MARIANA. But could you bring him to no terms, no proposals? Did he make no offer?
LAPPET. It must be done all at once, and while you are by.
MARIANA. So you think he must see me, to give any thing to be rid of me?
LAPPET. Hush, hush, I hear him coming again.
SCENE XIV.
LOVEGOLD, LAPPET, MARIANA.
LOVEGOLD. I am undone! I am undone! I am eat up! I am devoured! I have an army of cooks in my house.
LAPPET. Dear madam, consider; I know eight thousand pounds are a trifle. I know they are nothing; my master can very well afford them; they will make no hole in his purse: and if you should stand out, you will get more.
LOVEGOLD. [Putting his hand before Lappet’s mouth.]
You lie, you lie, you lie, you lie, you lie. She never could get more, never should get more: it is more than I am worth; it is an immense sum; and I will be starved, drowned, shot, hanged, burnt, before I part with a penny of it.
LAPPET. For Heaven’s sake, sir, you will ruin all — Madam, let me beg you, entreat you, to ‘bate these two thousand pounds. Suppose a law-suit should be the consequence, I know my master would be cast, I know it would cost him an immense sum of money, and that he would pay the charges of both in the end; but you might be kept out of it a long time. Eight thousand pounds now, are better than ten five years hence.
MARIANA. No; the satisfaction of my revenge on a man who basely departs from his word, will make me amends for the delay; and whatever I suffer, as long as I know his ruin will be the consequence, I shall be easy.
LOVEGOLD. Oh, bloody-minded wretch!
LAPPET. Why, sir, since she insists on it, what does it signify? You know you are in her power, and it will be only throwing away more money to be compelled to it at last: get rid of her at once; what are two thousand pounds? Why, sir, the Court of Chancery will eat it up for a breakfast. It has been given for a mistress, and will you not give it to be rid of a wife?
SCENE XV.
THOMAS, JAMES, MARIANA, LOVEGOLD, LAPPET.
[Lovegold and Lappet talk apart.]
THOMAS. Madam, the music is come which your ladyship ordered; and most of the company will be here immediately.
JAMES. Where will your ladyship be pleased the servants shall eat? for there is no room in the house that will be large enough to entertain ‘em.
MARIANA. Then beat down the partition, and turn two rooms into one.
JAMES. There is no service in the house proper for the dessert, madam.
MARIANA. Send immediately to the great china-shop in the Strand for the finest that is there.
LOVEGOLD. How! and will you swear a robbery against her? that she robbed me of what I shall give her?
LAPPET. Depend on it, sir.
LOVEGOLD. I’ll break open a bureau, to make it look the more likely.
LAPPET. Do so, sir; but lose no time: give it her this moment. Madam, my master has consented, and, if you have the contract, he is ready to pay the money. Be sure to break open the bureau, sir.
MARIANA. Here is the contract.
LOVEGOLD. I’ll fetch the money. It is all I am worth in the world.
SCENE XVI.
MARIANA, LAPPET.
MARIANA. Sure, he will never be brought to it yet.
LAPPET. I warrant him. But you are to pay dearer for it than you imagine; for I am to swear a robbery against you. What will you give me, madam, to buy off my evidence?
MARIANA. And is it possible that the old rogue would consent to such a villainy!
LAPPET. Ay, madam; for half that sum he would hang half the town. But, truly, I can never be made amends for all the pains I have taken on your account. Were I to receive a single guinea a lie for every one I have told this day, it would make me a pretty tolerable fortune. Ah! madam, what a pity it is that a woman of my excellent talents should be confined to so low a sphere of life as I am! Had I been born a great lady, what a deal of good should I have done in the world!
SCENE XVII.
MARIANA, LAPPET, LOVEGOLD.
LOVEGOLD. Here, here they are — all in bank-notes — all the money I am worth in the world. (I have sent for a constable; she must not go out of sight before we have her taken into custody.) — [Aside to Lappet.
LAPPET. [To Lovegold.] You have done very wisely.
MARIANA. There, sir, is your contract. And now, sir, I have nothing to do but to make myself as easy as I can in my loss.
SCENE XVIII.
LOVEGOLD, FREDERICK, CLERMONT, MARIANA, LAPPET, HARRIET.
LOVEGOLD. Where is that you promised me? where is my treasure?
CLERMONT. Here, sir, is all the treasure I am worth. A treasure which the whole world’s worth should not purchase.
LOVEGOLD. Give me the money, sir; give me the money; I say give me the money you stole from me.
CLERMONT. I understand you not.
LOVEGOLD. Did you not confess you robbed me of my treasure?
CLERMONT. This, sir, is the inestimable treasure I meant! Your daughter, sir, has this day blest me by making me her husband.
LOVEGOLD. How! Oh, wicked, vile wretch! to run away thus with a pitiful mean fellow, thy father’s clerk!
CLERMONT. Think not your family disgraced, sir. I am at least your equal born; and though my fortune be not so large as for my dearest Harriet’s sake I wish, still it is such as will put it out of your power to make us miserable.
LOVEGOLD. Oh! my money, my money, my money!
FREDERICK. If this lady does not make you amends for the loss of your money, resign over all pretensions in her to me, and I will engage to get it restored to you.
LOVEGOLD. How, sirrah! are you a confederate? Have you helped to rob me?
FREDERICK. Softly, sir, or you shall never see your guineas again.
LOVEGOLD. I resign her over to you entirely, and may you both starve together. So, go fetch my gold —
MARIANA. You are not easily prevailed upon, I see, to resign a right which you have not. But were I to resign over myself, it would hardly be the man’s fortune to starve whose wife brought him ten thousand pounds.
LOVEGOLD. Bear witness, she has confessed she has the money; and I shall prove she stole it from me. She has broke open my bureau; Lappet is my evidence.
LAPPET. I hope I shall have all your pardons, and particularly yours, madam, whom I have most injured.
LOVEGOLD. A fig for her pardon; you are doing a right action.
LAPPET. Then, if there was any robbery, you must have robbed yourself. This lady can be only a receiver of stolen goods; for I saw you give her the money with your own hands.
LOVEGOLD. How! I! You! What! what!
LAPPET. And I must own it, with shame I must own it — that the money you gave her in exchange for the contract, I promised to swear she had stole from you.
CLERMONT. Is it possible Mr. Lovegold could be capable of such an action as this?
LOVEGOLD. I am undone, undone, undone!
FREDERICK. No, sir, your three thousand guineas are safe yet! depend upon it, within an hour, you shall find them in the same place they were first deposited. I thought to have purchased a reprieve with them; but I find my fortune has of itself bestowed that on me.
LOVEGOLD. Give ‘em me, give ‘em me, this instant — but then the ten thousand, where are they?
MARIANA. Where they ought to be, in the hands of one who I think deserves them. [Gives them to Frederick.] You see, sir, I had no design to the prejudice of your family. Nay, I have proved the best friend you ever had; for, I presume, you are now thoroughly cured of your longing for a young wife.
LOVEGOLD. Sirrah, give me my notes, give me my notes!
FREDERICK. You must excuse me, sir; I can part with nothing I receive from this lady.
LOVEGOLD. Then I will go to law with that lady, and you, and all of you; for I will have them again, if law, or justice, or injustice, will give them me.
CLERMONT. Be pacified, sir; I think the lady has acted nobly, in giving that bac
k again into your family which she might have carried out of it.
LOVEGOLD. My family be hanged; if I am robbed, I don’t care who robs me. I would as soon hang my son as another — and I will hang him, if he does not restore me all I have lost: for I would not give half the sum to save the whole world — I will go and employ all the lawyers in town: for I will have my money again, or never sleep more.
FREDERICK. I am resolved we will get the better of him now. But oh, Mariana! your generosity is much greater in bestowing this sum than my happiness in receiving it. I am an unconscionable beggar, and shall never be satisfied while you have anything to bestow.
MARIANA. Do you hear him —
HARRIET. Yes, and begin to approve him — for your late behaviour has convinced me —
MARIANA. Dear girl, no more; you have frightened me already so much to-day, that rather than venture a second lecture, I would do whatever you wished — So, sir, if I do bestow all on you, here is the lady you are to thank for it.
HARRIET. Well, this I will say, when you do a good-natured thing, you have the prettiest way of doing it. And now, Mariana, I am ready to ask your pardon for all I said to-day.
MARIANA. Dear Harriet, no apologies: all you said I deserved.
SCENE THE LAST.
LAPPET, RAMILIE, FREDERICK, MARIANA, CLERMONT, HARRIET.
LAPPET. Treaties are going on, on both sides, while you and I seem forgotten.
RAMILIE. Why, have we not done them all the service we can? What farther have they to do with us? — Sir, there are some people in masquerading habits without.
MARIANA. Some I sent for to assist in my design on your father: I think we will give them admittance, though we have done without ‘em.
ALL. Oh! by all means.
FREDERICK. Mrs. Lappet, be assured I have a just sense of your favours; and both you and Ramilie shall find my gratitude. [Dance here.]
FREDERICK. Dear Clermont, be satisfied I shall make no peace with the old gentleman, in which you shall not be included. I hope my sister will prove a fortune equal to your great deserts.
CLERMONT. While I am enabled to support her in an affluence equal to her desires I shall desire no more. From what I have seen lately, I think riches are rather to be feared than wished; at least, I am sure avarice, which too often attends wealth, is a greater evil than any that is found in poverty. Misery is generally the end of all vice: but it is the very mark at which avarice seems to aim; the miser endeavours to be wretched —
He hoards eternal cares within his purse;
And what he wishes most, proves most his curse.
EPILOGUE
WRITTEN BY COLLEY CIBBER, ESQ.: SPOKEN BY MRS. RAFTOR
OUR Author’s sure bewitched! The senseless rogue
Insists no good play wants an epilogue.
