Part 56

He had many friends who had many wives, and was Well look’d upon by both, to that extent Of friendship which you may accept or pass, It does nor good nor harm being merely meant To keep the wheels going of the higher class, And draw them nightly when a ticket ’s sent: And what with masquerades, and fetes, and balls, For the first season such a life scarce palls.

A young unmarried man, with a good name And fortune, has an awkward part to play; For good society is but a game, ‘The royal game of Goose,’ as I may say, Where every body has some separate aim, An end to answer, or a plan to lay— The single ladies wishing to be double, The married ones to save the virgins trouble.

I don’t mean this as general, but particular Examples may be found of such pursuits: Though several also keep their perpendicular Like poplars, with good principles for roots; Yet many have a method more reticular— ‘Fishers for men,’ like sirens with soft lutes: For talk six times with the same single lady, And you may get the wedding dresses ready.

Perhaps you’ll have a letter from the mother, To say her daughter’s feelings are trepann’d; Perhaps you’ll have a visit from the brother, All strut, and stays, and whiskers, to demand What ‘your intentions are?’—One way or other It seems the virgin’s heart expects your hand: And between pity for her case and yours, You’ll add to Matrimony’s list of cures.

I’ve known a dozen weddings made even thus, And some of them high names: I have also known Young men who—though they hated to discuss Pretensions which they never dream’d to have shown— Yet neither frighten’d by a female fuss, Nor by mustachios moved, were let alone, And lived, as did the broken-hearted fair, In happier plight than if they form’d a pair.

There’s also nightly, to the uninitiated, A peril—not indeed like love or marriage, But not the less for this to be depreciated: It is—I meant and mean not to disparage The show of virtue even in the vitiated— It adds an outward grace unto their carriage— But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot, ‘Couleur de rose,’ who ’s neither white nor scarlet.

Such is your cold coquette, who can’t say ‘No,’ And won’t say ‘Yes,’ and keeps you on and off-ing On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow— Then sees your heart wreck’d, with an inward scoffing. This works a world of sentimental woe, And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin; But yet is merely innocent flirtation, Not quite adultery, but adulteration.

‘Ye gods, I grow a talker!’ Let us prate. The next of perils, though I place it sternest, Is when, without regard to ‘church or state,’ A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest. Abroad, such things decide few women’s fate— (Such, early traveller! is the truth thou learnest)— But in old England, when a young bride errs, Poor thing! Eve’s was a trifling case to hers.

For ’tis a low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit Country, where a young couple of the same ages Can’t form a friendship, but the world o’erawes it. Then there’s the vulgar trick of those d—d damages! ! A verdict—grievous foe to those who cause it!— Forms a sad climax to romantic homages; Besides those soothing speeches of the pleaders, And evidences which regale all readers.

But they who blunder thus are raw beginners; A little genial sprinkling of hypocrisy Has saved the fame of thousand splendid sinners, The loveliest oligarchs of our gynocracy; You may see such at all the balls and dinners, Among the proudest of our aristocracy, So gentle, charming, charitable, chaste— And all by having tact as well as taste.

Juan, who did not stand in the predicament Of a mere novice, had one safeguard more; For he was sick—no, ’twas not the word sick I meant— But he had seen so much love before, That he was not in heart so very weak;—I meant But thus much, and no sneer against the shore Of white cliffs, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings, Tithes, taxes, duns, and doors with double knockings.

But coming young from lands and scenes romantic, Where lives, not lawsuits, must be risk’d for Passion, And Passion’s self must have a spice of frantic, Into a country where ’tis half a fashion, Seem’d to him half commercial, half pedantic, Howe’er he might esteem this moral nation: Besides (alas! his taste—forgive and pity!) At first he did not think the women pretty.

I say at first—for he found out at last, But by degrees, that they were fairer far Than the more glowing dames whose lot is cast Beneath the influence of the eastern star. A further proof we should not judge in haste; Yet inexperience could not be his bar To taste:—the truth is, if men would confess, That novelties please less than they impress.

Though travell’d, I have never had the luck to Trace up those shuffling negroes, Nile or Niger, To that impracticable place, Timbuctoo, Where Geography finds no one to oblige her With such a chart as may be safely stuck to— For Europe ploughs in Afric like ‘bos piger:’ But if I had been at Timbuctoo, there No doubt I should be told that black is fair.

