MRS. MOSSE. I Do not know whether I ever hinted to the courteous reader that I had been in my younger days, without prejudice to my present condition, somewhat of a spoiled child. The person who, next after my father and mother, contributed most materially to this melancholy catastrophe, was an old female domestic, Mrs. Elizabeth Mosse, who, at the time of her death, had lived nearly sixty years in our house and that of my maternal grandfather. Of course, during the latter part of this long period, the common forms and feelings of servant and master were entirely swept away. She was a member of the family, an humble friend-happy are they who have such a friend! living as she liked, up stairs or down, in the kitchen or the nursery, considered, consulted, and beloved by the whole household. Mossy (for by that fondling nursery name she best liked to be called) had never been married, so that the family of her master and mistress had no rival in her heart, and on me, their only child, was concentrated that intensity of affection which distinguishes the attachments of age. I loved her dearly too, as dearly as a spoiled child can love its prime spoiler, but, oh! how selfish was my love, compared to the depth, the purity, the indulgence, the self-denial of hers! Dear Mossy! I shall never do her justice; and yet I must try. Mrs. Mosse, in her appearance, was in the highest degree what is called respectable. She must have been tall when young; for even when bent with age, she was above the middle height, a large-made though meagre woman. She walked with feebleness and difficulty, from the attacks of hereditary gout, which not even her temperance and activity could ward off. There was something very interesting in this tottering helplessness, clinging to the balusters, or holding by doors and chairs like a child. It had nothing of vulgar lameness; it told of age, venerable age. Out of doors she never ventured, unless on some sunny afternoon I could entice her into the air, and then once round the garden, or to the lawn gate and back again, was the extent of her walk, propped by a very aristocratic walkingstick (once the property of a duchess) as tall as herself, with a hooked ivory handle, joined to the cane by a rim of gold. Her face was as venerable as her person. She must have been very handsome; indeed she was so still, as far as regular and delicate features, a pale brown complexion, dark eyes, still retaining the intelligence and animation of youth, and an expression perfectly gentle and feminine, could make her so. It is one of the worst penalties that woman pays to age, that often, when advanced in life, the face loses its characteristic softness; in short, but for the dif ference in dress, many an old woman's head might pass for that of an old man. This misfortune could never have happened to Mossy. No one could mistake the sex of that sweet countenance. Her dress manifested a good deal of laudable coquetry, a nice and minute attention to the becoming. I do not know at what precise date her costume was fixed: but, as long as I remember her fixed it was, and stood as invariably at one point of fashion, as the hand of an unwound clock stands at one hour of the day. It consisted (to begin from the feet and describe upwards) of black shoes of shining stuff, with very pointed toes, high heels, and a peak up the instep, showing to advantage her delicately white cotton stockings, and peeping beneath petticoats so numerous and substantial, as to give a rotundity and projection almost equal to a hoop. Her exterior garment was always quilted, varying according to the season or the occasion, from simple stuff, or fine white dimity, or an obsolete manufacture called Marseilles, up to silk and satin ;for, as the wardrobes of my three grandmothers (pshaw! I mean my grandfather's three wives!) had fallen to her lot, few gentlewomen of the last century could boast a greater variety of silks that stood on end.- Over the quilted petticoat came an open gown, whose long waist reached to the bottom of her stiff stays, and whose very full tail, about six inches longer than the petticoat, would have formed a very inconvenient little train, if it had been permitted to hang down; but that inconvenience never happened, and could scarcely have been contemplated by the designer. The tail was constantly looped up, so as to hang behind in a sort of bunchy festoon, exhibiting on each side the aforesaid petticoat. In material the gown also varied with the occasion, although it was always either composed of dark cotton or of the rich silks and satins of my grandmamma's wardrobe. The sleeves came down just below the elbow, and were finished by a narrow white ruffle meeting her neat mittens. On her neck she wore a snow white double muslin kerchief, pinned over the. gown in front, and confined by an apron also of muslin; and, over all, a handsome silk shawl, so pinned back as to show a part of the snowy neck-kerchief. Her head-dress was equally becoming, and more particularly precise; for, if ever she betrayed an atom of oldmaidishness, it was on the score of her caps. From a touch of the gout in her hands which had enlarged and stiffened the joints, she could do no work which required nicety, and the successive lady's maids, on whom the operation devolved, used to say that they would rather make up ten caps for their mistress than one for Mrs. Mosse; and yet the construction seemed simple enough. A fine clear-starched caul, sticking up rather high and peaked in front, was plaited on a Scotch gauze headpiece; (I remember there used to be exactly six plaits to be equalled by that