the place was old bath, in the days immediately succeeding those of alexander pope and william hogarth, and dovetailing into those of horace walpole and the wesleys.
the age was one of rackets and reaction from morning till night, and bath was the head-quarters of the first—the scene of the pump-room, the raffle, the public breakfast, the junketing at mid-day, the ball at midnight, the play, the ridotto.
the scene was a private room in the "bear," when it was crowded with peers, bullies, rooks, highwaymen, leaders of fashion, waiting-women, and stage stars. the "bear" was held by great mrs. price, a hostess large, shining, portly—a friendly great woman, too magnificent to be fussy, or mean, or spiteful. the "bear" looked out on the parade, with its throngs of beaux—veritable beaux, with beau nash at their head—wigged, caned, and snuff-boxed, and belles with trains borne by black boys, cambric caps and aprons, and abundance of velvet patches. in and out of its yawning doorway strutted fine gentlemen, [page 63]chaplains, and wits, while grooms, public and private, swarmed round the house. its broad stairs and low wide corridors, traversed by the more private company, led to sitting rooms of all degrees, panelled with oak or lined with cedar, with worked worsted wonders in the shape of chairs, and china monsters by way of ornaments.
the person was a handsome woman, attired negligently in what was called a sacque, with a mob-cap. she sat sipping a dish of tea, as sober women will after fatigue or in anticipation of exertion, and making occasional reference to some shabby, well-worn volumes and printed sheets piled up beside her. her attitude was studious, for days when a chapter of the bible, a cookery recipe, a paper by addison or dick steele, or a copy of verses, included all the knowledge after which the gentler sex aspired; her retirement was remarkable at that gay era, and in that gadding neighbourhood; and her morning dress, though it would not have offended a tabitha tidy, looked plain among the silvered mazarines and the tippets of pheasants' tails.
she was a woman of about five-and-twenty; but her beauty, though still in its prime, showed the wear and tear of years. had it not been that its chief power lay in the intellect and goodness which sat on the capacious but not cloudy brow, and gleamed out of the cordial dark blue eyes, and hovered round the somewhat wide and somewhat lined but never sensual mouth—you would have said this was a faded queen whom the world was mad to worship. as it was, she did look faded this spring afternoon, and occasionally fretted audibly enough as she turned [page 64]over the leaves of her volumes, and sighed "heigho!" as she looked at her repeater—not quite so common an appendage as the little geneva story-tellers, though a footpad carried always a goodly supply, and a gentleman's gentleman of very fine prestige would wear a couple, "one in each fob"—and sipped her tea; which, by the way, she drank, not out of one of the diminutive china cups, but out of an old battered, but very shining little silver tankard.
anon my lady rose and strolled to a back window. she looked across the noisy, crowded stable-yard into the corner of a garden, where a lilac bush was budding into dusty dim purple and a hoary apple-tree blossomed white and pink like a blushing child, away over the green fields to a farmhouse upon a hill, where russet and yellow stacks proved the farmer's command of ready money, or caution in selling. from just such another farmhouse as that on which our bright benevolent woman—even in the dumps—was gazing wistfully, issued caroline inchbald, a beauty, and a generous, virtuous woman under great temptations, a friend and rival on equal terms with amelia opie.
but hark! an arrival in the next room: fresh guests—country people of consequence, for they were ushered in by mrs. price herself, who received in person their orders for an incongruous meal, neither dinner nor supper, to recruit them for some gala in which they had the prospect of figuring, to judge from a torrent of exclamations which pierced through a convenient cupboard in the partition.
"make haste, girls," in bass tones.
[page 65]"eat away, fiddy," in treble, mimicking the bass.
"uncle, don't attempt the game-pie. we'll be too late, as sure as our heads. didn't you hear mrs. price say there was a power of company wanting seats; it would be too bad if we lost the sight after all."
"what, prissy, worse than admiral byng's defeat, or my spoilt medal?"
"oh! uncle rowland, how can you joke! now, fiddy, there's a dear creature, don't have anything to say to the cream-tart. what although we're as hungry as hawks, if we only get a good view to talk about at the vicarage and larks' hall."
"there—prissy, dear, then i've done. i'll just run and shake our myrtle crapes and fresh pinch our stomachers."
