Marriage (Ferrier)/Chapter XXV
"Who taught the parrot to cry, hail?
What taught the chattering pie his tale?
Hunger; that sharpener of the wits,
Which gives e'en fools some thinking fits"
DRUMMOND'S
Persius.
MARY found herself bereft of both her lovers nearly at the same time. Lord Glenallan, after formally renewing his suit, at length took a final leave, and returned to Scotland. Lady Juliana's indignation could only be equalled by Dr. Redgill's upon the occasion. He had planned a snug retreat for himself during the game season at Glenallan Castle; where, from the good-nature and easy temper of both master and mistress, he had no doubt but that he should in time come to rule the roast, and be lord paramount over kitchen and larder. His disappointment was therefore great at finding all the solid joys of red deer and moor-game, kippered salmon and mutton hams, "vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision," leaving not a wreck behind.
"Refused Lord Glenallan!" exclaimed he to Lady Emily, upon first hearing of it. "The thing's incredible—absolutely impossible—I won't believe it!"
"That's right, Doctor; who is it that says 'And still believe the story false that ought not to be true? I admire your candour, and wish I could imitate it."
"Then your Ladyship really believes it. 'Pon my soul, I—I—it's really a very vexatious affair. I feel for Lady Juliana, poor woman! No wonder she's hysterical-five and twenty thousand a year refused! What is it she would have? The finest deer park in Scotland! Every sort of game upon the estate! A salmon fishing at the very door!—I should just like to know what is the meaning of it?"
"Cannot you guess, Doctor" asked Lady Emily.
"Guess! No, 'pon my soul! I defy any man to guess what could tempt a woman to refuse five and twenty thousand a year; unless, indeed, she has something higher in view, and even then she should be pretty sure of her mark. But I suppose, because Miss Adelaide has got a Duke, she thinks she must have one too. I suppose that's the story; but I can tell her Dukes are not so plenty; and she's by no means so fine a woman as her sister, and her market's spoilt, or I'm much mistaken. What man in his senses would ever ask a woman who had been such an idiot as to refuse five and twenty thousand a year?"
"I see, Doctor, you are quite a novice in the tender passion. Cannot you make allowance for it: a young lady's not being in love?"
"In what?" demanded the Doctor.
"In love," repeated Lady Emily.
"Love! Bah—nonsense—no mortal in their senses ever thinks of such stuff now."
"Then you think love and madness are one and the same thing, it seems?"
"I think the man or woman who could let their love stand in the way of five and twenty thousand a year is the next thing to being mad," said the Doctor warmly; "and in this case I can see no difference."
"But you'll allow there are some sorts of love that may be indulged without casting any shade upon the understanding?"
"I really can't tell what your Ladyship means," said the Doctor impatiently.
"I mean, for example, the love one may feel towards a turtle, such as we had lately."
"That's quite a different thing," interrupted the Doctor.
"Pardon me, but whatever the consequence may be, the effects in both cases were very similar, as exemplified in yourself. Pray, what difference did it make to your friends, who were deprived of your society, whether you spent your time in walking with 'even step, and musing gait,' before your Dulcinea's window or the turtle's cistern?—whether you were engrossed in composing a sonnet to your mistress's eyebrow, or in contriving a new method of heightening the enjoyments of calipash? —whether you expatiated with greater rapture on the charms of a white skin or green fat?—whether you were most devoted to a languishing or a lively beauty?—whether——"
"'Pon my honour, Lady Emily, I really—I—I can't conceive what it is you mean. There's a time for everything; and I'm sure nobody but yourself would ever have thought of bringing in a turtle to a conversation upon marriage."
"On the contrary, Doctor, I thought it had been upon love; and I was endeavouring to convince you that even the wisest of men may be susceptible of certain tender emotions towards a beloved object."
"You'll never convince me that any but a fool can be in love," cried the Doctor, his visage assuming a darker purple as the argument advanced.
"Then you must rank Lord Glenallan, with his five and twenty thousand a year, amongst the number, for he is desperately in love, I assure you."
"As to that, Lord Glenallan, or any man with his fortune, may be whatever he chooses. He has a right to be in love. He can afford to be in love."
"I have heard much of the torments of love," said Lady Emily; "but I never heard it rated as a luxury before. I hope there is no chance of your being made Premier, otherwise I fear we should have a tax upon love-marriages immediately."
"It would be greatly for the advantage of the nation, as well as the comfort of individuals, if there was," returned the Doctor. "Many a pleasant fellow has been lost to society by what you call a love-marriage. I speak from experience. I was obliged to drop the oldest friend I had upon his making one of your love-marriages."
"What! you were afraid of the effects of evil example?" asked Lady Emily.
"No—it was not for that; but he asked me to take a family dinner with him one day, and I, without knowing anything of the character of the woman he had married, was weak enough to go. I found a very so-so tablecloth and a shoulder of mutton, which ended our acquaintance. I never entered his door after it. In fact, no man's happiness is proof against dirty tablecloths and bad dinners; and you may take my word for it, Lady Emily, these are the invariable accompaniments of your love-marriages."
"Pshaw! that is only amongst the bourgeois," said Lady Emily affectedly; "that is not the sort of ménage I mean to have. Here is to be the style of my domestic establishment;" and she repeated Shenstone's beautiful pastoral—
"My banks they are furnished with bees," etc.,
till she came to—
"I have found out a gift for my fair,
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed."
"There's some sense in that," cried the Doctor, who had been listening with great weariness." You may have a good pigeon-pie, or un sauté de pigeons au sang, which is still better when well dressed."
"Shocking!" exclaimed Lady Emily; "to mention pigeon-pies in the same breath with nightingales and roses!"
"I'll tell you what, Lady Emily, it's just these sort of nonsensical descriptions that do all the mischief amongst you young ladies. It's these confounded poets that turn all your heads, and make you think you have nothing to do after you are married but sit beside fountains and grottoes, and divert yourself with birds and flowers, instead of looking after your servants, and paying your butcher's bills; and, after all, what is the substance of that trash you have just been reading, but to say that the man was a substantial farmer and grazier, and had bees; though I never heard of any man in his senses going to sleep amongst his beehives before. 'Pon my soul! if I had my will I would burn every line of poetry that ever was written. A good recipe for a pudding is worth all that your Shenstones and the whole set of them ever wrote; and there's more good sense and useful information in this book"—rapping his knuckles against a volume he held in his hand—"than in all your poets, ancient and modern."
Lady Emily took it out of his hand and opened it.
"And some very poetical description, too, Doctor; although you affect to despise it so much. Here is an eulogium on the partridge. I doubt much if St. Preux ever made a finer on his adorable Julie;" and she read as follows:—
"La Perdrix tient Ie premier rang apres la Bécasse, dans la cathégorie des gibiers à plumes. C'est, lorsqu'elle est rouge, l'un des plus honorables et desmeilleurs rôtis qui puissent être étalés sur une table gourmande. Sa forme appétissante, sa taille élégante et svelte, quoiqu' arrondie, son embonpoint modéré, ses jambes d'écarlate; enfin, son fumet divin et ses qualités restaurantes, tout concourt à la faire rechercher des vrais amateurs. D'autres gibiers sont plus rares, plus chers, mieux accueillis par la vanité, le prejuge, et la mode; la Perdrix rouge, belle de sa propre beauté, dont les qualités sont indépendantes de la fantaisie, qui réunit en sa personne tout ce qui peut charmer les yeux, delecter Ie palais, stimuler l'appétit, et ranimer les forces, plaira dans-tous les temps, et concourra à l'honneur de tous les festins, sous quelque forme qu'elle y paroisse."[1]
The Doctor sighed: "That's nothing to what he says of the woodcock:" and with trembling hand she turned over the leaves, till he found the place. "Here it is," said he, "page 88, chap. xvi. Just be so good as read that, Lady Emily, and say whether it is not infamous that Monsieur Grillade has never even attempted to make it."
With an air of melancholy enthusiasm she read—"Dans les pays oû les Bécasses sont communes, on obtient, de leurs carcasses pilées dans un mortier, une purée sur laquelle on dresse diverses entrées, telles que de petites côtelettes de mouton, etc. Cotte purée est l'une des plus délicieuses choses qui puisse être introduite dans Ie palais d'un gourmand, et l'on peut assurer que quiconque n'en a point mangé n'a point connu les joies du paradis terrestre. Une purée de Bécasse, bien faite, est Ie ne plus ultrâ des jouissances humaines. II faut mourir après l'avoir goutée, car toutes les autres alors ne paroitront plus qu'insipides."
"And these bécasses, these woodcocks, perfectly swarm on the Glenallan estate in the season," cried the Doctor; "and to think that such a man should have been refused. But Miss Mary will repent this the longest day she lives. I had a cook in my eye for them, too—one who is quite up to the making of this purée. 'Pon my soul! she deserve to live upon sheep's head and haggis for the rest of her life; and if I was Lady Juliana I would try the effect of bread and water."
"She certainly does not aspire to such joys as are here portrayed in this your book of life," said Lady Emily; "for I suspect she could endure existence even upon roast mutton with the man she loves."
"That's nothing to the purpose, unless the man she loves, as you call it, loves to live upon roast mutton too. Take my word for it, unless she gives her husband good dinners he'll not care twopence for her in a week's time. I look upon bad dinners to be the source of much of the misery we hear of in the married life. Women are much mistaken if they think it's by dressing themselves they are to please their husbands."
"Pardon me, Doctor, we must be the best judges there, and I have the authority of all ages and sages in my favour: the beauty and the charms of women have been the favourite theme, time immemorial; now no one ever heard of a fair one being celebrated for her skill in cookery."
"There I beg leave to differ from you," said the Doctor, with an air of exultation, again referring to his text-book—"here is the great Madame Pompadour, celebrated for a single dish: 'Les tendrons d'agneau au soleil et à la Pompadour, sont sortis de l'imagination de cette dame célèbre, pour entrer dans la bouche d'un roi."
"But it was Love that inspired her—it was Love that kindled the fire in her imagination. In short, you must acknowledge that
"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove."
"I'll acknowledge no such thing," cried the Doctor, with indignation. "Love rule the camp, indeed! A very likely story! Don't I know that all our first generals carry off the best cooks—that there's no such living anywhere as in camp—that their aides-de-camp are quite ruined by it—that in time of war they live at the rate of twenty thousand a year, and when they come home they can't get a dinner they can eat? As for the court, I don't pretend to know much about it; but I suspect there's more cooks than Cupids to be seen about it. And for the groves, I shall only say I never heard of any of your fetes champétre, or picnics, where all the pleasure didn't seem to consist in the eating and drinking."
"Ah, Doctor, I perceive you have taken all your ideas on that subject from Werter, who certainly was a sort of a sentimental gourmand, he seems to have enjoyed so much drinking his coffee under the shade of the lime-trees, and going to the kitchen to take his own pease-soup; and then he breaks out into such raptures at the idea of the illustrious lovers of Penelope killing and dressing their own meat! Butchers and cooks in one! only conceive them with their great knives and blue aprons, or their spits and white nightcaps! Poor Penelope! no wonder she preferred spinning to marrying one of these creatures! Faugh! I must have an ounce of civet to sweeten my imagination." And she flew of, leaving the Doctor to con over the "Manuel des Amphitryons," and sigh at the mention of joys, sweet, yet mournful, to his soul.
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ "Manuel des Amphitryons."