Tales and Novels — Volume 09

Whose lines are those, Harrington? do you know?”

“Yours, I suppose.”

“Mine! you do me much honour: no, they are Mr. Pope’s. Then you don’t know the anecdote?

“Mr. Pope, in the decline of life, was persuaded by Bolingbroke to go once more to the play-house, to see Mr. Macklin in the character of Shylock. According to the custom of the time, Pope was seated among the critics in the pit. He was so much struck and transported with admiration, that in the middle of the play, he started up, and repeated that distich.

“Now, was not I right when I told you, Harrington, that I would introduce you to the most celebrated Jew in all England, in all Christendom, in the whole civilized world?”

No one better than Mowbray knew the tone of enthusiastic theatric admiration in which the heroes of the stage like, or are supposed to like, to be addressed. Macklin, who was not asy to please, was pleased. The lines, or as Quin insisted upon their being called, the cordage of his face relaxed. He raised, turned, and settled his wig, in sign of satisfaction; then with a complacent smile gave me a little nod, and suffered Lord Mowbray to draw him out by degrees into a repetition of the history of his first attempt to play the character of Shylock. A play altered from Shakespeare’s, and called “The Jew of Venice,” had been for some time in vogue. In this play, the Jew had been represented, by the actors of the part, as a ludicrous and contemptible, rather than a detestable character; and when Macklin, recurring to Shakespeare’s original Shylock, proposed, in the revived Merchant of Venice, to play the part in a serious style, he was scoffed at by the whole company of his brother actors, and it was with the utmost difficulty he could screw the manager’s courage to the sticking-place, and prevail upon him to hazard the attempt. Take the account in Macklin’s own words. [Footnote: Vide Macklin’s Life.]

“When the long expected night at last arrived, the house was crowded from top to bottom, with the first company in town. The two front rows of the pit, as usual, were full of critics. I eyed them,” said Macklin, “I eyed them, sir, through the slit in the curtain, and was glad to see them there; as I wished, in such a cause, to be tried by a special jury. When I made my appearance in the green-room, dressed for the part, with my red hat on my head, my piqued beard, my loose black gown, and with a confidence which I had never before assumed, the performers all stared at one another, and evidently with a stare of disappointment. Well, sir, hitherto all was right, till the last bell rung; then, I confess, my heart began to beat a little: however, I mustered up all the courage I could, and recommending my cause to Providence, threw myself boldly on the stage, and was received by one of the loudest thunders of applause I ever before experienced. The opening scenes being rather tame and level, I could not expect much applause; but I found myself listened to: I could hear distinctly in the pit, the words ‘Very well—very well indeed! this man seems to know what he is about.’ These encomiums warmed me, but did not overset me. I knew where I should have the pull, which was in the third act, and accordingly at this period I threw out all my fire; and as the contrasted passions of joy for the merchant’s losses, and grief for the elopement of Jessica, open a fine field for an actor’s powers, I had the good fortune to please beyond my most sanguine expectations. The whole house was in an uproar of applause; and I was obliged to pause between the speeches to give it vent, so as to be heard. The trial scene wound up the fulness of my reputation. Here I was well listened to, and here I made such a silent yet forcible impression on my audience, that I retired from this great attempt most perfectly satisfied. On my return to the green-room, after the play was over, it was crowded with nobility and critics, who all complimented me in the warmest and most unbounded manner; and the situation I felt myself in, I must confess, was one of the most flattering and intoxicating of my whole life. No money, no title, could purchase what I felt. By G—, sir, though I was not worth fifty pounds in the world at that time, yet let me tell you, I was Charles the Great for that night.”

The emphasis and enthusiasm with which Macklin spoke, pleased me—enthusiastic people are always well pleased with enthusiasm. My curiosity too was strongly excited to see him play Shylock. I returned home full of the Jew of Venice; but, nevertheless, not forgetting my Spanish Jew.—At last, my mother could no longer bear to see me perplex and vex myself in my fruitless search for the letter, and confessed that while we were talking the preceding day, finding that no arguments or persuasions of hers had had any effect, she had determined on what she called a pious fraud: so, while I was in the room—before my face—while I was walking up and down, holding forth in praise of my Jewish friend whom I did know, and my Jewish friend whom I did not know, she had taken up Mr. Israel Lyons’ letter of introduction to Mr. Montenero, and had thrown it into the fire.

I was very much provoked; but to my mother, and a mother who was so fond of me, what could I say? After all, I confessed there was a good deal of fancy in the case on my side as well as on hers. I endeavoured to forget my disappointment. My imagination turned again to Shylock and Macklin; and, to please me, my mother promised to make a large party to go with me to see the Merchant of Venice the next night that Macklin should act; but, unfortunately, Macklin had just now quarrelled with the manager, and till this could be made up, there was no chance of his condescending to perform.

