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Title: Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges
Author: Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863
Language: English
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Henry Esmond
The English Humourists
The Four Georges
By
William Makepeace Thackeray
Edited, with an Introduction, by
George Saintsbury
With 15 Illustrations
Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Copenhagen,
New York, Toronto, Melbourne, Cape Town,
Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Shanghai
CONTENTS
Introduction.
The History Of Henry Esmond, Esq.
Dedication.
Preface. The Esmonds Of Virginia
Book I. The Early Youth Of Henry Esmond, Up To The Time Of His Leaving
Trinity College, In Cambridge
Chapter I. An Account Of The Family Of Esmond Of Castlewood Hall
Chapter II. Relates How Francis, Fourth Viscount, Arrives At
Castlewood
Chapter III. Whither In The Time Of Thomas, Third Viscount, I Had
Preceded Him As Page To Isabella
Chapter IV. I Am Placed Under A Popish Priest And Bred To That
Religion.—Viscountess Castlewood
Chapter V. My Superiors Are Engaged In Plots For The Restoration Of
King James II
Chapter VI. The Issue Of The Plots.—The Death Of Thomas, Third
Viscount Of Castlewood; And The Imprisonment Of His Viscountess
Chapter VII. I Am Left At Castlewood An Orphan, And Find Most Kind
Protectors There
Chapter VIII. After Good Fortune Comes Evil
Chapter IX. I Have The Small-Pox, And Prepare To Leave Castlewood
Chapter X. I Go To Cambridge, And Do But Little Good There
Chapter XI. I Come Home For A Holiday To Castlewood, And Find A
Skeleton In The House
Chapter XII. My Lord Mohun Comes Among Us For No Good
Chapter XIII. My Lord Leaves Us And His Evil Behind Him
Chapter XIV. We Ride After Him To London
Book II. Contains Mr. Esmond’s Military Life, And Other Matters
Appertaining To The Esmond Family
Chapter I. I Am In Prison, And Visited, But Not Consoled There
Chapter II. I Come To The End Of My Captivity, But Not Of My Trouble
Chapter III. I Take The Queen’s Pay In Quin’s Regiment
Chapter IV. Recapitulations
Chapter V. I Go On The Vigo Bay Expedition, Taste Salt Water And
Smell Powder
Chapter VI. The 29th December
Chapter VII. I Am Made Welcome At Walcote
Chapter VIII. Family Talk
Chapter IX. I Make The Campaign Of 1704
Chapter X. An Old Story About A Fool And A Woman
Chapter XI. The Famous Mr. Joseph Addison
Chapter XII. I Get A Company In The Campaign Of 1706
Chapter XIII. I Meet An Old Acquaintance In Flanders, And Find My
Mother’s Grave And My Own Cradle There
Chapter XIV. The Campaign Of 1707, 1708
Chapter XV. General Webb Wins The Battle Of Wynendael
Book III. Containing The End Of Mr. Esmond’s Adventures In England
Chapter I. I Come To An End Of My Battles And Bruises
Chapter II. I Go Home, And Harp On The Old String
Chapter III. A Paper Out Of The “Spectator”
Chapter IV. Beatrix’s New Suitor
Chapter V. Mohun Appears For The Last Time In This History
Chapter VI. Poor Beatrix
Chapter VII. I Visit Castlewood Once More
Chapter VIII. I Travel To France And Bring Home A Portrait Of Rigaud
Chapter IX. The Original Of The Portrait Comes To England
Chapter X. We Entertain A Very Distinguished Guest At Kensington
Chapter XI. Our Guest Quits Us As Not Being Hospitable Enough
Chapter XII. A Great Scheme, And Who Balked It
Chapter XIII. August 1st, 1714
Appendix
The English Humourists Of The Eighteenth Century
Lecture The First. Swift
Lecture The Second. Congreve And Addison
Lecture The Third. Steele
Lecture The Fourth. Prior, Gay, And Pope
Lecture The Fifth. Hogarth, Smollett, And Fielding
Lecture The Sixth. Sterne And Goldsmith
The Georges
The Poems
Sketches Of Manners, Morals, Court And Town Life
George The First
George The Second
George The Third
George The Fourth
Footnotes
INTRODUCTION.
[Illustration]
Thackeray In His Study At Onslow Square. From a painting by E. M. Ward
We know exceedingly little of the genesis and progress of _Esmond_. “It
did not seem to be a part of our lives as _Pendennis_ was,” says Lady
Ritchie, though she wrote part of it to dictation. She “only heard
_Esmond_ spoken of very rarely”. Perhaps its state was not the less
gracious. The Milton girls found _Paradise Lost_ a very considerable part
of their lives—and were not the happier.
But its parallels are respectable. The greatest things have a way of
coming “all so still” into the world. We wrangle—that is, those of us who
are not content simply not to know—about the composition of Homer, the
purpose of the _Divina Commedia_, the probable plan of the _Canterbury
Tales_, the _Ur-Hamlet_. Nobody put preliminary advertisements in the
papers, you see, about these things: there was a discreditable neglect of
the first requirements of the public. So it is with _Esmond_. There is, I
thought, a reference to it in the Brookfield letters; but in several
searches I cannot find it. To his mother he speaks of the book as “grand
and melancholy”, and to Lady Stanley as of “cut-throat melancholy”. It is
said to have been sold for a thousand pounds—the same sum that Master
Shallow lent Falstaff on probably inferior security. Those who knew
thought well of it—which is not wholly surprising.
It is still, perhaps, in possession of a success rather of esteem than of
affection. A company of young men and maidens to whom it was not long ago
submitted pronounced it (with one or two exceptions) inferior as a work of
humour. The hitting of little Harry in the eye with a potato was, they
admitted, humorous, but hardly anything else. As representing another
generation and another point of view, the faithful Dr. John Brown did not
wholly like it—Esmond’s marriage with Rachel, after his love for Beatrix,
being apparently “the fly in the ointment” to him. Even the author could
only plead “there’s a deal of pains in it that goes for nothing”, as he
says in one of his rare published references to the subject: but he was
wrong. Undoubtedly the mere taking of pains will not do; but that is when
they are taken in not the right manner, by not the right person, on not
the right subject. Here everything was right, and accordingly it “went
for” everything. A greater novel than _Esmond_ I do not know; and I do not
know many greater books. It may be “melancholy”, and none the worse for
that: it is “grand”.
For though there may not be much humour of the potato-throwing sort in
_Esmond_, it will, perhaps, be found that in no book of Thackeray’s, or of
any one else’s, is that deeper and higher humour which takes all life for
its province—which is the humour of humanity—more absolutely pervading.
And it may be found likewise, at least by some, that in no book is there
to be found such a constant intertwist of the passion which, in all
humanity’s higher representatives, goes with humour hand in hand—a loving
yet a mutually critical pair. Of the extraordinarily difficult form of
autobiography I do not know such another masterly presentment; nor is it
very difficult to recognize the means by which this mastery is attained,
though Heaven knows it is not easy to understand the skill with which they
are applied. The success is, in fact, the result of that curious
“doubleness”—amounting, in fact, here to something like _triplicity_—which
distinguishes Thackeray’s attitude and handling. Thus Henry Esmond, who is
on the whole, I should say, the most like him of all his characters
(though of course “romanced” a little), is himself and “the other fellow”,
and also, as it were, human criticism of both. At times we have a
tolerably unsophisticated account of his actions, or it may be even his
thoughts; at another his thoughts and actions as they present themselves,
or might present themselves, to another mind: and yet at other times a
reasoned view of them, as it were that of an impartial historian. The
mixed form of narrative and mono-drama lends itself to this as nothing
else could: and so does the author’s well-known, much discussed, and
sometimes heartily abused habit of _parabasis_ or soliloquy to the
audience. Of this nothing has yet been directly said, and anything that is
said would have to be repeated as to every novel: so that we may as well
keep it for the last or a late example, _The Virginians_ or _Philip_. But
its efficacy in this peculiar kind of double or treble handling is almost
indisputable, even by those who may dispute its legitimacy as a constantly
applied method.
One result, however, it has, as regards the hero-spokesman, which is
curious. I believe thoroughly in Henry Esmond—he is to me one of the most
real of illustrious Henrys as well of Thackeray’s characters—but his
reality is of a rather different kind from that of most of his fellows. It
is somewhat more abstract, more typical, more generalized than the reality
of English heroes usually is. He is not in the least shadowy or allegoric:
but still he is somehow “Esmondity” as well as Esmond—_the_ melancholy
rather than _a_ melancholy, clearsighted, aloofminded man. His heart and
his head act to each other as their governing powers, passion and humour,
have been sketched as acting above. He is a man never likely to be very
successful, famous, or fortunate in the world; not what is generally
called a happy man; yet enjoying constant glows and glimmers of a cloudy
happiness which he would hardly exchange for any other light. The late
Professor Masson—himself no posture-monger or man of megrims, but one of
genial temper and steady sense—described Thackeray as “a man apart”; and
so is the Marquis of Esmond. Yet Thackeray was a very real man; and so is
the Marquis too.
[Illustration]
No. 36 Onslow Square, Brompton, Where Thackeray Lived From 1853 to 1862.
The element of abstraction disappears, or rather retires into the
background, when we pass to Beatrix. She also has the _Ewigweibliche_ in
her—as much of it as any, or almost any, of Shakespeare’s women, and
therefore more than anybody else’s. But she is very much more than a
type—she is Beatrix Esmond in flesh and blood, and damask and diamond,
born “for the destruction of mankind” and fortunately for the delight of
them, or some of them, as well. Beatrix is beyond eulogy. “Cease! cease to
sing her praise!” is really the only motto, though perhaps something more
may be said when we come to the terrible pendant which only Thackeray has
had the courage and the skill to draw, with truth and without a disgusting
result. If she had died when _Esmond_ closes I doubt whether, in the Wood
of Fair Ladies, even Cleopatra would have dared to summon her to her side,
lest the comparison should not be favourable enough to herself, and the
throne have to be shared.
But, as usual with Thackeray, you must not look to the hero and heroine
too exclusively, even when there is such a heroine as this. For is there
not here another heroine—cause of the dubieties of the _Doctor Fidelis_ as
above cited? As to that it may perhaps be pointed out to the extreme
sentimentalists that, after all, Harry had been in love with the mother,
as well as with the daughter, all along. If they consider this an
aggravation, it cannot be helped: but, except from the extreme point of
view of Miss Marianne Dashwood in her earlier stage, it ought rather to be
considered a palliative. And if they say further that the thing is made
worse still by the fact that Harry was himself Rachel’s _second_ love, and
that she did not exactly wait to be a widow before she fell in love with
him—why, there is, again, nothing for it but to confess that it is very
shocking—and excessively human. Indeed, the fact is that Rachel is as
human as Beatrix, though in a different way. You may not only _love_ her
less, but—in a different sense of contrast from that of the Roman
poet—_like_ her a little less. But you cannot, if you have any knowledge
of human nature, call her unnatural. And really I do not know that the
third lady of the family, Isabel Marchioness of Esmond, though there is
less written about her, is not as real and almost as wonderful as the
other two. She is not so fairly treated, however, poor thing! for we have
her Bernstein period without her Beatrix one.
As for my Lords Castlewood—Thomas, and Francis _père et fils_—their
creator has not taken so much trouble with them; but they are never “out”.
The least of a piece, I think, is Rachel’s too fortunate or too
unfortunate husband. The people who regard Ibsen’s great triumph in the
_Doll’s House_ as consisting in the conduct of the husband as to the
incriminating documents, ought to admire Thackeray’s management of the
temporary loss of Rachel’s beauty. They are certainly both touches of the
baser side of human nature ingeniously worked in. But the question is,
What, in this wonderful book, is _not_ ingeniously worked in—character or
incident, description or speech?
If the champions of “Unity” were wise, they would take _Esmond_ as a
battle-horse, for it is certain that, great as are its parts, the whole is
greater than almost any one of them—which is certainly not the case with
_Pendennis_. And it is further certain that, of these parts, the
personages of the hero and the heroine stand out commandingly, which is
certainly not the case with _Pendennis_, again. The unity, however, is of
a peculiar kind: and differs from the ordinary non-classical “Unity of
Interest” which Thackeray almost invariably exhibits. It is rather a Unity
of _Temper_, which is also present (as the all-pervading motto _Vanitas
Vanitatum_ almost necessitates) in all the books, but here reaches a
transcendence not elsewhere attained. The brooding spirit of
_Ecclesiastes_ here covers, as it were, with the shadow of one of its
wings the joys and sorrows, the failures and successes of a private family
and their friends, with the other the fates of England and Europe; the
fortunes of Marlborough and of Swift on their way from dictatorship, in
each case, to dotage and death; the big wars and the notable literary
triumphs as well as the hopeless passions or acquiescent losses. It is
thus an instance—and the greatest—of that revival of the historical novel
which was taking place, and in which the novel of Scott(1)—simpler, though
not so very simple as is sometimes thought—is being dashed with a far
heavier dose of the novel-element as opposed to the romance, yet without
abandonment of the romance-quality proper. Of these novel-romance scenes,
as they may be called, the famous mock-duel at the end is of course the
greatest. But that where the Duke of Hamilton has to acknowledge the
Marquis of Esmond, and where Beatrix gives the kiss of Beatrix, is almost
as great: and there are many others. It is possible that this very
transcendence accounts to some extent for the somewhat lukewarm admiration
which it has received. The usual devotee of the novel of analysis dislikes
the historic, and has taught himself to consider it childish; the common
lover of romance (not the better kind) feels himself hampered by the
character-study, as Émile de Girardin’s subscribers felt themselves
hampered by Gautier’s style. All the happier those who can make the best
of both dispensations!
Nothing, however, has yet been said of one of the most salient
characteristics of _Esmond_—one, perhaps, which has had as much to do with
the love of its lovers and the qualified esteem of those who do not quite
love it, as anything else. This is, of course, the attempt, certainly a
very audacious one, at once to give the very form and pressure of the time
of the story—sometimes in actual diction—and yet to suffuse it with a
modern thought and colour which most certainly were _not_ of the time. The
boldness and the peril of this attempt are both quite indisputable; and
the peril itself is, in a way, double. There is the malcontent who will
say “This may be all very fine: but I don’t like it. It bothers and teases
me. I do not want to be talked to in the language of Addison and Steele”.
