Mantling

“ Archæologia Cantiana, vol. v, p. 248; Miscell. Genealogica et Heraldica, first series, vol. ii, p. 100; &c., &c. This design is continued until after 1700, but seems less closely folded at the later dates, when they are often found in ornamental achievements in pedigrees.
[87]
14.—A curious example of a mantling is engraved Herald and Genealogist, vol. viii, p. 254, in which a square sheet or cloth, having no hacking, and attached to the helmet, is folded-in round the edges; through these a cord is passed, ending in two tassels which extend a little below the bottom of the mantle. ”

“ In ancient examples there is great variety and freedom. Where the crest is the head of a griffon or bird the feathering of the neck will be carried on to cover the mantle. Other mantles will be powdered with badges or with charges from the shield, others checkered, barred or paled. More than thirty of the mantles enamelled on the stall-plates of the medieval Garter-knights are of red with an ermine lining, tinctures which in most cases have no reference to the shields below them. ”

“ Mantalini.
‘You’re never to be trusted,’ screamed the woman; ‘you were out all day yesterday, and gallivanting somewhere I know. You know you were! Isn’t it enough that I paid two pound fourteen for you, and took you out of prison and let you live here like a gentleman, but must you go on like this: breaking my heart besides?’
‘I will never break its heart, I will be a good boy, and never do so any more; I will never be naughty again; I beg its little pardon,’ said Mr Mantalini, dropping the handle of the mangle, and folding his palms together; ‘it is all up with its handsome friend! ”

“ Mantalini's eyes were closed, and his face was pale, and his hair was comparatively straight, and his whiskers and moustache were limp, and his teeth were clenched, and he had a little bottle in his right hand, and a little tea-spoon in his left; and his hands, arms, legs, and shoulders, were all stiff and powerless. And yet Madame Mantalini was not weeping upon the body, but was scolding violently upon her chair; and all this amidst a clamour of tongues, perfectly deafening, and which really appeared to have driven the unfortunate footman to the uttermost verge of distraction. ”

“ My prize was stalking his prey when I espied him. Nothing can be stiller than the Mantis religiosa when he is waiting to spring upon his victim; and at that propitious moment, armed with, a tumbler in one hand and a palmetto fan in the other, I made him my captive. I might have taken him with my fingers easily; but, though I do not believe, as the negroes do, that the bite of the devil's-riding-horse is "bad luck," or that this insect will Fig. 1.—Mantis religiosa. "curse with blindness" by spitting in its captor's eyes if it can, I have a horror of the creature, and I prefer not to touch it. ”

“ Instead of elevating that noble soul, Manton, whom I thought, through you, to rescue from the dominion of his appetites, and see set apart, with all his glorious powers, to the exalted priesthood of the Harmonies, you have steadily dragged him down from the beginning until now, when he is further removed than ever beyond our reach, and regards with contempt and disgust the very name of the system with which I had yearned to see him identified. ”

“ Mantalini waited, with much decorum, to hear the amount of the proposed stipend, but when it reached his ears, he cast his hat and cane upon the floor, and drawing out his pocket-handkerchief, gave vent to his feelings in a dismal moan.
‘Demnition!’ cried Mr. Mantalini, suddenly skipping out of his chair, and as suddenly skipping into it again, to the great discomposure of his lady’s nerves. ‘But no. It is a demd horrid dream. It is not reality. ”

“ Mantalini soothingly, ‘and when she says it is time to go, it is time, and go she shall; and when she walks along the streets with her own tulip, the women shall say, with envy, she has got a demd fine husband; and the men shall say with rapture, he has got a demd fine wife; and they shall both be right and neither wrong, upon my life and soul—oh demmit!’
With which remarks, and many more, no less intellectual and to the purpose, Mr. Mantalini kissed the fingers of his gloves to Ralph Nickleby, and drawing his lady’s arm through his, led her mincingly away. ”

