Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  _From Batty Langton, Esquire, to the Hon. Horatio Walpole_.

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, January 21st, 1748.

  . . . . . You ask me, my dear Sir, why I linger on year by year in thisland of Cherokees and Choctaws, as you put it, at the same time hintingvery delicately that now, with my poor old father in his grave and myown youthful debts discharged, you see no enduring reason for thisexile. It is kind of you to be so solicitous: kinder still to professthat you yet miss me. But that I am missed at White's is more than youshall persuade me to believe. In an earlier letter, written when theGaming Act passed, you told me they were for nailing up an escutcheon tomourn the death of play; they nailed up none for me. And I gather thatplay has recovered, and Dick Edgcumbe holds my cards. I doubt if Icould endure to revisit St. James's--save by moonlight perhaps._Rappelez-moi_ to the waiters. They will remember me.

  But in good deed, dear Sir, what should I be doing at home among theMalvern Hills upon a patrimony of 800 pounds?--for to that it hasdwindled. Can I hoe turnips, or poke a knowledgeable finger into theflanks of beeves? I wonder if your literary explorations ever led youacross the furrow of an ancient ploughman who--

  --on a May morning, on Malvern hills

  was weary of wandering and laid him down to sleep beside a brook--havingbeen chased thither betimes, no doubt, by a nagging bedfellow.I have no wife, nor mean to take one, and find it more to my comfort tosleep here by the River Charles and dream of Malvern, secure that Ishall wake to find myself detached from it by half a world.

  Yet your last letter touched me closely; for it happens that Sir O. V.,for love of whom rather than for any better reason I have kept thisexile, has taken to himself a Lady. That, you'll say, should be mydismissal; and that I like her, as she appears willing to be friendswith me, gives me, you'll say again, no excuse to linger. Yet I do, andshall.

  As for her history, Vyell picked her up in a God-forsaken fishing town,some leagues up the coast; brought her home; placed her undergouvernante and tutors; finally espoused her. Stay: finally he hasbuilt a palace for her, "Eagles" by name, whither he forces all Bostonto pay its homage. For convenience of access to the goddess he has cuta road twenty feet broad through the woodlands of her demesne.

  The palace in a woody vale they found, High-raised, of stone--

  or, to speak accurately, of stone and timber combined. Be pleased toimagine a river very much like that of Richmond, but covered with greycrags. "Fie," you will say, "the site is savage, then, like all else inthis New World?" My dear sir, you were never more mistaken.Mr. Manley's young eye of genius fastened upon it at once, to adapt itto a house and gardens in the Italian style.

  Have I mentioned this Mr. Manley in former letters? He is a younggentleman of good Midland blood (his county, I believe, Bedfordshire),with a moderate talent for drinking, a something more than talent forliving on his friends, and a positive genius for architecture.He will have none of your new craze for Gothic. Palladio is his god,albeit he allows that Palladio had feet of clay, and corrects himboldly--though always, as he tells me, with help of his minor deities,Vignola and the rest, who built the great villas around Rome. He hasstudied in Italy, and tells me that at Florence he was much beholden toyour friend Mann, who, I dare swear, lost money by the acquaintance.

  Vyell, his present patron, takes him out and shows him the site."Italy!" exclaims the Youth of Genius. "Italy?" echoes Maecenas,astonished. "We'll make it so," says the Youth. "These terraces, thisspouting water, these pines to serve us for cypresses!" "But, my goodsir, the House?" cries the impatient Vyell. "A fig for your house!Any fool can design a house when the Almighty and an artist togetherhave once made the landscape for it. Grant me two years for thegardens," he pleads. "You shall have ten months to complete landscape,house, everything." "I shall need armies of workmen." "You shall havethem." The Youth groaned. "I shall have to be sober for ten months onend!" "What of that?" says V. Lovers are unconscionable.

