Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1660 page)

My first Lady-Bore — see how quickly I get to the matter in hand, without wasting so much as a single line in prefatory phrases! — my first Lady-Bore is Miss Sticker. I don’t in the least mind mentioning her name, because I know, if she got the chance, she would do just the same by me. It is of no use disguising the fact, so I may as well confess at once that Miss Sticker is a fright. Far be it from me to give pain where the thing can by any means be avoided; but if I were to say that Miss Sticker would ever see forty again, I should be guilty of an unwarrantable deception on the public. I have the strongest imaginable objection to mentioning the word petticoats; but if that is the only possible description of Miss Sticker’s figure which conveys a true notion of its nature and composition, what am I to do? Perhaps I had better give up describing the poor thing’s personal appearance. I shall get into deeper and deeper difficulties if I attempt to go on. The very last time I was in her company, we were strolling about Regent Street, with my sister’s husband for escort. As we passed a hairdresser’s shop, the dear, simple man looked in, and asked me what those long tails of hair were for that he saw hanging up in the windows. Miss Sticker, poor soul, was on his arm, and heard him put the question. I thought I should have dropped.

This is, I believe, what you call a digression. I shall let it stop in, however, because it will probably explain to the judicious reader why I carefully avoid the subject — the meager subject, an ill-natured person might say — of Miss Sticker’s hair. Suppose I pass on to what is more importantly connected with the object of these pages — suppose I describe Miss Sticker’s character next.

Some extremely sensible man has observed somewhere that a Bore is a person with one idea. Exactly so. Miss Sticker is a person with one idea. Unhappily for society, her notion is that she is bound by the laws of politeness to join in every conversation which happens to be proceeding within the range of her ears. She has no ideas, no information, no flow of language, no tact, no power of saying the right word at the right time, even by chance. And yet she
will
converse, as she calls it. “A gentlewoman, my dear, becomes a mere cipher in society unless she can converse.” That is her way of putting it; and I deeply regret to add, she is one of the few people who preach what they practice. Her course of proceeding is, first, to check the conversation by making a remark which has no kind of relation to the topic under discussion. She next stops it altogether by being suddenly at a loss for some particular word which nobody can suggest. At last the word is given up, another subject is started in despair, and the company become warmly interested in it. Just at that moment Miss Sticker finds the lost word, screams it out triumphantly in the middle of the talk, and so scatters the second subject to the winds, exactly as she has already scattered the first.

The last time I called at my aunt’s — I merely mention this by way of example — I found Miss Sticker there, and three delightful men. One was a clergyman of the dear old purple-faced Port-wine school; the other two would have looked military, if one of them had not been an engineer, and the other an editor of a newspaper. We should have had some delightful conversation if the Lady-Bore had not been present. In some way, I really forget how, we got to talking about giving credit and paying debts; and the dear old clergyman, with his twinkling eyes and his jolly voice, treated us to a professional anecdote on the subject.

“Talking about that,” he began, “I married a man the other day for the third time. Man in my parish. Capital cricketer when he was young enough to run. ‘What’s your fee?’ says he. — ’Licensed marriage?’ says I; ‘guinea, of course.’ ‘I’ve got to bring you your tithes in three weeks, sir,’ says he; ‘give me tick till then.’ — ’All right,’ says I, and married him. In three weeks he comes and pays his tithes like a man. ‘Now, sir,’ says he, ‘about this marriage-fee, sir? I do hope you’ll kindly let me off at half-price, for I have married a bitter bad ‘un this time. I’ve got a half-guinea about me, sir, if you’ll only please to take it. She isn’t worth a farthing more — on the word of a man, she isn’t, sir!’ I looked hard in his face, and saw two scratches on it, and took the half-guinea, more out of pity than anything else. Lesson to me, however. Never marry a man on credit again as long as I live. Cash on all future occasions — cash down, or no marriage.”

