Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I

"What, Frank! my County History!" cried the Squire. "Mrs. H., he has got my County History!"

"Well, Hazeldean, it is time he should know something about the County."

"Ay, and History too," said Mrs. Dale, malevolently – for the little temper was by no means blown over.

Frank. – "I'll not hurt it, I assure you, sir. But I'm very much interested just at present."

The Captain, putting down the cards to cut. – "You've got hold of that passage about Botham Hall, page 706, eh?"

Frank. – "No; I was trying to make out how far it is to Mr. Leslie's place, Rood Hall. Do you know, mother?"

Mrs. Hazeldean. – "I can't say I do. The Leslies don't mix with the county; and Rood lies very much out of the way."

Frank. – "Why don't they mix with the county?"

Mrs. Hazeldean. – "I believe they are poor, and therefore I suppose they are proud: they are an old family."

Parson, thrumming on the table with great impatience: "Old fiddledee! – talking of old families when the cards have been shuffled this half hour."

Captain Barnabas. – "Will you cut for your partner, ma'am?"

Squire, who has been listening to Frank's inquiries with a musing air: "Why do you want to know the distance to Rood Hall?"

Frank, rather hesitatingly. – "Because Randal Leslie is there for the holidays, sir."

Parson. – "Your wife has cut for you, Mr. Hazeldean. I don't think it was quite fair; and my partner has turned up a deuce – deuce of hearts. Please to come and play, if you mean to play."

The Squire returns to the table, and in a few minutes the game is decided, by a dexterous finesse of the Captain, against the Hazeldeans. The clock strikes ten: the servants enter with a tray; the Squire counts up his and his wife's losings; and the Captain and Parson divide sixteen shillings between them.

Squire. – "There, Parson, I hope now you'll be in a better humor. You win enough out of us to set up a coach and four."

"Tut," muttered the parson; "at the end of the year, I'm not a penny the richer for it all."

And, indeed, monstrous as that assertion seemed, it was perfectly true, for the Parson portioned out his gains into three divisions. One-third he gave to Mrs. Dale, for her own special pocket-money; what became of the second third he never owned, even to his better half – but certain it was, that every time the Parson won seven-and-sixpence, half-a-crown which nobody could account for found its way to the poor-box; while the remaining third, the Parson, it is true, openly and avowedly retained: but I have no manner of doubt that, at the year's end, it got to the poor quite as safely as if it had been put into the box.

The party had now gathered round the tray, and were helping themselves to wine and water, or wine without water – except Frank, who still remained poring over the map in the County History, with his head leaning on his hands, and his fingers plunged in his hair.

"Frank," said Mrs. Hazeldean, "I never saw you so studious before."

Frank started up, and colored, as if ashamed of being accused of too much study in any thing.

The Squire, with a little embarrassment in his voice: "Pray, Frank, what do you know of Randal Leslie?"

"Why, sir, he is at Eton."

"What sort of a boy is he?" asked Mrs. Hazeldean.

Frank hesitated, as if reflecting, and then answered: "They say he is the cleverest boy in the school. But then he saps."

"In other words," said Mr. Dale with proper parsonic gravity, "he understands that he was sent to school to learn his lessons, and he learns them. You call that sapping – I call it doing his duty. But pray, who and what is this Randal Leslie, that you look so discomposed, Squire?"

"Who and what is he?" repeated the Squire, in a low growl. "Why, you know, Mr. Audley Egerton married Miss Leslie the great heiress, and this boy is a relation of hers. I may say," added the Squire, "that he is as near a relation of mine, for his grandmother was a Hazeldean. But all I know about the Leslies is, that Mr. Egerton, as I am told, having no children of his own, took up young Randal, (when his wife died, poor woman), pays for his schooling, and has, I suppose, adopted the boy as his heir. Quite welcome. Frank and I want nothing from Mr. Audley Egerton, thank heaven."

"I can well believe in your brother's generosity to his wife's kindred," said the Parson, sturdily, "for I am sure Mr. Egerton is a man of strong feeling."

"What the deuce do you know about Mr. Egerton? I don't suppose you could ever have even spoken to him."

"Yes," said the Parson, coloring up and looking confused, "I had some conversation with him once;" and observing the Squire's surprise, he added – "when I was curate at Lansmere – and about a painful business connected with the family of one of my parishioners."

"Oh! one of your parishioners at Lansmere – one of the constituents Mr. Audley Egerton threw over, after all the pains I had taken to give him his seat. Rather odd you should never have mentioned this before, Mr. Dale!"

