Chapter 6

nobility; and is thus as willing as other grown children to throw away thousands for a gew-gaw, though he would not part with a penny for charity. Next to him is my brother, whom you know as well as I do. He has finished his education with credit, and as he never ventures to oppose me in anything, I have no doubt he is very sensible. He has good manners, is a model of dress, and is reckoned ornamental in all societies. Next to him is Miss Crotchet, my sister-in-law that is to be. You see she is rather pretty, and very genteel. She is tolerably accomplished, has her table always covered with new novels, thinks Mr. Mac Quedy an oracle, and is extremely desirous to be called “my lady.” Next to her is Mr. Firedamp, a very absurd person, who thinks that water is the evil principle. Next to him is Mr. Eavesdrop, a man who, by dint of a certain something like smartness, has got into good society. He is a sort of bookseller’s tool, and coins all his acquaintance in reminiscences and sketches of character. I am very shy of him, for fear he should print me.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—If he print you in your own likeness, which is that of an angel, you need not fear him. If he print you in any other, I will cut his throat. But proceed—

_Lady Clarinda_.—Next to him is Mr. Henbane, the toxicologist, I think he calls himself. He has passed half his life in studying poisons and antidotes. The first thing he did on his arrival here was to kill the cat; and while Miss Crotchet was crying over her, he brought her to life again. I am more shy of him than the other.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—They are two very dangerous fellows, and I shall take care to keep them both at a respectful distance. Let us hope that Eavesdrop will sketch off Henbane, and that Henbane will poison him for his trouble.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Well, next to him sits Mr. Mac Quedy, the Modern Athenian, who lays down the law about everything, and therefore may be taken to understand everything. He turns all the affairs of this world into questions of buying and selling. He is the Spirit of the Frozen Ocean to everything like romance and sentiment. He condenses their volume of steam into a drop of cold water in a moment. He has satisfied me that I am a commodity in the market, and that I ought to set myself at a high price. So you see, he who would have me must bid for me.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—I shall discuss that point with Mr. Mac Quedy.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Not a word for your life. Our flirtation is our own secret. Let it remain so.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—Flirtation, Clarinda! Is that all that the most ardent—

_Lady Clarinda_.—Now, don’t be rhapsodical here. Next to Mr. Mac Quedy is Mr. Skionar, a sort of poetical philosopher, a curious compound of the intense and the mystical. He abominates all the ideas of Mr. Mac Quedy, and settles everything by sentiment and intuition.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—Then, I say, he is the wiser man.

_Lady Clarinda_.—They are two oddities, but a little of them is amusing, and I like to hear them dispute. So you see I am in training for a philosopher myself.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—Any philosophy, for Heaven’s sake, but the pound-shilling-and-pence philosophy of Mr. Mac Quedy.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Why, they say that even Mr. Skionar, though he is a great dreamer, always dreams with his eyes open, or with one eye at any rate, which is an eye to his gain: but I believe that in this respect the poor man has got an ill name by keeping bad company. He has two dear friends, Mr. Wilful Wontsee, and Mr. Rumblesack Shantsee, poets of some note, who used to see visions of Utopia, and pure republics beyond the Western deep: but, finding that these El Dorados brought them no revenue, they turned their vision-seeing faculty into the more profitable channel of espying all sorts of virtues in the high and the mighty, who were able and willing to pay for the discovery.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—I do not fancy these virtue-spyers.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Next to Mr. Skionar sits Mr. Chainmail, a good-looking young gentleman, as you see, with very antiquated tastes. He is fond of old poetry, and is something of a poet himself. He is deep in monkish literature, and holds that the best state of society was that of the twelfth century, when nothing was going forward but fighting, feasting, and praying, which he says are the three great purposes for which man was made. He laments bitterly over the inventions of gunpowder, steam, and gas, which he says have ruined the world. He lives within two or three miles, and has a large hall, adorned with rusty pikes, shields, helmets, swords, and tattered banners, and furnished with yew-tree chairs, and two long old worm-eaten oak tables, where he dines with all his household, after the fashion of his favourite age. He wants us all to dine with him, and I believe we shall go.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—That will be something new, at any rate.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Next to him is Mr. Toogood, the co-operationist, who will have neither fighting nor praying; but wants to parcel out the world into squares like a chess-board, with a community on each, raising everything for one another, with a great steam-engine to serve them in common for tailor and hosier, kitchen and cook.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—He is the strangest of the set, so far.

_Lady Clarinda_.—This brings us to the bottom of the table, where sits my humble servant, Mr. Crotchet the younger. I ought not to describe him.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—I entreat you do.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Well, I really have very little to say in his favour.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—I do not wish to hear anything in his favour; and I rejoice to hear you say so, because—

_Lady Clarinda_.—Do not flatter yourself. If I take him, it will be to please my father, and to have a town and country house, and plenty of servants and a carriage and an opera-box, and make some of my acquaintance who have married for love, or for rank, or for anything but money, die for envy of my jewels. You do not think I would take him for himself. Why, he is very smooth and spruce as far as his dress goes; but as to his face, he looks as if he had tumbled headlong into a volcano, and been thrown up again among the cinders.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—I cannot believe, that, speaking thus of him, you mean to take him at all.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Oh! I am out of my teens. I have been very much in love; but now I am come to years of discretion, and must think, like other people, of settling myself advantageously. He was in love with a banker’s daughter, and cast her off at her father’s bankruptcy, and the poor girl has gone to hide herself in some wild place.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—She must have a strange taste, if she pines for the loss of him.

