MANNERS OF THE DAY.*
THIS is an exceedingly clever production i that is to say, the author, or rather authoress, is a person of 'Considerable talent,—she is sprightly, acute, and observing, and knows what she is writing about. We do not go so far as to aver that we have been pleased with her dons; for we hate affectation, and every species of thisehood and hypocrisy ; and both her subject and her manner oftreating it abound in all these odious faults : we admire while we dislike: we respect the powers' while we detest their abuse. The Manners of the Day is precisely what the Erclusives was ex- pected to be, and what the novel-readers, greatly to their discomfiture, found it was not. It is a picture, and a faithful and lively picture, of that class of society Wholave ndflung to do but to amuse themselves, and who find that the great achievement of life is to get through it pleasantly. Luxury has for five-and-twenty and more years been carried to the highest possible pitch in England: persons of from twelve to thirty thousand a year, of whom the number is considerable in this country, have tasked the ingenuity of all the rest of the po- pulation, not to produce a new pleasure, but to improve upon and carry to perfection all the old ones. Anti-attrition is the end in fashionable society as in that of the Coachmakers' Company. As much of excitement as is compatible with ease,—this is the secret ; and as a reward for all the inventions which have been created for it, millions of pounds have been offered and given. Magic is not pos- sible—the lights which have shown that its delusions are unattainable have shown us the nearest approach to it. The improvements in arts, in science, in every species of service to human wants, have been car- ried to a pitch of exquisite perfection. The chosen few in England know the. miserable pleasure of having every wish anticipated—every indulgence unearned. The condition of enjoyment is labour; and as they are not compelled to labour for the essentials of life, they doom themselves to voluntary toil upon the nothings of fashionable existence. Mankind must be doing something; and if an mdiVirual is noThcompelled for a livelihood' to one form of work, he neces- sarily seeks it in some other shape.. The auctioneer, at a sale of cu- riosities, is not more bound to appear in his pulpit by the necessity of pursuing his profession, than are his fashionable auditors and buyers who seek the daily bread of excitement. The most fruitful
• Mamma of the Day—a Novel. 3 vols. 12mo. 1830.
source of happiness in life is a pursuit—it is also a necessity: hence a great deal of lady-conchology, and soup-and-flannel-petticoat charity. Hence, moreover, a great deal of vice. The hialte.• i r country are not vicious from either the v cc Of 'their passions or from their unrestrained indulgence the value of tranquillity is too well understood—the passioas would break in upon the equanimity essential to continued enjoyment ; the fashionables are vicious. for the sake of something to do—a forbidden act gives zest to the lazy ap- petite. No epicure lives on Cayenne pepper or mulligatawney. This class of lashionables are accused of being more immoral than the rest : on the contrary, we believe they understand too well the art of living happily—they are placed on an eminence, and all their actions are conspicuous ; a single offence among them spreads its offensive glare more widely and sl tikingly than a dozen more flagrant actions in a lower class. A great deal of nonsense has been said of the odious system of exclusion practised by coteries of fashionables. There is nothing more in this than is practised by every other division of society----we all love our like, and laugh at or hate those who daer from us. What can be more exclusive than a fox-hunting set, or a knot of lawyers, or a liter:sly circle ? The difference is, that in these instances nobody cares to be shut out thom society they are unfit, for, or take no pleasure in. The more conspicuous ranks, however, the notabilities of the mode, are not allowed to flock only with their kind, and push intruders from the herd, without being at. tacked in all quarters as secluding themselves for the sake of' vicious ? indulgence. Such at least is the cluirge 01 the old Dowager n ho writ s the " Royal Novel of the Exclusives," as the bookseller calls it, w to has got together a list of names out of t he extinct Pt: (Inge, which he calls a Key. To listen to the tone of her solemnity, it might be supposed that she was speaking of an Ameoy club, instead of' a society whose chief fault was doubtless voting herself and her sermons a bore. Such \\Titers as herself ought not to be angry with this ex- clusiveness, which thrms the entiee source of anmsenient in fashion- able novels. The ridiculous pretensions or persons who wish to figure v‘ithin a ring composed of individuals who despise and laugh at them, is the chief if not the only. thud ibr comedy in the novels of Inah life. The it's of iveaflily.;Ispirants, and the meanness of imagers-on, and the ridiculous fine:Ales of the unaasurod of their re- ception, are invariable, and it would seem inexhaustible subjects of ridicule.
