History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
compliance, he took a very violent method indeed. Perhaps you will
conclude he beat me; but this, though he hath approached very near to
it, he never actually did. He confined me to my room, without
suffering me to have either pen, ink, paper, or book: and a servant
every day made my bed, and brought me my food.
“When I had remained a week under this imprisonment, he made me a
visit, and, with the voice of a schoolmaster, or, what is often much
the same, of a tyrant, asked me, `If I would yet comply?' I answered,
very stoutly, `That I would die first.' `Then so you shall, and be
d--nd!' cries he; `for you shall never go alive out of this room.'
“Here I remained a fortnight longer; and, to say the truth, my
constancy was almost subdued, and I began to think of submission;
when, one day, in the absence of my husband, who was gone abroad for
some short time, by the greatest good fortune in the world, an
accident happened.--I--at a time when I began to give way to the
utmost despair----everything would be excusable at such a time--at
that very time I received----But it would take up an hour to tell you
all particulars.--In one word, then (for I will not tire you with
circumstances), gold, the common key to all padlocks, opened my door,
and set me at liberty.
“I now made haste to Dublin, where I immediately procured a passage to
England; and was proceeding to Bath, in order to throw myself into the
protection of my aunt, or of your father, or of any relation who would
afford it me. My husband overtook me last night at the inn where I
lay, and which you left a few minutes before me; but I had the good
luck to escape him, and to follow you.
“And thus, my dear, ends my history: a tragical one, I am sure, it is
to myself; but, perhaps, I ought rather to apologize to you for its
dullness.”
Sophia heaved a deep sigh, and answered, “Indeed, Harriet, I pity you
from my soul!----But what could you expect? Why, why, would you marry
an Irishman?”
“Upon my word,” replied her cousin, “your censure is unjust. There
are, among the Irish, men of as much worth and honour as any among the
English: nay, to speak the truth, generosity of spirit is rather more
common among them. I have known some examples there, too, of good
husbands; and I believe these are not very plenty in England. Ask me,
rather, what I could expect when I married a fool; and I will tell you
a solemn truth; I did not know him to be so.”--“Can no man,” said
Sophia, in a very low and altered voice, “do you think, make a bad
husband, who is not a fool?” “That,” answered the other, “is too
general a negative; but none, I believe, is so likely as a fool to
prove so. Among my acquaintance, the silliest fellows are the worst
husbands; and I will venture to assert, as a fact, that a man of sense
rarely behaves very ill to a wife who deserves very well.”
Chapter viii.
A dreadful alarm in the inn, with the arrival of an unexpected friend
of Mrs Fitzpatrick.
Sophia now, at the desire of her cousin, related--not what follows,
but what hath gone before in this history: for which reason the reader
will, I suppose, excuse me for not repeating it over again.
One remark, however, I cannot forbear making on her narrative, namely,
that she made no more mention of Jones, from the beginning to the end,
than if there had been no such person alive. This I will neither
endeavour to account for nor to excuse. Indeed, if this may be called
a kind of dishonesty, it seems the more inexcusable, from the apparent
openness and explicit sincerity of the other lady.--But so it was.
Just as Sophia arrived at the conclusion of her story, there arrived
in the room where the two ladies were sitting a noise, not unlike, in
loudness, to that of a pack of hounds just let out from their kennel;
nor, in shrillness, to cats, when caterwauling; or to screech owls;
or, indeed, more like (for what animal can resemble a human voice?) to
those sounds which, in the pleasant mansions of that gate which seems
to derive its name from a duplicity of tongues, issue from the mouths,
and sometimes from the nostrils, of those fair river nymphs, ycleped
of old the Naïades; in the vulgar tongue translated oyster-wenches;
for when, instead of the antient libations of milk and honey and oil,
the rich distillation from the juniper-berry, or, perhaps, from malt,
hath, by the early devotion of their votaries, been poured forth in
great abundance, should any daring tongue with unhallowed license
prophane, _i.e._, depreciate, the delicate fat Milton oyster, the
plaice sound and firm, the flounder as much alive as when in the
water, the shrimp as big as a prawn, the fine cod alive but a few
hours ago, or any other of the various treasures which those
water-deities who fish the sea and rivers have committed to the care
of the nymphs, the angry Naïades lift up their immortal voices, and
the prophane wretch is struck deaf for his impiety.
Such was the noise which now burst from one of the rooms below; and
soon the thunder, which long had rattled at a distance, began to
approach nearer and nearer, till, having ascended by degrees upstairs,
it at last entered the apartment where the ladies were. In short, to
drop all metaphor and figure, Mrs Honour, having scolded violently
below-stairs, and continued the same all the way up, came in to her
mistress in a most outrageous passion, crying out, “What doth your
ladyship think? Would you imagine that this impudent villain, the
master of this house, hath had the impudence to tell me, nay, to stand
it out to my face, that your ladyship is that nasty, stinking wh--re
(Jenny Cameron they call her), that runs about the country with the
Pretender? Nay, the lying, saucy villain had the assurance to tell me
that your ladyship had owned yourself to be so; but I have clawed the
rascal; I have left the marks of my nails in his impudent face. My
lady! says I, you saucy scoundrel; my lady is meat for no pretenders.
