adjuncts. Lady Fidget says: "Our virtue is like the statesman's religion, the Quaker's word, the gamester's oath, and the great man's honour; but to cheat those that trust us." Or again: "If you'll consult the widows of this town," says a young lady who does not wish to marry again, "they'll tell you, you should never take a lease of a house you can hire for a quarter's , warning." + Or again: "My heart cut a caper up to my mouth," says a young heir, "when I heard my father was shot through the head.” * The gentlemen collar each other on the stage, treat the ladies roughly before spectators, contrive an adultery not far off between the wings. Base or ferocious parts abound. There are furies like Mrs. Loveit and Lady Touchwood. There are swine like Parson Bull and the go-between Coupler. Lady Touchwood wants to stab her lover on the stage. Coupler, on the stage, uses gestures which recall the court of Henry III of France. Wretches like Fainall and Maskwell are unmitigated scoundrels, and their hatefulness is not even cloaked by the grotesque. Even honest women like Silvia and Mrs. Sullen are plunged into the most shocking situations. Nothing shocked the English public of those days; they had no real education, but only its varnish. There is a forced connection between the mind of a writer, the world which surrounds him, and the characters which he produces; for it is from this world that he draws the materials out of which he composes them. The sentiments which he contemplates in others and feels himself are gradually arranged into characters; he can only invent after his given model and his acquired experience; and his charcters only manifest what he is, or abridge what he has seen. Two features are prominent in this world; they are prominent also on this stage. All the successful characters can be reduced to two classes-natural beings on the one part, and artificial on the other; the first with the coarseness and shamelessness of their primitive inclinations, the second with the frivolities and vices of worldly habits: the first uncultivated, their simplicity revealing nothing but their innate baseness; the second cultivated, their refinement instilling into 3 Wycherley, "The Country Wife," V. 4. Vanbrugh, "Relapse," ii. end. She says to Maskwell, her lover: ** You want but leisure to invent fresh falsehood, and soothe me to a fond be- them nothing but a new corruption. And the talent of the writers is suited to the painting of these two groups: they possess the grand English faculty, which is the knowledge of exact detail and real sentiments; they see gestures, surroundings, dresses; they hear the sounds of voices, and they have the courage to exhibit them; they have inherited very little, and at a great distance, and in spite of themselves, still they have inherited from Shakespeare; they manipulate freely, and without any softening, the coarse harsh red color which alone can bring out the figures of their brutes. On the other hand, they have animation and a good style; they can express the thoughtless chatter, the frolicsome affectations, the inexhaustible and capricious abundance of drawing-room stupidities; they have as much liveliness as the maddest, and at the same time they speak as well as the best instructed; they can give the model of witty conversation; they have lightness of touch, brilliancy, and also facility, exactness, without which you cannot draw the portrait of a man of the world. They find naturally on their palette the strong colors which suit their barbarians, and the pretty tints which suit their exquisites. Section VIII.-Natural Characters First there is the blockhead, Squire Sullen, a low kind of sot, of whom his wife speaks in this fashion: "After his man and he had rolled about the room, like sick passengers in a storm, he comes flounce into bed, dead as a salmon into a fishmonger's basket; his feet cold as ice, his breath hot as a furnace, and his hands and his face as greasy as his flannel nightcap. O matrimony! He tosses up the clothes with a barbarous swing over his shoulders, disorders the whole economy of my bed, leaves me half naked, and my whole night's comfort is the tuneable serenade of that wakeful nightingale, his nose!" Sir John Brute says: "What the plague did I marry her (his wife) for? I knew she did not like me; if she had, she would have lain with me." 2 He turns his drawing-room into a stable, smokes it foul to drive the women away, throws his pipe at their heads, drinks, swears, and curses. Coarse words and oaths flow through his conversation like filth through a gutter. He gets drunk at the tavern, 1 Farquhar, "The Beaux Stratagem," ii. 1. 2 Vanbrugh, Provoked Wife," v. 6. 64 and howls out, "Damn morality! and damn the watch! and let the constable be married." He cries out that he is a free-born Englishman; he wants to go out and break everything. He leaves the inn with othen besotted scamps, and attacks the women in the street. He robs a tailor who was carrying a doctor's gown, puts it on, thrashes the guard. He is seized and taken by the constable; on the road he breaks out into abuse, and ends by proposing to him, amid the hiccoughs and stupid reiterations of a drunken man, to go and find out somewhere a bottle and a girl. He returns home at last, covered with blood and mud, growling like a dog, with red swollen eyes, calling his wife a slut and a liar. He goes to her, forcibly embraces her, and as she turns away, cries," I see it goes damnably against your stomach-and therefore-kiss me again. (Kisses and tumbles her.) So, now you being as dirty and as nasty as myself, we may go pig together." He wants to get a cup of cold tea