Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (328 page)
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Authors: Ford Madox Ford
First published in 1910, this historical novel is set during the reign of William and Mary, who shared rule over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1689 to 1694, and is mostly concerned with court intrigues and frivoloities of the time.
The novel tells the story of Mr Bettesworth, a learned but proud man – foreshadowing Ford’s later creation Christopher Tietjens – who agrees to a riduclaous wager of £20,000 to discover and marry the subject of a portrait he has never seen.
Following his unlikely and comical quest, suffering humiliation, he learns the errors of his ways, at the instruction of his eventual bride. The novel features a range of Restoration scenes, several of which were inspired by the comedy plays of the time, with a flavour of Hogarthian satire.
Although
The Portrait
is mostly comedic in tone, it finishes with a moralising standpoint.
The novel has received little attention since its publication, being criticised for its ‘sketchy’ nature and lack of historical interest or depth, compared to the author’s other historical works.
King William and Queen Mary
CONTENTS
BUT the white satin, sir...” Mr Boodle said from the floor where he knelt, rolling up his stuffs. “You have to remember my credit, sir, if not your own, and to wear white satin at your entry upon the Town!..
In a blue silk dressing-gown, with a white cloth knotted in turban fashion about his shaven head, Mr. Bettesworth held before his face the book of the opera
The Island Princess
, in which he was reading, and made no answer to the tailor. The tailor appealed to Mr. Roland Bettesworth, who, his legs crossed, and already dressed, leaned against the side of the tall window and played with his sword-knot.
“It will be known to the Quality,” Mr. Boodle said, “that Mr. Bettesworth has his trousseau and his toilet of me, and I protest that to appear upon the Town in white satin, unless one is to marry on the morrow—”
“Friend Boodle,” Mr. Roland Bettesworth said from the window, “my brother will wear the white satin.’’ Spare your breath, and send it home before noon.”
Mr. Boodle finished rolling his patterns up in his apron, and rising to his feet, he sighed —
“To be sure there is only one button-hole to sew. It shall be here by noon,” he said. His large spectacles hung sideways over his nose; the breast of his snuff-coloured, linsey-woolsey coat was decorated with an innumerable multitude of pins. He had a piece of chalk above his right ear; his tape-measure hung from his breeches’ pocket to a level with his shins; and his feet, in black slops, shuffled unhappily when he went out of the door. Mr. Roland ran out and overtook him on the great stone landing. He caught him by the opening of the waistcoat and pushed him almost behind a shoulder-high, red granite pedestal, upon which stood a white marble Susannah drawing her garments about her with one hand and modestly extending the other towards the beholder. Having the tailor well pinned in here, Mr. Roland Bettesworth planted his legs apart, pushed his black, three-cornered hat back on his head, and stood with his arms akimbo.
“The necessary, Brother Snip,” he said; “unpouch the Jacobuses, the Carroluses, the Moidores, the Shekels.”
Cowering behind the statue, the little tailor gave vent to grunts and gasps of despair and want of comprehension.
“Why, if you had read as many old plays, Brother Snip, as my brother Bettesworth, you would know that these are gold coins, and gold coins I will have of you. Guineas, broad guineas, as the present Age has it. But what’s in a name — ?”
Again the tailor squeaked.
“ — Now, here was our compact. When, being bearleader to my brother Bettesworth, I commended to him your shears, I was to have half your bill and you were to double each of the items on it. Now you have an order for three hundred and twenty-six guineas, and I will have one hundred and sixty-one and a half. Now! Instantly!
Precipidado!
”
“But, sir,” the tailor said, “the amount of my bill against you is more than that. I was minded to keep this money, and then you will be honourably out of my debt.”
Mr. Roland threw his head back and laughed.
“Honourably, quotha,” he said. “For the two thieves that we are that is a fine word. No, sirrah, understand first this one simple thing: I will have one hundred and sixty-one and a half guineas from thee, and then I will discourse upon the point of honour.”
Mr. Boodle sighed, “But how can I tell, my master, that the Worshipful, your brother, will pay my bill?”
“Why, goodly Snip, my brother, as you well know, owns half of Salisbury Plain; and though he had been as profligate as I, since he came into this fortune but the last month as ever was, surely you will not think it is all dissipated now? Consider, too, this monstrous house, and all these crabbed pictures of our ancestors. Egad! if I had the selling of them—”
“You would pay my bill,” the tailor said.
“Damme, Snip! if thou should’st see one maravedi of it,” the young man answered.
The tailor took a little wooden snuff-box from his skirt pocket and lapped snuff from his thumb with his dry nostrils.
“If this coat is to be finished by noon,” he said, “your Mastership must let me be gone home.”
“But my one hundred and sixty-one and a half guineas?” Mr. Roland said.
“... I will give you a bill of six months for it, and you shall get it discounted where you will.”
Mr. Roland rested his hand on his sword-hilt, and wagged his scabbard beneath the skirt of his blue coat.
“Oh, damme!” he said again, “that will never do.”
“It is all that will be done,” the tailor answered.
“Then shall I denounce your bill to my brother, and you lose his custom!”
“Then shall I tell Mr. Bettesworth” the tailor said, “that you have bidden me charge him double so that you might have half. Then your Worship would lose the ordering of your brother’s purchases.”
“Oh, I am not so assured of that,” Mr. Roland answered. “My Squire brother is the oddest, crabbedest, most obstinate, most egregious creature that ever was known. When you think you have him in one place, up he starts in another. When you think he would act, he will sit as still as a pig. So that I tell you, friend Snip, that if you should advise him this moment that I am set to take this reasonable perquisite, it is all one that he might say: ‘Beggarly tailor, shall a younger son not exist upon the superfluity of his elder? Get thee hence, thou Starveling!’ And so he would thrust a thousand pounds into my bosom and bid me spend it at the tables. Sir, he is a very unaccountable person. And if he had not made the Grand Tour when he was three-and-twenty, — because my uncle was seized with the whimsy to travel, — if he had not made the Grand Tour seven years ago, my brother would have been as musty a rustic as ever was Squire Cranky in the play. Now this whimsy of a white coat, can you explain that, friend Snip?”
“... Unless it be that his mistress have bid him wear it, to tease him.”
“Nay, he has no mistress,” Mr. Roland answered, “ — or none in the Town. He may have fathered half the brats on Salisbury Plain for aught I know. Your cold-eyed men are often given that way. But no, I will tell you how it is. When he was in Italy there was a painter called Perugio, or Graccho, or some such name, and this painter, being monstrously the mode at Rome, was able to force all the coxcombs and madams that came to see his work to put on white dominoes that he lent them. This he did because he said the high colours of their coats killed the low colours on his cloths. Now to-day the Worshipful, the head of my house, is minded to visit the paintings of one Hitchcock, which I have told him are monstrous fine. And he has said that he will make it the mode to do as much honour to our English Correggio as ever Italy can show to hers. So he will go in white, and nothing shall stop him. For he is what it is the mode to call a ‘Character,’ even as his and my uncle was before him. Did you ever hear tell of my uncle Bettesworth, Snip?”
Mr. Boodle rubbed his hand gently on his chin.
“Cocklaw Bettesworth,” he said; “I carried clothes home to him thirty years ago, before he went into the country for ever. It was a sad loss to the gaiety of the Town.”
“The gaiety of the Town,” Mr. Bettesworth ejaculated. “Gaiety, quotha! that’s a brave word for the surliest, sour-facest, rampiest old rustic uncle that ever cut a younger brother out of his will.”