Mrs. Malaprop

“ JULIA
If I were in spirits, Lydia, I should chide you only by laughing heartily at you; but it suits more the situation of my mind, at present, earnestly to entreat you not to let a man, who loves you with sincerity, suffer that unhappiness from your caprice, which I know too well caprice can inflict. LYDIA
O Lud! what has brought my aunt here? [Enter Mrs. MALAPROP, FAG, and DAVID.]
Mrs. MALAPROP
So! so! here's fine work!—here's fine suicide, parricide, and simulation, going on in the fields! and Sir Anthony not to be found to prevent the antistrophe! ”

“ LYDIA
Ah, madam! our memories are independent of our wills. It is not so easy to forget. Mrs. MALAPROP
But I say it is, miss; there is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I'm sure I have as much forgot your poor dear uncle as if he had never existed—and I thought it my duty so to do; and let me tell you, Lydia, these violent memories don't become a young woman. Sir ANTHONY
Why sure she won't pretend to remember what she's ordered not!—ay, this comes of her reading! ”

“ Impossible! He knows your value better. It cannot be. A parson with nothing but his pulpit! I never dreamed of such a thing—never. A life of Sunday schools and clothing societies in that bauble of a cottage. Pshaw! No girl ever ends by marrying the first man she likes, and no more will you. I shall make you prefer me in a month."
"Probably not, as I rather dislike you now," replied Marion, suppressing a smile.
"That will wear off. It is best, as Mrs. Malaprop says, to begin with a little aversion. You will at last like me beyond any one in the world." ”

“ So preached the "old hen," with a vague fear that her chickens might turn out to be ducklings, which would be a little awkward in the region whither she proposed to take them. For if there is one place more risky than another for adventurous young people with a talent for "perpetuating themselves down prejudices," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, it is that grandest, wildest, most dangerous coast, the coast of Cornwall. ”

“ This is the grand discovery—the last great contribution to philosophy from Concord’s greatest philosopher. We suddenly discover that we have been syllogizing like philosophers, as Mrs. Malaprop discovered that her children had been speaking English. The illustration of this overwhelming discovery is peculiarly happy, for he applies it to the discovery of a red flannel rag in the back yard or garden, and, after detecting the red flannel by syllogism, he advances to the grander problem of showing how, by philosophic methods, we can actually distinguish an old tin can from an elephant. ”

“ Lady Merrifield laughed. “Four years may do a good deal at that time of life,” she said. “I suppose no time ever so changes—changes—what shall I say?—eyes—views—characters. Only constancy in absence is the dangerous thing. There are distinguished examples of—of the mischief of being constant without knowing what one is constant to. Virulent constancy, as Mrs. Malaprop has it.”
Magdalen thanked and smiled. Perhaps there was a certain virulent constancy in a remote corner of her heart which had been revived by a certain indescribable look in the eyes and contour of Bessie Merrifield. ”

“ Malaprop's mistakes, in what she herself calls "orthodoxy," have been often objected to as improbable from a woman in her rank of life; but, though some of them, it must be owned, are extravagant and farcical, they are almost all amusing,—and the luckiness of her simile, "as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile," will be acknowledged as long as there are writers to be run away with, by the wilfulness of this truly "headstrong" species of composition. ”

“ What is the Stress employed throughout? Where is the Stress most marked? Give reasons. (Introduction, pp. 27 and 28.)
MRS. MALAPROP'S VIEWS From "The Rivals"
The scene is Mrs. Malaprop's lodgings at Bath. Present, Lydia Languish.
Enter Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony Absolute.
Mrs. Malaprop.—There, Sir Anthony, there sits the deliberate simpleton who wants to disgrace her family, and lavish herself on a fellow not worth a shilling.
Lydia.—Madam, I thought you once—
Mrs. Malaprop.—You thought, miss! I don't know any business you have to think at all: thought does not become a young woman. ”