"My dear sir," said the Parson, sinking his voice, and in a mild tone of conciliatory expostulation, "you are so irritable whenever Mr. Egerton's name is mentioned at all."

"Irritable!" exclaimed the Squire, whose wrath had been long simmering, and now fairly boiled over. "Irritable, sir! I should think so; a man for whom I stood godfather at the hustings, Mr. Dale! a man for whose sake I was called a 'prize ox,' Mr. Dale! a man for whom I was hissed in a market-place, Mr. Dale! a man for whom I was shot at, in cold blood, by an officer in his Majesty's service, who lodged a ball in my right shoulder, Mr. Dale! a man who had the ingratitude, after all this, to turn his back on the landed interest – to deny that there was any agricultural distress in a year which broke three of the best farmers I ever had, Mr. Dale! – a man, sir, who made a speech on the Currency which was complimented by Ricardo, a Jew! Good heavens! a pretty parson you are, to stand up for a fellow complimented by a Jew! Nice ideas you must have of Christianity. Irritable, sir!" now fairly roared the Squire, adding to the thunder of his voice the cloud of a brow, which evinced a menacing ferocity that might have done honor to Bussy D'Amboise or Fighting Fitzgerald. "Sir, if that man had not been my own half-brother, I'd have called him out. I have stood my ground before now. I have had a ball in my right shoulder. Sir, I'd have called him out."

"Mr. Hazeldean! Mr. Hazeldean! I'm shocked at you," cried the Parson; and, putting his lips close to the Squire's ear, he went on in a whisper: "What an example to your son! You'll have him fighting duels one of these days, and nobody to blame but yourself."

This warning cooled Mr. Hazeldean; and muttering, "Why the deuce did you set me off?" he fell back into his chair, and began to fan himself with his pocket-handkerchief.

The Parson skillfully and remorselessly pursued the advantage he had gained. "And now, that you may have it in your power, to show civility and kindness to a boy whom Mr. Egerton has taken up, out of respect to his wife's memory – a kinsman you say of your own – and who has never offended you – a boy whose diligence in his studies proves him to be an excellent companion to your son. Frank," (here the Parson raised his voice), "I suppose you wanted to call on young Leslie, as you were studying the county map so attentively?"

"Why, yes," answered Frank, rather timidly. "If my father did not object to it. Leslie has been very kind to me, though he is in the sixth form, and, indeed, almost the head of the school."

"Ah," said Mrs. Hazeldean, "one studious boy has a fellow-feeling for another; and though you enjoy your holidays, Frank, I am sure you read hard at school."

Mrs. Dale opened her eyes very wide, and stared in astonishment.

Mrs. Hazeldean retorted that look with great animation. "Yes, Carry," said she, tossing her head, "though you may not think Frank clever, his master finds him so. He got a prize last half. That beautiful book, Frank – hold up your head, my love – what did you get it for?"

Frank, reluctantly. – "Verses, ma'am."

Mrs. Hazeldean, with triumph. – "Verses! – there, Carry, verses!"

Frank, in a hurried tone. – "Yes, but Leslie wrote them for me."

Mrs. Hazeldean, recoiling. – "O Frank! a prize for what another did for you – that was mean."

Frank, ingenuously. – "You can't be more ashamed, mother, than I was when they gave me the prize."

Mrs. Dale, though previously provoked at being snubbed by Harry, now showing the triumph of generosity over temper: "I beg your pardon, Frank. Your mother must be as proud of that shame as she was of the prize."

Mrs. Hazeldean puts her arm round Frank's neck, smiles beamingly on Mrs. Dale, and converses with her son in a low tone about Randal Leslie. Miss Jemima now approached Carry, and said in an "aside," – "But we are forgetting poor Mr. Riccabocca. Mrs. Hazeldean, though the dearest creature in the world, has such a blunt way of inviting people – don't you think if you were to say a word to him, Carry?"

Mrs. Dale kindly, as she wraps her shawl round her: "Suppose you write the note yourself. Meanwhile I shall see him, no doubt."

Parson, putting his hand on the Squire's shoulder: "You forgive my impertinence, my kind friend. We parsons, you know, are apt to take strange liberties, when we honor and love folks, as I do you."

"Pish!" said the Squire, but his hearty smile came to his lips in spite of himself: "You always get your own way, and I suppose Frank must ride over and see this pet of my – "

"Brother's," quoth the Parson, concluding the sentence in a tone which gave to the sweet word so sweet a sound that the Squire would not correct the Parson, as he had been about to correct himself.

Mr. Dale moved on; but as he passed Captain Barnabas, the benignant character of his countenance changed sadly.

"The cruelest trump, Captain Higginbotham!" said he sternly, and stalked by – majestic.