The most amusing portion of the firanners of the Day, arises from a - similar source. ekwealthy slopseller migrates from the Barbican to Russell or liedfAl Square, and thence to Harley Street. He is a mercantile M.P., resPectable mid useful. His taniily, however, con- trive to make themu:Ives ridiculous and uncomfortable. They are for ever toiling into the acquaintance of the great, and out of the ac- quaintance of the small. The Browns, the Creeps, and the Johnsons, must perforce give way to the Lady Juliana C.'s and the family of the Dachess eV D.'s. They are not vulgar, because they have been edu- cated at vast expense, and they dress superstitiously after the Journal des Modes : they are accomplished, and only sing fashionable music : they sketch, they galopcide and waltz, ride and skate, and in short do every thing that it is fashionable to do ;—but still they are not fashion- able. They are in fact not playing their own part ; and where that is not 'the case, no one is comfortable, nor the cause of comfort in others. This is the true reason why they are excluded—and not that there is any absurd regulation against wealthy parvinus or poor pre- f tenders : they who understand the true ingredients of the most fashionable society of London, know that it is a complete mosaic I work, and composed of stones of ali colours and characters. Every man, however, who is successful in his part, is tot he " manner born :" he is playing the pert Nature gave him. If we wanted a mot' of the truth of this doctrine, we might quote the instance of the far-famed Baumann., who was as exclusive and as fashionable as any body— nay, the very arbiter of mode and ton ; and yet his claims were neither ; of birth nor fortune. He had a genius for dress, and a certain maniere I dare, wholly his own, which gave him a character, and which was imitated from no other person, and nearly inimitable. He was in fact 1 an amusing, perhaps a pleaeing, eriginal ; and this is the secret of admission into circles which have the power of plucking the roses without the thorns of society—who are in a position to admit the farceurs and thrust out the bores. The picture of fashional le life is drawn in the Manners of the Day by p. person qualified to take it ; for we entertain no doubt that she has moved a not undistinguished member of the scenes she paints,. This is not meant to imply that the picture is in all respects accurate : the painter has made mistakes, owing probably to peculiarities in her own position, and the necessity of making her novel clever and amus- ing. In the first place, all her fashionables talk in a style which strongly reminds us of the Precieust.s Ridicules. Her style of con- versation is so elaborate and affected, that without knowing any thing of the matter, we might pronounce that no society on earth ever talked so ornate a language, sinless, indeed, ct. . were scam: euphuistic club—some legitimate laughingstock for all the rest oi' Ilse world. An error of the same genua is the large admixture of French intro- duced into the conversation of every individual in the novel who is meant to be considered as a fashionable,. First of all, we deny that this is the practice of fashionable life, or of any life at all, except, per- haps, in the half German half French cantons of Switzerland, where they talk German and French as people eat bread and cheese, finish- ing a sentence in one language begun in another, and interlarding a paragraph of one tongue between two of the other. Secondly, we detest the effect of this Babylonian mixture, and protest, in the name of our own glorious language—which, like the elephant's trunk, that ean both uproot a tree and pick up a pin, is equal to the greatest and the most delicate efforts—against flying to the French language to express meanings that could be equally well turned in the vernacular tongue. This patchwork is odious, unnatural, and unnecessary ; false, as it is not an imitation of what is intended to be imitated, and disgusting, as a piece of affectation on the part of the writer. The writer of Alrnack's fell into the same error; and we regret to see that the authoress of Manners of the Day, who writes both better French and better Eng- lish, should have followed her example. We suspect the truth to be, that for the last year or two she has been living more in Paris than in London.
