The School for Scandal, Richard Brinsley Sheridan [i am reading a book .TXT] 📗

true that your brother is absolutely ruined? Joseph Surface I am afraid his circumstances are very bad indeed, ma’am. Mrs. Candour Ah! I heard so⁠—but you must tell him to keep up his spirits: everybody almost is in the same way: Lord Spindle, Sir Thomas Splint, Captain Quinze, and Mr. Nickit⁠—all up, I hear, within this week; so, if Charles is undone, he’ll find half his acquaintance ruined too, and that, you know, is a consolation⁠— Joseph Surface Doubtless, ma’am⁠—a very great one. Reenter Servant. Servant Mr. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin Backbite. Exit Servant. Lady Sneerwell So, Maria, you see your lover pursues you: positively you shan’t escape. Enter Crabtree and Sir Benjamin Backbite. Crabtree Lady Sneerwell, I kiss your hand. Mrs. Candour, I don’t believe you are acquainted with my nephew Sir Benjamin Backbite? Egad, ma’am, He has a pretty wit, and is a pretty poet, too. Isn’t he Lady Sneerwell? Sir Benjamin O fie, uncle! Crabtree Nay egad it’s true; I back him at a rebus or a charade against the best rhymer in the kingdom.⁠—Has your ladyship heard the epigram he wrote last week on Lady Frizzle’s Feather catching fire?⁠—Do, Benjamin repeat it, or the charade you made last night extempore at Mrs. Drowzie’s conversazione. Come now; your first is the name of a fish, your second a great naval commander, and⁠— Sir Benjamin Dear Uncle⁠—now⁠—prithee⁠— Crabtree I’ faith, ma’am, ’twould surprise you to hear how ready he is at all these things. Lady Sneerwell I wonder, Sir Benjamin, you never publish anything. Sir Benjamin To say truth, ma’am, ’tis very vulgar to print: and as my little productions are mostly satires and lampoons on particular people, I find they circulate more by giving copies in confidence to the friends of the parties.⁠—However I have some love elegies, which, when favoured with this lady’s smile, I mean to give to the public. Pointing to Maria. Crabtree To Maria. ’Fore Heaven, ma’am, they’ll immortalize you!⁠—you will be handed down to posterity, like Petrarch’s Laura, or Waller’s Sacharissa. Sir Benjamin To Maria. Yes madam, I think you will like them, when you shall see in a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.⁠—’Fore Gad they will be the most elegant things of their kind! Crabtree But, ladies, that’s true⁠—have you heard the news? Mrs. Candour What, sir, do you mean the report of⁠— Crabtree No ma’am that’s not it.⁠—Miss Nicely is going to be married to her own footman. Mrs. Candour Impossible! Crabtree Ask Sir Benjamin. Sir Benjamin ’Tis very true, ma’am: everything is fixed, and the wedding livery bespoke. Crabtree Yes⁠—and they do say there were pressing reasons for it. Lady Sneerwell Why, I have heard something of this before. Mrs. Candour It can’t be⁠—and I wonder anyone should believe such a story of so prudent a Lady as Miss Nicely. Sir Benjamin O Lud! ma’am, that’s the very reason ’twas believed at once. She has always been so cautious and so reserved, that everybody was sure there was some reason for it at bottom. Lady Sneerwell Why, to be sure, a tale of scandal is as fatal to the credit of a prudent lady of her stamp as a fever is generally to those of the strongest constitutions. But there is a sort of puny, sickly reputation, that is always ailing, yet will outlive the robuster characters of a hundred prudes. Sir Benjamin True, madam, there are valetudinarians in reputation as well as constitution, who, being conscious of their weak part, avoid the least breath of air, and supply their want of stamina by care and circumspection. Mrs. Candour Well, but this may be all mistake. You know, Sir Benjamin very trifling circumstances often give rise to the most injurious tales. Crabtree That they do, I’ll be sworn ma’am. Did you ever hear how Miss Piper came to lose her lover and her character last summer at Tunbridge?⁠—Sir Benjamin you remember it? Sir Benjamin Oh, to be sure!⁠—the most whimsical circumstance. Lady Sneerwell How was it, pray? Crabtree Why, one evening at Mrs. Ponto’s assembly, the conversation happened to turn on the breeding Nova Scotia sheep in this country. Says a young lady in company, “I have known instances of it; for Miss Letitia Piper, a first cousin of mine, had a Nova Scotia sheep that produced her twins.”⁠—“What!” cries the old Dowager Lady Dundizzy (who you know is as deaf as a post), “has Miss Piper had twins?”⁠—This mistake, as you may imagine, threw the whole company into a fit of laughter. However ’twas the next morning everywhere reported, and in a few days believed by the whole town, that Miss Letitia Piper had actually been brought to bed of a fine boy and girl: and in less than a week there were people who could name the father, and the farmhouse where the babies were put to nurse. Lady Sneerwell Strange indeed! Crabtree Matter of fact, I assure you⁠—O Lud! Mr. Surface pray is it true that your uncle, Sir Oliver, is coming home? Joseph Surface Not that I know of, indeed, sir. Crabtree He has been in the East Indies a long time. You can scarcely remember him, I believe⁠—Sad comfort, whenever he returns, to hear how your brother has gone on! Joseph Surface Charles has been imprudent, sir to be sure; but I hope no busy people have already prejudiced Sir Oliver against him. He may reform. Sir Benjamin To be sure he may: for my part, I never believed him to be so utterly void of principle as people say; and, though he has lost all his friends, I am told nobody is better spoken of by the Jews. Crabtree That’s true, egad, nephew. If the Old Jewry was a ward, I believe Charles would be an alderman: no man more popular there, ’fore Gad! I hear he pays as many annuities as the Irish tontine and that whenever he’s sick, they have prayers for the recovery of his health in the synagogue. Sir Benjamin Yet no man lives in greater splendour. They tell me, when he entertains his friends he will sit down to dinner with a dozen of his own securities;