FullReads

“When you come home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the ‘Lady Blanch;’ when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money–and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture–was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi’s, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you?

“Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter’s Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holyday–holydays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich–and the little hand-basket, in which I used to deposit our day’s fare of savory cold lamb and salad–and how you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in, and produce our store–only paying for the ale that you must call for–and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth–and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing–and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us–but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? Now, when we go out a day’s pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of the way–and go into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the expense–which, after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome.

“You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the battle of Hexham, and the surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood–when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery–where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me–and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me–and the pleasure was the better for a little shame–and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used to say, that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially–that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going–that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the stage–because a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our pride then–and I appeal to you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation, than I have done since in more expensive situations in the house? The getting in indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough,–but there was still a law of civility to women recognised to quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages–and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat, and the play, afterwards! Now we can only pay our money, and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then–but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty.

“There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became quite common–in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear–to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves now–that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat–when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologises, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now–what I mean by the word–we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty.