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DISCOVERING “EVELINA”
F. FRANKFORT MOORE
DISCOVERING
“EVELINA”
_AN OLD-FASHIONED ROMANCE_
A COMPANION BOOK TO
“THE JESSAMY BRIDE”
BY
F. FRANKFORT MOORE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1913
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
DISCOVERING “EVELINA”
CHAPTER I
“Indeed, I am not quite assured in my mind that the influence of Mr.
Garrick upon such a family as ours is healthy,” said Mrs. Burney, when
the breakfast cups had been removed and the maid had left the room in the
little house in St. Martin’s Street, off Leicester Fields. Dr. Burney,
the music-master, had not to hurry away this day: his first lesson did
not begin until noon; it was to be given at the mansion of Mr. Thrale,
the brewer, at Streatham, and the carriage was not to call for him
for another hour. He was glancing at the _Advertiser_ in unaccustomed
indolence, but when his wife had spoken he glanced up from the paper and
an expression of amused surprise was upon his face. His daughter Fanny
glanced up from the work-basket which her mother had placed ready for her
the moment that the breakfast-table had been cleared, and the expression
upon little Miss Burney’s face was one that had something of fright in
it. She was too short-sighted to see the wink which her brother James,
lieutenant in His Majesty’s navy, gave her, for their stepmother had her
back turned to him. But Mrs. Burney, without seeing him, knew that, as he
himself would phrase it, he had tipped Fanny a wink. She turned quickly
round upon him, and if she had previously any doubt on this point, it was
at once dispelled by the solemnity of his face.
Dr. Burney gave a laugh.
“The influence of Mr. Garrick is like that of the air we breathe,” said
he. “It is not to be resisted by the age we live in, leaving family
matters out of the question altogether: the Burney family must inhale as
much of the spirit of Mr. Garrick as the rest of the town—they cannot
help themselves, _ces pauvres Burneys!_ they cannot live without Mr.
Garrick.”
Mrs. Burney shook her head solemnly; so did Lieutenant James Burney, for
he had all his life been under the influence of Mr. Garrick, when the
atmosphere brought by Mr. Garrick was one of comedy.
“My meaning is that Mr. Garrick is not content to allow simple people
such as ourselves to live as simple people,” said Mrs. Burney. “I protest
that I have felt it; the moment he enters our house we seem to be in a
new world—whatsoever world it is his whim to carry us to.”
“That is the truth, my dear—he can do what he pleases with us and with
all the thousands who have flocked to his playhouse since his Goodman’s
Fields days—he has made a fortune as a courier; transporting people to
another world for an hour or two every night—a world that is less humdrum
than this in which four beats go to every bar and every crotchet goes
to a beat! Dear soul! he has made our hearts beat at times beyond all
computation of time and space.”
“You will herring-bone the edges neatly, Fanny; I noticed some lack of
neatness in the last of the napery that left your hand, my dear,” said
Mrs. Burney, bending over her stepdaughter at her work-basket; and,
indeed, it seemed that the caution was not unnecessary, for Fanny’s eyes
were gleaming and she was handling her work with as great indifference
(for the moment) as though she esteemed plain sewing something of
drudgery rather than a delight. And now, having administered her timely
caution, the good lady turned to her husband, saying:
“To my mind what you have claimed for Mr. Garrick but adds emphasis to
my contention that his visits have a disturbing influence upon a homely
family, taking them out of themselves, so to speak, and transporting
them far beyond the useful work of their daily life. I have noticed with
pain for some time past that Fanny’s heart has not been in her work:
her cross-stitch has been wellnigh slovenly, and her herring-boning has
really been indifferent—I say it with sorrow; but dear Fanny is too good
a girl to take offence at my strictures, which she knows are honest and
meant for her good.”
“Madam,” said Lieutenant Burney, “I pray you to give me leave to bear
you out; but at the same time to make excuses for Fan. I must do so in
justice to her, for the blame rests with me so far as the herring-boning
is concerned. I confess, with tears in my eyes, that ’twas I who provided
her with the last models for her herring-boning; and ’twas surely some
demon in my breast that prompted me to substitute the skeleton of one
of the South Sea fishes which I hooked when becalmed with Captain Cook
within sight of Otaheite, for the true herring whose backbone is a
model of regularity to be followed by all workers with the needle, when
deprived of the flesh, which is the staple fare of hundreds of honest
families and, while nourishing them amply, prevents their thoughts from
carrying them beyond the region pervaded by the smell of their cooking.”
