 | OVER A WOOD FIRE. Reveries of a bachelor, or, A book of the heart |  |
1. I.
Smoke—Signifying Doubt.
A wife?—thought I;—yes, a wife!
And why?
And pray, my dear sir, why not—why? Why not
doubt; why not hesitate; why not tremble?
Does a man buy a ticket in a lottery—a poor man,
whose whole earnings go in to secure the ticket,—
without trembling, hesitating, and doubting?
Can a man stake his bachelor respectability, his
independence, and comfort, upon the die of absorbing,
unchanging, relentless marriage, without trembling at
the venture?
Shall a man who has been free to chase his fancies
over the wide-world, without lett or hindrance, shut
Home, that are to claim him, his time, his trouble,
and his tears, thenceforward forever more, without
doubts thick, and thick-coming as Smoke?
Shall he who has been hitherto a mere observer of
other men's cares, and business—moving off where
they made him sick of heart, approaching whenever
and wherever they made him gleeful—shall he now
undertake administration of just such cares and business,
without qualms? Shall he, whose whole life has
been but a nimble succession of escapes from trifling
difficulties, now broach without doubtings—that Matrimony,
where if difficulty beset him, there is no
escape? Shall this brain of mine, careless-working,
never tired with idleness, feeding on long vagaries,
and high, gigantic castles, dreaming out beatitudes
hour by hour—turn itself at length to such dull task-work,
as thinking out a livelihood for wife and
children?
Where thenceforward will be those sunny dreams,
in which I have warmed my fancies, and my heart,
and lighted my eye with crystal? This very marriage,
which a brilliant working imagination has invested
time and again with brightness, and delight,
can serve no longer as a mine for teeming fancy: all,
alas, will be gone—reduced to the dull standard of
the actual! No more room for intrepid forays of
will be over!
Why not, I thought, go on dreaming?
Can any wife be prettier than an after dinner
fancy, idle and yet vivid, can paint for you? Can
any children make less noise, than the little rosy-cheeked
ones, who have no existence, except in the
omnium gatherum of your own brain? Can any
housewife be more unexceptionable, than she who
goes sweeping daintily the cobwebs that gather in
your dreams? Can any domestic larder be better
stocked, than the private larder of your head dozing
on a cushioned chair-back at Delmonico's? Can any
family purse be better filled than the exceeding
plump one, you dream of, after reading such pleasant
books as Munchausen, or Typee?
But if, after all, it must be—duty, or what-not,
making provocation—what then? And I clapped
my feet hard against the fire-dogs, and leaned back,
and turned my face to the ceiling, as much as to say;
—And where on earth, then, shall a poor devil look
for a wife?
Somebody says, Lyttleton or Shaftesbury I think,
that “marriages would be happier if they were all
arranged by the Lord Chancellor.” Unfortunately,
we have no Lord Chancellor to make this commutation
of our misery
Shall a man then scour the country on a mule's
back, like Honest Gil Blas of Santillane; or shall he
make application to some such intervening providence
as Madame St. Marc, who, as I see by the
Presse, manages these matters to one's hand, for some
five per cent on the fortunes of the parties?
I have trouted, when the brook was so low, and
the sky so hot, that I might as well have thrown my
fly upon the turnpike; and I have hunted hare at
noon, and wood-cock in snow-time,—never despairing,
scarce doubting; but for a poor hunter of his
kind, without traps or snares, or any aid of police or
constabulary, to traverse the world, where are swarming,
on a moderate computation, some three hundred
and odd millions of unmarried women, for a single
capture—irremediable, unchangeable—and yet a capture
which by strange metonymy, not laid down in
the books, is very apt to turn captor into captive,
and make game of hunter—all this, surely, surely
may make a man shrug with doubt!
Then—again,—there are the plaguey wife's-relations.
Who knows how many third, fourth, or fifth
cousins, will appear at careless complimentary intervals,
long after you had settled into the placid belief
that all congratulatory visits were at an end? How
many twisted headed brothers will be putting in heir
advice, as a friend to Peggy?
How many maiden aunts will come to spend a
month or two with their “dear Peggy,” and want to
know every tea-time, “if she isn't a dear love of a
wife?” Then, dear father-in-law, will beg, (taking
dear Peggy's hand in his,) to give a little wholesome
counsel; and will be very sure to advise just the contrary
of what you had determined to undertake. And
dear mamma-in-law, must set her nose into Peggy's
cupboard, and insist upon having the key to your
own private locker in the wainscot.
Then, perhaps, there is a little bevy of dirty-nosed
nephews who come to spend the holydays, and eat up
your East India sweetmeats; and who are forever
tramping over your head, or raising the Old Harry
below, while you are busy with your clients. Last,
and worst, is some fidgety old uncle, forever too cold
or too hot, who vexes you with his patronizing airs,
and impudently kisses his little Peggy!
—That could be borne, however: for perhaps
he has promised his fortune to Peggy. Peggy, then,
will be rich:—(and the thought made me rub my
shins, which were now getting comfortably warm upon
the fire-dogs.) Then, she will be forever talking of
her fortune; and pleasantly reminding you on occasion
of a favorite purchase,—how lucky that she had
the means; and dropping hints about economy; and
buying very extravagant Paisleys.
She will annoy you by looking over the stock-list
at breakfast time; and mention quite carelessly to
your clients, that she is interested in such, or such a
speculation.
She will be provokingly silent when you hint to a
tradesman, that you have not the money by you, for
his small bill;—in short, she will tear the life out of
you, making you pay in righteous retribution of
annoyance, grief, vexation, shame, and sickness of
heart, for the superlative folly of “marrying rich.”
—But if not rich, then poor. Bah! the thought
made me stir the coals; but there was still no blaze.
The paltry earnings you are able to wring out of
clients by the sweat of your brow, will now be all our
income; you will be pestered for pin-money, and
pestered with your poor wife's-relations. Ten to one,
she will stickle about taste—“Sir Visto's”—and
want to make this so pretty, and that so charming, if
she only had the means; and is sure Paul (a kiss)
can't deny his little Peggy such a trifling sum, and
all for the common benefit.
Then she, for one, means that her children shan't
go a begging for clothes,—and another pull at the
purse. Trust a poor mother to dress her children in
finery!
Perhaps she is ugly;—not noticeable at first; but
growing on her, and (what is worse) growing faster
nose long ago: and that lip—it is very strange, you
think, that you ever thought it pretty. And then,—
to come to breakfast, with her hair looking as it does,
and you, not so much as daring to say—“Peggy, do
brush your hair!” Her foot too—not very bad when
decently chaussée—but now since she's married, she
does wear such infernal slippers! And yet for all
this, to be prigging up for an hour, when any of my
old chums come to dine with me!
“Bless your kind hearts! my dear fellows,” said I,
thrusting the tongs into the coals, and speaking out
loud, as if my voice could reach from Virginia to
Paris—“not married yet!”
Perhaps Peggy is pretty enough—only shrewish.
—No matter for cold coffee;—you should have
been up before.
What sad, thin, poorly cooked chops, to eat with
your rolls!
—She thinks they are very good, and wonders
how you can set such an example to your children.
The butter is nauseating.
—She has no other, and hopes you'll not raise a
storm about butter a little turned.—I think I see
myself—ruminated I—sitting meekly at table, scarce
daring to lift up my eyes, utterly fagged out with
some quarrel of yesterday, choking down detestably
slipping in dried mouthfuls of burnt ham off the side
of my fork tines,—slipping off my chair side-ways at
the end, and slipping out with my hat between my
knees, to business, and never feeling myself a competent,
sound-minded man, till the oak door is between
me and Peggy!
—“Ha, ha,—not yet!” said I; and in so earnest a
tone, that my dog started to his feet—cocked his eye
to have a good look into my face—met my smile of
triumph with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled
up again in the corner.
Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, mild
enough, only she doesn't care a fig for you. She has
married you because father, or grandfather thought
the match eligible, and because she didn't wish to
disoblige them. Besides, she didn't positively hate
you, and thought you were a respectable enough
person;—she has told you so repeatedly at dinner.
She wonders you like to read poetry; she wishes, you
would buy her a good cook-book; and insists upon
your making your will at the birth of the first baby.
She thinks Captain So-and-So a splendid looking
fellow, and wishes you would trim up a little, were
it only for appearance' sake.
You need not hurry up from the office so early at
night:—she, bless her dear heart!—does not feel
the pathetic parts with directions to her seamstress.
You read of marriages: she sighs, and asks if Captain
So and So has left town? She hates to be mewed up
in a cottage, or between brick walls; she does so love
the Springs!
But, again, Peggy loves you;—at least she swears
it, with her hand on the Sorrows of Werter. She
has pin-money which she spends for the Literary
World, and the Friends in Council. She is not bad-looking,
save a bit too much of forehead; nor is she
sluttish, unless a negligé till three o'clock, and an ink
stain on the fore finger be sluttish;—but then she is
such a sad blue!
You never fancied when you saw her buried in a
three volume novel, that it was anything more than a
girlish vagary; and when she quoted Latin, you
thought innocently, that she had a capital memory
for her samplers.
But to be bored eternally about Divine Danté and
funny Goldoni, is too bad. Your copy of Tasso, a
treasure print of 1680, is all bethumbed and dogs-eared,
and spotted with baby gruel. Even your
Seneca—an Elzevir—is all sweaty with handling.
She adores La Fontaine, reads Balzac with a kind of
artist-scowl, and will not let Greek alone.
You hint at broken rest and an aching head at
—in lieu of the camphor bottle—or chant the aiai
aiai, of tragic chorus.
—The nurse is getting dinner; you are holding
the baby; Peggy is reading Bruyere.
The fire smoked thick as pitch, and puffed out
little clouds over the chimney piece. I gave the
fore-stick a kick, at thought of Peggy, baby, and
Bruyére.
—Suddenly the flame flickered bluely athwart
the smoke—caught at a twig below—rolled round the
mossy oak-stick—twined among the crackling tree-limbs—mounted—lit
up the whole body of smoke,
and blazed out cheerily and bright. Doubt vanished
with Smoke, and Hope began with Flame.
| OVER A WOOD FIRE. Reveries of a bachelor, or, A book of the heart | |