I am speaking lightly—flippantly, if you please—about this old Mrs. Prior, with her hard, eager smile, her weazened face, her frowning look, her cruel voice; and yet, goodness knows, I could, if I liked, be serious as a sermonizer. Why, this woman had once red cheeks, and was well-looking enough, and told few lies, and stole no sherry, and felt the tender passions of the heart, and I daresay kissed the weak old beneficed clergyman her father very fondly and remorsefully that night when she took leave of him to skip round to the back garden-gate and run away with Mr. Prior. Maternal instinct she had, for she nursed her young as best she could from her lean breast, and went about hungrily, robbing and pilfering for them. On Sundays she furbished up that threadbare black silk gown and bonnet, ironed the collar, and clung desperately to church. She had a feeble pencil drawing of the vicarage in Dorsetshire, and silhouettes of her father and mother, which were hung up in the lodgings wherever she went. She migrated much: wherever she went she fastened on the gown of the clergyman of the parish; spoke of her dear father the vicar, of her wealthy and gifted brother the Master of Boniface, with a reticence which implied that Dr. Sargent might do more for his poor sister and her family, if he would. She plumed herself (oh! those poor moulting old plumes!) upon belonging to the clergy; had read a good deal of good sound old-fashioned theology in early life, and wrote a noble hand, in which she had been used to copy her father’s sermons. She used to put cases of conscience, to present her humble duty to the Rev. Mr. Green, and ask explanation of such and such a passage of his admirable sermon, and bring the subject round so as to be reminded of certain quotations of Hooker, Beveridge, Jeremy Taylor. I think she had an old commonplace book with a score of these extracts, and she worked them in very amusingly and dexterously into her conversation. Green would be interested: perhaps pretty young Mrs. Green would call, secretly rather shocked at the coldness of old Dr. Brown, the rector, about Mrs. Prior. Between Green and Mrs. Prior money transactions would ensue: Mrs. Green’s visits would cease: Mrs. Prior was an expensive woman to know. I remember Pye of Maudlin, just before he “went over,” was perpetually in Mrs. Prior’s back parlour with little books, pictures, medals, &c. &c.—you know. They called poor Jack a Jesuit at Oxbridge; but one year at Rome I met him (with a half-crown shaved out of his head, and a hat as big as Don Basilio’s); and he said, “My dear Batchelor, do you know that person at your lodgings? I think she was an artful creature! She borrowed fourteen pounds of me, and I forget how much of—seven, I think—of Barfoot, of Corpus, just—just before we were received. And I believe she absolutely got another loan from Pummel, to be able to get out of the hands of us Jesuits. Are you going to hear the Cardinal? Do—do go and hear him—everybody does: it’s the most fashionable thing in Rome.” And from this I opine that there are slyboots in other communions besides that of Rome.
Now Mamma Prior had not been unaware of the love passages between her daughter and the fugitive Bombay captain. Like Elizabeth, she called Captain Walkingham “villain” readily enough; but, if I know woman’s nature in the least (and I don’t), the old schemer had thrown her daughter only too frequently in the officer’s way, had done no small portion of the flirting herself, had allowed poor Bessy to receive presents from Captain Walkingham, and had been the manager and directress of much of the mischief which ensued. You see, in this humble class of life, unprincipled mothers will coax and wheedle and cajole gentlemen whom they suppose to be eligible, in order to procure an establishment for their darling children! What the Prioress did was done from the best motives of course. “Never—never did the monster see Bessy without me, or one or two of her brothers and sisters, and Jack and dear Ellen are as sharp children as any in England!” protested the indignant Mrs. Prior to me; “and if one of my boys had been grown up, Walkingham never would have dared to act as he did—the unprincipled wretch! My poor husband would have punished the villain as he deserved; but what could he do in his shattered state of health? Oh! you men,—you men, Mr. Batchelor! how unprincipled you are!”
“Why, my good Mrs. Prior,” said I, “you let Elizabeth come to my room often enough.”
“To have the conversation of her uncle’s friend, of an educated man, of a man so much older than herself! Of course, dear sir! Would not a mother wish every advantage for her child? and whom could I trust, if not you, who have ever been such a friend to me and mine?” asks Mrs. Prior, wiping her dry eyes with the corner of her handkerchief, as she stands by my fire, my monthly bills in hand,—written in her neat old-fashioned writing, and calculated with that prodigal liberality which she always exercised in compiling the little accounts between us. “Why, bless me!” says my cousin, little Mrs. Skinner, coming to see me once when I was unwell, and examining one of the just-mentioned documents,—“bless me! Charles, you consume more tea than all my family, though we are seven in the parlour, and as much sugar and butter,—well, it’s no wonder you are bilious!”
“But then, my dear, I like my tea so very strong,” says I; “and you take yours uncommonly mild. I have remarked it at your parties.”
“It’s a shame that a man should be robbed so,” cried Mrs. S.
“How kind it is of you to cry thieves, Flora!” I reply.
“It’s my duty, Charles!” exclaims my cousin. “And I should like to know who that great, tall, gawky red-haired girl in the passage is!”
Ah me! the name of the only woman who ever had possession of this heart was not Elizabeth; though I own I did think at one time that my little schemer of a landlady would not have objected if I had proposed to make Miss Prior Mrs. Batchelor. And it is not only the poor and needy who have this mania, but the rich, too. In the very highest circles, as I am informed by the best authorities, this match-making goes on. Ah woman—woman!—ah wedded wife!—ah fond mother of fair daughters! how strange thy passion is to add to thy titles that of mother-in-law! I am told, when you have got the title, it is often but a bitterness and a disappointment. Very likely the son-in-law is rude to you, the coarse, ungrateful brute! and very possibly the daughter rebels, the thankless serpent! And yet you will go on scheming: and having met only with disappointment from Louisa and her husband, you will try and get one for Jemima, and Maria, and down even to little Toddles coming out of the nursery in her red shoes! When you see her with little Tommy, your neighbour’s child, fighting over the same Noah’s ark, or clambering on the same rocking-horse, I make no doubt, in your fond silly head, you are thinking, “Will those little people meet some twenty years hence?” And you give Tommy a very large piece of cake, and have a fine present for him on the Christmas tree—you know you do, though he is but a rude, noisy child, and has already beaten Toddles, and taken her doll away from her, and made her cry. I remember, when I myself was suffering from the conduct of a young woman in—in a capital which is distinguished by a viceregal court—and from her heartlessness, as well as that of her relative, who I once thought would be my mother-in-law—shrieking out to a friend who happened to be spouting some lines from Tennyson’s Ulysses:—“By George! Warrington, I have no doubt that when the young syrens set their green caps at the old Greek captain and his crew, waving and beckoning him with their white arms and glancing smiles, and wheedling him with their sweetest pipes—I make no doubt, sir, that the mother syrens were behind the rocks (with their dyed fronts and cheeks painted, so as to resist water), and calling out—‘Now, Halcyone, my child, that air from the Pirata! Now, Glaukopis, dear, look well at that old gentleman at the helm! Bathykolpos, love, there’s a young sailor on the maintop, who will tumble right down into your lap if you beckon him!’ And so on—and so on.” And I laughed a wild shriek of despair. For I, too, have been on the dangerous island, and come away thence, mad, furious, wanting a strait-waistcoat.
And so, when a white-armed syren, named Glorvina, was bedevilling me with her all too tempting ogling and singing, I did not see at the time, but now I know, that her artful mother was egging that artful child on.