"GRIEF À LA MODE"
"UNDERTAKER [_To his men_]. Well, come you that are to be mourners in
this house, put on your sad looks, and walk by me that I may sort you.
Ha, you! a little more upon the dismal; [_forming their countenances_]
this fellow has a good mortal look--place him near the corpse: that
wainscot face must be o' top of the stairs; that fellow's almost in a
fright (that looks as if he were full of some strange misery) at the
entrance to the hall. So--but I'll fix you all myself. Let's have no
laughing now on any provocation. [_Makes faces_.] Look yonder, that
hale, well-looking puppy! You ungrateful scoundrel, did not I pity
you, take you out of a great man's service, and shew you the pleasure
of receiving wages? Did not I give you ten, then fifteen, now twenty
shillings a week, to be sorrowful? and the more I give you, I think,
the gladder you are.
"_Enter a_ BOY.
"BOY. Sir, the grave-digger of St. Timothy's in the Fields would speak
with you.
"UNDERTAKER. Let him come in.
"_Enter_ GRAVE-DIGGER.
"GRAVE-DIGGER. I carried home to your house the shroud the gentleman
was buried in last night; I could not get his ring off very easilly,
therefore I brought you the finger and all; and, sir, the sexton gives
his service to you, and desires to know whether you'd have any bodies
removed or not: if not, he'll let them be in their graves a week
longer.
"UNDERTAKER. Give him my service; I can't tell readilly: but our
friend, Dr. Passeport, with the powder, has promised me six or seven
funerals this week."
* * * * *
These extracts are not from the manuscript of a modern
farce-comedy,[A] but belong to Steele's play of "The Funeral, or Grief
à la Mode." If they have about them all the air of _fin-de-siècle_
wit, so much the more eloquently do they testify to the freshness
of Dick's satire. Freshness, satire, and death! Surely the three
ingredients seem unmixable; yet when poured into the crucible of
Steele's genius they resulted in a crystal that sparkled delightfully
amid the lights of a theatre--a crystal which might still shed
brilliancy if some enterprising manager would exhibit it to a jaded
public.
[Footnote A: In "A Milk White Flag," a good specimen of "up-to-date"
farce, Mr. Hoyt dallies entertainingly and discreetly with the
blithesome topics of undertakers, corpses, and widows.]
In "The Funeral" the author impaled, with many a merciless slash of
the pen, the hypocrisy and vulgar flummery that characterised the
whole gruesome ceremony of conducting to its earthly resting-place
the body of a well-to-do sinner. For the average Englishman loved a
funeral and all its ghastly accompaniments as passionately as though
he had Irish blood in his veins, and often insisted upon investing the
burial of his friends with the mockery, rather than the sincerity, of
woe.
Grief thus became a pleasure, and it was a pleasure, be it added,
which was not taken too sadly. (Pardon the paradox.) The spirits of
the deceased's many admirers had to be raised, and the enlivening
process was set in motion by means of numerous libations, not of
tea, but of lusty wine. When the wife of mine host of the "Crown
and Sceptre" left this world of cooking and drinking, the women who
crowded to the good lady's funeral had to drown their sorrows in a tun
of red port,[A] and it is evident that at the burial of men the grief
of the mourners required an equal amount of quenching. Indeed, the
most absurd expenditures and preparations were made for what should be
the simplest of ceremonies, and the result oftentimes proved garish
in the extreme. As an example of the display in this direction, John
Ashton quotes from the _Daily Courant_ a report of the obsequies of
Sir William Pritchard, sometime Lord Mayor of London. After a
vast deal of pomp wasted in St. Albans and other places upon the
unappreciative and inanimate Pritchard, the remains reached the
country seat of the deceased, in the county of Buckingham. "Where,
after the body had been set out, with all ceremony befitting his
degree, for near two hours, 'twas carried to the church adjacent in
this order, viz., 2 conductors with long staves, 6 men in long cloaks
two and two, the standard, 18 men in cloaks as before, servants to
the deceas'd two and two, divines, the minister of the parish and the
preacher, the helm and crest, sword and target, gauntlets and spurs,
born by an officer of Arms, both in their rich coats of Her Majesty's
Arms enbroider'd; the body, between 6 persons of the Arms of Christ's
Hospital, St. Bartholomew's, Merchant Taylors Company, City of
London, empaled coat and single coat; the chief mourner and his four
assistants, followed by the relations of the defunct, &c."[B] In this