Meantime my mother having, as she thought, fairly got rid of the Jews, and Mowbray having, as he said, cured me of my present fit of Jewish insanity, desired to introduce me to his mother and sister. They had now just come to town from the Priory—Brantefield Priory, an ancient family-seat, where, much to her daughter’s discomfiture, Lady de Brantefield usually resided eight months of the year, because there she felt her dignity more safe from contact, and herself of more indisputable and unrivalled consequence, than in the midst of the jostling pretensions and modern innovations of the metropolis. At the Priory every thing attested, recorded, and flattered her pride of ancient and illustrious descent. In my childhood I had once been with my mother at the Priory, and I still retained a lively recollection of the antique wonders of the place. Foremost in my memory came an old picture, called “Sir Josseline going to the Holy Land,” where Sir Josseline de Mowbray stood, in complete armour, pointing to a horrid figure of a prostrate Jew, on whose naked back an executioner, with uplifted whip, was prepared to inflict stripes for some shocking crime.—This picture had been painted in times when the proportions of the human figure were little attended to, and when foreshortening was not at all understood: this added to the horrible effect, for the executioner’s arm and scourge were of tremendous size; Sir Josseline stood miraculously tall, and the Jew, crouching, supplicating, sprawling, was the most distorted squalid figure, eyes ever beheld, or imagination could conceive.

After having once beheld it, I could never bear to look upon it again, nor did I ever afterwards enter the tapestry chamber:—but there were some other of the antique rooms in which I delighted, and divers pieces of old furniture which I reverenced. There was an ancient bed, with scolloped tester, and tarnished quilt, in which Queen Elizabeth had slept; and a huge embroidered pincushion done by no hands, as you may guess, but those of the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots, who, during her captivity, certainly worked harder than ever queen worked before or since.

Then there was an old, worm-eaten chair, in which John of Gaunt had sat; and I remember that while Lady de Brantefield expressed her just indignation against the worms, for having dared to attack this precious relique, I, kneeling to the chair, admired the curious fretwork, the dusty honeycombs, which these invisible little workmen had excavated. But John of Gaunt’s chair was nothing to King John’s table. There was a little black oak table, too, with broken legs, which was invaluable—for, as Lady de Brantefield confidently affirmed, King John of France, and the Black Prince, had sat and supped at it. I marvelled much in silence—for I had been sharply reproved for some observation I had unwittingly made on the littleness and crookedness of a dark, corner-chimneyed nook shown us for the banqueting-room; and I had fallen into complete disgrace for having called the winding staircases, leading to the turret-chambers, back stairs.

Of Lady de Brantefield, the touch-me-not mistress of the mansion, I had retained a sublime, but not a beautiful idea—I now felt a desire to see her again, to verify my old notion.

Of Lady Anne Mowbray, who at the time I had been at the Priory, was a little child, some years younger than myself, I could recollect nothing, except that she wore a pink sash, of which she was very vain, and that she had been ushered into the drawing-room after dinner by Mrs. Fowler, at the sight of whom my inmost soul had recoiled. I remember, indeed, pitying her little ladyship for being under such dominion, and longing to ask her whether Fowler had told her the story of Simon the Jew. But I could never commune with Lady Anne; for either she was up in the nursery, or Fowler was at her back in the drawing-room, or little Lady Anne was sitting upright on her stool at her mother’s feet, whom I did not care to approach, and in whose presence I seldom ventured to speak—consequently my curiosity on this point had, from that hour, slumbered within me; but it now wakened, upon my mother’s proposing to present me to Lady Anne, and the pleasure of asking and the hope of obtaining an answer to my long-meditated question, was the chief gratification I promised myself from the renewal of our acquaintance with her ladyship.

CHAPTER VI.

My recollection of Lady de Brantefield proved wonderfully correct; she gave me back the image I had in my mind—a stiff, haughty-looking picture of a faded old beauty. Adhering religiously to the fashion of the times when she had been worshipped, she made it a point to wear the old head-dress exactly. She was in black, in a hoop of vast circumference, and she looked and moved as if her being Countess de Brantefield in her own right, and concentring in her person five baronies, ought to be for ever present to the memory of all mankind, as it was to her own.