And there will be the possibly less ingenuous but more obtrusive
malcontent who will say that it ought never to have been done, or that it
is not, as it is, done well. With the first, who probably exists “in
squadrons and gross bands”, argument is, of course, impossible. He may be
taught better if he is caught young, but that is all: and certainly the
last thing that any honest lover of literature would wish would be to make
him say that he likes a thing when he does not. That may be left to those
who preach and follow the fashions of the moment. Nor, perhaps, is there
very much to do with those who say that the double attempt is not
successful—except to disable their judgement. But as for the doctrine that
this attempt _deserves_ to fail, and must fail—that it is wrong in
itself—there one may take up the cudgels with some confidence.
So far from there being anything illegitimate in this attempt to bring one
period before the eyes of another in its habit as it lived, and speaking
as it spoke, but to allow those eyes themselves to move as they move and
see as they see—it is merely the triumph and the justification of the
whole method of prose fiction in general, and of the historical novel in
particular. For that historical novel is itself the result of the growth
of the historic sense acting upon the demand for fiction. So long as
people made no attempt to understand things and thoughts different from
those around and within them; so long as, like the men of the Middle Ages,
they blandly threw everything into their own image, or, like those of the
Renaissance to some extent and the Augustan period still more, regarded
other ages at worst with contempt, and at best with indulgence as
childish—the historical novel could not come into being, and did not. It
only became possible when history began to be seriously studied as
something more than a chronicle of external events. When it had thus been
made possible, it was a perfectly legitimate experiment to carry the
process still further; not merely to discuss or moralize, but to represent
the period as it was, without forfeiting the privilege of regarding it
from a point of view which it had not itself reached. The process of
Thackeray is really only an unfolding, and carrying further into
application, of the method of Shakespeare. Partly his date, partly his
genius, partly his dramatic necessities, obliged Shakespeare to combine
his treatment—to make his godlike Romans at once Roman and Elizabethan,
and men of all time, and men of no time at all. Thackeray, with the
conveniences of the novel and the demands of his audience, _dichotomizes_
the presentation while observing a certain unity in the fictitious person,
now of Henry Esmond, now of William Makepeace Thackeray himself. If
anybody does not like the result, there is nothing to be said. But there
are those who regard it as one of the furthest explorations that we yet
possess of human genius—one of the most extraordinary achievements of that
higher imagination which Coleridge liked to call _esenoplastic_.(2) That a
man should have the faculty of reproducing contemporary or general life is
wonderful; that he should have the faculty of reproducing past life is
wonderful still more. But that he should thus revive the past and preserve
the present—command and provide at once theatre and company, audience and
performance—this is the highest wizardry of all. And this, as it seems to
me, is what Thackeray had attempted, and more, what he has done, in the
_History of Henry Esmond_.(3)
He could not have done it without the “pains” to which he refers in the
saying quoted above; but these pains, as usual, bore fruit more than once.
It has been thought desirable to include in the present volume the two
main after-crops,(4) _The English Humourists_ and _The Four Georges_.
Exactly _how_ early Thackeray’s attention was drawn to the eighteenth
century it would, in the necessarily incomplete state of our biographical
information about him, be very difficult to say. We have pointed out that
the connexion was pretty well established as early as _Catherine_. But it
was evidently founded upon that peculiar congeniality, freshened and
enlivened with a proper dose of difference, which is the most certain
source and the purest maintainer of love in life and literature.
At the same time, the two sets of lectures are differentiated from the
novel not so much by their form—for Thackeray as a lecturer had very
little that smacked of the platform, and as a novelist he had a great deal
that smacked of the satiric conversation-scene—as by their purport.
_Esmond_, though partly critical, is mainly and in far the greater part
creative. The Lectures, though partly creative—_resurrective_, at any
rate—are professedly and substantially critical. Now, a good deal has been
said already of Thackeray’s qualities and defects as a critic: and it has
been pointed out that, in consequence of his peculiar impulsiveness, his
strong likes and dislikes, his satiric-romantic temperament, and perhaps
certain deficiencies in all-round literary and historical learning, his
critical light was apt to be rather uncertain, and his critical deductions
by no means things from which there should be no appeal. But _The English
Humourists_ is by far the most important “place” for this criticism in the
literary department; and _The Four Georges_ (with _The Book of Snobs_ to
some extent supplementing it) is the chief place for his criticism of
society, personality, and the like. Moreover, both have been, and are,
violently attacked by those who do not like him. So that, for more reasons
than one or two, both works deserve faithful critical handling themselves.
It is always best to disperse Maleger and his myrmidons before exploring
the beauties of the House of Alma: so we may take the objections to the
_Humourists_ first. They are chiefly concerned with the handling of Swift
and (in a less degree) of Sterne. Now, it is quite certain that we have
here, in the first case at any rate, to confess, though by no means to
avoid. It is an instance of that excessive “taking sides” with or against
his characters which has been noticed, and will be noticed, again and
again. Nor is the reason of this in the least difficult to perceive. It is
very doubtful whether Thackeray’s own estimate of average humanity was
much higher than Swift’s: nor is it quite certain that the affection which
Swift professed and (from more than one instance) seems to have really
felt for Dick, Tom, and Harry, in particular, as opposed to mankind at
large, was very much less sincere than Thackeray’s own for individuals.
But the temperament of the one deepened and aggravated his general
understanding of mankind into a furious misanthropy; while the temperament
of the other softened _his_ into a general pardon. In the same way,
Swift’s very love and friendship were dangerous and harsh-faced, while
Thackeray’s were sunny and caressing. But there can be very little doubt
that Thackeray himself, when the “Shadow of Vanity” was heaviest on him,
felt the danger of actual misanthropy, and thus revolted from its victim
with a kind of terror; while his nature could not help feeling a similar
revulsion from Swift’s harsh ways. That to all this revulsion he gives
undue force of expression need not be denied: but then, it must be
remembered that he does not allow it to affect his _literary_ judgement. I
do not believe that any one now living has a greater admiration for Swift
than I have: and all that I can say is that I know no estimate of his
genius anywhere more adequate than Thackeray’s. As for Sterne, I do not
intend to say much. If you will thrust your personality into your
literature, as Sterne constantly does, you must take the chances of your
personality as well as of your literature. You practically expose both to
the judgement of the public. And if anybody chooses to take up the cudgels
for Sterne’s personality I shall hand them over to him and take no part on
one side or another in that bout. To his _genius_, once more, I do not
think Thackeray at all unjust.
The fact is, however, that as is usual with persons of genius, but even
more than as usual, the defects and the qualities are so intimately
connected that you cannot have one without the other—you must pay the
price of the other for the one. All I can say is that such another _live_
piece of English criticism of English literature as this I do not know
anywhere. What is alive is very seldom perfect: to get perfection you must
go to epitaphs. But, once more, though I could pick plenty of small holes
in the details of the actual critical dicta, I know no picture of the
division of literature here concerned from which a fairly intelligent
person will derive a better impression of the facts than from this.
Addison may be a little depressed, and Steele a little exalted: but it is
necessary to remember that by Macaulay, whose estimate then practically
held the field, Steele had been most unduly depressed and Addison rather
unduly exalted. You may go about among our critics on the brightest day
with the largest lantern and find nothing more brilliant itself than the
“Congreve” article, where the spice of injustice will, again, deceive
nobody but a fool. The vividness of the “Addison and Steele” presentation
is miraculous. He redresses Johnson on Prior as he had redressed Macaulay
on Steele; and he is not unjust, as we might have feared that he would be,
to Pope. “Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding” is another miracle of
appreciation: and I should like to ask the objectors to “sentimentality”
by what other means than an intense _sympathy_ (from which it is
impossible to exclude something that may be called sentimental) such a
study as that of Goldsmith could have been produced? Now Goldsmith is one
of the most difficult persons in the whole range of literature to treat,
from the motley of his merits and his weaknesses. Yet Thackeray has
achieved the adventure here. In short, throughout the book, he is
invaluable as a critic, if not impeccable in criticism. His faults, and
the causes of them, are obvious, separable, negligible: his merits (the
chief of them, as usual, the constant shower of happy and illuminative
phrase) as rare in quality as they are abundant in quantity.
The lectures on _The English Humourists_ must have been composed very much
_pari passu_ with _Esmond_; they were being delivered while it was being
finished, and it was published just as the author was setting off to
re-deliver them in America. _The Four Georges_ were not regularly taken in
hand till some years later, when _The Newcomes_ was finished or finishing,
and when fresh material was wanted for the second American trip. But there
exists a very remarkable _scenario_ of them—as it may be almost called—a
full decade older, in the shape of a _satura_ of verse and prose
contributed to _Punch_ on October 11, 1845; which has accordingly been
kept back from its original associates to be inserted here. All things
considered, it gives the lines which are followed in the later lectures
with remarkable precision: and it is not at all improbable that Thackeray
actually, though not of necessity consciously, took it for head-notes.
No book of his has been so violently attacked both at the time of its
appearance and since. Nor—for, as the reader must have seen long ago, the
present writer, though proud to be called a Thackerayan stalwart, is not a
Thackerayan “know-nothing”, a “Thackeray-right-or-wrong” man—is there any
that exposes itself more to attack. From the strictly literary side,
indeed, it has the advantage of _The Book of Snobs_: for it is nowhere
unequal, and exhibits its author’s unmatched power of historical-artistic
imagination or reconstruction in almost the highest degree possible. But
in other respects it certainly does show the omission “to erect a sconce
on Drumsnab”. There was (it has already been hinted at in connexion with
the Eastern Journey) a curious innocence about Thackeray. It may be that,
like the Hind,
He feared no danger for he knew no sin;
but the absence of fear with him implied an apparent ignoring of danger,
which is a danger in itself. Nobody who has even passed Responsions in the
study of his literary and moral character will suspect him for one moment
of having pandered to American prejudice by prating to it, as a tit-bit
and _primeur_, scandal about this or that King George. But it was quite
evident from the first, and ought to have been evident to the author long
beforehand, that the enemy _might_ think, and _would_ say so. In fact,
putting considerations of mere expediency aside, I think myself that he
had much better not have done it. As for the justice of the general
verdict, it is no doubt affected throughout by Thackeray’s political
incapacity, whatever side he might have taken, and by that quaint
theoretical republicanism, with a good deal of pure Toryism mixed, which
he attributes to some of his characters, and no doubt, in a kind of rather
confused speculative way, held himself. He certainly puts George III’s
ability too low, and as certainly he indulges in the case of George IV in
one of these curious outbursts—a _Hetze_ of unreasoning, frantic,
“stop-thief!” and “mad-dog!” persecution—to which he was liable. “Gorgius”
may not have been a hero or a proper moral man: he was certainly “a most
expensive _Herr_”, and by no means a pattern husband. But recent and by no
means Pharisaical expositions have exhibited his wife as almost infinitely
_not_ better than she should be; the allegations of treachery to private
friends are, on the whole, Not Proven: if he deserted the Whigs, it was no
more than some of these very Whigs very shortly afterwards did to their
country: he played the difficult part of Regent and the not very easy one
of King by no means ill; he was, by common and even reluctant consent, an
extremely pleasant host and companion; and he liked Jane Austen’s novels.
There have been a good many princes—and a good many demagogues too—of whom
as much good could not be said.
Admitting excess in these details, and “inconvenience” in the
circumstances of the original representation, there remains, as it seems
to me, a more than sufficient balance to credit. That social-historic
sense, accompanied with literary power of bodying forth its results, which
we noticed as early as the opening of _Catherine_ has, in the seventeen
years’ interval, fully and marvellously matured itself. The picture is not
a mere mob of details: it is an orderly pageant of artistically composed
material. It is possible; it is life-like; the only question (and that is
rather a minor one) is, “Is it true?”
Minor, I say, because the artistic value would remain if the historical
were impaired. But I do not think it is. I shall bow to the authority of
persons better acquainted with the eighteenth century than I am: but if
some decades of familiarity with essayists and novelists and diarists and
letter-writers may give one a scanty _locus standi_, I shall certainly
give my testimony in favour of “Thackeray’s Extract”. The true essence of
the life that exhibits itself in fiction from _Pamela_ and _Joseph
Andrews_ down to _Pompey the Little_ and the _Spiritual Quixote_; in essay
from the _Tatler_ to the _Mirror_; in Lord Chesterfield and Lady Mary and
Horace Walpole; in Pope and Young and Green and Churchill and Cowper, in
Boswell and Wraxall, in Mrs. Delany and Madame d’Arblay, seems to me to
deserve warrant of excise and guarantee of analysis as it lies in these
four little flaskets.
And, as has been done before, let me finish with an almost silent
indication of the wonderful variety of this volume also. In one sense the
subject of its constituents is the same. Yet in another it is treated with
the widest and most infinite difference. Any one of the three treatments
would be a masterpiece of single achievement; while the first of the three
is, as it seems to me, _the_ masterpiece of its entire class.(5)
THE MS. OF “ESMOND”
The MS. is contained in two volumes and was presented to Trinity College,
Cambridge, by the author’s daughter; it is now deposited in the College
Library. Sir Leslie Stephen, in writing to the Librarian about it on June
11, 1889, says:—
“There are three separate handwritings. Thackeray’s own small upright
handwriting; that of his daughter, now Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, a rather
large round handwriting; and that of an amanuensis whose name I do not
know. The interest is mainly this, that it shows that Thackeray dictated a
considerable part of the book; and, as Mrs. Ritchie tells me, he dictated
it without having previously written anything. The copy was sent straight
to press as it stands, with, as you will see, remarkably little
alteration. As _Esmond_ is generally considered to be his most perfect
work in point of style, I think that this is a remarkable fact and adds
considerably to the interest of the MS.”
The four facsimiles which follow, and which appear here by the very kind
permission of Lady Ritchie and of the authorities of the College, have
been slightly reduced to fit the pages.
[Illustration: Facsimile 1]
[Illustration: Facsimile 2]
[Illustration: Facsimile 3]
[Illustration: Facsimile 4]
THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ.
THE HISTORY OF
HENRY ESMOND, ESQ.