aggregation of grandeur the mere bagatelle in the shape of a corpse
seems almost completely overshadowed, and it is thus comforting to
reflect that the latter finally had interment in a "handsome large
vault, in the isle on the north side of the church, betwixt 7 and 8 of
the clock that evening." The dear departed, or grief for his memory,
frequently played but too small a rôle in all these trappings of
despondency, and the insignificance of the deceased might only be
likened to the secondary position of a man at his own wedding. It was
all fuss and mortuary feathers, mourning rings and mulled wine in the
one case, just as in the other it is entirely a show of bride and
blushes, flounces and femininity. [Footnote A: In writing of the
customs connected with old-time English funerals, Misson says: "The
relations and chief mourners are in a chamber apart, with their more
intimate friends; and the rest of the guests are dispersed in several
rooms about the house. When they are ready to set out, they nail
up the coffin, and a servant presents the company with sprigs of
rosemary: Every one takes a sprig and carries it in his hand till the
body is put into the grave, at which time they all throw their sprigs
in after it. Before they set out, and after they return, it is usual
to present the guests with something to drink, either red or white
wine, boil'd with sugar and cinnamon, or some such liquor. Butler, the
keeper of a tavern, told me there was a tun of red port drank at his
wife's burial, besides mull'd white wine. Note, no men ever go to
women's burials, nor the women to the men's; so that there were none
but women at the drinking of Butler's wine. Such women in England will
hold it out with the men, when they have a bottle before them, as well
as upon t'other occasion, and tattle infinitely better than they."]
[Footnote B: The will of Benjamin Dod, a Roman Catholic citizen of
London (died 1714) runs in part as follows: "I desire four and twenty
persons to be at my burial ... to every of which four and twenty
persons ... I give a pair of white gloves, a ring of ten shillings
value, a bottle of wine at my funeral, and half a crown to be spent
at their return that night; to drink my soul's health, then on her
Journey for Purification in order to Eternal Rest. I appoint the room,
where my corpse shall lie, to be hung with black, and four and twenty
wax candles to be burning; on my coffin to be affixed a cross and this
inscription, _Jesus Hominum Salvator_. I also appoint my corpse to be
carried in a herse drawn with six white horses, with white feathers,
and followed by six coaches, with six horses to each coach, to carry
the four and twenty persons.... Item, I give to forty of my particular
acquaintance, not at my funeral, to every one of them a gold ring of
ten shillings value.... As for mourning, I leave that to my executors
hereafter nam'd; and I do not desire them to give any to whom I
shall leave a legacy.... I will have no Presbyterian, Moderate Low
Churchmen, or Occasional Conformists, to be at or have anything to do
with my funeral. I die in the Faith of the True Catholic Church. I
desire to have a tomb stone over me, with a Latin inscription, and
a lamp, or six wax candles, to burn seven days and nights
thereon."--_Vide_ ASHTON.]
Was it any wonder that when Dick Steele, aetat twenty-six, an officer
of Fusiliers, and a merry vagabond, wanted to redeem his reputation by
writing a rollicking comedy, his thoughts turned to the satirising of
the British undertaker? For the young man must prove to the town that
he was not the hypocrite several of his kind friends had dubbed him.
The fact was, that he had been virtuous enough to write a pious work
entitled, "The Christian Hero," which he afterwards published, but
as he had not grown sufficiently master of himself to live up to its
golden precepts (nay, rather did he continue to spend his evenings in
the taverns), the author came in for many a taunt and sneer. Why did
he not practice what he preached? was the sarcastic query of his
intimates.
Yet there was no thought of cant in what the soldier had done. His
design in issuing the "Christian Hero" was, as he explained in after
years, "principally to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of
virtue and religion, in opposition to a stronger propensity towards
unwarrantable pleasures." This secret admiration was too weak; he
therefore printed the book with his name, in hopes that a standing
testimony against himself, and the eyes of the world (that is to say,
of his acquaintances) upon him in a new light, would make him ashamed
of understanding and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so
contrary to life.