out of the closet, kicks open the door, discovers his wife's and niece's gallants. He storms, raves madly with his clammy tongue, then suddenly falls asleep. His valet comes and takes the insensible burden on his shoulders. It is the portrait of a mere animal, and I fancy it is not a nice one. That is the husband; let us look at the father, Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, a country gentleman, elegant, if any of them were. Tom Fashion knocks at the door of the mansion, which looks. like "Noah's ark," and where they receive people as in a besieged city. A servant appears at a window with a blunderbuss in his hand, who is at last with great difficulty persuaded that he ought to let his master know that somebody wishes to see him. "Ralph, go thy weas, and ask Sir Tunbelly if he pleases to be waited upon. And dost hear? call to nurse that she may lock up Miss Hoyden before the geat's open." Please to observe that in this house they keep a watch over the girls. Sir Tunbelly comes up with his people, armed with guns, pitchforks, scythes, and clubs, in no amiable mood, and wants to know the name of his visitor. "Till I know your name, I shall not ask you to come into my house; and when I know your name-'tis six to four I don't ask you neither." He is like a watchdog growling and looking at the calves of an intruder. But he presently learns that this intruder is his future son-in-law; he utters some exclamations, and makes his excuses. "Cod's my life! I ask your lordship's pardon ten thousand times. (To a servant.) Here, run in a-doors quickly. Get a Scotch-coal fire in the great parlor; set all the Turkey-work chairs in their places; get the great brass candlesticks out, and be sure stick the sockets full of laurel. Run! . . . And do you hear, run away to nurse, bid her let Miss Hoyden loose again, and if it was not shiftingday, let her put on a clean tucker, quick!" The pretended sonin-law wants to marry Hoyden straight off. "Not so soon neither! that's shooting my girl before you bid her stand! . . Besides, my wench's wedding-gown is not come home yet.' The other suggests that a speedy marriage will save money. Spare money? says the father, " Udswoons, I'll give my wench a wedding dinner, though I go to grass with the king of Assyria for't. . . . Ah! poor girl, she'll be scared out of her wits on her wedding-night; for, honestly speaking, she does not know a man from a woman but by his beard and his breeches." 10 Foppington, the real son-in-law, arrives. Sir Tunbelly, taking him for an impostor, calls him a dog; Hoyden proposes to drag him in the horse-pond; they bind him hand and foot, and thrust him into the dog-kennel; Sir Tunbelly puts his fist under his nose and threatens to knock his teeth down his throat. Afterwards, having discovered the impostor, he says, "My lord, will you cut his throat? or shall I? Here, give me my dog whip. . . Here, here, here, let me beat out his brains, and that will decide all." 11 He raves, and wants to fall upon Tom Fashion with his fists. Such is the country gentleman, of high birth and a farmer, boxer and drinker, brawler and beast. There steam up from all these scenes a smell of cooking, the noise of riot, the odor of a dunghill. Like father like child. What a candid creature is Miss Hoyden! She grumbles to herself, "It's well I have a husband a-coming, or, ecod, I'd marry the baker; I would so! Nobody can knock at the gate, but presently I must be locked up; and here's the young greyhound bitch can run loose about the house all the day long, she can; 'tis very well." 12 When the nurse 66 66 66 66 tells her her future husband has arrived, she leaps for joy, and kisses the old woman. "O Lord! I'll go put on my laced smock, though I'm whipped till the blood run down my heels. for't." 13 Tom comes himself, and asks her if she will be his wife. "Sir, I never disobey my father in anything but eating of green gooseberries." But your father wants to wait a whole week." "A week!-Why I shall be an old woman by that time." 14 - I cannot give all her answers. There is the spirit of a goat behind her kitchen-talk. She marries Tom secretly on the spot, and the chaplain wishes them many children. "Ecod," she says, with all my heart! the more the merrier, I say; ha! nurse!" 15 But Lord Foppington, her real intended, turns up, and Tom makes off. Instantly her plan is formed. She bids the nurse and chaplain hold their tongues. "If you two will be sure to hold your tongues, and not say a word of what's past, I'll e'en marry this lord too." What," says nurse, two husbands, my dear?" "Why, you had three, good nurse, you may hold your tongue." 16 She nevertheless takes a dislike to the lord, and very soon; he is not well made, he hardly gives her any pocketmoney; she hesitates between the two. "If I leave my lord, I must leave my lady too; and when I rattle about the streets in my coach, they'll only say, There goes mistress-mistress-mistress what? What's this man's name I have married, nurse?" "Squire Fashion.” "Squire Fashion is it?-Well, 'Squire,' that's better than nothing.17 Love him! why do you think I love him, nurse? ecod, I would not care if he were hanged, so I were but once married to him!-No-that which pleases me, is to think what work I'll make when I get to London; for when I am a wife and a lady both, nurse, ecod, I'll flaunt it with the best of 'em." 18 But she is cautious all the She knows that her father has his dog's whip handy, and that he will give her a good shake. "But, d'ye hear?" she says to the nurse. Pray take care of one thing: when the business comes to break out, be sure you get between me and my father, same. 66 |