A COLONEL IN THE SERVICE OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN ANNE
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF
Servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet
[First edition in three volumes, 1852. Revised edition, 1858]
Dedication.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
WILLIAM BINGHAM, LORD ASHBURTON
MY DEAR LORD,
The writer of a book which copies the manners and language of Queen Anne’s
time, must not omit the Dedication to the Patron; and I ask leave to
inscribe this volume to your lordship, for the sake of the great kindness
and friendship which I owe to you and yours.
My volume will reach you when the Author is on his voyage to a country
where your name is as well known as here. Wherever I am, I shall
gratefully regard you; and shall not be the less welcomed in America
because I am
Your obliged friend and servant,
W. M. THACKERAY.
LONDON, October 18, 1852.
Preface. The Esmonds Of Virginia
The estate of Castlewood, in Virginia, which was given to our ancestors by
King Charles the First, as some return for the sacrifices made in his
Majesty’s cause by the Esmond family, lies in Westmoreland county, between
the rivers Potomac and Rappahannoc, and was once as great as an English
Principality, though in the early times its revenues were but small.
Indeed, for near eighty years after our forefathers possessed them, our
plantations were in the hands of factors, who enriched themselves one
after another, though a few scores of hogsheads of tobacco were all the
produce that, for long after the Restoration, our family received from
their Virginian estates.
My dear and honoured father, Colonel Henry Esmond, whose history, written
by himself, is contained in the accompanying volume, came to Virginia in
the year 1718, built his house of Castlewood, and here permanently
settled. After a long stormy life in England, he passed the remainder of
his many years in peace and honour in this country; how beloved and
respected by all his fellow citizens, how inexpressibly dear to his
family, I need not say. His whole life was a benefit to all who were
connected with him. He gave the best example, the best advice, the most
bounteous hospitality to his friends; the tenderest care to his
dependants; and bestowed on those of his immediate family such a blessing
of fatherly love and protection, as can never be thought of, by us at
least, without veneration and thankfulness; and my son’s children, whether
established here in our Republick, or at home in the always beloved mother
country, from which our late quarrel hath separated us, may surely be
proud to be descended from one who in all ways was so truly noble.
My dear mother died in 1736, soon after our return from England, whither
my parents took me for my education; and where I made the acquaintance of
Mr. Warrington, whom my children never saw. When it pleased Heaven, in the
bloom of his youth, and after but a few months of a most happy union, to
remove him from me, I owed my recovery from the grief which that calamity
caused me, mainly to my dearest father’s tenderness, and then to the
blessing vouchsafed to me in the birth of my two beloved boys. I know the
fatal differences which separated them in politics never disunited their
hearts; and as I can love them both, whether wearing the king’s colours or
the Republick’s, I am sure that they love me, and one another, and him
above all, my father and theirs, the dearest friend of their childhood,
the noble gentleman who bred them from their infancy in the practice and
knowledge of Truth, and Love, and Honour.
My children will never forget the appearance and figure of their revered
grandfather; and I wish I possessed the art of drawing (which my papa had
in perfection), so that I could leave to our descendants a portrait of one
who was so good and so respected. My father was of a dark complexion, with
a very great forehead and dark hazel eyes, overhung by eyebrows which
remained black long after his hair was white. His nose was aquiline, his
smile extraordinary sweet. How well I remember it, and how little any
description I can write can recall his image! He was of rather low
stature, not being above five feet seven inches in height; he used to
laugh at my sons, whom he called his crutches, and say they were grown too
tall for him to lean upon. But small as he was he had a perfect grace and
majesty of deportment, such as I have never seen in this country, except
perhaps in our friend Mr. Washington, and commanded respect wherever he
appeared.
In all bodily exercises he excelled, and showed an extraordinary quickness
and agility. Of fencing he was especially fond, and made my two boys
proficient in that art; so much so, that when the French came to this
country with Monsieur Rochambeau, not one of his officers was superior to
my Henry, and he was not the equal of my poor George, who had taken the
king’s side in our lamentable but glorious War of Independence.
Neither my father nor my mother ever wore powder in their hair; both their
heads were as white as silver, as I can remember them. My dear mother
possessed to the last an extraordinary brightness and freshness of
complexion; nor would people believe that she did not wear rouge. At sixty
years of age she still looked young, and was quite agile. It was not until
after that dreadful siege of our house by the Indians, which left me a
widow ere I was a mother, that my dear mother’s health broke. She never
recovered her terror and anxiety of those days, which ended so fatally for
me, then a bride scarce six months married, and died in my father’s arms
ere my own year of widowhood was over.
From that day, until the last of his dear and honoured life, it was my
delight and consolation to remain with him as his comforter and companion;
and from those little notes which my mother hath made here and there in
the volume in which my father describes his adventures in Europe, I can
well understand the extreme devotion with which she regarded him—a
devotion so passionate and exclusive as to prevent her, I think, from
loving any other person except with an inferior regard; her whole thoughts
being centred on this one object of affection and worship. I know that,
before her, my dear father did not show the love which he had for his
daughter; and in her last and most sacred moments, this dear and tender
parent owned to me her repentance that she had not loved me enough: her
jealousy even that my father should give his affection to any but herself;
and in the most fond and beautiful words of affection and admonition, she
bade me never to leave him, and to supply the place which she was
quitting. With a clear conscience, and a heart inexpressibly thankful, I
think I can say that I fulfilled those dying commands, and that until his
last hour my dearest father never had to complain that his daughter’s love
and fidelity failed him.
And it is since I knew him entirely, for during my mother’s life he never
quite opened himself to me—since I knew the value and splendour of that
affection which he bestowed upon me, that I have come to understand and
pardon what, I own, used to anger me in my mother’s lifetime, her jealousy
respecting her husband’s love. ’Twas a gift so precious, that no wonder
she who had it was for keeping it all, and could part with none of it,
even to her daughter.
Though I never heard my father use a rough word, ’twas extraordinary with
how much awe his people regarded him; and the servants on our plantation,
both those assigned from England and the purchased negroes, obeyed him
with an eagerness such as the most severe taskmasters round about us could
never get from their people. He was never familiar, though perfectly
simple and natural; he was the same with the meanest man as with the
greatest, and as courteous to a black slave-girl as to the governor’s
wife. No one ever thought of taking a liberty with him (except once a
tipsy gentleman from York, and I am bound to own that my papa never
forgave him): he set the humblest people at once on their ease with him,
and brought down the most arrogant by a grave satiric way, which made
persons exceedingly afraid of him. His courtesy was not put on like a
Sunday suit, and laid by when the company went away; it was always the
same; as he was always dressed the same whether for a dinner by ourselves
or for a great entertainment. They say he liked to be the first in his
company; but what company was there in which he would not be first? When I
went to Europe for my education, and we passed a winter at London with my
half-brother, my Lord Castlewood and his second lady, I saw at her
Majesty’s Court some of the most famous gentlemen of those days; and I
thought to myself, “None of these are better than my papa”; and the famous
Lord Bolingbroke, who came to us from Dawley, said as much, and that the
men of that time were not like those of his youth:—“Were your father,
madam,” he said, “to go into the woods, the Indians would elect him
Sachem;” and his lordship was pleased to call me Pocahontas.
I did not see our other relative, Bishop Tusher’s lady, of whom so much is
said in my papa’s memoirs—although my mamma went to visit her in the
country. I have no pride (as I showed by complying with my mother’s
request, and marrying a gentleman who was but the younger son of a Suffolk
baronet), yet I own to a _decent respect_ for my name, and wonder how one,
who ever bore it, should change it for that of Mrs. _Thomas Tusher_. I
pass over as odious and unworthy of credit those reports (which I heard in
Europe, and was then too young to understand), how this person, having
_left her family_ and fled to Paris, out of jealousy of the Pretender,
betrayed his secrets to my Lord Stair, King George’s ambassador, and
nearly caused the prince’s death there; how she came to England and
married this Mr. Tusher, and became a great favourite of King George the
Second, by whom Mr. Tusher was made a dean, and then a bishop. I did not
see the lady, who chose to remain _at her palace_ all the time we were in
London; but after visiting her, my poor mamma said she had lost all her
good looks, and warned me not to set too much store by any such gifts
which nature had bestowed upon me. She grew exceedingly stout; and I
remember my brother’s wife, Lady Castlewood, saying—“No wonder she became
a favourite, for the king likes them old and ugly, as his father did
before him.” On which papa said—“All women were alike; that there was
never one so beautiful as that one; and that we could forgive her
everything but her beauty.” And hereupon my mamma looked vexed, and my
Lord Castlewood began to laugh; and I, of course, being a young creature,
could not understand what was the subject of their conversation.
After the circumstances narrated in the third book of these memoirs, my
father and mother both went abroad, being advised by their friends to
leave the country in consequence of the transactions which are recounted
at the close of the volume of the memoirs. But my brother, hearing how the
_future bishop’s lady_ had quitted Castlewood and joined the Pretender at
Paris, pursued him, and would have killed him, prince as he was, had not
the prince managed to make his escape. On his expedition to Scotland
directly after, Castlewood was so enraged against him that he asked leave
to serve as a volunteer, and join the Duke of Argyle’s army in Scotland,
which the Pretender never had the courage to face; and thenceforth my lord
was quite reconciled to the present reigning family, from whom he hath
even received promotion.
Mrs. Tusher was by this time as angry against the Pretender as any of her
relations could be, and used to boast, as I have heard, that she not only
brought back my lord to the Church of England, but procured the English
peerage for him, which the _junior branch_ of our family at present
enjoys. She was a great friend of Sir Robert Walpole, and would not rest
until her husband slept at Lambeth, my papa used laughing to say. However,
the bishop died of apoplexy suddenly, and his wife erected a great
monument over him; and the pair sleep under that stone, with a canopy of
marble clouds and angels above them—the first Mrs. Tusher lying sixty
miles off at Castlewood.
But my papa’s genius and education are both greater than any a woman can
be expected to have, and his adventures in Europe far more exciting than
his life in this country, which was past in the tranquil offices of love
and duty; and I shall say no more by way of introduction to his memoirs,
nor keep my children from the perusal of a story which is much more
interesting than that of their affectionate old mother,
Rachel Esmond Warrington.
CASTLEWOOD, VIRGINIA,
November 3, 1778.
Book I. The Early Youth Of Henry Esmond, Up To The Time Of His Leaving
Trinity College, In Cambridge
The actors in the old tragedies, as we read, piped their iambics to a
tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great
head-dress. ’Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required these
appurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure and
cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and King
Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden’s words): the Chorus
standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailing
the fates of those great crowned persons. The Muse of History hath
encumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the Theatre. She
too wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to measure. She too, in
our age, busies herself with the affairs only of kings; waiting on them
obsequiously and stately, as if she were but a mistress of Court
ceremonies, and had nothing to do with the registering of the affairs of
the common people. I have seen in his very old age and decrepitude the old
French King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type and model of kinghood—who never
moved but to measure, who lived and died according to the laws of his
Court-marshal, persisting in enacting through life the part of Hero; and,
divested of poetry, this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked,
and with a great periwig and red heels to make him look tall—a hero for a
book if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god in a
Roman shape, but what more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber
who shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon? I wonder shall History
ever pull off her periwig and cease to be court-ridden? Shall we see
something of France and England besides Versailles and Windsor? I saw
Queen Anne at the latter place tearing down the Park slopes after her
staghounds, and driving her one-horse chaise—a hot, red-faced woman, not
in the least resembling that statue of her which turns its stone back upon
St. Paul’s, and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill. She was
neither better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we knelt to hand her
a letter or a washhand-basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to the end
of time? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a natural
posture: not to be for ever performing cringes and congees like a
Court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the presence of
the sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar rather than
heroic: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will give our children
a much better idea of the manners of the present age in England, than the
_Court Gazette_ and the newspapers which we get thence.
There was a German officer of Webb’s, with whom we used to joke, and of
whom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was got to be believed in
the army, that he was eldest son of the Hereditary Grand Bootjack of the
Empire, and heir to that honour of which his ancestors had been very
proud, having been kicked for twenty generations by one imperial foot, as
they drew the boot from the other. I have heard that the old Lord
Castlewood, of part of whose family these present volumes are a chronicle,
though he came of quite as good blood as the Stuarts whom he served (and
who as regards mere lineage are no better than a dozen English and
Scottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post about the Court
than of his ancestral honours and valued his dignity (as Lord of the
Butteries and Groom of the King’s Posset) so highly, that he cheerfully
ruined himself for the thankless and thriftless race who bestowed it. He
pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for
the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by fines and
sequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton, where his brother
Thomas capitulated (afterwards making terms with the Commonwealth, for
which the elder brother never forgave him), and where his second brother
Edward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical profession, was slain on
Castlewood tower, being engaged there both as preacher and artilleryman.
This resolute old loyalist, who was with the king whilst his house was
thus being battered down, escaped abroad with his only son, then a boy, to
return and take a part in Worcester fight. On that fatal field Eustace
Esmond was killed, and Castlewood fled from it once more into exile, and
henceforward, and after the Restoration, never was away from the Court of
the monarch (for whose return we offer thanks in the Prayer-book) who sold
his country and who took bribes of the French king.
What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who is
more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune? Mr. Addison has
painted such a figure in his noble piece of _Cato_. But suppose fugitive
Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen
faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out for
his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The
Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes
the door—on which the exile’s unpaid drink is scored up—upon him and his
pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are
singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to
paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impossible
allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to claim Olympus for
such a wine-drabbled divinity as that.
About the king’s follower the Viscount Castlewood—orphan of his son,
ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks of bravery, old and
in exile, his kinsmen I suppose should be silent; nor if this patriarch
fell down in his cups, call fie upon him, and fetch passers-by to laugh at
his red face and white hairs. What! does a stream rush out of a mountain
free and pure, to roll through fair pastures, to feed and throw out bright
tributaries, and to end in a village gutter? Lives that have noble
commencements have often no better endings; it is not without a kind of
awe and reverence that an observer should speculate upon such careers as
he traces the course of them. I have seen too much of success in life to
take off my hat and huzza to it as it passes in its gilt coach: and would
do my little part with my neighbours on foot, that they should not gape
with too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly. Is it the Lord Mayor going
in state to mince-pies and the Mansion House? Is it poor Jack of Newgate’s
procession, with the sheriff and javelin-men, conducting him on his last
journey to Tyburn? I look into my heart and think that I am as good as my
Lord Mayor, and know I am as bad as Tyburn Jack. Give me a chain and red
gown and a pudding before me, and I could play the part of alderman very
well, and sentence Jack after dinner. Starve me, keep me from books and
honest people, educate me to love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me on
Hounslow Heath, with a purse before me and I will take it. “And I shall be
deservedly hanged,” say you, wishing to put an end to this prosing. I
don’t say no. I can’t but accept the world as I find it, including a
rope’s end, as long as it is in fashion.
