"I am come, Mr. Leslie," said Sir Arthur, "There, Mrs. Leslie !" interrupted Mr. Leslie, with an arch nod. "There do you hear that?" MONGER. -"do not move, Mrs. Leslie-pray stay, my MRS. TOMKINS, THE CHEESEdear cousin,-I am come to present to you a double petition. The letter which I received this morning was, like most human events, of PERHAPS the finest character in all Molière mingled yarn-it brought intelligence of good is that of Madame Pernelle, the scolding and of evil. I have lost an old and excellent grandmother in the "Tartufe;" at least, that friend, the rector of Hadley-cum-Appleton, and scene (the opening scene of that glorious have, by that loss, an excellent living to pre-play,) in which, tottering in at a pace which sent to my friend William Morland. It is her descendants have difficulty in keeping up above fifteen hundred a-year, with a large with, she puts to flight her grandson, and her house, a fine garden, and a park-like glebe, daughter-in-law's brother, (think of making altogether a residence fit for any lady; and it men fly the field!) and puts to silence her comes at a moment in which such a piece of daughter-in-law, her grand-daughter, and even preferment is doubly welcome, since the first the pert soubrette, (think of making women part of my petition relates to him. Hear it hold their tongues!) and finally boxes her favourably, my dear sir-my dear madam : he own waiting-maid's ears for yawning and loves your Barbara—and Barbara, I hope and looking tired,-that scene of matchless scoldbelieve, loves him." ing has always seemed to me unrivalled in the comic drama.* The English version of it in "The Hypocrite" is far less amusing, the old Lady Lambert being represented in that piece rather as a sour devotee, whose fiery zeal, and her submission to Cantwell, and even to Mawworm, form the chief cause, the mainspringas it were, of her lectures; whilst Madame Pernelle, although doubtless the effect of her harangues is heightened and deepened by her perfect conviction that she is right and that all the rest are wrong, has yet a natural gift of shrewishness-is, so to say, a scold born, and would have rated her daughter-in-law and all her descendants, and bestowed her cuffs upon her domestics with equal good-will, though she had never aspired to the reputation of piety, or edified by the example of M. Tartufe. The gift was in her. Not only has Molière beaten, as was to be expected, his own English imitator, but he has achieved the far higher honour of vanquishing, in this single instance, his two great forerunners, Masters Shakspeare and Fletcher. For, although the royal dame of Anjou had a considerable talent for vituperation, and Petruchio's two wives, Catherine and Maria,† were scolds of promise; none of the three, in my mind, could be said "You are both favourably disposed, I am sure," resumed Sir Arthur. "Such a son-inlaw must be an honour to any man-must he not, my dear madam?-and I, for my part, have a brother's interest in his suit." "There, Mr. Leslie!" ejaculated in her turn Mrs. Leslie, returning her husband's nod most triumphantly. "A brother's interest!-do you hear that?" "Since," pursued Sir Arthur, "I have to crave your intercession with his dear and admirable sister, whom I have loved, without knowing it, ever since we were children in the nursery, and who now, although confessing that she does not hate me, talks of want of fortune-as if I had not enough, and of want of beauty and want of accomplishments -as if her matchless elegance and unrivalled conversation were not worth all the doll-like prettiness or tinsel acquirements under the sun. Pray intercede for me, dear cousin!dear sir!" continued the ardent lover; whilst Mr. Leslie, without taking the slightest notice of the appeal, nodded most provokingly to the crest-fallen match-maker, and begged to know how she liked Sir Arthur's opinion of her system of education? What answer the lady made, this deponent saith not—indeed, I believe she was too angry to speak-but the result was all that could be desired by the young people: the journey was again postponed; the double marriage cele brated at Hallenden; and Miss Caroline, as bridesmaid, accompanied the fair brides to "canny Northumberland," to take her chance for a husband amongst "fresh fields and pastures new." * I cannot resist the temptation of subjoining, at the end of this paper, some part of that inimitable scene; believing that, like other great writers of an older date, Molière has been somewhat "pushed from his stool" by later dramatists, and is more talked of than read. At all events, any one who does remember Madame Pernelle will not be sorry to meet with her again.