The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 98 : _Ash Wednesday_ got wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt _Christmas_ and _Lord Mayor�

_Ash Wednesday_ got wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt _Christmas_ and _Lord Mayor's Days_. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him--to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still _Christmas Day_ was at his elbow, plying him the wa.s.sail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccup'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-cri-tical mess, and no dish for a gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great custard that stood before his _left-hand neighbour_, and daubed his hungry beard all over with it, till you would have taken him for the _Last Day in December_, it so hung in icicles.

At another part of the table, _Shrove Tuesday_ was helping the _Second of September_ to some c.o.c.k broth,--which courtesy the latter returned with the delicate thigh of a hen pheasant--so there was no love lost for that matter. The _Last of Lent_ was spunging upon _Shrovetide's_ pancakes; which _April Fool_ perceiving, told him he did well, for pancakes were proper to a _good fry-day_.

In another part, a hubbub arose about the _Thirtieth of January_, who, it seems, being a sour puritanic character, that thought n.o.body's meat good or sanctified enough for him, had smuggled into the room a calf's head, which he had had cooked at home for that purpose, thinking to feast thereon incontinently; but as it lay in the dish, _March manyweathers_, who is a very fine lady, and subject to the megrims, screamed out there was a "human head in the platter," and raved about Herodias' daughter to that degree, that the obnoxious viand was obliged to be removed; nor did she recover her stomach till she had gulped down a _Restorative_, confected of _Oak Apple_, which the merry _Twenty Ninth of May_ always carries about with him for that purpose.

The King's health[1] being called for after this, a notable dispute arose between the _Twelfth of August_ (a zealous old Whig gentlewoman,) and the _Twenty Third of April_ (a new-fangled lady of the Tory stamp,) as to which of them should have the honour to propose it. _August_ grew hot upon the matter, affirming time out of mind the prescriptive right to have lain with her, till her rival had basely supplanted her; whom she represented as little better than a _kept_ mistress, who went about in _fine clothes_, while she (the legitimate BIRTHDAY) had scarcely a rag, &c.

_April fool_, being made mediator, confirmed the right in the strongest form of words to the appellant, but decided for peace' sake that the exercise of it should remain with the present possessor. At the same time, he slily rounded the first lady in the ear, that an action might lie against the Crown for _bi-geny_.

It beginning to grow a little duskish, _Candlemas_ l.u.s.tily bawled out for lights, which was opposed by all the _Days_, who protested against burning daylight. Then fair water was handed round in silver ewers, and the _same lady_ was observed to take an unusual time in _Was.h.i.+ng_ herself.

_May Day_, with that sweetness which is peculiar to her, in a neat speech proposing the health of the founder, crowned her goblet (and by her example the rest of the company) with garlands. This being done, the lordly _New Year_ from the upper end of the table, in a cordial but somewhat lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on an occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's late tenants, promised to improve their farms, and at the same time to abate (if any thing was found unreasonable) in their rents.

At the mention of this, the four _Quarter Days_ involuntarily looked at each other, and smiled; _April Fool_ whistled to an old tune of "New Brooms;" and a surly old rebel at the farther end of the table (who was discovered to be no other than the _Fifth of November_,) muttered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the whole company, words to this effect, that, "when the old one is gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." Which rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unanimously voted his expulsion; and the male-content was thrust out neck and heels into the cellar, as the properest place for such a _boutefeu_ and firebrand as he had shown himself to be.

Order being restored--the young lord (who to say truth, had been a little ruffled, and put beside his oratory) in as few, and yet as obliging words as possible, a.s.sured them of entire welcome; and, with a graceful turn, singling out poor _Twenty Ninth of February_, that had sate all this while mumchance at the side-board, begged to couple his health with that of the good company before him--which he drank accordingly; observing, that he had not seen his honest face any time these four years, with a number of endearing expressions besides. At the same time, removing the solitary _Day_ from the forlorn seat which had been a.s.signed him, he stationed him at his own board, somewhere between the _Greek Calends_ and _Latter Lammas_.