But the man was weak where the author was willing, and thus gay
Richard went on "living so contrary a life" with true Celtic
perversity, and made of himself anything but a Christian Hero.
Rather was he a jolly Pagan, with a passion for his wine and his
coffee-house, and a kindly, merry word even for those who twitted him
upon his inconsistency. It was plain, therefore, that he must be some
other sort of hero, and so he evolved the brilliant satire of "The
Funeral," to "enliven his character, and repel the sarcasms of those
who abused him for his declarations relative to religion."
[Illustration: SIR RICHARD STEELE
By Sir GODFREY KNELLER]
In the twinkling of an eye Steele became the spoiled darling of the
day. The comedy, which was produced at Drury Lane in 1702, was the
talk of the enthusiastic town, and the playwright arose from
his beer-mugs, his wine-flagons, and his contemplation of ideal
Christianity, to find himself famous. He had opened a new vein of
satire, and a vein moreover which upheld virtue and laughed to scorn
hypocrisy and vice. That was a moral which the dramatists of his epoch
seldom taught.[A] And so the people crowded to the theatre, applauded
the sentiment of the play, guffawed at the keen wit of the dialogue,
and swore that this young rascal Steele was the prince of bright
fellows. Then they went home--and revelled, as before, in the funerals
of their friends.
[Footnote A: The "Funeral" is the merriest and most perfect of
Steele's comedies. The characters are strongly marked, the wit genial,
and not indecent. Steele was among the first who set about reforming
the licentiousness of the old comedy. His satire in the "Funeral" is
not against virtue, but vice and silliness.--DR. DORAN.]
What of this remarkable comedy? Its story turned upon the marriage of
the elderly Lord Brumpton to a designing young minx who estranges the
nobleman from his son, Lord Hardy, the gentlemanly, poverty-stricken
leading man of the piece. When Brumpton has a cataleptic fit, and is
apparently dead as a doornail, the spouse confides his body to the
undertaker with feelings of serene pleasure. But let the lines of the
play, or a portion thereof, unfold the situation.
The scene is at Lord Brumpton's house; the nobleman has just been
pronounced defunct, and Sable, the undertaker, has arrived. The
latter, who is being bantered by two of the characters, Mr. Campley
and Cabinet, is evidently a bit of a philosopher, albeit an uncanny
one, for he says:
* * * * *
"There are very few in the whole world that live to themselves, but
sacrifice their bosom-bliss to enjoy a vain show and appearance of
prosperity in the eyes of others; and there is often nothing more
inwardly distressed than a young bride in her glittering retinue, or
deeply joyful than a young widow in her weeds and black train; of both
which the lady of this house may be an instance, for she has been the
one, and is, I'll be sworn, the other.
"CABINET. You talk, Mr. Sable, most learnedly.
"SABLE. I have the deepest learning, sir, experience; remember your
widow cousin, that married last month.
"CABINET. Ay, but how you'd you imagine she was in all that grief
an hypocrite! Could all those shrieks, those swoonings, that rising
falling bosom, be constrained? You're uncharitable, Sable, to believe
it. What colour, what reason had you for it?
"SABLE. First, Sir, her carriage in her concerns with me, for I never
yet could meet with a sorrowful relict but was herself enough to
make a hard bargain with me. Yet I must confess they have frequent
interruptions of grief and sorrow when they read my bill; but as for
her, nothing she resolv'd, that look'd bright or joyous, should
after her love's death approach her. All her servants that were not
coal-black must turn out; a fair complexion made her eyes and heart
ake, she'd none but downright jet, and to exceed all example, she
hir'd my mourning furniture by the year, and in case of my mortality,
ty'd my son to the same article; so in six weeks time ran away with a
young fellow."
* * * * *
And so on (with a cynicism of which, of course, no modern "funeral
director" would be guilty--out loud), until the undertaker's men come
on the scene.
* * * * *
"Where in the name of goodness have you all been?" asks SABLE. "Have
you brought the sawdust and tar for embalming? Have you the hangings
and the sixpenny nails, and my lord's coat of arms?"
"SERVANT. Yes, sir, and had come sooner, but I went to the herald's
for a coat for Alderman Gathergrease that died last night--he has
promised to invent one against to-morrow."