-Vide note, at the end of this paper. + Shakspeare's fine extravaganza, "The Taming of the Shrew," gave rise to an equally pleasant continuaThe Tamer Tamed;" a play little known, except to tion by Fletcher, entitled "The Woman's Prize; or, the professed lovers of the old drama, in which Petruchio, having lost his good wife Catherine, is betrayed into a second marriage to a gentle, quiet, demure damsel, called Maria, who, after their nuptials, changes into an absolute fury, turns the table upon him completely, and succeeds in establishing the female dominion upon the firmest possible basis, being aided throughout by a sort of chorus of married women from town and country. to approach Madame Pernelle,-not to mention the superior mode of giving tongue (if I may affront the beautiful race of spaniels by applying in such a way a phrase appropriated to their fine instinct,)—to say nothing of the verbal superiority, Flipote's box on the ear remains unrivalled and unapproached. Catherine breaking the lute over her master's head is a joke in comparison. Now, notwithstanding the great Frenchman's beating his English rivals so much in the representation of a shrew, I am by no means disposed to concede to our Continental neighbours any supremacy in the real living model. I should be as sorry that French women should go beyond us in that particular gift of the tongue, which is a woman's sole weapon, her one peculiar talent, as that their soldiers should beat ours in the more manly way of fighting with sword and with gun, or their painters or poets overpass us in their respective arts. The art of scolding is no trifling accomplishment, and I claim for my countrywomen a high degree of excellence in all the shades and varieties thereunto belonging, from the peevish grumble to the fiery retort-from "the quip modest" to "the countercheck quarrelsome." The gift is strictly national too; for although one particular district of London (which, indeed, has given its name to the dialect*) has been celebrated, and I believe deservedly celebrated, for its breed of scolds; yet I will undertake to pick up in any part of England, at four-and-twenty hours' notice, a shrew that shall vie with all Billingsgate. monger, in Belford, with the whole produce of her dairy, celebrated for a certain mock Stilton, which his customers, who got it at about half the price of the real, were wont to extol as incomparably superior to the more genuine and more expensive commodity. Simon hesitated-looked at Deborah's sour face; for she had by strong persuasion been induced to promise not to scold that is to say, not to speak, (for, in her case, the terms were synonymous ;)- muttered something which might be understood as a civil excuse, and went to the stable to get ready his horse and chaise. In that short walk, however, the prudent swain recollected that a rival cheesemonger had just set up over-against him in the same street of the identical town of Belford; that the aforesaid rival was also a bachelor, and, as Mrs. Ford had hinted, would doubtless not be so blind to his own interest as to neglect to take her mock Stilton, with so small an encumbrance as a sour-looking wife, who was said to be the best manager in the county: so that by the time the crafty stepmother reappeared with a parting glass of capital currant wine, (a sort of English stirrup-cup, which she positively affirmed to be of Deborah's making,) Simon had changed, or, as he expressed it, made up his mind to espouse Miss Deborah, for the benefit of his trade and the good of his customers. Short as was the courtship, and great as were the pains taken by Mrs. Ford who performed impossibilities in the way of conciliation) to bring the marriage to bear, it had yet nearly gone off three several times, in consequence of Deborah's tongue, and poor Simon's misgivings, on whose mind, especially on one occasion, the night before the wedding, it was powerfully borne, that all the excellence of the currant wine, and all the advantages of the mock Stilton, were but poor compensations, not only for "peace and happy life," and To go no farther for an instance than our own market-town, I will match my worthy neighbour, Mrs. Tomkins, cheesemonger, in Queen-street, against any female fish-vender in Christendom. She, in her single person, simple as she stands there behind her counter, shall outscold the whole parish of Wapping. Deborah Ford, such was Mrs. Tomkins's" awful rule and just supremacy," but for the maiden appellation, was the only daughter of a thrifty and thriving yeoman in the county of Wilts, who having, to her own infinite dissatisfaction and the unspeakable discomfort of her family, remained