The prime advantage of Mrs. Tyler’s acquaintance to the Varley family, consisted in the circumstance that that lady and her daughter boarded at what they called one of the most fashionable houses in the city. Mrs. Tyler despised housekeeping; it confined one so to the mercy of servants, besides company made it so troublesome and expensive. The Miss Varleys could go and board at the same place in the winter, and Mrs. Tyler would be so very kind and condescending as to “take all the trouble of chaperoning them into the society of the ‘upper ten thousand,’ and nobody could with any certainty predict what advantages might accrue; perhaps a splendid settlement, perhaps”—I know not how many inducements she possessed, all of which sounded golden enough in the ears of the Miss Varleys when they made her acquaintance at —— Beach the season before, and insured for her what she intended, an invitation to the country when it was genteel to go into the country without such a bill of expense. The sphere in which Mrs. Tyler actually moved was only in the same pseudo-genteel orbit with the Mrs. Washington Potts’s, Mrs. De Perouk’s and a similar galaxy of inferior magnitude, to whose acquaintance and real claims to respect our shrewd and gifted countrywoman, has introduced so many delighted and instructed readers. Blessings on her simplicity, and on her two-edged satire; blessings on her mind and her pen, for holding up a mirror before the face of society, in which it may see not only its lineaments of loveliness, but also its deformities.
Mrs. Tyler was a very small, dried-up woman, if I may be tolerated for the expression, though a row of beautiful porcelain teeth displayed themselves whenever she parted her parched and skinny lips; her cheeks were most unnaturally rosy—I should have said rougey! A profusion of smooth and glossy ringlets adorned her head, and her whole dress was so in the extreme of fashion, there could have been, indeed, but a paltry difference between her “polar and equatorial diameter.” Brilliants sparkled in her gay caps, among the ribbons and roses; gems flashed on her withered hands; “tinkling ornaments, cauls, round tires like the moon, chains, and bracelets, and mufflers, bonnets and head-bands, and tablets, earrings and rings, changeable suits of apparel, mantles, and wimples, and crisping-pins, glasses, fine linen, hoods and veils,” figuratively speaking, the Prophet’s whole catalogue of a Judean toilette, was in requisition, with many modern inventions, at which a Judean maiden would have stood aghast, to make a vain old woman young again! O, miserable ambition!
Miss Elizabeth was large and masculine in all her proportions, with an ungraceful stoop in her shoulders, coarse and prominent features, staring blue eyes, a brilliant and exquisite complexion, and most unusually beautiful hair. Her manners were intended to be easy and nonchalant, while in truth, to the eyes of true refinement, they were unpardonably bold and rude. Miss Tyler had persuaded herself she was a wit, her sayings had sometimes occasioned so much laughter, and she delighted to use her fancied power everywhere, and on all occasions, shooting the shafts of her sarcasm and irony hither and thither without delicacy, civility, or mercy. She dressed gaudily and expensively, while her father drudged behind the counter of his “hardware and leather establishment,” early and late to support such enormous and unnecessary expenditures. She read novels “all night,” and was familiar with the fate of every hero and heroine, from those of Bulwer, Eugene Sue, and George Sand, down to the prettiest specimen of “yellow-covered literature” for sale in small retail beer-shops, or peddled in railroad cars by newsboys. She gloried in the unfeminine and unprincipled habit of laughing at and ridiculing people in their very presence, if their backs were turned, and especially country people; was strangely familiar with strangers; laughed and talked very loud in the streets, shops, and public conveyances, et cetera. Dear reader, I need not fill my outline more definitely; with a blush for the honor of my sex, I am compelled to admit there is more than one Elizabeth Tyler in “these degenerate days!”
Well, the next day after Mrs. Tyler and her daughter arrived Mrs. Varley gave a very extensive invitation to the ton of the village, to assemble at her house in the evening, to pay their respects and make the acquaintance of her most distinguished visiters. The invitation, of course, included Mr. Style, Mrs. Tower, and Jessie Lincoln, concerning whom they had unaccountably neglected to make any inquiries, strange as it may seem, when she was the object of such nervous anxiety.
From eight till nine, poor Charlotte sat on the sofa by the side of Miss Tyler, terribly dispirited, and eagerly watching for the announcement of the Rev. Mr. Style. Elizabeth rallied her in vain; she scarcely remembered to introduce her friend, and tried fruitlessly to be amused by Elizabeth’s coarse and unladylike satires on the really elegant company as they entered. By and by Charlotte and Elizabeth simultaneously started; Charlotte rose from her seat, and Miss Tyler suddenly seized her arm, as if to detain her till some surprise was explained, and leveled her quizzing-glass deliberately at a group who were that moment exchanging salutations with Mrs. Varley near the door.
“There is Mr. Style! that’s him! that splendid figure!” whispered Charlotte, who had neither eyes nor ears for any one else.
“Gracious, Charlotte Varley! what kind of company do you entertain, for mercy’s sake!” very audibly ejaculated Miss Tyler. “Upon my word, if there isn’t my mantuamaker, Jessie Lincoln, invited to a party to honor us, mamma! Isn’t that a pretty piece of impudence! Well, I did think you were genteel people, and decently aristocratic before—you Varleys!”
“Laud!” chimed the mamma, displaying her elegant row of porcelain, and fanning herself vigorously, “Who is the people that’s distinguished by such elustrious visiters as sewing-women, and takes ’em out into company? Don’t introduce us, Miss Varley!”
“Havn’t you got some tailoress girls, and school ma’ams stowed away somewhere, Lottie, that you are going to bring out, to give distinction to this mélange?” sneered Elizabeth, in a lower tone, with a most contemptuous smile, before Charlotte had time to recover from her confusion enough to apologize that the company was no more exclusively patrician.
“She is Mrs. Tower’s visiter,” stammered Charlotte, in a whisper, as Mrs. Tyler and Elizabeth rose from the sofa, and majestically walked a little aside, lest the despised mantuamaker should approach near enough to make an introduction inevitable.