"SABLE. Ah! pox take some of our cits, the first thing after their
death is to take care of their birth--let him bear a pair of
stockings, he is the first of his family that ever wore one.... And
you, Mr. Blockhead, I warrant you have not call'd at Mr. Pestle's the
apothecary: will that fellow never pay me? I stand bound for all the
poison in that starving murderer's shop: he serves me just as Dr.
Quibus did, who promised to write a treatise against water-gruel, a
healthy slop that has done me more injury than all the Faculty: look
you now, you are all upon the sneer, let me have none but downright
stupid countenances. I've a good mind to turn you all off, and take
people out of the playhouse; but hang them, they are as ignorant of
their parts as you are of yours.... Ye stupid rogues, whom I have
picked out of the rubbish of mankind, and fed for your eminent
worthlessness, attend, and know that I speak you this moment stiff and
immutable to all sense of noise, mirth or laughter. [_Makes mouths at
them as they pass by him to bring them to a constant countenance_.]
So, they are pretty well--pretty well."
[_Exit_.
* * * * *
When the stage is clear Lord Brumpton and his servant Trusty enter.
The former has wakened from his cataleptic trance, as the faithful
Trusty watched beside him, and is horrified to learn of Lady
Brumpton's lack of grief. But hush; he will conceal himself, for
here comes my lady, accompanied by her woman and confidant, Mistress
Tattleaid.
* * * * *
"_Enter_ WIDOW _and_ TATTLEAID, _meeting and running to each other_.
"WIDOW. Oh, Tattleaid, his and our hour has come!
"TAT. I always said by his church yard cough, you'd bury him, and
still you were impatient.
"WIDOW. Nay, thou hast ever been my comfort, my confident, my friend,
and my servant; and now I'll reward thy pains; for tho' I scorn the
whole sex of fellows I'll give them hopes for thy sake; every smile,
every frown, every gesture, humour, caprice and whimsy of mine shall
be gold to thee, girl; thou shalt feel all the sweets and wealth of
being a fine rich widow's woman. Oh! how my head runs my first year
out, and jumps to all the joys of widowhood! If thirteen months hence
a friend should haul one to a play one has a mind to see,[A] what
pleasure t'will be when my Lady Brumpton's footman called (who kept
a place for that very purpose) to make a sudden insurrection of fine
wigs in the pit and side-boxes. Then, with a pretty sorrow in one's
face, and a willing blush for being stared at, one ventures to look
round, and bow to one of one's own quality. Thus [_very directly_] to
a snug pretending fellow of no fortune. Thus [_as scarce seeing him_]
to one that writes lampoons. Thus [_fearfully_] to one who really
loves. Thus [_looking down_] to one woman-acquaintance, from box to
box, thus [_with looks differently familiar_], and when one has done
one's part, observe the actors do theirs, but with my mind fixed not
on those I look at, but those that look at me. Then the serenades--the
lovers! [A query--if the theatres were patronised only by those who
looked solely at the stage, what would be the size of the audiences?]
[Footnote A: A well-regulated widow kept herself at home for six weeks
after the death of her husband, and denied herself the theatre and
other public amusements for a twelvemonth.]
"TAT. Oh, madam, you make my heart bound within me: I'll warrant you,
madam, I'll manage them all; and indeed, madam, the men are really
very silly creatures, 'tis no such hard matter--they rulers! they
governors! I warrant you indeed.
"WIDOW. Ay, Tattleaid, they imagine themselves mighty things, but
government founded on force only, is a brutal power--we rule them by
their affections, which blinds them into belief that they rule us, or
at least are in the government with us. But in this nation our power
is absolute; thus, thus, we sway--[_playing her fan_]. A fan is both
the standard and the flag of England. I laugh to see men go on our
errands, strut in great offices, live in cares, hazards and scandals,
to come home and be fools to us in brags of their dispatches,
negotiations, and their wisdoms--as my good dear deceas'd use to
entertain me; which I, to relieve myself from, would lisp some silly
request, pat him on the face. He shakes his head at my pretty folly,
calls me simpleton; gives me a jewel, then goes to bed so wise, so
satisfied, and so deceived."