a spinster for more years than she cared to tell, was at length got rid of by a manoeuvring stepmother, who made his marrying Miss Deborah the condition of her supplying Mr. Simon Tomkins, cheese * Even the Americans-although, in a land so celebrated for freedom of speech, and so jealous of being outdone in any way by the mother country, one would think that they might by this time have acquired an established scolding-place of their own-still use the word "Billingsgate" to express the species of vituperation of which I am treating. I found the phrase in that sense in a very eloquent speech of their very eloquent advocate, Mr. Mason, as reported in a New York paper, no longer ago than last June: a diffusion of fame which our fish-wives owe to the wide spread of our language. Who in the New World ever heard of their Parisian rivals, les Dames de la Halle! being permitted, in common parlance, to call his soul his own. Things, however, had gone too far. The stepmother talked of honour and character, and broken hearts; the father hinted at an action for damages, and a certain nephew, Timothy, an attorney-at-law; whilst a younger brother, six feet two in height, and broad in proportion, more than hinted at a good cudgelling. So Simon was married. Long before the expiration of the honeymoon, he found all his worst fears more than confirmed. His wife-" his mistress," as in the homely country phrase he too truly called her-was the greatest tyrant that ever ruled over a household. Compared with our tigress, Judith Jenkins, now Mrs. Jones, was a lamb. Poor Simon's shopman left him, his maid gave warning, and his apprentices ran away; So that he who could not give warning, and was ashamed to run away, remained the one solitary subject of this despotic queen, the band's smoking, and threatened ten times a day to demolish the pipes and the boxes, which were good for nothing, as she observed, but to keep "the men-folk idle and to poison every Christian thing about them;" an affront which both parties endured with a patient silence, which only served to exasperate her wrath.* luckless man-of-all-work of that old and well-trils either to her shopman's snuff or her hus accustomed shop. Bribery, under the form of high wages and unusual indulgences, did to a certain point remedy this particular evil; so that they came at last only to change servants about once a fortnight on an average, and to lose their apprentices, some by running away and some by buying themselves off, not oftener than twice a year. Indeed, in one remarkable instance, they had the good fortune Find it where he would, much need had to keep a cook, who happened to be stone poor Mr. Tomkins of comfort. Before his deaf, upwards of a twelvemonth; and, in an- marriage, he had been a spruce dapper little other still more happy case, were provided man, with blue eyes, a florid complexion, and with a permanent shopman, in the shape of hair of the colour commonly called sandy,an old pliant rheumatic Frenchman, who had alert in movement, fluent in speech, and much lived in some Italian warehouse in London addicted to laughing, whether at his own jokes until fairly worn off his legs, in which plight or the jokes of his neighbours; he belonged his importers had discarded him, to find his to the Bachelors' Club and the Odd Fellows, way back to la belle France as best he could. was a great man at the cricket-ground, and a Happening to fall in with him, on going to person of some consideration at the vestry; the London warehouse with an order for Par-in short was the beau idéal of the young thrimesan, receiving an excellent character of him from his employers, and being at his wit's end for a man, Mr. Simon Tomkins, after giving him due notice of his wife's failing, engaged the poor old foreigner, and carried him home to Queen-street in triumph. A much-enduring man was M. Leblanc ! Next after his master, he, beyond all doubt, was the favourite object of Deborah's objurgation; but, by the aid of snuff and philosophy, he bore it bravely. "Mais je suis philosophe!" cried the poor old Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders, and tapping his box when the larum of his mistress's tongue ran through the house-"Toutefois je suis philosophe!" exclaimed he with a patient sigh; and Deborah, who, without comprehending the phrase, understood it to convey some insinuation against herself, redoubled her clamour at the sound. ving country tradesman of thirty years ago. He had not been married half a year before such an alteration took place as really would have seemed incredible. His dearest friends did not know him. The whole man was changed-shrunk, shrivelled, withered, dwindled