_Ash Wednesday_, being now called upon for a song, with his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the Canary he had swallowed would give him leave, struck up a Carol, which _Christmas Day_ had taught him for the nonce; and was followed by the latter, who gave "Miserere"

in fine style, hitting off the mumping notes and lengthened drawl of _Old Mortification_ with infinite humour. _April Fool_ swore they had exchanged conditions: but _Good Friday_ was observed to look extremely grave; and _Sunday_ held her fan before her face, that she might not be seen to smile.

_Shrove-tide_, _Lord Mayor's Day_, and _April Fool_, next joined in a glee--

Which is the properest day to drink?

in which all the _Days_ chiming in, made a merry burden.

They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The question being proposed, who had the greatest number of followers--the _Quarter Days_ said, there could be no question as to that; for they had all the creditors in the world d.o.g.g.i.ng their heels. But _April Fool_ gave it in favour of the _Forty Days before Easter_; because the debtors in all cases outnumbered the creditors, and they kept _lent_ all the year.

All this while, _Valentine's Day_ kept courting pretty _May_, who sate next him, slipping amorous _billets-doux_ under the table, till the _Dog Days_ (who are naturally of a warm const.i.tution) began to be jealous, and to bark and rage exceedingly. _April Fool_, who likes a bit of sport above measure, and had some pretensions to the lady besides, as being but a cousin once removed,--clapped and halloo'd them on; and as fast as their indignation cooled, those mad wags, the _Ember Days_, were at it with their bellows, to blow it into a flame; and all was in a ferment: till old Madam _Septuagesima_ (who boasts herself the _Mother of the Days_) wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious tale of the lovers which she could reckon when she was young; and of one Master _Rogation Day_ in particular, who was for ever putting the _question_ to her; but she kept him at a distance, as the chronicle would tell--by which I apprehend she meant the Almanack.

Then she rambled on to the _Days that were gone_, the _good old Days_, and so to the _Days before the Flood_--which plainly showed her old head to be little better than crazed and doited.

Day being ended, the _Days_ called for their cloaks and great coats, and took their leaves. _Lord Mayor's Day_ went off in a Mist, as usual; _Shortest Day_ in a deep black Fog, that wrapt the little gentleman all round like a hedge-hog. Two _Vigils_--so watchmen are called in heaven--saw _Christmas Day_ safe home--they had been used to the business before. Another _Vigil_--a stout, st.u.r.dy patrole, called the _Eve of St. Christopher_--seeing _Ash Wednesday_ in a condition little better than he should be--e'en whipt him over his shoulders, pick-a-back fas.h.i.+on, and _Old Mortification_ went floating home, singing--

On the bat's back do I fly,

and a number of old s.n.a.t.c.hes besides, between drunk and sober, but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you may believe me) were among them.

_Longest Day_ set off westward in beautiful crimson and gold--the rest, some in one fas.h.i.+on, some in another; but _Valentine_ and pretty _May_ took their departure together in one of the prettiest silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish to set in.

[Footnote 1: The late King.]

THE WEDDING

I do not know when I have been better pleased than at being invited last week to be present at the wedding of a friend's daughter. I like to make one at these ceremonies, which to us old people give back our youth in a manner, and restore our gayest season, in the remembrance of our own success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of our own youthful disappointments, in this point of a settlement. On these occasions I am sure to be in good-humour for a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected honey-moon. Being without a family, I am flattered with these temporary adoptions into a friend's family; I feel a sort of cousinhood, or uncles.h.i.+p, for the season; I am inducted into degrees of affinity; and, in the partic.i.p.ated socialities of the little community, I lay down for a brief while my solitary bachelors.h.i.+p. I carry this humour so far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, even when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear friend. But to my subject.--

The union itself had been long settled, but its celebration had been hitherto deferred, to an almost unreasonable state of suspense in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices which the bride's father had unhappily contracted upon the subject of the too early marriages of females. He has been lecturing any time these five years--for to that length the courts.h.i.+p has been protracted--upon the propriety of putting off the solemnity, till the lady should have completed her five and twentieth year. We all began to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had abated of none of its ardours, might at last be lingered on, till pa.s.sion had time to cool, and love go out in the experiment.