"hold! no such thing, lasses. i'm not to be left here to feed in solitude, and without e'er a portfolio or picture. you little geese, it is two good hours to the exhibition. are you to be frizzing, and painting, and lacing, and mincing, and capering for two mortal hours, and your poor country uncle left to spoil his digestion for want of something else to do than eat? is that your gratitude, when here have i come against my will to introduce you to the wicked, gay world, and spoil your arcadian simplicity? don't make faces, prissy!"
"oh! uncle rowland; you are making base pretences."
"indeed, sir, i think you are as wild to see the wonders as we are."
but the remonstrance had its effect, for the young ladies evidently sat down again, and, by the clatter of knives and [page 66]forks, one could judge they condescended to do some justice to the good things provided for their solace, while the conversation went on in more regular order.
the lady in the nankin sitting-room had decidedly the advantage in this situation, as she did not soliloquize in private, and she heard through the cupboard and the locked door of communication the chat of her neighbours. they spoke no treason, and they ought to be more prudent if they told secrets: it was a real benefit to a lonely wight, a little irritated in nerve and temper, to be a party to their lively, affectionate, simple intercourse; and, as the truth must be told, the lady in the nankin sitting-room crossed her hands with a motion of indolent interest and turned her head with an air of listless pleasure, nodding and beating her foot lightly on the floor now and then, in interjection and commentary. she could figure the group perfectly. two rosy little girls brought into the town for a day and a night's shopping and gadding, as they would call it, under the escort of an indulgent uncle: a bachelor probably, else madam, his wife, would have been there to keep them in order; and not so very elderly, for the good man was of what is styled a sprightly turn, and though his nieces submitted to his authority, there was a decidedly modified amount of reverence in the way in which they insisted,
"you must comb out your curls, uncle rowland."
"and i'll tie your cravat for you, sir, and make you quite smart. we are not to appear abroad with a country bumpkin or a fright of a student, are we, prissy?"
and mutual jokes were bandied pretty freely.
[page 67]"now, prissy, are we to see the famous traveller?"
"no, sir, it is to be the virtuoso, with the mock copper coins."
"bronze, child, bronze."
"we're to have nobody in particular, only lady betty," chimed in the more girlish voice. "the company, the other gentlefolks, will be quite sufficient besides."
"and fiddy will scream when the blunderbusses are fired. shall we take the precaution of putting cotton in her ears beforehand?" derided the man.
then the single lady fixed further, that prissy (mistress priscilla, doubtless, in company down in somersetshire) was the cleverest and most forward, and that fiddy (mistress fidelia) was the shyest and, perhaps, the prettiest, for she was clearly uncle rowland's favourite. but then, for all her rosy cheeks, poor child! she was delicate, since there was a constant cry from the conductor of the party, "fiddy, you vain doll, remember your mantle; madam is not here to wrap you up, nor granny."
"oh, sir! we've lots of scarfs and shawls, all for fiddy; and she is to tie on her iris hood against the draughts."
"what! one of the poppies and bluebells that will honeycomb admired? she'll beat you, prissy, out and out. i would sicken and bear her company."
"i wonder to hear you, sir. i can tell you, granny would not coddle me so. granny is always preaching of hardening weakness."
"ah, the old mother is no milksop!"
there, was she not right? had she not full hints of the history of the vicarage and madam its mistress, the mother [page 68]of these two little girls; and of the parish priest her husband, their father—the younger brother of the tolerably educated squire yonder, with his larks' hall; and of granny, who kept house there still for her elder son, where she had once reigned queen paramount in the hearty days of her homely goodman. it was a scroll fairly unfolded, and perfectly legible to the experienced woman.
"uncle rowland," prefaced the soft voice, more quietly, "do you really think the gay world of the town so much more vicious than the sober world of the country?"
"why, no, my dear," answered the manly voice, now graver, and with a little sadness in its ring, "ignorance is not innocence, and depravity is vastly more general than any mode. nevertheless, there are customs of which i would greatly prefer prissy and fiddy to remain unaware, like their mother before them."
"but granny lived in the great world, and there is not one of us like granny."
"the risk is too great, child; the fire is wondrous strong, though the pure gold be sometimes refined in the process—as your father would preach."
"and, sir, this mistress lumley, or lady betty, as they called her downstairs, is as virtuous as she is clever."
"you may depend upon that, miss, or you had not come to bath to see her play. they term the poor soul lady betty because she has turned on her heel from the worthless london sparks, and taught them to keep their distance."
"uncle rowland, i don't think you heartily sympathize with charming lady betty."