into nothing. The henpecked husband in the farce, carrying his wife's clogs in one hand and her bandbox in the other, and living on the "tough drumsticks of turkeys, and the fat flaps of shoulders of mutton," was but a type of him. The spirit of his youth was departed. He gave up attending the coffeehouse or the cricket-ground, ceased to joke or to laugh at jokes; and he who had had at club, and vestry a voice potential as double as the mayor's," could hardly be brought to answer Yes or No to a customer. The man was evidently in an atrophy. His wife laid the blame to his smoking, and his friends laid it to his wife, whilst poor Simon smoked on and said nothing. It was a parallel case to Peter Jen During the great dispute in France about the Ancients Nothing is so provoking in an adversary as silence. and Moderns, in Madame Dacier's time, one of the combatants published a pamphlet with the title, Re Tobacco in its various forms seems to have been the chief consolation of her victims. If snuff and philosophy were Leblanc's resources, a pipe and a tankard were his master's; and in both cases the objects to which they resorted for comfort drew down fresh lectures from their liege lady. She complained of the smell. And of a surety the smell is an abomi-ponse au Silence de M. de la Motte. I confess that I nation; only that, her father and her seven brothers, to say nothing of half-a-dozen uncles and some score of cousins, having been as atrociously given to smoking as if they had been born and bred in Germany, so that eight or ten chimneys had been constantly going in one room in the old farm-house of Bevis-land, the fumes of tobacco might be said to be her native air; and Mr. Tomkins's stock-in-trade consisting, besides the celebrated cheese which had so unluckily brought him acquainted with her, of soap, candles, salt-butter, bacon, pickles, oils, and other unsavoury commodities, one would really think that no one particular stench could greatly increase the ill odours of that most unfragrant shop. She, however, imputed all the steams that invaded her nos have some sympathy with the writer. It was but the other day that I and another lady were engaged in an argument with one of the stronger sex, and had just beaten him out of the field-were on the very point of giving him the coup de grace, when all on a sudden my gentleman made us a low bow, and deIclared that we should have it in our own way-that he would not say another word on the subject. I don't know that I was ever so much provoked in my life. To be defrauded of our just victory (for of course we were right,) whilst the cunning wretch (a clever man, too, which made it worse) looked as complacent and as smiling as if he had yielded the point from pure compassion to our weakness! Mrs. Tomkins would have boxed his ears. It is just as if an opponent at chess, whose pawns are almost gone, and whose pieces are taken, whose game, in short, is desperate-and who must in a move or two be checkmated-should suddenly proclaim himself tired, and sweep away the board. I wonder what Mrs. Tomkins would say to that! kins's, and Stephen Lane might have saved him; but Stephen not being amongst his cronies, (for Simon was a Tory,) and Simon making no complaint, that chance was lost. He lingered through the first twelve months after their marriage, and early in the second he died, leaving his widow in excellent circumstances, the possessor of a flourishing business and the mother of a little boy, to whom she (the will having of course been made under her supervision) was constituted sole guardian. Incredible as it may seem, considering the life she had led him while alive, Deborah was really sorry for poor Simon-perhaps from a touch of remorse, perhaps because she lost in him the most constant and patient listener to her various orations-perhaps from a mixture of both feelings; at all events, sorry she was; and as grief in her showed itself in the very novel form of gentleness, so that for four and twenty hours she scolded nobody, the people about her began to be seriously alarmed for her condition, and were about to call in the physician who had attended the defunct, to prescribe for the astounding placability of the widow, when something done or left undone, by the undertaker or his man, produced the effect which medical writers are pleased to call "an effort of nature;" she began to scold, and scolding all through the preparations for the funeral, and the funeral itself, and the succeeding ceremonies of will-reading, legacypaying, bill-settling, stock-valuing, and so forth, with an energy and good-will, and an unwearying perseverance that left nothing