The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 548, May 26, 1832

THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

THE FAIR OF MAY FAIR

The volumes of sketches of fashionable life with this quaint title will serve to amuse a few inveterate novel-readers; while occasional pages may induce others to take up the thread of the narrative. The flying follies of high life, or rather, we think, of affected ton, are hit off with truth and vigour, and there is a pleasantry in the writer's style which is an acceptable relief to the dulness of common-place details. We shall endeavour to detach a scene or two, one, as a specimen of "the art of ingeniously tormenting," and the incipient waywardness of a newly-married pair.

"From the first months of his domestication with his wife at Wellwood Abbey, Sir Henry Wellwood had intended, had longed, to commence his little system of tender remonstrance; but the slightest insinuation of a difference of opinion was sufficient to fan the embers of Henrietta's distemperature into a conflagration. The blaze was not strong, indeed; for the lady had always been accustomed to find a fit of wilfulness, or of affected despondency, more available and becoming than one of hasty anger. But she was tolerably expert in those piquant flippancies of speech which harass the enemy like a straggling fire; and could contrive, when it suited her purpose, to make herself as disagreeable as if her face had not been that of a cherub, or her voice seraphic.

"'A woman,' quoth La Bruyère, 'must be charming indeed, whose husband does not repent, ten times a day, that he is a married man.' Sir Henry Wellwood would have scoffed at the axiom. The 'idol of his soul' was still an idol; although, like the votaries of old, he had managed to discover that it was not wholly formed of precious metals; that its feet were of clay! He still fancied himself the happiest of mortals; particularly when Henrietta, in her best looks and spirits, was riding by his side through the Wellwood plantations, listening to the project of his intended improvements;—or seated in her boudoir sketching designs and modelling plans for his two new lodges. Sometimes after dinner she would busy herself with her guitar, and insist on his attempting a second to her Italian notturno; sometimes she persuaded him to lend her his arm towards the village, to assist in executing that easy work of benevolence, the deplenishment of her silken purse. At such, moments she was indeed enchanting;—and the fascinated Wellwood was quite willing to echo the chorus of Mrs. Delafield's visiters, that he had 'drawn a prize.'

"But the sands of life are not formed exclusively of diamond sparks. Flint and granite mingle in the contents of the hour-glass; and Sir Henry often found himself required to listen to fractious complaints of old Roddington's innovations, of Lawford's negligence—of roses that would not blow at the gardener's bidding,—of London booksellers, who would not send down the new novels in proper time,—of old women who refused to be cured of their rheumatism, and young ones who declined becoming scholars at her platting school. His own misdemeanours, too, were frequent and unpardonable. He had a knack of carrying off the very volume she was reading,—of losing her place, and leaving his own marked by leaving the unfortunate book sprawling upon its face on the table, like a drunkard on the ground. He often kept her waiting five minutes for her ride, or twenty for dinner; would stop and detain her, in their walks, while he corrected the practical blunders of some superannuated hedger and ditcher; had a trick of whipping off the thistle-tops while driving her in the garden chair, to the imminent indignation of her ponies; was sometimes seen to nod after dinner, when the morning's run had been a good one; and had an opinion of his own in politics, which precisely reversed those of Lady Mandeville and her coterie.—In a word, he was often very 'tiresome!' and whenever the fair Henrietta was excited into pronouncing that sentence on his proceedings, it was a signal for ill-humour for the remainder of the day; or rather till the spoiled child would condescend to be coaxed into a more satisfactory mood of mind."

But we are more struck with the appalling fidelity of the following scene in a tale named the Divorcee. The heroine, Amelia, is married in early life to a Mr. Allanby, "a man with 10,000l. per annum, and a grey pigtail:" the match turns out a miserable one: Amelia's dishonour by Vavasor Kendal, her divorce, and Mr. Allanby's death are told in a few pages—the guilty pair, Vavasor and Amelia, flee to Paris, and we are introduced to this faithful picture of Parisian vice:—

"The infirmity of Amelia's health served at least to release her from those forced efforts of gaiety which had recoiled so heavily on her feelings. Her day for vivacity was gone.—In an atmosphere whose buoyancy is exhausted, the feather falls as heavily as the plummet.

"But instead of commiserating the languor and feebleness extending from the physical to the moral existence of the invalid, Vavasor only made her dulness an excuse for flying to the relief of society more congenial with his own tendency to vice and folly. Lady Emlyn who in London was the leader of a coterie devoted to the excitements of high-play,—a coterie that felt privileged to inveigh with horror against 'gambling,' because its members ventured their thousands on games where cunning tempers the fortuities of chance,—on the manoeuvres of écarté and whist instead of the dare-all risks of hazard and rouge-et-noir,—had now removed her card-table from Grosvenor-square to a splendid hotel in the Rue Rivoli; where she had the honour of assembling, twice a week, a larger proportion of the idle and licentious of the exclusive caste, than could be found in any other suite of drawing-rooms in civilized Europe. Her salon was in fact crowded with busy ranks of those swindlers of distinction who, in opposition to their brethren of lower pretensions, (the chevaliers d'industrie), ought surely to be termed the chevaliers de la paresse. Among these, the brilliant air and lively effrontery of Captain Kendal secured him a warm acceptance; and by frequenting the circle of Lady Emlyn, he had not only the gratification of escaping from the insipid mediocrity of the home his vices had created, but acquired the power of indulging in others which were now still dearer to his heart.

