Her first essay exceeded her best expectations in its success; a success the more important, as failure, there, might have fastened discredit upon her whole enterprize, since her first pupil was Lady Barbara Frankland.
Lady Kendover, the aunt of that young lady, to whom Miss Arbe, for the honour of her own patronage, had adroitly dwelt upon the fortnight passed at Mrs Howel’s, and, in the society of Lady Aurora Granville, by her protegée; received and treated her with distinguished condescension, and even flattering kindness. For though her ladyship was too high in rank, to share in the anxious tenaciousness of Mrs Howel, for manifesting the superiour judgment with which she knew how to select, and how to reject, persons qualified for her society; and though yet less liable to be controlled by the futile fears of the opinion of a neighbourhood, which awed Mrs Maple; still she was more a woman of quality than a woman of the world; and the circle in which she moved, was bounded by the hereditary habits, and imitative customs, which had always limited the proceedings of her ladyship’s, in common with those of almost every other noble family, of patronizing those who had already been elevated by patronage; and of lifting higher, by peculiar favour, those who were already mounting by the favour of others. To go further,—to draw forth talents from obscurity, to honour indigent virtue, were exertions that demanded a character of a superiour species; a character that had learnt to act for himself, by thinking for himself and feeling for others.
The joy of Lady Barbara, a lively and lovely young creature, just blooming into womanhood, in becoming the pupil of Ellis, was nearly extatic. Lady Aurora Granville, with whom she was particularly connected, had written to her in such rapture of the private play, that she was wild to see the celebrated Lady Townly. And though she was not quite simple, nor quite young enough, to believe that she should literally behold that personage, her ideas were, unconsciously, so bewildered, between the representation of nature and life, or nature and life themselves, that she had a certain undefined pleasure in the meeting which perplexed, yet bewitched her imagination. She regarded it as the happiest possible event, to be brought into such close intercourse, with a person whom she delighted herself with considering as the first actress of the age. She looked at her; watched her; listened to her; and prevailed upon Lady Kendover to engage that she should every day take a lesson; during which her whole mind was directed to imitating Miss Ellis in her manner of holding the harp; in the air of her head as she turned from it to look at the musical notes; in her way of curving, straightening, or elegantly spreading her fingers upon the strings; and in the general bend of her person, upon which depended the graceful effect of the whole. Not very singular, indeed, was Lady Barbara, in regarding these as the principal points to be attained, in acquiring the accomplishment of playing upon the harp; which, because it shews beauty and grace to advantage, is often erroneously chosen for exhibiting those who have neither; as if its powers extended to bestow the charms which it only displays.
The admiration of Lady Barbara for her instructress, lost some boundary of moderation every day; and Ellis, though ashamed of such excess of partiality, felt fostered by its warmth, and returned it with sincerity. Lady Barbara, who was gaily artless, and as full of kindness as of vivacity, had the strong recommendation of being wholly natural; a recommendation as rare in itself, as success is in its deviations.
Miss Arbe was all happy exultation, at a prosperity for which she repaid herself, without scruple, by perpetual, though private lessons; and Ellis, whose merit, while viewed with rivalry, she had sought to depreciate, she was now foremost to praise. The swellings of envy and jealousy gave way to triumph in her own discernment; and all severities of hypercriticism subsided into the gentler vanity, and more humane parade, of patronage.
Another happy circumstance signalized, also, this professional commencement of Ellis; Miss Arbe secured to her the popular favour of Sir Marmaduke Crawley, a travelled fine gentleman, just summoned from Italy, to take possession of his title and estate; and to the guardianship of two hoyden sisters, many years younger than himself. His character of a connoisseur, and admirer of les beaux arts; a person of so refined a conformation, as to desire to be thought rather to vegetate than to live, when removed from the genial clime of the sole region of the muses, and of taste, Italy; made his approbation as useful to her fame, as the active influence of Miss Arbe was to her fortune. This gentleman, upon hearing her perform to Lady Kendover, declared, with a look of melancholy recollection, that The Ellis was more divine than any thing that he had yet met with on this side the Alps. He requested Miss Arbe, therefore, to place his sisters under her elegant tuition, if he might hope that The Ellis could be prevailed upon to undertake two such Vandals.
