In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to
Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes
producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring
her the sort of food she needed. Her life was rurally simple,
quite free from secrets either foul, dangerous, or otherwise important,
and not consciously affected by the great affairs of the world.
All the more did the affairs of the great world interest her,
when communicated in the letters of high-born relations: the way
in which fascinating younger sons had gone to the dogs by marrying
their mistresses; the fine old-blooded idiocy of young Lord Tapir,
and the furious gouty humors of old Lord Megatherium; the exact
crossing of genealogies which had brought a coronet into a new branch
and widened the relations of scandal,--these were topics of which she
retained details with the utmost accuracy, and reproduced them in
an excellent pickle of epigrams, which she herself enjoyed the more
because she believed as unquestionably in birth and no-birth as she
did in game and vermin. She would never have disowned any one on the
ground of poverty: a De Bracy reduced to take his dinner in a basin
would have seemed to her an example of pathos worth exaggerating,
and I fear his aristocratic vices would not have horrified her.
But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred:
they had probably made all their money out of high retail prices,
and Mrs.
Pages:
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96