CHAPTER XXXVIII
Mihi jam non regia Roma,
Sed vacuum Tibur placet.
—Horace.
"My dear child," said my mother to me, affectionately, "you must be very much bored here, pour dire vrai, I am so myself. Your uncle is a very good man, but he does not make his house pleasant; and I have, lately, been very much afraid that he should convert you into a mere bookworm; after all, my dear Henry, you are quite clever enough to trust to your own ability. Your great geniuses never read."
"True, my dear mother," said I, with a most unequivocal yawn, and depositing on the table Mr. Bentham upon Popular Fallacies; "true, and I am quite of your opinion. Did you see in the Post of this morning, how full Cheltenham was?"
"Yes, Henry; and now you mention it, I don't think you could do better than to go there for a month or two. As for me, I must return to your father, whom I left at Lord H—'s: a place, entre nous, very little more amusing than this—but then one does get one's ecarte table, and that dear Lady Roseville, your old acquaintance, is staying there."
"Well," said I, musingly, "suppose we take our departure the beginning of next week?—our way will be the same as far as London, and the plea of attending you will be a good excuse to my uncle, for proceeding no farther in these confounded books."
"C'est une affaire finie," replied my mother, "and I will speak to your uncle myself."
Accordingly the necessary disclosure of our intentions was made. Lord Glenmorris received it with proper indifference, so far as my mother was concerned; but expressed much pain at my leaving him so soon. However, when he found I was not so much gratified as honoured by his wishes for my longer sejour, he gave up the point with a delicacy that enchanted me.
The morning of our departure arrived. Carriage at the door—bandboxes in the passage—breakfast on the table—myself in my great coat—my uncle in his great chair. "My dear boy," said he, "I trust we shall meet again soon: you have abilities that may make you capable of effecting much good to your fellow-creatures; but you are fond of the world, and, though not averse to application, devoted to pleasure, and likely to pervert the gifts you possess. At all events, you have now learned, both as a public character and a private individual, the difference between good and evil. Make but this distinction, that whereas, in political science, though the rules you have learned be fixed and unerring, yet the application of them must vary with time and circumstance. We must bend, temporize, and frequently withdraw, doctrines, which, invariable in their truth, the prejudices of the time will not invariably allow, and even relinquish a faint hope of obtaining a great good, for the certainty of obtaining a lesser; yet in the science of private morals, which relate for the main part to ourselves individually, we have no right to deviate one single iota from the rule of our conduct. Neither time nor circumstance must cause us to modify or to change. Integrity knows no variation; honesty no shadow of turning. We must pursue the same course—stern and uncompromising—in the full persuasion that the path of right is like the bridge from earth to heaven, in the Mahometan creed—if we swerve but a single hair's breadth, we are irrevocably lost."
At this moment my mother joined us, with a "Well, my dear Henry, every thing is ready—we have no time to lose."
My uncle rose, pressed my hand, and left in it a pocket-book, which I afterwards discovered to be most satisfactorily furnished. We took an edifying and affectionate farewell of each other, passed through the two rows of servants, drawn up in martial array, along the great hall, entered the carriage, and went off with the rapidity of a novel upon "fashionable life."
CHAPTER XXXIX
Dic—si grave non est—
Quae prima iratum ventrem placaverit esca.
—Horace.
I did not remain above a day or two in town. I had never seen much of the humours of a watering-place, and my love of observing character made me exceedingly impatient for that pleasure. Accordingly, the first bright morning I set off for Cheltenham. I was greatly struck with the entrance to that town: it is to these watering-places that a foreigner should be taken, in order to give him an adequate idea of the magnificent opulence, and universal luxury, of England. Our country has, in every province, what France only has in Paris—a capital, consecrated to gaiety, idleness, and enjoyment. London is both too busy in one class of society, and too pompous in another, to please a foreigner, who has not excellent recommendations to private circles. But at Brighton, Cheltenham, Hastings, Bath, he may, as at Paris, find all the gaieties of society without knowing a single individual.