to be feared on the score of her physical strength. John Wesley preaching four sermons, and Kean playing Richard three times in one day, might have envied her power of lungs. She could have spoken Lord Brougham's famous six hours' speech on the Law Reform without exhaustion or hoarseness. But what do I talk of a six hours' speech? She could have spoken a whole night's debate in her own single person, without let or pause, or once dropping her voice, till the division, so prodigious was her sostenuto. Matthews and Miss Kelly were nothing to her. And the exercise agreed with her she throve on it. So for full twenty years after the death of Mr. Tomkins did she reign and scold in the dark, dingy, low-browed, well-accustomed shop of which she was now the sole directress. M. Pierre Leblanc continued to be her man of business; and as, besides his boasted philosophy, he added a little French pliancy and flattery of which he did not boast, and a great deal of dexterity in business and integrity, as well as clearness in his accounts, they got on together quite as well as could be expected. The trade flourished; for, to do Deborah justice, she was not only a good manager, in the lowest sense of the term-which, commonly speaking, means only frugal,—but she was, in the most liberal acceptation of the words, prudent, sagacious, and honest in her pecuniary dealings, buying the very best commodities, and selling them at such a fair and moderate profit as ensured a continuation of the best custom of the county-the more especially as her sharp forbidding countenance and lank raw-boned figure were seldom seen in the shop. People said (but what will not people say?) that one reason for her keeping away from such excellent scolding-ground was to be found in les doux yeux of M. Pierre Leblanc, who, withered, wizened, brokendown cripple as he was, was actually suspected of having made an offer to his mistress;-a story which I wholly disbelieve, not only because I do not think that the poor philosopher, whose courage was rather of a passive than an active nature, would ever have summoned resolution to make such a proposal; but because he never, as far as I can discover, was observed in the neighbourhood with a scratched face-a catastrophe which would as certainly have followed the audacity in question, as the night follows the day. Moreover, it is bad philosophy to go hunting about for a remote and improbable cause, when a sufficient and likely one is close at hand; and there was, in immediate juxtaposition with Mrs. Tomkins's shop, reason enough to keep her out of it to the end of time. I have said that this shop, although spacious and not incommodious, was dark and lowbrowed, forming a part of an old-fashioned irregular tenement, in an old-fashioned irregular street. The next house, with a sort of very deep and square bay-window, which was, by jutting out so as to overshadow it, in some sort the occasion of the gloom which, increased, perhaps, by the dingy nature of the commodities, did unquestionably exist in this great depository of cheese and chandlery-ware, happened to be occupied by a dealer in whalebone in its various uses, stays, umbrellas, parasols, and so forth,-a fair, mild, gentle Quakeressa female Friend, with two or three fair smiling daughters, the very models of all that was quiet and peaceful, who, without even speaking to the furious virago, were a standing rebuke to that "perturbed spirit." The deep bay-window was their constant dwelling-place. There they sat tranquilly working from morning to night, gliding in and out with a soft stealing pace like a cat, sleek, dimpled, and dove-eyed, with that indescribable nicety and purity of dress and person, and that blameless modesty of demeanour, for which the female Friend is so generally distinguished. Not a fault could Mrs. Tomkins discover in her next neighbour, but if ever woman hated her next neighbour, she hated Rachel May. The constant sight of this object of her detestation was, of course, one of the evils of Mrs. Tomkins's prosperous life;—but she had many others to fight with-most of them, of course, of her own seeking. What she would have done without a grievance, it is difficult to guess; but she had so great a genius for making one out of every thing and every person connected with her, that she was never at a loss in that particular. Her stepmother she had always regarded as a natural enemy; and at her father's death, little as she, generally speaking, coveted money, she contrived to quarrel with her whole family on the division of his property, chiefly on the score of an old japanned chest of drawers, not worth ten shillings, which her brothers and sisters