Mr. Bolton laughed heartily, and answered with the pleasantest animation, “Be assured, my dear young lady, that the election which you deprecate, is a better friend than you think, and saves you from the fancy-ring and white mustard-seed, which are the favourite topics that have succeeded the Catholic question just gone by. Now I conceive, from your countenance, that you would not like the pugilistic platform better than the hustings, nor find the stomach a more interesting subject of conversation than the poll: what say you?”
I was delighted with my champion, and told him merrily that he was very right, and I would take care how I repined again.
“Believe me,” continued he, “that you, who seem to have been brought up in the school of nature and reason, have little idea how widely what is called the world, departs from both. It is not enough now-a-days to furnish your house, and adorn your person according to a received rule, you must eat, drink, sleep, think, or not think, fashionably. You must be of one consent in sickness as in health; if indisposed, you must be fashionably indisposed, and as fashionably cured. Four or five years ago every body of any pretension was afflicted by determination of blood to the head, and hence, lancet, leeches, and cupping, were in wonderful activity. The head is now entirely out of fashion, except amongst the dandies and phrenologists, and the stomach takes precedence of every other topic, in a well organized society. As you are young, and have not perhaps made your debut, I will give you a hint or two to prepare you for good company. Young ladies of your age, play, sing, waltz, and dress; talk of Der Freischütz, Weber, and Pasta; laugh a great deal when there is nothing to laugh at, which shews ability, for any one could be merry if a subject were allowed, and are silly, envious, and unfeeling ad libitum. Young gentlemen of my friend Mr. Johnson’s age, ride, fight, row, play whist, hunt, fish, shoot, and talk nonsense; occasionally dancing and flirting, as the necessity of circumstances may require; but by no means spoiling your sex, by paying any of those polite attentions which might lead to insubordination, the more alarming, as were your masters to lose any thing of their presumed superiority, they might be ill prepared to recover the lapse of power, unless by a barbarous appeal to physical strength. The matron class you will find as well as the well-bred men of a certain standing, eating mutton chops, at intervals, to the amount of a certain number of ounces, with which no mixture of liquid is permitted, from eight o’clock in the morning till the same hour in the evening. You will see them likewise swallowing white mustard-seed by wholesale, and swearing to its sovereign efficacy in every possible disorder of the human frame. It will naturally suggest itself to you, that any demand upon the brains would be unreasonable, now that the casket which contains them is less carefully attended to than before, and therefore, as an act of justice, fashion very equitably dispenses altogether with the presence of intellect, which is enjoying a long vacation.”
I love this old man for his good humour and good sense; and, more than for either, because his sallies excessively diverted the invalid left in my charge by the rest of the party, who had gone to return a visit at some distance from Marsden, and who came back before Mr. Bolton had taken his departure.
Mr. Johnson went first, and when he had made his bow, my uncle asked whether his father, Sir Thomas Johnson, were not a very rich man.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Bolton, “he is called by courtesy a rich man. He has an immense extent of property, which gives him considerable influence; but he is so poor, notwithstanding, that he cannot command a hundred pounds in ready money, while he is governed by such an inordinate pride that he would rather die than shorten his rental by an inch of paper, in selling off land enough to pay the charges on his estate. He is, however, a kind hearted, hospitable man, who married late in life, and thinks his only child, who has just been paying his respects to you, a sans pareil, whose hand will amply recompense the largest sacrifice of fortune that can be made to attain it. It is now his great object in life to marry his son, and, though he idolizes pedigree, he thinks his own so transcendent that it will ennoble any inferior race; for which reason he gives it to be understood that family is less an object with him than wealth.”
“And pray,” said my uncle, “what sort of young man is Mr. Johnson?”
“Empty, pompous, and good-natured,” answered Mr. Bolton. “He has walked so many years up and down a long gallery of portraits, that he honestly believes ‘the boast of heraldry’ to belong peculiarly to his house. As he was never sent to school, he had no opportunity of comparing himself with his superiors, and was not compelled to find his true level by the discipline of a fagging system, or the aristocracy of rank. A private tutor indulged his early indolence; toad-eaters and retainers flattered his youthful vanity; and a short stay at Oxford has put the finish to his education by sending him home an accomplished boxer, rower, and judge of champagne. He is, as may naturally be expected, very extravagant, and such a darling with his parents, that, notwithstanding the difficulty of raising supplies, no curb has ever been put upon his expenditure.”
“Then,” observed my uncle, “I suppose that he is himself also looking after a wife.”