The night was so fine that the Parson and his wife, as they walked home, made a little detour through the shrubbery.

Mrs. Dale. – "I think I have done a good piece of work to-night."

Parson, rousing himself from a reverie. – "Have you, Carry? – it will be a very pretty handkerchief."

Mrs. Dale. – "Handkerchief – nonsense, dear. Don't you think it would be a very happy thing for both, if Jemima and Signor Riccabocca could be brought together?"

Parson. – "Brought together!"

Mrs. Dale. – "You do snap one up so, my dear – I mean if I could make a match of it."

Parson. – "I think Riccabocca is a match already, not only for Jemima, but yourself into the bargain."

Mrs. Dale, smiling loftily. – "Well, we shall see. Was not Jemima's fortune about £4000?"

Parson dreamily, for he is relapsing fast into his interrupted reverie: "Ay – ay – I daresay."

Mrs. Dale. – "And she must have saved! I dare say it is nearly £6000 by this time; eh! Charles dear, you really are so – good gracious, what's that!"

As Mrs. Dale made this exclamation they had just emerged from the shrubbery, into the village green.

Parson. – "What's what?"

Mrs. Dale, pinching her husband's arm very nippingly. – "That thing – there – there."

Parson. – "Only the new stocks, Carry; I don't wonder they frighten you, for you are a very sensible woman. I only wish they would frighten the Squire."

CHAPTER XIII

Supposed to be a Letter from Mrs. Hazeldean to – Riccabocca, Esq., The Casino; but edited, and indeed composed, by Miss Jemima Hazeldean.

"Dear Sir – To a feeling heart it must always be painful to give pain to another, and (though I am sure unconsciously) you have given the greatest pain to poor Mr. Hazeldean and myself, indeed to all our little circle, in so cruelly refusing our attempts to become better acquainted with a gentleman we so highly esteem. Do, pray, dear sir, make us the amende honorable, and give us the pleasure of your company for a few days at the Hall! May we expect you Saturday next? – our dinner-hour is six o'clock.

"With the best compliments of Mr. and Miss Jemima Hazeldean.

"Believe me, my dear sir, yours truly,

"H.H.

"Hazeldean Hall."

Miss Jemima having carefully sealed this note, which Mrs. Hazeldean had very willingly deputed her to write, took it herself into the stable-yard, in order to give the groom proper instructions to wait for an answer. But while she was speaking to the man, Frank, equipped for riding with more than his usual dandyism, came also into the yard, calling for his pony in a loud voice, and singling out the very groom whom Miss Jemima was addressing – for, indeed, he was the smartest of all in the Squire's stables – told him to saddle the gray pad, and accompany the pony.

"No, Frank," said Miss Jemima, "you can't have George; your father wants him to go on a message – you can take Mat."

"Mat, indeed!" said Frank, grumbling with some reason; for Mat was a surly old fellow, who tied a most indefensible neckcloth, and always contrived to have a great patch in his boots; besides, he called Frank "Master," and obstinately refused to trot down hill; "Mat, indeed! – let Mat take the message, and George go with me."

But Miss Jemima had also her reasons for rejecting Mat. Mat's foible was not servility, and he always showed true English independence in all houses where he was not invited to take his ale in the servants' hall. Mat might offend Signor Riccabocca, and spoil all. An animated altercation ensued, in the midst of which the Squire and his wife entered the yard, with the intention of driving in the conjugal gig to the market town. The matter was referred to the natural umpire by both the contending parties.

The Squire looked with great contempt on his son. "And what do you want a groom at all for? Are you afraid of tumbling off the pony?"

Frank. – "No, sir; but I like to go as a gentleman, when I pay a visit to a gentleman!"

"Squire, in high wrath. – "You precious puppy! I think I'm as good a gentleman as you, any day, and I should like to know when you ever saw me ride to call on a neighbor, with a fellow jingling at my heels, like that upstart Ned Spankie, whose father kept a cotton-mill. First time I ever heard of a Hazeldean thinking a livery-coat was necessary to prove his gentility!"

Mrs. Hazeldean, observing Frank coloring, and about to reply. – "Hush, Frank, never answer your father – and you are going to call on Mr. Leslie?"

"Yes, ma'am, and I am very much obliged to my father for letting me," said Frank, taking the Squire's hand.

"Well, but, Frank," continued Mrs. Hazeldean, "I think you heard that the Leslies were very poor."

Frank. – "Eh, mother?"

Mrs. Hazeldean. – "And would you run the chance of wounding the pride of a gentleman, as well born as yourself, by affecting any show of being richer than he is?"

