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No. 142]

OR,

Monthly Journal of Fashion.

LONDON, OCTOBER 1, 1842.

AN ANGLO-INDIAN SPINSTER IN SEARCH OF A HUSBAND.

THE tiffin, in some of the settlements of India, is what the tea-table is too often in this country;-a little temple, dedicated to Rumour, where surmise swells instantly into fact, and characters are dethroned from their rightful estimation by virtue of decrees as inexorable as those of Minos and Rhadamanthus. Perhaps, in point of equity, the decisions of those respectable judges have the advantage; for though they adjourned the hearing of the culprit till they had inflicted his punishment, it was something in his favour to be heard at all; whereas, at the secret tribunals of that social inquisition, which drags to its bar the reputations of friends and associates, there is no hearing. The guilt of the obnoxious party is implied and proved by the simple fact of being brought to trial.

At one of these sittings, the bench consisting of grave magistrates of both sexes, poor Arabella Duncan had one been duly convicted, upon several counts, of a most multifarious indictment. It began with certain delinquencies as to dress. No defence was set up: indeed it did not admit of any. Who would have ventured one syllable in behalf of a faded merino gown, its texture so unfitted to a warm climate, and the date of which would have puzzled the acutest antiquarian research into by-goue fashions? Who would be bold enough to suggest anything in behalf of a straw-coloured silk, which by candle-light shewed like a dingy white, or to extenuate a superannuated gros de Naples, originally black, but in its expiring moments, like a dying dolphin, exhibiting innumerous tints and colours not its own? One of the couclave,-a military lounger, who, having no official duties to detain him at the hour of tiffin, might be considered a standing member of the board,-honoured the unforfortunate gros de Naples with the appellation of his " remembrancer," because, he said, the night on which Miss Duncan first made her appearance in it was the opening of the banquetting-room in the Government-gardens, usually called "Lord Clive's Folly" and it was, moreover, the day on which he himself returned from his march against the rebellious Polygars. "An admirable memoria technica, by Jove! Captain Blackenall," said Henry Flahagan, a barrister without briefs, and a lawyer with litle law, his professional business allowing him ample leisure for the tiffin-table at his mother's where the bed of justice was at present held. "A spinster and her dress, when both are of a certain standing, are most useful standards of reference for past events. See how the remark is exemplified. This very gros de Naples, you see, has verified two important pieces of chronology;-the completion of the banquetting-room, and the dispersion of the Polygars. It is astonishing how much history a young lady of a certain age may carry about her, when every article of her dress tells a tale of other times. Why, her wardrobe must be as valuable as a shelf in the British Museum " "Oh, fie! Henry," interrupted his sister Augusta, in one of the softest of the tones of sympathy which those interesting creatures are wont to assume when they are carrying on a mild, ivilized warfare against a friend or a rival; "oh, fie! well, I declare if you men be not so fond of scandal-there's nothing like you. And you, Captain Blackenall, are a great deal too revere upon poor Miss Duncan." The word "poor" is essential

VOL. 12

in the procès verbal of genteel defamation, being so equivocally expressive as to answer the purpose either of an amiable compassion, or the most sneering contempt. "Well, I declare, though her wardrobe may be a little the worse for wear-I can't deny it she herself is not so very old I am sure she can't be thirty, for my uncle, the East-India Director, remembers seeing the whole family, when he was at Edinburgh, many years ago, and she was then quite a girl, and wore a frock." An admirable defence for a female arraigned for not being young! In fact, it is one of the beauties of this form of trial, that no attorney-general or public accuser is required to make out a case. Let some kind procureuse générale benevolently undertake the defence, and it is at once established.

