One of these mamas favoured by Doctor Benjamin Bairam was Mrs. Caroline Grandison, said to be a legitimate descendant of the great Sir Charles: a lady who, in propriety of demeanour and pious manners, was the petticoated image of her admirable ancestor. The clean-linen of her morality was spotless as his. As nearly she neighboured perfection, and knew it as well. Let us hope that her history will some day be written, and the balance restored in literature which it was her pride to have established for her sex in life.
Mrs. Caroline was a colourless lady of an unequivocal character, living upon drugs, and governing her husband and the world from her sofa. Woolly Negroes blest her name, and whiskered John-Thomases deplored her weight. The world was given to understand that sorrows and disappointments had reduced her to the contemplative posture which helped her to consider the urgent claims of her black fellow-creatures and require the stalwart services of her white. In her presence the elect had to feel how very much virtue is its own reward; for, if they did not rightly esteem the honour she did them, they had little farther encouragement from Mrs. Caroline Grandison. On the other hand her rigour toward vice was unsparing; especially in the person of one of her own sex, whom she treated as heaven treats fallen angels. A sinful man—-why, Mrs. Caroline expected nothing better: but a sinful woman—-Oh! that was a scandal, a shame! And you met no sinful woman at Mrs. Caroline Grandison's parties. As a consequence, possibly, though one hardly dares suppose it, her parties were the dullest in London, and gradually fell into the hands of popular preachers, specific doctors, raw missionaries with their passage paid for, and a chance dean or so; a non-dancing, stout-dining congregation, in the midst of which a gay young guardsman was dismally out of his element, and certainly would not have obtruded his unsodden spirit had there been no fair daughters.
The completeness of the lady's reputation was rounded by the whispers of envious tongues; which, admitting the inviolability of her character, remarked that indeed she was a little too careful to appear different from others, and took an ascetic delight in the contrast. There is no doubt that she took a great deal of medicine. Dr. Bairam may have contributed toward her asceticism somewhat. The worthy doctor may even, perhaps, have contributed a trifle to her perfection.
In her sweet youth this lady fell violently in love with the great Sir Charles, and married him in fancy. The time coming, when maiden fancy must give way to woman fact, she compromised her reverent passion for the hero by declaring that she would never change the name he had honoured her with, and must, if she espoused any mortal, give her widowed hand to a Grandison. Accordingly two cousins were proposed to her; but the moral reputation of these Grandisons was so dreadful, and such a disgrace to the noble name they bore, that she rejected them with horror. Woman's mission, however, being her perpetual precept, she felt at the age of twenty-three bound to put it in practice, and, as she was handsome, and most handsomely-endowed, a quite an objectionable gentleman was discovered, who, for the honour of assisting her in her mission, agreed to disembody himself in her great name, and be lost in the blaze of Sir Charles. With his concurrence she rapidly produced eight daughters. A son was denied to her. This was the second generation of Grandisons denied a son. Her husband, the quite unobjectionable gentleman, lost heart after the arrival of the eighth, and surrendered his mind to more frivolous pursuits. She also appeared to lose heart; it was her saintly dream to have a Charles. So assured she was that he was coming at last that she prepared male baby-linen with her own hands for the disappointing eighth. When, in that moment of creative suspense, Dr. Bairam's soft voice, with sacred melancholy, pronounced, ``A daughter, madam!'' Mrs. Caroline Grandison covered her face, and wept. She afterwards did penance for her want of resignation, and relapsed upon religion and little dogs.
Mrs. Caroline Grandison appeared to lose heart. But people said she was not really solaced by religion and little dogs. People said, that her repeated consultations with Dr. Bairam had one end in view, and that all those quantities of medicine were consumed for a devout purpose. Eight is not a number to stop at. Nine if you like, but not eight. No one thinks of stopping at eight. People said that the pertinacity of her spirit weakened her mind, and that she consulted cards and fortune-tellers, and cast horoscopes, to discover if there would be a ninth, and that ninth a Charles. They might truly have said, that the potency of Dr. Bairam's prescriptions weakened the constitution. Mrs. Caroline Grandison grew fretful, and, reclined on an invalid couch, while her name hunted foxes.