Born to a considerable fortune, though with a narrow capacity, Sir Marmaduke had persuaded himself, that to make the tour of Europe, and to become a connoisseur in all the arts, was the same thing; and, as he was rich, and, therefore, able to make himself friends, civil, and therefore never addicted to make enemies, no one felt tempted, either by sincerity or severity, to undeceive him; and, as all he essentially wanted, for the character to which he thought himself elevated, was ‘spirit, taste, and sense,’ he uttered his opinions upon whatever he saw, or heard, without the smallest suspicion, that the assiduity with which he visited, or the wealth with which he purchased, works of art, included not every requisite for their appreciation. Yet though, from never provoking, he never encountered, that foe to the happy feelings of inborn presumption, truth, he felt sometimes embarrassed, when suddenly called upon to pronounce an opinion on any abtruse point of taste. He was always, therefore, watchful to catch hints from the dashing Miss Arbe, since to whatever she gave her fearless sanction, he saw fashion attached.
Nothing could be more different than the reception given to Ellis by Lady Kendover, and that which she experienced from the Miss Crawleys. Without any superiority to their brother in understanding, they had a decided inferiority in education and manners. They had been brought up by a fond uncle, in the country, with every false indulgence which can lead to idle ease and pleasure, for the passing moment; but which teems with that weariness, that a dearth of all rational employment nurses up for the listless and uncultured, when folly and ignorance out-live mere thoughtless merriment. Accustomed to follow, in every thing, the uncontrolled bent of their own humours, they felt fatigued by the very word decorum; and thought themselves oppressed by any representation of what was due to propriety. Their brother, on the contrary, taking the opposite extreme, had neither care nor wish but what related to the opinion of the virtuosi: because, though possessed of whatever could give pecuniary, he was destitute of all that could inspire mental independence.
‘Oh ho! The Ellis!’ cried Miss Crawley, mimicking her brother: ‘you are come to be our school-mistress, are you? Quick, quick, Di; put on your dumpish face, and begin your task.’
‘Be quiet, be quiet!’ cried Miss Di; ‘I shall like to learn of all things. The Ellis shall make me The Crawley. Come, what’s to be done, The Ellis? Begin, begin!’
‘And finish, finish!’ cried the eldest: ‘I can’t bear to be long about any thing: there’s nothing so fogrum.’
Their brother, now, ventured, gently, to caution them not to make use of the word fogrum, which, he assured them, was by no means received in good company.
‘O, I hate good company!’ cried the eldest: ‘It always makes me fall asleep.’
‘So do I,’ cried the youngest; ‘except when I take upon myself to wake it. O! that’s the delight of my life! to run wild upon a set of formals, who think one brainless, only because one is not drowsy. Do you know any fogrums of that sort, brother?’
The merriment that this question, which they meant to be personal, occasioned, extremely confused Sir Marmaduke; and his evident consciousness flung them into such immoderate laughter, that the new mistress was forced to desist from all attempt at instruction, till it subsided; which was not till their brother, shrugging his shoulders, with shame and mortification, left the room.
Yawning, then, with exhausted spirits, they desired to be set to work.
Proficiency they had no chance, for they had no wish to make; but Ellis, from this time, attended them twice a-week; and Sir Marmaduke was gratified by the assurances of Miss Arbe, that all the world praised his taste, for choosing them so accomplished an instructress.
The fourth scholar that the same patronage procured for Ellis, was a little girl of eleven years of age, whose mother, Lady Arramede, the nearly ruined widow of a gamester peer, sacrificed every comfort to retain the equipage, and the establishment, that she had enjoyed during the life of her luxurious lord. Her table, except when she had company, was never quite sufficient for her family; her dress, except when she visited, was always old, mended, and out of fashion; and the education of her daughter, though destined to be of the first order, was extracted, in common with her gala dinners, and gala ornaments, from these daily savings. Ellis, therefore, from the very moderate price at which Miss Arbe, for the purpose of obliging her own various friends, had fixed her instructions, was a treasure to Lady Arramede; who had never before so completely found, what she was always indefatigably seeking, a professor not more cheap than fashionable.
