
offender, left the room in tears, under the protection of the formal
gentleman.