The disappointing eighth was on the verge of her teens when Sir Austin visited town. None of Mrs. Caroline Grandison's daughters had married: owing, it was rumoured, to the degeneracy of the males of our day. The elder ones had, in their ignorance, wished to marry young gentlemen of their choosing. Mrs. Caroline Grandison bade them wait till she could find for them something like Sir Charles: she was aware that such a man would hardly be found alive again. If they rebelled, as model young ladies occasionally will, Mrs. Caroline Grandison declared that they were ill, and called in Dr. Bairam to prescribe, who soon reduced them. Physic is an immense ally in bringing about filial obedience.
No lady living was better fitted to appreciate Sir Austin, and understand his System, than Mrs. Caroline Grandison. When she heard of it from Dr. Bairam, she rose from her couch and called for her carriage, determined to follow him up and come to terms with him. All that was told her of the baronet conspired to make her believe he was Sir Charles in person fallen upon evil times: the spirit of Sir Charles revived to mix his blood with hers and produce a race of moral Paladins after Sir Charles's pattern. She reviewed her daughters. Any one of the three younger ones would be a suitable match, and, if he wanted perfectly educated young women, where else could he look for them? But he was difficult to hunt down. He went abroad shyly. He was never to be met in general society. The rumour of him was everywhere, and an extremely unfavourable rumour it was, from mothers who had daughters, and hopes for their daughters, which a few questions of his had kindled, and a discovery of his severe requisitions extinguished. It appeared that he had seen numerous young ladies. He had politely asked them to sit down and take off their shoes; but such monstrous feet they had mostly that he declined the attempt to try on the Glass Slipper, and politely departed; or tried it on, and with a resigned sad look declared that it would not, would not fit!
Some of the young ladies had been to schools. Their feet were all enormously too big, and there was no need for them to take off their shoes. Some had been very properly educated at home; and to such, if Bairam physician and Thompson lawyer did not protest, the Slipper was applied; but by occult arts of its own it seemed to find out that their habits were somehow bad, and incapacitated them from espousing the Fairy Prince. The Slipper would not fit at all.
Unsuspecting damsels were asked at what time they rose in the morning, and would reply, at any hour. Some said, they finished in the morning the romance they had relinquished to sleep overnight, little considering how such a practice made the feet swell. One of them thought it a fine thing to tell him she took Metastasio to bed with her and pencilled translations of him when she awoke. *
There was a damsel closer home who did not take Metastasio to bed with her, and who ate dewberries early in the morning, whose foot, had Sir Austin but known it, would have fitted into the intractable Slipper as easily and neatly as if it had been a soft kid glove made to her measure. Alas! the envious sisters were keeping poor Cinderella out of sight. Dewberries still abounded by the banks of the river; and thither she strolled, and there daily she was met by one who had the test of her merits in his bosom: and there, on the night the scientific humanist conceived he had alighted on the identical house which held the foot to fit the Slipper, there under consulting stars, holy for evermore henceforth, the Fairy Prince, trembling and with tears, has taken from her lips the first ripe fruit of love, and pledged himself hers. *
A night of happy augury to Father and Son. They were looking out for the same thing; only one employed science, the other instinct; and which hit upon the right it was for time to decide. Sir Austin dined with Mrs. Caroline Grandison. They had been introduced by Sir Miles Papworth.
``What!'' said Sir Miles, when Mrs. Caroline expressed her wish for an introduction, ``you want to know Feverel? Aha! Why, you are the very woman for him, ma'am. It's one of the strong-minded he's after. So you shall, so you shall. I'll give a dinner to-morrow. And let me tell you in confidence that the value of his mines is increasing, ma'am. You needn't be afraid about his crotchets. Feverel has his eye on the main chance as well as the rest of us.''
``You do not believe, Sir Miles, that one may esteem him for his principles and sympathize with his object?'' said Mrs. Caroline.