which she professed toon each side-woe to the damsel who should wards a pearl edge;-indeed I retain my disput more or less!) and, on the other side, a like to this hour-it is such an exceedingly border, consisting of a strip of fine muslin, cross and frumpish-looking colour-and then edged with narrow lace, clear-starched and its ugliness! Show me a brown flower! No! crimped, was plaited on with equal precision. I could not bring myself to buy brown;—so In one part of this millinery I used to assist. after fighting many battles about grey and I dearly loved to crimp Mossy's frills, and she green, we at last settled on purple as a sort with her usual indulgence used frequently to of neutral tint, a hue which pleased both parlet me, keeping however a pretty close eye on ties. To return to the cap which we have her laces and muslins, whilst I was passing been so long making-the finish both to that them with triumphant rapidity between the and to my description was a strip of crimped small wooden machine notched longitudinally, muslin, with edging on both sides to match and the corresponding roller. Perhaps a great- the border, quilled on a piece of tape, and faster proof of indulgence could hardly have been ened on a cap at each ear. This she called shown, since she must, during this operation, the chinnum. A straight short row of hair have been in double fear for her own cap strips, rather grey, but still very dark for her age, which did occasionally get a rent, and for my just appeared under the plaited lace; and a fingers, which were sometimes well pinched- pair of silver-mounted spectacles completed then she would threaten that I should never her equipment. If I live to the age of sevencrimp her muslin again-a never which seldom ty, I will dress so too, with an exception of lasted beyond the next cap-making. The head- the stiff stays. Only a waist native to the piece was then concealed by a satin riband fashion could endure that whalebone armour. fastened in a peculiar bow, something between a bow and a puffing behind, whilst the front was adorned with an equally peculiar small knot, of which the two bows were pinned down flat and the two ends left sticking up, cut into scallops of a prodigious regularity. The purchase of the ribands formed another branch of the cap-making department to which I laid claim. From the earliest period at which I could distinguish one colour from another, I had been purveyor of ribands to Mossy, and indeed at all fairs, or whenever I received a present or entered a shop, (and I was so liberally supplied that there was nothing like generosity in the case,) it was the first and pleasantest destination of money that occurred to me: so that the dear woman used to complain, that Miss bought her so many ribands, that they spoiled in keeping. We did not quite agree either in our taste. White, as both acknowledged, was the only wear for Sundays and holidays; but then she loved plain white, and I could not always control a certain wandering inclination for figured patterns and pearl edges. If Mossy had an aversion to any thing, it was to a pearl edge. I never could persuade her to wear that simple piece of finery but once; and then she made as many wry faces as a child eating olives, and stood before a glass eyeing the obnoxious riband with so much discomposure, that I was fain to take it out myself, and promise to buy no more pearl edges. The every-day ribands were coloured; and there, too, we had our little differences of taste and opinion. Both agreed in the propriety of grave colours; but then my reading of a grave colour was not always the same as hers. My eyes were not old enough. She used to accuse my French greys of blueness, and my crimsons of redness, and my greens of their greenness. She had a penchant for brown, and to brown I had a repugnance only Her employments were many and various. No work was required of her from her mistress; but idleness was misery to her habits of active usefulness, and it was astonishing how much those crippled fingers could do. She preferred coarse needle-work, as it was least difficult to her eyes and hands; and she attended also to those numerous and undefined avocations of a gentleman's family which come under the denomination of odd jobs-shelling peas, paring apples, splitting French beans, washing china, darning stockings, hemming and mending dusters and house-cloths, making cabbage-nets, and kuitting garters. These were her daily avocations, the amusements which she loved. The only more delicate operation of needle-work that she ever undertook was the making of pincushions, a manufacture in which she delighted-not the quips and quiddities of these degenerate days, little bits of riband, and pasteboard, and gilt paper, in the shape of books or butterflies, by which, at charitable repositories, half-a-dozen pins are smuggled into a lady's pocket, and shillings and half-crowns are smuggled out; - no! Mossy's were real solid old-fashioned silken pincushions, such as Autolycus might have carried about amongst his pedlery-ware, square and roomy, and capable, at a moderate computation, of containing a whole paper of shortwhites, and another of middlings. It was delightful to observe her enjoyment of this playwork; the conscious importance with which she produced her satins and brocades, and her cards of sewing silks (she generally made a whole batch at once)—the deliberation with which she assorted the colours; - the care with which she tacked and fitted side to side, and corner to corner; the earnestness with which, when all was sewed up except one small aperture for the insertion of the stuffing, she would pour in the bran, or stow in the wool:-then the care with which she | agreeable companion, sensible, modest, simpoked the stuffing into every separate corner, ple, shrewd, with an exactness of recollection, ramming it down with all her strength, and an honesty of memory, that gave exceeding making the little bag (so to say) hold more interest to her stories. You were sure that than it would hold, until it became almost as you heard the truth. There was one striking hard as cricket-ball;-then how she drew peculiarity in her manner of talking, or rather the aperture together by main force, putting one striking contrast. The voice and accent so many last stitches, fastening off with such were quite those of a gentlewoman, as sweetcare; and then distributing them to all around toned and correct as could be; the words and her (for her lady-like spirit would have scorned their arrangement were altogether those of a the idea of selling them), and always reserv- common person, provincial and ungrammatical ing the gayest and the prettiest for me. Dear in every phrase and combination. I believe old soul! I have several of them still. it is an effect of association, from the little slips in her grammar, that I have contracted a most unscholar-like prejudice in favour of false syntax, which is so connected in my mind with right notions, that I no sooner catch the sound of bad English than I begin to listen for good sense; and really they often go together (always supposing that the bad English be not of the order called slang), and meet much more frequently than those exclusive people, ladies and gentlemen, are willing to allow. In her they were always united. But the charm of her conversation was in the old family stories, and the unconscious peeps at old manners which they afforded. But, if I should begin to enumerate all the instances of kindness which I experienced at her hands, through the changes and varieties of troublesome childhood and fantastic youth; from the time when I was a puling baby, to the still more exacting state of a young girl at home in the holidays, I should never know when to end. Her sweet and loving temper was self-rewarded. She enjoyed the happiness she gave. Those were pleasant evenings when my father and mother were engaged in the Christmas-dinner visits of a gay and extensive neighbourhood, and Mrs. Mosse used to put on her handsomest shawl and her kindest smile, and totter up stairs to drink tea with me, and keep me company. From those evenings I imbibed, in the first place, a love of strong green tea, for which gentlewomanly excitation Mossy had a remarkable predilection; secondly, a very discreditable and unladylike partiality, of which I am quite ashamed, which I keep a secret from my most intimate friends, and would not mention for the world -a sort of sneaking kindness for her favourite game of cribbage; an old-fashioned vulgarity, which, in my mind, beats the genteeler pastimes of whist and picquet, and every game, except quadrille, out and out. I make no exception in favour of chess, because, thanks to my stupidity, I never could learn that recondite diversion; moreover, judging from the grave faces and fatiguing silence of the initiated, I cannot help suspecting that, board for board, we cribbage-players are as well amused as they. Dear Mossy could neither feel to deal and shuffle, nor see to peg; so that the greater part of the business fell to my share. The success was pretty equally divided. Three rubbers were our stint; and we were often game and game in the last before victory declared itself. She was very anxious to beat, certainly-(N. B. we never played for any thing)-she liked to win; and yet she did not quite like that I should lose. If we could both have won-if it had been four-handed cribbage, and she my partner-still there would have been somebody to be beaten and pitied, but then that somebody would not have been "Miss." The cribbage hour was pleasant; but I think the hours of chat which preceded and followed it were pleasanter still. Mossy was a most My grandfather, with whom she had lived in his first wife's time, full twenty years before my mother's birth, was a most respectable clergyman, who, after passing a few years in London amongst the wits and poets of the day, seeing the star of Pope in its decline, and that of Johnson in its rise, had retired into the country, where he held two adjoining livings of considerable value, both of which he served for above forty years, until the duty becoming too severe, he resigned one of them under an old-fashioned notion, that he who did the duty ought to receive the remuneration. I am very proud of my venerable ancestor. We have a portrait of him taken shortly after he was ordained, in his gown and band, with a curious flowing wig, something like that of a judge, fashionable doubtless, at the time, but which at present rather discomposes one's notions of clerical costume. He seems to have been a dark little man, with a sensible countenance, and a pair of black eyes, that even in the picture look you through. He was a votary of the Muses, too; a contributor to Lewis's Miscellany; (did my readers ever hear of that collection?) translated Horace, as all gentlemen do; and wrote love-verses, which had the unusual good fortune of obtaining their object, being, as Mrs. Mosse was wont to affirm, the chief engine and implement by which at fifty he gained the heart of his third wife, my real grandmamma, the beautiful daughter of a neighbouring 'squire. Of Dr. R., his wives, and his sermons, the bishops who visited, and the poets who wrote to