While he was speaking, I had my eye on Miss Sticker. Thanks to the luncheon which was on the table, she was physically incapable of “conversing” while our reverend friend was telling his humorous little anecdote. Just as he had done, and just as the editor of the newspaper was taking up the subject, she finished her chicken and turned round from the table.

“Cash down, my dear sir, as you say,” continued the editor. “You exactly describe our great principle of action in the Press. Some of the most extraordinary and amusing things happen with subscribers to newspapers — ”

“Ah, the Press!” burst in Miss Sticker, beginning to converse. ““What a wonderful engine! and how grateful we ought to feel when we get the paper so regularly every morning at breakfast. The only question is — at least many people think so — I mean with regard to the Press, the only question is whether it ought to be — ”

Here Miss Sticker lost the next word, and all the company had to look for it.

“With regard to the Press, the only question is, whether it ought to be — Oh, dear, dear, dear me!” cried Miss Sticker, lifting both her hands in despair, “what is the word?”

“Cheaper?” suggested our reverend friend. “Hang it, ma’am! it can hardly be that, when it is down to a penny already.”

“Oh no; not cheaper,” said Miss Sticker.

“More independent!” inquired the editor. “If you mean that, I defy anybody to find more fearless exposures of corruption — ”

“No, no!” cried Miss Sticker, in an agony of polite confusion. I didn’t mean that. More independent wasn’t the word.”

“Better printed?” suggested the engineer.

“On better paper?” added my aunt.

“It can’t be done — if you refer to the cheap press — it can’t be done for the money,” interposed the editor, irritably.

“Oh, but that’s not it!” continued Miss Sticker, wringing her bony fingers, with horrid black mittens on them, “I didn’t mean to say better printed or better paper. It was one word I meant, not two. With regard to the Press,” pursued Miss Sticker, repeating her own ridiculous words carefully, as an aid to memory, “the only question is whether it ought to be — Bless my heart, how extraordinary! Well, well, never mind; I’m quite shocked, and ashamed of myself. Pray go on talking, and don’t notice me.”

It was all very well to say, Go on talking; but the editor’s amusing story about subscribers to newspapers had been by this time fatally interrupted. As usual, Miss Sticker had stopped us in full flow. The engineer considerately broke the silence by starting another subject.

“Here are some wedding-cards on your table,” he said to my aunt, “which I am very glad to see there. The bridegroom is an old friend of mine. His wife is really a beauty. You know how he first became acquainted with her? No? It was quite an adventure, I assure you. One evening he was on the Brighton Railway; last down train. A lovely girl in the carriage; our friend Dilberry immensely struck with her. Got her to talk after a long time, with great difficulty. Within half an hour of Brighton, the lovely girl smiles and says, to our friend, ‘Shall we be very long now, sir, before we get to Gravesend?’ Case of confusion at that dreadful London Bridge terminus. Dilberry explained that she would be at Brighton in half an hour, upon which the lovely girl instantly and properly burst into tears. ‘Oh, what shall I do! Oh, what will my friends think!’ Second flood of tears. ‘Suppose you telegraph?’ says Dilberry, soothingly. ‘Oh, but I don’t know how!’ says the lovely girl. Out comes Dilberry’s pocket-book. Sly dog! he saw his way now to finding out who her friends were. ‘Pray let me write the necessary message for you,’ says Dilberry. ‘Who shall I direct to at Gravesend?’ — ’My father and mother are staying there with some friends,’ says the lovely girl. ‘I came up with a day-ticket, and I saw a crowd of people, when I came back to the station, all going one way, and I was hurried and frightened, and nobody told me, and it was late in the evening, and the bell was ringing, and, oh heavens! what will become of me!’ Third burst of tears. ‘We will telegraph to your father,’ says Dilberry. ‘Pray don’t distress yourself. Only tell me who your father is.’ — ’Thank you a thousand times,’ says the lovely girl, ‘my father is — ’ “

“ANONYMOUS!” shouts Miss Sticker, producing her lost word with a perfect burst of triumph. “How glad I am I remember it at last! Bless me!” exclaims the Lady-Bore, quite unconscious that she has brought the engineer’s story to an abrupt conclusion, by giving his distressed damsel an anonymous father; “bless me! what are you all laughing at? I only meant to say that the question with regard to the Press was, whether it ought to be anonymous. What in the world is there to laugh at in that? I really don’t see the joke.”