My carriage stopped at the—Hotel. A corpulent and stately waiter, with gold buckles to a pair of very tight pantaloons, showed me up stairs. I found myself in a tolerable room facing the street, and garnished with two pictures of rocks and rivers, with a comely flight of crows, hovering in the horizon of both, as natural as possible, only they were a little larger than the trees. Over the chimney-piece, where I had fondly hoped to find a looking-glass, was a grave print of General Washington, with one hand stuck out like the spout of a tea-pot. Between the two windows (unfavourable position!) was an oblong mirror, to which I immediately hastened, and had the pleasure of seeing my complexion catch the colour of the curtains that overhung the glass on each side, and exhibit the pleasing rurality of a pale green.
I shrunk back aghast, turned, and beheld the waiter. Had I seen myself in a glass delicately shaded by rose-hued curtains, I should gently and smilingly have said, "Have the goodness to bring me the bill of fare." As it was, I growled out, "Bring me the bill, and be d—d to you."
The stiff waiter bowed solemnly, and withdrew slowly. I looked round the room once more, and discovered the additional adornments of a tea-urn, and a book. "Thank Heaven," thought I, as I took up the latter, "it can't be one of Jeremy Bentham's." No! it was the Cheltenham Guide. I turned to the head of amusements—"Dress ball at the rooms every—" some day or other—which of the seven I utterly forget; but it was the same as that which witnessed my first arrival in the small drawing-room of the—Hotel.
"Thank Heaven!" said I to myself, as Bedos entered with my things, and was ordered immediately to have all in preparation for "the dressball at the rooms," at the hour of half-past ten. The waiter entered with the bill. "Soups, chops, cutlets, steaks, roast joints, birds."
"Get some soup," said I, "a slice or two of lion, and half a dozen birds."
"Sir," said the solemn waiter, "you can't have less than a whole lion, and we have only two birds in the house."
"Pray," asked I, "are you in the habit of supplying your larder from Exeter 'Change, or do you breed lions here like poultry?"
"Sir," answered the grim waiter, never relaxing into a smile, "we have lions brought us from the country every day."
"What do you pay for them?" said I.
"About three and sixpence a-piece, Sir."
"Humph!—market in Africa overstocked," thought I.
"Pray, how do you dress an animal of that description?"
"Roast and stuff him, Sir, and serve him up with currant jelly."
"What! like a hare?"
"It is a hare, Sir."
"What!"
"Yes, Sir, it is a hare! [Note: I have since learned, that this custom of calling a hare a lion is not peculiar to Cheltenham. At that time I was utterly unacquainted with the regulations of the London coffee-houses.]— but we call it a lion, because of the Game Laws."
'Bright discovery,' thought I; 'they have a new language in Cheltenham: nothing's like travelling to enlarge the mind.' "And the birds," said I, aloud, "are neither humming birds, nor ostriches, I suppose?"
"No, Sir; they are partridges."
"Well, then, give me some soup; a cotelette de mouton, and a 'bird,' as you term it, and be quick about it."
"It shall be done with dispatch," answered the pompous attendant, and withdrew.
Is there, in the whole course of this pleasant and varying life, which young gentlemen and ladies write verses to prove same and sorrowful,—is there, in the whole course of it, one half-hour really and genuinely disagreeable?—if so, it is the half-hour before dinner at a strange inn. Nevertheless, by the help of philosophy and the window, I managed to endure it with great patience: and though I was famishing with hunger, I pretended the indifference of a sage, even when the dinner was at length announced. I coquetted a whole minute with my napkin, before I attempted the soup, and I helped myself to the potatory food with a slow dignity that must have perfectly won the heart of the solemn waiter. The soup was a little better than hot water, and the sharp sauced cotelette than leather and vinegar; howbeit, I attacked them with the vigour of an Irishman, and washed them down with a bottle of the worst liquor ever dignified with the venerabile nomen of claret. The bird was tough enough to have passed for an ostrich in miniature; and I felt its ghost hopping about the stomachic sepulchre to which I consigned it, the whole of that evening and a great portion of the next day, when a glass of curacoa laid it at rest.
