Ouida

Beatrice Boville and Other Stories Ouida

Publisher Marketing: "To compass her with sweet observances, To dress her beautifully and keep her true." That, according to Mr. Tennyson's lately-published opinion, is the devoir of that deeply-to-be-pitied individual, l'homme marie. Possibly in the times of which the Idyls treat, Launcelot and Gunevere might have been the sole, exceptional mauvais sujets in the land, and woad, being the chief ingredient in the toilet-dress, mightn't come quite so expensive. But nowadays "sweet observances," rendered, I presume, by gifts from Hunt and Roskell's and boxes in the grand tier, tell on a cheque-book so severely; "keeping her true" is such an exceedingly problematical performance, to judge by Sir C. C.'s breathless work, and "dressing her beautifully" comes so awfully expensive, with crinoline and cashmeres, pink pearls, and Mechlin, and the beau sexe's scornful repudiation, not alone of a faded silk, like poor Enid's, but of the handsomest dress going, if it's damned by being "seen twice," that I have ever vowed that, plaise a Dieu, I will never marry, and with heaven's help will keep the[Pg 10] vow better than I might most probably keep the matrimonial ones if I took them. Yet if ever I saw a woman for whom I could have fancied a man's committing that semisuicidal act, that woman was Beatrice Boville.