_Lady Clarinda_.—They say he was good-looking, till his bubble schemes, as they call them, stamped him with the physiognomy of a desperate gambler. I suspect he has still a penchant towards his first flame. If he takes me, it will be for my rank and connection, and the second seat of the borough of Rogueingrain. So we shall meet on equal terms, and shall enjoy all the blessedness of expecting nothing from each other.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—You can expect no security with such an adventurer.

_Lady Clarinda_.—I shall have the security of a good settlement, and then if _andare al diavolo_ be his destiny, he may go, you know, by himself. He is almost always dreaming and _distrait_. It is very likely that some great reverse is in store for him: but that will not concern me, you perceive.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—You torture me, Clarinda, with the bare possibility.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Hush! Here is music to soothe your troubled spirit. Next to him, on this side, sits the dilettante composer, Mr. Trillo; they say his name was O’Trill, and he has taken the O from the beginning, and put it at the end. I do not know how this may be. He plays well on the violoncello, and better on the piano; sings agreeably; has a talent at versemaking, and improvises a song with some felicity. He is very agreeable company in the evening, with his instruments and music-books. He maintains that the sole end of all enlightened society is to get up a good opera, and laments that wealth, genius, and energy are squandered upon other pursuits, to the neglect of this one great matter.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—That is a very pleasant fancy at any rate.

_Lady Clarinda_.—I assure you he has a great deal to say for it. Well, next to him, again, is Dr. Morbific, who has been all over the world to prove that there is no such thing as contagion; and has inoculated himself with plague, yellow fever, and every variety of pestilence, and is still alive to tell the story. I am very shy of him, too; for I look on him as a walking phial of wrath, corked full of all infections, and not to be touched without extreme hazard.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—This is the strangest fellow of all.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Next to him sits Mr. Philpot, the geographer, who thinks of nothing but the heads and tails of rivers, and lays down the streams of Terra Incognita as accurately as if he had been there. He is a person of pleasant fancy, and makes a sort of fairy land of every country he touches, from the Frozen Ocean to the Deserts of Sahara.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—How does he settle matters with Mr. Firedamp?

_Lady Clarinda_.—You see Mr. Firedamp has got as far as possible out of his way. Next to him is Sir Simon Steeltrap, of Steeltrap Lodge, Member for Crouching-Curtown, Justice of Peace for the county, and Lord of the United Manors of Spring-gun-and-Treadmill; a great preserver of game and public morals. By administering the laws which he assists in making, he disposes, at his pleasure, of the land and its live stock, including all the two-legged varieties, with and without feathers, in a circumference of several miles round Steeltrap Lodge. He has enclosed commons and woodlands; abolished cottage gardens; taken the village cricket-ground into his own park, out of pure regard to the sanctity of Sunday; shut up footpaths and alehouses (all but those which belong to his electioneering friend, Mr. Quassia, the brewer); put down fairs and fiddlers; committed many poachers; shot a few; convicted one-third of the peasantry; suspected the rest; and passed nearly the whole of them through a wholesome course of prison discipline, which has finished their education at the expense of the county.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—He is somewhat out of his element here: among such a diversity of opinions he will hear some he will not like.

_Lady Clarinda_.—It was rather ill-judged in Mr. Crotchet to invite him to-day. But the art of assorting company is above these _parvenus_. They invite a certain number of persons without considering how they harmonise with each other. Between Sir Simon and you is the Reverend Doctor Folliott. He is said to be an excellent scholar, and is fonder of books than the majority of his cloth; he is very fond, also, of the good things of this world. He is of an admirable temper, and says rude things in a pleasant half-earnest manner, that nobody can take offence with. And next to him again is one Captain Fitzchrome, who is very much in love with a certain person that does not mean to have anything to say to him, because she can better her fortune by taking somebody else.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—And next to him again is the beautiful, the accomplished, the witty, the fascinating, the tormenting, Lady Clarinda, who traduces herself to the said Captain by assertions which it would drive him crazy to believe.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Time will show, sir. And now we have gone the round of the table.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—But I must say, though I know you had always a turn for sketching characters, you surprise me by your observation, and especially by your attention to opinions.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Well, I will tell you a secret: I am writing a novel.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—A novel!

_Lady Clarinda_.—Yes, a novel. And I shall get a little finery by it: trinkets and fal-lals, which I cannot get from papa. You must know I have been reading several fashionable novels, the fashionable this, and the fashionable that; and I thought to myself, why I can do better than any of these myself. So I wrote a chapter or two, and sent them as a specimen to Mr. Puffall, the book-seller, telling him they were to be a part of the fashionable something or other, and he offered me, I will not say how much, to finish it in three volumes, and let him pay all the newspapers for recommending it as the work of a lady of quality, who had made very free with the characters of her acquaintance.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—Surely you have not done so?

_Lady Clarinda_.—Oh, no! I leave that to Mr. Eavesdrop. But Mr. Puffall made it a condition that I should let him say so.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—A strange recommendation.

_Lady Clarinda_.—Oh, nothing else will do. And it seems you may give yourself any character you like, and the newspapers will print it as if it came from themselves. I have commended you to three of our friends here as an economist, a transcendentalist, and a classical scholar; and if you wish to be renowned through the world for these, or any other accomplishments, the newspapers will confirm you in their possession for half-a-guinea a piece.

_Captain Fitzchrome_.—Truly, the praise of such gentry must be a feather in any one’s cap.

_Lady Clarinda_.—So you will see, some morning, that my novel is “the most popular production of the day.” This is Mr. Puffall’s favourite phrase. He makes the newspapers say it of everything he publishes. But “the day,” you know, is a very convenient phrase; it allows of three hundred and sixty-five “most popular productions” in a year. And in leap-year one more.