The next subject of this amiable discussion was the complexion of the party. Here the evidence was strong against her, for ocular proof who can gainsay? Yet that evidence was in the present instance contradictory. One said that it was an olivetint, that had been bleached by the skilful application of cosmetics. Another contended that it had been originally a brun, which, with the light strongly reflected on it, approximated to a mouse or rather a lead-colour. A third asserted it to be naturally fair, but by exposure to the sun, it had assumed a parchmenttint like that of an old deed. In short, the judgment of the travellers in Ælian upon the colour of the chamelion was not a more dissentient one. One point, however, was decreed, nem. con, that the complexion was by no means a good one. Miss Duncan's moral qualities came next under the consideration of this merciful bench, and it was on all hands allowed that, under the pretence of healing quarrels, explaining misrepresentations, in short, of setting matters right between one friend and another, she always contrived to make things worse, and to set the parties more by the ears than ever.

In the meanwhile, who was this Arabella Duncan, it will be naturally asked, that has been so mercilessly handled in this kind-hearted circle? She was one of a large family of daughters of a Scottish family, amongst whom a sum moderate in its aggregate, but a mere pittance when distributed, had been bequeathed by an uncle. Her father, their only surviving parent, a gentleman brought up to no lucrative calling, and of too high a rank and too ancient a lineage to stoop to any, struggled hard under the burthen of educating and maintaining them. But his parental duties had not been imperfectly performed. They were a well-educated sisterhood, not indeed fashionably accomplished, but not deficient in respect of sound, wholesome instruction. The youngest, Arabella, with a fund of native good sense, sharpened by exercise, and an understanding which, naturally apprehensive, was expanded by reading and by reflecting on what she read, had a certain enthusiasm in her character that fell little short of Quixotism; but of so benevolent a cast, so attuned to concord and to goodness, that in any other circle than that of an Indian presidency, she would have called forth admiration for virtues that were almost of an angelic order. And it did occasionally happen that her benevolence, which a knowledge of the world had not yet tamed into a becoming indifference to all around her, led her into mistakes that produced, though unintentionally, the very mischief she deprecated and laboured to avert. It is true, she was no longer young; but then she was not nearly so old as she had been pronounced to be by the verdict of the tiffin-table. It is equally true that

her stock of finery, originally small, was every year becoming smaller, and she could not afford fresh purchases every time new assortments arrived from England. But her complexion, on which she had been found guilty at Mrs. Flahagan's, without one vote in her favour, though not improved by a five years' residence in the East, was clear if not brilliant, but quite brilliant enough to provoke the envy of the waspish beings who arraigned it. Her voyage to India, where she had no home or recommendation beyond the chances of a hospitable reception from a fifth Scottish cousin of the same name at Madras, where he resided as a surgeon on the medical staff of the presidency, was of a piece with her ardent and romantic character. "I have ten sisters," said she, "all clinging round my poor father, who with the utmost difficulty keeps himself above water, and I will leave my little fortune with them, reserving only enough to carry me out at the lowest rate of passage-money and with the cheapest equipment. My sisters shudder at the thought of seeking a husband in a distant part of the globe. I respect their delicacy, and though I think it a becoming and maideuly delicacy, I am convinced it is a false one. What are the destinies chalked out for us in the great plan of Providence? Is it not that we should become the help-mates of the other sex? And why do we strive to acquire our little attainments, and to improve our humble faculties, but that we may be the more worthy to share their fortunes, and the more capable of soothing their labours? Why then should I dissemble a sentiment my heart disowns not? I proceed to India avowedly IN SEARCH OF A HUSBAND. It is the consummation of our hopes, the aim and end of our thoughts, and we endeavour to reach it with our utmost efforts the moment our young hearts have learned their first emotions. Why not advance to that object by the most direct and straight-forward path, instead of pursuing it through turns and doublings, that seldom succeed, but which are always disengenuous, whether they succeed or not? Yes, I will try all I can to get a husband worthy of me in India. I will make the most of the few attractions nature has given me, and display to all the advantage I can the humble acquirements I have received from education."

