Manners Volume Iii Part 2

Adelade Paroit faite-expres pour charmer; Et mieux que le galant Ovide, Ses yeux enseignent l'art d'aimer Adelade.

D'Adelade Ah! que l'empire semble doux!

Qu'on me donne un nouvel Alcide, Je gage qu'il file aux genoux D'Adelade.

D'Adelade Fuyez le dangereux accueil: Tous les enchantemens d'Armide Sont moins a craindre qu'un coup d'oeil D'Adelade.

D'Adelade Quand l'Amour eut forme les traits, Ma fois, dit-il, la cour de Gnide N'a rien de pareil aux attraits D'Adelade.

Adelade, Lui dit-il, ne nous quittons pas: Je suis aveugle, sois mon guide; Je suivrai partout pas a pas Adelade.

TRANSLATION.

Adelaide Was surely form'd all hearts to move, And more than Ovid we can prove By speaking eyes, the art of love In Adelaide.

Than Adelaide No softer thraldom could we meet: Alcides' self would think it sweet, To spin his task out at the feet Of Adelaide.

From Adelaide And all her dang'rous beauties fly;-- Armida's charms and witchery Were far less fatal than the eye Of Adelaide.

Of Adelaide When Cupid first the features fram'd, "In Cnidus' court," he loud proclaim'd, "Not one for beauty shall be fam'd Like Adelaide."

"O Adelaide!"

The sightless boy enraptur'd cried, "Alas, I'm blind! Be thou my guide; From henceforth I'll ne'er leave the side Of Adelaide."

Miss Wildenheim quickly recollected, that these lines were written in a fine edition of Klopstock's works Colonel Desmond had given her, as a _gage d'amitie_, the last day she had seen him at Vienna; and when Miss Nevil turned to trace the resemblance she perceived in the drawing--the blush, the smile, the att.i.tude, the graceful form, struck her so forcibly, that she exclaimed, "It _is_ yourself, Miss Wildenheim; I thought it was the image of you, the instant I saw it." Melicent, with intuitive propriety, sought to relieve Adelaide's embarra.s.sment, and said, "Here's a far more beautiful figure; this, Miss Webberly, is my last production--a charming Paul and Virginia, I a.s.sure you. Do admire Paul's leg, it is thicker than the tree he is sitting under:--I wonder he doesn't kick Virginia, she squints so abominably."

When this singular specimen of the fine arts was first displayed to the partial eyes of Melicent's parents, it met with no small admiration from them. A showy frame was bought, in which it was hung up over the chimney-piece of their usual sitting-room, and the fond mother gazed at it from morning till night. When Colonel Desmond returned from abroad, this was the first object, that, after showing her nine healthy, handsome children, she directed his attention to. He did not then express all the horror he felt at the contrast it afforded; but in about six months' negociation with considerable difficulty accomplished its being safely deposited in his port-folio.

CHAPTER VI.

Qu'Adelade Met d'ame et de gout dans son chant!

Aux accens de sa voix timide Chacun dit rien n'est si touchant, Qu'Adelade[5]!

oeMARMONTELoe.

[Footnote 5:

Adelaide Whilst singing steals each list'ner's heart, 'Tis melody's refined part, None can such melting strains impart, As Adelaide.

As soon as the gentlemen returned to the drawing room, and tea was over, the mistress of the house proposed music.

The Desmonds, in general, were considerable proficients in this delightful art; and a trio for the violin, flute, and piano forte, was charmingly played by Melicent, and her father, and uncle. Though the former failed so lamentably in drawing, she had a fine genius for music, which was made the most of by constant practice; it was the only thing her father had ever studied, and in it he had acquired considerable knowledge, whilst her uncle had gained, in Germany, a fine style of playing on the violin; and to their instructions she was more indebted for her excellence, than to those of Mr. Ingham, who taught her the mere mechanical part of the science, and even that very imperfectly. As soon as, according to the rules of etiquette, the young lady of the house had made a commencement, her guests were in turn requested to display their talents. Colonel Desmond had whispered about that Adelaide sung enchantingly; and there was a general impatience expressed to hear her, which she, in her usual unaffected manner, consented to gratify.