Chapter I. An Account Of The Family Of Esmond Of Castlewood Hall
When Francis, fourth Viscount Castlewood, came to his title, and presently
after to take possession of his house of Castlewood, county Hants, in the
year 1691, almost the only tenant of the place besides the domestics was a
lad of twelve years of age, of whom no one seemed to take any note until
my lady viscountess lighted upon him, going over the house, with the
housekeeper on the day of her arrival. The boy was in the room known as
the book-room, or yellow gallery, where the portraits of the family used
to hang, that fine piece among others of Sir Antonio Van Dyck of George,
second viscount, and that by Mr. Dobson of my lord the third viscount,
just deceased, which it seems his lady and widow did not think fit to
carry away, when she sent for and carried off to her house at Chelsey,
near to London, the picture of herself by Sir Peter Lely, in which her
ladyship was represented as a huntress of Diana’s court.
The new and fair lady of Castlewood found the sad lonely little occupant
of this gallery busy over his great book, which he laid down when he was
aware that a stranger was at hand. And, knowing who that person must be,
the lad stood up and bowed before her, performing a shy obeisance to the
mistress of his house.
She stretched out her hand—indeed when was it that that hand would not
stretch out to do an act of kindness, or to protect grief and ill-fortune?
“And this is our kinsman,’” she said; “and what is your name, kinsman?”
“My name is Henry Esmond,” said the lad, looking up at her in a sort of
delight and wonder, for she had come upon him as a _Dea certè_, and
appeared the most charming object he had ever looked on. Her golden hair
was shining in the gold of the sun; her complexion was of a dazzling
bloom; her lips smiling, and her eyes beaming with a kindness which made
Harry Esmond’s heart to beat with surprise.
“His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady,” says Mrs. Worksop the
housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond plagued more than he hated),
and the old gentlewoman looked significantly towards the late lord’s
picture, as it now is in the family, noble and severe-looking, with his
hand on his sword, and his order on his cloak, which he had from the
emperor during the war on the Danube against the Turk.
Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait and the
lad, the new viscountess, who had still hold of the boy’s hand as she
looked at the picture, blushed and dropped the hand quickly, and walked
down the gallery, followed by Mrs. Worksop.
When the lady came back, Harry Esmond stood exactly in the same spot, and
with his hand as it had fallen when he dropped it on his black coat.
Her heart melted I suppose (indeed she hath since owned as much) at the
notion that she should do anything unkind to any mortal, great or small;
for, when she returned, she had sent away the housekeeper upon an errand
by the door at the farther end of the gallery; and, coming back to the
lad, with a look of infinite pity and tenderness in her eyes, she took his
hand again, placing her other fair hand on his head, and saying some words
to him, which were so kind and said in a voice so sweet, that the boy, who
had never looked upon so much beauty before, felt as if the touch of a
superior being or angel smote him down to the ground, and kissed the fair
protecting hand as he knelt on one knee. To the very last hour of his
life, Esmond remembered the lady as she then spoke and looked, the rings
on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, the beam of her eyes
lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips blooming in a smile, the
sun making a golden halo round her hair.
As the boy was yet in this attitude of humility, enters behind him a
portly gentleman, with a little girl of four years old in his hand. The
gentleman burst into a great laugh at the lady and her adorer, with his
little queer figure, his sallow face, and long black hair. The lady
blushed, and seemed to deprecate his ridicule by a look of appeal to her
husband, for it was my lord viscount who now arrived, and whom the lad
knew, having once before seen him in the late lord’s lifetime.
“So this is the little priest!” says my lord, looking down at the lad;
“welcome, kinsman.”
“He is saying his prayers to mamma,” says the little girl, who came up to
her papa’s knee; and my lord burst out into another great laugh at this,
and kinsman Henry looked very silly. He invented a half-dozen of speeches
in reply, but ’twas months afterwards when he thought of this adventure:
as it was, he had never a word in answer.
“_Le pauvre enfant, il n’a que nous_,” says the lady, looking to her lord;
and the boy, who understood her, though doubtless she thought otherwise,
thanked her with all his heart for her kind speech.
“And he shan’t want for friends here,” says my lord, in a kind voice,
“shall he, little Trix?”
The little girl, whose name was Beatrix, and whom her papa called by this
diminutive, looked at Henry Esmond solemnly, with a pair of large eyes,
and then a smile shone over her face, which was as beautiful as that of a
cherub, and she came up and put out a little hand to him. A keen and
delightful pang of gratitude, happiness, affection, filled the orphan
child’s heart, as he received from the protectors, whom Heaven had sent to
him, these touching words, and tokens of friendliness and kindness. But an
hour since he had felt quite alone in the world: when he heard the great
peal of bells from Castlewood church ringing that morning to welcome the
arrival of the new lord and lady, it had rung only terror and anxiety to
him, for he knew not how the new owner would deal with him; and those to
whom he formerly looked for protection were forgotten or dead. Pride and
doubt too had kept him within doors: when the vicar and the people of the
village, and the servants of the house, had gone out to welcome my Lord
Castlewood—for Henry Esmond was no servant, though a dependant; no
relative, though he bore the name and inherited the blood of the house;
and in the midst of the noise and acclamations attending the arrival of
the new lord (for whom you may be sure a feast was got ready, and guns
were fired, and tenants and domestics huzzaed when his carriage approached
and rolled into the courtyard of the hall), no one ever took any notice of
young Henry Esmond, who sat unobserved and alone in the book-room, until
the afternoon of that day, when his new friends found him.
When my lord and lady were going away thence, the little girl, still
holding her kinsman by the hand, bade him to come too. “Thou wilt always
forsake an old friend for a new one, Trix,” says her father to her
good-naturedly; and went into the gallery, giving an arm to his lady. They
passed thence through the music-gallery, long since dismantled, and Queen
Elizabeth’s rooms, in the clock-tower, and out into the terrace, where was
a fine prospect of sunset, and the great darkling woods with a cloud of
rooks returning; and the plain and river with Castlewood village beyond,
and purple hills beautiful to look at—and the little heir of Castlewood, a
child of two years old, was already here on the terrace in his nurse’s
arms, from whom he ran across the grass instantly he perceived his mother,
and came to her.
“If thou canst not be happy here,” says my lord, looking round at the
scene, “thou art hard to please, Rachel.”
“I am happy where you are,” she said, “but we were happiest of all at
Walcote Forest.” Then my lord began to describe what was before them to
his wife, and what indeed little Harry knew better than he—viz., the
history of the house: how by yonder gate the page ran away with the
heiress of Castlewood, by which the estate came into the present family,
how the Roundheads attacked the clock-tower, which my lord’s father was
slain in defending. “I was but two years old then,” says he, “but take
forty-six from ninety, and how old shall I be, kinsman Harry?”
“Thirty,” says his wife, with a laugh.
“A great deal too old for you, Rachel,” answers my lord, looking fondly
down at her. Indeed she seemed to be a girl; and was at that time scarce
twenty years old.
“You know, Frank, I will do anything to please you,” says she, “and I
promise you I will grow older every day.”
“You mustn’t call papa Frank; you must call papa my lord, now,” says Miss
Beatrix, with a toss of her little head; at which the mother smiled, and
the good-natured father laughed, and the little, trotting boy laughed, not
knowing why—but because he was happy no doubt—as every one seemed to be
there. How those trivial incidents and words, the landscape and sunshine,
and the group of people smiling and talking, remain fixed on the memory!
As the sun was setting, the little heir was sent in the arms of his nurse
to bed, whither he went howling; but little Trix was promised to sit to
supper that night—“and you will come too, kinsman, won’t you?” she said.
Harry Esmond blushed: “I—I have supper with Mrs. Worksop,” says he.
“D—n it,” says my lord, “thou shalt sup with us, Harry, to-night! Shan’t
refuse a lady, shall he, Trix?”—and they all wondered at Harry’s
performance as a trencherman, in which character the poor boy acquitted
himself very remarkably; for the truth is he had no dinner, nobody
thinking of him in the bustle which the house was in, during the
preparations antecedent to the new lord’s arrival.
“No dinner! poor dear child!” says my lady, heaping up his plate with
meat, and my lord filling a bumper for him, bade him call a health; on
which Master Harry, crying “The King”, tossed off the wine. My lord was
ready to drink that, and most other toasts: indeed, only too ready. He
would not hear of Doctor Tusher (the Vicar of Castlewood, who came to
supper) going away when the sweetmeats were brought: he had not had a
chaplain long enough, he said, to be tired of him: so his reverence kept
my lord company for some hours over a pipe and a punchbowl; and went away
home with rather a reeling gait, and declaring a dozen of times, that his
lordship’s affability surpassed every kindness he had ever had from his
lordship’s gracious family.
As for young Esmond, when he got to his little chamber, it was with a
heart full of surprise and gratitude towards the new friends whom this
happy day had brought him. He was up and watching long before the house
was astir, longing to see that fair lady and her children—that kind
protector and patron; and only fearful lest their welcome of the past
night should in any way be withdrawn or altered. But presently little
Beatrix came out into the garden, and her mother followed, who greeted
Harry as kindly as before. He told her at greater length the histories of
the house (which he had been taught in the old lord’s time), and to which
she listened with great interest; and then he told her, with respect to
the night before, that he understood French, and thanked her for her
protection.
“Do you?” says she, with a blush; “then, sir, you shall teach me and
Beatrix.” And she asked him many more questions regarding himself, which
had best be told more fully and explicitly, than in those brief replies
which the lad made to his mistress’s questions.
Chapter II. Relates How Francis, Fourth Viscount, Arrives At Castlewood
’Tis known that the name of Esmond and the estate of Castlewood, com.
Hants, came into possession of the present family through Dorothea,
daughter and heiress of Edward, Earl and Marquis of Esmond, and Lord of
Castlewood, which lady married, 23 Eliz., Henry Poyns, gent.; the said
Henry being then a page in the household of her father. Francis, son and
heir of the above Henry and Dorothea, who took the maternal name which the
family hath borne subsequently, was made knight and baronet by King James
the First; and, being of a military disposition, remained long in Germany
with the Elector-Palatine, in whose service Sir Francis incurred both
expense and danger, lending large sums of money to that unfortunate
prince; and receiving many wounds in the battles against the Imperialists,
in which Sir Francis engaged.
On his return home Sir Francis was rewarded for his services and many
sacrifices, by his late Majesty James the First, who graciously conferred
upon this tried servant the post of Warden of the Butteries and Groom of
the King’s Posset, which high and confidential office he filled in that
king’s, and his unhappy successor’s, reign.
His age, and many wounds and infirmities, obliged Sir Francis to perform
much of his duty by deputy; and his son, Sir George Esmond, knight and
banneret, first as his father’s lieutenant, and afterwards as inheritor of
his father’s title and dignity, performed this office during almost the
whole of the reign of King Charles the First, and his two sons who
succeeded him.
Sir George Esmond married rather beneath the rank that a person of his
name and honour might aspire to, the daughter of Thos. Topham, of the city
of London, alderman and goldsmith, who, taking the Parliamentary side in
the troubles then commencing, disappointed Sir George of the property
which he expected at the demise of his father-in-law, who devised his
money to his second daughter, Barbara, a spinster.
Sir George Esmond, on his part, was conspicuous for his attachment and
loyalty to the royal cause and person, and the king being at Oxford in
1642, Sir George, with the consent of his father, then very aged and
infirm, and residing at his house of Castlewood, melted the whole of the
family plate for his Majesty’s service.
For this, and other sacrifices and merits, his Majesty, by patent under
the Privy Seal, dated Oxford, Jan., 1643, was pleased to advance Sir
Francis Esmond to the dignity of Viscount Castlewood, of Shandon, in
Ireland: and the viscount’s estate being much impoverished by loans to the
king, which in those troublesome times his Majesty could not repay, a
grant of land in the plantations of Virginia was given to the lord
viscount; part of which land is in possession of descendants of his family
to the present day.
The first Viscount Castlewood died full of years, and within a few months
after he had been advanced to his honours. He was succeeded by his eldest
son, the before-named George; and left issue besides, Thomas, a colonel in
the king’s army, that afterwards joined the Usurper’s government; and
Francis, in holy orders, who was slain whilst defending the house of
Castlewood against the Parliament, anno 1647.
George, Lord Castlewood (the second viscount) of King Charles the First’s
time, had no male issue save his one son Eustace Esmond, who was killed,
with half of the Castlewood men beside him, at Worcester fight. The lands
about Castlewood were sold and apportioned to the Commonwealth men;
Castlewood being concerned in almost all of the plots against the
Protector, after the death of the king, and up to King Charles the
Second’s restoration. My lord followed that king’s Court about in its
exile, having ruined himself in its service. He had but one daughter, who
was of no great comfort to her father; for misfortune had not taught those
exiles sobriety of life; and it is said that the Duke of York and his
brother the king both quarrelled about Isabel Esmond. She was maid of
honour to the Queen Henrietta Maria; she early joined the Roman Church;
her father, a weak man, following her not long after at Breda.
On the death of Eustace Esmond at Worcester, Thomas Esmond, nephew to my
Lord Castlewood, and then a stripling, became heir to the title. His
father had taken the Parliament side in the quarrels, and so had been
estranged from the chief of his house; and my Lord Castlewood was at first
so much enraged to think that his title (albeit little more than an empty
one now) should pass to a rascally Roundhead, that he would have married
again, and indeed proposed to do so to a vintner’s daughter at Bruges, to
whom his lordship owed a score for lodging when the king was there, but
for fear of the laughter of the Court, and the anger of his daughter, of
whom he stood in awe; for she was in temper as imperious and violent as my
lord, who was much enfeebled by wounds and drinking, was weak.
Lord Castlewood would have had a match between his daughter Isabel and her
cousin, the son of that Francis Esmond who was killed at Castlewood siege.
