A PROVINCIAL REPUTATION.
I once resided in a country town; I will not specify whether that town was Devizes or Doncaster, Beverley or Brighton: I think it highly reprehensible in a writer to be personal, and scarcely more venial do I consider the fault of him who presumes to be local. I will, however, state, that my residence lay among the manufacturing districts; but lest any of my readers should be misled by that avowal, I must inform them, that in my estimation all country towns, from the elegant Bath, down to the laborious Bristol, are (whatever their respective polite or mercantile inhabitants may say to the contrary), positively, comparatively, and superlatively, manufacturing towns!
Club-rooms, ball-rooms, card-tables, and confectioners' shops, are the factories; and gossips, both male and female, are the labouring classes. Norwich boasts of the durability of her stuffs; the manufacturers I allude to weave a web more flimsy. The stuff of tomorrow will seldom be the same that is publicly worn to-day; and were it not for the zeal and assiduity of the labourers, we should want novelties to replace the stuff that is worn out hour by hour.
No man or woman who ever ventures to deviate from the beaten track should ever live in a country town. The gossips all turn from the task of nibbling one another, and the character of the lusus naturae becomes public property. I am the mother of a family, and I am known to have written romances. My husband, in an evil hour, took a fancy to a house at a watering-place, which, by way of distinction, I shall designate by the appellation of Pumpington Wells: there we established ourselves in the year 1800.
The manufacturers received us with a great show of civility, exhibiting to us the most recent stuff, and discussing the merits of the newest fabrications. We, however, were not used to trouble ourselves about matters that did not concern us, and we soon offended them.
We turned a deaf ear to all evil communications. If we were told that Mr. A., "though fond of show, starved his servants," we replied, we did not wish to listen to the tale. If we heard that Mr. B. though uxorious in public, was known to beat his wife in private, we cared not for the matrimonial anecdote. When maiden ladies assured us that Mrs. C. cheated at cards, we smiled, for we had no dealings with her; and when we were told that Mrs. D. never paid her bills, we repeated not the account to the next person we met; for as we were not her creditors, her accounts concerned us not.
We settled ourselves, much to our satisfaction, in our provincial abode: it was a watering-place, which my husband, as a bachelor, had frequented during its annual season.
As a watering-place he knew it well. Such places are vastly entertaining to visiters, having no "local habitation," and no "name"—caring not for the politics of the place, and where, if any thing displeases them, they may pay for their lodgings, order post-horses, and never suffer their names to appear in the arrival book again.
But with those who live at watering-places, it is quite another affair. For the first six months we were deemed a great acquisition. There were two or three sets in Pumpington Wells—the good, the bad, and the indifferent. The bad left their cards, and asked us to dances, the week we arrived; the indifferent knocked at our door in the first month; and even before the end of the second, we were on the visiting lists of the good. We knew enough of society to be aware that it is impolitic to rush into the embraces of all the arms that are extended to receive strangers; but feeling no wish to affront any one in return for an intended civility, we gave card for card; and the doors of good, bad, and indifferent, received our names.
All seemed to infer, that the amicable gauntlet, which had been thrown down, having been courteously taken up, the ungloved hands were forthwith to be grasped in token of good fellowship; we had left our names for them, and by the invitations that poured in upon us, they seemed to say with Juliet—
"And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself."
No man, not even a provincial, can visit every body; and it seems but fair, that if a selection is to be made, all should interchange the hospitalities of life with those persons in whose society they feel the greatest enjoyment.
Many a dinner, therefore, did we decline—many a route did we reject; my husband's popularity tottered, and the inviters, though they no longer dinned their dinners in our ears, and teazed us with their "teas," vowed secret vengeance, and muttered "curses, not loud, but deep."
I have hinted that we had no scandalous capabilities; and though slander flashed around us, we seldom admitted morning visiters, and our street-door was a non-conductor.
But our next door neighbours were maiden ladies, who had been younger, and, to use a common term of commiseration, had seen better days—by which, I mean the days of bloom, natural hair, partners, and the probability of husbands.
Their vicinity to us was an infinite comfort to the town, for those who were unable to gain admittance at our door to disturb our business and desires,
"For every man has business and desire,
Such as they are,"
were certain of better success at our neighbours', where they at least could gain some information about us "from eye-witnesses who resided on the spot."
My sins were numbered, so were my new bonnets; and for a time my husband was pitied, because "he had an extravagant wife;" but when it was ascertained that his plate was handsome, his dinner satisfactory in its removes, and comme il faut in its courses, those whose feet had never been within our door, saw clearly "how it must all end, and really felt for our trades-people."
I have acknowledged that I had written romances; the occupation was to me a source of amusement; and as I had been successful, my husband saw no reason why he should discourage me. A scribbling fool, in or out of petticoats, should be forbidden the use of pen, ink, and paper; but my husband had too much sense to heed the vulgar cry of "blue stocking." After a busy month passed in London, we saw my new novel sent forth to the public, and then returned to our mansion at Pumpington Wells.
As we drove up to our door, our virgin neighbours gazed on us, if possible, with more than their former interest. They wiped their spectacles; with glances of commiseration they saw us alight, and with unwearied scrutiny they witnessed the removal of our luggage from the carriage. We went out—every body stared at us—the people we did know touched the hands we extended, and hastened on as if fearful of infection; the people we did not know whispered as they passed us, and looked back afterwards; the men servants seemed full of mysterious flurry when we left our cards at the doors of acquaintances, and the maid-servants peeped at us up the areas; the shopkeepers came from their counters to watch us down the streets—and all was whispering and wonder.