``Well, ma'am,'' Sir Miles returned, ``I'm a plain man. I said to my wife the other day—-she was talking something in that way—-and I said to her, If Feverel had five hundred, instead of fifty thousand, a-year—-he's got that clear, ma'am, and it'll double—-how about his principles then? Aha! A rich man can play the fool if he likes, and you women clap your hands, and cheer him. Now, if I were to have a System for all my rascals, you'd call me something like what I should be—-eh? You would, though! And I wish I had sometimes, for they're every one of 'em in scrapes, and I've got to pay the piper. But that's part of their education, to my mind, so down goes the money.''
``Have you seen much of his son?'' Mrs. Caroline inquired, restraining an appearance of particular interest.
``Not much, ma'am; not much. Aha! I expect it's the mothers 'll be asking about _his_ son, and the daughters about mine—-eh?'' Sir Miles indulged in a stout laugh.
``He's a fine lad. I'll say that for him, ma'am. He'll go a long way when he's once loose, that lad will. I came to hear the other day that I was pretty near transporting him the young villain!''
Sir Miles told Mrs. Caroline certain facts that had gradually become public intelligence about his neighbourhood concerning the Bakewell Comedy.
Mrs. Caroline threw her hands aloft.
``Have I frightened you a bit, ma'am?'' said twinkling Sir Miles; but the perverse woman, with the downfall if her hands, checked his exultation by exclaiming: ``Is it not a proof of his father's wisdom to watch him so rigorously!''
Next day, at Sir Miles Papworth's hastily-ordered dinner, Mrs. Caroline Grandison, who had summoned her great dormant energies successfully to stand upon her feet, was handed down by Sir Austin. They sat together, and talked together.
Sir Austin and Mrs. Caroline discovered that they had in common from an early period looked on life as a science: and, having arrived at this joint understanding, they, with the indifference of practised dissectors, laid out the world and applied the knife to the people they knew. In other words, they talked most frightful scandal. It is proverbial what a cold torturer science can be. Malice is nothing to it. They reviewed their friends. Pure blood was nowhere. Sir Austin hinted his observations since his arrival in town, and used a remark or two from Bairam and Thompson. Mrs. Caroline cleverly guessed the families, and still further opened his eyes. Together they quashed the wild-oats special plea. Mrs. Caroline gave him a clearer idea of his system than he had ever had before. She ran ahead of his thoughts like nimble fire. She appeared to have forethought them all, and taken a leap beyond. When he plodded and hesitated on his conception, she, at a word, struck boldly into black and white, making him fidget for his Note-book to reverse a sentence or two on Woman. And she quoted =The Pilgrim's Scrip.=
``How true are some of the things you say, Sir Austin! And how false, permit me to add, are others!'' she deprecatingly remarked. ``That, for instance, on Domestic Differences. How could you be so cynical as to say, `_In a dissension between man and wife that one is in the right who has most friends._' It really angered me. Cannot one be absolutely superior—-notoriously the injured one?'' (Mrs. Caroline was citing her own case against the fainthearted, fox-hunting Unobjectionable.) ``But you amply revenge it. You say, `_Great Hopes have lean offspring._' How true that is! How I know it myself! How true every disappointed woman must know it to be! And what you say Of the Instincts and the Mind—-something—-that our Instincts seek stability here below, and are always casting anchor—- something—-without the Captain's consent—-and that it is at once the fruitful source of unhappiness and the proof of immortality—-I'm making nonsense of it, but I appreciated the wisdom fully.''
In this way she played with him. The theorist was dazzled, delighted. Lady Blandish was too like a submissive slave to the System. Mrs. Caroline wedded it on the equal standing of an English wife, who gives her half and more to the union.
Her name appeared on his card-table the day after the dinner. Six of her eight daughters, and a sprinkling of her little dogs, were ready for his visit by the afternoon or fashionable morning. Charlotte and Harriet were absent. Clementina was the elder in attendance, and the rest presented fairly decreasing heights down to the disappointing last, Carola, called as near Charles as was permissible, a right ruddy young woman out of the nursery.
