Complete Fictional Works of Henry Fielding

by Henry Fielding

  CLERMONT. They are of all people my aversion; they are a sort of spaniels, who, though they have no chance of running down the hare themselves, often spoil the chase. I have known one of these fellows pursue half the fine women in town, without any other design than of enjoying them all in the arms of a strumpet. It is pleasant enough to see them watching the eyes of a woman of quality half an hour, to get an opportunity of making a bow to her.

  FREDERICK. Which she often returns with a smile, or some more extraordinary mark of affection; from a charitable design of giving pain to her real admirer, who, though he can’t be jealous of the animal, is concerned to see her condescend to take notice of him.

  SCENE V.

  HARRIET, FREDERICK, CLERMONT.

  HARRIET. I suppose, brother, you have heard of my good father’s economy, that he has resolved to join two entertainments in one — and prevent giving an extraordinary wedding supper.

  FREDERICK. Yes, I have heard it — and I hope have taken measures to prevent it.

  HARRIET. Why, did you believe it then?

  FREDERICK. I think I had no longer room to doubt.

  HARRIET. I would not believe it, if I were to see them in bed together.

  FREDERICK. Heaven forbid it!

  HARRIET. So say I too. Heaven forbid I should have such a mother-in-law; but I think, if she were wedded into any other family, you would have no reason to lament the loss of so constant a mistress.

  FREDERICK. Dear Harriet, indulge my weakness.

  HARRIET. I will indulge your weakness with all my heart — but the men ought not; for they are such lovers as you who spoil the women. Come, if you will bring

  MR. Clermont into my apartment, I’ll give you a dish of tea, and you shall have some sal volatile in it, though you have no real cause for any depression of your spirit; for I dare swear your mistress is very safe. And I am sure, if she were to be lost in the manner you apprehend, she would be the best loss you ever had in your life.

  CLERMONT. Oh, Frederick! if your mistress were but equal to your sister, you might be well called the happiest of mankind. [Exeunt.

  SCENE VI.

  MARIANA, LAPPET.

  LAPPET. Ha, ha, ha! and so yon have persuaded the old lady that you really intend to have him.

  MARIANA. I tell you, I do really intend to have him.

  LAPPET. Have him! ha, ha, ha! For what do you intend to have him?

  MARIANA. Have I not told you already that I will marry him?

  LAPPET. Indeed, you will not.

  MARIANA. How, Mrs. Impertinence, has your mistress told you so? and did she send you hither to persuade me against the match?

  LAPPET. What should you marry him for? As for his riches, you might as well think of going hungry to a fine entertainment, where you are sure of not being suffered to eat. The very income of your own fortune will be more than he will allow you. Adieu fine clothes, operas, plays, assemblies; adieu dear Quadrille — and to what have you sacrificed all these? — not to a husband — for whatever you make of him, you will never make a husband of him, I’m sure.

  MARIANA. This is a liberty, madam, I shall not allow you; if you intend to stay in this house, you must leave off these pretty airs you have lately given yourself — Remember you are a servant here, and not the mistress, as you have been suffered to affect.

  LAPPET. You may lay aside your airs too, good madam, if you come to that; for I shall not desire to stay in this house when you are the mistress of it.

  MARIANA. It will be prudent in you not to put on your usual insolence to me; for, if you do, your master shall punish you for it.

  LAPPET. I have one comfort; he will not be able to punish me half so much as he will you. The worst he can do to me is to turn me out of the house — but you he can keep in it. Wife to an old fellow! faugh!

  MARIANA. If Miss Harriet sent you on this errand, you may return, and tell her, her wit is shallower than I imagined it — and, since she has no more experience, I believe I shall send my daughter-in-law to school again. [Exit.

  LAPPET. Hum! you will have a schoolmaster at home. I begin to doubt whether this sweet-tempered creature will not marry in spite at last. I have one project more to prevent her, and that I will about instantly.

  SCENE VII

  The Garden.

  LOVEGOLD, MRS. WISELY.

  LOVEGOLD. I cannot be easy. I must settle something upon her.

  MRS. WISELY. Believe me, Mr. Lovegold, it is unnecessary; when you die, you will leave your wife very well provided for.

  LOVEGOLD. Indeed, I have known several law-suits happen on these accounts; and sometimes the whole has been thrown away in disputing to which party it belonged. I shall not sleep in my grave while a set of villainous lawyers are dividing the little money I have among them.

  MRS. WISELY. I know this old fool is fond enough now to come to any terms; but it is ill trusting him: violent passions can never last long at his years. [Aside.

  LOVEGOLD. What are you considering?

  MRS. WISELY. Mr. Lovegold, I am sure, knows the world too well to have the worse opinion of any woman from her prudence; therefore I must tell you, this delay of the match does not at all please me. It seems to argue your inclinations abated, and so it is better to let the treaty end here. My daughter has a very good offer now, which were she to refuse on your account, she would make a very ridiculous figure in the world after you had left her.

  LOVEGOLD. Alas! madam, I love her better than anything almost upon the face of the earth; this delay is to secure her a good jointure: I am not worth the money the world says; I am not indeed.