My mother presented me to her ladyship. The ceremony of introduction between a young gentleman and an old lady of those times, performed on his part with a low bow and look of profound deference, on hers, with back stepping-curtsy and bridled head, was very different from the nodding, bobbing trick of the present day. As soon as the finale of Lady de Brantefield’s sentence, touching honour, happiness, and family connexion, would permit, I receded, and turned from the mother to the daughter, little Lady Anne Mowbray, a light fantastic figure, bedecked with “daisies pied,” covered with a profusion of tiny French flowers, whose invisible wire stalks kept in perpetual motion as she turned her pretty head from side to side. Smiling, sighing, tittering, flirting with the officers round her, Lady Anne appeared, and seemed as if she delighted in appearing, as perfect a contrast as possible to her august and formidable mother. The daughter had seen the ill effect of the mother’s haughty demeanour, and, mistaking reverse of wrong for right, had given reserve and dignity to the winds. Taught by the happy example of Colonel Topham, who preceded me, I learned that the low bow would have been here quite out of place. The sliding bow was for Lady Anne, and the way was to dash into nonsense with her directly, and full into the midst of nonsense I dashed. Though her ladyship’s perfect accessibility seemed to promise prompt reply to any question that could be asked; yet the single one about which I felt any curiosity, I could not contrive to introduce during the first three hours I was in her ladyship’s company. There was such a quantity of preliminary nonsense to get through, and so many previous questions to be disposed of: for example, I was first to decide which of three colours I preferred, all of them pronounced to be the prettiest in, the universe, boue de Paris, oeil de l’empereur, and a suppressed sigh.

At that moment, Lady Anne wore the suppressed sigh, but I did not know it—I mistook it for boue de Paris—conceive my ignorance! No two things in nature, not a horse-chestnut and a chestnut-horse, could be more different.

Conceive my confusion! and Colonels Topham and Beauclerk standing by. But I recovered myself in public opinion, by admiring the slipper on her ladyship’s little foot. Now I showed my taste, for this slipper had but the night before arrived express from Paris, and it was called a venez-y voir; and how a slipper, with a heel so high, and a quarter so low, could be kept on the foot, or how the fair could walk in it, I could not conceive, except by the special care of her guardian sylph.

After the venez-y voir had fixed all eyes as desired, the lady turning alternately to Colonels Topham and Beauclerk, with rapid gestures of ecstasy, exclaimed, “The pouf! the pouf! Oh! on Wednesday I shall have the pouf!”

Now what manner of thing a pouf! might be, I had not the slightest conception. “It requireth,” said Bacon, “great cunning for a man in discourse to seem to know that which he knoweth not.” Warned by boue de Paris and the suppressed sigh, this time I found safety in silence. I listened, and learned, first that un pouf was the most charming thing in the creation; next, that nobody upon earth could be seen in Paris without one; that one was coming from Mademoiselle Berlin, per favour of Miss Wilkes, for Lady Anne Mowbray, and that it would be on her head on Wednesday; and Colonel Topham swore there would be no resisting her ladyship in the pouf, she would look so killing.

“So killing,” was the colonel’s last.

I now thought that I had Lady Anne’s ear to myself; but she ran on to something else, and I was forced to follow as she skimmed over fields of nonsense. At last she did stop to take breath, and I did get in my one question: to which her ladyship replied, “Poor Fowler frighten me? Lord! No. Like her? oh! yes—dote upon Fowler! didn’t you?—No, you hated her, I remember. Well, but I assure you she’s the best creature in the world; I could always make her do just what I pleased. Positively, I must make you make it up with her, if I can remember it, when she comes up to town—she is to come up for my birthday. Mamma, you know, generally leaves her at the Priory, to take care of all the old trumpery, and show the place—you know it’s a show place. But I tell Colonel Topham, when I’ve a place of my own, I positively will have it modern, and all the furniture in the very newest style. I’m so sick of old reliques! Natural, you know, when I have been having a surfeit all my life of old beds and chairs, and John of Gaunt and the Black Prince. But the Black Prince, I remember, was always a vast favourite of yours. Well, but poor Fowler, you must like her, too—I assure you she always speaks with tenderness of you; she is really the best old soul! for she’s growing oldish, but so faithful, and so sincere too. Only flatters mamma sometimes so, I can hardly help laughing in her face; but then you know mamma, and old ladies, when they come to that pass, must be flattered to keep them up—‘tis but charitable—really right. Poor Fowler’s daughter is to be my maid.”

“I did not know Fowler had a daughter, and a daughter grown up.”

“Nancy Fowler! not know! Oh! yes, quite grown up, fit to be married—only a year younger than I am. And there’s our old apothecary in the country has taken such a fancy to her! But he’s too old and wiggy—but it would make a sort of lady of her, and her mother will have it so—but she sha’n’t—I’ve no notion of compulsion. Nancy shall be my maid, for she is quite out of the common style; can copy verses for one—I’ve no time, you know—and draws patterns in a minute. I declare I don’t know which I love best—Fowler or Nancy—poor old Fowler, I think. Do you know she says I’m so like the print of the Queen of France. It never struck me; but I’ll go and ask Topham.”

