AGRESTILLA.
For the Table Book.
There is a story in the Rambler of a lady whom the great moralist calls Althea, who perversely destroyed all the satisfaction of a party of pleasure, by not only finding, but seeking for fault upon every occasion, and affecting a variety of frivolous fears and apprehensions without cause. Female follies, like “states and empires, have their periods of declension;” and nearly half a century has passed away since it has been deemed elegant, or supposed interesting, to scream at a spider, shudder in a boat, or assert, with vehemence of terror, that a gun, though ascertained not to be charged, may still “go off.” The tendency to fly from one extreme to the other has ever been the characteristic of weak minds, and the party of weak minds will always support itself by a considerable majority, both among women and men. Something may be done by those minor moralists, modestly termed essayists and novelists, who have brought wisdom and virtue to dwell in saloons and drawing-rooms. Mrs. H. More and Miss Edgeworth have pretty well written down the affectation of assuming “the cap, the whip, the masculine attire,” and the rage for varnishing and shoe-making has of itself subsided, by the natural effect of total incongruity between the means and the end. Ladies are now contented to be ladies, that is, rational beings of the softer sex, and do not affect to be artists or mechanics. Nevertheless, some peculiarities of affectation do from time to time shoot up into notice, and call for the pruning-knife of the friendly satirist.
Agrestilla is an agreeable, well-informed person of my own sex, from whose society I have derived great pleasure and advantage both in London and Paris. A few weeks since, she proposed to me to accompany her to spend some time in a small town in Normandy, for the benefit of country air: to this plan I acceded with great readiness; an apartment was secured by letter, and we proceeded on our journey.
I have lived too long in the world ever to expect unmixed satisfaction from any measure, and long enough never to neglect any precaution by which personal comfort is to be secured. To this effect I had represented, that perhaps it might be better to delay fixing on lodgings till we arrived, lest we should find ourselves bounded to the view of a market-place or narrow street, with, perchance, a butcher’s shop opposite our windows, and a tin-man or tallow-chandler next door to us. Agrestilla replied, that in London or Paris it was of course essential to one’s consideration in society to live in a fashionable neighbourhood, but that nobody minded those things “in the country.” In vain I replied, that consideration was not what I considered, but freedom from noise and bad smells: I was then laughed at for my fastidiousness,—“Who in the world would make difficulties about such trifles in the country, when one might be out of doors from morning till night!”
We arrived at the place of our destination; my mind expanded with pleasure at the sight of large rooms, wide staircases, and windows affording the prospect of verdure. The stone-floors and the paucity of window curtains, to say nothing of blinds to exclude the sun, appeared to me inconveniences to be remedied by the expenditure of a few francs; but Agrestilla, as pertinacious in her serenity as Althea in her querulousness, decided that we ought to take things in the rough, and make anything do “in the country.” Scraps of carpet and ells of muslin are attainable by unassisted effort, stimulated by necessity, and I acquired and maintained tolerable ease of mind and body, till we came to discuss together the grand article of society. My maxim is, the best or none at all. I love conversation, but hate feasting and visiting. Agrestilla lays down no maxim, but her practice is, good if possible—if not, second-best; at all events, a number of guests and frequent parties. Though she is not vain of her mind or of her person, yet the display of fine clothes and good dishes, and the secret satisfaction of shining forth the queen of her company, make up her enjoyment: Agrestilla’s taste is gregarious. To my extreme sorrow and apprehension, we received an invitation to dine with a family unknown to me, and living nine miles off! To refuse was impossible, the plea of preengagement is inadmissible with people who tell you to “choose your day,” and as to pretending to be sick, I hold it to be presumptuous and wicked. The conveyance was to be a cart! the time of departure six in the morning! Terrified and aghast, I demanded, “How are we to get through the day?” No work! no books! no subjects of mutual interest to talk upon!—“Oh! dear me, time soon passes ‘in the country;’ we shall be three hours going, the roads are very bad, then comes breakfast, and then walking round the garden, and then dinner and coming home early.” This invitation hung over my mind like an incubus,—like an eye-tooth firm in the head to be wrenched out,—like settling-day to a defaulter, or auricular confession to a ceremonious papist and bad liver. My only hope was in the weather. The clouds seemed to be for ever filling and for ever emptying, like the pitchers of the Danaides. The street, court, and garden became all impassable, without the loan of Celestine’s sabots (anglice wooden shoes.) Celestine is a stout Norman girl, who washes the dishes, and wears a holland-mob and a linsey-woolsey petticoat. Certainly, thought I, in my foolish security, while this deluge continues nobody will think of visiting “in the country.” But vain and illusive was my hope! Agrestilla declared her intention of keeping her engagement “if it rained cats and dogs;” and the weather cleared up on the eve of my execution, and smiled in derision of my woe. The cart came. Jemmy Dawson felt as much anguish in his, but he did not feel it so long. We were lumbered with inside packages, bundles, boxes, and baskets, accumulated by Agrestilla; I proposed their being secured with cords (lashed is the sea-term) to prevent them from rolling about, crushing our feet and grazing our legs at every jolt. Agrestilla’s politeness supprest an exclamation of amazement, that people could mind such trifles “in the country!”