SCENE IV.
MERITAL, MALVIL, RATTLE.
MERITAL. Nay, dear Ned.
RATTLE. What queer bundle of rusticity is that?
MERITAL. A man of admirable sense, I assure you. Your hopes in the widow now are not worth much.
RATTLE. Pugh! there’s a rival indeed! besides, I am sensible that I am the happy he whom she has chosen out of our whole sex. She is stark mad in love, poor soul! and let me alone when I have made an impression. I tell ye, sirs, I have had opportunities, I have had encouragements, I have had kisses and embraces, lads; but, mum. Now if you tell one word, devil take me if ever I trust you with a secret again.
MALVIL. You will pardon me, Harry; but if I believe one word of it, may I never know a secret again.
RATTLE. I am glad of that; my joy makes me blab, but it may be for the lady’s honour not to have it believed.
MALVIL. Ay, faith, and for the honour of her sense too.
RATTLE. I pumped Sir Apish, as you desired; it seems, all matters are agreed on with the old folks, he has nothing now but to get his mistress’s own consent.
MALVIL. That’s only a form; miss says yes now after her father, as readily as after the parson.
RATTLE. Well, well, I thank fate my mistress is at her own disposal.
MERITAL. And did you not tell Sir Apish I was his rival? you can keep a secret?
RATTLE. O, inviolably to serve a friend, and provided there be an intrigue in the case. I love intrigues so well, I almost think myself the son of one.
MALVIL. And to publish them so well, that had you been so and known it, your supposed father would have known his blessing, and the world his title.
RATTLE. But why should you think I can’t keep a secret? Now, upon my honour, I never publish any one’s intrigues but my own.
MALVIL. And your character is so public, that you hurt nobody’s name but your own.
RATTLE. Nay, curse take me, if I am ashamed of being publicly known to have an affair with a lady, at all.
MALVIL. NO? but you should be ashamed of boasting of affairs with ladies, whom it is known you never spoke to.
MERITAL. There you are too hard on him, for Rattle has affairs.
RATTLE. And with women of rank.
MALVIL. Of very high rank, if their quality be as high as their lodgings are.
RATTLE. Prythee, Malvil, leave this satirical, ill-natured way, or, upon my word, we pretty fellows shall not care to be seen in your company.
MERITAL. You must excuse him, he is only envious of your success; and as the smiles of a mistress raise your gaiety, so the frowns of a mistress cause his spleen.
RATTLE. Do they? But you and I, Tom, know better: for, curse me, if it be in the power of the frowns of the whole sex to give me an uneasy moment. Neither do I value their smiles at a pinch of snuff. And yet, I believe I have as few of the first, and as many of the last, as ——
MERITAL. HOW! how! not value the widow’s smiles?
RATTLE. Humph! they are golden ones.
MALVIL. Here’s a rogue would persuade us he is in love, and all the charms he can find in his mistress are in her pocket.
RATTLE. Agad, and that opinion is not singular. I have known a fine gentleman marry a rich heiress with a vast deal of passion, and bury her at the month’s end with a perfect resignation.
MALVIL. Then his resignation seems to me much more apparent than his passion.
RATTLE. You fix his passion on the wrong object: it was her fortune he was so violently enamoured with, and had that been demanded of him, agad he would have had no more resignation than a lawyer to refund his fee.
MERITAL. I am of Rattle’s opinion; for if this was not the general notion, how would some celebrated toasts maintain their éclat who, considered out of the light of their fortune, have no more charms than beau Grin out of his embroidery?
RATTLE. Or my lady Wrinkle out of her paint.
MERITAL. And again, others be neglected who have every charm but wealth. In short, beauty is now considered as a qualification only for a mistress, and fortune for a wife.
MALVIL. The ladies are pretty even with us, for they have learned to value good qualities only in a gallant, and to look for nothing but an estate in a husband.
RATTLE. These are rare sentiments in a platonie lover.
MERITAL. Well put. How can a man love, who has so ill an opinion of the sex?
MALVIL. Merital, you are always touching the wounds of your friends, which are too tender to endure it.
MERITAL. Well, gentlemen, are you for the Mall this morning?
RATTLE. With all my heart.
MALVIL. I have business, but will meet you there.
RATTLE. Gad, that’s well thought on, I must call on some ladies, but they lie in our way.
MALVIL. Ay, your ladies commonly lie in every body’s way.
MERITAL. You will find me in the Mall, or at St. James’s.
SCENE V.
MERITAL, LORD FORMAL.
MERITAL. Ha! here’s a fool coming, and he is unavoidable. My lord, your humble servant; to see you at this end of the town is a miracle, at so early an hour.
LORD FORMAL. Why, positively, Mr. Merital, this is an hour wherein I seldom make any excursions farther than my drawing-room. But, being a day of business, I have rid down two brace of chairmen this morning. I have been, sir, at three milliners’, two perfumers’, my bookseller’s, and a fan-shop.
MERITAL. Ha, ha, ha! a very tiresome circuit.
LORD FORMAL. It has exagitated my complexion to that exorbitancy of vermeille, that I shall hardly have reduced it to any tolerable consistency under a fortnight’s course of acids.
MERITAL. I think, my lord, it is hardly worth while to be concerned about natural colours, now we are arrived at such a perfection in artificial.
LORD FORMAL. Pardon me. We have, indeed, made some progress in red, but for your pale colours, they must be acquired naturally; your white washes will not subdue cherry cheeks.
MERITAL. O if that be the malady, I would prescribe to the gentlemen a course of rakery, and to the ladies a course of vapours.
LORD FORMAL. Well, positively, going into a bookseller’s shop is to me the last of fatigues, and yet it is a necessary one: for since the ladies have divided their time between cards and reading, a man, to be agreeable to them, must understand something of books, as well as quadrille.
MERITAL. I am afraid, if this humour continue, it will be as necessary in the education of a pretty gentleman to learn to read, as to learn to dance.
LORD FORMAL. Why, I’ll tell you how I do. By going to a bookseller’s shop once a month, I know the titles and authors of all the new books: so when I name one in company, it is, you know, of consequence supposed I have read it; immediately some lady pronounces sentence, either favourable, or not, according as the fame of the author and her ladyship’s cards run high or low, — then good manners enrol me in her opinion.
MERITAL. A very equitable court of justice truly.
LORD FORMAL. Reading, sir, is the worst thing in the world for the eyes; I once gave in to it, and had in a very few months gone through almost a dozen pages in Cassandra. But I found it vastly impaired the lustre of my eyes. I had, sir, in that short time, perfectly lost the direct ogle — But I lose time — for I am going to make a visit just by — a — I presume, you hear that I intend shortly to quarter my coat of arms.
MERITAL. The world, my lord, is rather amazed how my Lord Formal has so long withstood such temptations.
LORD FORMAL. Why truly I have had as many temptations as any man. But I have ever laid it down as a maxim, that a wife should be very rich. Men who do not know the world will talk of virtue and beauty. Now, in my opinion, virtue is so scarce, it is not worth the looking after; and beauty so common, it is not worth the keeping.
MERITAL. Do you think a fine woman so trifling a possession, my lord?
LORD FORMAL. Why a fine woman — is a very fine thing — and so — is a fine house, I mean to entertain
your friends with: for they, commonly, enjoy both, with the additional pleasure of novelty, whilst they pall on your own taste.
MERITAL. This from you, my lord, is surprising. Sure, you will allow some women to be virtuous.
LORD FORMAL. O yes. I will allow an ugly woman to be as virtuous as she pleases, just as I will a poor man to be covetous. But beauty in the hands of a virtuous woman, like gold in those of a miser, prevents the circulation of trade.
MERITAL. It is rather like riches in the possession of the prudent. A virtuous woman bestows her favours on the deserving, and makes them a real blessing to the man who enjoys her; whilst the vicious one, like a squandering prodigal, scatters them away; and, like a prodigal, is often most despised by those to whom she has been most kind.
LORD FORMAL. This from the gay Mr. Merital, is, really, very surprising.
MERITAL. Yes, my lord, the gay Mr. Merital now stands candidate for a husband. So you cannot wonder that I would persuade the ladies of my good principles, which may engage some or other to choose me.
LORD FORMAL. It will as soon engage a country borough to choose you parliament-man. But I must take an abrupt leave. For the sweetness of your conversation has perfumed my senses to the forgetfulness of an affair, which, being of consequential essence, obliges me to assure you that I am your humble servant.
SCENE VI.
MERITAL. [Alone.] Prince of coxcombs!’sdeath!’tis in the mouths of such fellows as these that the reputations of women suffer; for women are like books. Malice and envy will easily lead you to the detection of their faults; but their beauties good judgment only can discover and good nature relish. And woman, that noble volume of our greatest happiness,
“Which to the wise affords a rich repast,
Fools only censure from their want of taste.”
ACT II.
SCENE I.
LADY MATCHLESS’S House.
LADY MATCHLESS, VERMILIA.
LADY MATCHLESS. Upon my word, Vermilia, you wrong me, if you think noise, equipage, or flattery, give me any real pleasure; it is, indeed, a pleasing triumph for a prisoner eloped to reflect on her past confinement and present freedom; freed from that torment, an injurious husband: one who — but he is gone, and, I hope, to heaven.
VERMILIA. That’s a generous wish, my dear; and yet I believe it is the wish of many whose husbands deserve a worse place.
LADY MATCHLESS. You mean, during the life of a bad husband; but those prayers then flow more from self-interest than generosity; for who would not wish her spouse in heaven, when it was the only way to deliver herself out of a hell?
VERMILIA. True, indeed. But yours are the efforts of pure good nature; you pray for the happiness of your tyrant, now you are delivered out of his power.
LADY MATCHLESS. Ah! poor man! since I can say nothing to his advantage, let him sleep in peace; my revenge shall not be on his memory, but his sex; that part of it which I know would follow his example, were they but in his place.
VERMILIA. You have opportunities enough of revenge, and objects enough to execute it upon; for, I think, you have as many slaves in your assemblies as the French king in his galleys.