were too much of her own temper to relinquish. Then her son, on whom she doted with a peevish, grumbling, fretful, discontented fondness that always took the turn of finding fault, was, as she used reproachfully to tell him, just like his father. The poor child, do what he would, could never please her. If he were well, she scolded; if he were sick, she scolded; if he were silent, she scolded; if he talked, she scolded. She scolded if he laughed, and she scolded if he cried. Then the people about her were grievances, of course, from Mr. Pierre Leblanc downward. She turned off her porter for apprehending a swindler, and gave away her yard-dog for barking away some thieves. There was no foreseeing what would displease her. She caused a beggar to be taken up for insulting her, because he, with his customary cant, blessed her good-humoured face; and she complained to the mayor of the fine fellow Punch for the converse reason, because he stopped before her windows and mimicked her at her own door. "Mother!" said John Tomkins, mustering up his courage, “I think I was one and twenty last Saturday." "And what of that?" replied Deborah, putting on her stormiest face; "I'm mistress here, and mistress I'll continue: your father, poor simpleton that he was, was not fool enough to leave his house and business to an ignorant boy. The stock and trade are mine, sir, and shall be mine, in spite of all the undutiful sons in Christendom. One and twen ty, forsooth! What put that in your head, I wonder? What do you mean by talking of one and twenty, sirrah ?" "Only, mother," replied John, meekly, "that, though father left you the house and business, he left me three thousand pounds, which, by your prudent management, are now seven thousand; and uncle William Ford, he left me the new Warren Farm; and so, mother, I was thinking, with your good will, to marry and settle." "Marry!" exclaimed Mrs. Tomkins, too, angry even to scold-" marry!" and she laid down her knife and fork, as if choking. "Yes, mother!" rejoined John, taking courage from his mother's unexpected quietness, "Rachel May's pretty grand-daughter Rebecca; she is but half a Quaker, you know, for her mother was a Churchwoman: and so, with your good leave-" and smack went all! that remained of the ducks in poor John's face; an effort of nature that probably saved Deborah's life, and enabled her to give vent to an oration to which I have no power to do justice; but of which the non-effect was so decided, that John and his pretty Quakeress were married within a fortnight, and are now Then she met with a few calamities of happily settled at the new Warren House; which her temper was more remotely the whilst Mrs. Tomkins, having hired a goodcause; such as being dismissed from the humoured, good-looking, strapping Irishman dissenting congregation that she frequented, of three and twenty, as her new foreman, is for making an over-free use of the privilege said to have it in contemplation, by way, as which pious ladies sometimes assume of quar- she says, of punishing her son, to make him, relling with their acquaintance on spiritual the aforesaid Irish foreman, successor to Sigrounds, and venting all manner of angry mon Tomkins, as well as to Pierre Leblanc, anathema for the love of God; an affront that and is actually reported, (though the fact drove her to church the very next Sunday. seems incredible,) to have become so amiable Also, she got turned off by her political party, under the influence of the tender passion, as in the heat of a contested election, for insult-to have passed three days without scolding ing friends and foes in the bitterness of her zeal, and thereby endangering the return of her favourite candidate. A provincial poet, whose works she had abused, wrote a song in her dispraise; and three attorneys brought actions against her for defamation. These calamities notwithstanding, Deborah's life might, for one and twenty years, be accounted tolerably prosperous. At the end of that time, two misfortunes befell her nearly at once,-Pierre Leblanc died, and her son attained his majority. "Mother!" said the young man, as they were dining together off a couple of ducks any body in the house or out. The little God of Love is, to be sure, a powerful deity, especially when he comes somewhat out of season; but this transition of character does seem to me too violent a change even for a romance, much more for this true history; and I hold it no lack of charity to continue doubtful of Deborah's reformation till after the honey-moon. Note. MADAME PERNELLE, ELMIRE, MARIANNE, two days after the old shopman's funeral; ¦ Allons, Flipote, allons; que d'eux je me délivre. |