Suppose that true, said I, what’s that to this?
Is yours a good one? — No, but Molière’s is,
He cried, and zounds! no epilogue was tacked to his.
Besides, your modern epilogues, said he,
Are but ragouts of smut and ribaldry.
Where the false jests are dwindled to so few,
There’s scarce one double entendre left that’s new.
Nor would I in that lovely circle raise
One blush, to gain a thousand coxcombs’ praise.
Then for the threadbare joke of cit and wit,
Whose foreknown rhyme is echoed from the pit,
Till of their laugh the galleries are bit.
Then to reproach the critics with ill-nature,
And charge their malice to his stinging satire:
And thence appealing to the nicer boxes,
Though talking stuff might dash the Drury doxies.
If these, he cried, the choice ingredients be
For epilogues, they shall have none for me.
Lord, sir, says I, the gallery will so bawl;
Let ‘em, he cried, a bad one’s worse than none at all.
Madam, these things than you I’m more expert in,
Nor do I see no epilogue much hurt in,
Zounds! when the play is ended — Drop the curtain.
THE INTRIGUING CHAMBERMAI D
CONTENTS
AN EPISTLE TO MRS. CLIVE
EPILOGUE
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
ACT I.
ACT II.
EPILOGUE
THE INTRIGUING CHAMBERMAID
THEATER ROYAL IN DRURY LANE, 1733
“Majores nusquam ronchi; juvenesque senesque
Et pucri nasum Rhinocerotis habent.” — Mabtial.
AN EPISTLE TO MRS. CLIVE
MADAM, — If addresses of this nature (notwithstanding the base purposes to which they have been perverted) were originally intended to express the gratitude of the author for some favour received, or to celebrate the merit of some particular friend, I think you have a very just title to this.
Dedications, and indeed most panegyrics, have been generally confined to persons in high life; not that good qualities are so; but as the praise which most authors bestow comes not from the heart, nor is the effect of their gratitude for past favours, but of their necessity of future, it is not so much their business to inquire who best deserves praise, as who can best pay for it. And thus we often see an epistle crammed with such gross, false, and absurd flattery, as the poet ought to be ashamed of writing, and the patron of accepting.
But while I hold the pen, it will be a maxim with me, that vice can never be too great to be lashed, nor virtue too obscure to be commended; in other words, that satire can never rise too high, nor panegyric stoop too low.
It is your misfortune to bring the greatest genius for acting on the stage at a time when the factions and divisions among the players have conspired with the folly, injustice, and barbarity of the town, to finish the ruin of the stage, and sacrifice our own native entertainments to a wanton affected fondness for foreign music; and when our nobility seem eagerly to rival each other in distinguishing themselves in favour of Italian theatres, and in neglect of our own.
However, the few who have yet so much English taste and good-nature left, as sometimes to visit that stage where you exert your great abilities, never fail to receive you with the approbation you deserve; nay, you extort, by the force of your merit, the applause of those who are languishing for the return of Cuzzoni.
And here I cannot help reflecting with some pleasure that the town, that part of it, at least, which is not quite Italianised, have one obligation to me, who made the first discovery of your great capacity, and brought you earlier forward on the theatre than the ignorance of some and the envy of others would have otherwise permitted. I shall not here dwell on any thing so well known as your theatrical merit, which one of the finest judges and the greatest man of his age hath acknowledged to exceed in humour that of any of your predecessors in his time.
But as great a favourite as you at present are with the audience, you would be much more so, were they acquainted with your private character; could they see you laying out great part of the profits, which arise to you from entertaining them so well, in the support of an aged father; did they see you, who can charm them on the stage with personating the foolish and vicious characters of your sex, acting in real life the part of the best wife, the best daughter, the best sister, and the best friend.
The part you have maintained in the present dispute between the players and the patentees, is so full of honour, that had it been in higher life, it would have given you the reputation of the greatest heroine of the age. You looked on the cases of Mr. Highmore and Mrs. Wilks with compassion, nor could any promises or views of interest sway you to desert them; nor have you scrupled any fatigue (particularly the part which at so short a warning you undertook in this farce) to support the cause of those whom you imagined injured and distressed; and for this you have been so far from endeavouring to exact an exorbitant reward from persons little able to afford it, that I have known you offer to act for nothing, ra
ther than the patentees should be injured by the dismission of the audience.
In short, if honour, good nature, gratitude, and good sense, joined with the most entertaining humour, wherever they are found, are titles to public esteem, I think you may be sure of it; at least, I am sure they will always recommend you to the sincere friendship of,
Madam,
Your most obliged humble servant,
HENRY FIELDING.
TO MR. FIELDING,
OCCASIONED BY
THE REVIVAL OF THE AUTHOR’S FARCE
SENT TO THE AUTHOR BY AN UNKNOWN HAND
WHILE wit, like persecution reigns, and all
Must in the furious inquisition fall,
Complete Fictional Works of Henry Fielding Page 308