Squire, with great admiration. – "Harry, I'd give £10 to have said that!"

Frank, leaving the Squire's hand to take his mother's. – "You're quite right, mother – nothing could be more snobbish!"

Squire. – "Give us your fist too, sir; you'll be a chip of the old block, after all."

Frank smiled, and walked off to his pony.

Mrs. Hazeldean to Miss Jemima. – "Is that the note you were to write for me?"

Miss Jemima. – "Yes, I supposed you did not care about seeing it, so I have sealed it and given it to George."

Mrs. Hazeldean. – "But Frank will pass close by the Casino on his way to the Leslies'. It may be more civil if he leaves the note himself."

Miss Jemima, hesitatingly. – "Do you think so?"

Mrs. Hazeldean. – "Yes, certainly. Frank – Frank – as you pass by the Casino, call on Mr. Riccabocca, give this note, and say we shall be heartily glad if he will come."

Frank nods.

"Stop a bit," cried the Squire. "If Rickeybockey's at home, 'tis ten to one if he don't ask you to take a glass of wine! If he does, mind, 'tis worse than asking you to take a turn on the rack. Faugh! you remember, Harry? – I thought it was all up with me."

"Yes," cried Mrs. Hazeldean, "for Heaven's sake, not a drop! Wine indeed!"

"Don't talk of it," cried the Squire, making a wry face.

"I'll take care, sir!" said Frank, laughing as he disappeared within the stable, followed by Miss Jemima, who now coaxingly makes it up with him, and does not leave off her admonitions to be extremely polite to the poor foreign gentleman, till Frank gets his foot into the stirrup; and the pony, who knows who he has got to deal with, gives a preparatory plunge or two and then darts out of the yard.

To be continued[From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.]

THE EVERY-DAY MARRIED LADY

It might be supposed that the every-day married lady was formerly the every-day young lady, and has now merely changed her condition. But this is not the case, for nothing is more common than to see the most holiday spinsters settle down into the most working-day matrons. The married lady, in fact, of the species we would describe, has no descent in particular. If you can imagine a pupa coming into the world of itself without any connection with the larva, or an imago unconscious of the pupa, that is the every-day married lady. She is born at the altar, conjured into life by the ceremonial, and having utterly lost her individual existence, becomes from that moment a noun of multitude. People may say, "Oh, this is our old acquaintance, Miss Smith!" but that is only calling names, for the identity is gone. If she is any thing at all but what appertains to the present, she is the late Miss Smith, who has survived herself, and changed into a family.

We would insist upon this peculiarity of the every-day married lady – that her existence is collective. Her very language is in the plural number – such as we, ours, and us. She respects the rights of paternity so much, as never to permit herself to talk of her children as peculiarly her own. Her individuality being merged in her husband and their actual or possible offspring, she has no private thoughts, no wishes, no hopes, no fears but for the concern. And this is all the better for her tranquillity: for although a part of her husband, she does not quite fancy that he is a part of her. She leaves at least the business to his management, and if she does advise and suggest on occasions, she thinks that somehow things will come out very well. She feels that she is only a passenger; and although, as such, she may recommend the skipper to shorten sail when weathering a critical point, or, for the sake of safety, to come to anchor in the middle of the sea, she has still a certain faith in his skill or luck, and sleeps quietly in the storm. For this reason the every day married lady is comfortable in the figure, and has usually good round features of her own. The Miss Smith she has survived had a slender waist and small delicate hands; but this lady is a very tolerable armful, and the wedding-ring makes such a hollow on her finger, that one might think it would be difficult to get off.

The every-day married lady is commonly reported to be selfish; but this is a mistake. At least her selfishness embraces the whole family circle: it has no personality. When the wife of a poor man, she will sit up half the night sewing and darning, but not a stitch for herself: that can be done at any time; but the boys must go comfortably to school, and the girls look genteel on the street, and the husband – to think of Mr. Brown wanting a button on his shirt! She looks selfish, because her eye is always on her own, and because she talks of what she is always thinking about; but how can one be selfish who is perpetually postponing herself, who dresses the plainest, eats the coarsest, and sleeps the least of the family? She never puts herself forward in company unless her young ladies want backing; but yet she never feels herself overlooked, for every word, every glance bestowed upon them, is communicated electrically to her. She is, indeed, in such perfect rapport with the concern, that it is no uncommon thing for her to go home chuckling with amusement, overpowered with delight, from a party at which she had not once opened her lips. This is the party which she pronounces to have "gone off" well. Half-observant people fancy that the calculation is made on the score of the jellies and ice, and singing and dancing, and so on, and influenced by a secret comparison with her own achievements; but she has more depth than they imagine, and finer sympathies – they don't understand her.