I perceived that Fowler, wiser grown, had learned how much more secure the reign of flattery is, than the reign of terror. She was now, as I found, supreme in the favour of both her young and old lady. The specimen I have given of Lady Anne Mowbray’s conversation, or rather of Lady Anne’s mode of talking, will, I fancy, be amply sufficient to satiate all curiosity concerning her ladyship’s understanding and character. She had, indeed, like most of the young ladies her companions—“no character at all.”

Female conversation in general was, at this time, very different from what it is in our happier days. A few bright stars had risen, and shone, and been admired; but the useful light had not diffused itself. Miss Talbot’s and Miss Carter’s learning and piety, Mrs. Montague’s genius, Mrs. Vesey’s elegance, and Mrs. Boscawen’s [Footnote: See Bas-Bleu.] “polished ease,” had brought female literature into fashion in certain favoured circles; but it had not, as it has now, become general in almost every rank of life. Young ladies had, it is true, got beyond the Spectator and the Guardian: Richardson’s novels had done much towards opening a larger field of discussion. One of Miss Burney’s excellent novels had appeared, and had made an era in London conversation; but still it was rather venturing out of the safe course for a young lady to talk of books, even of novels; it was not, as it is now, expected that she should know what is going on in the literary world. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and varieties of literary and scientific journals, had not

Before there was a regular demand and an established market, there were certain hawkers and pedlars of literature, fetchers and carriers of bays, and at every turn copies of impromptus, charades, and lines by the honourable Miss C——, and the honourable Mrs. D——, were put into my hands by young ladies, begging for praise, which it was seldom in my power conscientiously to bestow. I early had a foreboding—one of my mother’s presentiments—that I should come to disgrace with Lady Anne Mowbray about some of these cursed scraps of poetry. Her ladyship had one—shall I say?—peculiarity. She could not bear that any one should differ from her in matters of taste; and though she regularly disclaimed being a reading lady, she was most assured of what she was most ignorant. With the assistance of Fowler’s flattery, together with that of all the hangers-on at Brantefield Priory, her temper had been rendered incapable of bearing contradiction. But this defect was not immediately apparent: on the contrary, Lady Anne was generally thought a pleasant, good-humoured creature, and most people wondered that the daughter could be so different from the mother. Lady de Brantefield was universally known to be positive and prejudiced. Her prejudices were all old-fashioned, and ran directly counter to the habits of her acquaintance. Lady Anne’s, on the contrary, were all in favour of the present fashion, whatever it might be, and ran smoothly with the popular stream. The violence of her temper could, therefore, scarcely be suspected, till something opposed the current: a small obstacle would then do the business—would raise the stream suddenly to a surprising height, and would produce a tremendous noise. It was my ill fortune one unlucky day to cross Lady Anne Mowbray’s humour, and to oppose her opinion. It was about a trifle; but trifles, indeed, made, with her, the sum of human things. She came one morning, as it was her custom, to loiter away her time at my mother’s till the proper hour for going out to visit. For five minutes she sat at some fashionable kind of work—wafer work, I think it was called, a work which has been long since consigned to the mice; then her ladyship yawned, and exclaiming, “Oh, those lines of Lord Chesterfield’s, which Colonel Topham gave me; I’ll copy them into my album. Where’s my album?—Mrs. Harrington, I lent it to you. Oh! here it is. Mr. Harrington, you will finish copying this for me.” So I was set down to the album to copy—Advice to a Lady in Autumn.

My mother, who saw that I did not relish the asses’ milk, put in a word for me.

“My dear Lady Anne, it is not worth while to write these lines in your album, for they were in print long ago, in every lady’s old memorandum-book, and in Dodsley’s Collection, I believe.”

“But still that was quite a different thing,” Lady Anne said, “from having them in her album; so Mr. Harrington must be so very good.” I did not understand the particular use of copying in my illegible hand what could be so much better read in print; but it was all-sufficient that her ladyship chose it. When I had copied the verses I must, Lady Anne said, read the lines, and admire them. But I had read them twenty times before, and I could not say that they were as fresh the twentieth reading as at the first. Lord Mowbray came in, and she ran to her brother:—“Mowbray! can any thing in nature be prettier than these verses of Lord Chesterfield? Mowbray, you, who are a judge, listen to these two lines:

Now, here’s your friend, Mr. Harrington, says it’s only a prettiness, and something about Ovid. I’m sure I wish you’d advise some of your friends to leave their classics, as you did, at the musty university. What have we to do with Ovid in London? You, yourself, Mr. Harrington, who set up for such a critic, what fault can you find, pray, with

By the lady’s tone of voice, raised complexion, and whole air of the head, I saw the danger was imminent, and to avoid the coming storm, I sheltered myself under the cover of modesty; but Mowbray dragged me out to make sport for himself.