“ There, amidst clothes-baskets and clothes, stripped up to his shirt-sleeves, but wearing still an old patched pair of pantaloons of superlative make, a once brilliant waistcoat, and moustache and whiskers as of yore, but lacking their lustrous dye—there, endeavouring to mollify the wrath of a buxom female—not the lawful Madame Mantalini, but the proprietress of the concern—and grinding meanwhile as if for very life at the mangle, whose creaking noise, mingled with her shrill tones, appeared almost to deafen him—there was the graceful, elegant, fascinating, and once dashing Mantalini. ”

“ This impression had been consummately fixed upon the mind of Manton by her obstinate refusal to permit the presence, at their interviews, of any third person, not even that of her own child. She could thus, through his generous humanity, most effectually draw him to her side; and, when once in her reach, he was again in the power of those fearful arts, of which we have seen something.
The life of Manton became now a succession of the “to-morrows” of remorse. Each new sun arose upon its succeeding scene of wilful, self-degrading excess, such as we have witnessed. ”

“ Mantalini, smiting himself on the head. ‘I will fill my pockets with change for a sovereign in halfpence and drown myself in the Thames; but I will not be angry with her, even then, for I will put a note in the twopenny-post as I go along, to tell her where the body is. She will be a lovely widow. I shall be a body. Some handsome women will cry; she will laugh demnebly.’
‘Alfred, you cruel, cruel creature,’ said Madame Mantalini, sobbing at the dreadful picture. ”

“ And take this mantle thy shoulder upon,
I doubt it will make him glad.”
She gave him a mantle so bright, so bright,
Her hands wove long ago:
“Pardy,” she said, “he will love the lad
That I have engirded so.” ”

“ But the Mantis, the ecstatic insect with the arms always raised in an attitude of supreme invocation, the horrible Mantis religiosa or Praying Mantis, does better [112] still: she eats her husbands (for the insatiable creature sometimes consumes seven or eight in succession) while they strain her passionately to their heart. Her inconceivable kisses devour, not in a metaphorical, but in an appallingly real fashion, the ill-fated choice of her soul stomach. She begins with the head, goes down to the thorax, nor stops till she comes to the hind-legs, which she deems too tough. ”

“ Manton was now again a madman. In the pride of his hopeful love he had built magnificent schemes, which his singular energies had rapidly placed upon the firm basis of realisation; it only required the calm exercise of his own will to consummate all and make his name illustrious. But he had not labored for himself—and she, for whom all had been achieved, was no longer his—she was gone—utterly gone! She had sold her birthright, and was no longer his. The world became dark, its honors and its ambitions as nothing. ”

“ The modern French form manteau is used in English chiefly as a dressmaker’s term for a woman’s mantle. “Mantua,” much used in the 18th century for a similar garment, is probably a corruption of manteau, due to silk or other materials coming from the Italian town of that name, and known by the trade name of “mantuas.” The Spanish mantilla is a covering for the head and shoulders of white or black lace or other material, the characteristic head-dress of women in southern and central Spain. ”

“ Mant was a woman whose life revolved about a bunch of keys. What treasures they gave access to, what disasters would have ensued had they been forever lost, was not quite clear; but whenever they were missed the household was in an uproar, and as Mrs. Mant would trust them to no one but herself, these occasions were frequent. One of them arose at the very moment when Mrs. Mant was recovering from her enthusiasm for Miss Winter. ”

“ I will swear, too, that at one time you did not scruple to suggest, by indirection, one much nearer to you; the true scope of which suggestion, however artfully disguised, the world will readily comprehend. Furthermore, I can now understand, perfectly, the secret of all those physiological phenomena, by which you have managed to delude and degrade Manton, not forgetting the disgusting fact, which has become too apparent to me, that you are endeavoring to play off Elna upon him, and, through his generous susceptibilities, to retain him within the reach of your damnable arts! ”

“ The splendor increases as it comes. Now, the dark and wrathful giant has fallen on his knees—the flood of glory overcomes him. His club is dropped. His eyes, upturned in awe, seem dimmed by the sudden glory of an angel’s presence. Ha! I see! the features of that angel are like his whose soul I see! The giant is subdued! His pride has bowed its forehead in the dust, before the angel radiance of a visiting mother!”
Manton felt his flesh creep as this was spoken, and as the Clairvoyant paused for some moments, he asked: “What does this spirit of the mother say?” ”