Not that the every-day married lady is unsocial – not at all: all comfortable people are social; but she is partial to her own class, and does not care to carry her confidences out of it. She has several intimate friends whom she is fond of meeting; but besides that, she is a sort of freemason in her way, and finds out every-day people by the word and sign. Rank has very little to do with this society, as you will find if you observed her sitting at a cottage door, where, in purchasing a draught of milk, she has recognized a sister. If these two every-day married women had been rocked in the same cradle, they could not talk more intimately; and, indeed, they have heavy matters to talk about, for of all the babies that ever came into this breathing world, theirs were the most extraordinary babies. The miracle is, that any of them are extant after such outrageous measles, and scarlet fevers, and chicken-poxes – prophesied of, so to speak, even before their birth, by memorabilia that might have alarmed Dr. Simson. The interlocutors part very well pleased with each other: the cottager proud to find that she has so much in common with a real lady, and the lady pronouncing the reflection of herself she had met with to be a most sensible individual.

Although careless in this instance of the circumstance of rank, the every-day married lady has but little sympathy with the class of domestic servants. She looks upon her servants, in fact, as in some sort her natural enemies, and her life may therefore be said to be passed at the best in a state of armed neutrality. She commonly proceeds on the allowance system; and this is the best way, as it prevents so many sickening apprehensions touching that leg of mutton. Indeed the appetite of servants is a constant puzzle to her: she can not make it out. She has a sharp eye, too, upon the policeman, and wonders what on earth he always looks down her area for. As for followers, that is quite out of the question. Servants stay long enough upon their errands to talk to all the men and women in the parish; and the idea of having an acquaintance now and then besides – more especially of the male sex – tramping into the kitchen to see them, is wildly unnatural. She tells of a sailor whom she once detected sitting in the coolest possible manner by the fireside. When she appeared, the man rose up and bowed – and then sat down again. Think of that! The artful girl said he was her brother! – and here all the every-day married ladies in the company laugh bitterly. Since that time she has been haunted by a sailor, and smells tar in all sorts of places.

If she ever has a passable servant, whom she is able to keep for a reasonable number of years, she gets gradually attached to her, and pets and coddles her. Betty is a standing testimony to her nice discrimination, and a perpetual premium on her successful rearing of servants. But alas! the end of it all is, that the respectable creature gets married to the green grocer, and leaves her indulgent mistress: a striking proof of the heartlessness and ingratitude of the whole tribe! If it is not marriage, however, that calls her away, but bad health; if she goes home unwell, or is carried to the infirmary – what then? Why, then, we are sorry to say, she passes utterly away from the observation and memory of the every-day married lady. This may be reckoned a bad trait in her character; and yet it is in some degree allied to the great virtue of her life. Servants are the evil principle in her household, which it is her business to combat and hold in obedience. A very large proportion of her time is spent in this virtuous warfare; and success on her part ought to be considered deserving of the gratitude of the vanquished, without imposing burdens upon the victor.

The every-day married lady is the inventor of a thing which few foreign nations have as yet adopted either in their houses or languages. This thing is Comfort. The word can not well be defined, the items that enter into its composition being so numerous, that a description would read like a catalogue. We all understand, however, what it means, although few of us are sensible of the source of the enjoyment. A widower has very little comfort, and a bachelor none at all; while a married man – provided his wife be an every-day married lady – enjoys it in perfection. But he enjoys it unconsciously, and therefore ungratefully: it is a thing of course – a necessary, a right, of the want of which he complains without being distinctly sensible of its presence. Even when it acquires sufficient intensity to arrest his attention, when his features and his heart soften, and he looks round with a half smile on his face, and says, "This is comfort!" it never occurs to him to inquire where it all comes from. His every-day wife is sitting quietly in the corner: it was not she who lighted the fire, or dressed the dinner, or drew the curtains, and it never occurs to him to think that all these, and a hundred other circumstances of the moment, owe their virtue to her spiriting, and that the comfort which enriches the atmosphere, which sparkles in the embers, which broods in the shadowy parts of the room, which glows in his own full heart, emanates from her, and encircles her like an aureola. We have suggested, on a former occasion, that our conventional notions of the sex, in its gentle, modest, and retiring characteristics, are derived from the every-day young lady; and in like manner we venture to opine that the every-day married lady is the English wife of foreigners and moralists. Thus she is a national character, and a personage of history; and yet there she sits all the while in that corner, knitting something or other, and thinking to herself that she had surely smelt a puff of tar as she was passing the pantry.