At dinner young Salter was vastly liberal of his father's wine, and
called loud and often for Champaigne, sparkling bumpers of which had
shortly the effect of so raising the spirits of his guests, that they
began their usual merciless quizzing of the Marquis, as they styled
their younger host; for, holding as they did, all the family in
sovereign contempt, the presence of father and sisters was no sort of
check. Indeed they rather seemed to expect that their easy familiarity
would be received as a compliment by the whole domestic circle; nor were
they far wrong in their calculations. Mr. Salter, honest man, thought
that, as he had been at a great expense about his son's education and
travels to foreign parts, it was no wonder that his said son should on
his return home create a very great sensation. As for the young ladies,
they were particularly well pleased; for John's getting so intimate with
men of fashion must, they thought, lead to their receiving more or less
attention.
"You import the silk for your own waistcoats, I suppose, Salter?"
observed Sir William Orm, "there is nothing like it to be had in this
country."
"I heard a lady--a lady of title too--say, no later than last night,"
chimed in Geoffery, "that she would give anything for a pair of slippers
made out of one of the Marquis's waistcoats, they were all so perfectly
beautiful."
"She don't mean to go barefooted till she gets them, I hope," replied
the polite object of this delicate compliment.
"I suspect," said Sir William, "that it is the Marquis's own beauty
which the lady has so associated with the patterns of the silks he wears
that she knows not how to separate the ideas."
"Salter is certainly a fortunate fellow," rejoined Geoffery, "the ladies
all admire him."
"Confess the truth now, Marquis," cried Sir William; "in round numbers
at home and abroad, how many hearts do you think you have broken in your
time?"
"I know better than to kiss and tell," answered young Salter
conceitedly.
"That chain," said Geoffery, "which you wear in such graceful festoons,
Marquis, must be either Venetian or Maltese, the workmanship is so
exquisite. By-the-by, there was a lady last night admiring that too, and
wishing so much you would make her a present of it."
"What," cried Sir William, "the ladies volunteering to wear his chains?
you may well be vain, Marquis."
"They may volunteer to wear this that get it," said young Salter,
looking down at the chain.
"You are a great fool, John," observed his father, "hanging money round
your neck that way, that's paying no interest."
"Pardon me!" interrupted Sir William, "it is interesting to the ladies."
"He will be able to afford it to be sure," continued old Salter, "for
which he may thank an industrious father. Why, gentlemen, when I began
the world--confound it!" he cried, shoving back his chair violently,
"what are you treading on my gouty foot for?"
Miss Salter, who knew too well what was coming, had tried to avert the
impending evil by, not it would seem a gentle hint under the table. It
had for many years of Mr. Salter's life been his boast that he had
earned every shilling of his own fortune. "Any fool might belong to an
old family," he would say, "but a man deserved credit, he thought, who
could make a new one;" which as we have already hinted he was determined
to do, by heaping all his wealth on the noble Marquis. On Mr. Salter's
first coming to Cheltenham, however, his daughters had prevailed on him,
much against his will, to be silent on this favourite topic; while they
had flourished away from morning till night about family--respectable
family--highly respectable family--old family--ancient family; till at
length, by dint of retrograde movements, they had arrived, for aught we
know, at coming in with the conqueror. But, alas, about this time Lady
Flamborough jilted, and Ladies Whaleworthy and Shawbridge cut poor Mr.
Salter, and so put him out of humour with all sorts of quality, as he
called them, that he derived a species of consolation from suffering the
full tide of his old notions to overflow once more both his soul and his
conversation. In vain, therefore, was Miss Salter's hint, as well as
many subsequent interruptions. "When I began the world," he recommenced,
"the young man in the song who had but one sixpence was better off than
I was. My father came by his death in a colliery you see in Cumberland,
and left my poor mother with six of us upon the parish. I was big enough
at the time, I remember, to lead a cart, so was apprenticed to a farmer,
who moving some years after to a farm in Ayrshire, took me with him.
There I picked up the knowledge of Scotch farming that afterwards made
my fortune, and brought me a wife into the bargain, who, were she
living, good woman, wouldn't believe her own eyes, that that there fine
gentleman, and these here fine ladies were her own born children! Look
here to be sure," he continued, pointing to Miss Salter's ornaments,
"such chains, and rings, and bracelets, and nonsense; and if you'll
believe me, gentlemen, the first pair of shoes ever her mother had on
her feet I bought for her at Maybole fair, in Ayrshire. As for
ornaments, we were married with a rush ring, and all the household
furniture we possessed was a chaff-bed."