“That were a wide enough area upon occasions for the most ambitious of
thinkers,” said Dr. Burney, controlling his features, seeing that his
wife took the ward-room humour of his son with dreadful seriousness. He
made a sign to James to go no further—but James had gone round the world
once, and he was not to be checked in a humbler excursion.
“Yes, madam, ’tis my duty to confess that Fanny’s model was the
flying-fish, and not the simple Channel herring, hence the failure to
achieve the beautiful regularity of design which exists in the backbone
of the latter from the figurehead to the stern, larboard sloping in one
direction and starboard in the other. If anyone be culpable ’tis myself,
not Fanny; but I throw myself on your mercy, and only implore that the
herring-boning of my sister will not result in a whaling for me.”
Mrs. Burney looked seriously from her brother to Fanny, and getting no
cue from either, began:
“’Tis indeed honourable for you to endeavour by your confession to excuse
the fault of your sister, James—”
“The traditions of the service, madam—” began the lieutenant, laying
his hand on his heart; but he got no further, for Fanny could restrain
herself no longer; she burst into a laugh and dropped her work, and her
father rose, holding up his hand.
“The jest has gone far enough, James,” he said. “We sleep in beds in this
house and do not swing in hammocks. Keep your deep-sea jests until you
are out of soundings, if it please you.”
“I ask your pardon, sir,” said James; “but i’ faith there’s many a
true word said in jest; and it seems to me that there’s a moral in the
parable of the young woman who took the flying-fish of the South Seas for
her model rather than the herring of the three-fathom coastline of the
Channel; and that moral touches close upon the complaint made by our good
mother against Mr. Garrick.”
“Let it be so,” said Mrs. Burney, who was a clever enough woman to
perceive that it would be unwise to make a grievance of the impudence of
a young naval gentleman. “Let it be so; let it be that we are simple,
homely, wholesome herrings, we are none the better for such a flying-fish
as Mr. Garrick coming among us, giving us, it may be, the notion that
our poor fins are wings, and so urging us to make fools of ourselves by
emulating the eagle. The moral of your fable is that we should keep to
our own element—is not that so, sir?”
“I’ faith, madam, I am not sure but that ’tis so, and I haul down my
colours to you, and feel no dishonour in the act,” cried James. “Lord,
where should we all be to-day if it were not for the good women who hold
fast to the old traditions of the distaff and needle? They are the women
who do more for the happiness of men than all who pass their time dipping
quills in inkhorns or daubing paint upon good canvas that might with
luck be hung from a stunsail boom and add another knot to the log of a
frigate of seventy-two! Is there anyone who dines at the table of Sir
Joshua Reynolds round the corner that does not wish with all his heart
that his sister would sell her palette and buy a wine-glass or two with
the proceeds? Why, when we went to dinner at Sir Joshua’s yesterday there
were not enough glasses to go round the table.”
“There never are—that is well known,” said Mrs. Burney.
“Nay, nay; let us take to ourselves the reproof of Dr. Johnson to Mr.
Boswell when he complained, loud enough almost for Sir Joshua himself to
hear him, about the scarcity of service. ‘Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘some
who have the privilege of sitting at this table, and you are one of
them, sir, will be wiser if they keep their ears open and their mouths
shut than they would if they had the means of drinking all that you are
longing to drink.’”
“Mr. Boswell, in spite of the reproof, contrived to lurch from the table
with more wine than wisdom ’tween decks,” remarked James.
“He must have found a wine-glass,” said Miss Susy Burney, who had been
quite silent but quite attentive to every word that had been spoken since
breakfast-time.
“And so the honour of Mrs. Reynolds’s housekeeping is saved,” said Dr.
Burney.
“Nay, sir, is not Mr. Boswell a Scotsman?” cried the irrepressible James.
“That is his lifelong sorrow, since he fancies it to be an insuperable
barrier between his idol, Dr. Johnson, and himself,” replied his father.
“But how does his Scotsmanship bear upon the wine-glass question?”
“Ah, sir, without being versed in the subtleties of theology I make bold
to think that Father Adam did not suffer hunger until knives and forks
were invented,” said James. “Your drouthy Scot will drink straight from
the bottle if no beaker be at hand. Oh, why was not Mr. Garrick at Sir
Joshua’s to rouse our spirits by his imitation of Mr. Boswell seeking for
a wine-glass—and after?”