And this woman escapes scot-free, while comparatively innocent men are held up to ridicule, in novel after novel, by dozens at a time! When will the deluded male writers see my sex in its true colours, and describe it accordingly? When will Miss Sticker take her proper place in the literature of England?

~ My second Lady-Bore is that hateful creature, Mrs. Tincklepaw. Where, over the whole interesting surface of male humanity (including cannibals) — where is the man to be found whom it would not be scandalous to mention in the same breath with Mrs. Tincklepaw? The great delight of this shocking woman’s life is to squabble with her husband (poor man, he has my warmest sympathy and best good wishes), and then to bring the quarrel away from home with her, and to let it off again at society in general, in a series of short, spiteful hints. Mrs. Tincklepaw is the exact opposite of Miss Sticker. She is a very little woman; she is (and more shame for her, considering how she acts) young enough to be Miss Sticker’s daughter; and she has a kind of snappish tact in worrying innocent people, under every possible turn of circumstances, which distinguishes her (disgracefully) from the poor feeble-minded Maid-Bore, to whom the reader has been already introduced. Here are some examples — all taken, be it observed, from my own personal observation of the manner in which Mrs. Tincklepaw contrives to persecute her harmless fellow-creatures wherever she happens to meet with them:

Let us say I am out walking, and I happen to meet Mr. and Mrs. Tincklepaw. (By-the-by, she never lets her husband out of her sight — he is too necessary to the execution of her schemes of petty torment. And such a noble creature, to be used for so base a purpose! He stands six feet two, and is additionally distinguished by a glorious and majestic stoutness, which has no sort of connection with the comparatively comic element of fat. His nature, considering what a wife he has got, is inexcusably meek and patient. Instead of answering her, he strokes his magnificent flaxen whiskers, and looks up resignedly at the sky. I sometimes fancy that he stands top high to hear what his dwarf of a wife says. For his sake, poor man, I hope this view of the matter may be the true one.)

I am afraid I have contrived to lose myself in a long parenthesis. Where was I? Oh! out walking, and happening to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Tincklepaw. She has had a quarrel with her husband at home, and this is how she contrives to let me know it.

“Delightful weather, dear, is it not?” I say, as we shake hands.

“Charming, indeed,” says Mrs. Tincklepaw. “Do you know, love, I am so glad you made that remark to me, and not to Mr. Tincklepaw?”

“Really?” I ask. “Pray tell me why?”

“Because,” answers the malicious creature, “if you had said it was a fine day to Mr. Tincklepaw, I should have been so afraid of his frowning at you directly, and saying, ‘Stuff! talk of something worth listening to, if you talk at all!’ What a love of a bonnet you have got on! and how Mr. Tincklepaw would have liked to be staying in your house when you were getting ready to-day to go out. He would have waited for you so patiently, dear. He would never have stamped in the passage; and no such words as, ‘Deuce take the woman! is she going to keep me here all day?’ would by any possibility have escaped his lips. Don’t, love! don’t look at the shops, while Mr. Tincklepaw is with us. He might say, ‘Oh, bother! you’re always wanting to buy something!’ I shouldn’t like that to happen. Should you, dear?”

Once more. Say I meet Mr. and Mrs. Tincklepaw at a dinner-party, given in honour of a bride and bridegroom. From the instant when she enters the house, Mrs. Tincklepaw never has her eye off the young couple. She looks at them with an expression of heart-broken curiosity. Whenever they happen to speak to each other, she instantly suspends any conversation in which she is engaged, and listens to them with a mournful eagerness. When the ladies retire, she gets the bride into a corner, appropriates her to herself for the rest of the evening, and persecutes the wretched young woman in this manner: