Mary, the heroine of this fiction, was the daughter of Edward, who
married Eliza, a gentle, fashionable girl, with a kind of indolence in
her temper, which might be termed negative good-nature: her virtues,
indeed, were all of that stamp. She carefully attended to the _shews_ of
things, and her opinions, I should have said prejudices, were such as
the generality approved of. She was educated with the expectation of a
large fortune, of course became a mere machine: the homage of her
attendants made a great part of her puerile amusements, and she never
imagined there were any relative duties for her to fulfil: notions of
her own consequence, by these means, were interwoven in her mind, and
the years of youth spent in acquiring a few superficial accomplishments,
without having any taste for them. When she was first introduced into
the polite circle, she danced with an officer, whom she faintly wished
to be united to; but her father soon after recommending another in a
more distinguished rank of life, she readily submitted to his will, and
promised to love, honour, and obey, (a vicious fool,) as in duty bound.
While they resided in London, they lived in the usual fashionable style,
and seldom saw each other; nor were they much more sociable when they
wooed rural felicity for more than half the year, in a delightful
country, where Nature, with lavish hand, had scattered beauties around;
for the master, with brute, unconscious gaze, passed them by unobserved,
and sought amusement in country sports. He hunted in the morning, and
after eating an immoderate dinner, generally fell asleep: this
seasonable rest enabled him to digest the cumbrous load; he would then
visit some of his pretty tenants; and when he compared their ruddy glow
of health with his wife's countenance, which even rouge could not
enliven, it is not necessary to say which a _gourmand_ would give the
preference to. Their vulgar dance of spirits were infinitely more
agreeable to his fancy than her sickly, die-away languor. Her voice was
but the shadow of a sound, and she had, to complete her delicacy, so
relaxed her nerves, that she became a mere nothing.
Many such noughts are there in the female world! yet she had a good
opinion of her own merit,--truly, she said long prayers,--and sometimes
read her Week's Preparation: she dreaded that horrid place vulgarly
called _hell_, the regions below; but whether her's was a mounting
spirit, I cannot pretend to determine; or what sort of a planet would
have been proper for her, when she left her _material_ part in this
world, let metaphysicians settle; I have nothing to say to her unclothed
spirit.
As she was sometimes obliged to be alone, or only with her French
waiting-maid, she sent to the metropolis for all the new publications,
and while she was dressing her hair, and she could turn her eyes from
the glass, she ran over those most delightful substitutes for bodily
dissipation, novels. I say bodily, or the animal soul, for a rational
one can find no employment in polite circles. The glare of lights, the
studied inelegancies of dress, and the compliments offered up at the
shrine of false beauty, are all equally addressed to the senses.
When she could not any longer indulge the caprices of fancy one way, she
tried another. The Platonic Marriage, Eliza Warwick, and some other
interesting tales were perused with eagerness. Nothing could be more
natural than the developement of the passions, nor more striking than
the views of the human heart. What delicate struggles! and uncommonly
pretty turns of thought! The picture that was found on a bramble-bush,
the new sensitive-plant, or tree, which caught the swain by the
upper-garment, and presented to his ravished eyes a portrait.--Fatal
image!--It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a
new kind of a knight-errant into the world. But even this was nothing to
the catastrophe, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet
settling on the sleeping lover's face. What a _heart-rending_ accident!
She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but
there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered it
with her tears.--Alas! Alas!
If my readers would excuse the sportiveness of fancy, and give me credit
for genius, I would go on and tell them such tales as would force the
sweet tears of sensibility to flow in copious showers down beautiful
cheeks, to the discomposure of rouge, &c. &c. Nay, I would make it so
interesting, that the fair peruser should beg the hair-dresser to
settle the curls himself, and not interrupt her.
She had besides another resource, two most beautiful dogs, who shared
her bed, and reclined on cushions near her all the day. These she
watched with the most assiduous care, and bestowed on them the warmest
caresses. This fondness for animals was not that kind of
_attendrissement_ which makes a person take pleasure in providing for
the subsistence and comfort of a living creature; but it proceeded from
vanity, it gave her an opportunity of lisping out the prettiest French
expressions of ecstatic fondness, in accents that had never been attuned
by tenderness.
She was chaste, according to the vulgar acceptation of the word, that
is, she did not make any actual _faux pas_; she feared the world, and
was indolent; but then, to make amends for this seeming self-denial, she
read all the sentimental novels, dwelt on the love-scenes, and, had she
thought while she read, her mind would have been contaminated; as she
accompanied the lovers to the lonely arbors, and would walk with them by
the clear light of the moon. She wondered her husband did not stay at
home. She was jealous--why did he not love her, sit by her side, squeeze
her hand, and look unutterable things? Gentle reader, I will tell thee;
they neither of them felt what they could not utter. I will not pretend
to say that they always annexed an idea to a word; but they had none of
those feelings which are not easily analyzed.