* * * * *
This pleasant conversation Lord Brumpton overhears, as he does also
the inmost secrets of his lawyer, Puzzle. The latter gentleman, who
has studied hard to cheat his good-natured employer, and succeeded, is
a daringly drawn satire on the pettifogging attorney of the period.[A]
Note the following words of wisdom, _àpropos_ to the drawing of wills,
which Mr. Puzzle addresses to his nephew.
[Footnote A: Of the attorney of Queen Anne's day Ward wrote: "He's an
Amphibious Monster, that partakes of two Natures, and those contrary;
He's a great Lover both of Peace and Enmity; and has no sooner set
People together by the Ears, but is Soliciting the Law to make an end
of the Difference. His Learning is commonly as little as his Honesty;
and his Conscience much larger than his Green Bag. Catch him in what
Company soever, you will always hear him stating of Cases, or telling
what notice my Lord Chancellor took of him, when he beg'd leave to
supply the deficiency of his Counsel. He always talks with as great
assurance as if he understood what he only pretends to know: And
always wears a Band, and in that lies his Gravity and Wisdom. He
concerns himself with no Justice but the Justice of a Cause: and for
making an unconscionable Bill he outdoes a Taylor."]
"PUZZLE. As for legacies, they are good or not, as I please; for let
me tell you, a man must take pen, ink and paper, sit down by an old
fellow, and pretend to take directions, but a true lawyer never makes
any man's will but his own; and as the priest of old among us got near
the dying man, and gave all to the Church, so now the lawyer gives all
to the law.
"CLERK. Ay, sir, but priests then cheated the nation by doing their
offices in an unknown language.
"PUZZLE. True, but ours is a way much surer; for we cheat in no
language at all, but loll in our own coaches, eloquent in gibberish,
and learned in jingle. Pull out the parchment [_referring to the will
of_ LORD BRUMPTON], there's the deed; I made it as long as I could.
Well, I hope to see the day when the indenture shall be the exact
measure of the land that passes by it; for 'tis a discouragement to
the gown, that every ignorant rogue of an heir should in a word or
two understand his father's meaning, and hold ten acres of land by
half-an-acre of parchment. Nay, I hope to see the time when that there
is indeed some progress made in, shall be wholly affected; and by the
improvement of the noble art of tautology, every Inn in Holborn an Inn
of Court. Let others think of logic, rhetoric, and I know not what
impertinence, but mind thou tautology. What's the first excellence in
a lawyer? Tautology. What's the second? Tautology. What's the third?
Tautology; as an old pleader said of action."
* * * * *
Who shall say that the tautological sentiments of Mr. Puzzle are not
still inculcated? Nay, the whole play furnishes a capital instance of
the truism that the world changes but little, and, furthermore, that
the mould of nigh two centuries cannot spoil the wit of sparkling
Steele. Ah, Dick! Dick! you may have been a sorry dog, with your
toasts and your taverns, yet 'tis a thousand pities that a few
dramatists of to-day cannot drink inspiration from the same cups.
To continue our cheerful journey with this unusual "Funeral," we soon
find ourselves introduced to Lord Hardy, the unjustly discarded son of
Brumpton. Hardy is a high-spirited, honest man of quality, a trifle
out at elbows just now, owing to the stoppage of financial supplies
from the paternal mansion. His straits are oft severe, and it is
fortunate that he has in Trim a faithful servant who knows so well how
to keep the duns at bay. "Why, friend, says I [Trim is describing to
Hardy his method of dealing with his lordship's creditors], how often
must I tell you my lord is not stirring. His lordship has not slept
well, you must come some other time; your lordship will send for him
when you are at leisure to look upon money affairs; or if they are so
saucy, so impertinent as to press a man of your quality for their
own, there are canes, there's Bridewel, there's the stocks for your
ordinary tradesmen; but to an haughty, thriving Covent Garden mercer,
silk or laceman, your lordship gives your most humble service to him,
hopes his wife is well; you have letters to write, or you would see
him yourself, but you desire he would be with you punctually on such
a day, that is to say, the day after you are gone out of town, Which
shows very plainly that Trim could have earned large wages had he
lived in the nineteenth century. These 'Palmy Days' are not long
enough, however, to permit the introduction of all the characters, nor
the outlining of the entire story, with its brisk love-interest. But
this bit of dialogue, which occurs after Sable has discovered the
much-alive Lord Brumpton, is too good to be ignored:
"SABLE. Why, my lord, you can't in conscience put me off so; I must do
according to my orders, cut you up, and embalm you, except you'll come
down a little deeper than you talk of; you don't consider the charges
I have been at already.
