when courtship was of a more refined character, its language was still artificial, being fashioned upon the models of Greece and Italy. In this case, while the enamoured parties shivered under the dripping damp chill of an English December sky, they professed to talk about Arcadian bowers, and to fancy themselves among groves of blooming myrtles- "Where spring perpetual leads the laughing hours, The spicy gales of Paphos were quoted by the lover, while his teeth chattered in the face of an icy north-eastern blast. To finish the picture, we must fancy the solemn entrances and exits of the parties, much like the measured steps of an antique choral dance, the low and profound congees, the bowings of the gentleman, and the demure but blushing slowly sinking courtesies of the lady, so much in character, and so much in keeping with the stateliness of the tight-laced, hooped, and powdered perriwig, and those formal harangues which, in the present day, so greatly excite an irreverent mirth when we read them in the institute of a Chesterfield or a Richardson. The following verses, by Lord Chesterfield, are appropriate to this chapter. He was Cupid's master of the ceremonies at this period: "Would you engage the lovely fair? Verse were but vain, the muses fail, Attentions by attentions gain, If a young lady, thus prematurely launched uncontaminated perhaps into the world, and had secured the grand aim, a good settlement, although not equal to the many, many thousands of a Lady Compton, she then displayed the effects of her education and her habits, upon a more extensive scale, and plunged at once into the fashionable vortex proportionate to her means, her lack of moral and intellectual resources. A busy whirl of daily variety being necessary to occupy the emptiness of her mind, she dashes upon the town on a round of insipid visits in a carriage, with four tawdry, powdered, and laced footmen clinging thereto; and, in paying a visit, she enters a house with as much bluster as if she meant to fire it, and departs with the same hurried demeanour as if she had stolen something.* When she was obliged to stay at home, she regaled herself with frequent libations of tea, sometimes qualified with more vile or potent liquers disguised under gentle appellations.† When her female friends dropped in, the scandal of the day commenced, and reputations, which really might want some mending, were completely torn by those loose-tongued savages into shreds and tatters, because they were in general incapable of employing their "unruly members" upon more dignified and more charitable subjects. When she had her levee, the dashing... rake and notorious profligate had free access, and the lew'd jest or double entendres flew thick and fast, and scarcely raised the fashionable fan to a single cheek.‡ Happy was it, if these venial sentences fell still-born as soon as uttered : "Or, like as the snow falls in the river, "A married lady," according to Cibber, "may have men at her toilette, and invite them to dinner, or appoint them to a party in a stage box at the play, engross the conversation there, call them by their Christian names, talk louder than the players; from thence jaunt it into the city, take a frolicksome supper at an Indian house, perhaps in the gaiete-du-cœur, toast a pretty fellow. Then clatter again to the west end, break with the morning into an assembly, crowd to the hazard table, throw a familiar levant upon some sharp lurking man of quality, and, if he demand his money, turn it off with a laugh agreeable to the old maxim in a debate, 'when you want an argument try to raise a laugh,' and cry out, you'll owe it him to vex him." "§ This gambling might be characterised as the greatest female vice of the whole century. But a lady's debts of honour could not always be thus laughed away; on the contrary, the "sharp lurking man of quality" had often his own ends in view, and many bankrupt female gamesters had to compound with their creditors at the expense of their honour and their domestic happiness. Many of the plays and tales of the period turn upon this very delicate and critical point. A day so lavishly and so worthlessly spent, necessarily borrowed, or rather stolen largely from the night, late hours, therefore, became fashionable, although they were regarded at first with wonder and alarm. Oft times * Tatler, No. 109. † Congreve's "Way of the World." a highly fashionable lady did not return from her racketty tour before two o'clock. The more sober part of the upper classes had now adopted late hours, not retiring to bed before eleven o'clock. A fashionable lady patronized French milliners, French hairdressers, and Italian opera singers. She loved tall footmen, and turbaned negro boys; she doated upon monkeys, paroquets, and lap-dogs; was a perfect critic in old China and India trinkets: and could not exist without a raffle or a sale. And, according to Otway, she also kept squirrels in cages, which they occasionally enlivened by the sprightly tinkling of small silver bells. In the year 1834, Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley published a volume, entitled "London at Night, and other Poems;" one of these elegant productions is called "The Careless Lady:" it well applies to the reigns under review. It thus begins, her lady's maid is the speaker: "Lady, lady, how lik'st thou this weary life, This strange tissue of pleasure, and pain, and strife? Or art thou mournful-or art thou gay?" Being thus urged, the lady answers, that she is neither merry nor sad : "I pray thee to pardon, my mind's very