“Oh! Harrington, that will never do. No critic! No judge! You! with all your college honours fresh about you. Come, come, Harrington, pronounce you must. Is this poetry or not?

“Whether prose or poetry, I pronounce it to be very good advice.”

“Good advice! the thing of all others I have the most detested from my childhood,” cried Lady Anne; “but I insist upon it, it is good poetry, Mr. Harrington.”

“And equally good grammar, and good English, and good sense,” cried her brother, in an ironical tone. “Come, Harrington, acknowledge it all, man—all equally. Never stop half way, when a young—and such a young lady, summons you to surrender to her your truth, taste, and common sense. Gi’ her a’ the plea, or you’ll get na good of a woman’s hands.”

“So, sir!—So, my lord, you are against me too, and you are mocking me too, I find. I humbly thank you, gentlemen,” cried Lady Anne, in a high tone of disdain; “from a colonel in the army, and a nobleman who has been on the continent, I might have expected more politeness. From a Cambridge scholar no wonder!”

My mother laid down her netting in the middle of a row, and came to keep the peace. But it was too late; Lady Anne was deaf and blind with passion. She confessed she could not see of what use either of the universities were in this world, except to make bears and bores of young men.

Her ladyship, fluent in anger beyond conception, poured, as she turned from her brother to me, and from me to her brother, a flood of nonsense, which, when it had once broken bounds, there was no restraining in its course. Amazed at the torrent, my mother stood aghast; Mowbray burst into unextinguishable laughter: I preserved my gravity as long as I possibly could; I felt the risible infection seizing me, and that malicious Mowbray, just when he saw me in the struggle—the agony—sent me back such an image of my own length of face, that there was no withstanding it. I, too, breaking all bounds of decorum, gave way to visible and audible laughter; and from which I was first recovered by seeing the lady burst into tears, and by hearing, at the same moment, my mother pronounce in a tone of grave displeasure, “Very ill-bred, Harrington!” My mother’s tone of displeasure affecting me much more than the young lady’s tears, I hastened to beg pardon, and I humbled myself before Lady Anne; but she spurned me, and Mowbray laughed the more. Mowbray, I believe, really wished that I should like his sister; yet he could not refrain from indulging his taste for ridicule, even at her expense. My mother wondered how Lord Mowbray could tease his sister in such a manner; and as for Harrington, she really thought he had known that the first law of good-breeding is never to say or do any thing that can hurt another person’s feelings.

“Never intentionally to hurt another’s feelings, ma’am,” said I; “I hope you will allow me to plead the innocence of my intentions.”

“Oh, yes! there was no malicious intent: Not guilty—Not guilty!” cried Mowbray. “Anne, you acquit him there, don’t you, Anne?”

Anne sobbed, but spoke not.

“It is little consolation, and no compensation, to the person who is hurt,” said my mother, “that the offender pleads he did not mean to say or do any thing rude: a rude thing is a rude thing—the intention is nothing—all we are to judge of is the fact.”

“Well, but after all, in fact,” said Mowbray, “there was nothing to make any body seriously angry.”

“Of that every body’s own feelings must be the best judge,” said my mother, “the best and the sole judge.”

“Thank Heaven! that is not the law of libel yet, not the law of the land yet,” said Mowbray; “no knowing what we may come to. Would it not be hard, ma’am, to constitute the feelings of one person always sole judge of the intentions of another? though in cases like the present I submit. Let it be a ruled case, that the sensibility of a lady shall be the measure of a gentleman’s guilt.”

“I don’t judge of these things by rule and measure,” said my mother: “try my smelling-bottle, my dear.” Very few people, especially women of delicate nerves and quick feelings, could, as my mother observed, bear to be laughed at; particularly by those they loved; and especially before other people who did not know them perfectly. My mother was persuaded, she said, that Lord Mowbray had not reflected on all this when he had laughed so inconsiderately.

Mowbray allowed that he certainly had not reflected when he had laughed inconsiderately. “So come, come. Anne, sister Anne, be friends!” then playfully tapping his sister on the back, the pretty, but sullen back of the neck, he tried to raise the drooping head; but finding the chin resist the upward motion, and retire resentfully from his touch, he turned upon his heel, and addressing himself to me, “Well! Harrington,” said he, “the news of the day, the news of the theatre, which I was bringing you full speed, when I stumbled upon this cursed half-pint of asses’ milk, which Mrs.. Harrington was so angry with me for overturning—”

“But what’s the news, my lord?” said my mother.

