Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

The row at home at length grew so unbearable, that Sir Joseph Raikes, who had never had an explanation since his marriage, and had given into all his wife's caprices--that Sir Joseph, we say, even with his 'eavenly temper, he broke out into a passion; and one day after dinner, at which only his brother-in-law Dolly was present, told his wife that her tyranny was intolerable, and that it must come to an end.

Dolly said he was "quite wight," and backed up Raikes in every way.

Zuleika said they were a pair of brutes, and that she desired to return to Sir Ajax.

"Why, what the devil is urging you?" cried the husband; "you drive me mad, Zuleika."

"Yes; what are you at, Zuleika? You dwive him cwazy," said the brother.

Upon which Zuleika broke out. She briefly stated that her husband was a liar; that he was a gambler; that he had deceived her about betting at Epsom, and had given his word to a lie; that he had deceived her about that--that woman,--and given his word to another lie; and that, with the fruits of his gambling transactions at Epsom, he had purchased the diamond necklace, not for her, but for that--that person! That was all--that was enough. Let her go home and die in Baker Street, in the room which, she prayed Heaven, she never had quitted! That was her charge. If Sir Joseph Raikes had any thing to say he had better say it.

Sir Joseph Raikes said, that she had the most confounded jealous temper that ever a woman was cursed with; that he had been on his knees to her ever since his marriage, and had spent half his income in administering to her caprices and extravagancies; that as for these charges, they were so monstrous, he should not condescend to answer them; and as she chose to leave her husband and her child, she might go whenever she liked.

Lady Raikes upon this rang the bell, and requested Hickson the butler to tell Dickson her maid to bring down her bonnet and shawl; and when Hickson quitted the dining-room, Dolly Trotter began:

"Zuleika," said he, "you are enough to twy the patience of an angel; and, by Jove, you do! You've got the best fellow for a husband (a sneer from Zuleika) that ever was bullied by a woman, and you tweat him like a dawg. When you were ill, you used to make him get up of a night to go to the doctor's. When you're well, you plague his life out of him. He pays your milliner's bills, as if you were a duchess, and you have but to ask for a thing and you get it."

"Oh, yes, I have necklaces!" said Zuleika.

"Confound you, Zuly! had'nt he paid three hundwed and eighty for a new cawwiage for you the week before? Hadn't he fitted your dwawing-woom with yellow satin at the beginning of the season? Hadn't he bought you the pair of ponies you wanted, and gone without a hack himself, and he gettin' as fat as a porpoise for want of exercise, the poor old boy? And for that necklace, do you know how it was that you didn't have it, and that you were very nearly having it, you ungwateful little devil you? It was _I_ prevented you! He _did_ win six hundwed at the Derby; and he would have bought your necklace, but he gave me the money. The governor said he never would pay another play-debt again for me; and bet I would, like a confounded, gweat, stooped fool: and it was this old Joe--this dear old twump--who booked up for me, and took me out of the hole, like the best fellow in the whole world, by Jove! And--and I'll never bet again, so help me----! And that's why he couldn't tell--and that's why he wouldn't split on me--and that's why you didn't have your confounded necklace, which old Cwipplegate bought for Mrs. Montmowency, who's going to marry her, like a confounded fool for his pains!"

And here the dragoon being blown, took a large glass of claret; and when Hickson and Dickson came down stairs, they found her ladyship in rather a theatrical attitude, on her knees, embracing her husband's big hand, and calling down blessings upon him, and owning that she was a wretch, a monster, and a fiend.

She was only a jealous, little spoiled fool of a woman; and I am sure those who read her history have never met with her like, or have ever plagued their husbands. Certainly they have not, if they are not married: as, let us hope, they will be.

As for Vincent, he persists in saying that the defence is a fib from beginning to end, and that the Trotters were agreed to deceive Lady Raikes. But who hasn't had his best actions misinterpreted by calumny? And what innocence or good will can disarm jealousy?

* * * * *

Very different from THACKARAY is the genial Mrs. S. C. HALL, from whom we have

EDWARD LAYTON'S REWARD.

"I could not have believed it!" exclaimed Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. "I could not have believed it!" she repeated, over and over again; and she fell into a fit of abstraction.

Her husband, who had been glancing wearily over a magazine, turning leaf after leaf without reading, or perhaps seeing even the heading of a page, at length said, "I could!"

"You have large faith, my dear," observed the lady.

"Fortunately for Selina, I had no faith in him," was the reply.

Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw was not an eloquent person; she never troubled her husband or any one else with many words; so she only murmured, in a subdued tone, "Fortunately, indeed!"

"What a fellow he was!" said Mr. P. Bradshaw, as he closed the magazine. "Do you remember how delighted you were with him the evening of the _tableaux_ at Lady Westrophe's? There was something so elegant and dignified in his bearing; so much ease and grace of manner; his address was perfect--the confidence of a well-bred gentleman, subdued almost, but not quite, into softness by the timidity of youth. This was thrown into strong relief by the manners of the young men of the family, whose habits and voices might have entitled them to take the lead, even now, in the go-a-head school, which then was hardly in existence--at all events in England."

"You were quite as much taken with him as I was."

"No, my dear, not _quite_. Edward Layton was especially suited for the society of ladies. His tastes and feelings are--or _were_ at that time--all sincerely refined; he was full of the impulse of talent, which he never had strength to bring forth: his thoughts were ever wandering, and he needed perpetual excitement, particularly the excitement of beauty and music, to bring them and keep them where he _was_. He was strongly and strangely moved by excellence of any kind, so that it _was_ excellence; and the only thing I ever heard him express contempt for was wealth!--yes wealth!"

"I could not have believed it," said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw again.

"That particular night it was whispered he was engaged to Lelia Medwin. When she sung, he stood like a young Apollo at her harp, too entranced to turn over the leaves of music, his eyes overflowing with delight, and the poor little girl so bewitched by his attentions that she fancied every whisper a declaration of love."

"Shameful!" said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw.

"Then her mother showed every one what a lovely sketch he had made of Lelia's head, adding, that indeed it was too lovely; but then, he was a _partial_ judge."

"She was a silly woman," observed the lady.

"She would not have been considered so if they had been married," replied the gentleman. "Mammas have no mercy on each other in those delicate manoeuvrings. Well, he waltzed with her always; and bent over her--willow-fashion; looked with her at the moon; and wrote a sonnet which she took to herself, for it was addressed 'To mine own dear ----;' and then when, about eight weeks afterwards, we met him at the _dejeuner_ at Sally Lodge, he was as entranced with Lizzie Grey's guitar as he had been with Lelia's harp, sketched her little tiger head for her grandmamma, waltzed with _her_, bent over _her_ willow-fashion, looked with her at the moon, and wrote another sonnet, addressed 'To the loved one.'"

"Such men----" exclaimed Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. She did not finish the sentence, but looked as if such men ought to be exterminated. And so they ought!

"There was so much about him that I liked: his fine talents, good manners, excellent position in society, added to his good nature, and----"

"Good fortune," added Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw.

"No, Mary," said her husband, quietly, "I never was a _mammon worshipper_. This occurred, if you remember, before the yellow pestilence had so completely subverted London, that the very aristocracy knelt and worshipped the golden calf; and no blame to the calf to _receive_ the homage, whatever we may say of those who paid it.

"I did not mean _that_ as a reproof, Pierce," replied his wife, most truly. "_I_ think it quite natural to like young men of fortune--we could not get on without them, you know; and it would be very imprudent--very imprudent, indeed--to invite any young man, however excellent. When we want to get these young girls, our poor nieces, off, I declare it is quite melancholy. Jane is becoming _serious_ since she has grown so thin; and I fear the men will think Belle a blue, she has so taken to the British Museum. Oh, how I wish people would live, and bring up, and get off their own daughters! Four marriageable nieces, with such farthing fortunes, are enough to drive any poor aunt distracted!"

This was the longest speech Mrs. Bradshaw ever made in her life, and she sighed deeply at its conclusion.

"You may well sigh!" laughed the gentleman; "for the case seems hopeless. But I was going to say, that as I knew him better, I was really going to take the young gentleman a little to task on the score of his philandering. Lelia was really attached to him, and had refused a very advantageous offer for his sake; but the very next week, at another house, I found him enchained by a sparkling widow--correcting her drawings, paying the homage of intelligent silence and sweet smiles to her wit, leaning his white-gloved hand upon her chair, and looking in her eyes with his most bewitching softness. The extent of this flirtation no one could anticipate; but the sudden appearance of Lady Di' Johnson effected a total change. She drove four-in-hand, and was a dead shot--the very antipodes of sentiment. We said her laugh would drive Edward Layton distracted, and her _cigarette_ be his death. But, no! the magnificence of her tomboyism caught his fancy. He enshrined her at once as Diana, bayed the moon with hunting-songs, wrote a sonnet to the chase, and then, with his own hands, twisted it into a _cigarette_, with which her ladyship puffed it to the winds of heaven, while wandering with the Lothario amid a grove of fragrant limes. The miracle was, that at breakfast the next morning Lady Di' was subdued, voted driving unfeminine, and asked Edward to take the reins for her after lunch. You remember we left them there; and I next met him at Killarney, giving his chestnut locks to the breeze, his arm to the oar, and his eyes to a lady of blue-stocking celebrity, who, never having had many lovers, was inclined to make the most of the present one. Circumstances rendered me acquainted with some facts relating to his 'flirtations,' if his soft and sentimental ways could be called by such a name. I had seen poor Lelia at Baden-Baden; and I dare say you can recall what we heard of another love of his nearer home. Well, I encountered my Hero of Ladies that very evening, wandering amid the ruined aisles of Mucross Abbey. I saw that his impressible nature had taken a thoughtful, if not a religious tone, from the scene. And he commenced the conversation by declaring, that 'He was a great fool.'"

"Knave, rather," said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw.

"No," replied her husband; "not a knave, but a singular example of a man whose feelings and susceptibilities never deepen into affection--unstable as water--tossed hither and thither for want of fixed principles, and suffering intensely in his better moods from the knowledge of the weakness he has not the courage to overcome. I was not inclined to let him spare himself, and did not contradict his opinion that he was a 'fool,' but told him he might be what he pleased himself, as long as he did not make fools of others."

"'I tell every woman I know that I am not a marrying man,' he replied.

"'That,' I said, 'does not signify as long as you act the lover, each fair one believing you will revoke in her favor.'

"'I give you my honor,' he exclaimed, 'as a man and a gentleman, I never entertained for twenty-four hours the idea of marrying any woman I ever knew.'"

"The villain!" exclaimed the lady. "I hope, Pierce, you told him he was a villain!"

"No; because I knew the uncertainty of his disposition: but I lectured him fully and honestly, and yet said nothing to him so severe as what he said of himself. I told him he would certainly be caught in the end by some unworthy person, and then he would look back with regret and misery upon the chances he had lost, and the unhappiness he had caused to those whose only faults had been in believing him true when he was false."

"'Better that,' he answered, 'than marrying when he could not make up his mind.'

"'Then why play the lover?'

"'He only did so while infatuated--he was certain to find faults where he imagined perfection.'"

"What assurance!" said Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw.

"'I am sure,' I said, 'Lelia was very charming. Lelia Medwin was an excellent, amiable little creature, with both good temper and good sense.'

"'That was it,' he said: 'only fancy the six-foot-one-and-three-quarters wedded to bare five feet! The absurdity struck me one night as we were waltzing and whirling past a looking-glass; I was obliged to bend double, though I never felt it till I saw it.'"

"Really, I have not patience," observed Mrs. Bradshaw. "And so her feelings were to be trampled upon because she was not tall enough to please _him_! Why did he not think of that before?"

"'But there was Lizzy Grey, related to half the aristocracy, with a voice like an angel.'

"'A vixen,' he said, 'though of exquisite beauty--could have torn my eyes out for the little attention I paid Mrs. Green.'

"'_Little attention!_' I repeated; 'more than little.'

"'Her wit was delicious,' he replied; 'but she was a widow! Only fancy the horror of being compared with 'My dear first husband!'

"'Then your conquest of Lady Di' Johnson! How badly you behaved to her!'

"'She was magnificent on horseback; and her _cigarette_ as fascinating as the fan of a Madrid belle, or the _tournure_ of a Parisian lady. They were her _two points_. But when she relinquished both, I believe in compliment to _me_, she became even more commonplace than the most commonplace woman.'"

"The puppy!" muttered the lady: "the dreadful puppy! I could not have believed it!"

Mr. Bradshaw did not heed the interruption, but continued:

"'And who,' I inquired, 'was the Lady of the Lake? I do not mean of _this lake_, for I see her reign is already over--your passion expired with the third chapter of her novel, which I know she read to you by moonlight--but the fair Lady of Geneva, whose betrothed called you out?'

"'Her father was a sugar-boiler,' was the quiet reply: 'a sugar-boiler, or something of the kind. What would my aristocratic mother say to that? Of course I could have had no serious intention _there_. Indeed I never _had_ a serious intention for a whole week.'

"'But, my dear fellow, when presents are given, and letters written, and locks of hair and vows exchanged----'

"'No, no!' he exclaimed; '_no_ vows exchanged! I never broke my word to a woman yet. It was admiration for this or that--respect, esteem, perhaps a tender bewilderment--mere _brotherly_ love. And in that particular instance her intended got angry at my civility. I know I was wrong; and, to confess the truth, I am ashamed of that transaction--it taught me a lesson; and, but for the confounded vacillation of my taste and temper, I might perhaps have been a Benedick before this. You may think it puppyism, if you please; but I am really sorry when I make an impression, and resolve never to attempt it again: but the next fine voice, or fine eyes----'

"'Or cigarette,' I suggested; and then I said as much as one man can say to another, for you know a woman can say much more to a man in the way of reproof than he would bear from his own sex; but he silenced me very quickly by regrets and good resolutions. It was after that our little niece, Selina, made an impression upon him."

"I did not know all you have now told me," expostulated his wife. "I own I thought it would have been a good match for Selina; and he was evidently deeply smitten before he knew she was your niece. I managed it beautifully; but you cut the matter short by offending him."

"There, say no more about it," said the sensible husband; "you thought your blue-eyed, fair-haired, doll-like favorite, could have enchained a man who had escaped heart-whole from the toils of the richest and rarest in the land. It really is fearful to see how women not only tolerate, but pursue this sort of men. You call them 'villains,' and I know not what, when you are foiled; but if you succeed, you temper it; they have been a little wild, to be sure--but then, and then, and then--you really could not refuse your daughter; and add, "Men _are_ such creatures that if the world knew but all, _he_ is not worse than others."

"For shame, Pierce! how can you?" said the lady.

"I told him then," continued Mr. Bradshaw, "that he would take '_the crooked stick at last_;' but that he should not add a tress of Selina's hair to his collection, to be turned over by _his_ WIFE one of those days. Of course he was very indignant, and we parted; but I did not think my prophecy would come true so soon. I have long since given up speculating how marriages will turn out, for it is quite impossible to tell. If women could be shut up in a harem, as in the East, a man who was ashamed of his wife might go into society without her; but for a refined and well-educated gentleman, as Edward Layton certainly is, to be united to the _widow_ of a sugar-boiler!--yes, absolutely!--who is an inch shorter than pretty Lelia and more tiger-headed than Lizzy Grey, and who declares she hates music, although her dear first husband took her _h_often to the Hopera--who adds deformity to shortness, talks loudly of the _h_influence of wealth, and compares the presentations at the Mansion House, that she has seen, to those at St. James's which she has not yet seen! Verily, Edward Layton has had _his reward_!"

* * * * *

BULWER LYTTON contributes to the "Keepsake" an essay, characteristic of his earlier rather than of his later style:

THE CONFIRMED VALETUDINARIAN.

Certainly there is truth in the French saying, that there is no ill without something of good. What state more pitiable to the eye of a man of robust health than that of the Confirmed Valetudinarian? Indeed, there is no one who has a more profound pity for himself than your Valetudinarian; and yet he enjoys two of the most essential requisites for a happy life; he is never without an object of interest, and he is perpetually in pursuit of hope.

Our friend Sir George Malsain is a notable case in point: young, well born, rich, not ill educated, and with some ability, they who knew him formerly, in what were called his "gay days," were accustomed to call him "lucky dog," and "enviable fellow." How shallow is the judgment of mortals! Never was a poor man so bored--nothing interested him. His constitution seemed so formed for longevity, and his condition so free from care, that he was likely to have a long time before him:--it is impossible to say how long that time seemed to him. Fortunately, from some accidental cause or other, he woke one morning and found himself ill; and, whether it was the fault of the doctor or himself I cannot pretend to say, but he never got well again. His ailments became chronic; he fell into a poor way. From that time life has assumed to him a new aspect. Always occupied with himself, he is never bored. He may be sick, sad, suffering, but he has found his object in existence--he lives to be cured. His mind is fully occupied; his fancy eternally on the wing. Formerly he had travelled much, but without any pleasure in movement: he might as well have stayed at home. Now, when he travels, it is for an end; it is delightful to witness the cheerful alertness with which he sets about it. He is going down the Rhine;--for its scenery? Pshaw! he never cared a button about scenery; but he has great hopes of the waters at Kreuznach. He is going into Egypt;--to see the Pyramids? Stuff! the climate on the Nile is so good for the mucous membrane! Set him down at the dullest of dull places, and he himself is never dull. The duller the place the better; his physician has the more time to attend to him. When you meet him he smiles on you, and says, poor fellow, "The doctor assures me that in two years I shall be quite set up." He has said the same thing the last twenty years, and will say it the day before his death!...

What a busy, anxious, fidgety creature Ned Worrell was? That iron frame supported all the business of all society! Every man who wanted any thing done, asked Ned Worrell to do it. And do it Ned Worrell did! You remember how feelingly he was wont to sigh,--"Upon my life I'm a perfect slave." But now Ned Worrell has snapped his chain; obstinate dyspepsia, and a prolonged nervous debility, have delivered him from the carks and cares of less privileged mortals. Not Ariel under the bough is more exempt from humanity than Edward Worrell. He is enjoined to be kept in a state of perfect repose, free from agitation, and hermetically shut out from grief. His wife pays his bills, and he is only permitted to see his banker's accounts when the balance in his favor is more than usually cheerful. His eldest daughter, an intelligent young lady, reads his letters, and only presents to him those which are calculated to make a pleasing impression. Call now on your old friend, on a question of life and death, to ask his advice, or request his interference--you may as well call on King Cheops under the Great Pyramid. The whole houseguard of tender females block the way.

"Mr. Worrell is not to be disturbed on any matter of business whatever," they will tell you. "But, my dear ma'am, he is trusted to my marriage settlement; his signature is necessary to a transfer of my wife's fortune from those cursed railway shares. To-morrow they will be down at zero. We shall be ruined!"

"Mr. Worrell is in a sad, nervous way, and can't be disturbed, sir." And the door is shut in your face!

It was after some such occurrence that I took into earnest consideration a certain sentiment of Plato's, which I own I had till then considered very inhuman; for that philosopher is far from being the tender and sensitive gentleman generally believed in by lovers and young ladies. Plato, in his "Republic," blames Herodicus (one of the teachers of that great doctor Hippocrates) for showing to delicate, sickly persons, the means whereby to prolong their valetudinary existence, as Herodicus himself (naturally a very rickety fellow) had contrived to do. Plato accuses this physician of having thereby inflicted a malignant and wanton injury on those poor persons;--nay, not only an injury on them, but on all society. "For," argues this stern, broad-shouldered Athenian, "how can people be virtuous who are always thinking of their own infirmities?" And therefore he opines, that if a sickly person cannot wholly recover health and become robust, the sooner he dies the better for himself and others! The wretch, too, might be base enough to marry, and have children as ailing as their father, and so injure, _in perpetuo_, the whole human race. Away with him!

But, upon cool and dispassionate reflection, it seemed to me, angry as I was with Ned Worrell, that Plato stretched the point a little too far; and certainly, in the present state of civilization, so sweeping a condemnation of the sickly would go far towards depopulating Europe. Celsus, for instance, classes amongst the delicate or sickly the greater part of the inhabitants of towns, and nearly all literary folks (_omnesque pene cupidi literarum_). And if we thus made away with the denizens of the towns, it would be attended with a great many inconveniencies as to shopping, &c., be decidedly injurious to house property, and might greatly affect the state of the funds; while, without literary folks, we should be very dull in our healthy country-seats, deprived of newspapers, novels, and "The Keepsake." Wherefore, on the whole, I think Herodicus was right; and that sickly persons should not only be permitted but encouraged to live as long as they can.

That proposition granted, if in this attempt to show that your confirmed Valetudinarian is not so utterly miserable as he is held to be by those who throw physic to the dogs--and that in some points he may be a decided gainer by his physical sufferings--I have not wholly failed--then I say, with the ingenious Author who devoted twenty years to a work "On the Note of the Nightingale,"--"I have not lived in vain!"

A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[24]

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

_Continued from Page 44._