The Casual Honeymoon
by
As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750
“But this is the most cruel thing, to marry one does not know how, nor why, nor wherefore.–Gad, I never liked anybody less in my life. Poor woman!–Gad, I’m sorry for her, too; for I have no reason to hate her neither; but I wish we could keep it secret! why, I don’t believe any of this company would speak of it.”
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
CAPTAIN AUDAINE, of a pompous and handsome person, and loves Miss Allonby.
LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, younger son to the Marquis of Venour, makes love to Miss Allonby.
GERALD ALLONBY, brother to Miss Allonby, a true raw Squire.
MR. ERWYN, betrothed to Lady Allonby.
VANRINGHAM, an impudent tragedian of the Globe Company.
QUARMBY, Vanringham’s associate.
Miss ALLONBY, an heiress, of a petulant humor, in love with Audaine.
MARCHIONESS OF FALMOUTH, an impertinent affected dowager, and grandmother to Miss Allonby.
LADY ALLONBY, step-mother to Miss Allonby and Gerald.
POSTILIONS, SERVANTS, Etc.
SCENE
Tunbridge Wells, thence shifting to Chetwode Lodge, Mr. Babington-Herle’s house, on Rusthall Common, within two miles of the town.
THE CASUAL HONEYMOON
PROEM:–Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine
It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style. Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in Philadelphia, “for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street.” In England the memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by, and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted.
For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old or thereabouts, of whom nobody knew anything quite definite–beyond the genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue–save that after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks’ duration, he was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought three duels behind Ormerod House,–with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge, and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared suitor for her hand.
And with this prelude I begin on my transcription.
I
Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the immensity of my passion, ’twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations; and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: “But I don’t want to marry you. Why on earth should I?”
“For the sake of peace,” I replied, “and in self-protection, since as long as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall pester you to death.”
“Indeed, I think it more than probable,” she returned; “for you dog me like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to be rid of both them and you.”
But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. “Nay,” I dissented; “the subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate, and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love you with completeness: and give me leave to assure you, madam, with a freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without your heart.”