Eaton Stannard Barrett

“ So pray, your ladyship, do make her stay dinner—Do. Or may be,' (said he, getting closer and whispering Lady Gwyn) , 'may be you would just lend her half-a-crown or so; and, 'pon my soul, I will pay you myself in ten days.'
'Silence, traitor!' cried I, rising in the barouche, and dignifying my manner. 'I do not want a dinner: I would not accept of a dinner; but above all, of a dinner in this house, till I am mistress of it!'
'And is it true,' cried Jerry to Lady Gwyn, 'that she is the real mistress of this house?'
'Oh! certainly, certainly,' said her ladyship. ”

“ To Gregory Wilkinson, Esq.
'There,' cries the farmer, 'if I have deprived you of an old woman, I have got you a young man. Large estates, you know;—handsome, fashionable;—come, pluck up a heart, my girl; ay, egad, and steal one too.'
I rose, gave him one of my ineffable looks, and retired to my chamber.
'So,' said I, locking my door, and flinging myself on the bed, 'this is something like misery. Here is a precious project against my peace. I am to be forced into marriage, am I? And with whom? A man whose legitimacy is unimpeached, and whose friends would certainly consent. ”

“ This is the law!'
'And let me tell you, Sir,' said Stuart, 'that nothing but my respect for the law deters me at this moment from chastising you as you deserve.'
'What do you mean, sirrah?' cried Betterton.
'That you are a ruffian,' said Stuart, 'and the same cowardice which made you offer insult to a woman will make you bear it from a man. Now, Sir, I leave you to your fate.' And we were quitting the room.
'What thing is that?' said Stuart, stopping short before the poet; who, with one arm and his face out of the bag, lay on his back, gasping and unable to stir. ”

“ I gazed with delight at this admirable apartment. It was a perfect treasure: nothing could be more complete: all was in the best style of horror; and now, for the first time, I felt the full consciousness of being as real a heroine as ever existed.
I then indulged myself with imagining the frightful scenes I should undergo here. Such attempts to murder me, such ghosts, such mysteries! figures flitting in the dusty perspective, quick steps along the corridor, groans, and an ill-minded lord of the castle.
In the midst of this pleasing reverie, methought I heard a step approaching. ”

“ Like a rapid ray from heaven, a thought at once simple and magnificent shot through my brain, and made my very heart bound with transport. When I name Monkton Castle, need I tell you the rest? Need I tell you that I determined to seize on that antique abode of my ancestors, to fortify it against assaults, to procure domestics and suitable furniture for it, and to reside there, the present rival, and the future victress of the vile Lady Gwyn? Let her dispossess me if she dare, or if she can; for I have heard that possession is a great number of points of the law in one's favour. ”

“ Now my ambition is to be a Heroine, and how can I hope to succeed in my vocation, unless I, too, suffer privations and inconveniences? Besides, have I not far greater merit in getting a husband by sentiment, adventure, and melancholy, than by dressing, gadding, dancing, and singing? For heroines are just as much on the alert to get husbands, as other young ladies; and to say the truth, I would never voluntarily subject myself to misfortunes, were I not certain that matrimony would be the last of them. But even misery itself has its consolations and advantages. ”

“ Well, I must say, I hate to see a man more ready to fall out with one, than to fall in love with one.
But Montmorenci—what shall I say of him? How can he possibly exculpate himself from his treacherous intrigue with the landlady? I confess I am predisposed to credit any feasible excuse which he can assign, rather than find myself deceived, outrivalled, and deprived of a lover, not alone dear to me, but indispensible to the progress of my memoirs.
Then, that closet-scene, from which I had a right to expect the true pathetic, what a bear-garden it became! ”

“ While I surveyed its roofless walls, over-topt with briony, grass, and nettles, and admired the gothic points of the windows, where mantling ivy had supplied the place of glass, long suffering and murder came to my thoughts.
As I sat planning, from romances, the revival of the feudal customs and manners in my castle, and of the feudal system among my tenantry (all so favourable to heroines) , I saw a magnificent barouche, turning from the road into the common, and advancing towards me. My heart beat high: the carriage approached, stopt; and who should alight from it, but Higginson and Jerry! ”

“ On my pleading the prescriptive immunities of heroines, and asserting that the law could never lay its fangs on so ethereal a name as Cherubina, he solemnly swore to me, that he once knew a golden-haired, azure-eyed heroine, called Angelica Angela Angelina, who was hanged at the Old Bailey for stealing a broken lute out of a haunted chamber; and while my blood was running cold at the recital, he pressed me so cordially to take refuge in his house, that at length, I threw myself on the protection of the best of men. ”

