Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/640

 . 30, 1861.] being strung up to concert pitch, or slightly above it, both orally and mentally you grew exhausted. Then it was all over with you, and saving an occasional interjection or two, you subsided into a mere automaton, warranted to listen in the most natural manner.

The family of the Joneses consisted of four female members, but perhaps after the foregone description it is not necessary to mention the sex. The mamma, a dear, good, placid, old lady, on whom the memory of her husband’s fame fell like an embalming perfume, seldom took part in the sayings and doings of her daughters; believing, however, with the strongest faith, that his children must be perfection, and quietly acquiescing in all that was going on, from sheer amiability of temperament. The young ladies arithmetically were expressed by the numeral three (so, they would have added, were the daughters of Eurynome), and a more complete tria juncta in uno, never existed. Annie, Janie, and Maggie (they would have called themselves Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia) thought together, worked together, laughed together, I believe slept together, and, Iö Apollo! talked together, overlaying, overlapping, interlarding, dovetailLng, and veneering one another’s remarks; contradicting, asserting, expostulating, and explaining all at once, pitching their voices, as I before said, in alto, and “going in” for every subject under the sun, from the anatomy of the hippocampus to the domestic policy of the Peloponnesians. There was positively no resisting these young ladies. You were drawn into a moral vortex—a wordy maelstrom, and you found yourself in danger of being drowned—in froth. They criticised men and things in an off-hand, glib sort of way, calling authors to whom they had been only once introduced by their surname, without any prefix, while Annie would be certain to join in, agreeing with Janie in all she uttered, and Maggie would clink the argument by a sort of tone implying, “I have said it,” but before she could finish, Annie and Janie would both add their voices to the common concord, while Maggie, by no means disposed to retire from the field, took up the strain, and a Babel of sounds would ensue, perfectly excruciating, and suggestive of a tympanum injured for weeks. The Joneses of Montpelier moved in good society, and, it must be confessed, many agreeable people often met at their house, but somehow or other they always consisted of a mixture of rich people, titled people, or notorious people. The first they asked because they were rich, the second they worshipped because they were trump cards in their little foolish game with society, and helped them to win perhaps by tricks rather than honours, and the third they invited, that it might be said: “So-and-so were at the Joneses last night!”

Their gracious patronage of literary men knew no bounds, except that of reading their books, a weakness the Joneses seldom perpetrated; but they read the critiques in the papers, and would admire, criticise, taunt, or kow-tow, according to the nature and safety of the ground on which they found themselves. A tender young author trying his wings perhaps for the first time afforded great opportunities to Annie, Janie, and Maggie; and having perhaps just received a visit from a patriarch bull rhinoceros of literature, whose fame was made, and to whom they were obliged to show some deference, they “took it out,” as the term is, of the young fledgling, and so bewildered him with advice as to his future works, and criticism of his present or past ones, that the poor crest-fallen pigeon would be only too glad to escape, feeling and appearing somewhat like the jackdaw of Rheims before the terrible curse was removed.

Prior to my friend Nathaniel becoming a married man, the Joneses of Montpelier were tolerably civil to him. Notwithstanding his obscure habits and somewhat sullen manners, there was a certain reputation, more defined than real, attached to his name, which was a sort of passport to him in society; and the Joneses were condescending accordingly. I could perceive Nat never quite liked them, and he would growl and grumble when Annie, Janie, and Maggie agreed as to the impossibility of knowing Mr. and Mrs. Cadmus Smith, because Mrs. C. S. was only the daughter of a country surgeon.

“We do not look down upon these sort of people,” said Annie.

“But it is impossible,” added Janie, “to know everyone—”

“And, we have really such a large acquaintance,” interposed Maggie, “that we are obliged to winnow the grain” chimed in all three at once.

When Nathaniel married, visits were exchanged between Mrs. Nat and the Joneses, but as the former lady was not known to possess a single relative in the world directly or indirectly connected with the aristocracy, as not even a baron’s quarterings could be traced in the dim vista of her pedigree, the Joneses of Montpelier were only just civil, and as they did not desire to keep up the acquaintance beyond a mere simmering point, and had no grounds or possible cause for a cut direct, they brought to bear that system of small annoyances, and those charming little darts, the merits of which we have already discussed. A quiet, settled, but entirely unostentatious air of impertinence is very provoking to the recipients thereof, especially when tact and a complete mastery of the noble art of invisibly wounding your neighbour lend their aid in the matter. The Joneses neither said nor did anything that could be taken hold of, but they invariably managed that Mrs. Nat should be the first to recognise them when they happened to meet at some mutual friend’s house. This was done in the easiest and most graceful way possible, ignoring her presence with art so admirable that it was impossible to believe the act premeditated. Then, when the Joneses were driving in a friend’s well-appointed barouche or chariot, they were immediately afflicted with myopia in regard to Mrs. Nat; or if in a turn-out not quite so elegant, they did manage to see and just to bend to her; but if they were walking, and none of their grand acquaintances near, they would bow graciously enough. Then occasionally they would give little sharp and point-blank contradictions, when Mrs. Nat was engaged in conversation; or when she was not quite so