And the lady, it was said, took a fancy to the young man, who was her
junior by several years (which circumstance she did not consider to be a
fault in him); but having paid his court, and being admitted to the
intimacy of the house, he suddenly flung up his suit, when it seemed to be
pretty prosperous, without giving a pretext for his behaviour. His friends
rallied him at what they laughingly chose to call his infidelity. Jack
Churchill, Frank Esmond’s lieutenant in the royal regiment of foot guards,
getting the company which Esmond vacated, when he left the Court and went
to Tangier in a rage at discovering that his promotion depended on the
complaisance of his elderly affianced bride. He and Churchill, who had
been _condiscipuli_ at St. Paul’s School, had words about this matter; and
Frank Esmond said to him with an oath, “Jack, your sister may be
so-and-so, but by Jove, my wife shan’t!” and swords were drawn, and blood
drawn, too, until friends separated them on this quarrel. Few men were so
jealous about the point of honour in those days; and gentlemen of good
birth and lineage thought a royal blot was an ornament to their family
coat. Frank Esmond retired in the sulks, first to Tangier, whence he
returned after two years’ service, settling on a small property he had of
his mother, near to Winchester, and became a country gentleman, and kept a
pack of beagles, and never came to Court again in King Charles’s time. But
his uncle Castlewood was never reconciled to him; nor, for some time
afterwards, his cousin whom he had refused.
By places, pensions, bounties from France, and gifts from the king, whilst
his daughter was in favour, Lord Castlewood, who had spent in the royal
service his youth and fortune, did not retrieve the latter quite, and
never cared to visit Castlewood, or repair it, since the death of his son,
but managed to keep a good house, and figure at Court, and to save a
considerable sum of ready money.
And now, his heir and nephew, Thomas Esmond, began to bid for his uncle’s
favour. Thomas had served with the emperor, and with the Dutch, when King
Charles was compelled to lend troops to the States, and against them, when
his Majesty made an alliance with the French king. In these campaigns
Thomas Esmond was more remarked for duelling, brawling, vice, and play,
than for any conspicuous gallantry in the field, and came back to England,
like many another English gentleman who has travelled, with a character by
no means improved by his foreign experience. He had dissipated his small
paternal inheritance of a younger brother’s portion, and, as truth must be
told, was no better than a hanger-on of ordinaries, and a brawler about
Alsatia and the Friars, when he bethought him of a means of mending his
fortune.
His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody’s word but her
own for the beauty which she said she once possessed. She was lean, and
yellow, and long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the toy-shops
in London could not make a beauty of her—Mr. Killigrew called her the
Sibyl, the death’s-head put up at the king’s feast as a _memento mori_,
&c.—in fine, a woman who might be easy of conquest, but whom only a very
bold man would think of conquering. This bold man was Thomas Esmond. He
had a fancy to my Lord Castlewood’s savings, the amount of which rumour
had very much exaggerated. Madam Isabel was said to have royal jewels of
great value; whereas poor Tom Esmond’s last coat but one was in pawn.
My lord had at this time a fine house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, nigh to the
Duke’s Theatre and the Portugal ambassador’s chapel. Tom Esmond, who had
frequented the one as long as he had money to spend among the actresses,
now came to the church as assiduously. He looked so lean and shabby, that
he passed without difficulty for a repentant sinner; and so, becoming
converted, you may be sure took his uncle’s priest for a director.
This charitable father reconciled him with the old lord his uncle, who a
short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my lord’s
coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his
nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his
rapier sticking out of the scabbard—to his twopenny ordinary in Bell Yard.
Thomas Esmond, after this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began
to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and clean
linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week to be sure; but he made amends on
the other days: and, to show how great his appetite was, Mr. Wycherley
said, he ended by swallowing that fly-blown rank old morsel his cousin.
There were endless jokes and lampoons about this marriage at Court: but
Tom rode thither in his uncle’s coach now, called him father, and having
won could afford to laugh. This marriage took place very shortly before
King Charles died: whom the Viscount of Castlewood speedily followed.
The issue of this marriage was one son, whom the parents watched with an
intense eagerness and care; but who, in spite of nurses and physicians,
had only a brief existence. His tainted blood did not run very long in his
poor feeble little body. Symptoms of evil broke out early on him; and,
part from flattery, part superstition, nothing would satisfy my lord and
lady, especially the latter, but having the poor little cripple touched by
his Majesty at his church. They were ready to cry out miracle at first
(the doctors and quack-salvers being constantly in attendance on the
child, and experimenting on his poor little body with every conceivable
nostrum)—but though there seemed from some reason a notable amelioration
in the infant’s health after his Majesty touched him, in a few weeks
afterward the poor thing died—causing the lampooners of the Court to say,
that the king in expelling evil out of the infant of Tom Esmond and
Isabella his wife, expelled the life out of it, which was nothing but
corruption.
The mother’s natural pang at losing this poor little child must have been
increased when she thought of her rival Frank Esmond’s wife, who was a
favourite of the whole Court, where my poor Lady Castlewood was neglected,
and who had one child, a daughter, flourishing and beautiful, and was
about to become a mother once more.
The Court, as I have heard, only laughed the more because the poor lady,
who had pretty well passed the age when ladies are accustomed to have
children, nevertheless determined not to give hope up, and even when she
came to live at Castlewood, was constantly sending over to Hexton for the
doctor, and announcing to her friends the arrival of an heir. This
absurdity of hers was one amongst many others which the wags used to play
upon. Indeed, to the last days of her life, my lady viscountess had the
comfort of fancying herself beautiful, and persisted in blooming up to the
very midst of winter, painting roses on her cheeks long after their
natural season, and attiring herself like summer though her head was
covered with snow.
Gentlemen who were about the Court of King Charles and King James, have
told the present writer a number of stories about this queer old lady,
with which it’s not necessary that posterity should be entertained. She is
said to have had great powers of invective; and, if she fought with all
her rivals in King James’s favour, ’tis certain she must have had a vast
number of quarrels on her hands. She was a woman of an intrepid spirit,
and it appears pursued and rather fatigued his Majesty with her rights and
her wrongs. Some say that the cause of her leaving Court was jealousy of
Frank Esmond’s wife: others, that she was forced to retreat after a great
battle which took place at Whitehall, between her ladyship and Lady
Dorchester, Tom Killigrew’s daughter, whom the king delighted to honour,
and in which that ill-favoured Esther got the better of our elderly
Vashti. But her ladyship for her part always averred that it was her
husband’s quarrel, and not her own, which occasioned the banishment of the
two into the country; and the cruel ingratitude of the sovereign in giving
away, out of the family, that place of Warden of the Butteries and Groom
of the King’s Posset, which the two last Lords Castlewood had held so
honourably, and which was now conferred upon a fellow of yesterday, and a
hanger-on of that odious Dorchester creature, my Lord Bergamot(6); “I
never,” said my lady, “could have come to see his Majesty’s posset carried
by any other hand than an Esmond. I should have dashed the salver out of
Lord Bergamot’s hand, had I met him.” And those who knew her ladyship are
aware that she was a person quite capable of performing this feat, had she
not wisely kept out of the way.
Holding the purse-strings in her own control, to which, indeed, she liked
to bring most persons who came near her, Lady Castlewood could command her
husband’s obedience, and so broke up her establishment at London; she had
removed from Lincoln’s Inn Fields to Chelsey, to a pretty new house she
bought there; and brought her establishment, her maids, lap-dogs, and
gentlewomen, her priest, and his lordship, her husband, to Castlewood
Hall, that she had never seen since she quitted it as a child with her
father during the troubles of King Charles the First’s reign. The walls
were still open in the old house as they had been left by the shot of the
Commonwealth men. A part of the mansion was restored and furnished up with
the plate, hangings, and furniture, brought from the house in London. My
lady meant to have a triumphal entry into Castlewood village, and expected
the people to cheer as she drove over the Green in her great coach, my
lord beside her, her gentlewomen, lap-dogs, and cockatoos on the opposite
seat, six horses to her carriage, and servants armed and mounted,
following it and preceding it. But ’twas in the height of the No-Popery
cry; the folks in the village and the neighbouring town were scared by the
sight of her ladyship’s painted face and eyelids, as she bobbed her head
out of the coach window, meaning no doubt to be very gracious; and one old
woman said, “Lady Isabel! lord-a-mercy, it’s Lady Jezebel!” a name by
which the enemies of the right honourable viscountess were afterwards in
the habit of designating her. The country was then in a great No-Popery
fervour, her ladyship’s known conversion, and her husband’s, the priest in
her train, and the service performed at the chapel of Castlewood (though
the chapel had been built for that worship before any other was heard of
in the country, and though the service was performed in the most quiet
manner), got her no favour at first in the county or village. By far the
greater part of the estate of Castlewood had been confiscated, and been
parcelled out to Commonwealth men. One or two of these old Cromwellian
soldiers were still alive in the village, and looked grimly at first upon
my lady viscountess, when she came to dwell there.
She appeared at the Hexton Assembly, bringing her lord after her, scaring
the country folks with the splendour of her diamonds, which she always
wore in public. They said she wore them in private, too, and slept with
them round her neck; though the writer can pledge his word that this was a
calumny. “If she were to take them off,” my Lady Sark said, “Tom Esmond,
her husband, would run away with them and pawn them.” ’Twas another
calumny. My Lady Sark was also an exile from Court, and there had been war
between the two ladies before.
The village people began to be reconciled presently to their lady, who was
generous and kind, though fantastic and haughty, in her ways; and whose
praises Dr. Tusher, the vicar, sounded loudly amongst his flock. As for my
lord, he gave no great trouble, being considered scarce more than an
appendage to my lady, who as daughter of the old lords of Castlewood, and
possessor of vast wealth, as the country folks said (though indeed
nine-tenths of it existed but in rumour), was looked upon as the real
queen of the Castle, and mistress of all it contained.
Chapter III. Whither In The Time Of Thomas, Third Viscount, I Had Preceded
Him As Page To Isabella
Coming up to London again some short time after this retreat, the Lord
Castlewood dispatched a retainer of his to a little cottage in the village
of Ealing, near to London, where for some time had dwelt an old French
refugee, by name Mr. Pastoureau, one of those whom the persecution of the
Huguenots by the French king had brought over to this country. With this
old man lived a little lad, who went by the name of Henry Thomas. He
remembered to have lived in another place a short time before, near to
London, too, amongst looms and spinning-wheels, and a great deal of
psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of Frenchmen.
There he had a dear, dear friend, who died and whom he called aunt. She
used to visit him in his dreams sometimes; and her face, though it was
homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs. Pastoureau,
Bon Papa Pastoureau’s new wife, who came to live with him after aunt went
away. And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived Uncle
George, who was a weaver too, but used to tell Harry that he was a little
gentleman, and that his father was a captain, and his mother an angel.
When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was
embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and say, “Angel! she belongs to the
Babylonish Scarlet Woman.” Bon Papa was always talking of the Scarlet
Woman. He had a little room where he always used to preach and sing hymns
out of his great old nose. Little Harry did not like the preaching; he
liked better the fine stories which aunt used to tell him. Bon Papa’s wife
never told him pretty stories; she quarrelled with Uncle George, and he
went away.
After this Harry’s Bon Papa, and his wife and two children of her own that
she brought with her, came to live at Ealing. The new wife gave her
children the best of everything, and Harry many a whipping, he knew not
why. Besides blows, he got ill names from her, which need not be set down
here, for the sake of old Mr. Pastoureau, who was still kind sometimes.
The unhappiness of those days is long forgiven, though they cast a shade
of melancholy over the child’s youth, which will accompany him, no doubt,
to the end of his days: as those tender twigs are bent the trees grow
afterward; and he, at least, who has suffered as a child, and is not quite
perverted in that early school of unhappiness, learns to be gentle and
long-suffering with little children.
Harry was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback, with
a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing. The
_noverca_, or unjust stepmother, who had neglected him for her own two
children, gave him supper enough the night before he went away, and plenty
in the morning. She did not beat him once, and told the children to keep
their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike
a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, but he
always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the rescue with
arms like a flail. She only washed Harry’s face the day he went away; nor
ever so much as once boxed his ears. She whimpered rather when the
gentleman in black came for the boy; and old Mr. Pastoureau, as he gave
the child his blessing, scowled over his shoulder at the strange
gentleman, and grumbled out something about Babylon and the scarlet lady.
He was grown quite old, like a child almost. Mrs. Pastoureau used to wipe
his nose as she did to the children. She was a great, big, handsome young
woman; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought ’twas only a sham,
and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which the lackey helped
him.
He was a Frenchman; his name was Blaise. The child could talk to him in
his own language perfectly well: he knew it better than English indeed:
having lived hitherto chiefly among French people: and being called the
little Frenchman by other boys on Ealing Green. He soon learnt to speak
English perfectly, and to forget some of his French: children forget
easily. Some earlier and fainter recollections the child had, of a
different country; and a town with tall white houses; and a ship. But
these were quite indistinct in the boy’s mind, as indeed the memory of
Ealing soon became, at least of much that he suffered there.
The lackey before whom he rode was very lively and voluble, and informed
the boy that the gentleman riding before him was my lord’s chaplain,
Father Holt—that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond—that my Lord
Viscount Castlewood was his _parrain_—that he was to live at the great
house of Castlewood, in the province of ——shire, where he would see madame
the viscountess, who was a grand lady. And so, seated on a cloth before
Blaise’s saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and to a fine square
called Covent Garden, near to which his patron lodged.
Mr. Holt the priest took the child by the hand, and brought him to this
nobleman, a grand languid nobleman in a great cap and flowered
morning-gown, sucking oranges. He patted Harry on the head and gave him an
orange.
“_C’est bien ça_,” he said to the priest after eyeing the child, and the
gentleman in black shrugged his shoulders.
“Let Blaise take him out for a holiday,” and out for a holiday the boy and
the valet went. Harry went jumping along; he was glad enough to go.
He will remember to his life’s end the delights of those days. He was
taken to see a play by Monsieur Blaise, in a house a thousand times
greater and finer than the booth at Ealing Fair—and on the next happy day
they took water on the river, and Harry saw London Bridge, with the houses
and booksellers’ shops thereon, looking like a street, and the Tower of
London, with the armour, and the great lions and bears in the moats—all
under company of Monsieur Blaise.
Presently, of an early morning, all the party set forth for the country,
namely, my lord viscount and the other gentleman; Monsieur Blaise, and
Harry on a pillion behind them, and two or three men with pistols leading
the baggage-horses. And all along the road the Frenchman told little Harry
stories of brigands, which made the child’s hair stand on end, and
terrified him; so that at the great gloomy inn on the road where they lay,
he besought to be allowed to sleep in a room with one of the servants, and
was compassionated by Mr. Holt, the gentleman who travelled with my lord,
and who gave the child a little bed in his chamber.
His artless talk and answers very likely inclined this gentleman in the
boy’s favour, for next day Mr. Holt said Harry should ride behind him, and
not with the French lacky; and all along the journey put a thousand
questions to the child—as to his foster-brother and relations at Ealing;
what his old grandfather had taught him; what languages he knew; whether
he could read and write, and sing, and so forth. And Mr. Holt found that
Harry could read and write, and possessed the two languages of French and
English very well; and when he asked Harry about singing, the lad broke
out with a hymn to the tune of Dr. Martin Luther, which set Mr. Holt
a-laughing; and even caused his _grand parrain_ in the laced hat and
periwig to laugh too when Holt told him what the child was singing. For it
appeared that Dr. Martin Luther’s hymns were not sung in the churches Mr.
Holt preached at.
“You must never sing that song any more, do you hear, little manikin?”
says my lord viscount, holding up a finger.
“But we will try and teach you a better, Harry.” Mr. Holt said; and the
child answered, for he was a docile child, and of an affectionate nature,
“That he loved pretty songs, and would try and learn anything the
gentleman would tell him.” That day he so pleased the gentlemen by his
talk, that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged him
in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day
before, waited upon him now.
“’Tis well, ’tis well!” said Blaise, that night (in his own language) when
they lay again at an inn. “We are a little lord here; we are a little lord
now: we shall see what we are when we come to Castlewood where my lady
is.”
“When shall we come to Castlewood, Monsieur Blaise?” says Harry.
“_Parbleu!_ my lord does not press himself.” Blaise says, with a grin;
and, indeed, it seemed as if his lordship was not in a great hurry, for he
spent three days on that journey, which Harry Esmond hath often since
ridden in a dozen hours. For the last two of the days, Harry rode with the
priest, who was so kind to him, that the child had grown to be quite fond
and familiar with him by the journey’s end, and had scarce a thought in
his little heart which by that time he had not confided to his new friend.
At length on the third day, at evening, they came to a village standing on
a green with elms round it, very pretty to look at; and the people there
all took off their hats, and made curtsies to my lord viscount, who bowed
to them all languidly; and there was one portly person that wore a cassock
and a broad-leafed hat, who bowed lower than any one—and with this one
both my lord and Mr. Holt had a few words. “This, Harry, is Castlewood
church,” says Mr. Holt, “and this is the pillar thereof, learned Doctor
Tusher. Take off your hat, sirrah, and salute Doctor Tusher.”
“Come up to supper, doctor,” says my lord; at which the doctor made
another low bow, and the party moved on towards a grand house that was
before them, with many grey towers, and vanes on them, and windows flaming
in the sunshine; and a great army of rooks, wheeling over their heads,
made for the woods behind the house, as Harry saw; and Mr. Holt told him
that they lived at Castlewood too.
They came to the house, and passed under an arch into a courtyard, with a
fountain in the centre, where many men came and held my lord’s stirrup as
he descended, and paid great respect to Mr. Holt likewise. And the child
thought that the servants looked at him curiously, and smiled to one
another—and he recalled what Blaise had said to him when they were in
London, and Harry had spoken about his godpapa, when the Frenchman said,
“_Parbleu!_ one sees well that my lord is your godfather”; words whereof
the poor lad did not know the meaning then, though he apprehended the
truth in a very short time afterwards, and learned it and thought of it
with no small feeling of shame.
Taking Harry by the hand as soon as they were both descended from their
horses, Mr. Holt led him across the court, and under a low door to rooms
on a level with the ground; one of which Father Holt said was to be the
boy’s chamber, the other on the other side of the passage being the
father’s own; and as soon as the little man’s face was washed, and the
father’s own dress arranged, Harry’s guide took him once more to the door
by which my lord had entered the hall, and up a stair, and through an
ante-room to my lady’s drawing-room—an apartment than which Harry thought
he had never seen anything more grand—no, not in the Tower of London which
he had just visited. Indeed the chamber was richly ornamented in the
manner of Queen Elizabeth’s time, with great stained windows at either
end, and hangings of tapestry, which the sun shining through the coloured
glass painted of a thousand hues; and here in state, by the fire, sat a
lady to whom the priest took up Harry, who was indeed amazed by her
appearance.
My lady viscountess’s face was daubed with white and red up to the eyes,
to which the paint gave an unearthly glare: she had a tower of lace on her
head, under which was a bush of black curls—borrowed curls—so that no
wonder little Harry Esmond was scared when he was first presented to
her—the kind priest acting as master of the ceremonies at that solemn
introduction—and he stared at her with eyes almost as great as her own, as
he had stared at the player-woman who acted the wicked tragedy-queen, when
the players came down to Ealing Fair. She sat in a great chair by the
fire-corner; in her lap was a spaniel-dog that barked furiously; on a
little table by her was her ladyship’s snuff-box and her sugar-plum box.
She wore a dress of black velvet, and a petticoat of flame-coloured
brocade. She had as many rings on her fingers as the old woman of Banbury
Cross; and pretty small feet which she was fond of showing, with great
gold clocks to her stockings, and white pantofles with red heels; and an
odour of musk was shook out of her garments whenever she moved or quitted
the room, leaning on her tortoiseshell stick, little Fury barking at her
heels.
Mrs. Tusher, the parson’s wife, was with my lady. She had been
waiting-woman to her ladyship in the late lord’s time, and, having her
soul in that business, took naturally to it when the Viscountess of
Castlewood returned to inhabit her father’s house.
“I present to your ladyship your kinsman and little page of honour, Master
Henry Esmond,” Mr. Holt said, bowing lowly, with a sort of comical
humility. “Make a pretty bow to my lady, monsieur; and then another little
bow, not so low, to Madam Tusher—the fair priestess of Castlewood.”
“Where I have lived and hope to die, sir,” says Madam Tusher, giving a
hard glance at the brat, and then at my lady.
Upon her the boy’s whole attention was for a time directed. He could not
keep his great eyes off from her. Since the Empress of Ealing he had seen
nothing so awful.
“Does my appearance please you, little page?” asked the lady.
“He would be very hard to please if it didn’t,” cried Madam Tusher.
“Have done, you silly Maria,” said Lady Castlewood.
“Where I’m attached, I’m attached, madam—and I’d die rather than not say
so.”
“_Je meurs où je m’attache_,” Mr. Holt said, with a polite grin. “The ivy
says so in the picture, and clings to the oak like a fond parasite as it
is.”
“Parricide, sir!” cries Mrs. Tusher.
“Hush, Tusher—you are always bickering with Father Holt,” cried my lady.
“Come and kiss my hand, child,” and the oak held out a _branch_ to little
Harry Esmond, who took and dutifully kissed the lean old hand, upon the
gnarled knuckles of which there glittered a hundred rings.
“To kiss that hand would make many a pretty fellow happy!” cried Mrs.
Tusher: on which my lady crying out, “Go, you foolish Tusher,” and tapping
her with her great fan, Tusher ran forward to seize her hand and kiss it.
Fury arose and barked furiously at Tusher; and Father Holt looked on at
this queer scene, with arch grave glances.
The awe exhibited by the little boy perhaps pleased the lady to whom this
artless flattery was bestowed; for having gone down on his knee (as Father
Holt had directed him, and the mode then was) and performed his obeisance,
she said, “Page Esmond, my groom of the chamber will inform you what your
duties are, when you wait upon my lord and me; and good Father Holt will
instruct you as becomes a gentleman of our name. You will pay him
obedience in everything, and I pray you may grow to be as learned and as
good as your tutor.”
The lady seemed to have the greatest reverence for Mr. Holt, and to be
more afraid of him than of anything else in the world. If she was ever so
angry, a word or look from Father Holt made her calm: indeed he had a vast
power of subjecting those who came near him; and, among the rest, his new
pupil gave himself up with an entire confidence and attachment to the good
father, and became his willing slave almost from the first moment he saw
him.
He put his small hand into the father’s as he walked away from his first
presentation to his mistress, and asked many questions in his artless
childish way. “Who is that other woman?” he asked. “She is fat and round;
she is more pretty than my Lady Castlewood.”
“She is Madam Tusher, the parson’s wife of Castlewood. She has a son of
your age, but bigger than you.”
“Why does she like so to kiss my lady’s hand? It is not good to kiss.”
“Tastes are different, little man. Madam Tusher is attached to my lady,
having been her waiting-woman, before she was married, in the old lord’s
time. She married Doctor Tusher the chaplain. The English household
divines often marry the waiting-women.”
“You will not marry the French woman, will you? I saw her laughing with
Blaise in the buttery.”
“I belong to a church that is older and better than the English Church,”
Mr. Holt said (making a sign whereof Esmond did not then understand the
meaning, across his breast and forehead); “in our Church the clergy do not
marry. You will understand these things better soon.”
“Was not St. Peter the head of your Church?—Dr. Rabbits of Ealing told us
so.”
The father said, “Yes, he was.”
“But St. Peter was married, for we heard only last Sunday that his wife’s
mother lay sick of a fever.” On which the father again laughed, and said
he would understand this too better soon, and talked of other things, and
took away Harry Esmond, and showed him the great old house which he had
come to inhabit.
It stood on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in which were
rooks’ nests, where the birds at morning and returning home at evening
made a great cawing. At the foot of the hill was a river with a steep
ancient bridge crossing it; and beyond that a large pleasant green flat,
where the village of Castlewood stood and stands, with the church in the
midst, the parsonage hard by it, the inn with the blacksmith’s forge
beside it, and the sign of the “Three Castles” on the elm. The London road
stretched away towards the rising sun, and to the west were swelling hills
and peaks, behind which many a time Harry Esmond saw the same sun setting,
that he now looks on thousands of miles away across the great ocean—in a
new Castlewood by another stream, that bears, like the new country of
wandering Aeneas, the fond names of the land of his youth.
The Hall of Castlewood was built with two courts, whereof one only, the
fountain court, was now inhabited, the other having been battered down in
the Cromwellian wars. In the fountain court, still in good repair, was the
great hall, near to the kitchen and butteries. A dozen of living-rooms
looking to the north, and communicating with the little chapel that faced
eastwards and the buildings stretching from that to the main gate, and
with the hall (which looked to the west) into the court now dismantled.
This court had been the most magnificent of the two, until the protector’s
cannon tore down one side of it before the place was taken and stormed.
The besiegers entered at the terrace under the clock-tower, slaying every
man of the garrison, and at their head my lord’s brother, Francis Esmond.
The Restoration did not bring enough money to the Lord Castlewood to
restore this ruined part of his house; where were the morning parlours,
above them the long music-gallery, and before which stretched the
garden-terrace, where, however, the flowers grew again, which the boots of
the Roundheads had trodden in their assault, and which was restored
without much cost, and only a little care, by both ladies who succeeded
the second viscount in the government of this mansion. Round the
terrace-garden was a low wall with a wicket leading to the wooded height
beyond, that is called Cromwell’s battery to this day.
Young Harry Esmond learned the domestic part of his duty, which was easy
enough, from the groom of her ladyship’s chamber: serving the countess, as
the custom commonly was in his boyhood, as page, waiting at her chair,
bringing her scented water and the silver basin after dinner—sitting on
her carriage step on state occasions, or on public days introducing her
company to her. This was chiefly of the Catholic gentry, of whom there
were a pretty many in the country and neighbouring city; and who rode not
seldom to Castlewood to partake of the hospitalities there. In the second
year of their residence the company seemed especially to increase. My lord
and my lady were seldom without visitors, in whose society it was curious
to contrast the difference of behaviour between Father Holt, the director
of the family, and Doctor Tusher, the rector of the parish—Mr. Holt moving
amongst the very highest as quite their equal, and as commanding them all;
while poor Doctor Tusher, whose position was indeed a difficult one,
having been chaplain once to the Hall, and still to the Protestant
servants there, seemed more like an usher than an equal, and always rose
to go away after the first course.
Also there came in these times to Father Holt many private visitors, whom
after a little, Henry Esmond had little difficulty in recognizing as
ecclesiastics of the father’s persuasion; whatever their dresses (and they
adopted all) might be. These were closeted with the father constantly, and
often came and rode away without paying their devoirs to my lord and
lady—to the lady and lord rather—his lordship being little more than a
cipher in the house, and entirely under his domineering partner. A little
fowling, a little hunting, a great deal of sleep, and a long time at cards
and table, carried through one day after another with his lordship. When
meetings took place in this second year, which often would happen with
closed doors, the page found my lord’s sheet of paper scribbled over with
dogs and horses, and ’twas said he had much ado to keep himself awake at
these councils: the countess ruling over them, and he acting as little
more than her secretary.
Father Holt began speedily to be so much occupied with these meetings as
rather to neglect the education of the little lad who so gladly put
himself under the kind priest’s orders. At first they read much and
regularly, both in Latin and French; the father not neglecting in anything
to impress his faith upon his pupil, but not forcing him violently, and
treating him with a delicacy and kindness which surprised and attached the
child; always more easily won by these methods than by any severe exercise
of authority. And his delight in our walks was to tell Harry of the
glories of his order, of its martyrs and heroes, of its brethren
converting the heathen by myriads, traversing the desert, facing the
stake, ruling the courts and councils, or braving the tortures of kings;
so that Harry Esmond thought that to belong to the Jesuits was the
greatest prize of life and bravest end of ambition; the greatest career
here, and in heaven the surest reward; and began to long for the day, not
only when he should enter into the one Church and receive his first
communion, but when he might join that wonderful brotherhood, which was
present throughout all the world, and which numbered the wisest, the
bravest, the highest born, the most eloquent of men among its members.
