The Jessamy Bride

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“If the scenes are ungenteel,” said he, “it is because nature is made up of ungenteel things. Your modern gentleman is, to my mind, much less interesting than your ungenteel person; and I believe that Tony Lumpkin when admirably represented, as he will be by Mr. Quick, will be a greater favourite with all who come to the playhouse than the finest gentleman who ever uttered an artificial sentiment to fall exquisitely on the ear of a boarding-school miss. So, by my faith! I'll not interfere with his romping.”

He was fluent and decisive on this point, as he was on every other point on which he had made up his mind. He only stammered and stuttered when he did not know what he was about to say, and this frequently arose from his over-sensitiveness in regard to the feelings of others—a disability which could never be laid to the charge of Dr. Johnson, who was, in consequence, delightfully fluent.

On the evening of the third rehearsal of the play with the amended cast, he went to Reynolds's house in Leicester Square to dine. He knew that the Horneck family would be there, and he looked forward with some degree of apprehension to his meeting with Mary. He felt that she might think he looked for some explanation of her strange words spoken when he was by her side at the Pantheon. But he wanted no explanation from her. The words still lay as a burden upon his heart, but he felt that it would pain her to attempt an explanation of them, and he was quite content that matters should remain as they were. Whatever the words might have meant, it was impossible that they could mean anything that might cause him to think of her with less reverence and affection.

He arrived early at Reynolds's house, but it did not take him long to find out that he was not the first arrival. From the large drawingroom there came to his ears the sound of laughter—such laughter as caused him to remark to the servant—

“I perceive that Mr. Garrick is already in the house, Ralph.”

“Mr. Garrick has been here with the young ladies for the past half-hour, sir,” replied Ralph.

“I shouldn't wonder if, on inquiry, it were found that he has been entertaining them,” said Goldsmith.

Ralph, who knew perfectly well what was the exact form that the entertainment assumed, busied himself hanging up the visitor's hat.

The fact was that, for the previous quarter of an hour, Garrick had been keeping Mary Horneck and her sister, and even Miss Reynolds, in fits of laughter by his burlesque account of Goldsmith's interview with an amanuensis who had been recommended to him with a view of saving him much manual labour. Goldsmith had told him the story originally, and the imagination of Garrick was quite equal to the duty of supplying all the details necessary for the burlesque. He pretended to be the amanuensis entering the room in which Goldsmith was supposed to be seated working laboriously at his “Animated Nature.”

“Good morning, sir, good morning,” he cried, pretending to take off his gloves and shake the dust off them with the most perfect self-possession, previous to laying them in his hat on a chair. “Now mind you don't sit there, Dr. Goldsmith,” he continued, raising a warning finger. A little motion of his body, and the pert amanuensis, with his mincing ways, was transformed into the awkward Goldsmith, shy and self-conscious in the presence of a stranger, hastening with clumsy politeness to get him a chair, and, of course, dragging forward the very one on which the man had placed his hat. “Now, now, now, what are you about?”—once more Garrick was the amanuensis. “Did not I warn you to be careful about that chair, sir? Eh? I only told you not to sit in it? Sir, that excuse is a mere quibble—a mere quibble. This must not occur again, or I shall be forced to dismiss you, and where will you be then, my good sir? Now to business, Doctor; but first you will tell your man to make me a cup of chocolate—with milk, sir—plenty of milk, and two lumps of sugar—plantation sugar, sir; I flatter myself that I am a patriot—none of your foreign manufactures for me. And now that I think on't, your laundress would do well to wash and iron my ruffles for me; and mind you tell her to be careful of the one with the tear in it”—this shouted half-way out of the door through which he had shown Goldsmith hurrying with the ruffles and the order for the chocolate. Then came the monologue of the amanuensis strolling about the room, passing his sneering remarks at the furniture—opening a letter which had just come by post, and reading it sotto voce. It was supposed to be from Filby, the tailor, and to state that the field-marshal's uniform in which Dr. Goldsmith meant to appear at the next masked ball at the Haymarket would be ready in a few days, and to inquire if Dr. Goldsmith had made up his mind as to the exact orders which he meant to wear, ending with a compliment upon Dr. Goldsmith's good taste and discrimination in choosing a costume which was so well adapted to his physique, and a humble suggestion that it should be worn upon the occasion of the first performance of the new comedy, when the writer hoped no objection would be raised to the hanging of a board in front of the author's box with “Made by Filby” printed on it.