[page 69]"tut! child, i have not seen her. you would not have me captivated ere i ever set eyes on my enslaver? but, to speak honestly, little fiddy, i own i have no great leaning to actresses and authoresses. there are perils enough in a woman's natural course, without her challenging the extremes of a fictitious career. more than that, fiddy, i have not much faith in the passion that is ranted to the public; even if it were always a creditable passion. those who are sorely hurt don't bawl, child: deep streams are still."
"i will play to him," the lady of the nankin sitting-room says to herself, her lips parting with a slight smile, and her colour rising at the same time. your true woman is easily pained, and, the more fully furnished, the more finely skilled, she is all the more susceptible to blame as to praise, and so on that account the less qualified for public life. there was many a strong enough argument against the stage and the desk which master rowland might have used instead of his weak one.
lady betty, in that bubbling, frothing, steaming london—mistress lumley in the provinces—was a young actress of great repute and good character, who had compelled success, like mrs. siddons after her, and reigned for several seasons, and still her fame was paramount and her respectability unquestioned. in those very dissipated days of queen anne and the early georges, the broad prejudices which darken the stage were light in tint and slender in force. the great world was tumultuous, giddy, reckless, with innumerable victims falling suddenly into its yawning chasms, like the figures from the bridge in mirza's vision; [page 70]and the theatre was not a more exposed sphere than many another, and that made all the difference in the world. very few save the strictest methodists condemned it, when henry brooke wrote for it, and dr. johnson stood with his hands behind his back in the green room.
mrs. betty lumley, tall, comely, high-principled, warm-hearted, and ingenuous, was come of yeomen ancestors. she did not see a play in a barn and run away after the drama, like caroline inchbald; but on the death of her father and mother, she went up with an elder sister and young brother to london to seek for an employment and a livelihood. encountering some person of dramatic pursuits—manager, stage-painter, ticket-taker, or the like, or the wife of one or other—she was recommended to the stage. she was supported in the idea by all her connections, for then no one questioned the perfect respectability of the profession. she studied hard in new, though not uncongenial fields; she ventured; she tried again and again, with the "modest but indomitable pluck" of genius, and she at last won a position and a prospect of independence. in all this nobody blamed her; on the contrary, the magnates of the hour—kings, councillors, bishops—awarded her great credit for her parts, her industry, her integrity, her honour.
not a lady of quality in london was more respected and admired, rightly or wrongly, than mistress betty. at the same time it is possible that, having reached the goal, could she have turned back and begun her walk anew, she would have hesitated before following this thorny path. it was a thorny path, for all its applause and success; nay, on account of them; even with a good woman like [page 71]mistress betty it required all her sincerity, her sobriety, and, according to the prevailing standard, her religion, to deliver her from imminent danger. moreover, with the attainment of the object, had come the bitter drops which qualified the cup. her plain, fond, innocent sister was in her grave; and so within the two last years was the young brother, for whom her interest had procured a post of some importance in the colonies, whence he bequeathed to mistress betty, his dear distinguished sister, his little savings. she struggled to be resigned, and was not only weary, but tempted to grasp at material rewards. this was the turning-point of her life. she would be virtuous to the last. her honest, clear character revolted at vice; but she might harden, grow greedy of power, become imperious and arrogant. for, remember, i do not say that mistress betty had contracted no contamination. no, no; she had suffered from her selfish fits, her vain fits, her malicious fits—she had experienced her hours of boldness and levity—she had made her own way to eminence—she had struggled with unscrupulous rivals—she had heard much which we would have wished her not to have heard—she had been a member of that wild, ultra-fine, coarse, scandalous society: but as we find saints in strange company sometimes, so the cordial, faithful, generous woman remained with only a slight coating of affectation and worldliness, thirst for praise, desire after excitement, habit of command.
"i'll play to this horrid country justice," whispers mistress betty, quite roused, and looking animated and brilliant already. "i hear by the gentleness of his voice, when he [page 72]speaks of the sins and sorrows of mankind, and when he addresses his little girl, that the fellow has a heart; but he gave me no quarter, and he shall receive none in return. i'll conquer him. to come within sight and sound of the boards with his muddy boots and his snarls, spoiling the enjoyment of the lasses!"
very true, mistress betty, it was neither very wise nor very gallant; but you ought to remember that the most loyal prejudices are sometimes as loyally abandoned.