"Well, Mr. Salter," said Sir William, "I can only say that times are
greatly changed for the better, and you have yourself to thank for it."
"That's what I say, sir," cried Salter, striking his clenched hand on
the table till he made the glasses ring. "Let me see the man that has
done so much out of so small a beginning. My son will have as fine an
estate as any gentleman in the country, and as fine a house upon it as
any nobleman. And if the family is _new_, why so is the _property_, and
likely, therefore, like a _new_ coat, to give some wear, which is more
than some of the old ones will do," he added, winking, and looking
exceedingly wise as he laughed at his own wit. The mortified young
ladies here rose, and tossing their heads and biting their lips, took
their departure.
"Nothing would serve my daughters, when first we come to this
vanity-fair," continued Mr. Salter, "but they must pass themselves off
for ladies of high family, forsooth, and behave with impertinence to
their betters, till they got themselves blown and cut too, as all that
sail under false colours deserve to be. But let a man, I say, come
forward with nothing but the truth in his mouth, and who shall despise
him for having made his way in the world by honest industry?"
Mr. Salter's guests assented, in words at least, to his proposition, and
thus encouraged, he proceeded, "A man who has had his own and his
children's bred to get, may not have had much time, to be sure, _ither_
for book-_larning_ or bow-making, and may not, therefore, be over good
company neither for your schollar nor your fine gentleman; but what e
that; there are plenty neither wiser nor genteeler than himself, why
shouldn't he be happy with them! As for his children, why, if he can
afford to make them independent, let him give them, as I have done,
plenty of schooling with it, and so make them company for any man."
Geoffery here interrupted the discussion by rising to take his
departure, pleading the ball at his aunt's, which he must attend, while
Sir William Orm, finding there would be no chance of renewing the whist
party, inveigled away the Marquis to the hazard-table. Mr. Salter, thus
left to himself, was soon fast asleep in his chair; and his usual nap
being prolonged by his unusual potations, it was a couple of hours
before he found his way into the drawing-room. The disappointment of his
daughters, on his making his appearance alone, may be imagined, when it
is duly considered that they had waited tea, though we cannot say
patiently, till near one o'clock in the morning for the gentlemen, of
whose early retreat they were not aware.
So much for feeding illbred men of fashion, in the hope of securing in
return what they have not to give--their politeness. After, therefore,
expressing warmly their disapprobation of such rudeness, the Misses
Salter had nothing for it but to retire to rest, venting on each other,
'till sleep closed their lips, the aggregate of spleen collected
throughout the day from so many fruitful sources. Yet here were people
whose more than common prosperity might have brought with it more than
common happiness in their own line, had not silly ambition and idle
vanity poisoned every fountain of attainable enjoyment, and created an
inconvenient thirst for the springs of a land of which they were never
likely to become naturalized citizens.
The Misses Salter had always heard their poor father say, that he had
spared no expense in their education; they knew that they possessed
accomplishments, and prided themselves on remembering what they had been
made to read at school. But they knew not, for it came not within their
sphere to know, that there is an education of early habits effecting the
minutiae of outward bearing, and acquired it would seem, by the
unconscious mimicry of infancy, the stamp of which no after-school
discipline can yet either erase or bestow; and still less were they
capable of comprehending, that there is a further education of refining
sympathies and ennobling sentiments which, while as children of Adam we
all share one first nature, bestows, in combination with that already
named of early habits, a sort of second nature, on the privileged few,
who from generation to generation have been reared, like exotics, amid
the beautiful and beautifying blossoms of delicacy and feeling,
sheltered from the rough winds of coarseness, the blighting atmosphere
of necessity, and the cold ungenial climate of that almost justifiable
selfishness unavoidably learned by those who have not only their own,
but their family's imperious wants to supply by their individual anxious
exertions.
Thus it is that shades of thinking, of feeling, and of judging, scarcely
sufficiently palpable to form subjects of instruction, pass,
unintentionally imparted, unconsciously imbibed, from father to son,
from mother to daughter, till education in this enlarged sense, in other
words refinement, becomes a kind of hereditary distinction, which must
be possessed for several succeeding generations before it can well exist
in its highest perfection.
That these are very sufficient reasons why the various classes of
society, for the comfort of all parties, should keep in their respective
spheres, till gradually assimilated by time and circumstances, no one
who knows the world can deny; the error lies in making pride instead of
expediency the ground of separation,--the sin, in suffering the
manifestations of that pride to be offensive.