bad mood, The lady is then asked whether she loves hunting or hawking: "Or dost thou love better the champaign," &c. To all which she answers, definitively and positively, for the last time: "Thou art wrong-thou art wrong-oh! how sorely thou'rt wrong, In Courtenay's "Memoirs of the Life of Sir William Temple," is the following extract from a letter of Mrs. Dorothy Osborne to Mr. Temple, whom he afterward married :* and who made as good a wife, as her sense and affection, as a mistress promised; it finely displays the habits and manners of the period; that shrewd and excellent lady writes: "There are a great many ingredients must go to the making one happy in a husband. My cousin Fr- says, our humour must agree; and, to do that, he must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used that kind of company; that is, he must not be so much a country gentleman, as to understand nothing but hawks and dogs,* and be fonder of either than his wife; nor of the next sort of men, whose time reaches no farther than to be justices of the peace, and once in his life, high sheriff; who reads no book but statutes, and studies nothing, but how to make a speech interlarded with Latin, that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them, rather than persuade them into quietness. He must not be a thing, that began the world in a free-school; was sent from thence to the University, and is at his farthest, when he reaches the Inns of Court; has no acquaintance, but those of his forms in these places; speaks the French he has picked out of old laws, and admires nothing but the stories he has heard of the revels that were kept there before his time. He must not be a town gallant neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary, that cannot imagine how one hour should be spent without company, unless it be in sleeping; that makes court to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and is laughed at equally. Nor a travelled Mounsieur, whose head is feathered inside and outside; that can talk of nothing but dances and duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes, when every body else dies with cold to see him. He must not be a fool of any sort, nor peevish, nor ill-natured, nor proud, nor covetous; and to all this must be added, that he must love me, and I him, as much as we are capable of loving. Without all this, his fortune being ever so great, would not satisfy me; and with it, a very moderate one, would keep me from ever repenting my disposal."† This extract, as the reviewer of the work justly * Sir William Temple was ambassador at the Hague; his concern in public affairs extended from 1661 to 1680. The great De Witt wrote to Lord Arlington, to say, "that it was impossible to send a minister of greater capacity, or more proper for the genius and temper of the nation, than Sir W. Temple." * Mrs. Dorothy showed her masculine understanding, in preferring large mastiffs, the larger the better-and Irish grey hounds, before all the most exact little dogs, that ever lady played withal :" of course, she did not lap them. Her good sense told her, a lady's lap was only for children. † Temple had, in his second embassy at the Hague, an allowance of £100 a week, besides a very rich buffet of plate, with the King of Great Britain's arms upon it. So that there was not any other ambassador's table, where so much was to be seen, nor which was covered with such large dishes, and such fine contrivances for fruit, and for sweat meats. WIQUEFORT. It appears he had never, of his own, more than £1500 a year; and, latterly, he divided his property with his son. He was a temperate man, a wonder for that period; he followed the maxim of Epictetus, who reputed a man a drunkard, who exceeded three measures. Sir William's stint was, one glass for myself, one for my friends, and one for my enemies. Having mentioned a maxim of one of the sober ancients, perhaps the temperance reader may be glad to hear of another; Anarchasis, who said "the first draught for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, the fourth for madness." observes, shows that "Mrs. Dorothy's head was made up with some other furniture than peacock's feathers, and sarsnet, (gro de nap ;) it would, without alteration, be worthy the mouth of one of Congreve's or Cibber's masculine's virgins." I suppose few of my readers need be informed, that marriage, under the Catholic religion, is one of their sacraments. Which religion, being destroyed by Henry VIII., made a considerable change in the forms of marriage, for it was no longer considered a sacrament. The following is a curious description and account of a lady's wedding clothes : WEDDING CLOTHES.--" The wedding clothes of Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, 1550, a present from her husband, John Bowyer, Esq. of Lincoln's Inn : "Wedyn apparell, bought for my wyffe Elizabeth Draper, the younger, of Camberwell, against 17 die Junii anno dominii 1550, with dispensalls. First.-4 ells of tawney taffeta, at 11s. 6d. the ell, for the Venetian gowne. Item.-7 yards of silk chamlett crymsyn, at 7s. 6d. the yard, for a kyrtle. Item.-1 yard and a half of tawney velvet, to guard the Venetian gowne, at 15 the yard. Item.--half a yard of crymsyn satyn, for the fore Item.-8 yards of Russel's black, at 4s. 6d. the yard, slyves. for a Dutch gowne. Item.-half a yard tawney satyn. Item. a yard and a quarter of velvet black, to guard the Dutch gowne. 8. 46 d. 52 6 22 6 68 35 5 17 8 Item.-6 yards of tawney damaske, at 11s. the yard 66 pettycoate with pleites. 20 271 4 |