ENGLISH PRASLINISMS.
IT would be difficult to perform a domestic tragedy on the arena of a coachman's wig ; but what is farce to the bystanders may be tragedy to the performers. Underneath the laughter of the great Londonderry wig case, there is a show of contest which 18 painful : the set smile on the lips is negatived by the clenched teeth and glaring eye. There must be some more serious object of contention than the 6/. 4s. for the dressing of wigs. The ac- , count had run for three or four years • but it is inconceivable that "the most noble Marquis could have felt any difficulty in paying such a sum. Of course, he would not have said a second word about it, much less contest the claim in the County Court, but that there was some principle at work. Now what are the facts brought out in evidence ? Everybody knows, that when very great folks wish most espe- cially to typify and display their greatness to the observing uni- verse, they cause their coachmen to wear singularly ugly wigs, less like a human head of hair than the mane of some very tame and mechanical lion. The Marquis of Londonderry, having pre- tensions to almost royal state, is endued as to his coachman with a wig of this sort. But as Canute was subject to the waves, so the wig even of a Londonderry is subject to skyey influences, and needs more or less dressing according to the state of the weather. "Saladin must die," and Londonderry's coachman must have his wig dressed. "Est modus in rebus "—there is a fashion in these things : some persons, being very refined in the matter of the aurigarious wig, have it dressed, as Lord Craven does, three times a day in the state season : others are more moderate, and twice a week seems, by the discreet and experienced judgment of the coach-box, to be accounted a proper and decorous recurrence of dressing. Less than that is not admissible. One sympathizes, therefore, with the Marchioness—almost a Peeress in her own right—who made it a point of honour not "to sit behind a coach- man with a dirty wig." It presents nobility, indeed, under a new phase, to fund that it is to be considered as a something " behind " a coachman, and partly dependent on the state of that worthy functionary's wig. But as the fact is so, we say, one sympathizes with the Marchioness. Why should she lose caste for a platter of 3s. more or less ? What question can there be on the subject ? This is the mystery. Some question undoubtedly there was, raised too by the Marquis. Mr. Irwin, the respectable wig-maker of Berwick Street, Soho, who dresses the wigs of fifty coachmen a week,—and, if we may be allowed the expression, supports fifty "brave Peers of England, pillars of the state," by thus " titivating" the essential wigs,—had been summoned by the Marquis to a special audience, and formally warned that he was to dress no wigs for the household except upon a written order for each occasion, under the sign-manual of " Vane Londonderry." But was that order, warrant, commission, or edict, ever issued ? Never. Applications were made for it, but it was never allowed. Mr. Irwin went on without it, auda- ciously flying in LordLondenderry's face with a wig-dressing twice a week during the tie ason, from 1844 to 1847. He pre- sumed, of course, that the Marquis could not mean to deprive the Marchioness of her proper state and consequence by making her sit behind a coachman with a disordered wig. But Lord Lon- donderry resists the claim, even urged in the County Court ; the Judge supports the recusant Peer ; and Mr. Irwin's little bill is disallowed altogether. The practical implication of the joint de- fence and judgment is, that the Marquis of Londonderry did not mean to allow Lady Londonderry's coachman to have his wig
dressed at all What can be inferred but that there has been a domestic contest about this wig—waged for years—so TA irreconcilable, that the parties could not keep it out o Can wewe then crow over our neighbours the French one score of their conjugalities, with such a display as this before i "t'
We sneer at the corruption of their officials ; but loo at the annals of our own law courts. It is true, indeed, in spite of spe- cial instances, that mercenary corruption is not a characteristic of our official classes ; but there are too many proofs that the sense of honesty is not acute or perfect in the high circles." We attach no undue importance to individual cases of " repudia- tion," or the occasional plea of privilege in bar of a tradesman's bill ; we make no undue account of the vindictive litigation with which an Earl's servants pursue his brother for lodging expenses in the Earl's mansion : the taint we mean is wider and deeper than that. It is the measureless expenditure into which the denizens of " the great world" appear to be plunging, with increased furor, for purposes of fantastic luxury or ostentation. A nobleman shall tra- vel abroad emulating regal state in the profusion of the diamond snuffboxes which he shall dispense; yet put off his tradesman at home. Another shall beat his brains daily to devise how he may render more elaborate and curiously complete the upholstery and linendrapery of his country palace, give royal entertainments, ransack his wits for new modes of expenditure ; and eventually rush into bankruptcy for an amount not far short of two millions sterling. No single creditor, however large his bill, could have supposed that other debts were so vast and so numerous as to form an amount impossible to be paid : but of course the fact implies that promises to such an amount have been given, and upon the faith of the wealth and honour of a British Peer goods- and service have been given. If a poor wretch without money applies to a butcher and tailor and orders in food and clothing which he knows he cannot pay for, he is called a " swindler," and goes to a prison. If one in trade owes some thousands more than he can pay, all his goods are seized, he is stripped, and he goes into the gazette. If a great lord obtains goods or service to the value of millions sterling, he goes " to the Continent." And we say that the French have not our high and nice sense of ho- nesty !
We are shocked at the Duke de Praslin, who murders his wife are our annals free from crime in high quarters ? Among our- selves, a lady detects her husband's infidelity, or supposes she does so ; and she, with her own insane hand, inflicts upon hina. the retribution which Fulbert dealt on Abelard ; but the story is kept out of the papers, or only alluded to obscurely. However "highly connected," the culprit was not a person of title. Be- sides, there were extenuating circumstances—reasonable doubts of sanity, and so forth ; all of which we feel respecting people on this side of the water. - 1 That is it : knowing the excuses on our ovra.side, we make a set-off, which we forget when we undertakeloteatirize our neigh- bour for meanness, dishonesty, or crime... Yortilit.rnay be doubted whether we have a right to claim any aaperrostity either in morals or the savoir vivre. The French are less reserved than we are ; we reproach them with their openness in matters which we make it a point of delicacy to conceal; and we study "appearances " with an earnestness unknown to them : any overt offences on our part, therefore, indicate more than the corresponding sallies on their side. So assiduous, indeed, is our sacrifice to appearances, that we ourselves literally do not know, what is beneath the sur- face of the society around us; we can only guess, and sometimes we are fain to make very hideous conjectures. Take it at the best, there is reason to surmise that beneath our straitlaced and punctilious observance of decorum lies a terrible amount of do- mestic misery and wrong,—paltry discord about paltry things, more humiliating and debasing to humanity than the bloody knife of the murderer; the infidelity of indifference, and its cor- responding sin, the legal prostitution of loveless union ,- the estrangement of falsehood ; the slow murder of spiteful unkind- ness ; the anxiety of conscious fraud toiling to keep up a seeming of the " respectable "; or, among the more fortunate, passions and affections mortified under the hard mechanical rules of com- mon life, such as it is made by mechanical commonplace minds, doomed to drag out an existence of dreary negation, and taking refuge at last in an universal scepticism or a fanaticism as faint in faith.
Can we say that we have learned the social art of life so well as to sneer at our neighbour, or assume airs of a more arrogant toleration ? Surely not : the passing annals of the day rebuke us if we do, and remind us that if we scan the conduct of that neighbour it must be less to judge than to learn. '
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