“ Jerry, who still remained in the room, came behind me, and whispered, 'Troth, Miss, I have no brains, but I have a bit of an oath, if that is of any use to you. I would sell my soul out of gratitude, at any time.'
'Alas! your Excellenza,' said I to the magistrate, 'frail is the tenure of that character, which has Innocence for its friend, and Infamy for its foe. Life is a chequered scene of light and shade; life is a jest, a stage——'
'Talking of life is not the way to save it,' said the magistrate. ”

“ For, in the first place, I had no gown underneath; and in the next, I recollected, that Harriot Byron, at a moment of distress, went wild about the country, in masquerade.
Hurrying into the hall, I saw the street door wide open, Stuart and Montmorenci struggling with each other near it, the landlady dragging a trunk down stairs, and looking like the ghost of a mad housemaid; and the poet just behind her, with his corpulent mother, bed and all, upon his back; while she kept exclaiming, that we should all be in heaven in five minutes, and he crying out, Heaven forbid! Heaven forbid! ”

“ On my honour, I mean to treat you with kindness. Nay, we must positively be on terms of friendship—I make it a point. After all, what is rank? what are riches? How vapid their charms, compared with the heartfelt joys of truth and virtue! O, Lady Gwyn, O, my respected aunt; I conjure you by our common ties of blood, by your brother, who was my father, spurn the perilous toy, fortune, and retire in time, and without exposing your lost lord, into the peaceful bosom of obscurity!'
'Conduct this wretch out of the house,' said her ladyship to the servant who had entered. ”

“ How dare you, hussey, commit such a robbery?'
'I am no hussey, and 'tis no robbery,' cried I; 'and trust me, you shall neither have apology nor compensation. Hussey, indeed! Sir, it was all your own fault for leaving that uncouth gate of your's open. I am afraid, Sir, that you are a shockingly ignorant old man.'
The peasant was just about to seize me, when Stuart ran up, and prevented him. They had then some private conversation together, and I saw Stuart give him a guinea. The talismanic touch of gold struck instant peace, and a compact of amity followed. ”

“ Sure your ladyship has often read in romances of blood on floors, and daggers, that looked as fresh as a daisy at the end of centuries. But, alas-o-day! modern blood won't keep like the good old blood. Ay, ay, ay; the times have degenerated in every thing;—even in harps. Look at that harp yonder: I warrant 'tis in excellent tune at this moment, albeit no human finger has touched it these ten years: and your ladyship must remember reading of other cobwebbed harps in old castles, that required no tuning-hammer, after lying by whole ages. ”

“ Ofttimes I sit and weep, I know not why; and then I weep to find myself weeping. Then, when I can weep, I weep at having nothing to weep at; and then, when I have something to weep at, I weep that I cannot weep at it. This very morning I bumpered a tulip with my tears, while reading a dainty ditty that I must now repeat to you.
'The moon had just risen, as a maid parted from her lover. A sylph was pursuing her sigh through the deserts of air, bathing in its warmth, and enhaling its odours. ”

“ Have too much modesty to shew your modesty. Sleep? By my soul you shall sleep, and snore too, if you have a mind. Sleep? Sure, can't you pin the curtains round, so that we shan't see you? Sleep? Sure, how did the ladies manage on board the packet that I came over in? Sleep—sleep—sleep? O murder. I believe we must surrender, sure enough. O murder, murder, 'tis all over with us? For now that I think of it, we shan't have even room to lie down you know.'
'This is a sad affair,' said I to the minstrel. 'Can you devise no remedy?'
'None,' said the minstrel, blushing through his very eyeballs. ”

“ I sat down to breakfast, astonished at what I had just heard. Harriet Byron, Cecilia, Amanda, and their respective consorts, all alive and well! Oh, could I get but one glimpse of them, speak ten words with them, I should die content. I pictured them to myself, adorned with all the venerable loveliness of a virtuous old age,—even in greyness engaging, even in wrinkles interesting. Hand in hand they walk down the gentle slope of life, and often pause to look back upon the scenes that they have passed—the happy vale of their childhood, the turretted castle, the cloistered monastery. ”

“ Her eyes were of the real, original old blue; and her eyelashes of the best silk. You forget the thickness of her lips, in the casket of pearls which they enshrined; and the roses of York and Lancaster were united in her cheek. A nose of the Grecian order surmounted the whole. Such was Hysterica.
But alas! misfortunes are often gregarious, like sheep. For one night, when our heroine had repaired to the chapel, intending to drop her customary tear on the tomb of her sainted benefactress, she heard on a sudden,
Oh, horrid, horrible, and horridest horror! ”

