I do not know when I have been better pleased than at being invited
last week to be present at the wedding of a friend's daughter. I like
to make one at these ceremonies, which to us old people give back our
youth in a manner, and restore our gayest season, in the remembrance
of our own success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of our own
youthful disappointments, in this point of a settlement. On these
occasions I am sure to be in good-humour for a week or two after, and
enjoy a reflected honey-moon. Being without a family, I am flattered
with these temporary adoptions into a friend's family; I feel a
sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the season; I am inducted
into degrees of affinity; and, in the participated socialities of
the little community, I lay down for a brief while my solitary
bachelorship. I carry this humour so far, that I take it unkindly to
be left out, even when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear
friend. But to my subject.--
The union itself had been long settled, but its celebration had been
hitherto deferred, to an almost unreasonable state of suspense in the
lovers, by some invincible prejudices which the bride's father had
unhappily contracted upon the subject of the too early marriages of
females. He has been lecturing any time these five years--for to
that length the courtship has been protracted--upon the propriety of
putting off the solemnity, till the lady should have completed her
five and twentieth year. We all began to be afraid that a suit, which
as yet had abated of none of its ardours, might at last be lingered
on, till passion had time to cool, and love go out in the experiment.
But a little wheedling on the part of his wife, who was by no means
a party to these overstrained notions, joined to some serious
expostulations on that of his friends, who, from the growing
infirmities of the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves many
years' enjoyment of his company, and were anxious to bring matters to
a conclusion during his life-time, at length prevailed; and on Monday
last the daughter of my old friend, Admiral ---- having attained the
_womanly_ age of nineteen, was conducted to the church by her pleasant
cousin J----, who told some few years older.
Before the youthful part of my female readers express their
indignation at the abominable loss of time occasioned to the lovers
by the preposterous notions of my old friend, they will do well to
consider the reluctance which a fond parent naturally feels at parting
with his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in most cases may
be traced the difference of opinion on this point between child and
parent, whatever pretences of interest or prudence may be held out to
cover it. The hard-heartedness of fathers is a fine theme for romance
writers, a sure and moving topic; but is there not something untender,
to say no more of it, in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes
in to tear herself from the parental stock, and commit herself to
strange graftings? The case is heightened where the lady, as in the
present instance, happens to be an only child. I do not understand
these matters experimentally, but I can make a shrewd guess at
the wounded pride of a parent upon these occasions. It is no new
observation, I believe, that a lover in most cases has no rival so
much to be feared as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy in
_unparallel subjects_, which is little less heart-rending than the
passion which we more strictly christen by that name. Mothers'
scruples are more easily got over; for this reason, I suppose, that
the protection transferred to a husband is less a derogation and a
loss to their authority than to the paternal. Mothers, besides, have a
trembling foresight, which paints the inconveniences (impossible to be
conceived in the same degree by the other parent) of a life of forlorn
celibacy, which the refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon
their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here, than the cold
reasonings of a father on such a topic. To this instinct may be
imputed, and by it alone may be excused, the unbeseeming artifices, by
which some wives push on the matrimonial projects of their daughters,
which the husband, however approving, shall entertain with comparative
indifference. A little shamelessness on this head is pardonable.
With this explanation, forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal
importunity receives the name of a virtue.--But the parson stays,
while I preposterously assume his office; I am preaching, while the
bride is on the threshold.
Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the sage reflections
which have just escaped me have the obliquest tendency of application
to the young lady, who, it will be seen, is about to venture upon a
change in her condition, at a _mature and competent age_, and not
without the fullest approbation of all parties. I only deprecate _very
hasty marriages_.
It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone through at an early
hour, to give time for a little _déjeuné_ afterwards, to which a
select party of friends had been invited. We were in church a little
before the clock struck eight.
Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the dress of the
bride-maids--the three charming Miss Foresters--on this morning. To
give the bride an opportunity of shining singly, they had come habited
all in green. I am ill at describing female apparel; but, while _she_
stood at the altar in vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a
sacrificial whiteness, _they_ assisted in robes, such as might become
Diana's nymphs--Foresters indeed--as such who had not yet come to the
resolution of putting off cold virginity. These young maids, not being
so blest as to have a mother living, I am told, keep single for their
father's sake, and live altogether so happy with their remaining
parent, that the hearts of their lovers are ever broken with the
prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted
and provoking home-comfort. Gallant girls! each a victim worthy of
Iphigenia!
I do not know what business I have to be present in solemn places. I
cannot divest me of an unseasonable disposition to levity upon the
most awful occasions. I was never cut out for a public functionary.
