Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

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by Maria Edgeworth


  Mowbray happened to call upon me soon after the conversation I had with my mother about the Spanish Jew. I had not been dissuaded from my purpose by her representations; but I had determined to pay my visit without saying any thing more about the matter, and to form my own judgment of the man. A new difficulty, however, occurred: my letter of introduction had disappeared. I searched my pockets, my portfolios, my letter-case, every conceivable place, but it was not to be found. Mowbray obligingly assisted me in this search; but after emptying half a dozen times over portfolios, pockets, and desks, I was ashamed to give him more trouble, and I gave up the letter as lost. When Mowbray heard that this letter, about which I was so anxious, was an introduction to a Jewish gentleman, he could not forbear rallying me a little, but in a very agreeable tone, upon the constancy of my Israelitish taste, and the perfect continuance of my identity.

  “I left you, Harrington, and I find you, after four years’ absence, intent upon a Jew; boy and man you are one and the same; and in your case, ’tis well that the boy and man should an individual make; but for my part, I am glad to change my identity, like all other mortals, once in seven years; and I hope you think I have changed for the better.”

  It was impossible to think otherwise, especially at that moment. In a frank, open-hearted manner, he talked of his former tyrannical nature, and blamed himself for our schoolboy quarrel. I was charmed with him, and the more so, when he entered so warmly or so politely into my present distress, and sympathized with my madness of the moment. He suggested all that was possible to be done to supply the loss of the letter. Could not I get another in its stead? The same friend who gave me one letter of introduction could write another. No; Mr. Israel Lyons had left Cambridge, and I knew not where to direct to him. Could not I present myself to Mr. Montenero without a letter? That might be rather an awkward proceeding, but I was not to be stopped by any nice observances, now that I had set my mind upon the matter. Unluckily, however, I could by no means recollect the exact address of Mr. Montenero. I was puzzled among half a dozen different streets and numbers: Mowbray offered to walk with me, and we went to each of these streets, and to all the variety of numbers I suggested, but in vain; no Mr. Montenero was to be found. At last, tired and disappointed, as I was returning home, Mowbray said he thought he could console me for the loss of my chance of seeing my Spanish Jew, by introducing me to the most celebrated Jew that ever appeared in England. Then turning into a street near one of the play-houses, he knocked at the door of a house where Macklin the actor lodged. Lord Mowbray was well acquainted with him, and I was delighted to have an opportunity of seeing this celebrated man. He was at this time past the meridian of ordinary life, but he was in the zenith of his extraordinary course, and in the full splendour and vigour of his powers.

  “Here,” said Mowbray, presenting me to Macklin, “is a young gentleman, who is ambitious of being acquainted with the most celebrated Jew that ever appeared in England. Allow me to introduce him to the real, original Jew of Venice:

  ‘This is the Jew

  That Shakspeare drew!’

  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 w
as 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 u
pon 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.”

 

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