On the part of the professor, the satisfaction was not quite mutual. Lady Arramede, reduced by her great expences in public, to the most miserable parsimony in private, joined, to a lofty desire of high consideration in the world, a constant alarm lest her pecuniary difficulties should be perceived. The low terms, therefore, upon which Ellis taught, though the real inducement for her being employed, urged the most arrogant reception of the young instructress, in the apprehension that she might, else, suspect the motive to her admission; and the instant that she entered the room, her little pupil was hurried to the instrument, that she might not presume to imagine it possible, that she could remain in the presence of her ladyship, even for a moment, except to be professionally occupied.
Yet was she by no means more niggardly in bestowing favour, than rapacious in seeking advantage. Her thoughts were constantly employed in forming interrogatories for obtaining musical information, by which her daughter might profit in the absence of the mistress; though she made them without troubling herself to raise her eyes, except when she did not comprehend the answer; and then, her look was of so haughty a character, that she seemed rather to be demanding satisfaction than explication.
The same address, also, accompanied her desire to hear the pieces, which her daughter began learning, performed by the mistress: she never made this request till the given hour was more than passed; and made it then rather as if she were issuing a command, for the execution of some acknowledged duty, than calling forth talents, or occupying time, upon which she could only from courtesy have any claim.
Miss Brinville, the fifth pupil of Ellis, was a celebrated beauty, who had wasted her bloom in a perpetual search of admiration; and lost her prime, without suspecting that it was gone, in vain and ambitious difficulties of choice. Yet her charms, however faded and changed, still, by candle-light, or when adroitly shaded, through a becoming skill in the arrangement of her head-dress, appeared nearly in their first lustre; and in this view it was that they were always present to herself; though, by the world, the altered complexion, sunk eyes, and enlarged features, exhibited by day-light, or by common attire, were all, except through impertinent retrospection, that were any more noticed.
She was just arrived at Brighthelmstone, with her mother, upon a visit to an acquaintance, whom that lady had engaged to invite them, with a design of meeting Sir Lyell Sycamore, a splendid young baronet, with whom Miss Brinville had lately danced at a private ball; where, as he saw her for the first time, and saw her to every advantage which well chosen attire, animated vanity, and propitious wax-light could give, he had fallen desperately enamoured of her beauty; and had so vehemently lamented having promised to join a party to Brighthelmstone, that both the mother and the daughter concluded, that they had only to find a decent pretence for following him, to secure the prostration of his title and fortune at their feet. And though similar expectations, from gentlemen of similar birth and estate, had already, at least fifty times, been disappointed, they were just as sanguine, in the present instance, as if, new to the world, and inexperienced in its ways, they were now receiving their first lessons, upon the fallaciousness of self-appreciation: so slight is the impression made, even where our false judgment is self-detected, by wounds to our vanity! and so elastic is the re-bound of that hope, which originates in our personal estimation of our deserts!
The young Baronet, indeed, no sooner heard of the arrival at Brighthelmstone of the fair one who had enchanted him, than, wild with rapture, he devoted all his soul to expected extacies. But when, the next morning, fine and frosty, though severely cold, he met her upon the Steyn, her complexion and her features were so different to those yet resting, in full beauty, upon his memory, that he looked at her with a surprise mingled with a species of indignation, as at a caricature of herself.
Miss Brinville, though too unconscious of her own double appearance to develope what passed in his mind, was struck and mortified by his change of manner. The bleak winds which blew sharply from the sea, giving nearly its own blue-green hue to her skin, while all that it bestowed of the carnation’s more vivid glow, visited the feature which they least become, but which seems always the favourite wintry hot-bed of the ruddy tints; in completing what to the young Baronet seemed an entire metamorphosis, drove him fairly from the field. The wondering heroine was left in a consternation that usefully, however disagreeably, might have whispered to her some of those cruel truths which are always buzzing around faded beauties,—missing no ears but their own!—had she not been hurried, by her mother, into a milliner’s shop, to make some preparations for a ball to which she was invited for the evening. There, again, she saw the Baronet, to whose astonished sight she appeared with all her first allurements. Again he danced with her, again was captivated; and again the next morning recovered his liberty. Yet Miss Brinville made no progress in self-perception: his changes were attributed to caprice or fickleness; and her desire grew but more urgent to fix her wavering conquest.