She is a young lady of as good fashion, and family, and fortune, as
any in Somersetshire. Did you never hear of the great Squire Western,
sirrah? She is his only daughter; she is----, and heiress to all his
great estate. My lady to be called a nasty Scotch wh--re by such a
varlet!--To be sure I wish I had knocked his brains out with the
punch-bowl.”
The principal uneasiness with which Sophia was affected on this
occasion Honour had herself caused, by having in her passion
discovered who she was. However, as this mistake of the landlord
sufficiently accounted for those passages which Sophia had before
mistaken, she acquired some ease on that account; nor could she, upon
the whole, forbear smiling. This enraged Honour, and she cried,
“Indeed, madam, I did not think your ladyship would have made a
laughing matter of it. To be called whore by such an impudent low
rascal. Your ladyship may be angry with me, for aught I know, for
taking your part, since proffered service, they say, stinks; but to be
sure I could never bear to hear a lady of mine called whore.--Nor will
I bear it. I am sure your ladyship is as virtuous a lady as ever sat
foot on English ground, and I will claw any villain's eyes out who
dares for to offer to presume for to say the least word to the
contrary. Nobody ever could say the least ill of the character of any
lady that ever I waited upon.”
_Hinc illae lachrymae;_ in plain truth, Honour had as much love for
her mistress as most servants have, that is to say--But besides this,
her pride obliged her to support the character of the lady she waited
on; for she thought her own was in a very close manner connected with
it. In proportion as the character of her mistress was raised, hers
likewise, as she conceived, was raised with it; and, on the contrary,
she thought the one could not be lowered without the other.
On this subject, reader, I must stop a moment, to tell thee a story.
“The famous Nell Gwynn, stepping one day, from a house where she had
made a short visit, into her coach, saw a great mob assembled, and her
footman all bloody and dirty; the fellow, being asked by his mistress
the reason of his being in that condition, answered, `I have been
fighting, madam, with an impudent rascal who called your ladyship a
wh--re.' `You blockhead,' replied Mrs Gwynn, `at this rate you must
fight every day of your life; why, you fool, all the world knows it.'
`Do they?' cries the fellow, in a muttering voice, after he had shut
the coach-door, `they shan't call me a whore's footman for all that.'”
Thus the passion of Mrs Honour appears natural enough, even if it were
to be no otherwise accounted for; but, in reality, there was another
cause of her anger; for which we must beg leave to remind our reader
of a circumstance mentioned in the above simile. There are indeed
certain liquors, which, being applied to our passions, or to fire,
produce effects the very reverse of those produced by water, as they
serve to kindle and inflame, rather than to extinguish. Among these,
the generous liquor called punch is one. It was not, therefore,
without reason, that the learned Dr Cheney used to call drinking punch
pouring liquid fire down your throat.
Now, Mrs Honour had unluckily poured so much of this liquid fire down
her throat, that the smoke of it began to ascend into her pericranium
and blinded the eyes of Reason, which is there supposed to keep her
residence, while the fire itself from the stomach easily reached the
heart, and there inflamed the noble passion of pride. So that, upon
the whole, we shall cease to wonder at the violent rage of the
waiting-woman; though at first sight we must confess the cause seems
inadequate to the effect.
Sophia and her cousin both did all in their power to extinguish these
flames which had roared so loudly all over the house. They at length
prevailed; or, to carry the metaphor one step farther, the fire,
having consumed all the fuel which the language affords, to wit, every
reproachful term in it, at last went out of its own accord.
But, though tranquillity was restored above-stairs, it was not so
below; where my landlady, highly resenting the injury done to the
beauty of her husband by the flesh-spades of Mrs Honour, called aloud
for revenge and justice. As to the poor man, who had principally
suffered in the engagement, he was perfectly quiet. Perhaps the blood
which he lost might have cooled his anger: for the enemy had not only
applied her nails to his cheeks, but likewise her fist to his
nostrils, which lamented the blow with tears of blood in great
abundance. To this we may add reflections on his mistake; but indeed
nothing so effectually silenced his resentment as the manner in which
he now discovered his error; for as to the behaviour of Mrs Honour, it
had the more confirmed him in his opinion; but he was now assured by a
person of great figure, and who was attended by a great equipage, that
one of the ladies was a woman of fashion, and his intimate
acquaintance.
By the orders of this person, the landlord now ascended, and
acquainted our fair travellers that a great gentleman below desired to
do them the honour of waiting on them. Sophia turned pale and trembled
at this message, though the reader will conclude it was too civil,
notwithstanding the landlord's blunder, to have come from her father;
but fear hath the common fault of a justice of peace, and is apt to
conclude hastily from every slight circumstance, without examining the
evidence on both sides.
To ease the reader's curiosity, therefore, rather than his
apprehensions, we proceed to inform him that an Irish peer had arrived
very late that evening at the inn, in his way to London. This
nobleman, having sallied from his supper at the hurricane before
commemorated, had seen the attendant of Mrs Fitzpatrick, and upon a