“ Nature was convulsed, and the traveller inconvenienced.
'In the province of Languedoc stood the Gothic Castle of Montmorenci. Before it ran the Garonne, and behind it rose the Pyrenees, whose summits exhibiting awful forms, seen and lost again, as the partial vapours rolled along, were sometimes barren, and gleamed through the blue tinge of air, and sometimes frowned with forests of gloomy fir, that swept downward to their base.
'My lads, are your carbines charged, and your daggers sharpened?' whispered Rinaldo, with his plume of black feathers, to the banditti, in their long cloaks. ”

“ What heroine in distress but loaths her food? so I sent a message that I was unwell, and then solaced myself with a volume of the Mysteries of Udolpho, which had escaped the conflagration. At ten, I flung myself on my bed, in hopes to have dreams portentous of my future fate; for heroines are remarkably subject to a certain prophetic sort of night-mare. You remember the story that Ludovico read, of a spectre who beckons a baron from his castle in the dead of night, and leading him into a forest, points to his own corpse, and bids him bury it. ”

“ That I am not deficient in the qualities requisite for a heroine, is indisputable. All the world says I am handsome, and it would be melancholy were all the world in error. My form is tall and aërial, my face Grecian, my tresses flaxen, my eyes blue and sleepy. But the great point is, that I have a remarkable mole just over my left temple. Then, not only peaches, roses, and Aurora, but snow, lilies, and alabaster, may, with perfect propriety, be adopted in a description of my skin. I confess I differ from other heroines in one point. They, you may remark, are always unconscious of their charms ”

“ The lightning of her angel smile,
we do not expect one to believe that fire comes out of her mouth, whenever it laughs.'
'Not unless her teeth were flints,' said Jerry. 'But if you said that fire came out of her eyes, one would believe you sooner; for this I know, that many and many a time Molly has struck fire out of mine.'
'A heroine's eye,' said I, 'gives a greater scope to the poet than any thing in the world. It is all fire and water. If it is not beaming, or sparkling, it is sure to be drowned or swimming——'
'In the Pacific Ocean, I hope,' cried Jerry. ”

“ As he flung himself into a chair, he cast a Schedoniac scowl at me; while I felt, that one glance from the corner of a villain's eye is worth twenty straight-forward looks from an honest man. My heart throbbed audible, my bosom heaved like billows: I threw into my features a conventual smile, and stood before him, in all the silence of despair, something between Niobe, patience, and a broken lily.
'Lady!' cried he, with a voice that vibrated through my brain; 'I am the Baron Hildebrand, that celebrated ruffian. My plans are terrible and unsearchable. Hear me. ”

“ The consequence is my wanting that beauty, which, touched with the languid delicacy of illness, gains from sentiment what it loses in bloom; so that really this horse's constitution of mine is a terrible disadvantage to me. I know, had I the power of inventing my own indispositions, I would strike out something far beyond even the hectics and head-aches of my fair predecessors. I believe there is not a sigh-fever; but I would fall ill of a scald from a lover's tear, or a classic scratch from the thorn of a rose. ”

“ The more I picked, the more I longed to pick—'Tis human nature; and was not Eve herself tempted in a garden? So from roses I went to lilies, from lilies to carnations, thence to jessamine, honey-suckle, eglantine, sweet-pea; till, in short, I had filled my bonnet, and almost emptied the beds. I then hurried to the willow with my prize; sentenced Stuart and Betterton to fifty yards banishment, and constructed a charming couch of flowers, which I damasked and inlaid with daisies, butter-flowers, and moss. ”

“ Bravo!' cried an hundred voices at once, and away the little drone flew from my hive. I tossed back my ringlets with an infantine shake of the head, and sat as if unconscious of my triumph.
The best of it is, that every word he said will one day appear in print. Men who converse with a heroine ought to talk for the press, or they will make but a silly figure in her memoirs.
'I thank you for your spirit, my dear,' said Lady Gwyn, sitting down beside me. 'That little puppy deserves every severity. ”

“ Dear Cherry, speak. Only say you are not!'
'Indeed, my friend,' said I, 'you shall be treated with mildness. Doctor, I beg you will not act harshly towards him. With all his faults, the man is goodnatured and well tempered, and to do him justice, he has always used me kindly.'
'Have I not?' cried he. 'Sweet Cherry, beautiful Cherry, blessings on you for that!'
'Come away,' said Montmorenci hastily. 'You know 'tis near dinner time.'
'Farewell, Doctor,' said I. 'Adieu, poor Wilkinson.'
'What, leaving me?' cried he, 'leaving your old father a prisoner in this vile house? ”

“ LETTER XII
'It is my lady, O it is my love!' exclaimed Lord Altamont Mortimer Montmorenci, as he flew, like a winged mercury, into my apartment this morning. A loud rap at the door checked his eloquence, and spoiled a most promising posture.
'Is Miss Wilkinson within?' said a voice in the hall.
'No such person lives here,' replied the maid, who was accustomed to hear me called Miss Donald. ”