“How proud we are!” cried Miss Perkins, sarcastically. Leonard assented to the sarcasm by his looks; but Allen declared he liked proper pride, and seemed to think that Lucy’s was of this species.
An argument might have ensued, if a collation, as Mr. Ludgate called it, had not appeared at this critical moment. Of what it consisted, and how genteelly and gallantly our hero did the honours of his collation, we forbear to relate; but one material circumstance we must not omit, as on this, perhaps more than even on his gentility and gallantry, depended the fortune of the day. In rummaging over a desk to find a corkscrew, young Ludgate took occasion to open and shake a pocket-book, from which fell a shower of bank notes. What effect they produced upon his fair one, and on her mother, can be best judged of by the event. Miss Belle Perkins, after this domiciliary visit, consented to go with our hero on Sunday to Kensington Gardens, Monday to Sadler’s Wells, Tuesday on the water, Wednesday to the play, Thursday the Lord knows to what ball, Friday to Vauxhall, and on Saturday to—the altar!
Some people thought the young lady and gentleman rather precipitate; but these were persons who, as the bride justly observed, did not understand any thing in nature of a love match. Those who have more liberal notions, and a more extensive knowledge of the human heart, can readily comprehend how a lady may think a man so odious at one minute, that she could not touch him with a pair of tongs, and so charming the next, that she would die a thousand deaths for him, and him alone. Immediately after the ceremony was performed, Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate went down in the hoy to Margate, to spend their honeymoon in style. Their honeymoon, alas! could not be prolonged beyond the usual bounds. Even the joys of Margate could not be eternal, and the day came too soon when our happy pair were obliged to think of returning home. Home! With what different sensations different people pronounce and hear that word pronounced! Mrs. Leonard Ludgate’s home in Cranbourne-alley appeared to her, as she scrupled not to declare, an intolerable low place, after Margate. The stipulated alterations, her husband observed, had been made in the house, but none of them had been executed to her satisfaction. The expedient of the dark passage was not found to succeed: a thorough wind, from the front and back doors, ran along it when either or both were left open to admit light; and this wicked wind, not content with running along the passage, forced its way up and down stairs, made the kitchen chimney smoke, and rendered even the more creditabler apartments scarcely habitable. Chimney doctors were in vain consulted: the favourite dark passage was at length abandoned, and the lady, to her utter discomfiture, was obliged to pass through the shop.
To make herself amends for this mortification, she insisted upon throwing down the partition between the dining-room and her own bedchamber, that she might have one decent apartment at least fit for a rout. It was to no purpose that her friend Lucy, who was called in to assist in making up furniture, represented that this scheme of throwing bedchamber and dining-room into one would be attended with some inconveniences; for instance, that Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate would be obliged, in consequence of this improvement, to sleep in half of the maid’s garret, or to sit up all night. This objection was overruled by Mrs. Ludgate, whose genius, fertile in expedients, made every thing easy, by the introduction of a bed in the dining-room, in the shape of a sofa. The newly-enlarged apartment, she observed, would thus answer the double purposes of show and utility; and, as soon as the supper and card tables should be removed, the sofa-bed might be let down. She asserted that the first people in London manage in this way. Leonard could not contradict his lady, because she had a ready method of silencing him, by asking how he could possibly know any thing of life who had lived all his days, except Sundays, in Cranbourne-alley? Then, if any one of his father’s old notions of economy by chance twinged his conscience, Belle very judiciously asked how he ever came to think of her for a wife? “Since you have got a genteel wife,” said she, “it becomes you to live up to her notions, and to treat her as she and her friends have a right to expect. Before I married you, sir, none of the Perkins’s were in trade themselves, either directly or indirectly; and many’s the slights and reproaches I’ve met with from my own relations and former acquaintances, since my marriage, on account of the Ludgates being all tradesfolks; to which I always answer, that my Leonard is going to wash his hands of trade himself, and to make over all concern in the haberdashery line and shop to the young man below stairs, who is much better suited to such things.”