“ Make tracks, an Americanism synonymous with skedaddle; to make oneself scarce.
Make-up, personal appearance.—Theatrical.
Makings, materials. A man is often said to have the MAKINGS of a good politician (or whatever he may aspire to be) in him, if they were but properly applied.
Malapropism, an ignorant, vulgar misapplication of language, so named from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Sheridan’s famous comedy of the Rivals. Mrs. Partington afterwards succeeded to the mantle of Mrs. Malaprop; but the phrase Partingtonism is as yet [222] uncoined, for the simple reason that Mrs. ”

“ He was to a great degree a reading man, and had a considerable knowledge of the byeways of Florentine history.
My mother "brought the house down" nightly as Mrs. Malaprop; and a very exceptionally beautiful Madame de Parcieu (an Englishwoman married to a Frenchman) was in appearance, manière d'être, and deportment the veritable beau idéal of Lydia Languish, and might have made a furore on any stage, if it had been possible to induce her to raise her voice sufficiently. She was most good-naturedly amenable. ”

“ Richmond—‘Aunt Titchie.’ Victor and I have just been paying a visit in her bedroom to this extraordinary old lady, who was rolled up in petticoats, with a little dog under a shawl by way of muff. She is passionately fond of eating, and dilated upon the goodness of the cook—‘Her tripe and onions are de-licious!’—‘I like a green gosling, and plenty of sage and stuffing, that’s what I like.’
“She is a complete Mrs. Malaprop. ‘I was educated, my dear,’ she said, ‘at a cemetery for young ladies;’ but this is only a specimen. ”

“ MALAPROP
Sir Anthony, shall we leave them together?— [Aside to LYDIA.] Ah! you stubborn little vixen! Sir ANTHONY
Not yet, ma'am, not yet!— [Aside to CAPTAIN ABSOLUTE.] What the devil are you at? unlock your jaws, sirrah, or—— ABSOLUTE
[Aside.] Now Heaven send she may be too sullen to look round!—I must disguise my voice.— [Draws near LYDIA, and speaks in a low hoarse tone.] Will not Miss Languish lend an ear to the mild accents of true love? Will not—— Sir ANTHONY
What the devil ails the fellow? why don't you speak out?—not stand croaking like a frog in a quinsy! ”

“ MALAPROP Observe me, Sir Anthony. I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don't think so much learning becomes a young woman; for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning—neither would it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments.—But, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. ”

“ The Meer passed his time in the zenana. He so devotedly loved his wife that he never gave her a rival. All the livelong day they were together, this infatuated pair, so absorbed in their new-born happiness. To me, an unmarried Hindu,the Meer's self-abandonment was shocking. He never left the side of his Bibi—she would not part with him. I had not the entree of the zenana, but learnt from the servants that the master and mistress were inseparable. The Meer stole out of his inner chamber once in a fortnight or so, when he had to ask me for a large sum of money, or to go to the mosque. ”

“ Hester delighted to indulge were of the keen bargains she had driven, most girls, would have listened with all the patience of interest. An unhappy attachment is irresistible to the imagination of eighteen; but with these tender and arithmetical recollections it was impossible for any young woman to sympathise;—however, she listened very patiently—supper came at nine—and they went to bed at ten. Sometimes a neighbour of Mrs. Malpas's own standing dropped in, and everything on the table was, if possible, found more fault with than usual. ”

“ Time flies. Mánkore is now sixteen, her boy-husband is nearing twelve. Mánkore looks older than her age by at least five years. Devchand, her husband, looks nine at most. He is short, dull, consumptive. She is the reverse. But is she not his promised bride? The families now live away from each other; but the wife is informed of her husband's rapid progress, physical and mental. Mánkore is "bursting" with youth and hope; she is already a moogdhá; [7] her season of leafage is over; her wise mother has already disclosed to her enraptured gaze the mysteries of wifehood. ”