Confiding in the efficacy of the resolve, and convinced of the purity of the sentiment, she arrived, a charming and interesting young woman, at the grand mart of female beauty, being hospitably welcomed by her fifth cousins, Mr. Archibald Duncan and his wife, who spared no opportunity of getting her off their hands, by introducing her to houses where she was sure of meeting those who stood high in the list of eligibles. Unluckily, however, Arabella reposed so full a faith in her favourite aphorism, that she did not sufficiently conceal from others that of which she herself was perfectly conscious-her solicitude for a befitting offer. Not that she lavished her smiles upon coxcombs and fools, but she was anxiously bent upon attracting some worthy and honourable man, who had sufficient means of maintaining her in a manner becoming her station in life, and whose dispositions were not at variance with her own fair and honourable notions of wedded happiness. Alas, poor Arabella! she knew not how often it happens that the solicitude she could not dissemble, defeats itself. The admirable maxim, so epigrammatically expressed by the wittiest of English poets, was not sufficiently before her eyes:

Woodcocks to shun your snares have skill;
You show so plain you strive to kill.
In love, the artless catch the game,
And they scarce miss who never aim.

No wonder, therefore, that false judgments should circulate against her. Mean, worldly minds, whose utmost grasp was too narrow to comprehend the motives of a being who refused to walk in their own beaten track, were of course loud in their condemnations, and even the few who admired the charms of her conversation, and could feel the force of the reasonings by

which she justified to herself and others the eccentric course she was pursuing, could scarcely forbear the censures which all contraventions of sexual decorum so justly incur. It followed as a consequence, that where she had begun to make an impression, it was too slight to endure the raillery which was sure to disconcert her projects, because she was cried down as a coquette, though never was any thing more averse from every thought or feeling of poor Arabella Duncan thau coquetry. She was a sportsman, who indeed singled out a bird and followed her game; but she was not, to use the phrase of the clever poet just quoted, one of those

Gay fowlers at a flock of hearts,

to whom the reproach of coquetry could be fairly imputed. Nor had she wholly failed in conquests, that for a time augured auspiciously to her hopes. She had actually inspired with a sincere attachment a young civil servant, who was in the road to high advancement. He had cultivated a taste for letters, aud their discourse turning upon topics of literature, instead of the current subjects of satire and scandal, he was soon enabled to perceive how much she surpassed him, not only in extent of reading, but in that soundness of induction, without which reading is merely an idle amusement or an unprofitable labour. Nor was Mr. Sydenham insensible to the high-minded and pure ingenuousness of her nature, which raised her in his estimation far above the tribe of common-place beauties, who flutter away their insect-lives in the purusit of selfish and frivolous pleasures. In his eyes, if not consummately handsome, she had external attractions of no vulgar kind; and what was wanting in mere regular beauty, was supplied by the expression that beamed in the most intelligent of faces.

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One circumstance was unpropitious to the attachment. Charles Sydenham was careless and extravagant. But Arabella hailed it as a good omen. I will shew him," she said, a virtuous example, and the first lesson of virtue is economy." The enthusiasm of her soul was quickened by the hope of weaning him from habits which involved him in disgrace and dependence. Alas! it was a pleasing vision, which she was soon compelled to forego. As in our northern clime, the early buddings of the infant year are withered by the icy blast of the east, so shrink the generous emotions of our nature from the chilling breath of ridicule. The unfeeling sneer was abroad. Charles Sydenham, with his splendid salary, was too valuable a prize not to have caused innumerable throbbings in the fair bosoms of certain younger competitors, who thought it high time to poor Arabella, -her third year as an oriental spinster having already expired, -quietly by on the shelf. If they sate next to each other, engaged in the instructive converse so rarely carried on between the two sexes in our Anglo-Indian coteries, all eyes were instantly upon them, and some of those half-suppressed titters, which are such convenient modes of expressing the spite of genteel persons, were sure to disconcert one of the parties at least. As for Arabella herself, who had never suffered such pitiful feelings to ruffle her bosom,-she heard them with the calmest composure. She felt that her aim, however liable to a wrongful interpretation, was lofty and dignified,-irreconcileable it must be allowed, with the conventional proprieties of her sex, -but it was sanctioned by her understanding, and her conscience echoed back the sanction; it was that of becoming a good wife and an affectionate companion to a sensible man, naturally too ductile not to need the constant impulse of good example and virtuous admonition. "Why should I trouble myself," said she to herself," with the idle clatter of their tongues, or shrink from the inquisition of their eyes? Let them say, if they please, that I am in pursuit of a husband. I acknowledge, I avow it; but it is not in pursuit of a husband whose purse may minister to my foolish whims or expensive gratifications; but of a husband whom I may please as a wife and admonish as a friend; whose follies I may reclaim, and whose good resolutions, too weak to