I could not make it out; was it to see the authoress? No; I had been an authoress when they last saw me. Was it the brilliant success of my new work? It could be nothing else.
My husband met a maiden lady, and bowed to her; she passed on without deigning to notice him. I spoke to an insipid man who had always bored me with his unprofitable intimacy, and he looked another way! The next lady we noticed tossed her head, as if she longed to toss it at us; and the next man we met opened his eyes astonishingly wide, and said—
"Are you here! Dear me! I was told you could not show your—I mean, did not mean to return!"
There was evidently some mystery, and we determined to wait patiently for its developement. "If," said I, "it bodes us good, time will unravel it." "And if," said my husband, "it bodes us evil, some d—d good-natured friend will tell us all about it."
We had friends at Pumpington Wells, and good ones too, but no friend enlightened us; that task devolved upon an acquaintance, a little slim elderly man, so frivolous and so garrulous, that he only wanted a turban, some rouge, and a red satin gown, to become the most perfect of old women.
He shook his head simultaneously as he shook our hands, and his little grey eyes twinkled with delight, while he professed to feel for us both the deepest commiseration.
"You are cut," said he; "its all up with you in Pumpington Wells."
"Pray be explicit," said I faintly, and dreading some cruel calumny, or plot against my peace.
"You've done the most impolitic thing! the most hazardous"—
"Sir!" said my husband, grasping his cane.
"I lament it," said the little man, turning to me; "your book has done it for you."
I thought of the reviews, and trembled.
"How could you," continued our tormentor, "how could you put the Pumpington Wells people in your novel?"
"The Pumpington Wells people!—Nonsense; there are good and bad people in my novel, and there are good and bad people in Pumpington Wells; but you flatter the good, if you think that when I dipped my pen in praise, I limited my sketches to the virtuous of this place; and what is worse, you libel the bad if you assert that my sketches of vice were meant personally to apply to the vicious who reside here."
"I libel—I assert!" said the old lady-like little man; "not I!—every body says so!"
"You may laugh," replied my mentor and tormentor combined, "but personality can be proved against you; and all the friends and relations of Mr. Flaw declare you meant the bad man of your book for him."
"His friends and relations are too kind to him."
"Then you have an irregular character in your book, and Mrs. Blemish's extensive circle of intimates assert that nothing can be more pointed than your allusion to her conduct and her character."
"And pray what do these persons say about it themselves?"
"They are outrageous, and go about the town absolutely wild."
"Fitting the caps on themselves?"
The little scarecrow shook his head once more; and declaring that we should see he had spoken too true, departed, and then lamented so fluently to every body the certainty of our being cut, that every body began to believe him.
I have hinted that my bonnets and my husband's plate occasioned heartburnings: no—that is not a correct term, the heart has nothing to do with such exhalations—bile collects elsewhere.
Those who had conspired to pull my husband from the throne of his popularity, because their parties excited in us no party spirit, and we abstained from hopping at their hops, found, to their consternation, that when the novelty of my novel misdemeanour was at an end, we went on as if nothing had occurred. However, they still possessed heaven's best gift, the use of their tongues, they said of us everything bad which they knew to be false, and which they wished to see realized.
Their forlorn hope was our "extravagance." "Never mind," said one, "Christmas must come round, and then we shall see."
When once the match of insinuation is applied to the train of rumoured difficulties, the suspicion that has been smouldering for awhile bounces at once into a report, and very shortly its echo is bounced in every parlour in a provincial town.
Long bills, that had been accustomed to wait for payment until Christmas, now lay on my table at midsummer; and tradesmen, who drove dennetts to cottages once every evening, sent short civil notes, regretting their utter inability to make up a sum of money by Saturday night, unless I favoured them, by the bearer, with the sum of ten pounds, "the amount of my little account."
Dennett-driving drapers actually threatened to fail for the want of ten pounds!—pastry-cooks, who took their families regularly "to summer at the sea," assisted the counter-plot, and prematurely dunned my husband!
It is not always convenient to pay sums at midsummer, which we had been in the habit of paying at Christmas; if, however, a single applicant was refused, a new rumour of inability was started and hunted through the town before night. People walked by our house, looking up wistfully at the windows; others peeped down the area, to see what we had for dinner. One gentleman went to our butcher, to inquire how much we owed him; and one lady narrowly escaped a legal action, because when she saw a few pipkins lying on the counter of a crockery-ware man, directed to me, she incautiously said, in the hearing of one of my servants, "Are you paid for your pipkins?—ah, it's well if you ever get your money!"
Christmas came at last; bills were paid, and my husband did not owe a shilling in Pumpington Wells. Like the old ladies in the besieged city, the gossips looked at us, wondering when the havoc would begin.
Ho who mounts the ladder of life, treading step by step upon the identical footings marked out, may live in a provincial town. When we want to drink spa waters, or vary the scene, we now visit watering-places; but rather than force me to live at one again, "stick me up," as Andrew Fairservice says, in Rob Roy, "as a regimental target for ball-practice." We have long ceased to live in Pumpington.
Fleeting are the tints of the rainbow—perishable the leaf of the rose—variable the love of woman—uncertain the sunbeam of April; but naught on earth can be fleeting; so perishable, so variable, or so uncertain, as the popularity of a provincial reputation.
Monthly Magazine.