"LORD BRUMPTON. Charges! for what?
"SABLE. First, twenty guineas to my lady's woman for notice of your
death (a fee I've before now known the widow herself go halves in),
but no matter for that--in the next place, ten pounds for watching you
all your long fit of sickness last winter--
"LORD BRUMPTON. Watching me? Why I had none but my own servants by
turns!
"SABLE. I mean attending to give notice of your death. I had all your
long fit of sickness, last winter, at half a crown a day, a fellow
waiting at your gate to bring me intelligence, but you unfortunately
recovered, and I lost all my obliging pains for your service.
"LORD BRUMPTON. Ha! ha! ha! Sable, thou'rt a very impudent fellow. Half
a crown a day to attend my decease, and dost thou reckon it to me?"
"SABLE.... I have a book at home, which I call my doomsday-book, where
I have every man of quality's age and distemper in town, and know
when you should drop. Nay, my lord, if you had reflected upon your
mortality half so much as poor I have for you, you would not desire to
return to life thus--in short, I cannot keep this a secret, under the
whole money I am to have for burying you."
* * * * *
Of course Lady Brumpton is discomfited and disgraced at the end of
the play, and, of course, Lord Brumpton is reconciled to his son--for
Steele took care that virtue should be rewarded and the moral code
otherwise preserved. As to her ladyship, who has proved a very
entertaining sort of villain, we shall take leave of her in one of the
best scenes of the comedy:
"WIDOW. _[Reading the names of the visitors who have called to leave
their condolences]_ Mrs. Frances and Mrs. Winnifred Glebe, who are
they?"
"TATTLEAID. They are the country great fortunes, have been out of town
this whole year; they are those whom your ladyship said upon being
very well-born took upon them to be very ill-bred."
"WIDOW. Did I say so? Really I think it was apt enough; now I remember
them. Lady Wrinkle--oh, that smug old woman! there is no enduring
her affectation of youth; but I plague her; I always ask whether her
daughter in Wiltshire has a grandchild yet or not. Lady Worth--I can't
bear her company; [_aside_] she has so much of that virtue in her
heart which I have in mouth only. Mrs. After-day--Oh, that's she that
was the great beauty, the mighty toast about town, that's just come
out of the small-pox; she is horribly pitted they say; I long to see
her, and plague her with my condolence.... But you are sure these
other ladies suspect not in the least that I know of their coming?
"TAT. No, dear madam, they are to ask for me.
"WIDOW. I hear a coach. [_Exit_ TATTLEAID.] I have now an exquisite
pleasure in the thought of surpassing my Lady Sly, who pretends to
have out-grieved the whole town for her husband. They are certainly
coming. Oh, no! here let me--thus let me sit and think. [_Widow on
her couch; while she is raving, as to herself_, TATTLEAID _softly
introduces the ladies_.] Wretched, disconsolate, as I am!... Alas!
alas! Oh! oh! I swoon! I expire! [_Faints_.
"SECOND LADY. Pray, Mrs. Tattleaid, bring something that is cordial to
her. [_Exit_ TATTLEAID.
"THIRD LADY. Indeed, madam, you should have patience; his lordship was
old. To die is but going before in a journey we must all take.
_Enter_ TATTLEAID, _loaded with bottles_; THIRD LADY _takes a bottle
from her and drinks_.
"FOURTH LADY. Lord, how my Lady Fleer drinks! I have heard, indeed,
but never could believe it of her. [_Drinks also_.
"FIRST LADY. [_Whispers_.] But, madam, don't you hear what the town
says of the jilt, Flirt, the men liked so much in the Park? Hark
ye--was seen with him in a hackney coach.
"SECOND LADY. Impudent flirt, to be found out!
"THIRD LADY. But I speak it only to you.
"FOURTH LADY. [_Whispers next woman_.] Nor I, but to no one.