  MRS. WISELY. Well, sir, then there can be no harm, for the satisfaction of both her mind and mine, in your signing a small contract which can be prepared immediately.

  LOVEGOLD. What signifies signing, madam?

  MRS. WISELY. I see, sir, you don’t care for it. So there is no harm done; and really this other is so very advantageous an offer, that I don’t know whether I shall not be blamed for refusing him on any account.

  LOVEGOLD. Nay, but be not in haste; what would you have me sign?

  MRS. WISELY. Only to perform your promise of marriage.

  LOVEGOLD. Well, well, let your lawyer draw it up then, and mine shall look it over.

  MRS. WISELY. I believe my lawyer is in the house; I’ll go to him, and get it done instantly; and then we will give this gentleman a final answer. I assure you, he is a very advantageous offer. [Exit.

  LOVEGOLD. AS I intend to marry this girl, there can be no harm in signing the contract; her lawyer draws it up, so I shall be at no expense; for I can get mine to look it over for nothing. I should have done very wisely, indeed, to have entitled her to a third of my fortune, whereas I will not make her jointure above a tenth. I protest it is with some difficulty that I have prevailed with myself to put off the match; I am more in love, I find, than I suspected.

  SCENE VIII.

  LAPPET, LOVEGOLD.

  LAPPET. Oh! unhappy, miserable creature that I am! what shall I do? whither shall I go?

  LOVEGOLD. What’s the matter, Lappet?

  LAPPET. To have been innocently assisting in betraying so good a man! so good a master! so good a friend!

  LOVEGOLD. Lappet, I say.

  LAPPET. I shall never forgive myself, I shall never outlive it, I shall never eat, drink, sleep — [Runs against him.

  LOVEGOLD. One would think you were walking in your sleep, now. What can be the meaning of this?

  LAPPET. Oh! sir! — you are undone, sir, and I am undone.

  LOVEGOLD. How! what! has any one robbed me? have I lost anything?

  LAPPET. No, sir, but you have got something.

  LOVEGOLD. What? what?

  LAPPET. A wife, sir.

  LOVEGOLD. No, I have not yet — but why —

  LAPPET. How, sir, are you not married?

  LOVEGOLD. No.

  LAPPET. That is the happiest word I ever heard come out of your mouth.

  LOVEGOLD. I have, for some p
articular reasons, put off the match for a few days.

  LAPPET. Yes, sir! and for some particular reasons, you shall put off the match for a few years.

  LOVEGOLD. What do you say?

  LAPPET. Oh! sir, this affair has almost determined me never to engage in matrimonial matters again. I have been finely deceived in this lady. I told you, sir, she had an estate in a certain country; but I find it is all a cheat, sir; the devil of any estate has she.

  LOVEGOLD. How! not any estate at all! How can she live then?

  LAPPET. Nay, sir. Heaven knows how half the people in this town live.

  LOVEGOLD. However, it is an excellent good quality in a woman to be able to live without an estate. She that can make something out of nothing, will make a little go a great way. I am sorry she has no fortune; but considering all her saving qualities, Lappet —

  LAPPET. All an imposition, sir! she is the most extravagant wretch upon earth.

  LOVEGOLD. How! how! extravagant!

  LAPPET. I tell you, sir, she is downright extravagance itself.

  LOVEGOLD. Can it be possible after what you told me?

  LAPPET. Alas, sir, that was only a cloak thrown over her real inclinations.

  LOVEGOLD. How was it possible for you to be so deceived in her?

  LAPPET. Alas! sir, she would have deceived any one upon earth, even yourself: for, sir, during a whole fortnight since you have been in love with her she has made it her whole business to conceal her extravagance and appear thrifty.

  LOVEGOLD. That is a good sign though; Lappet, let me tell you, that is a good sign; right habits as well as wrong are got by affecting them. And she who could be thrifty a whole fortnight gives lively hopes that she may be brought to be so as long as she lives.

  LAPPET. She loves play to distraction: it is the only visible way in the world she has of living.

  LOVEGOLD. She must win then, Lappet; and play, when people play the best of the game, is no such very bad thing. Besides, as she plays only to support herself, when she can be supported without it, she may leave it off.

  LAPPETT. To support her extravagance, in dress particularly: why, don’t you see, sir, she is dressed out to-day like a princess?

  LOVEGOLD. It may be an effect of prudence in a young woman to dress, in order to get a husband. And as that is apparently her motive, when she is married that motive ceases; and to say the truth, she is in discourse a very prudent young woman.

  LAPPET. Think of her extravagance.

  LOVEGOLD. A woman of the greatest modesty!

  LAPPET. And extravagance.

  LOVEGOLD. She has really a very fine set of teeth.

  LAPPET. She will have all the teeth out of your head.

  LOVEGOLD. I never saw finer eyes.

  LAPPET. She will eat you out of house and home.

  LOVEGOLD. Charming hair!

  LAPPET. She will ruin you!

  LOVEGOLD. Sweet kissing lips, swelling breasts, and the finest shape that ever was embraced. [Catching Lappet in his arms.