him, Mossy's talk was mainly composed; chiefly of the wives. Mrs. R., the first, was a fine London lady, added to the hospitality of a man of good fortune, and to the sort of stateliness which in those primitive days appertained to a doctor of divinity. The superintendence of that large household seems to have been at once her duty and her delight. It was a plenty and festivity almost resembling that of Camacho's wedding, guided by a wise and liberal economy, and a spirit of indefatigable industry. Oh the saltings, the picklings, the preservings, the a widow, and considerably older than her spouse, inasmuch as my grandpapa's passion for her commenced when he and her son, by a former husband, were school-fellows at Westminster. Mrs. Mosse never talked much of her, and, I suspect, did not much like her, though, when closely questioned, she would say that madam was a fine, portly lady, stately and personable, but rather too high. Her son made a sad mesalliance. He ran away with the sexton's daughter, an adven-cake-makings, the unnamed and unnameable ture which cost the sexton his post, and his mother her pride: she never looked up after it. That disgrace, and a cold caught by bumping on a pillion six miles through the rain, sent her to her grave. Of the second Mrs. R. little remains on record, except a gown and petticoat of primrose silk, curiously embossed and embroidered with gold and silver thread and silks of all colours, in an enormous running pattern of staring flowers, wonderfully unlike nature; also various recipes in the family receiptbook, which show a delicate Italian hand, and a bold originality of orthography. The chief event of her married life appears to have been the small-pox. She and two of her sisters, and Mrs. Mosse, were all inoculated together. The other servants, who had not gone through the disorder, were sent out of the house: Dr. R. himself took refuge with a neighbouring friend, and the patients were consigned to the care of two or three nurses, gossips by profession, hired from the next town. The best parlour, (in those days drawing-rooms were not,) was turned into a hospital; a quarantine, almost as strict as would be required in the plague, was kept up, and the preparation, the disease, and the recovery, consumed nearly two months. Mrs. Mosse always spoke of it as one of the pleasantest passages of her life. None of them suffered much; there was nothing to do, plenty of gossiping; a sense of self-importance, such as all prisoners must feel more or less; and for amusement they had Pamela, the Spectator, and Sir Charles Grandison. My grandfather had a very fine library; but Sir Charles was a female book, having been purchased by the joint contributions of six young ladies, and circulated amongst them once a year, sojourning two months with each fair partner, till death or marriage broke up the coterie. Is not that fame? Well, the second Mrs. R. died in the course of time, though not of the small-pox; and my grandfather, faithful to his wives, but not to their memories, married again as usual. His third adventure in that line was particularly happy; for my grandmother, beside being a celebrated beauty, appears to have been one of the best and kindest women that ever gladdened a country-home. She had a large household; for the tithes of one rich rectory were taken in kind, and the glebe culti vated; so that the cares of a farm-house were confectionary doings over which she presided! The very titles of her territories denoted the extent of her stores. The apple-room, the pear-bin, the cheese-loft, the minced-meat closet, were household words as familiar in Mossy's mouth as the dairy or the poultryyard. And my grandmamma was no hoarder for hoarding's sake, no maker of good things which were not to be eaten as I have sometimes noted amongst your managing ladies; the object of her cares and stores was to contribute to the comfort of all who came within her influence. The large parsonage-house was generally overflowing with guests; and from the Oxford professor, who, with his wife, children, servants, and horses, passed his vacations there, to the poor pew-opener, who came with her little ones at tide-times, all felt the charm of her smiling graciousness, her sweet and cheerful spirit, her open hand and open heart. It is difficult to imagine a happier couple than my venerable grandfather and his charming wife. He retained to the last his studious habits, his love of literature, and his strong and warm family affections; while she cast the sunshine of her innocent gaiety over his respectable age, proud of his scholarship, and prouder still of his virtues. Both died long ago. But Mossy was an "honest chronicler," and never weary of her theme. Even the daily airings of the good doctor (who, in spite of his three wives, had a little of the peculiar preciseness in his studies and his exercise, which one is apt to attribute exclusively to that dreary person, an old bachelor) even those airings from twelve to two, four miles on the turnpike-road, and four miles back, with the fat horses and the grey-haired coachman, became vivid and characteristic in her description. The very carriage-dog, Sancho, was individualized; we felt that he belonged to the people and the time. Of these things we talked, mingled with many miscellaneous anecdotes of the same date;-how an electioneering duke saluted madam, and lost master's interest by the freedom;-how Sir Thomas S., the Lovelace of his day, came in his chariot and six, full twenty miles out of his way, to show himself to Miss Fanny in a Spanish masquerade dress, white satin slashed with blue, a