“News! not for you, ma’am, only for Harrington; news of the Jews.”

“The Jews!” said my mother.

“The Jews!” said I, both in the same breath, but in very different tones.

“Jews, did I say?” replied Mowbray: “Jew, I should have said.”

“Mr. Montenero?” cried I.

“Montenero!—Can you think of nothing but Mr. Montenero, whom you’ve never seen, and never will see?”

“Thank you for that, my lord,” said my mother; “one touch from you is worth a hundred from me.”

“But of what Jew then are you talking? and what’s your news, my lord?” said I.

“My news is only—for Heaven’s sake, Harrington, do not look expecting a mountain, for ‘tis only a mouse. The news is, that Macklin, the honest Jew of Venice, has got the pound, or whatever number of pounds he wanted to get from the manager’s heart; the quarrel’s made up, and if you keep your senses, you may have a chance to see, next week, this famous Jew of Venice.”

“I am heartily glad of it!” cried I, with enthusiasm.

“And is that all?” said my mother, coldly.

“Mr. Harrington,” said Lady Anne, “is really so enthusiastic about some things, and so cold about others, there is no understanding him; he is very, very odd.”

Notwithstanding all the pains my mother took to atone for my offence, and notwithstanding that I had humbled myself to the dust to obtain pardon, I was not forgiven.

Lady de Brantefield, Lady Anne, and some other company, dined with us; and Mowbray, who seemed to be really sorry that he had vexed his sister, and that he had in the heyday of his spirit unveiled to me her defects of temper, did every thing in his power to make up matters between us. At dinner he placed me beside Anne, little sister Anne; but no caressing tone, no diminutive of kindness in English, or soft Italian, could touch her heart, or move the gloomy purpose of her soul. Her sulky ladyship almost turned her back upon me, as she listened only to Colonel Topham, who was on the other side. Mowbray coaxed her to eat, but she refused every thing he offered—would not accept even his compliments—his compliments on her pouf—would not allow him to show her off, as he well knew how to do, to advantage; would not, when he exerted himself to prevent her silence from being remarked, smile at any one of the many entertaining things he said; she would not, in short, even passively permit his attempts to cover her ill-humour, and to make things pass off well.

In the evening, when the higher powers drew off to cards, and when Lady Anne had her phalanx of young ladies round her; and whilst I stood a defenceless young man at her mercy, she made me feel her vengeance. She talked at me continually, and at every opening gave me sly cuts, which she flattered herself I felt sorely.

Mowbray turned off the blows as fast as they were aimed, or treated them all as playful traits of lover-like malice, tokens of a lady’s favour.

“Ha! a good cut, Harrington!—Happy man!—Up to you there, Harrington! High favour, when a lady condescends to remember and retaliate. Paid you for old scores!—Sign you’re in her books now!—‘No more to say to you, Mr. Harrington’—a fair challenge to say a great deal more to her.”

And all the time her ladyship was aiming to vex, and hoping that I was heartily mortified, as from my silence and melancholy countenance she concluded that I was; in reality I stood deploring that so pretty a creature had so mean a mind. The only vexation I felt was at her having destroyed the possibility of my enjoying that delightful illusion which beauty creates.

My mother, who had been, as she said, quite nervous all this evening, at last brought Lady Anne to terms, and patched up a peace, by prevailing on Lady de Brantefield, who could not be prevailed on by any one else, to make a party to go to some new play which Lady Anne was dying to see. It was a sentimental comedy, and I did not much like it; however, I was all complaisance for my mother’s sake, and she in return renewed her promise to go with me to patronize Shylock. By the extraordinary anxiety my mother showed, and by the pains she took that there should be peace betwixt Lady Anne and me, I perceived, what had never before struck me, that my mother wished me to be in love with her ladyship.

Now I could sooner have been in love with Lady de Brantefield. Give her back a decent share of youth and beauty, I think I could sooner have liked the mother than the daughter.

By the force and plastic power of my imagination, I could have turned and moulded Lady de Brantefield, with all her repulsive haughtiness, into a Clelia, or a Princess de Cleves, or something of the Richardson full-dressed heroine, with hoop and fan, and stand off, man!—and then there would be cruelty and difficulty, and incomprehensibility-something to be conquered—something to be wooed and won. But with Lady Anne Mowbray my imagination had nothing to work upon, no point to dwell on, nothing on which a lover’s fancy could feed: there was no doubt, no hope, no fear, no reserve of manner, no dignity of mind.