The tones of her voice were exquisitely touching, and they took the shortest road to the heart, without stopping on the way to tickle the ear by the tricks of mere execution; each ornament seemed to rise in its own proper place, by a sort of "happy necessity," and, like the temple of taste, her singing "always charmed, never surprised." Her vocal excellences were most called forth in the highest style of Italian music. In the detached scenes of an opera she was inimitable: her divine voice painted, as it were, every shade of feeling; and the composer might have rejoiced to hear the Proserpine or Elfrida, not of his music, but of his imagination. Still more enchanting than her voice when she sang was her countenance, which the soul seemed to irradiate with that immortal light only seen on earth in "the human face divine;" and there were expressed all those indescribable charms, the offspring of genius and feeling, which the most melodious sounds are insufficient to convey to the sense. As she was however too rational, to be sublime out of place, she did not attempt to introduce the "grand opera" at Bogberry Hall, but apologizing for her deficiency in English music, which she feared to disfigure by her peculiar accent, sang a playful foreign ballad, which perhaps displayed the fascinating graces of her flexible voice, and polished manner, almost as delightfully as a finer composition would have done. She was rapturously _encored_, and was detained singing, till, quite distressed at the idea of excluding every other lady from the piano forte, she pleaded fatigue, as her excuse for retiring from the instrument. As the company crowded round her to bestow their praises, the winning expression with which her soft eyes met the general gaze, as they seemed imploringly to ask the forgiveness of her unsought superiority, and which her graceful gestures no less eloquently entreated, drew from the heart touched by her sweetness and modesty that exclamation of "charming! charming!" which the lips had opened to apply to her captivating talents.

During the time Adelaide was singing, Melicent stood beside her uncle in almost breathless delight, her hand resting on his arm, which she pressed with earnestness as any note of peculiar beauty met her ear. He was so completely lost in a reverie, (a most unusual circ.u.mstance with him,) that even after the melody had ceased, he stood in the same spot, and in the same att.i.tude, as before. Melicent roused him from his reflections, as she looked up in his face, and said, "How enchanting!

her voice is 'pleasant as the gale of spring, that sighs on the hunter's ear when he wakens from dreams of joy, and has heard the music of the spirits of the Hill.'" "I perceive," replied he, almost starting at her first address, "that you read Ossian as incessantly as ever, Melicent: I have just been thinking how superior Miss Wildenheim is to her own acquirements." "I don't exactly understand you, uncle." "If you had ever mixed in the world, my love, you would without difficulty; you would there meet with many of both s.e.xes, in whom the painter, or the poet, or the musician, stand forth so prominently, that the individual character is lost in the background, indeed, sometimes, with advantage. I'm sure, when Miss Wildenheim occurs to your mind to-morrow morning, you won't think _first_ of her singing, though you do admire it so much." "Oh, no!" replied Melicent, "I shall think of her charming smiles, as she is endeavouring to persuade Miss Cecilia Webberly to sing the air she thinks she most excels in.--They are looking for the music; I must go and a.s.sist them." Cecilia now did her utmost to eclipse Adelaide, by displaying twice the power of voice in songs of greater execution, which every body confessed she sang _well_, though no one _felt_ she sang charmingly. After two or three solos, it was proposed, that Mr. Ingham should join her in a duet. She purposely chose one, which should be a trial of skill between the performers. It was that style of music, which Colonel Desmond called the "florid Gothick," from its profuse ornament and defective taste; it had triplets, volatas, and trills without end.

Poor Mr. Ingham, in more than one sense of the word, _shook_ for his fame; the merciless Cecilia forgot, that on it depended his bread; she did not read in his countenance, "He who filches from me my good name, takes that which not enricheth him, and makes me poor indeed!" But when they came to the final cadence, impelled by the "glorious fault of angels and of G.o.ds," she aspired higher than fate permitted her to attain with honour; and in a precipitate fall from D sharp in alt was hurled on the flat seventh, instead of the perfect third of the key, which made an unfortunate discord with the note intended to harmonize with said perfect third in a simultaneous trill; and on this unlucky seventh she continued to shake without pity or remorse, till the poor man, in emulation, was nearly black in the face, and was obliged to take breath twice, in a most audible manner, before she would have done. But at last she ceased, and the mortified musician's good-natured patron, seeing his vexation, and being himself shocked at the discord, clapped him on the back, saying, "Well done, Ingham; both parts famously sung:"

and, with a significant wink, added, "By Heavens! she shook the cat out of the bag that time; she did you up there, man alive!" Lanty, who had thought the shake wondrous queer, he did not know why, understanding the drift of his father's observation, burst into a loud fit of laughter, which was followed by a peremptory order from his mother to quit the room. In the mean time the rest of the company were variously occupied: Mrs. O'Sullivan and Miss Fitzcarril, with the physician and curate, formed a party at _short whist_, which the former, to a.s.sist her claims to fas.h.i.+on, played at a rate that was much higher than accorded with her frugal propensities, and which the pride of her companions prevented from confessing was much beyond what suited their finances. The physician, who was losing, internally grumbled at this new method of playing the good old game of whist, by which twice as much may be lost in the same s.p.a.ce of time; and muttered, as he sorted his cards, a barbarous parody of Shakspeare, "There comes the last scene of all:--short sight, short gowns, short whist, short every thing!" Leaning over "John of Gaunt's" chair, (the agnomen Mr. Desmond had been pleased to bestow on the stupendous Theresa,) stood Captain Cormac, to rejoice in the goodly row of kings, queens, and aces, which the hand of his liege sometimes contained, and which was graciously pointed out to him with an accompanying smile; or to pick up the glove, card, or handkerchief that fell to the ground, not always undesignedly. Mrs.