After this splendid repast, I flung myself back on my chair with the complacency of a man who has dined well, and dozed away the time till the hour of dressing.
"Now," thought I, as I placed myself before my glass, "shall I gently please, or sublimely astonish the 'fashionables' of Cheltenham? Ah, bah! the latter school is vulgar, Byron spoilt it. Don't put out that chain, Bedos—I wear—the black coat, waistcoat, and trowsers. Brush my hair as much out of curl as you can, and give an air of graceful negligence to my tout ensemble."
"Oui, Monsieur, je comprends," answered Bedos.
I was soon dressed, for it is the design, not the execution, of all great undertakings which requires deliberation and delay. Action cannot be too prompt. A chair was called, and Henry Pelham was conveyed to the rooms.
CHAPTER XL
Now see, prepared to lead the sprightly dance,
The lovely nymphs, and well dressed youths advance:
The spacious room receives its jovial guest,
And the floor shakes with pleasing weight oppressed.
—Art of Dancing.
Page. His name, my lord, is Tyrrell.
—Richard III.
Upon entering, I saw several heads rising and sinking, to the tune of "Cherry ripe." A whole row of stiff necks, in cravats of the most unexceptionable length and breadth, were just before me. A tall thin young man, with dark wiry hair brushed on one side, was drawing on a pair of white Woodstock gloves, and affecting to look round the room with the supreme indifference of bon ton.
"Ah, Ritson," said another young Cheltenhamian to him of the Woodstock gauntlets, "hav'n't you been dancing yet?"
"No, Smith, 'pon honour!" answered Mr. Ritson; "it is so overpoweringly hot; no fashionable man dances now;—it isn't the thing."
"Why," replied Mr. Smith, who was a good-natured looking person, with a blue coat and brass buttons, a gold pin in his neckcloth, and kneebreeches, "why, they dance at Almack's, don't they?"
"No, 'pon honour," murmured Mr. Ritson; "no, they just walk a quadrille or spin a waltz, as my friend, Lord Bobadob, calls it, nothing more—no, hang dancing, 'tis so vulgar."
A stout, red-faced man, about thirty, with wet auburn hair, a marvellously fine waistcoat, and a badly-washed frill, now joined Messrs. Ritson and Smith.
"Ah, Sir Ralph," cried Smith, "how d'ye do? been hunting all day, I suppose?"
"Yes, old cock," replied Sir Ralph; "been after the brush till I am quite done up; such a glorious run. By G—, you should have seen my grey mare, Smith; by G—, she's a glorious fencer."
"You don't hunt, do you, Ritson?" interrogated Mr. Smith.
"Yes, I do," replied Mr. Ritson, affectedly playing with his Woodstock glove; "yes, but I only hunt in Leicestershire with my friend, Lord Bobadob; 'tis not the thing to hunt any where else, 'tis so vulgar."
Sir Ralph stared at the speaker with mute contempt: while Mr. Smith, like the ass between the hay, stood balancing betwixt the opposing merits of the baronet and the beau. Meanwhile, a smiling, nodding, affected female thing, in ringlets and flowers, flirted up to the trio.
"Now, reelly, Mr. Smith, you should deence; a feeshionable young man, like you—I don't know what the young leedies will say to you." And the fair seducer laughed bewitchingly.
"You are very good, Mrs. Dollimore," replied Mr. Smith, with a blush and a low bow; "but Mr. Ritson tells me it is not the thing to dance."
"Oh," cried Mrs. Dollimore, "but then he's seech a naughty, conceited creature—don't follow his example, Meester Smith;" and again the good lady laughed immoderately.
"Nay, Mrs. Dollimore," said Mr. Ritson, passing his hand through his abominable hair, "you are too severe; but tell me, Mrs. Dollimore, is the Countess St. A—coming here?"
"Now, reelly, Mr. Ritson, you, who are the pink of feeshion, ought to know better than I can; but I hear so."
"Do you know the countess?" said Mr. Smith, in respectful surprise, to Ritson.
"Oh, very well," replied the Coryphaeus of Cheltenham, swinging his Woodstock glove to and fro; "I have often danced with her at Almack's."