At the dinner at Lady Kendover’s, where Miss Arbe brought forward the talents and the plan of Ellis, such a spirit was raised, to procure scholars amongst the young ladies of fashion then at Brighthelmstone; and it seemed so youthful to become a pupil, that Miss Brinville feared, if left out, she might be considered as too old to enter such lists. Yet her total ignorance of music, and a native dull distaste to all the arts, save the millinery, damped her wishes with want of resolution; till an exclamation of Sir Lyell Sycamore’s, that nothing added so much grace to beauty as playing upon the harp, gave her sudden strength and energy, to beg to be set down, by Miss Arbe, as one of the first scholars for her protegée.
Ellis was received by her with civility, but treated with the utmost coldness. The sight of beauty at its height, forced a self-comparison of no exhilarating nature; and, much as she built upon informing Sir Lyell of her lessons, she desired nothing less than shewing him from whom they were received. To sit at the harp so as to justify the assertion of the Baronet, became her principal study; and the glass before which she tried her attitudes and motions, told her such flattering tales, that she soon began to think the harp the sweetest instrument in the world, and that to practise it was the most delicious of occupations.
Ellis was too sincere to aid this delusion. Of all her pupils, no one was so utterly hopeless as Miss Brinville, whom she found equally destitute of ear, taste, intelligence, and application. The same direction twenty times repeated, was not better understood than the first moment that it was uttered. Naturally dull, she comprehended nothing that was not familiar to her; and habitually indolent, because brought up to believe that beauty would supply every accomplishment, she had no conception of energy, and not an idea of diligence.
Ellis, whose mind was ardent, and whose integrity was incorrupt, felt an honourable anxiety to fulfil the duties of her new profession, though she had entered upon them merely from motives of distress. She was earnest, therefore, for the improvement of her pupils; and conceived the laudable ambition, to merit what she might earn, by their advancement. And though one amongst them, alone, manifested any genius; in all of them, except Miss Brinville, she saw more of carelessness, or idleness, than of positive, incapacity. But here, the darkness of all musical apprehension was so impenetrable, that not a ray of instruction could make way through it; and Ellis who, though she saw that to study her looks at the instrument was her principal object, had still imagined that to learn music came in for some share in taking lessons upon the harp, finding it utterly vain to try to make her distinguish one note from another, held her own probity called upon to avow her opinion; since she saw herself the only one who could profit from its concealment.
Gently, therefore, and in terms the most delicate that she could select, she communicated her fears to Mrs Brinville, that the talents of Miss Brinville were not of a musical cast.
Mrs Brinville, with a look that said, What infinite impertinence! declared herself extremely obliged by this sincerity; and summoned her daughter to the conference.
Miss Brinville, colouring with the deepest resentment, protested that she was never so well pleased as in hearing plain truth; but each made an inclination of her head, that intimated to Ellis that she might hasten her departure: and the first news that reached her the next morning was, that Miss Brinville had sent for a celebrated and expensive professor, then accidentally at Brighthelmstone, to give her lessons upon the harp.
Miss Arbe, from whom Ellis received this intelligence, was extremely angry with her for the strange, and what she called unheard-of measure that she had taken. ‘What had you,’ she cried, ‘to do with their manner of wasting their money? Every one chooses to throw it away according to his own taste. If rich people have not that privilege, I don’t see how they are the better for not being poor.’
The sixth scholar whom Ellis undertook, was sister to Sir Lyell Sycamore. She possessed a real genius for music, though it was so little seconded by industry, that whatever she could not perform without labour or time, she relinquished. Thus, though all she played was executed in a truly fine style, nothing being practised, nothing was finished; and though she could amuse herself, and charm her auditors, with almost every favourite passage that she heard, she could not go through a single piece; could play nothing by book; and hardly knew her notes.
Nevertheless, Ellis found her so far superiour, in musical capacity, to every other pupil that had fallen to her charge, that she conceived a strong desire to make her the fine player that her talents fitted her for becoming.