But a little wheedling on the part of his wife, who was by no means a party to these overstrained notions, joined to some serious expostulations on that of his friends, who, from the growing infirmities of the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves many years' enjoyment of his company, and were anxious to bring matters to a conclusion during his life-time, at length prevailed; and on Monday last the daughter of my old friend, Admiral ---- having attained the _womanly_ age of nineteen, was conducted to the church by her pleasant cousin J----, who told some few years older.

Before the youthful part of my female readers express their indignation at the abominable loss of time occasioned to the lovers by the preposterous notions of my old friend, they will do well to consider the reluctance which a fond parent naturally feels at parting with his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in most cases may be traced the difference of opinion on this point between child and parent, whatever pretences of interest or prudence may be held out to cover it. The hard-heartedness of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, a sure and moving topic; but is there not something untender, to say no more of it, in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear herself from the parental stock, and commit herself to strange graftings? The case is heightened where the lady, as in the present instance, happens to be an only child. I do not understand these matters experimentally, but I can make a shrewd guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon these occasions. It is no new observation, I believe, that a lover in most cases has no rival so much to be feared as the father. Certainly there is a jealousy in _unparallel subjects_, which is little less heart-rending than the pa.s.sion which we more strictly christen by that name. Mothers'

scruples are more easily got over; for this reason, I suppose, that the protection transferred to a husband is less a derogation and a loss to their authority than to the paternal. Mothers, besides, have a trembling foresight, which paints the inconveniences (impossible to be conceived in the same degree by the other parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy, which the refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here, than the cold reasonings of a father on such a topic. To this instinct may be imputed, and by it alone may be excused, the unbeseeming artifices, by which some wives push on the matrimonial projects of their daughters, which the husband, however approving, shall entertain with comparative indifference. A little shamelessness on this head is pardonable.

With this explanation, forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal importunity receives the name of a virtue.--But the parson stays, while I preposterously a.s.sume his office; I am preaching, while the bride is on the threshold.

Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the sage reflections which have just escaped me have the obliquest tendency of application to the young lady, who, it will be seen, is about to venture upon a change in her condition, at a _mature and competent age_, and not without the fullest approbation of all parties. I only deprecate _very hasty marriages_.

It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone through at an early hour, to give time for a little _dejeune_ afterwards, to which a select party of friends had been invited. We were in church a little before the clock struck eight.

Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the dress of the bride-maids--the three charming Miss Foresters--on this morning. To give the bride an opportunity of s.h.i.+ning singly, they had come habited all in green. I am ill at describing female apparel; but, while _she_ stood at the altar in vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, _they_ a.s.sisted in robes, such as might become Diana's nymphs--Foresters indeed--as such who had not yet come to the resolution of putting off cold virginity. These young maids, not being so blest as to have a mother living, I am told, keep single for their father's sake, and live altogether so happy with their remaining parent, that the hearts of their lovers are ever broken with the prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted and provoking home-comfort. Gallant girls! each a victim worthy of Iphigenia!

I do not know what business I have to be present in solemn places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. I was never cut out for a public functionary.

Ceremony and I have long shaken hands; but I could not resist the importunities of the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent on this occasion, and _give away the bride._ Something ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious of all moments--a sense of my unfitness to have the disposal, even in imagination, of the sweet young creature beside me. I fear I was betrayed to some lightness, for the awful eye of the parson--and the rector's eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a rebuke--was upon me in an instant, souring my incipient jest to the tristful severities of a funeral.

This was the only misbehaviour which I can plead to upon this solemn occasion, unless what was objected to me after the ceremony by one of the handsome Miss T----s, be accounted a solecism. She was pleased to say that she had never seen a gentleman before me give away a bride in black. Now black has been my ordinary apparel so long--indeed I take it to be the proper costume of an author--the stage sanctions it--that to have appeared in some lighter colour would have raised more mirth at my expense, than the anomaly had created censure. But I could perceive that the bride's mother, and some elderly ladies present (G.o.d bless them!) would have been well content, if I had come in any other colour than that. But I got over the omen by a lucky apologue, which I remembered out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, of all the birds being invited to the linnets' wedding, at which, when all the rest came in their gayest feathers, the raven alone apologised for his cloak because "he had no other." This tolerably reconciled the elders.

But with the young people all was merriment, and shakings of hands, and congratulations, and kissing away the bride's tears, and kissings from her in return, till a young lady, who a.s.sumed some experience in these matters, having worn the nuptial bands some four or five weeks longer than her friend, rescued her, archly observing, with half an eye upon the bridegroom, that at this rate she would have "none left."

My friend the admiral was in fine wig and buckle on this occasion--a striking contrast to his usual neglect of personal appearance. He did not once shove up his borrowed locks (his custom ever at his morning studies) to betray the few grey stragglers of his own beneath them.

He wore an aspect of thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the hour, which at length approached, when after a protracted _breakfast_ of three hours--if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botargoes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c., can deserve so meagre an appellation--the coach was announced, which was come to carry off the bride and bridegroom for a season, as custom has sensibly ordained, into the country; upon which design, wis.h.i.+ng them a felicitous journey, let us return to the a.s.sembled guests.

As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, The eyes of men Are idly bent on him that enters next,

so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when the chief performers in the morning's pageant had vanished. None told his tale.

None sipt her gla.s.s. The poor Admiral made an effort--it was not much.

I had antic.i.p.ated so far. Even the infinity of full satisfaction, that had betrayed itself through the prim looks and quiet deportment of his lady, began to wane into something of misgiving. No one knew whether to take their leaves or stay. We seemed a.s.sembled upon a silly occasion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must do justice to a foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise like to have brought me into disgrace in the fore-part of the day; I mean a power, in any emergency, of thinking and giving vent to all manner of strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma I found it sovereign. I rattled off some of my most excellent absurdities. All were willing to be relieved, at any expense of reason, from the pressure of the intolerable vacuum which had succeeded to the morning bustle. By this means I was fortunate in keeping together the better part of the company to a late hour: and a rubber of whist (the Admiral's favourite game) with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, which came opportunely on his side--lengthened out till midnight--dismissed the old gentleman at last to his bed with comparatively easy spirits.

I have been at my old friend's various times since. I do not know a visiting place where every guest is so perfectly at his ease; nowhere, where harmony is so strangely the result of confusion. Every body is at cross purposes, yet the effect is so much better than uniformity.

Contradictory orders; servants pulling one way; master and mistress driving some other, yet both diverse; visitors huddled up in corners; chairs unsymmetrised; candles disposed by chance; meals at odd hours, tea and supper at once, or the latter preceding the former; the host and the guest conferring, yet each upon a different topic, each understanding himself, neither trying to understand or hear the other; draughts and politics, chess and political economy, cards and conversation on nautical matters, going on at once, without the hope, or indeed the wish, of distinguis.h.i.+ng them, make it altogether the most perfect _concordia discors_ you shall meet with. Yet somehow the old house is not quite what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it for him. The instrument stands where it stood, but she is gone, whose delicate touch could sometimes for a short minute appease the warring elements. He has learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to "make his destiny his choice." He bears bravely up, but he does not come out with his flashes of wild wit so thick as formerly. His sea songs seldomer escape him. His wife, too, looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold and set to rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is wonderful how one young maiden freshens up, and keeps green, the paternal roof. Old and young seem to have an interest in her, so long as she is not absolutely disposed of. The youthfulness of the house is flown. Emily is married.

THE CHILD ANGEL

A DREAM

I chanced upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I had been reading the "Loves of the Angels," and went to bed with my head full of speculations, suggested by that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to innumerable conjectures; and, I remember, the last waking thought, which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort of wonder, "what could come of it."

I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make out--but to some celestial region. It was not the real heavens neither--not the downright Bible heaven--but a kind of fairyland heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, without presumption.

Methought--what wild things dreams are!--I was present--at what would you imagine?--at an angel's gossiping.

Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor I know--but there lay, sure enough, wrapped in its little cloudy swaddling bands--a Child Angel.

Sun-threads--filmy beams--ran through the celestial napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged orders hovered round, watching when the new-born should open its yet closed eyes; which, when it did, first one, and then the other--with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dims the expanding eye-lids of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces--what an inextinguishable t.i.tter that time spared not celestial visages! Nor wanted there to my seeming--O the inexplicable simpleness of dreams!--bowls of that cheering nectar,

--which mortals _caudle_ call below--