"FIFTH LADY. [_Whispers the_ WIDOW.] I can't believe it; nay, I always
thought it, madam.
"WIDOW. Sure, 'tis impossible the demure, prim thing. Sure all the
world is hypocrisy Well, I thank my stars, whatsoever sufferings I
have, I have none in reputation. I wonder at the men; I could never
think her handsome. She has really a good shape and complexion but no
mein; and no woman has the use of her beauty without mein. Her charms
are dumb, they want utterance. But whither does distraction lead me to
talk of charms?
"FIRST LADY. Charms, a chit's, a girl's charms! Come, let us widows be
true to ourselves, keep our countenances and our characters, and a fig
for the maids.
"SECOND LADY. Ay, since they will set up for our knowledge, why should
not we for their ignorance?
"THIRD LADY. But, madam, o' Sunday morning at church, I curtsied to
you and looked at a great fuss in a glaring light dress, next pew.
That strong, masculine thing is a knight's wife, pretends to all the
tenderness in the world, and would fain put the unwieldly upon us for
the soft, the languid. She has of a sudden left her dairy, and sets up
for a fine town lady; calls her maid Cisly, her woman speaks to her by
her surname of Mrs. Cherryfist, and her great foot-boy of nineteen,
big enough for a trooper, is stripped into a laced coat, now Mr. Page
forsooth.
"FOURTH LADY. Oh, I have seen her. Well, I heartily pity some people
for their wealth; they might have been unknown else--you would die,
madam, to see her and her equipage: I thought her horses were ashamed
of their finery; they dragged on, as if they were all at plough, and
a great bashful-look'd booby behind grasp'd the coach, as if he had
never held one.
"FIFTH LADY. Alas! some people think there is nothing but being fine
to be genteel; but the high prance of the horses, and the brisk
insolence of the servants in an equipage of quality are inimitable.
"FIRST LADY. Now you talk of an equipage, I envy this lady the beauty
she will appear in a mourning coach, it will so become her complexion;
I confess I myself mourned for two years for no other reason. Take up
that hood there. Oh, that fair face with a veil! [_They take up her
hood_.
"WIDOW. Fie, fie, ladies. But I have been told, indeed, black does
become--
"SECOND LADY. Well, I'll take the liberty to speak it, there is young
Nutbrain has long had (I'll be sworn) a passion for this lady; but
I'll tell you one thing I fear she'll dislike, that is, he is younger
than she is.
"THIRD LADY. No, that's no exception; but I'll tell you one, he is
younger than his brother.
"WIDOW. Talk not of such affairs. Who could love such an unhappy
relict as I am? But, dear madam, what grounds have you for that idle
story?
"FOURTH LADY. Why he toasts you and trembles where you are spoke of.
It must be a match.
"WIDOW. Nay, nay, you rally, you rally; but I know you mean it kindly.
"FIRST LADY. I swear we do.
[TATTLEAID _whispers the_ WIDOW.
"WIDOW. But I must beseech you, ladies, since you have been so
compassionate as to visit and accompany my sorrow, to give me the only
comfort I can now know, to see my friends cheerful, and to honour an
entertainment Tattleaid has prepared within for you. If I can find
strength enough I'll attend you; but I wish you would excuse me, for
I have no relish of food or joy, but will try to get a bit down in my
own chamber.
"FIRST LADY. There is no pleasure without you.
"WIDOW. But, madam, I must beg of your ladyship not to be so importune
to my fresh calamity as to mention Nutbrain any more. I am sure there
is nothing in it. In love with me, quotha!"
[WIDOW _is led away. Exeunt_ LADIES.
Thus runs the comedy, trippingly as the tongue of a gay _raconteur_.
Sometimes the scenes are exaggerated, sometimes the characters may be
overdrawn, but the satire is true, and the wit is of the best.
Take, for instance, the picture reproduced above. Are not its
colours--albeit bold and merciless--tinged with the redeeming hue
of naturalness? And of you, fair daughters of Eve (if any of you
condescend to read these pages), let the author ask one impertinent
little question: Is there not something in the conversation of Dick
Steele's First Lady, or his Second Lady, or all the other Ladies,
which suggests the charity and intellectuality that doth hedge in an
afternoon tea?