"Is she a good deencer?" asked Mrs. Dollimore.
"O, capital," responded Mr. Ritson; "she's such a nice genteel little figure."
Sir Ralph, apparently tired of this "feeshionable" conversation, swaggered away.
"Pray," said Mrs. Dollimore, "who is that geentleman?"
"Sir Ralph Rumford," replied Smith, eagerly, "a particular friend of mine at Cambridge."
"I wonder if he's going to make a long steey?" said Mrs. Dollimore.
"Yes, I believe so," replied Mr. Smith, "if we make it agreeable to him."
"You must positively introduce him to me," said Mrs. Dollimore.
"I will, with great pleasure," said the good-natured Mr. Smith.
"Is Sir Ralph a man of fashion?" inquired Mr. Ritson.
"He's a baronet!" emphatically pronounced Mr. Smith.
"Ah!" replied Ritson, "but he may be a man of rank, without being a man of fashion."
"True," lisped Mrs. Dollimore.
"I don't know," replied Smith, with an air of puzzled wonderment, "but he has L7,000. a-year."
"Has he, indeed?" cried Mrs. Dollimore, surprised into her natural tone of voice; and, at that moment, a young lady, ringletted and flowered like herself, joined her, and accosted her by the endearing appellation of "Mamma."
"Have you been dancing, my love?" inquired Mrs. Dollimore.
"Yes, ma; with Captain Johnson."
"Oh," said the mother, with a toss of her head; and giving her daughter a significant push, she walked away with her to another end of the room, to talk about Sir Ralph Rumford, and his seven thousand pounds a-year.
"Well!" thought I, "odd people these; let us enter a little farther into this savage country." In accordance with this reflection, I proceeded towards the middle of the room.
"Who's that?" said Mr. Smith, in a loud whisper, as I passed him.
"'Pon honour," answered Ritson, "I don't know! but he's a deuced neat looking fellow, quite genteel."
"Thank you, Mr. Ritson," said my vanity; "you are not so offensive after all."
I paused to look at the dancers; a middle-aged, respectable looking gentleman was beside me. Common people, after they have passed forty, grow social. My neighbour hemmed twice, and made preparation for speaking. "I may as well encourage him," was my reflection; accordingly I turned round, with a most good-natured expression of countenance.
"A fine room this, Sir," said the man immediately.
"Very," said I, with a smile, "and extremely well filled."
"Ah, Sir," answered my neighbour, "Cheltenham is not as it used to be some fifteen years ago. I have seen as many as one thousand two hundred and fifty persons within these walls;" (certain people are always so d—d particularizing,) "ay, Sir," pursued my laudator temporis acti, "and half the peerage here into the bargain."
"Indeed!" quoth I, with an air of surprise suited to the information I received, "but the society is very good still, is it not?"
"Oh, very genteel," replied the man; "but not so dashing as it used to be." (Oh! those two horrid words! low enough to suit even the author of"- -.")
"Pray," asked I, glancing at Messrs. Ritson and Smith, "do you know who those gentlemen are?"
"Extremely well!" replied my neighbour: "the tall young man is Mr. Ritson; his mother has a house in Baker-street, and gives quite elegant parties. He's a most genteel young man; but such an insufferable coxcomb."
"And the other?" said I.
"Oh! he's a Mr. Smith; his father was an eminent merchant, and is lately dead, leaving each of his sons thirty thousand pounds; the young Smith is a knowing hand, and wants to spend his money with spirit. He has a great passion for 'high life,' and therefore attaches himself much to Mr. Ritson, who is quite that way inclined."
"He could not have selected a better model," said I.
"True," rejoined my Cheltenham Asmodeus, with naive simplicity; "but I hope he won't adopt his conceit as well as his elegance."
"I shall die," said I to myself, "if I talk with this fellow any longer," and I was just going to glide away, when a tall, stately dowager, with two lean, scraggy daughters, entered the room; I could not resist pausing to inquire who they were.