My mother, I believe, now saw that it would not do, at least for the present; but she had known many of Cupid’s capricious turns. Lady Anne was extremely pretty, and universally allowed to be so; her ladyship was much taken notice of in public, and my mother knew that young men are vain of having their mistresses and wives admired by our sex. But my mother calculated ill as to my particular character. To the Opera and to Ranelagh, to the Pantheon, and to all the fashionable public places of the day, I had had the honour of attending Lady Anne; and I had had the glory of hearing “Beautiful!” “Who is she?”—and “Who is with her?” My vanity, I own, had been flattered, but no further. My imagination was always too powerful, my passions too sincere and too romantic, to be ruled by the opinions of others, or to become the dupe of personal vanity. My mother had fancied that a month or two in London would have brought my imagination down to be content with the realities of fashionable life. My mother was right as to the fact, but wrong in her conclusion. This did not incline me more towards Lady Anne, but it disinclined me towards marriage.

My exalted ideas of love were lowered—my morning visions of life fled—I was dispirited.

Mowbray had rallied me on my pining for Cambridge, and on preferring Israel Lyons, the Jew, to him and all the best company in London.

He had hurried me about with him to all manner of gaieties, but still I was not happy; my mind—my heart wanted something more.

In this my London life, I found it irksome that I could never, as at dear Cambridge, pause upon my own reflections. If I stopped awhile, “to plume contemplation’s wings, so ruffled and impaired,” some of the low realities, some of the impertinent necessities of fashionable life, would tread on my heels. The order of the day or night was for ever pressed upon me—and the order of the day was now to go to this new sentimental comedy—my mother’s favourite actor, the silver-toned Barry, was to play the lover of the piece; so she was sure of as many fashionable young ladies as her box could possibly hold. At this period, in England, every fashionable belle declared herself the partisan of some actor or actress; and every fashionable beau aspired to the character of a dramatic critic. Mowbray, of course, was distinguished in that line, and his pretty little sister, Lady Anne, was, at least in face, formed to grace the front box. The hours of the great world were earlier then than they are now, and nothing interfered, indeed nothing would have been suffered to interfere, with the hour for the play. As a veteran wit described it, “There were at this time four estates in the English Constitution, kings, lords, commons, and the theatre.” Statesmen, courtiers, poets, philosophers, crowded pell mell with the white-gloved beaux to the stage box and the pit. It was thought well-bred, it was the thing to be in the boxes before the third act, even before the second, nay, incredible as it may in these times appear, before the first act began. Our fashionable party was seated some minutes before the curtain drew up.

CHAPTER VII.

The beaux and belles in the boxes of the crowded theatre had bowed and curtsied, for in those days beaux did bow and belles did curtsy; the impatient sticks in the pit, and shrill catcalls in the gallery, had begun to contend with the music in the orchestra; and thrice had we surveyed the house to recognize every body whom any body knew, when the door of the box next to ours, the only box that had remained empty, was thrown open, and in poured an over-dressed party, whom nobody knew. Lady de Brantefield, after one reconnoitring glance, pronounced them to be city Goths and Vandals; and without resting her glass upon them for half a moment, turned it to some more profitable field of speculation. There was no gentleman of this party, but a portly matron, towering above the rest, seemed the principal mover and orderer of the group. The awkward bustle they made, facing and backing, placing and changing of places, and the difficulty they found in seating themselves, were in striking contrast with the high-bred ease of the ladies of our party. Lady Anne Mowbray looked down upon their operations with a pretty air of quiet surprise, tinctured with horror; while my mother’s shrinking delicacy endeavoured to suggest some idea of propriety to the city matron, who having taken her station next to us in the second row, had at last seated herself so that a considerable portion of the back part of her head-dress was in my mother’s face: moreover, the citizen’s huge arm, with its enormous gauze cuff, leaning on the partition which divided, or ought to have divided, her from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting and stretching forward to the front row, where five of her young ladies were wedged, she aimed with her fan at each of their backs in quick succession, and in a more than audible whisper asked, “Cecy! Issy! Henny! Queeney! Miss Coates, where’s Berry?”—All eyes turned to look for Berry—“Oh! mercy, behind in the back row! Miss Berry, that must not be—come forward, here’s my place or Queeney’s,” cried Mrs. Coates, stretching backwards with her utmost might to seize some one in the farthest corner of the back row, who had hitherto been invisible. We expected to see in Miss Berry another vulgarian produced, but to our surprise, we beheld one who seemed of a different order of beings from those by whom she was surrounded. Lord Mowbray and I looked at each other, struck by the same sentiment, pained for this elegant timid young creature, as we saw her, all blushing and reluctant, forced by the irresistible fat orderer of all things to “step up on the seat,” to step forward from bench to bench, and then wait in painful pre-eminence while Issy, and Cecy, and Queeney, and Miss Coates, settled how they could make room, or which should vacate her seat in her favour. In spite of the awkwardness of her situation she stood with such quiet, resigned, yet dignified grace, that ridicule could not touch her. The moment she was seated with her back to us, and out of hearing, Lady de Brantefield turned to her son and asked “Who is she?”