Her utmost exertions, however, and warmest wishes, were insufficient for this purpose. The genius with which Miss Sycamore was endowed for music, was unallied to any soft harmonies of temper, or of character: she was presumptuous, conceited, and gaily unfeeling. If Ellis pressed her to more attention, she hummed an air, without looking at her; if she remonstrated against her neglect, she suddenly stared at her, though without speaking. She had a haughty indifference about learning; but it was not from an indifference to excel; ’twas from a firm self-opinion, that she excelled already. If she could not deny, that Ellis executed whole pieces, in as masterly a manner as she could herself play only chosen passages, she deemed that a mere mechanical part of the art, which, as a professor, Ellis had been forced to study; and which she herself, therefore, rather held cheap than respected.
Ellis, at first, seriously lamented this wayward spirit, which wasted real talents; but all interest for her pupil soon subsided; and all regret concentrated in having such a scholar to attend; for the manners of Miss Sycamore had an excess of insolence, that rather demanded apathy than philosophy to be supported, by those who were in any degree within her power. Ellis was treated by her with a sort of sprightly defiance, that sometimes seemed to arise from gay derision; at others, from careless haughtiness. Miss Sycamore, who gave little attention to the rumours of her history, saw her but either as a Wanderer, of blighted fortune, and as such looked down upon her with contempt; or as an indigent young woman of singular beauty, and as such, with far less willingness, looked up to her with envy.
Twice a-week, also, Selina, with the connivance, though not with the avowed consent of Mrs Maple, came from Lewes, to continue her musical lessons, at the house of Lady Kendover, or of Miss Arramede.
Such was the set which the powerful influence of Miss Arbe procured for the opening campaign of Ellis; and to this set its own celebrity soon added another name. It was not, indeed, one which Miss Arbe would have deigned to put upon her list; but Ellis, who had no pride to support in her present undertaking, save the virtuous and right pride of owing independence to her own industry, as readily accepted a preferred scholar from the daughter of a common tradesman, as she had accepted the daughter of an Earl, whom she taught at Lady Kendover’s.
Mr Tedman, a grocer, who had raised a very large fortune, was now at Brighthelmstone, with his only daughter and heiress, at whose desire he called at Miss Matson’s, to enquire for the famous music-teacher.
Ellis, hearing that he was an elderly man, conceived what might be his business, and admitted him. Much surprised by her youthful appearance, ‘Good now, my dear,’ he cried, ‘why to be sure it can’t be you as pretends to learn young misses music? and even misses of quality, as I am told? It’s more likely it’s your mamma; put in case you’ve got one.’
When Ellis had set him right, he took five guineas from his purse, and said, ‘Well, then, my dear, come to my darter, and give her as much of your tudeling as will come to this. And I think, by then, she’ll be able to twiddle over them wires by herself.’
The hours of attendance being then settled, he looked smirkingly in her face, and added, ‘Which of us two is to hold the stakes, you or I?’ shaking the five guineas between his hands. But when she assured him that she had not the most distant desire to anticipate such an appropriation, he assumed an air of generous affluence, and assuring her, in return, that he was not afraid to trust her, counted two guineas and a half a guinea, upon the table, and said, ‘So if you please, my dear, we’ll split the difference.’
Ellis found the daughter yet more innately, though less obviously, vulgar; and far more unpleasant, because uncivil, than the father. In a constant struggle to hide the disproportion of her origin, and early habits, with her present pretensions to fashion, she was tormented by an incessant fear of betraying, that she was as little bred as born to the riches which she now possessed. This made her always authoritative with her domestics, or inferiours, to keep them in awe; pert with gentlemen, by way of being genteel; and rude with ladies, to shew herself their equal.
Mr Tedman conceived, immediately, a warm partiality for Ellis, whose elegant manners, which, had he met with her in high life, would have distanced him by their superiority, now attracted him irresistibly, in viewing them but as good-nature. He called her his pretty tudeler, and bid her make haste to earn her five guineas; significantly adding, that, if his daughter were not finished before they were gone, he was rich enough to make them ten.
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