University of Virginia Library

Winter's Tale.

F—, the portrait-painter, was a considerable ally of mine at
one time. His success in his art brought him into contact with
many people, and he made friends as a fastidious lady buys shoes
—trying on a great many that were destined to be thrown aside.
It was the prompting, no doubt, of a generous quality—that of
believing all people perfect till he discovered their faults—but as
he cut loose without ceremony from those whose faults were not
to his mind, and, as ill-fitting people are not as patient of rejection
as ill-fitting shoes, the quality did not pass for its full value,
and his abusers were “thick as leaves in Vallambrosa.” The
friends who “wore his bleeding roses,” however (and of these he
had his share), fought his battles quite at their own charge. What
with plenty of pride, and as plentiful a lack of approbativeness,
F— took abuse as a duck's back takes rain—buoyant in the
shower as in the sunshine.

“Well, F—!” I said, as I occupied his big chair one morning

while he was at work, “there was great skirmishing about you
last night at the tea-party!”

“No!—really? Who was the enemy?”

“Two ladies, who said they travelled with you through Italy,
and knew all about you—the Blidgimses.”

“Oh, the dear old Blidgimses—Crinny and Ninny—the ungrateful
monsters! Did I ever tell you of my nursing those two
old girls through the cholera?

“No. But before you go off with a long story, tell me how
you can stand such abominable backbiting? It isn't once in a
way, merely!—you are their whole stock in trade, and they vilify
you in every house they set foot in. The mildest part of it is
criminal slander, my good fellow! Why not do the world a
service, and show that slander is actionable, though it is committed
in good society?”

“Pshaw! What does it amount to?

and, in this particular instance, the jury would probably give the
damages the other way—for if they hammer at me till doomsday,
I have had my fun out of them—my quid pro quo!”

“Well, preface your story by telling me where you met
them. I never knew by what perverse thread you were drawn
together.”

“A thread that might have drawn me into much more desperate
extremity—a letter from the most lovable of women, charging
me to become the trusty squire of these errant damsels wherever
I should encounter them. I was then studying in Italy. They

came to Florence, where I chanced to be, and were handed over
to me without dog, cat, or waiting-maid, by a man who seemed
ominously glad to be rid of them. As it was the ruralizing season,
and all the world was flocking to the baths of Lucca, close
by, they went there till I could get ready to undertake them—
which I did, with the devotion of a courier in a new place, one
fig-desiring evening of June.”

“Was there a delivery of the great seal?” I asked, rather
amused at F—'s circumstantial mention of his introitus to
office.

“Something very like it, indeed. I had not fairly got the
blood out of my face, after making my salaam, when Miss Crinny
Blidgims fished up from some deep place she had about her, a
memorandum-book, with a well-thumbed brown paper cover, and,
gliding across the room, placed it in my hands as people on the
stage present pocket-books—with a sort of dust-flapping parabola.
Now, if I have any particular antipathy, it is to the smell of old
flannel, and, as this equivocal-looking object descended before my
nose—faith!—but I took it. It was the account-book of the
eatables and drinkables furnished to the ladies in their travels,
the prices of eggs, bread, figs, et cetera, and I was to begin my duties
by having up the head waiter of the lodging-house, and holding
inquisition on his charges. The Blidgimses spoke no Italian, and
no servant in the house spoke English, and they were bursting for
a translator to tell him that the eggs were over-charged, and that
he must deduct threepence a day for wine, for they never
touched it!”

“`What do the ladies wish?' inquired the dumb-founded
waiter, in civil Tuscan.

“`What does he say? what does he say?' cried Miss Corinna,
in resounding nasal.

“`Tell the impudent fellow what eggs are in Dutchess
county!' peppered out Miss Katrina, very sharply.

“Of course I translated with a discretion. There was rather
an incongruity between the looks of the damsels and what they
were to be represented as saying—Katrina Blidgims living altogether
in a blue opera-hat with a white feather.”

I interrupted F— to say that the blue hat was immortal, for
it was worn at the tea-party of the night before.

“I had enough of the blue hat and its bandbox before we
parted. It was the one lifetime extravagance of the old maid,
perpetrated in Paris, and as it covered the back seam of a wig (a
subsequent discovery of mine), she was never without it, except
when bonneted to go out. She came to breakfast in it, mended
her stockings in it, went to parties in it. I fancy it took some
trouble to adjust it to the wig, and she devoted to it the usual
dressing-hours of morning and dinner; for in private she wore a
handkerchief over it, pinned under her chin, which had only to be
whipped off when company was announced, and this, perhaps, is
one of the secrets of its immaculate, yet threadbare preservation.
She called it her abbo!”

“Her what?”

“You have heard of the famous Herbault, the man-milliner, of
Paris? The bonnet was his production, and called after him with
with great propriety. In Italy, where people dress according to
their condition in life, this perpetual abbo was something à la
princesse, and hence my embarrassment in explaining to Jacomo,
the waiter, that Signorina Katrina's high summons concerned
only an overcharge of a penny in the eggs!”

And what said Jacomo?”

“Jacomo was incapable of an incivility, and begged pardon
before stating that the usual practice of the house was to
charge half a dollar a day for board and lodging, including
a private parlor and bedroom, three meals and a bottle
of wine. The ladies, however, had applied through an English
gentlemen (who chanced to call on them, and who spoke Italian),
to have reductions made on their dispensing with two dishes of
meat out of three, drinking no wine, and wanting no nuts and
raisins. Their main extravagance was in eggs, which they ate
several times a day between meals, and wished to have cooked
and served up at the price per dozen in the market. On
this they had held conclave below stairs, and the result had not
been communicated, because there was no common language;
but Jacomo wished, through me, respectfully to represent, that
the reductions from the half-dollar a day should be made as requested,
but that the eggs could not be bought, cooked, and
served up, (with salt and bread, and a clean napkin), for just
their price in the market. And on this point the ladies were obstinate.
And to settle this difficulty between the high contracting
parties, cost an argument of a couple of hours, my first performance
as translator in the service of the Blidgimses. Thenceforward,
I was as necessary to Crinny and Ninny—(these were
their familiar diminutives for Corinna and Katrina)—as necessary
to Crinny as the gift of speech, and to Ninny as the wig
and abbo put together. Obedient to the mandate of the fair
hand which had consigned me to them, I gave myself up to their
service, even keeping in my pocket their frowsy grocery-book—
though not without some private outlay in burnt vinegar. What

penance a man will undergo for a pretty woman who cares nothing
about him!”

“But what could have started such a helpless pair of old
quizzes upon their travels?”

“I wondered myself until I knew them better. Crinny Blidgims
had a tongue of the liveliness of an eel's tail. It would
have wagged after she was skinned and roasted. She had, beside,
a kind of pinchbeck smartness, and these two gifts, and perhaps
the name of Corinna, had inspired her with the idea that
she was an improvisatrice. So, how could she die without going
to Italy?”

“And Ninny went for company?”

“Oh, Miss Ninny Blidgims had a passion too! She had come
out to see Paris. She had heard that, in Paris, people could renew
their youth, and she thought she had done it, with her abbo.
She thought, too, that she must have manners to correspond. So,
while travelling in her old bonnet, she blurted out her bad grammar
as she had done for fifty years, but in her blue hat she simpered
and frisked to the best of her recollection. Silly as that
old girl was, however, she had the most pellucid set of ideas on
the prices of things to eat. There was no humbugging her on
that subject, even in a foreign language. She filled her pockets
with apples, usually in our walks; and the translating between
her and a street huckster, she in her abbo and the apple-woman
in Italian rags, was vexatious to endure, but very funny to remember.
I have thought of painting it, but, to understand the
picture, the spectator must make the acquaintance of Miss Fanny
Blidgims—rather a pill for a connoisseur! But, by this time,
you are ready to approfond, as the French aptly say, the depths
of my subsequent distresses.