LADY MATCHLESS. Why, really, I sometimes look on my drawing-room as a little parliament of fools, to which every different body sends its representatives. Beaus of all sorts. The courtly lord, who addresses me with a formal, well-bred dissimulation; the airy Sir Plume, who always walks in the minuet-step, and converses in recitativo.
VERMILIA. And is a Narcissus in everything but beauty.
LADY MATCHLESS. Then the robust warrior, who proceeds by way of storm or siege. The lawyer, who attacks me as he would a jury, with a cringe, and a lie at the tip of his tongue. The cit, who would cheat me by way of bargain and sale. And — your settling country ‘squire, who would put my life into half his estate, provided I would put his whole family’s into all mine.
VERMILIA. There is a more dangerous, though a more ridiculous fool than any of these, and that is a fine gentleman, who becomes the disguise of a lover worse than any you have named.
LADY MATCHLESS. O, ay; a man of sense acts a lover just as a Dutchman would a harlequin. He stumbles at every straw we throw in his way, which a fop would skip over with ease.
VERMILIA. But pray, my dear, what design have you in view from all these lovers?
LADY MATCHLESS. The very design nature had when she formed them, to make fools of them.
VERMILIA. But you will not be surprised if I admire that you give the least encouragement to the finest gentlemen.
LADY MATCHLESS. Indeed, I approve your remark. Why, it proceeds from this reason; that of love, like other fevers, is only dangerous to a rich constitution, and therefore I am cautious of giving a distemper which I do not intend to cure — for I have no absolute intention ever to marry again.
VERMILIA. Nor absolute resolution against it, I dare swear.
LADY MATCHLESS. To say the truth, I cannot positively affirm I have, nor, if I had, am I confident I should be able to keep it. For when Sir William died I made a secret resolution never to run a second hazard; but — a — at the year’s end, I don’t know how — a — I had like to have fallen into the snare again.
VERMILIA. Well, and by what lucky chance delivered?
LADY MATCHLESS. The very night before our intended marriage I flew away to London, and left my poor, disappointed swain to vent his passion to the wind.
VERMILIA. O what a profusion was there of sighs, vows, prayers, oaths, tears, and curses! — And so you are fled to London as a place of security against love-debts? I know not why it is, but certainly a woman is the least liable to play the fool here; perhaps the hurry of diversions and company keep the mind in too perpetual a motion to let it fix on one object. Whereas, in the country our ideas are more fixed and more romantic. Courts and cities have few heroes or heroines in love.
LADY MATCHLESS. Ah, Vermilia, let the jealous husband learn from me; there is more danger in woods and purling streams than in an assembly or a playhouse. When a beauteous grove is your theatre, a murmuring cascade your music, nature’s flowery landscapes your scene, heaven only the spectator, and a pretty fellow the actor — the Lord knows what the play will be:
VERMILIA. But I hope this five months’ absence has restored you to a perfect stain quo.
LADY MATCHLESS. Had he pursued his conquest then, I am afraid I should have fallen before him, but he has given resolution time to rally, and I am now so fortified against him that all his attacks would prove in vain.
VERMILIA. Be not too confident, for I have heard military men say, that a garrison, to be secure, should have its works well manned as well as strong.
SCENE II.
To them, CATCHIT.
CATCHIT. Madam, your ladyship’s coach is at the door.
LADY MATCHLESS. Come, my dear; by this, I believe the Park begins to fill.
VERMILIA. I am ready to wait on you, my dear. Catchit, if Mr. Malvil comes, you may tell him where I’m gone.
CATCHIT. Yes, madam.
SCENE III.
CATCHIT. [Alone.] Well, sure nature has not a more ridiculous creature than a jealous lover. Never did a lady in my profession get more by forging smiles and favourable expressions from a mistress, than I, by making Mr. Malvil believe mine values him less than she does. He has promised me a diamond ring to discover his rival. Ay, but how shall I discover his rival, when he has none? Hum! suppose I make him one! Ay but that may make mischief; well, but that must make for me. Well then. But who shall this rival be? Ha, Mr. Merital is a favourite of my lady, and is often here. There is an appointment too between him and Helena to meet here at five my lady will be at home too. Now if I could but persuade Malvil that that assignation was meant with him. [Stands considering.
SCENE IV.
MALVIL, CATCHIT.
MALVIL. Your servant, pretty Mrs. Catchit. What is that pretty head of yours meditating on?
CATCHIT. Whatever it be, sir, it is for your service; you will be th
e death of me, you will. I am always contriving, and plotting, and studying, and lying, and swearing, for you.
MALVIL. And you shall see no end of my gratitude.
CATCHIT. Nor no beginning either, I am afraid: you are in my debt at least five hundred pound at the rate of a guinea a perjury: if I had carried them to Westminster Hall I had made a better bargain.
MALVIL. Let me enjoy that dear cold mistress of thine, and thou shalt be paid.
CATCHIT. I fear that’s an uncertain condition.
Complete Fictional Works of Henry Fielding Page 232