Desmond kept herself disengaged to be kind and civil to every body, sometimes condoling with the losers at whist, sometimes laughing with the young people, as they played at "consequences," "what's my thought like?" or "dressing the poor soldier." Miss Webberly was in earnest conversation with Mr. Donolan, of which Mrs. Desmond's ear, unwilling, caught one or two sentences. In answer to an observation from Amelia, he said "A very good match for _him_," with a sort of conceited emphasis on the word _him_, which insinuated "it would be a very bad match for _me_." "Scarcely even for _him_," retorted Miss Webberly, "German gentry are but sma." This quotation was followed by a laugh of affected vehemence from both; and when Cecilia, exulting in her triumph over Mr.

Ingham, came up to them, the witticism was repeated; and they then, in a playhouse whisper, extended their strictures to all the company in turn, only interrupted by fits of laughter. Mrs. Desmond turned away in disgust, and, looking for Melicent, proudly thought, "My little mountain girl may want polish, as Edward says, but, with all her wildness, she is still the lady." The object of her thoughts was, at that moment, in conversation with her uncle and Adelaide, whom they had joined, when Cecilia Webberly sat down to the piano forte. When she had finished her duet, in the manner before mentioned, Miss Desmond said, "What a pity it is, Miss Wildenheim, that people, in the attempt to astonish, will insist upon showing what they _cannot_ do." "My dear Melicent,"

interrupted her uncle, "you may take it as a pretty general rule, that when a lady attempts or even succeeds in _astonis.h.i.+ng_, all is not exactly as it ought to be; am I not right?" continued he, turning to Adelaide, "Oh, perfectly," replied she; "but, indeed, Miss Webberly executed her songs extremely well, with the exception of that unfortunate shake." "I have heard my uncle say," rejoined Melicent, "that an _execution_ is sometimes a _murder_; in that sense, I allow she has executed them well; but, surely, music that is not pleasing, can never be good." As Melicent never spoke _sotto voce_, her uncle was afraid her observations would be heard, and therefore, to divert her mind from Miss Webberly's singing, took up a book of poems, which was lying on the table they were standing near, and addressing Adelaide, said, "I condemned these verses this morning, as being unnatural: Melicent, to all my objections, only answered, 'Oh! dear uncle, I delight in them.' Do be our umpire, and show her, that something more is necessary to prove her admiration to be well founded, than the bare a.s.sertion that she does admire; when she dislikes, she has reasons enough at command, but when she approves, it is with an extravagance of enthusiasm, that admits of no a.n.a.lysis." Adelaide read as follows:--

The sigh of her heart was sincere, When blus.h.i.+ng she whisper'd her love, A sound of delight in my ear; Her voice was the voice of a dove.

Ah! who could from Phillida fly?

Yet I sought other nymphs of the vale, Forgot her sweet blush and her sigh!

Forgot that I told her my tale.

In sorrow I wish'd to return, And the tale of my pa.s.sion renew; Go, Shepherd, she answer'd with scorn, False Shepherd, for ever adieu!

For thee no more tears will I shed, From thee to fair Friends.h.i.+p I go; The bird by a wound that has bled, Is happy to fly from its foe.

"What can she find so affecting in those lines?" thought Colonel Desmond, as he marked Adelaide's changing countenance. Memory had raised the shades of departed joys, which appeared in her eyes not clad in their original brightness, but wrapped in sorrow's watery veil; reason quickly bade them be gone, but not ere her attentive observer had marked their shadowy footsteps as they crossed her brow. When she looked up, his penetrating glance read her mind, and expressed his own. She painfully felt her heart was open to his view, that there was now no retreat, and therefore calmly said to Melicent, "I agree with you, Miss Desmond, the feelings of Phillida are perfectly natural." "But,"