“Mr. Boswell is too trivial a subject for Davy: I have seen him take off
Dr. Johnson mixing a bowl of punch until I was like to die of laughter. I
protest that when he came to the squeezing of the imaginary lemon, while
he cried out in the Doctor’s broadest Lichfield, ‘Who’s for poonch?’
I could smell the acid juice,” said Dr. Burney, and he laughed at the
recollection of Garrick’s fooling.
The naval man gave a resounding nautical smack to his thigh.
“That is what ’tis to be a sailor,” he cried. “I have had no chance of
seeing Mr. Garrick at his best. I should dearly like to hear him take
off Mr. Boswell when three sheets in the wind. Why was he not with us
yesterday?”
“Mr. Garrick himself has had a drinking bout on. He has been at the Wells
for the past fortnight,” said his father.
“_Ecce signum!_” came a doleful voice from the door, and a little man
slowly put round the jamb a face bearing such an expression of piteous
nausea as caused everyone in the room—not even excepting Mrs. Burney—to
roar with laughter—uncontrollable laughter.
Then the expression on the little man’s face changed to one of surprised
indignation. He crept into the room and looked at every person therein
with a different expression on his face for each—a variation of his
original expression of disgust and disappointment mingled with doleful
reproof. It seemed as if it was not a single person who had entered the
room, but half a dozen persons—a whole doleful and disappointed family
coming upon an unsympathetic crew convulsed with hilarity.
And then he shook his head sadly.
“And these are the people who have just heard that I have been taking the
nauseous waters of Tunbridge Wells for a whole fortnight,” and there was
a break in his voice. “Oh, Friendship, are thou but a name? Oh, Sympathy,
art thou but a mask? Is the world of sentiment nothing more than a world
of shadows? Have all the sweet springs of compassion dried up, leaving us
nothing but the cataracts of chalybeate to nauseate the palate?”
He looked round once more, and putting the tips of his fingers together,
glanced sadly up to the ceiling, then sighed and turned as if to leave
the room.
“Nay, sir,” cried Dr. Burney, “I do not believe that the chalybeate
cataracts still flow: ’tis my firm belief, from the expression of your
face, that you have swallowed the whole spring—the Wells of Tunbridge
must have been dried up by you before you left—your face betrays you.
I vow that so chalybeate an expression could not be attained by lesser
means.”
“Sir, you do me honour, and you have a larger faith in me than my own
physician,” said the little man, brightening up somewhat. “Would you
believe that he had the effrontery to accuse me of shirking the hourly
pailful that he prescribed for me?”
“He had not seen you as we have, Mr. Garrick,” said Dr. Burney.
“He accused me of spending my days making matches and making mischief in
the Assembly Rooms and only taking the waters by sips—me, sir, that have
so vivid a memory of Mr. Pope’s immortal lines:
A little sipping is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep or taste not the chalybeate spring!”
“You were traduced, my friend—but tell us of the matches and the mischief
and we shall be the more firmly convinced of your integrity.”
“Nay, sir; I give you my word that ’twas but the simplest of matches—not
by any means of the sort that yonder desperado fresh from the South
Seas applies to the touch-hole of one of his horrible ten-pounders when
the enemy’s frigate has to be sunk—nay, a simple little match with no
more powder for it to burn than may be found on the wig of a gentleman
of fifty-two and on the face of a lady of forty-five—the one a gay
bachelor, t’other a ripe widow—‘made for one another,’ said I; and where
was the mischief in that? And if I ventured to broach the subject of
the appropriateness of the union of the twain, and to boast under the
inspiring influence of the chalybeate spring that I could bring it about,
is there anyone that will hint that I was not acting out of pure good
nature and a desire to make two worthy folk happy—as happy as marriage
can make any two—”
“Give us their names, sir, and let us judge on that basis,” said Dr.
Burney.
“I have no desire to withhold them, my dear Doctor; for I want you to
back me up, and I am sure that—oh, Lord! here comes the man himself. For
the love of heaven, back me up, Doctor, and all will be well.”
“Nay, I will not be dragged by the hair of the head into any of your
plots, my friend,” cried Burney. “Nay, not I. I have some reputation to
maintain, good friend Garrick; you must play alone the part of Puck that
you have chosen for yourself this many a year. Think not that you will
induce me to study the character under you, and so thus—”
The manservant threw open the door of the room, announcing:
“Mr. Kendal to wait upon you, sir.”
But by the time a small and rather rotund gentleman had been ushered into
the room, Mr. Garrick was apparently engaged in an animated conversation
with Miss Burney on the subject of the table-cover at which she was
working.