land; and it appeared that when she was in want of a chapter, she was in the habit of practising upon poor G. as a corpus vile. She would bait him into a frenzy, and, when she had got matter enough, retire quietly to her writing-case, and record his struggles—always introducing the British Wife, Sister, &c., as his soother and keeper during these maniacal exercitations. Goodbody told the G.C.s that he was now so well accustomed to be used as a conjugal Helot, that he did not mind it much—but there was one point to which he never could reconcile himself, and that was, that Mrs. G. invariably required him to correct her proofs.
Then the G.C.s formed themselves into a Committee of Matrons, and discussed their servants, their nurseries—the latest improvements in dress. Each explained in turn to her fellows the little difficulties she encountered in keeping down her “incumbrancer;” and each in turn received comfort and counsel from her friends. If this representation was indeed a true one, these little arrangements are formed and welded into a diabolical cold-blooded system, from which men would in vain endeavour to escape. It was suggested by one inconsiderate and youthful G.C., that it was a man’s own fault if he was enmeshed in the matrimonial web; for, after all, the forms of proposal rested with himself. This thoughtless suggestion was received with a shout of derision, and the larger experience of the collective assembly was brought to bear upon a demonstration of its absurdity.
A member was selected, Mr. Martin Wriggles, and he was held out as an ingenuous youth, with life before him, and the world as a meadow, in which he was to take his pastime. The fast young lady, the sentimental young lady, the serious young lady, the intellectual young lady, made successive attacks upon him; but Wriggles was a man of strong mind, and held out. All his female friends took part against him, though each abused her rivals in a quiet depreciatory way, which furnished abundant food for reflection to any person of well-regulated mind. An experienced widow of forty-two took him in hand, but without effect; W. happened at the moment to be under the influence of a fit of ambition, and was getting up Adam Smith as a step towards the Premiership. The widow pronounced him to be a fool without “soul;” but Wriggles, three months afterwards, was caught by the rosy-checked penniless daughter of a Consul in one of the Baltic Ports. What he wanted was unsophisticated nature. Mrs. W. is now given up to sentiment and spirit-rapping, and suffers tortures from the coarse vulgarity of that brute W.; whose only gleams of happiness occur during occasional visits to the G.C. Occasio facit maritum.
When these little matters were disposed of, much amusement was afforded to the Club by Brown the Avenger, who entertained them for a time by reading out the letters which he had written during the period of his courtship to Mrs. S. B., the Queen-regnant, being the fourth of that dynasty. It was clear enough that it was not all a joke to poor B., who emphasised certain passages, and informed his sympathising friends how the realities had tallied with his anticipations. Indeed, so much instruction as well as amusement was afforded by this lecture, that it was proposed, and carried nem. con., that at a future meeting of the Club, all members should produce the luscious correspondence which had preceded the fall of each poor bee into the honey-pot; and that the results should be carefully recorded for the warning of the rising generation.
One member had scarcely taken any share in the proceedings, although he had been laughed at by his fellows, but with that kindliness of spirit which invariably distinguishes the little personalities of the G.C.s towards each other. This gentleman was known amongst his fellows as “Gloomy Bob.” There was nothing so very peculiar about his case—Mrs. R. Bircham had only taken to physicking herself, her husband, and her household; but the process had so weighed upon his spirits that he had sought for an antidote against the present evils of existence in a philosophic investigation of mesmeric phenomena. Gloomy Bob—as had been evident of late to the anxious eyes of his friends—had been in a deeper state of despondency than usual, and this was not sufficiently accounted for by the fact that Mrs. B. had recently put him through a searching course of digitalis. There was more in it than this. He had, at last, sunk to a point at which he could scarcely distinguish between his thick-coming fancies and the actual facts of his life. When pressed, again and again, he said at length:
“Yes! my friends, I will tell you all. Ring for Charles. Was it a vision? Was it a fact? Oh, no! it can never, never be! Charles—three pen’north of brandy! Yes! you shall hear the tale of my chief and latest sorrow, and assist me in instituting investigations which may lead us to certainties. I had thought that my bonds must needs be broken in a few years—is it true, indeed, that they are for all time—for ever—for ever thus?
“You are well aware,” so Gloomy Bob began his awful disclosures, “that it is currently reported in the club that I had taken refuge in the study of magnetic phenomena, as a refuge from the miseries to which my actual life is exposed in consequence of my having, in an unguarded moment, strolled home from a pic-nic, by moonlight, with the then lovely and tender Caroline Downy, now the stern and implacable Mrs. Robert Bircham—first on, and then in, my arm.
“We were married, my friends—we were married! But within the first week of our marriage, my wife began to govern me by her health. Her head was always aching—she required medical advice.
“Our honeymoon was spent at an establishment for the cold-water cure—not quite what I had anticipated. We passed through a course of allopathy, homœopathy, kinopathy, and various other systems: but, at length, my wife became thoroughly imbued with the principles of magnetism, and from these she has never since departed. In an evil hour I consented to act as her medium—I have never known a happy moment since.
“With a few passes Mrs. B. can, at any time,