My friend looked at me with a very altered and disrepectful air at this interrogation. "Who?" said he, "why, the Countess of Babbleton, and her two daughters, the Honourable Lady Jane Babel, and the Honourable Lady Mary Babel. They are the great people of Cheltenham," pursued he, "and it's a fine thing to get into their set."
Meanwhile Lady Babbleton and her two daughters swept up the room, bowing and nodding to the riven ranks on each side, who made their salutations with the most profound respect. My experienced eye detected in a moment that Lady Babbleton, in spite of her title and her stateliness, was exceedingly the reverse of good ton, and the daughters (who did not resemble the scrag of mutton, but its ghost) had an appearance of sour affability, which was as different from the manners of proper society, as it possibly could be.
I wondered greatly who and what they were. In the eyes of the Cheltenhamians, they were the countess and her daughters; and any further explanation would have been deemed quite superfluous; further explanation I was, however, determined to procure, and was walking across the room in profound meditation as to the method in which the discovery should be made, when I was startled by the voice of Sir Lionel Garrett: I turned round, and to my inexpressible joy, beheld that worthy baronet.
"God bless me, Pelham," said he, "how delighted I am to see you. Lady Harriett, here' your old favourite, Mr. Pelham."
Lady Harriet was all smiles and pleasure. "Give me your arm," said she;
"I must go and speak to Lady Babbleton—odious woman!"
"Do, my dear Lady Harriett," said I, "explain to me what Lady Babbleton was?"
"Why—she was a milliner, and took in the late lord, who was an idiot.—
Voila tout!"
"Perfectly satisfactory," replied I.
"Or, short and sweet, as Lady Babbleton would say," replied Lady Harriett, laughing.
"In antithesis to her daughters, who are long and sour."
"Oh, you satirist!" said the affected Lady Harriett (who was only three removes better than the Cheltenham countess); "but tell me, how long have you been at Cheltenham?"
"About four hours and a half!"
"Then you don't know any of the lions here?"
"None."
"Well, let me dispatch Lady Babbleton, and I'll then devote myself to being your nomenclator."
We walked up to Lady Babbleton, who had already disposed of her daughters, and was sitting in solitary dignity at the end of the room.
"My dear Lady Babbleton," cried Lady Harriett, taking both the hands of the dowager, "I am so glad to see you, and how well you are looking; and your charming daughters, how are they?—sweet girls!—and how long have you been here?"
"We have only just come," replied the cidevant milliner, half rising and rustling her plumes in stately agitation, like a nervous parrot; "we must conform to modern ours, Lady Arriett, though for my part, I like the old- fashioned plan of dining early, and finishing one's gaieties before midnight; but I set the fashion of good ours as well as I can. I think it's a duty we owe to society, Lady Arriett, to encourage morality by our own example. What else do we have rank for?" And, so saying, the counter countess drew herself up with a most edifying air of moral dignity.
Lady Harriett looked at me, and perceiving that my eye said "go on," as plain as eye could possibly speak, she continued—"Which of the wells do you attend, Lady Babbleton?"
"All," replied the patronizing dowager. "I like to encourage the poor people here; I've no notion of being proud because one has a title, Lady Arriett."
"No," rejoined the worthy helpmate of Sir Lionel Garrett; "every body talks of your condescension, Lady Babbleton; but are you not afraid of letting yourself down by going every where?"
"Oh," answered the countess, "I admit very few into my set, at home, but I go out promiscuously;" and then, looking at me, she said, in a whisper, to Lady Harriett, "Who is that nice young gentleman?"
"Mr. Pelham," replied Lady Harriett; and, turning to me, formally introduced us to each other.
"Are you any relation (asked the dowager) to Lady Frances Pelham?"
"Only her son," said I.
"Dear me," replied Lady Babbleton, "how odd; what a nice elegant woman she is! She does not go much out, does she? I don't often meet her."
"I should not think it likely that your ladyship did meet her much. She does not visit promiscuously."
"Every rank has its duty," said Lady Harriett, gravely; "your mother, Mr.
Pelham, may confine her circle as much as she pleases; but the high rank of Lady Babbleton requires greater condescension; just as the Dukes of Sussex and Gloucester go to many places where you and I would not."