  LAPPET. Oh, sir! I am not the lady. — Was ever such an old goat! — Well, sir, I see you are determined on the match, and so I desire you would pay me my wages. I cannot bear to see the ruin of a family in which I have lived so long, that I have contracted as great a friendship for it as if it was my own: I can’t bear to see waste, riot, and extravagance; to see all the wealth a poor, honest, industrious gentleman has been raising all his lifetime, squandered away in a year or two in feasts, balls, music, cards, clothes, jewels — It would break my heart to see my poor old master eat out by a set of singers, fiddlers, milliners, mantua-makers, mercers, toymen, jewellers, fops, cheats, rakes — To see his guineas fly about like dust: all his ready money paid in one morning to one tradesman; his whole stock in the funds spent in one half-year; all his land swallowed down in another; all his old gold, nay, the very plate which he has had in his family time out of mind, which has descended from father to son ever since the flood, to see even that disposed of. What will they have next, I wonder, when they have had all that he is worth in the world, and left the poor old man without any thing to furnish his old age with the necessaries of life — Will they be contented then, or will they tear out his bowels, and eat them too. [Both burst into tears.] The laws are cruel to put it in the power of a wife to ruin her husband in this manner — And will any one tell me that such a woman as this is handsome? — What are a pair of shining eyes, when they must be bought with the loss of all one’s shining gold?

  LOVEGOLD. Oh! my poor old gold.

  LAPPET. Perhaps she has a fine set of teeth.

  LOVEGOLD. My poor plate that I have hoarded with so much care.

  LAPPET. Or I’ll grant she may have a most beautiful shape.

  LOVEGOLD. My dear land and tenements.

  LAPPET. What are the roses on her cheeks, or lilies in her neck?

  LOVEGOLD. My poor India bonds, bearing at least three and a half per cent.

  LAPPET. A fine excuse, indeed, when a man is ruined by his wife, to tell us he has married a beauty.

  SCENE IX.

  LAWYER, LOVEGOLD, LAPPET.

  LAWYER. Sir, the contract is ready; my client has sent for the counsel on the other side, and he is now below examining it.

  LOVEGOLD. Get you out of my doors, you villain, you and your client too! Ill contract you, with a pox!

  LAWYER. Heyday! sure you are non compos mentis!

  LOVEGOLD. No, sirrah, I had like to have been non compos mentis; but I have had the good luck to escape it. Go and tell your client I have discovered her: bid her take her advantageous offer; for I shall sign no contracts.

  LAWYER. This is the strangest thing I have met with in my whole course of practice.

  LOVEGOLD. I am very much obliged to you, Lappet; indeed, I am very much obliged to you.

  LAPPET. I am sure, sir, I have a very great satisfaction in serving you, and I hope you will consider of that little affair that I mentioned to you to-day about my law-suit.

  LOVEGOLD. I am very much obliged to you.

  LAPPET. I hope, sir, you won’t suffer me to be ruined when I have preserved you from it.

  LOVEGOLD. Hey! — [Appearing deaf.

  LAPPET. You know, sir, that in Westminster Hall money and right are always on the same side.

  LOVEGOLD. Ay, so they are; very true, so they are; and therefore no one can take too much care of his money.

  LAPPET. The smallest matter of money, sir, would do me an infinite service.

  LOVEGOLD. Hey! What?

  LAPPET. A small matter of money, sir, would do me a great kindness.

  LOVEGOLD. O-ho! I have a very great kindness for you; indeed, I have a very great kindness for you.

  LAPPET. Pox take your kindness! I’m only losing time: there’s nothing to be got out of him. So I’ll even to Frederick, and see what the report of my success will do there: Ah! would I were married to thee myself!

  LOVEGOLD. What a prodigious escape have I had! I cannot look at the precipice without being giddy.

  SCENE X.

  RAMILIE, LOVEGOLD.

  LOVEGOLD. Who is that? Oh, is it you, sirrah? How dare you enter within these walls?

  RAMILIE. Truly, sir, I can scarcely reconcile it to myself; I think, after what has happened, you have no great title to my friendship. But I don’t know how it is, sir there is something or other about you which strangely engages my affections, and which, together with the friendship I have for your son, won’t let me suffer you to be imposed upon; and to prevent that, sir, is the whole and sole occasion of my coming within your doors. Did not a certain lady, sir, called Mrs. Lappet, depart from you just now?

  LOVEGOLD. What if she did, sirrah?

  RAMILIE. Has she not, sir, been talking to you about a young lady whose name is Mariana?

  LOVEGOLD. Well, and what then?

  RAMILIE. Why, then, sir, every single syllable she has told you has been neither more nor less than a most confounded lie; as is, indeed, every word she says: for I don’t
believe, upon a modest calculation, she has told sis truths since she has been in the house. She is made up of lies: her father was an attorney, and her mother was chambermaid to a maid of honour. The first word she spoke was a lie, and so will be the last. I know she has pretended a great affection for you, that’s one lie; and every thing she has said of Mariana is another.