blue cloak embroidered with silver, and point-lace that might have won any woman's heart, except that of his fair but obdurate mistress; and lastly, how Henry Fielding, when on a visit in the neighbourhood, had been accustomed to come and swing the children in the great barn; he had even swung Mossy herself, to her no small edification and delight-only think of being chucked backwards and forwards by the man who wrote about Parson Adams and 'Squire Allworthy! I used to envy her that felicity. Then from authors we got to books. She could not see in my time to read any thing but the folio Bible, and Common Prayer-Book, with which my dear mother had furnished her; but in her younger days she had seen or heard parts at least of a variety of books, and entered into them with a very keen though uncritical relish. Her chief favourites were, the Pilgrim's Progress, Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and the equally apocryphal but still truer-seeming History of the Plague in London, by the same author, all of which she believed with the most earnest simplicity. I used frequently to read to her the passages she liked best; and she in her turn would repeat to me songs and ballads, good, bad, and indifferent-a strange medley, and strangely confounded in her memory; and so the time passed till ten o'clock. Those were pleasant evenings for her and for me. I have sometimes, on recollection, feared that her down-stair life was less happy. All that the orders of a mistress could effect for her comfort was done. But we were rich then unluckily; and there were skipjacks of footmen, and surly coachmen, and affected waiting-maids, and vixenish cooks, with tempers red-hot like their coals, to vex and tease our dear old woman. She must have suffered greatly between her ardent zeal for her master's interest, and that strange principle of concealing evil doings which servants call honour, and of which she was perpetually the slave and the victim. She had another infirmity, too, an impossibility of saying no, which, added to an unbounded generosity of temper, rendered her the easy dupe of the artful and designing. She would give any thing to the appearance of want, or the pretence of affection; in short, to importunity, however clothed. It was the only point of weakness in her character; and to watch that she did not throw away her own little comforts, to protect her from the effects of her over-liberality, was the chief care of her mistress. Three inferior servants were successively turned away for trespassing on Mossy's goodness, drinking her green tea, eating her diet-bread, begging her gowns. But the evil was incurable; she could dispense with any pleasure, except that of giving. So she lived on, beloved as the kind, the gentle, and the generous must be, till I left school, an event that gave her great satisfaction. We passed the succeeding spring in Lon don; and she took the opportunity to pay a long-promised visit to a half-nephew and niece, or rather a half-niece and her husband, who lived in Prince's-street, Barbican. Mrs. Beck (one naturally mentions her first as the person of most consequence) was the only real woman who ever came up to the magnificent abstract idea of the "fat woman of Brentford," the only being for whom Sir John Falstaff might have passed undetected. She was indeed a mountain of flesh, exuberant, rubicund, and bearded like a man; and she spoke, in a loud deep mannish voice, a broad Wiltshire dialect; but she was hearty and jovial withal, a thorough good fellow in petticoats. Mr. Beck, on the other hand, was a little insignificant, perking, sharp-featured man, with a JerrySneak expression in his pale whey-face, a thin squeaking voice, and a Cockney accent. He had been lucky enough to keep a little shop in an independent borough, at the time of a violently contested election; and having adroitly kept back his vote till votes rose to their full value (I hope this is no breach of privilege,) and then voted on the strongest side, he was at the time of which I speak comfortably settled in the excise as a tide-waiter, had a pretty neat house, brought up his family in good repute, wore a flaming red waistcoat, attended a dissenting meeting, and owed no man a shilling. These good people were very fond of their aunt, who had indeed, before they were so well off, shown them innumerable kindnesses. Perhaps there might be in the case a little gratitude for favours to come; for she had three or four hundred pounds to bequeath, partly her own savings, and partly a legacy from a distant relative; and they were her natural heirs. However that might be, they paid her all possible attention, and when we were about to return into the country, petitioned so vehemently for a few weeks more, that, yielding to the above-mentioned infirmity, she consented to stay. I had myself been the ambassadress to Barbican to fetch our dear old friend; and I remember, as if it were yesterday, how earnestly I entreated her to come with me, and how seriously I lectured Mrs. Beck for her selfishness, in wishing to keep her aunt in London during the heat of June. I even, after taking leave, sprang out of the carriage and ran up stairs to persuade her to come with me. Mossy's wishes were evidently on my side; but she had promised, and the performance of her promise was peremptorily_claimed: so with a heavy heart I left her. I never saw her again. There is surely such a thing as presentiment. A violent attack of gout in the stomach carried her off in a few hours. Hail to thy memory! for thou wast of the antique world, when "service sweat for duty, not for meed!" |