FORESTER. FORESTER was the son of an English gentleman, who had paid some attention to his education, but who had some singularities of opinion, which probably influenced him in his conduct towards his children. Young Forester was frank, brave, and generous; but he had been taught to dislike politeness so much, that the common forms of society appeared to him either odious or ridiculous; his sincerity was seldom restrained by any attention to the feelings of others. His love of independence was carried to such an extreme, that he was inclined to prefer the life of Robinson Crusoe in his desert island to that of any individual in cultivated society. His attention had been early fixed upon the follies and vices of the higher classes of people; and his contempt for selfish indolence was so strongly associated with the name of gentleman, that he was disposed to choose his friends and companions from among his inferiors: the inequality between the rich and the poor shocked him his temper was enthusiastic as well as benevolent; and he ardently wished to be a man, and to be at liberty to act for himself, that he might reform society, or at least his own neighbourhood. When he was about nineteen years old, his father died, and young Forester was sent to Edinburgh, to Dr. Campbell, the gentleman whom his father had appointed his guardian. In the choice of his mode of travelling his disposition appeared. The stage-coach and a carrier set out nearly at the same time from Penrith. Forester, proud of bringing his principles immediately into action, put himself under the protection of the carrier, and congratulated himself upon his freedom from prejudice. He arrived a Edinburgh in all the glory of independence, and he desired the carrier to set him down at Dr. Campbell's door. "The doctor's not at home," said the footman whọ opened the door. "He is at home," exclaimed Forester, with indignation; "I see him at the window." "My master is just going to dinner, and can't see any body now," said the footman; "but if you will call again at six o'clock, maybe he may see you, my good lad." "My name is Forester-let me in," said Forester pushing forwards. "Forester!—Mr. Forester!" said the footman; "the young gentleman that was expected in the coach to-day?" Without deigning to give the footman any explanation, Forester took his own portmanteau from the carrier; and Dr. Campbell came down stairs just when the footman was officiously struggling with the young gentleman for his burden. Dr. Campbell received his pupil very kindly; but Forester would not be prevailed upon to rub his shoes sufficiently upon the mat at the bottom of the stairs, or to change his disordered dress before he made his appearance in the drawing-room. He entered with dirty shoes, a threadbare coat, and hair that looked as if it never had been combed; and he was much surprised by the effect which his singular appearance produced upon the risible muscles of some of the company. "I have nothing to be ashamed of," said he to himself; but, notwithstanding all his efforts to be and to appear at ease, he was constrained and abashed. A young laird, Mr. Archibald Mackenzie, seemed to enjoy his confusion with malignant, half-suppressed merriment, in which Dr. Campbell's son was too good-natured and too well-bred to participate. Henry Campbell was three or four years older than Forester, and though he looked like a gentleman, Forester could not help being pleased with the manner in which he drew him into conversation. The secret magic of politeness relieved him insensibly from the torment of false shame. "It is a pity this lad was bred up a gentleman," said Forester to himself, "for he seems to have some sense and goodness." Dinner was announced, and Forester was provoked at being interrupted in an argument concerning carts and coaches which he had begun with Henry Campbell. Not that Forester was averse to eating, for he was at this instant ravenously hungry; but eating in company he always found equally repugnant to his habits and his principles. A table covered with a clean table-cloth, dishes in nice order, plates, knives, and forks laid at regular distances, appeared to our young Diogenes absurd superfluities, and he was ready to exclaim, "How many things I do not want!" Sitting down to dinner, eating, drinking, and behaving like other people appeared to him difficult and disagreeable ceremonies. He did not perceive that custom had rendered all these things perfectly easy to every one else in company; and as soon as he had devoured his food his own way, he moralized in silence upon the good sense of Sancho Panza, who preferred eating an egg behind the door to feasting in public; and he recollected his favourite traveller Le Vaillant's enthusiastic account of his charming Hottentot dinners, and of the disgust that he afterward felt on the comparison of European etiquette and African simplicity. “Thank God, the ceremony of dinner is over," said Forester to Henry Campbell, as soon as they rose from table. All those things which seemed mere matter of course in society appeared to Forester strange ceremonies. In the evening there were cards for those who liked cards, and there was conversation for those who liked conversation. Forester liked neither; he preferred playing with a cat; and he sat all night apart from the company in a corner of a sofa. He took it for granted that the conversation could not be worth his attention, because he heard Lady Catherine Mackenzie's voice among others; he had conceived a dislike, or rather a contempt for this lady, because she showed much of the pride of birth and rank in her manners. Henry Campbell did not think it necessary to punish himself for her ladyship's faults by withdrawing from entertaining conversation: he knew that his father had the art of managing the frivolous subjects started in general company, so as to make them lead to amusement and instruction; and this Forester would probably have discovered this evening, had he not followed his own thoughts, instead of listening to the observations of others. Lady Catherine, it is true, began with a silly history of her hereditary antipathy for pickled cucumbers; and she was rather tiresome in tracing the genealogy of this antipathy through several generations of her ancestry; but Dr. Campbell said "that he had heard, from an ingenious gentleman of her ladyship's family, that her ladyship's grandfather, and several of his Le Vaillant's Travels in Africa, vol. i. p. 114. you will only repeat the same thing over again, or be silent. Silence is the ornament of your sex: and in silence, if there be not wisdom, there is safety. You will then, if you please, according to your custom, sit listening to all entreaties to explain and speak-with a fixed immutability of posture, and a predetermined deafness of eye, which shall put your opponent utterly out of patience; yet still by persevering with the same complacent importance of countenance, you shall half-persuade people you could speak if you would; you shall keep them in doubt by that true want of meaning "which puzzles more than wit;" even because they cannot conceive the excess of your stupidity, they shall actually begin to believe that they themselves are stupid. Ignorance and doubt are the great parents of the sublime. Your adversary, finding you impenetrable to argument, perhaps would try wit:-but, " On the impassive ice the lightnings play." His eloquence or his kindness will avail less; when, in yielding to you after a long harangue, he expects to please you, you will answer, undoubtedly with the utmost propriety, "That you should be very sorry he yielded his judgment to you; that he is very good; that you are much obliged to him; but that, as to the point in dispute, it is a matter of perfect indifference to you; for your part, you have no choice at all about it: you beg that he will do just what he pleases; you know that it is the duty of a wife to submit; but you hope, however, you may have an opinion of your own." Remember, all such speeches as these will lose above half their effect if you cannot accompany them with the vacant stare, the insipid smile, the passive aspect of the humbly perverse. While I write, new precepts rush upon my recollection; but the subject is inexhaustible. I quit it with regret, though fully sensible of my presumption in having attempted to instruct those who, while they read, will smile in the consciousness of superior powers. Adieu! then, my fair readers: long may you prosper in the practice of an art peculiar to your sex! Long may you maintain unrivalled dominion at home and abroad; and long may your husbands rue the hour when first they made you promise "to obey!' [Written in 1787-published in 1795.] |