"Vavasor Kendal was an expert player. Like other frigid egotists, his head and heart were always at leisure; and his successes had been the means, on more than one occasion, of extending his means of disgraceful enjoyment. At least, however, his career lay on the verge of a precipice; for playing at a stake beyond the limit of his fortune, a single faltering step might at any hour precipitate him into an abyss of shame and ruin. Amelia was often tempted to doubt whether she had more cause to dread that intoxication of triumph, which induced him to still further excesses, or the reverses tending to aggravate the violence of temper to which she was an habitual victim. The fluctuating fortunes of the gamester,—his losses or gains,—were equally a source of suffering to herself. But the Carnival was drawing to a close; she soon began ardently to wish that his sister might grow weary of the increasing dulness of the French capital, and migrate among other swallows of the season, in search of new pleasures.

"Long had she been in expectation of an announcement to this effect, when one night,—a cold cheerless night in March,—Vavasor exceeded even his ordinary period of absence. The habitually dissolute of Paris rarely keep late hours. Vice does not form with them, as with the English roue, an occasional excess, but is consistent and regular in its habits. Captain Kendal usually returned home between two and three; and Amelia was accustomed to sit up, and by her own services lighten the labours of their scanty establishment. It was she, the invalid, who was careful to keep up light and fire for the tyrant of the domestic hearth.

"But on this occasion two o'clock came,—three, four, five o'clock,—and no Vavasor. Hour after hour she listened to the chime of the gaudy timepiece decorating their shabby apartment; and while the night advanced, in all its chilly, lonely, comfortless protraction, shivered as she added new logs to the dying embers, and as she hoped or despaired of his return, alternately replaced the veilleuse by candles, the candles by a veilleuse. She had already assumed her night-apparel; and alter wandering like an unquiet spirit from her own apartment to the sitting-room and back again, a thousand, thousand times,—after reclining her exhausted frame and throbbing head against the door of the ante-room, in the trust of catching the sound of his well-known step upon the stairs, she threw herself down on the sofa for a moment's respite. But in a few minutes she started up again.—Surely that was his voice, which reached her from some passenger in the street below, some passenger humming an air from the new Opera, according to Vavasor's custom, when returning flushed with the excitement of success? Again and hurriedly did she prepare for his reception,—again place his chair by the fire, his slippers beside it; and stand with a beating heart and suspended breath, to await the entrance of the truant. But, no! it was not him. The wanderer had hastened onwards to some happier home. The street was quiet again. She would take a book and strive to beguile the tediousness of suspense.

"Dreary indeed is that hour of the twenty-four which may be said to afford the true division between night and day; when even the latest watcher has retired to rest, while the earliest artisans scarcely yet rouse themselves for the renewal of their struggle with existence;—when even the studious, the sorrowing, and the dissipated, close their over-wearied eyes;—and when those who 'do lack, and suffer hunger,' enjoy that Heaven-vouchsafed stupor affording the only interim to their consciousness of want and woe. The winds whistle more shrilly in the stillness of that lonely hour. Man and beast are in their lair, and unearthly things alone seem stirring;—the good genius glides with a holy and hallowing influence through the tranquil dwelling of virtue; the demon grins and gibbers in the deserted but reeking chambers of the vicious. Even sorrow has phantoms of its own; and when Amelia found herself a lonely watcher in the stillness of night, the kind voice of old Allanby,—the voice that was wont of yore to bid her speak her bosom's wish that it might be granted,—often seemed creeping into the inmost cell of her ear. She could fancy him close beside her,—taunting her,—touching her,—till, starting from her seat, she strove to shake off the hideous delusion. Sometimes the soft cordial tones of her mother,—her mother, who was in the grave,—seemed again dispensing those lessons of virtue of which her own life had afforded so pure an example: sometimes the playful caresses of her boys seemed to grow warm upon her lips—around her neck. Yes! she could hear them, see them:—little Charles, who, in his very babyhood, had been accustomed to uplift his tiny arm in championship of his own dear mother;—Digby, the soft, tender, loving infant, whose every look was a smile, whose every action an endearment!—And now they appeared to pass before her as strangers; changed—matured—enlightened;—without one word of fondness—one gesture of recognition!

"From such meditations, how horrible to start up amid the dreariness of night, nor find a human heart unto which to appeal for comfort,—a human voice from which to claim reply in annihilation of the spell that transfixed her mind. The cold cheerless room, the flickering light, the desolation that was around her, struck more heavily than ever on her heart. 'Oh! that this were an omen!' she cried, with clasping hands, as she listened to the howling of the wind upon the lofty staircase leading to their remote apartments. Drawing closer over her bosom the wrapper by which she attempted to exclude the piercing night-air, Amelia smiled at the thought of the chilliness of the grave,—of the grave, where the heart beats not, and the fixed glassy eye is incapable of tears.

"'I shall lie among the multitudes of a strange country,' faltered she; 'there will be no one to point out with officious finger to my sons, the dishonoured resting-place of their mother,—their divorced mother! Vavasor will be freed from his bondage—free to choose anew, and commence H more auspicious career. But for me he might have been a different being. It is I who have hardened his heart and seared his mind. And oh! may Heaven in its mercy touch them,—that he may deal gently with me during the last short remnant of our union!'

"A harsh sound interrupted her contemplations;—the grating of his key in the outer door,—of his step in the ante-room. Mechanically she rose, and advanced to meet the truant who had kept her watching,—who had so often kept her watching,—so often been forgiven. A momentary glimpse of his countenance convinced her that he was in no mood even to wish for indulgence. His brow was black—his eyes red and glaring. After a terrified pause, she tendered him her assistance to unclasp his cloak; but with a deadly execration he rejected the offer.