“An East Indian, I should guess, by her dark complexion,” whispered Lady Anne to me.

Some feather or lappet intercepted my view of her face, but from the glimpse I caught of it as she passed, it struck me as uncommonly interesting, though with a peculiar expression and foreign air—whether she was handsome or not, though called upon to decide, I could not determine. But now our attention was fixed on the stage. It was announced to the audience that, owing to the sudden illness of the actor who was to have performed the principal part in the comedy advertised for this night, there was a necessity for changing the play, and they should give in its stead the Merchant of Venice.

The Merchant of Venice and Macklin the Jew!—Murmurs of discontent from the ladies in my box, who regretted their sentimental comedy and their silver-toned Barry, were all lost upon me; I rejoiced that I should see Macklin in Shylock. Before the performance began, my attention was again caught by the proceedings of the persons in the next box. There seemed to be some sudden cause of distress, as I gathered from exclamations of “How unlucky!—How distressing!—What shall we do?—What can we do?—Better go away—carriage gone!—must sit it out—May be she won’t mind—Oh! she will—Shylock!—Jessica!—How unfortunate!—poor Miss Berry!”

“Jessica!” whispered Mowbray to me, with an arch look: “let me pass,” added he, just touching my shoulder. He made his way to a young lady at the other end of the box; and I, occupying immediately the ceded place, stationed myself so that I had a better view of my object, and could observe her without being seen by any one. She was perfectly still, and took no notice of the whispering of the people about her, though, from an indescribable expression in the air of the back of her head and neck, I was convinced that she heard all that passed among the young and old ladies in her box. The play went on—Shylock appeared—I forgot every thing but him.—Such a countenance!—Such an expression of latent malice and revenge, of every thing detestable in human nature! Whether speaking or silent, the Jew fixed and kept possession of my attention. It was an incomparable piece of acting: much as my expectations had been raised, it far surpassed any thing I had conceived—I forgot it was Macklin, I thought only of Shylock. In my enthusiasm I stood up, I pressed forward, I leaned far over towards the stage, that I might not lose a word, a look, a gesture. When the act finished, as the curtain fell, and the thunders of applause died away, I heard a soft low sigh near me; I looked, and saw the Jewess! She had turned away from the young ladies her companions, and had endeavoured to screen herself behind the pillar against which I had been leaning. I had, for the first time, a full view of her face and of her countenance, of great sensibility, painfully, proudly repressed. She looked up while my eyes were fixed upon her—a sudden and deep colour spread over her face and mounted to her temples. In my confusion I did the very thing I should not have done, and said the thing of all others I should not have said. I expressed a fear that I had been standing in such a manner as to prevent her from seeing Shylock; she bowed mildly, and was, I believe, going to speak.

“You have indeed, sir,” interrupted Mrs. Coates, “stood so that nobody could see nothing but yourself. So, since you mention it, and speak without an introduction, excuse me if I suggest, against the next act, that this young lady has never been at a play before in her life—in Lon’on, at least. And though it i’n’t the play I should have chose for her, yet since she is here, ‘tis better she should see something than nothing, if gentlemen will give her leave.” I bowed in sign of submission and repentance; and was retiring, so as to leave my place vacant, and a full opening to the stage. But in a sweet, gentlewomanlike voice, seeming, perhaps, more delightful from contrast, the young lady said that she had seen and could see quite as much as she wished of the play; and she begged that I would not quit my place. “I should oblige her,” she added, in a lower tone, “if I would continue to stand as I had done.” I obeyed, and placed myself so as to screen her from observation during the whole of the next act. But now, my pleasure in the play was over. I could no longer enjoy Macklin’s incomparable acting; I was so apprehensive of the pain which it must give to the young Jewess. At every stroke, characteristic of the skilful actor, or of the master poet, I felt a strange mixture of admiration and regret. I almost wished that Shakspeare had not written, or Macklin had not acted the part so powerfully: my imagination formed such a strong conception of the pain the Jewess was feeling, and my inverted sympathy, if I may so call it, so overpowered my direct and natural feelings, that at every fresh development of the Jew’s villany I shrunk as though I had myself been a Jew.

Each exclamation against this dog of a Jew, and still more every general reflection on Jewish usury, avarice, and cruelty, I felt poignantly. No power of imagination could make me pity Shylock, but I felt the force of some of his appeals to justice; and some passages struck me in quite a new light on the Jewish side of the question.