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.