It is. I will not swear that black is white; But I suspect in fact that white is black, And the whole matter rests upon eyesight. Ask a blind man, the best judge. You’ll attack Perhaps this new position—but I’m right; Or if I’m wrong, I’ll not be ta’en aback:— He hath no morn nor night, but all is dark Within; and what seest thou? A dubious spark.

But I’m relapsing into metaphysics, That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics, Those bright moths fluttering round a dying flame; And this reflection brings me to plain physics, And to the beauties of a foreign dame, Compared with those of our pure pearls of price, Those polar summers, all sun, and some ice.

Or say they are like virtuous mermaids, whose Beginnings are fair faces, ends mere fishes;— Not that there’s not a quantity of those Who have a due respect for their own wishes. Like Russians rushing from hot baths to snows Are they, at bottom virtuous even when vicious: They warm into a scrape, but keep of course, As a reserve, a plunge into remorse.

But this has nought to do with their outsides. I said that Juan did not think them pretty At the first blush; for a fair Briton hides Half her attractions—probably from pity— And rather calmly into the heart glides, Than storms it as a foe would take a city; But once there (if you doubt this, prithee try) She keeps it for you like a true ally.

She cannot step as does an Arab barb, Or Andalusian girl from mass returning, Nor wear as gracefully as Gauls her garb, Nor in her eye Ausonia’s glance is burning; Her voice, though sweet, is not so fit to warb— le those bravuras (which I still am learning To like, though I have been seven years in Italy, And have, or had, an ear that served me prettily);—

She cannot do these things, nor one or two Others, in that off-hand and dashing style Which takes so much—to give the devil his due; Nor is she quite so ready with her smile, Nor settles all things in one interview (A thing approved as saving time and toil);— But though the soil may give you time and trouble, Well cultivated, it will render double.

And if in fact she takes to a ‘grande passion,’ It is a very serious thing indeed: Nine times in ten ’tis but caprice or fashion, Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead, The pride of a mere child with a new sash on, Or wish to make a rival’s bosom bleed: But the tenth instance will be a tornado, For there’s no saying what they will or may do.

The reason ’s obvious; if there’s an eclat, They lose their caste at once, as do the Parias; And when the delicacies of the law Have fill’d their papers with their comments various, Society, that china without flaw (The hypocrite!), will banish them like Marius, To sit amidst the ruins of their guilt: For Fame ’s a Carthage not so soon rebuilt.

Perhaps this is as it should be;—it is A comment on the Gospel’s ‘Sin no more, And be thy sins forgiven:’—but upon this I leave the saints to settle their own score. Abroad, though doubtless they do much amiss, An erring woman finds an opener door For her return to Virtue—as they call That lady, who should be at home to all.

For me, I leave the matter where I find it, Knowing that such uneasy virtue leads People some ten times less in fact to mind it, And care but for discoveries and not deeds. And as for chastity, you’ll never bind it By all the laws the strictest lawyer pleads, But aggravate the crime you have not prevented, By rendering desperate those who had else repented.

But Juan was no casuist, nor had ponder’d Upon the moral lessons of mankind: Besides, he had not seen of several hundred A lady altogether to his mind. A little ‘blase’—’tis not to be wonder’d At, that his heart had got a tougher rind: And though not vainer from his past success, No doubt his sensibilities were less.

He also had been busy seeing sights— The Parliament and all the other houses; Had sat beneath the gallery at nights, To hear debates whose thunder roused (not rouses) The world to gaze upon those northern lights Which flash’d as far as where the musk-bull browses; He had also stood at times behind the throne— But Grey was not arrived, and Chatham gone.

He saw, however, at the closing session, That noble sight, when really free the nation, A king in constitutional possession Of such a throne as is the proudest station, Though despots know it not—till the progression Of freedom shall complete their education. ’Tis not mere splendour makes the show august To eye or heart—it is the people’s trust.

There, too, he saw (whate’er he may be now) A Prince, the prince of princes at the time, With fascination in his very bow, And full of promise, as the spring of prime. Though royalty was written on his brow, He had then the grace, too, rare in every clime, Of being, without alloy of fop or beau, A finish’d gentleman from top to toe.