“ Manton spoke in tender soothing to the gentle trembler, who continued, amidst bursts of hysteric laughter, and smiles of stormy joy, to moan—“Poor mother! how will she bear it?”
Manton, at length, gently released himself from her caress, and placing her head upon the cushion of the sofa, whispered, [Pg 201] “Be calm, Elna! She must bear it—she will bear it; it is a righteous retribution, that has overtaken her at last. ”

“ An hour after the last scene, Manton returned to his room, and, seeming greatly hurried, lit his lamp, and throwing himself into a chair, seized his pen, muttering between his teeth, “It must be finished to-night! a man has no right to be tired!” ”

“ Mantalini did the same, taking occasion to show that he could live with uncommon satisfaction upon bread and water and go clad in rags, but that he could not support existence with the additional burden of being mistrusted by the object of his most devoted and disinterested affection. ”

“ However, she took it off, and with graceful politeness begged Prince Mannikin to accept it, which you may be sure he was charmed to do, and, taking only this and a little bundle of all kinds of wood, and accompanied only by two spaniels out of the fifty who had stayed with him when the war was ended, he set forth, receiving many tokens of love and favour from the people in every town he passed through. At the last little village he left his horse behind him, to begin his toilful march through the snow, which extended, blank and terrible, in every direction as far as the eye could see. ”

“ Mantel, masculine, ‘cloak, mantle,’ from the equivalent Middle High German mantel, mandel, Old High German mantal, mandal, masculine; on account of the non-permutation of t to z the word cannot be cognate with Middle English mantel, English mantle, Old Icelandic mǫttul, masculine, ‘cloak,’ and hence it is not derived from the same root as Greek μανδύας, ‘upper garment.’ The Teutonic cognates are more probably based on Latin mantellum, from which Italian mantello and French manteau are derived. ”

“ You are killing yourself here with tobacco, wine and labour, while she would show that even self-immolated genius may find a warm place to nestle, in distant lands, and near the matronly bosom, in spite of cold and sullen self-reliance!”
“The fact of her being a matron,” frigidly responded Manton, “considerably modifies the general character of the proposition which she has done me the honor, through you, to communicate. But, Doctor, I must finally and definitively state to you that I do not, at present, wish to cultivate any female acquaintance whatever in the city of New York. ”

“ But since you have asked the reason why it should seem more decorous to appear before princes without one’s mantle than to wear it, it might be a more than sufficient answer to say that it is the custom wherever well-bred men appear in the presence of mighty lords to come without a mantle, and that whoever is ignorant of that custom is there called a churl. ”

“ But though you are both allowed to enter, do not let him follow you farther than inside the door or, at the farthest, up to the staller’s seat, and leave him there to keep your mantle. Leave your mantle behind when you go before the king and be careful to have your hair brushed smooth, and your beard combed with care. You must have neither hat nor cap nor other covering on your head; for one must appear before lords with uncovered head and ungloved hands, with a blithe face and with limbs and body thoroughly bathed. ”

“ Mantalini, with his egg-spoon in his mouth.
"It's very easy to talk," said Mrs. Mantalini.
"Not so easy when one is eating a demnition egg" replied Mr. Mantalini; "for the yolk runs down the waistcoat, and yolk of egg does not match any waistcoat but a yellow waistcoat, demmit."
"You were flirting with her during the whole night," said Madame Mantalini, apparently desirous to lead the conversation back to the point from which it had strayed. ”

“ Mantalini, and a mischievous, wooden-legged kobold like Silas Wegg, take stronger hold upon us than the Harry Maylies and Rose Flemings, the John Harmons and Bella Wilfers, for whose ultimate matrimonial felicity the business of the plot is conducted. Even the more notable heroes often pale a little by comparison with their attendants. ”

“ At Mantua the tide of his feelings has turned again, and by one of those natural reactions which he himself takes note of he wakes up unaccountably happy, "and all this day an unaccustom'd spirit lifts him above the ground with cheerful thoughts." ”