Father Holt bade him keep his views secret, and to hide them as a great
treasure which would escape him if it was revealed; and proud of this
confidence and secret vested in him, the lad became fondly attached to the
master who initiated him into a mystery so wonderful and awful. And when
little Tom Tusher, his neighbour, came from school for his holiday, and
said how he, too, was to be bred up for an English priest, and would get
what he called an exhibition from his school, and then a college
scholarship and fellowship, and then a good living—it tasked young Harry
Esmond’s powers of reticence not to say to his young companion, “Church!
priesthood! fat living! My dear Tommy, do you call yours a Church and a
priesthood? What is a fat living compared to converting a hundred thousand
heathens by a single sermon? What is a scholarship at Trinity by the side
of a crown of martyrdom, with angels awaiting you as your head is taken
off? Could your master at school sail over the Thames on his gown? Have
you statues in your church that can bleed, speak, walk, and cry? My good
Tommy, in dear Father Holt’s Church these things take place every day. You
know St. Philip of the Willows appeared to Lord Castlewood and caused him
to turn to the one true Church. No saints ever come to you.” And Harry
Esmond, because of his promise to Father Holt, hiding away these treasures
of faith from T. Tusher, delivered himself of them nevertheless simply to
Father Holt, who stroked his head, smiled at him with his inscrutable
look, and told him that he did well to meditate on these great things, and
not to talk of them except under direction.
Chapter IV. I Am Placed Under A Popish Priest And Bred To That
Religion.—Viscountess Castlewood
Had time enough been given, and his childish inclinations been properly
nurtured, Harry Esmond had been a Jesuit priest ere he was a dozen years
older, and might have finished his days a martyr in China or a victim on
Tower Hill: for, in the few months they spent together at Castlewood, Mr.
Holt obtained an entire mastery over the boy’s intellect and affections;
and had brought him to think, as indeed Father Holt thought with all his
heart too, that no life was so noble, no death so desirable, as that which
many brethren of his famous order were ready to undergo. By love, by a
brightness of wit and good humour that charmed all, by an authority which
he knew how to assume, by a mystery and silence about him which increased
the child’s reverence for him, he won Harry’s absolute fealty, and would
have kept it, doubtless, if schemes greater and more important than a poor
little boy’s admission into orders had not called him away.
After being at home for a few months in tranquillity (if theirs might be
called tranquillity, which was, in truth, a constant bickering), my lord
and lady left the country for London, taking their director with them: and
his little pupil scarce ever shed more bitter tears in his life than he
did for nights after the first parting with his dear friend, as he lay in
the lonely chamber next to that which the father used to occupy. He and a
few domestics were left as the only tenants of the great house: and,
though Harry sedulously did all the tasks which the father set him, he had
many hours unoccupied, and read in the library, and bewildered his little
brains with the great books he found there.
After a while the little lad grew accustomed to the loneliness of the
place; and in after days remembered this part of his life as a period not
unhappy. When the family was at London the whole of the establishment
travelled thither with the exception of the porter, who was, moreover,
brewer, gardener, and woodman, and his wife and children. These had their
lodging in the gate-house hard by, with a door into the court; and a
window looking out on the green was the chaplain’s room; and next to this
a small chamber where Father Holt had his books, and Harry Esmond his
sleeping-closet. The side of the house facing the east had escaped the
guns of the Cromwellians, whose battery was on the height facing the
western court; so that this eastern end bore few marks of demolition, save
in the chapel, where the painted windows surviving Edward the Sixth had
been broke by the Commonwealth men. In Father Holt’s time little Harry
Esmond acted as his familiar, and faithful little servitor; beating his
clothes, folding his vestments, fetching his water from the well long
before daylight, ready to run anywhere for the service of his beloved
priest. When the father was away he locked his private chamber; but the
room where the books were was left to little Harry, who, but for the
society of this gentleman, was little less solitary when Lord Castlewood
was at home.
The French wit saith that a hero is none to his valet de chambre, and it
required less quick eyes than my lady’s little page was naturally endowed
with, to see that she had many qualities by no means heroic, however much
Mrs. Tusher might flatter and coax her. When Father Holt was not by, who
exercised an entire authority over the pair, my lord and my lady
quarrelled and abused each other so as to make the servants laugh, and to
frighten the little page on duty. The poor boy trembled before his
mistress, who called him by a hundred ugly names, who made nothing of
boxing his ears—and tilting the silver basin in his face which it was his
business to present to her after dinner. She hath repaired, by subsequent
kindness to him, these severities, which it must be owned made his
childhood very unhappy. She was but unhappy herself at this time, poor
soul, and I suppose made her dependants lead her own sad life. I think my
lord was as much afraid of her as her page was, and the only person of the
household who mastered her was Mr. Holt. Harry was only too glad when the
father dined at table, and to slink away and prattle with him afterwards,
or read with him, or walk with him. Luckily my lady viscountess did not
rise till noon. Heaven help the poor waiting-woman who had charge of her
toilet! I have often seen the poor wretch come out with red eyes from the
closet, where those long and mysterious rites of her ladyship’s dress were
performed, and the backgammon-box locked up with a rap on Mrs. Tusher’s
fingers when she played ill or the game was going the wrong way.
Blessed be the king who introduced cards, and the kind inventors of piquet
and cribbage, for they employed six hours at least of her ladyship’s day,
during which her family was pretty easy. Without this occupation my lady
frequently declared she should die. Her dependants one after another
relieved guard—’twas rather a dangerous post to play with her ladyship—and
took the cards turn about. Mr. Holt would sit with her at piquet during
hours together, at which time she behaved herself properly; and, as for
Dr. Tusher, I believe he would have left a parishioner’s dying bed, if
summoned to play a rubber with his patroness at Castlewood. Sometimes,
when they were pretty comfortable together, my lord took a hand. Besides
these my lady had her faithful poor Tusher, and one, two, three
gentlewomen whom Harry Esmond could recollect in his time. They could not
bear that genteel service very long; one after another tried and failed at
it. These and the housekeeper, and little Harry Esmond, had a table of
their own. Poor ladies! their life was far harder than the page’s. He was
found asleep tucked up in his little bed, whilst they were sitting by her
ladyship reading her to sleep, with the _News Letter_ or the _Grand
Cyrus_. My lady used to have boxes of new plays from London, and Harry was
forbidden, under the pain of a whipping, to look into them. I am afraid he
deserved the penalty pretty often, and got it sometimes. Father Holt
applied it twice or thrice, when he caught the young scapegrace with a
delightful wicked comedy of Mr. Shadwell’s or Mr. Wycherley’s under his
pillow.
These, when he took any, were my lord’s favourite reading. But he was
averse to much study, and, as his little page fancied, to much occupation
of any sort.
It always seemed to young Harry Esmond that my lord treated him with more
kindness when his lady was not present, and Lord Castlewood would take the
lad sometimes on his little journeys a-hunting or a-birding; he loved to
play at cards and tric-trac with him, which games the boy learned to
pleasure his lord: and was growing to like him better daily, showing a
special pleasure if Father Holt gave a good report of him, patting him on
the head, and promising that he would provide for the boy. However, in my
lady’s presence, my lord showed no such marks of kindness, and affected to
treat the lad roughly, and rebuked him sharply for little faults—for which
he in a manner asked pardon of young Esmond when they were private, saying
if he did not speak roughly, she would, and his tongue was not such a bad
one as his lady’s—a point whereof the boy, young as he was, was very well
assured.
Great public events were happening all this while, of which the simple
young page took little count. But one day, riding into the neighbouring
town on the step of my lady’s coach, his lordship and she and Father Holt
being inside, a great mob of people came hooting and jeering round the
coach, bawling out, “The bishops for ever!” “Down with the Pope!” “No
Popery! no Popery! Jezebel, Jezebel!” so that my lord began to laugh, my
lady’s eyes to roll with anger, for she was as bold as a lioness, and
feared nobody; whilst Mr. Holt, as Esmond saw from his place on the step,
sank back with rather an alarmed face, crying out to her ladyship, “For
God’s sake, madam, do not speak or look out of window, sit still.” But she
did not obey this prudent injunction of the father; she thrust her head
out of the coach window, and screamed out to the coachman, “Flog your way
through them, the brutes, James, and use your whip!”
The mob answered with a roaring jeer of laughter, and fresh cries of,
“Jezebel! Jezebel!” My lord only laughed the more: he was a languid
gentleman: nothing seemed to excite him commonly, though I have seen him
cheer and halloo the hounds very briskly, and his face (which was
generally very yellow and calm) grow quite red and cheerful during a burst
over the Downs after a hare, and laugh, and swear, and huzza at a
cockfight, of which sport he was very fond. And now, when the mob began to
hoot his lady, he laughed with something of a mischievous look, as though
he expected sport, and thought that she and they were a match.
James the coachman was more afraid of his mistress than the mob, probably,
for he whipped on his horses as he was bidden, and the postboy that rode
with the first pair (my lady always went with her coach-and-six) gave a
cut of his thong over the shoulders of one fellow who put his hand out
towards the leading horse’s rein.
It was a market day and the country people were all assembled with their
baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no sooner
lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a great cabbage
came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, at which my lord laughed
more, for it knocked my lady’s fan out of her hand, and plumped into
Father Holt’s stomach. Then came a shower of carrots and potatoes.
“For heaven’s sake be still!” says Mr. Holt; “we are not ten paces from
the ‘Bell’ archway, where they can shut the gates on us, and keep out this
_canaille_.”
The little page was outside the coach on the step, and a fellow in the
crowd aimed a potato at him, and hit him in the eye, at which the poor
little wretch set up a shout; the man laughed, a great big saddler’s
apprentice of the town. “Ah! you d—— little yelling Popish bastard,” he
said, and stooped to pick up another; the crowd had gathered quite between
the horses and in the inn door by this time, and the coach was brought to
a dead standstill. My lord jumped as briskly as a boy out of the door on
his side of the coach, squeezing little Harry behind it; had hold of the
potato-thrower’s collar in an instant, and the next moment the brute’s
heels were in the air, and he fell on the stones with a thump.
“You hulking coward!” says he; “you pack of screaming blackguards! how
dare you attack children, and insult women? Fling another shot at that
carriage, you sneaking pigskin cobbler, and by the Lord I’ll send my
rapier through you!”
Some of the mob cried, “Huzza, my lord!” for they knew him, and the
saddler’s man was a known bruiser, near twice as big as my lord viscount.
“Make way, there,” says he (he spoke in a high shrill voice, but with a
great air of authority). “Make way, and let her ladyship’s carriage pass.”
The men that were between the coach and the gate of the “Bell” actually
did make way, and the horses went in, my lord walking after them with his
hat on his head.
As he was going in at the gate, through which the coach had just rolled,
another cry begins of “No Popery—no Papists!” My lord turns round and
faces them once more.
“God save the king!” says he at the highest pitch of his voice. “Who dares
abuse the king’s religion? You, you d——d psalm-singing cobbler, as sure as
I’m a magistrate of this county I’ll commit you!” The fellow shrunk back,
and my lord retreated with all the honours of the day. But when the little
flurry caused by the scene was over, and the flush passed off his face, he
relapsed into his usual languor, trifled with his little dog, and yawned
when my lady spoke to him.
This mob was one of many thousands that were going about the country at
that time, huzzaing for the acquittal of the seven bishops who had been
tried just then, and about whom little Harry Esmond at that time knew
scarce anything. It was assizes at Hexton, and there was a great meeting
of the gentry at the “Bell”; and my lord’s people had their new liveries
on, and Harry a little suit of blue and silver, which he wore upon
occasions of state; and the gentlefolks came round and talked to my lord;
and a judge in a red gown, who seemed a very great personage, especially
complimented him and my lady, who was mighty grand. Harry remembers her
train borne up by her gentlewoman. There was an assembly and ball at the
great room at the “Bell”, and other young gentlemen of the county families
looked on as he did. One of them jeered him for his black eye, which was
swelled by the potato, and another called him a bastard, on which he and
Harry fell to fisticuffs. My lord’s cousin, Colonel Esmond of Walcote, was
there, and separated the two lads, a great tall gentleman with a handsome,
good-natured face. The boy did not know how nearly in after-life he should
be allied to Colonel Esmond, and how much kindness he should have to owe
him.
There was little love between the two families. My lady used not to spare
Colonel Esmond in talking of him, for reasons which have been hinted
already; but about which, at his tender age, Henry Esmond could be
expected to know nothing.
Very soon afterwards my lord and lady went to London with Mr. Holt,
leaving, however, the page behind them. The little man had the great house
of Castlewood to himself; or between him and the housekeeper, Mrs.
Worksop, an old lady who was a kinswoman of the family in some distant
way, and a Protestant, but a stanch Tory and king’s-man, as all the
Esmonds were. He used to go to school to Dr. Tusher when he was at home,
though the doctor was much occupied too. There was a great stir and
commotion everywhere, even in the little quiet village of Castlewood,
whither a party of people came from the town, who would have broken
Castlewood Chapel windows, but the village people turned out, and even old
Sievewright, the republican blacksmith, along with them: for my lady,
though she was a Papist, and had many odd ways, was kind to the tenantry,
and there was always a plenty of beef, and blankets, and medicine for the
poor at Castlewood Hall.
A kingdom was changing hands whilst my lord and lady were away. King James
was flying, the Dutchmen were coming; awful stories about them and the
Prince of Orange used old Mrs. Worksop to tell to the idle little page.
He liked the solitude of the great house very well; he had all the
play-books to read, and no Father Holt to whip him, and a hundred childish
pursuits and pastimes, without doors and within, which made this time very
pleasant.
Chapter V. My Superiors Are Engaged In Plots For The Restoration Of King
James II
Not having been able to sleep, for thinking of some lines for eels which
he had placed the night before, the lad was lying in his little bed,
waiting for the hour when the gate would be open, and he and his comrade,
Job Lockwood, the porter’s son, might go to the pond and see what fortune
had brought them. At daybreak Job was to awaken him, but his own eagerness
for the sport had served as a réveille long since—so long, that it seemed
to him as if the day never would come.
It might have been four o’clock when he heard the door of the opposite
chamber, the chaplain’s room, open, and the voice of a man coughing in the
passage. Harry jumped up, thinking for certain it was a robber, or hoping
perhaps for a ghost, and, flinging open his own door, saw before him the
chaplain’s door open, and a light inside, and a figure standing in the
doorway, in the midst of a great smoke which issued from the room.
“Who’s there?” cried out the boy, who was of a good spirit.
