"My Novel" — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
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will condescend to forget his sixteen quarterings in the pleasure of doing you a favour,—yet these specimens of the suavity of their several nations are rare; whereas blandness and polish are common attributes with your Italian. They seem to have been immemorially handed down to him, from ancestors emulating the urbanity of Caesar, and refined by the grace of Horace.
“Dr. Riccabocca consents to dine with us,” cried the parson, hastily.
“If Madame permit?” said the Italian, bowing over the hand extended to him, which, however, he forbore to take, seeing it was already full of the watch.
“I am only sorry that the trout must be quite spoiled,” began Mrs. Dale, plaintively.
“It is not the trout one thinks of when one dines with Mrs. Dale,” said the infamous dissimulator.
“But I see James coming to say that dinner is ready,” observed the parson.
“He said that three-quarters of an hour ago, Charles dear,” retorted Mrs. Dale, taking the arm of Dr. Riccabocca.
CHAPTER VIII
While the parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to regale the reader with a small treatise a propos of that “Charles dear,” murmured by Mrs. Dale,—a treatise expressly written for the benefit of The Domestic Circle.
It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys so little endearment as the word “dear.” But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the close, as in that “Charles dear” of Mrs. Dale, it has spilled so much of its natural bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, “amara lento temperet risu.” Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch. For example:—
(Plaintive.) “I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles dear.”
“Nay, I am very glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles dear.”
“Not quite so loud! If you had but my poor head, Charles dear,” etc.
(Arch.) “If you could spill the ink anywhere but on the best tablecloth, Charles dear!”
“But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite faultless, own, Charles dear,” etc.
When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its venom is naturally less exhausted. For example:—
“Really, I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person,” etc.
“And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should just like to know whose fault it was—that’s all.”
“But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the children than—” etc.
But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty of “my” before it; it is generally more than simple objurgation,—it prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious assumption of the Petruchian paterfamilias—the head of the family—boding, not perhaps “peace and love, and quiet life,” but certainly “awful rule and right supremacy.” For example:—
“My dear Jane, I wish you would just put by that everlasting crochet, and listen to me for a few moments,” etc. “My dear Jane, I wish you would understand me for once; don’t think I am angry,—no, but I am hurt! You must consider,” etc.
“My dear Jane, I don’t know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for their husband’s property,” etc.
“My dear Jane, I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the world to be jealous; but I’ll be d—-d if that puppy, Captain Prettyman,” etc.
Now, few so carefully cultivate the connubial garden, as to feel much surprise at the occasional sting of a homely nettle or two; but who ever expected, before entering that garden, to find himself pricked and lacerated by an insidious exotical “dear,” which he had been taught to believe only lived in a hothouse, along with myrtles and other tender and sensitive shrubs which poets appropriate to Venus? Nevertheless Parson Dale, being a patient man, and a pattern to all husbands, would have found no fault with his garden, though there had not been a single specimen of “dear,”—whether the dear humilis or the dear superba; the dear pallida, rubra, or nigra; the dear suavis or the dear horrida,—no, not a single “dear” in the whole horticulture of matrimony, which Mrs. Dale had not brought to perfection. But this was far from being the case; Mrs. Dale, living much in retirement, was unaware of the modern improvements, in variety of colour and sharpness of prickle, which have rewarded the persevering skill of our female florists.
CHAPTER IX
In the cool of the evening Dr. Riccabocca walked home across the fields. Mr. and Mrs. Dale had accompanied him half-way, and as they now turned back to the parsonage, they looked behind to catch a glimpse of the tall, outlandish figure, winding slowly through the path amidst the waves of the green corn.
“Poor man!” said Mrs. Dale, feelingly; “and the button was off his wristband! What a pity he has nobody to take care of him! He seems very domestic. Don’t you think, Charles, it would be a great blessing if we could get him a good wife?”
“Um,” said the parson; “I doubt if he values the married state as he ought.”
“What do you mean, Charles? I never saw a man more polite to ladies in my life.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what? You are always so mysterious, Charles dear.”
“Mysterious! No, Carry; but if you could hear what the doctor says of the ladies sometimes.”
“Ay, when you men get together, my dear. I know what that means—pretty things you say of us! But you are all alike; you know you are, love!”
“I am sure,” said the parson, simply, “that I have good cause to speak well of the sex—when I think of you and my poor mother.”
Mrs. Dale, who, with all her “tempers,” was an excellent woman, and loved her husband with the whole of her quick little heart, was touched. She pressed his hand, and did not call him dear all the way home.
Meanwhile the Italian passed the fields, and came upon the high road about two miles from Hazeldean. On one side stood an old-fashioned solitary inn, such as English inns used to be before they became railway hotels,—square, solid, old-fashioned, looking so hospitable and comfortable, with their great signs swinging from some elm-tree in front, and the long row of stables standing a little back, with a chaise or two in the yard, and the jolly landlord talking of the crops to some stout farmer, whose rough pony halts of itself at the well-known door. Opposite this inn, on the other side of the road, stood the habitation of Dr. Riecabocca.
A few years before the date of these annals, the stage-coach on its way to London from a seaport town stopped at the inn, as was its wont, for a good hour, that its passengers might dine like Christian Englishmen—not gulp down a basin of scalding soup, like everlasting heathen Yankees, with that cursed railway-whistle shrieking like a fiend in their ears! It was the best dining-place on the whole road, for the trout in the neighbouring rill were famous, and so was the mutton which came from Hazeldean Park.
From the outside of the coach had descended two passengers, who,