The moral of this novel, as well as we can collect, is tolerably ap- plicable at the present moment. It turrs upon the danger of public men neglecting their wives, and leaving them to the machinations of idle gentlemen, too poor or too vicious to marry. The different kinds of marriages are discussed ; and are divided into three genera,—the bon marriage, the marriage de convenance, and the marriage dal- cieux. The bon marriage is between a very young and beautiful lady and a Lord Willersdale, who is the life and soul of the British Mi- nistry, and subsequently its Premier. This gentleman goes down to the House too often, gives too many Cabinet dinners, and shuts him- self too much in his office, to fulfil duly the functions of a tinnily man : in consequence, his wife lends a too willing ear to a certain captain of the Guards. The marriage delicieux is an ordinary love marriage ; and of the marriages de convenances, there are so many in the book and the world, that we shall not stay to particularize them. We have alluded to the family and persons of the story who are most amusing: we mean the family of the principal of the firm of Forsyth and Co. slopsellers, Barbican ; James Forsyth, sen. Esq. M.P., of Harley Street, and Iver Lodge, in — some shire or other. These people are certainly inimitably drawn. They are not., however, the only groups well conceived and hit off: we would point out to the atten- tion of the reader the Mordaunts and the Lilfords. Lady Lilford, "the excellent wife" of a " good sort of man," is a chef d'ceuvre, with her charity-schools, pride, and worklliness. To enable our readers in some sort to judge for themselves as to the talents of this writer, we give a couple of extracts, the shortest that we can select.
TIIE LONDON SEASON.
"The London season was now in its zenith ; and the world, the exclusive world, whose territories are so narrow of limit, and whose population is so easily resolved by the census of Debrett, seemed intoxicated by delicious ex- citation. Streets resounding with rattling wheels, from the first universal roar of morning business, to the last solitary sulky chariot bearing home to a daylight pillow some first-year's lingerer of the ball-room :—clubs, mur- muring like beehives, and attracting in one busy swarm the swarthy Nabob from his barbaric and selfish splendour—the pale official—the bilious 14-our- mewl—the supercilious man of letters—and the apathetic man of fashion :— exhibitions at once dazzling and disappointing the fastidious eye, while they suspend the breath of their visitants by an oppressive, ill-flavoured atmos- phere :—shops wherein the mighty efforts of the whole kingdom, the whole continent, unite to supply or to suggest our wants :—public walks, and pub- lic drives, bright with an animated crowd of youth and beauty :—theatres doing their ill-requited best to beguile the idler from his weariness :—the opera extending its aristocratic refinements to the general enjoyment : these, with a ceaseless but varying succession of dinners, balls, concerts, tItljeuners, and water-parties ; of water-parties, ti(Yeuners, concerts, balls, and dinners— proclaimed that " the season,"—the canicular Spring—was existent in all its fervid force ! The Senates of Westminster and King Street were in due convocation ; the edicts of both being harassed by a factious opposition, and threatened by a fronfle of no mean energy. Tattersall's and the Red House disputed for the mob of cabriolets : Triaud and Diivy for the mob of Brit- schkas. The elaborate taste of Storr was torn in pieces between the claims of Lord Breloque's gold necessaire, and the Duchess of Delvile's ninety-fifth bracelet. Groups of exotic singers were grunting at the Argyll Rooms and Egyptian Hall ; a kangaroo took likenesses at one Bazaar, and literary cats displayed their skill in orthography at another. Epsom, with its yellow-satin - jacket postilions, had given place to the more select promise of Ascot ; moss roses were hawked about at a discount by ragged mothers of "six small children ;" Gunter was taxing his exhausted imagination for the caramel no- velties of aftitechanapetre; and half the pillows in Grosvenor Square were ren- dered sleepless by the anxious indecisions of an approaching but costume. "Delicious crisis !