interrupted Colonel Desmond, in a tone and manner not to be mistaken, "don't you think, that though she might turn in scorn from the unworthy object of her first attachment, she might solace her wounded heart by admitting the love of another?" "Never!" replied Adelaide: "even in endeavouring to view him with indifference, her mind must have been too long filled with his idea, not to feel the impossibility of its ever being possessed by a second choice." Colonel Desmond knew the human heart better, and flattered himself, not unjustly, that if he had patience to play the friend, and did not too quickly a.s.sume the lover, he might imperceptibly win her regard in that character. He was not hurried away by the imprudent warmth of feeling, which would have deprived a younger man of his self-possession, but determined to destroy the impression of what the seriousness of his looks and tones had conveyed to her mind; and therefore with apparent carelessness, asked her how she liked Ireland. This question a stranger is plagued with in every company, from the day he lands in that country till the one he leaves it; which with its twin tormentor, "Do you like England or Ireland best?" serves to commence that sort of conversation, which begins in Great Britain with observations on the weather. By the way, it is strange that no moralist has ever remarked how providential it is, that the climate of this latter island is so variable, considering the propensity its inhabitants have to talk of it. It certainly affords a beautiful ill.u.s.tration of the doctrine of compensation.

But to return to our friend Desmond:--he was too well bred to have asked such an unfair question, had he not been completely _distrait_. When the mind is absent without leave, the deputy it leaves behind to secure its unmolested retreat most resembles that apish faculty, memory, and mechanically imitates the manners, and repeats the phrases of others.

Adelaide, more embarra.s.sed, though not so _distrait_ as her interrogator, replied, that she was even more pleased with the country than she had expected to be from the favourable picture held forth in some late publications. He agreed to the justice of these representations; while his brother, happening to hear him, was nettled, to the quick, and abruptly said, "Not a bit like, Ned; quite too ridiculous." "But, my dear Harry, there is nothing in the world so tiresome as direct panegyric; you must allow a little for the malice of human nature, to make an individual or a national character loved, its virtues must be relieved by its foibles." "I'll tell you what, Ned, the devil a good there is in dressing us up in a fool's cap and bells, to make a set of fat English squires laugh who have eat themselves stupid."

"How can you be so illiberal, brother? That des----"--"By the piper that danced before Moses," interrupted the elder Desmond; "it's themselves that's illiberal.--There's the two Webberlys, and that airified nephew of my wife's, mocking us all, by the Lord! and all the time of tea, and while Milly was playing on the forte, they were laughing as if their sides would burst. I'm bothered from the head to the tail with them, that's the truth of it. But come, Miss Wildenheim, a tune from you would save any man from being in a pa.s.sion--give us 'G.o.d save the King,' and that will remind me that I ought to comport myself as becomes a peaceable subject."

In nothing did Adelaide excel more than in playing an air, in a manner that seemed to give it beauties that it was not before suspected of possessing. She called to her aid all the powers of harmony, and united boldness of execution with tenderness of expression. She now played "G.o.d save the King," in a manner that electrified the company; the card players had dispersed, and there was such a nodding of heads, and marching, and whistling, and singing, and drumming on tables, and rattling watch chains, and beating time, that the performance of a person who could not have brought forth all the power of the "forte," as Mr. Desmond called it, would have been lost amongst all these various noises. The tune was played and replayed, till Adelaide laughingly said her fingers ached; and then dancing was proposed, and being agreed to, the company repaired to a large hall for the purpose. Here Mr. Desmond vented the remnant of his spleen against the Webberlys, by calling to the piper, "Play up the humours of Ludgate Hill there!" with a significant wink to the music master, (who, by the by, was more of a wag than an Orpheus), and though the wink was of no use to the blind piper and fiddler, the tone of his voice was sufficiently understood by them to need no second order; and they accordingly struck up their favourite tune of "Jig Polthogue," to which Mr. Desmond amused himself by mimicking, in turn, the dancing of all the set; and his imitations, being general, offended n.o.body in particular, but in truth he even satirized with so much good humour, that he hardly ever gave offence. It seemed always to be the fas.h.i.+ons of the times he quizzed, rather than the people who exhibited them. "What an entertaining, exhilarating people the Irish are!" said Adelaide to Colonel Desmond. "Yes," replied he; "but yet, with all their cleverness, how strangely inconsistent is their conduct! If Melicent Desmond was a sovereign princess, her father could not have had more pride about her than he has; and yet here she is a.s.sociating with her music-master, dancing in the very set with him; and I never can persuade him there is any impropriety in it." "How well she does dance!" remarked his fair partner. "And what a capital caricature Captain Cormac and Miss Fitzcarril would make--he all flourishes, she as stiff as the genealogical tree that hangs up in the hall at Ballinamoyle. Do you observe," resumed he, "how much of the '_incedo regina_' there is in her manner to him occasionally! This good lady is a singular being, I can a.s.sure you. She can be 'proud with meanness, and be mean with pride.'" "Such a character," rejoined Adelaide, "reminds me of Homer's princesses, who, from doing the honours of the palace, proceed to wash the clothes of its inhabitants in the neighbouring river, to which pleasant employment they drive right regally." Mr. Desmond now coming up to turn her in the dance, took that opportunity of saying, "I tried to touch you up, but I couldn't--it's a shame for you to bear away the _bell_ in every thing:--I never saw any one in my life _handle their feet_ as you do."

