The Way of the World

a girl⁠—’tis the greensickness of a second childhood, and, like the faint offer of a latter spring, serves but to usher in the fall, and withers in an affected bloom. Mrs. Fainall Here’s your mistress. Enter Mrs. Millamant, Witwoud and Mincing. Mirabell Here she comes, i’faith, full sail, with her fan spread and streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tenders.⁠—Ha, no, I cry her mercy. Mrs. Fainall I see but one poor empty sculler, and he tows her woman after him. Mirabell To Mrs. Millamant. You seem to be unattended, madam. You used to have the beau monde28 throng after you, and a flock of gay fine perukes hovering round you. Witwoud Like moths about a candle. I had like to have lost my comparison for want of breath. Mrs. Millamant Oh, I have denied myself airs today. I have walked as fast through the crowd. Witwoud As a favourite just disgraced, and with as few followers. Mrs. Millamant Dear Mr. Witwoud, truce with your similitudes, for I am as sick of ’em⁠— Witwoud As a physician of a good air. I cannot help it, madam, though ’tis against myself. Mrs. Millamant Yet again! Mincing, stand between me and his wit. Witwoud Do, Mrs. Mincing, like a screen before a great fire. I confess I do blaze today; I am too bright. Mrs. Fainall But, dear Millamant, why were you so long? Mrs. Millamant Long! Lord, have I not made violent haste? I have asked every living thing I met for you; I have enquired after you, as after a new fashion. Witwoud Madam, truce with your similitudes.⁠—No, you met her husband, and did not ask him for her. Mirabell By your leave, Witwoud, that were like enquiring after an old fashion to ask a husband for his wife. Witwoud Hum, a hit, a hit, a palpable hit! I confess it. Mrs. Fainall You were dressed before I came abroad. Mrs. Millamant Aye, that’s true. Oh, but then I had⁠—Mincing, what had I? Why was I so long? Mincing O mem, your la’ship stayed to peruse a packet of letters. Mrs. Millamant Oh, aye, letters⁠—I had letters⁠—I am persecuted with letters⁠—I hate letters. Nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has ’em, one does not know why. They serve one to pin up one’s hair. Witwoud Is that the way? Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies. Mrs. Millamant Only with those in verse, Mr. Witwoud. I never pin up my hair with prose⁠—I think I tried once, Mincing. Mincing O mem, I shall never forget it. Mrs. Millamant Aye, poor Mincing tift and tift29 all the morning. Mincing Till I had the cramp in my fingers, I’ll vow, mem. And all to no purpose. But when your la’ship pins it up with poetry, it fits so pleasant the next day as anything, and is so pure and so crips. Witwoud Indeed, so crips? Mincing You’re such a critic, Mr. Witwoud. Mrs. Millamant Mirabell, did you take exceptions last night? Oh, aye, and went away.⁠—Now I think on’t I’m angry⁠—no, now I think on’t I’m pleased⁠—for I believe I gave you some pain. Mirabell Does that please you? Mrs. Millamant Infinitely; I love to give pain. Mirabell You would affect a cruelty which is not in your nature; your true vanity is in the power of pleasing. Mrs. Millamant Oh, I ask your pardon for that. One’s cruelty is one’s power, and when one parts with one’s cruelty one parts with one’s power, and when one has parted with that, I fancy one’s old and ugly. Mirabell Aye, aye; suffer your cruelty to ruin the object of your power, to destroy your lover⁠—and then how vain, how lost a thing you’ll be! Nay, ’tis true; you are no longer handsome when you’ve lost your lover: your beauty dies upon the instant. For beauty is the lover’s gift; ’tis he bestows your charms⁠—your glass is all a cheat. The ugly and the old, whom the looking-glass mortifies, yet after commendation can be flattered by it, and discover beauties in it: for that reflects our praises rather than your face. Mrs. Millamant Oh, the vanity of these men!⁠—Fainall, d’ye hear him? If they did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know they could not commend one if one was not handsome. Beauty the lover’s gift! Lord, what is a lover, that it can give? Why, one makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases; and then, if one pleases, one makes more. Witwoud Very pretty. Why, you make no more of making of lovers, madam, than of making so many card-matches. Mrs. Millamant One no more owes one’s beauty to a lover than one’s wit to an echo. They can but reflect what we look and say; vain empty things if we are silent or unseen, and want a being. Mirabell Yet, to those two vain empty things, you owe two the greatest pleasures of your life. Mrs. Millamant How so? Mirabell To your lover you owe the pleasure of hearing yourselves praised, and to an echo the pleasure of hearing yourselves talk. Witwoud But I know a lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won’t give an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue that an echo must wait till she dies before it can catch her last words. Mrs. Millamant Oh, fiction⁠—Fainall, let us leave these men. Mirabell Aside to Mrs. Fainall. Draw off Witwoud. Mrs. Fainall Immediately;⁠—I have a word or two for Mr. Witwoud. Exeunt Mrs. Fainall and Witwoud. Mirabell I would beg a little private audience too.⁠—You had the tyranny to deny me last night, though you knew I came to impart a secret to you that concerned my love. Mrs. Millamant You saw I was engaged. Mirabell Unkind! You had the leisure to entertain a herd of fools: things who visit you from their excessive idleness, bestowing on your easiness that time which is the incumbrance of their lives. How can you find delight in such society? It is impossible they should admire you; they are not capable; or, if they were, it should be to