By such speeches as these, alternately piquing and soothing the vanity of her Leonard, our accomplished wife worked him to her purposes. She had a rout once a week; and her room was so crowded, that there was scarcely a possibility of breathing. Yet, notwithstanding all this, she one morning declared, with a burst of tears, she was the most miserable woman in the world. And why? Because her friend, Mrs. Pimlico, Miss Coxeater that was, had a house in Weymouth-street; whilst she was forced to keep on being buried in Cranbourne-alley. Mr. Ludgate was moved by his wife’s tears, and by his own ambition, and took a house in Weymouth-street. But before they had been there six weeks, the fair one was again found bathed in tears. And why? “Because,” said Belle, “because, Mr. Ludgate, the furniture of this house is as old as Methusalem’s; and my friend, Mrs. Pimlico, said yesterday that it was a shame to be seen: and so to be sure it is, compared with her own, which is spick and span new. Yet why should she pretend to look down upon me in point of furniture, or any thing? Who was she, before she was married? Little Kitty Coxeater, as we always called her at the dancing school; and nobody ever thought of comparing her, in point of gentility, with Belle Perkins! Why, she is as ugly as sin! though she is my friend, I must acknowledge that; and, if she had all the clothes in the world, she would never know how to put any of them on; that’s one comfort. And, as every body says, to be sure she never would have got a husband but for her money. And, after all, what sort of a husband has she got? A perfumer, indeed! a man with a face like one of his own wash-balls, all manner of colours. I declare, I would rather have gone without to the end of my days than have married Mr. Pimlico.”
“I cannot blame you there, my dear,” said Mr. Ludgate; “for to be sure Mr. Pimlico, much as he thinks of himself and his country house, has as little the air of—the air of fashion as can be well conceived.”
Leonard Ludgate made an emphatic pause in this speech; and surveyed himself in a looking-glass with much complacency, whilst he pronounced the word fashion. He, indeed, approved so much of his wife’s taste and discernment, in preferring him to Mr. Pimlico, that he could not at this moment help inclining to follow her judgment respecting the furniture. He acceded to her position, that the Ludgates ought to appear at least no shabbier than the Pimlicos. The conclusion was inevitable: Leonard, according to his favourite maxim of “Spend to-day, and spare to-morrow,” agreed that they might new furnish the house this year, and pay for it the next. This was immediately done; and the same principle was extended through all their household affairs, as far as the tradesmen concerned would admit of its being carried into practice.
By this means, Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate were not for some time sensible of the difficulties they were preparing for themselves. They went on vying with the Pimlicos, and with all their new acquaintance, who were many of them much richer than themselves; and of this vain competition there was no end. Those who estimate happiness not by the real comforts or luxuries which they enjoy, but by comparison between themselves and their neighbours, must be subject to continual mortification and discontent. Far from being happier than they were formerly, Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate were much more miserable after their removal to Weymouth-street. Was it not better to be the first person in Cranbourne-alley than the last in Weymouth-street? New wants and wishes continually arose in their new situation. They must live like other people. Everybody, that is, everybody in Weymouth-street, did so and so; and, therefore, they must do the same. They must go to such a place, or they must have such a thing, not because it was in itself necessary or desirable, but because everybody, that is, everybody of their acquaintance, did or had the same. Even to be upon a footing with their new neighbours was a matter of some difficulty; and then merely to be upon an equality, merely to be admitted and suffered at parties, is awkward and humiliating. Noble ambition prompted them continually to aim at distinction. The desire to attain il poco piu—the little more, stimulates to excellence, or betrays to ruin, according to the objects of our ambition. No artist ever took more pains to surpass Raphael or Correggio than was taken by Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate to outshine Mr. and Mrs. Pimlico. And still what they had done seemed nothing: what they were to do occupied all their thoughts. No timid economical fears could stop or even startle them in the road to ruin. Faithful to his maxim, our hero denied himself nothing. If, for a moment, the idea that any thing was too expensive suggested itself, his wife banished care by observing, “We need not pay for it now. What signifies it, since we need not think of paying for it till next year?” She had abundance of arguments of similar solidity, adapted to all occasions. Sometimes the thing in question was such a trifle it could not ruin anybody. “‘Tis but a guinea! ‘Tis but a few shillings!” Sometimes it was a sort of thing that could not ruin anybody, because “‘Tis but for once and away!” ‘Tis but is a most dangerous thing! How many guineas may be spent upon ‘tis but, in the course of one year, in such a city as London!
Bargains! excellent bargains! were also with our heroine admirable pleas for expense. “We positively must buy this, my dear; for it would be a sin to let such a bargain slip through one’s fingers. Mrs. Pimlico paid twice as much for what is not half as good. ‘Twould be quite a shame to one’s good sense to miss such a bargain!” Mrs. Ludgate was one of those ladies who think it is more reasonable to buy a thing because it is a bargain than because they want it: she farther argued, “If we don’t want it, we may want it:” and this was a satisfactory plea.
Under the head bargains we must not forget cheap days. Messrs. Run and Raffle advertised a sale of old shop goods, with the catching words—cheap days! Everybody crowded to throw away their money on cheap days; and, amongst the rest, Mrs. Ludgate.