After two or three dances the company adjourned to the supper table, and here again all was mirth and glee. Colonel and Mr. Desmond sung comical songs, and told droll stories, till the whole party were in fits of laughter. Three of the children, younger than Melicent and Launcelot, were kept up to supper, and they sang catches and glees with their father and uncle, in a manner that surprised every body who heard their sweet voices and saw their childish faces. Before they began, a dispute arose between Mr. Desmond and the music-master, relative to the key note; the one sounded one, and the other another; when, to settle the matter, the former called to his second son, "Do you hear, George, take this note out in your mouth to the forte, strike it, and bring me word if I'm not right, and be sure you don't drop it by the way." How far George was an impartial testimony, or how much the note lost or gained in its ascent or descent, must ever remain in doubt; but, like a dutiful child, when he returned, he said, "_You_ were right to be sure, father--listen here;" and sounding the octave above as clear as a bell, and as sweetly as possible, they all set to, the little performers keeping time and tune admirably; whilst the mellow base of the gentlemen, and the enchanting soprano of their sister, contrasted delightfully with the juvenile strains of these "young-eyed cherubim."

Melicent's fine notes made most of the party express a wish to hear her in a solo, and she sang the "Exile of Erin," with a pathos that drew tears from many present. Adelaide seemed particularly to feel it; which Mr. Desmond perceiving, he said, "Come, Melicent, that's too dismal--I'll tune you up a lilt;" and he immediately sang, in a most comical manner, a ballad he had written himself, ent.i.tled, "Miss Jenny's lament for the loss of her petticoat;" in which was ably satirized the present style of _undress_. Soon after this the party separated with as much hilarity as they had met.

CHAPTER VII.

Jeunes beautes qui venez dans ces lieux, Fouler d'un pied leger l'herbe tendre et fleurie, Comme vous je connus les plaisirs de la vie, Vos fetes, vos transports, et vos aimables jeux.

L'Amour bercoit mon coeur de ses douces chimeres, Et l'Hymen me flattoit du destin le plus beau, Un instant detruisit ces erreurs mensongeres, Que me reste-t-il? Le tombeau![6]

oeLEVIZACoe.

[Footnote 6:

Ye fair ones that, with agile bound, Dance o'er this turf in frolick round, Whose tender flowers scarce bend their head, Beneath your footstep's airy tread; Like you I once, with sportive mien, Join'd laughing Pleasure's joyous train: Then life and all its hopes were new, And love its brightest visions drew: Those joys are past--the vision's flown: What now remains?--The tomb alone.

When Adelaide returned to Ballinamoyle, she thought of the day she had spent at Bogberry Hall with the most lively pleasure; the unrefined good-natured gaiety of its inmates had seized her with so strong a grasp, that it had dragged her along with the general current of mirth, and, leading her thoughts out of their ordinary course, had, with no unwelcome violence, broken the chain of their painful a.s.sociations. Her eye had early been accustomed to the animation of foreign countenances and gestures; and as she had only been acquainted with English manners in a very retired country place, it is perhaps not surprising, that she should have felt chilled by their apparent monotony, and abashed by the half-reproving look she sometimes met with; when, pausing for an instant to consider what she had done wrong, she found she had, in the earnestness of conversation, raised her hand and arm full six inches from her side, where it was arrested in its graceful action, and remanded by the blus.h.i.+ng offender to its former quiescent station. But censure was not even thus avoided, for in the very effort to please, she had committed a second error, by moving that beautiful brow, which expressed every feeling of her heart; and her dismay, at perceiving her observer still unsatisfied, produced some other involuntary gesture still more reprehensible than the first.

She now therefore saw the Irishmen change from one leg to another, flourish their arms, rattle their watch chains, and swing their chairs, without the horror so elegant a female was bound to experience on beholding such ungraceful motions, for which no sanctioning precedent could be produced at St. James's. And she even granted absolution to the varying expression of the women's countenances, which sometimes bordered on grimace; and extended it to their voices, running through half the gamut in the changes of the most decided brogue that ever offended ears polite.