stand the test of vulgar ridicule, I may confirm and strengthen." But Charles Sydenham, unhappily, was not equally impassive to sly remarks and malicious insinuations. "She has hooked him," said one. "See how he dives away with the hook, and like a trout thinks himself safe in deep water," said another. The sarcasm was too much for the little philosophy he was master of. He suffered it to overpower him, shunned the mercenary advances of Miss Duncan-for so he had begun most unjustly to think them-deemed lightly of the sacred promise he had given her, and of the equally sacred one he had extorted from Arabella, and at last fell prostrate before a few glances shot from the pretty but unmeaning eyes of one of the common-place beauties of the settlement, whom in a few days he led to the altar.

It was now taken for granted, that Arabella was indeed shelved -finally, irrevocably shelved. And it was about this time that her dress, complexion, and character had undergone, before the tribunal of Mrs. Flahagan's tiffin-table, that candid and impartial trial with which our story commenced. She was herself conscious of the growing infirmities of her wardrobe, though she cared little about the sentence passed on her complexion or her character, and she could not at times forbear shaking her head as she observed the colour deserting her silk dresses, like friends who fall off from us in our adversities. But though she would sometimes moralize thus, it was with no feeling like despondency, for by dint of altering and turning, shaping and cutting, piecing here and inserting a tuck or two there, and helping off with new ribbons, which impart to old articles of attire the same sort of freshness that wrinkled cheeks receive from rouge, she contrived to keep up appearances pretty well. Nor did she sink under the desertion of her weak-minded admirer. Her affections were not blighted, nor was her heart withered, as is usual on such occasions in novels and romances. Those affections still bloomed, for they were the healthy affections of good-will and benevolence; and her heart, that morbid part of a young lady's anatomy, was still open to every kindly and generous feeling. She pitied, indeed, the weakness of Charles Sydenham, but in the sincerity of her soul prayed for his conjugal happiness.

It may be remembered also, that Arabella had been charged in the tiffin-table indictment with impertinent interpositions in family quarrels, and, under pretence of conciliation, making matters worse than they were before. And this was sometimes true even to the letter, saving as to her motives, for they were pure and faultless. Singular and unexpected contre-temps not unfrequently baffled her attempts to restore concord. An instance of this kind occurred not long after her rupture with Charles Sydenham. The garden-house contiguous to that of her fifth cousin, in which she was still hospitably domiciled, was occupied by a pair who lived together, as it often happens, a cat-and-dog sort of life, without the slightest wish on either side to dissolve the connexion. Mrs. Dalston, indeed, frequently complained, and loudly too, of Mr. Dalston's tyranny; and he, poor man, felt, most bitterly, the tyranny of Mrs. Dalston. To speak the truth, she always contrived to get the victory, but it was hotly disputed even to blows by the conquered party. No one acquainted with the modes of life in India, needs to be informed that visits are often paid by unceremoniously dropping in on each other during the evening. Arabella had for this purpose alighted from her palanquin, and was ascending the steps of her neighbour's verandah. That appalling knock of the footman, loud enough for the last summons of the quick and the dead, which announces a London visitor, is happily unknown there; and she had actually proceeded into the salon, where that amiable couple, having exhausted their arguments, had arrived at the ultima ratio, which so frequently concluded their debates. A mere worldly-minded visitor would have slunk away, leaving the parties to finish the controversy in their own way. Not so did Arabella Duncan. It was sufficient that discord raged where peace and gentleness ought to reside. "How delighted shall I be" said she, "if I can make these foolish people agree, instead of

scratching out each other's eyes, as they seem inclined to do!" So, without any preface or apology, she stepped in between the combatants. To have inquired the cause of the strife would have made it worse; but the lady, who on these occasions uniformly personated the injured party, poured out the full tide of her wrongs, appealing to Miss Duncan for sympathy and compassion. But these were not matters of course with Arabella. Before she pitied, she insisted on having cause to pity, and as the husband stood still and sileut amidst this hurricane of words, she felt a strong predisposition in his favour; and, therefore, mildly intreating Mrs. Dalston to abstain from intemperance of gesture and language, began to drop a hint or two about a wife's obedience, or something to that effect, which sounded in the lady's ears as unintelligibly as if it had been Hebrew.

"And do you take the part," said she, "of that wicked man? But I will abide his tyranny no longer. My life and his persecutions shall end at the same moment." Having said this, which Arabella heard with more philosophy than the terrified husband, who, though he bad witnessed the threat for the fiftieth time, was seriously alarmed lest she should put it into execution, the foolish woman ran to the compound, screaming out "the well, the well shall be my refuge!"—" Stop her, Miss Duncan,” said he. "Here, Vencata Sawmy, Mogun Chitty,"-calling to those honest domesties, who were sprawling at full length asleep in the verandah, and who, not unused to similar tempests, continued to sleep," you d–d lazy rascals, run after your mistress!" He then ran towards the well, Arabella followed more deliberately. "Quick, quick, dear Miss Duncan; she will drown herself in the well!" "It is not quite so clear to me," replied Arabella, "that she will." But at that moment, even the placid composure of Arabella had nearly deserted her ; for a loud splashing, as of a heavy substance falling into water, was heard by both in the direction of the well. Still, however, Arabella retained her presence of mind, for she had an internal conviction that the danger was imaginary. "Good heavens! Miss Duncan," said Dalston, "we must call for assistance;" and as they both looked over the side of the well, which was nearly forty feet deep, they perceived something like a white cloth floating on the water below. "Look there," said the appalled husband. "There she is. She sinks! Help! help!" reiterating his ineffectual clamours to rouse Vencata Sawmy, and Mogun Chitty. "Be patient," said Miss Duncan; and with a coolness that seemed unseasonable at so dreadful a moment, availing herself of a long bamboo, which she fastened to the well-rope, she lowered it to the bottom. Projecting farther than prudence warranted, she was soon enabled to bring up the white cloth, which turned out to be Mrs. Dalston's shawl." It is hers," he exclaimed. "Alas! she is gone!" "No such thing," answered Arabella, "she is not in the well. It does not follow that because a lady is disposed to make the Naiads of the well a present of a handsome shawl, she should throw herself in along with it. Your wife is not in the well. Go in. All will be right, I warrant you.": The man obeyed, and Arabella proceeded a few yards towards a small cluster of cocoa-trees, where she had already perceived Mrs. Dalston, who was enjoying the farce, feeling the highest conjugal delight in making a fool of her husband. The problem was easily solved. She had loosened a brick, which she pushed into the well, and in doing so, had dropt her shawl, which fell into the well also.

The anecdote, in its travels through the settlement, received: at least fifty different versions, none of them favourable to poor Arabella, against whom, on the contrary, it was converted into: "confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ," of a meddling disposition to pry into the secrets of families, and to light up domestic discord. Such kind, such benevolent commentators. are we upon the conduct of each other!

High-minded and superior to the exasperations that prey upon weak people, Arabella did not abstain from visiting Sydenham: and his wife; nor was the latter unaffectionate or unkind in that

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