—for her part, she never made difficulties.—Being obliged to maintain the equilibrium of my person by clinging to each side of the cart with my two hands, I had much to envy those personages of the Hindû mythology, who are provided with six or seven arms: as for my bonnet it was crushed into all manner of shapes, my brain was jarred and concussed into the incapacity to tell whether six and five make eleven or thirteen, and my feet were “all murdered,” as the Irish and French say. What exasperated my sufferings was the reflection on my own folly in incurring so much positive evil, to pay and receive a mere compliment! Had it been to take a reprieve to a dear friend going to be hanged, to carry the news of a victory, or convey a surgeon to the wounded, I should have thought nothing and said less of the matter; but for a mere dinner among strangers, a long day without interest and occupation!—really I consider myself as having half incurred the guilt of suicide. Six or seven times at least, the horse, painfully dragging us the whole way by the strain of every nerve and sinew, got stuck in the mud, and was to be flogged till he plunged out of it. More than once we tottered upon ridges of incrusted mud, when a very little matter would have turned us over. I say nothing about Rutland—I abhor and disdain a pun—but we did nothing but cross ruts to avoid puddles, and cross them back again to avoid stones, and the ruts were all so deep as to leave but one semicircle of the wheel visible. I never saw such roads—the Colossus of Rhodes would have been knee-deep in them. At last we arrived—Agrestilla as much out of patience at my calling it an evil to have my shins bruised black and blue, while engaged in a party of pleasure “in the country,” as I to find the expedition all pain and no pleasure. We turned out of the cart in very bad condition; all our dress “clean put on,” as the housewives say, rumpled and soiled, our limbs stiff, our faces flushed, and by far too fevered to eat, and too weary to walk. How I thought, like a shipwrecked mariner, not upon my own “fireside,” as English novelists always say, but upon my quiet, comfortable room, books, work, independence, and otium with or without dignitate (let others decide that.) Oh! the fag of talking when one has nothing to say, smiling when one is ready to cry, and accepting civilities when one feels them all to be inflictions! Of the habits, the manners, the appearance, and the conversation of our hosts, I will relate nothing; I have eaten their bread, as the Arabs say, and owe them the tribute of thanks and silence. Agrestilla was as merry as possible all day; she has lived in the company of persons of sense and education, but—nobody expects refinement “in the country!” In vain I expostulate with her, pleading in excuse of what she terms my fastidiousness, that I cannot change my fixed notions of elegance, propriety, and comfort, to conform to the habits of those to whom such terms are as lingua franca to a Londoner, what he neither understands nor cares for.
It is easy to conform one’s exterior to rural habits, by putting on a coarse straw hat, thick shoes, and linen gown, but the taste and feeling of what is right, the mental perception must remain the same. Nothing can be more surprising to an English resident in a country-town of France, than the jumble of ranks in society that has taken place since the revolution. I know a young lady whose education and manners render her fit for polished society in Paris; her mother goes about in a woollen jacket, and dresses the dinner, not from necessity, for that I should make no joke of, but from taste; and is as arrant an old gossip as ever lolled with both elbows over the counter of a chandler’s shop.—Her brother is a garde du corps, who spends his life in palaces and drawing-rooms, and she has one cousin a little pastry-cook, and another a washer-woman.—They have a lodger, a maiden lady, who lives on six hundred francs per annum, (about twenty-four pounds,) and of course performs every menial office for herself, and, except on Sundays, looks like an old weeding-woman; her brother has been a judge, lives in a fine house, buys books and cultivates exotics. Low company is tiresome in England, because it is ignorant and stupid; in France it is gross and disgusting. The notion of being merry and entertaining is to tell gross stories; the demoiselles sit and say nothing, simper and look pretty: what a pity it is that time should change them into coarse, hard-featured commères, like their mothers! The way in Normandy is to dine very early, and remain all the evening in the dinner-room, instead of going into a fresh apartment to take coffee. Agrestilla does not fail to conform to the latter plan in Paris, because people of fashion do so, and Agrestilla is a fashionable woman, but she wonders I should object to the smell of the dinner “in the country.” I have been strongly tempted to the crime of sacrilege by robbing the church for wax candles, none being to be got at “the shop.” My incapacity for rural enjoyments and simple habits is manifest to Agrestilla, from my absurdly objecting to the smell of tallow-candles “in the country.” Agrestilla’s rooms are profusely lighted with wax in Paris, “but nobody thinks of such a thing ‘in the country’ for nearly a month or two,”—as if life were not made up of months, weeks, and hours!
I am afraid, Mr. Editor, that I may have wearied you by my prolixity, but since all acumen of taste is to disappear, when we pass the bills of mortality, I will hope that my communication may prove good enough to be read—in the country.
N.