Ceremony and I have long shaken hands; but I could not resist the
importunities of the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily
confined him at home, to act as parent on this occasion, and _give
away the bride._ Something ludicrous occurred to me at this most
serious of all moments--a sense of my unfitness to have the disposal,
even in imagination, of the sweet young creature beside me. I fear I
was betrayed to some lightness, for the awful eye of the parson--and
the rector's eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a
rebuke--was upon me in an instant, souring my incipient jest to the
tristful severities of a funeral.
This was the only misbehaviour which I can plead to upon this solemn
occasion, unless what was objected to me after the ceremony by one of
the handsome Miss T----s, be accounted a solecism. She was pleased to
say that she had never seen a gentleman before me give away a bride in
black. Now black has been my ordinary apparel so long--indeed I take
it to be the proper costume of an author--the stage sanctions it--that
to have appeared in some lighter colour would have raised more mirth
at my expense, than the anomaly had created censure. But I could
perceive that the bride's mother, and some elderly ladies present (God
bless them!) would have been well content, if I had come in any other
colour than that. But I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which
I remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, of all the birds
being invited to the linnets' wedding, at which, when all the rest
came in their gayest feathers, the raven alone apologised for his
cloak because "he had no other." This tolerably reconciled the elders.
But with the young people all was merriment, and shakings of hands,
and congratulations, and kissing away the bride's tears, and kissings
from her in return, till a young lady, who assumed some experience in
these matters, having worn the nuptial bands some four or five weeks
longer than her friend, rescued her, archly observing, with half an
eye upon the bridegroom, that at this rate she would have "none left."
My friend the admiral was in fine wig and buckle on this occasion--a
striking contrast to his usual neglect of personal appearance. He did
not once shove up his borrowed locks (his custom ever at his morning
studies) to betray the few grey stragglers of his own beneath them.
He wore an aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the
hour, which at length approached, when after a protracted _breakfast_
of three hours--if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes,
dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c., can deserve so meagre an
appellation--the coach was announced, which was come to carry off the
bride and bridegroom for a season, as custom has sensibly ordained,
into the country; upon which design, wishing them a felicitous
journey, let us return to the assembled guests.
As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
The eyes of men
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when the chief
performers in the morning's pageant had vanished. None told his tale.
None sipt her glass. The poor Admiral made an effort--it was not much.
I had anticipated so far. Even the infinity of full satisfaction, that
had betrayed itself through the prim looks and quiet deportment of his
lady, began to wane into something of misgiving. No one knew whether
to take their leaves or stay. We seemed assembled upon a silly
occasion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must do
justice to a foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise like to
have brought me into disgrace in the fore-part of the day; I mean a
power, in any emergency, of thinking and giving vent to all manner
of strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma I found it sovereign. I
rattled off some of my most excellent absurdities. All were willing
to be relieved, at any expense of reason, from the pressure of the
intolerable vacuum which had succeeded to the morning bustle. By this
means I was fortunate in keeping together the better part of the
company to a late hour: and a rubber of whist (the Admiral's favourite
game) with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, which came
opportunely on his side--lengthened out till midnight--dismissed the
old gentleman at last to his bed with comparatively easy spirits.
I have been at my old friend's various times since. I do not know a
visiting place where every guest is so perfectly at his ease; nowhere,
where harmony is so strangely the result of confusion. Every body is
at cross purposes, yet the effect is so much better than uniformity.
Contradictory orders; servants pulling one way; master and mistress
driving some other, yet both diverse; visitors huddled up in corners;
chairs unsymmetrised; candles disposed by chance; meals at odd hours,
tea and supper at once, or the latter preceding the former; the host
and the guest conferring, yet each upon a different topic, each
understanding himself, neither trying to understand or hear the
other; draughts and politics, chess and political economy, cards and
conversation on nautical matters, going on at once, without the hope,
or indeed the wish, of distinguishing them, make it altogether the
most perfect _concordia discors_ you shall meet with. Yet somehow the
old house is not quite what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys
his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it for him. The instrument
stands where it stood, but she is gone, whose delicate touch could
sometimes for a short minute appease the warring elements. He has
learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to "make his destiny his choice." He
bears bravely up, but he does not come out with his flashes of wild
wit so thick as formerly. His sea songs seldomer escape him. His wife,
too, looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold and set to
rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is wonderful how one young
maiden freshens up, and keeps green, the paternal roof. Old and young
seem to have an interest in her, so long as she is not absolutely
disposed of. The youthfulness of the house is flown. Emily is married.