  Well, the Youth sits down to his plans, and at once orders begin to flyacross ocean to this port and that for the rarest marbles--_rossoantico_ from Mount Taenarus, _verde antico_ from Thessally; with greenCarystian, likewise shipped from Corinth; Carrara, Veronese Orange,Spanish _broccatello_, Derbyshire alabaster, black granite from Vyell'sCornish estate, red and purple porphyries from high up the Nile. . . .The Youth conjures up his gardens as by magic. Here you have a terracefenced with columns; below it a cascade pouring down a stairway ofcircular basins--the hint of it borrowed from Frascati (from the VillaTorlonia, if I remember); there an alley you'd swear was Boboli dippingto rise across the river, on a stairway you'd swear as positively wasVal San Zibio. Yet all is congruous. The dog scouts the Villa d'Estefor a "toy-shop."

  The house at first disappoints one, being straight and simple to thelast degree. ("D----n me," says he, "what can you look for, in tenmonths?") It is of two storeys, the windows of the upper storey loftierby one-third than those beneath; and has for sole ornament a balustradedparapet broken midway by an Ionic portico of twelve columns, with a_loggia_ deeply recessed above its entrance door. To this portico aflight of sixteen steps conducts you from the uppermost terrace.

  Such is Vyell's new pleasance of Eagles, Boston's latest wonder. I havedescribed it at this length because you profess to take more interest inhouses than in women; and also, to tell the truth, be cause I am shy ofdescribing Lady V. To call her roundly the loveliest creature I haveever set eyes on, or am like to, is (you will say) no description,though it may argue me in love with her.

  On my honour, no! or only as all others are in love--all the men, Imean, and even some pro portion of the womankind. The rest agree tocall her "Lady Good-for-Nothing," upon a double rumour, of which onehalf is sad truth, and the other (my life on it) false as hell.

  They have heard that when Vyell found her she was a serving-girl,undergoing punishment (a whipping, to be precise) for some trumperyoffence against the Sabbath. Yes, my dear sir, this is true; as it istrue also that Vyell, like a knight-errant of old, offered to share herpunishment, and did indeed share it to the extent of sitting in thestocks beside her. You'd have thought an honest mind might find foodfor compassion in this, and even an excuse to believe the better ofhuman nature; but it merely scandalises these Puritan tabbies.They fear Vyell for his wealth and title; and he, despising them, forcesthem to visit her.

  Now for the falsehood. The clergyman who read the marriage ceremony forV. somewhere in the backwoods (this, too, was his whim, and they have tobe content with it) is a low-bred trencher-chaplain, by name Silk.He should have been unfrocked the next week, not for performing afunction apostolically derived, but for spreading a report--I wait tofasten it on him--that before marriage she was no better than she shouldbe. I have earned better right than any other man to know Vyell, and Iknow it to be calumny. But the wind blows, and the name"Lady Good-for-Nothing" is a by-breath of it.

  Vyell guesses nothing of this. He has a masculine judgment and no smalldegree of wit--though 'tis of a hard intellectual kind; but throughmisprising his fellow creatures he has come to lack _flair_. His lady,if she scent a taint on the wind wafted through her routs andassemblies, no doubt sets it down to breathings upon her humble origin,or (it may be) even to some leaking gossip of her foregone wrong.(Women, my dear sir, are brutes to rend a wounded one of the herd.) Shecan know nothing of the worse slander.

  She moves through her duties as hostess with a pretty well-bred grace,and a childishness infinitely touching. Yet something more protectsher; a certain common sense, which now and then very nearly achieveswit. For an instance--But yesterday a certain pompous lady lamented toher in my hearing (and with intention, as it seemed to me, who am grownsuspicious), the rapid moral decay of Boston society. "Alas!" sighs myheroine; "but what a comfort, ma'am, to think that neither of us belongsto it!" Add to this that she has learning enough to equip ten_precieuses_--and hides it: has read
Plato and can quote her Virgil bythe page--but forbears. Yet all this while you have suspected me, nodoubt, of raving over a '_Belle Sauvage_, a Pocahontas.

  Well, I shall watch her progress. . . . I have become so nearly a partof Vyell that I charge myself to stand for him and supply what he lacks.He loves her; she loves him to doting; but I cannot see into theirfuture.

  Vyell, by the way, charges me to request your good offices with Mr. Mannto procure him a couple of Tuscan vases. I know that your friend isinfinitely obliging to all who approach him through you: and thisrequest which my letter carries as a tag should have been its pretext,as in fact it was its occasion. Adieu! my dear sir.

  Yours most sincerely,

  BAT. LANGTON.