``We receive you into the family,'' the fond mother leaned on her elbows maternally smiling, to welcome her visitor. ``I wished my daughters to share with me the pleasure of your acquaintance.''
``And knew well, madam, how to gratify me most.'' Sir Austin bowed to the ceremony of introduction, and took a hand of each, retaining Carola's.
``This is your youngest, madam?''
``Yes.'' Mrs. Caroline suppressed a sigh.
``And how old are you, my dear?''
Carola twisted, and tried to read the frill of her trousers. She was dressed very young.
``My child!'' her mother admonished her. Whereat Carola screwed out a growl, ``Thirteen.''
``Thirteen this day,'' said her mother.
``Allow me to congratulate you, my dear.'' Sir Austin bent forward, and put his lips to her forehead.
Carola received the salute with the stolidity of a naughty doll.
``She is not well to-day,'' said Mrs. Caroline. ``She is usually full of life and gaiety—-almost too much of an animal, I sometimes think.''
``At her age she can scarcely be that,'' observed Sir Austin.
``She's the maddest creature I ever knew.'' Mrs. Caroline immediately went upon his tack with unction. ``To-day she is shy. She is not herself. Possibly something has disagreed with her.''
``That nasty medicine, it is, mama,'' mumbled wilful Carola, swinging her frock.
Sir Austin turned to Mrs. Caroline, and inquired anxiously if the child took much medicine.
``The smallest occasional closes,'' Mrs. Caroline remarked, to an accompaniment of interjectory eyebrows and chins from all her younger daughters, and a reserved demure aspect of the elder ones.
``I do not like much medicine for children,'' said the baronet, a little snappishly.
``Only the smallest occasional doses!'' Mrs. Caroline repeated, making her voice small and the doses sound sweet.
``My son has had little, or nothing,'' said the baronet. The young ladies looked on the father of that son with interest.
``Will you come and see our gymnasium?'' Mrs. Caroline asked quickly.
``It is,'' she added, rising with heroic effort, ``not to be compared to our country one. But it is of excellent use, and all my girls exercise in it, when in town, once a day, without intermission. My principle is, that girls require a development of their frames as well as boys; and the more muscle they have the better women they make. I used it constantly till disappointment and sorrow broke the habit.''
``On my honour, madam,'' said the enraptured baronet, ``you are the only sensible woman I have met,'' and he offered his arm to conduct the strenuous invalid.
Daughters and little dogs trooped to the gymnasium, which was fitted up in the court below, and contained swing-poles, and stride-poles, and newly invented instruments for bringing out special virtues: an instrument for the lungs: an instrument for the liver; one for the arms and thighs; one for the wrists; the whole for the promotion of the Christian accomplishments.
Owing, probably, to the exhaustion consequent on their previous exercises of the morning, the young ladies, excepting Carola, looked fatigued and pale, and anything but well-braced; and for the same reason, doubtless, when the younger ones were requested by their mother to exhibit the use of the several instruments, each of them wearily took hold of the depending strap of leather, and wearily pulled it, like mariners oaring in the deep sea; oaring to a haven they have no faith in.
``I sometimes hear them,'' said their mama, ``while I am reclining above, singing in chorus. `Row, brothers, row,' is one of their songs. It sounds pretty and cheerful.''
The baronet was too much wrapped up in the enlightenment of her principle to notice the despondency of their countenances.
``We have a professor of gymnastics, who comes twice a week to superintend,'' said Mrs. Caroline.
``How old did you say your daughter is, madam?'' the baronet abruptly interrogated her.
``Which?—-Oh!'' she followed his eye and saw it resting on ruddy Carola, ``thirteen. She this day completes her thirteenth year. That will do, dears; much of it is not good after your dinners.''
The baronet placidly nodded approval of all her directions, and bestowed a second paternal kiss upon Carola.
``They talk of the Future Man, madam,'' he said. ``I seem to be in the house of the Future Woman.''
``Happy you that have a son!'' exclaimed Mrs. Caroline, and, returning to the drawing-room, they exchanged Systems anew, as a preparatory betrothal of the subjects of the Systems.