—during whose poignant brevity hearts are apt to beat themselves into apathy for the remainder of the year, and a thousand rapid and disjointed impressions unite to form one visionary whole :—appeasing moment !—when enmity unconsciously loses itself in some selfish calcula- tion :—revivifier of the jaded bosom I—which quickens acquaintance into friendship, and liking into love, between the pauses of a debate or a quadrille: —gay Carnival of quaint disguises! where each smiles upon the other from beneath an avowed mask of duplicity :—acmii of demoralization I—when oaths are Sworn and vows broken,—fortunes lost and dishonour gained,— domestics and job-horses rendered up to the most uncompromising martyr- dom,—country cousins and the prosy friends of our youth abandoned with- out remorse to the infamy of their vocation,—what are the pleasures of the brightest day of all the barren year beside, compared with the sanguine, buoy- ant, beaming, joyous frivolity of thy very dullest hour "The most learned professor, the gravest philosopher, selects 'the Season,' for the exposition of his miracles—lrving's oracular predications become co- temporary with Pasta's lighter notes ;—in the season new books are printed— in the season new theories are circulated. The long-absent are to be met with in its crowded streets ; the long-parted become reunited in its illuminated saloons. The illustrious and the powerful are familiarly mingled in its mob ; —its echoes vary with unimaginable novelties of colloquial invention ; and wit is wittiest, and wisdom wisest, during the revolution of its hour-glass,—for they know that the applause of thousands is waiting to reward their efforts."
ON FEMALE AUTHORSHIP.
"'Some lines! does she then unite the gift of poetry to her other inspira- tions?'
To an exquisite degree I—and it is the sole exercise of her talents which I have permitted myself to discourage.' "'And whv?—since it car. only have displayed itself in a graceful and be- coming form..' " Authorship is a dangerous temptation to a woman;—! would have none
In whom I am interested incur such a dangerous publicity, till she has at- tained her fullest years of discretion. So many minerals glitter on their sur- face which are not sterling ore ;—so many youthful minds, under the excite- Witt of early scholarship, give promise of powers that their maturity will not realize !—And even when "the light that leads astray is really light from Heaven," what attractions and what irreplaceable pleasures does a woman renounce, who places the reprobation of the laurel upon her brow I—Depend upon it, that next to the solitude of a throne, there is nothing like the loneli- ness of authorship.—No one addresses a distinguished writer in a natural or confidential tone; he is believed to be disdainful of the humble charities of life, and indifferent to its ordinary interests. If a novelist,—we fancy that he is " taking notes "of our weaknesses, and examining our moral qualities, as a naturalist fixes his microscope on a beetle or a snail ;—if a philosopher, we feel in his presence like Gulliver, hid in the thimble of Gliunclalelitch. Now for a man—a mere, dry, broad-clothed, ratioeinatious man, to gird on a gorgon's head and petrify society, is no sacrifice ; for it is the vocation of his sex to act the colossus. But a woman has deeper and purer happiness in store.'
" But to be a writer, dear Lady Theodosia, is not to be an anthor
" A step only divides the two ;—et d'ailleurs urt pas fieuri et fiatteur which few resist. Few things more provokingly offend my ideas of feminine deli- cacy, than a young lady who goes about watering the dust of the earth with her elegiac tears. Love we know to be the natural theme of poetry ; and love is a word that becomes fulsome, we are told, in two instances,—on the lips of an old man, or on those of a young woman.' " But Mrs. Hemans !—Joanna Baillie I—surely even your fastidious taste will accord to their pages the most feminine purity of expression ? And Miss Edgeworth I—one Of the master spirits of the age!' Illustrious exceptions I—which form no rule for a parcel of silly girls rhapsodizing about love and despair in the strain of Ophelia. But I am di- gressing from Willersville rectory to Paternoster Row.'"
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