“ Here was a suitor! But it was not to be supposed that such a man as Mr. Glascock would be so violently in love as to propose to a girl whose nearest known friend and female relation was misbehaving herself.
Only they who have closely watched the natural uneasiness of human hens can understand how great was Lady Milborough's anxiety on this occasion. Marriage to her was a thing always delightful to contemplate. Though she had never been sordidly a match-maker, the course of the world around her had taught her to regard men as fish to be caught, and girls as the anglers who ought to catch them. ”

“ I held my face down that no one should see my tears, and I knew that father took out his big colored pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose very hard. Mr. Hoad, however, was not so easily affected.
"Ah, you were right, Mrs. Maliphant," said he, in a loud, emphatic voice. "Your husband would make a very fine orator. All the more reason it's a sin and a shame he should hide his talents under a bushel. Now, don't you agree with me?"
"Oh, Laban knows best what he has got to do," answered mother. "I think it's a great pity for women to mix themselves up in these matters. ”

“ To a man like Malbone, self-indulgent rather than selfish, this poor, blind semblance of a moral purpose in Emilia was a great embarrassment. It is a terrible thing for a lover when he detects conscience amidst the armory of weapons used against him, and faces the fact that he must blunt a woman’s principles to win her heart. Philip was rather accustomed to evade conscience, but he never liked to look it in the face and defy it. ”

“ For many years Mr Malpas had meant less to her as a husband than as the father of her son. She would do her duty by him—nobody could suggest that she had ever done less—on the surface she would acknowledge him still as the head of her household, but his illness would give her the opportunity of managing the business to her own liking and scraping together, in the years that remained to them, a little money that, added to the small fortune of which Mr Condover had boasted to her at the christening, should make her son secure for life. ”

“ Mary had gone to bed when he reached Wolfpits, but she had left his supper ready on the kitchen table. He ate his bread and cheese and drank his beer. That night, exhausted with the strain of the day, he slept heavily.
So the new life began. If George Malpas, lying in Shrewsbury Jail, returned, in one of the debauches of sentiment to which his nature was subject, to the idea of his desolate wife and family, and dwelt on it with pity or remorse, he might well have spared himself the luxury of these emotions. There were few changes at Wolfpits. ”

“ There is a favourite in every family; and, generally speaking, that favourite is the most troublesome member in it. People evince a strange predilection for whatever plagues them. This, however, was not the case with Hester Malpas. The eldest of six children, she was her father's favourite, because from her only was he sure of a cheerful word and a bright smile. She was her mother's favourite, because every one said that she was the very image of that mother herself at sixteen. ”

“ On scrutinizing the baroness closely, Monsieur Malberg had thought at first that he had made a mistake; nineteen years had caused so many changes! And all of us have a singular habit: if we are many years without seeing a woman, when we think of that woman, we always imagine her as she was when we saw her last. ”

“ Why did you send her to her destruction?"
"Misericordia!'" exclaimed the old woman, as this new light broke in upon her mind; "is that the reason why you don't care to stay at Bella Luce any more, or ever to see the place again? Why, Beppo, my son, she was a good-for-nought! She was not worthy of so much as a look from thee!"
"Mother! mother! She was as good a girl as ever breathed!" said Beppo, with a sob in his voice; "you know she was, mother!"
"I did think she was; but you ask his reverence! Ask the priest, my son. He knows the truth." ”

“ She was gazing at the open volume on her knee, with fixed and dreamy eyes that saw not the page; and as Lord Mallow came very near, with steps that made no sound on the fallen pine-needles, he saw that there were tears upon her drooping eyelids.
There are moments in every man's life when impulse is stronger than discretion. Lord Mallow gave the reins to impulse now, and seated himself by Lady Mabel's side, and took her hand in his, with an air of sympathy so real that the lady forgot to be offended. ”

“ Hester had yet to learn that no earthly advantage comes without its drawback. At length the silence was broken, and Hester listened with conviction, and a good fit of crying, to the many advantages her whole family were to derive from her adoption by her aunt. Still, "What will my mother say?" was the only answer she could give.
When we expect the worst, it never happens. Mrs. Malpas caught at the idea of Hester's going to town with an eagerness which inflicted on poor Hester the severest pang she had ever known. ”