“_Silentium!_” whispered the other; “’tis I, my boy!” and, holding his
hand out, Harry had no difficulty in recognizing his master and friend,
Father Holt. A curtain was over the window of the chaplain’s room that
looked to the court, and Harry saw that the smoke came from a great flame
of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the chaplain’s
room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was
charmed to see his tutor, the father continued the burning of his papers,
drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which Harry had
never seen before.
Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad’s attention fixed at once on this
hole. “That is right, Harry,” he said; “faithful little famuli see all and
say nothing. You are faithful, I know.”
“I know I would go to the stake for you,” said Harry.
“I don’t want your head,” said the father, patting it kindly; “all you
have to do is to hold your tongue. Let us burn these papers, and say
nothing to anybody. Should you like to read them?”
Harry Esmond blushed, and held down his head; he _had_ looked as the fact
was, and without thinking, at the paper before him; and though he had seen
it, could not understand a word of it, the letters being quite clear
enough, but quite without meaning. They burned the papers, beating down
the ashes in a brazier, so that scarce any traces of them remained.
Harry had been accustomed to see Father Holt in more dresses than one; it
not being safe, or worth the danger, for Popish ecclesiastics to wear
their proper dress; and he was, in consequence, in no wise astonished that
the priest should now appear before him in a riding dress, with large buff
leather boots, and a feather to his hat, plain, but such as gentlemen
wore.
“You know the secret of the cupboard,” said he, laughing, “and must be
prepared for other mysteries;” and he opened—but not a secret cupboard
this time—only a wardrobe, which he usually kept locked, and from which he
now took out two or three dresses and perukes of different colours, and a
couple of swords of a pretty make (Father Holt was an expert practitioner
with the small sword, and every day, whilst he was at home, he and his
pupil practised this exercise, in which the lad became a very great
proficient), a military coat and cloak, and a farmer’s smock, and placed
them in the large hole over the mantelpiece from which the papers had been
taken.
“If they miss the cupboard,” he said, “they will not find these; if they
find them, they’ll tell no tales, except that Father Holt wore more suits
of clothes than one. All Jesuits do. You know what deceivers we are,
Harry.”
Harry was alarmed at the notion that his friend was about to leave him;
but “No”, the priest said; “I may very likely come back with my lord in a
few days. We are to be tolerated; we are not to be persecuted. But they
may take a fancy to pay a visit at Castlewood ere our return; and, as
gentlemen of my cloth are suspected, they might choose to examine my
papers, which concern nobody—at least, not them.” And to this day, whether
the papers in cipher related to politics, or to the affairs of that
mysterious society whereof Father Holt was a member, his pupil, Harry
Esmond, remains in entire ignorance.
The rest of his goods, his small wardrobe, &c., Holt left untouched on his
shelves and in his cupboard, taking down—with a laugh, however—and
flinging into the brazier, where he only half burned them, some
theological treatises which he had been writing against the English
divines. “And now,” said he, “Henry, my son, you may testify, with a safe
conscience, that you saw me burning Latin sermons the last time I was here
before I went away to London; and it will be daybreak directly, and I must
be away before Lockwood is stirring.”
“Will not Lockwood let you out, sir?” Esmond asked. Holt laughed; he was
never more gay or good-humoured than when in the midst of action or
danger.
“Lockwood knows nothing of my being here, mind you,” he said; “nor would
you, you little wretch, had you slept better. You must forget that I have
been here; and now farewell. Close the door, and go to your own room, and
don’t come out till—stay, why should you not know one secret more? I know
you will never betray me.”
In the chaplain’s room were two windows; the one looking into the court
facing westwards to the fountain; the other, a small casement strongly
barred, and looking on to the green in front of the Hall. This window was
too high to reach from the ground; but, mounting on a buffet which stood
beneath it, Father Holt showed me how, by pressing on the base of the
window, the whole framework of lead, glass, and iron stanchions, descended
into a cavity worked below, from which it could be drawn and restored to
its usual place from without; a broken pane being purposely open to admit
the hand which was to work upon the spring of the machine.
“When I am gone,” Father Holt said, “you may push away the buffet, so that
no one may fancy that an exit has been made that way; lock the door; place
the key—where shall we put the key?—under _Chrysostom_ on the book-shelf;
and if any ask for it, say I keep it there, and told you where to find it,
if you had need to go to my room. The descent is easy down the wall into
the ditch; and so, once more farewell, until I see thee again, my dear
son.” And with this the intrepid father mounted the buffet with great
agility and briskness, stepped across the window, lifting up the bars and
framework again from the other side, and only leaving room for Harry
Esmond to stand on tiptoe and kiss his hand before the casement closed,
the bars fixing as firm as ever seemingly in the stone arch overhead. When
Father Holt next arrived at Castlewood, it was by the public gate on
horseback; and he never so much as alluded to the existence of the private
issue to Harry, except when he had need of a private messenger from
within, for which end, no doubt, he had instructed his young pupil in the
means of quitting the Hall.
Esmond, young as he was, would have died sooner than betray his friend and
master, as Mr. Holt well knew; for he had tried the boy more than once,
putting temptations in his way, to see whether he would yield to them and
confess afterwards, or whether he would resist them, as he did sometimes,
or whether he would lie, which he never did. Holt instructing the boy on
this point, however, that if to keep silence is not to lie, as it
certainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a negation—and
therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice or your friend, and
in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to either, is not criminal,
but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as lawful a way as the other of
eluding a wrongful demand. For instance (says he), suppose a good citizen,
who had seen his Majesty take refuge there, had been asked, “Is King
Charles up that oak-tree?” His duty would have been not to say, Yes—so
that the Cromwellians should seize the king and murder him like his
father—but No; his Majesty being private in the tree, and therefore not to
be seen there by loyal eyes: all which instruction, in religion and
morals, as well as in the rudiments of the tongues and sciences, the boy
took eagerly and with gratitude from his tutor. When, then, Holt was gone,
and told Harry not to see him, it was as if he had never been. And he had
this answer pat when he came to be questioned a few days after.
The Prince of Orange was then at Salisbury, as young Esmond learned from
seeing Doctor Tusher in his best cassock (though the roads were muddy, and
he never was known to wear his silk, only his stuff one, a-horseback),
with a great orange cockade in his broad-leafed hat, and Nahum, his clerk,
ornamented with a like decoration. The doctor was walking up and down, in
front of his parsonage, when little Esmond saw him, and heard him say he
was going to pay his duty to his highness the prince, as he mounted his
pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The village people had orange
cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith’s laughing daughter pinned one
into Harry’s old hat, which he tore out indignantly when they bid him to
cry, “God save the Prince of Orange and the Protestant religion!” but the
people only laughed, for they liked the boy in the village, where his
solitary condition moved the general pity, and where he found friendly
welcomes and faces in many houses. Father Holt had many friends there too,
for he not only would fight the blacksmith at theology, never losing his
temper, but laughing the whole time in his pleasant way, but he cured him
of an ague with quinquina, and was always ready with a kind word for any
man that asked it, so that they said in the village ’twas a pity the two
were Papists.
The director and the Vicar of Castlewood agreed very well; indeed, the
former was a perfectly bred gentleman, and it was the latter’s business to
agree with everybody. Doctor Tusher and the lady’s maid, his spouse, had a
boy who was about the age of little Esmond; and there was such a
friendship between the lads, as propinquity and tolerable kindness and
good humour on either side would be pretty sure to occasion. Tom Tusher
was sent off early however to a school in London, whither his father took
him and a volume of sermons in the first year of the reign of King James;
and Tom returned but once, a year afterwards, to Castlewood for many years
of his scholastic and collegiate life. Thus there was less danger to Tom
of a perversion of his faith by the director, who scarce ever saw him,
than there was to Harry, who constantly was in the vicar’s company; but as
long as Harry’s religion was his Majesty’s, and my lord’s, and my lady’s,
the doctor said gravely, it should not be for him to disturb or disquiet
him: it was far from him to say that his Majesty’s Church was not a branch
of the Catholic Church; upon which Father Holt used, according to his
custom, to laugh and say, that the Holy Church throughout all the world,
and the noble army of martyrs, were very much obliged to the doctor.
It was while Dr. Tusher was away at Salisbury that there came a troop of
dragoons with orange scarfs, and quartered in Castlewood, and some of them
came up to the Hall, where they took possession, robbing nothing however
beyond the hen-house and the beer-cellar; and only insisting upon going
through the house and looking for papers. The first room they asked to
look at was Father Holt’s room, of which Harry Esmond brought the key, and
they opened the drawers and the cupboards, and tossed over the papers and
clothes—but found nothing except his books and clothes, and the vestments
in a box by themselves, with which the dragoons made merry, to Harry
Esmond’s horror. And to the questions which the gentleman put to Harry, he
replied, that Father Holt was a very kind man to him, and a very learned
man, and Harry supposed would tell him none of his secrets if he had any.
He was about eleven years old at this time, and looked as innocent as boys
of his age.
The family were away more than six months, and when they returned they
were in the deepest state of dejection, for King James had been banished,
the Prince of Orange was on the throne, and the direst persecutions of
those of the Catholic faith were apprehended by my lady, who said she did
not believe that there was a word of truth in the promises of toleration
that Dutch monster made, or in a single word the perjured wretch said. My
lord and lady were in a manner prisoners in their own house; so her
ladyship gave the little page to know, who was by this time growing of an
age to understand what was passing about him, and something of the
characters of the people he lived with.
“We are prisoners,” says she; “in everything but chains, we are prisoners.
Let them come, let them consign me to dungeons, or strike off my head from
this poor little throat” (and she clasped it in her long fingers). “The
blood of the Esmonds will always flow freely for their kings. We are not
like the Churchills—the Judases, who kiss their master and betray him. We
know how to suffer, how even to forgive in the royal cause” (no doubt it
was to that fatal business of losing the place of Groom of the Posset to
which her ladyship alluded, as she did half a dozen times in the day).
“Let the tyrant of Orange bring his rack and his odious Dutch tortures—the
beast! the wretch! I spit upon him and defy him. Cheerfully will I lay
this head upon the block; cheerfully will I accompany my lord to the
scaffold: we will cry, ‘God save King James!’ with our dying breath, and
smile in the face of the executioner.” And she told her page a hundred
times at least of the particulars of the last interview which she had with
his Majesty.
“I flung myself before my liege’s feet,” she said, “at Salisbury. I
devoted myself—my husband—my house, to his cause. Perhaps he remembered
old times, when Isabella Esmond was young and fair; perhaps he recalled
the day when ’twas not _I_ that knelt—at least he spoke to me with a voice
that reminded _me_ of days gone by. ‘Egad!’ said his Majesty, ‘you should
go to the Prince of Orange, if you want anything.’ ‘No, sire,’ I replied,
‘I would not kneel to a usurper; the Esmond that would have served your
Majesty will never be groom to a traitor’s posset.’ The royal exile
smiled, even in the midst of his misfortune; he deigned to raise me with
words of consolation. The viscount, my husband, himself, could not be
angry at the august salute with which he honoured me!”
The public misfortune had the effect of making my lord and his lady better
friends than they ever had been since their courtship. My lord viscount
had shown both loyalty and spirit, when these were rare qualities in the
dispirited party about the king; and the praise he got elevated him not a
little in his wife’s good opinion, and perhaps in his own. He wakened up
from the listless and supine life which he had been leading; was always
riding to and fro in consultation with this friend or that of the king’s;
the page of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his
greater cheerfulness and altered demeanour.
Father Holt came to the Hall constantly, but officiated no longer openly
as chaplain; he was always fetching and carrying: strangers, military and
ecclesiastic (Harry knew the latter though they came in all sorts of
disguises), were continually arriving and departing. My lord made long
absences and sudden reappearances, using sometimes the means of exit which
Father Holt had employed, though how often the little window in the
chaplain’s room let in or let out my lord and his friends, Harry could not
tell. He stoutly kept his promise to the father of not prying, and if at
midnight from his little room he heard noises of persons stirring in the
next chamber, he turned round to the wall and hid his curiosity under his
pillow until it fell asleep. Of course he could not help remarking that
the priest’s journeys were constant, and understanding by a hundred signs
that some active though secret business employed him: what this was may
pretty well be guessed by what soon happened to my lord.
No garrison or watch was put into Castlewood when my lord came back, but a
guard was in the village; and one or other of them was always on the Green
keeping a look-out on our great gate, and those who went out and in.
Lockwood said that at night especially every person who came in or went
out was watched by the outlying sentries. ’Twas lucky that we had a gate
which their worships knew nothing about. My lord and Father Holt must have
made constant journeys at night: once or twice little Harry acted as their
messenger and discreet little aide de camp. He remembers he was bidden to
go into the village with his fishing-rod, enter certain houses, ask for a
drink of water, and tell the good man, “There would be a horse-market at
Newbury next Thursday,” and so carry the same message on to the next house
on his list.
He did not know what the message meant at the time, nor what was
happening: which may as well, however, for clearness’ sake, be explained
here. The Prince of Orange being gone to Ireland, where the king was ready
to meet him with a great army, it was determined that a great rising of
his Majesty’s party should take place in this country: and my lord was to
head the force in our county. Of late he had taken a greater lead in
affairs than before, having the indefatigable Mr. Holt at his elbow, and
my lady viscountess strongly urging him on; and my Lord Sark being in the
Tower a prisoner, and Sir Wilmot Crawley, of Queen’s Crawley, having gone
over to the Prince of Orange’s side—my lord became the most considerable
person in our part of the county for the affairs of the king.
It was arranged that the regiment of Scots Greys and Dragoons, then
quartered at Newbury, should declare for the king on a certain day, when
likewise the gentry affected to his Majesty’s cause were to come in with
their tenants and adherents to Newbury, march upon the Dutch troops at
Reading under Ginckel; and, these overthrown, and their indomitable little
master away in Ireland, ’twas thought that our side might move on London
itself, and a confident victory was predicted for the king.
As these great matters were in agitation, my lord lost his listless manner
and seemed to gain health; my lady did not scold him, Mr. Holt came to and
fro, busy always; and little Harry longed to have been a few inches
taller, that he might draw a sword in this good cause.
One day, it must have been about the month of July, 1690, my lord, in a
great horseman’s coat, under which Harry could see the shining of a steel
breastplate he had on, called little Harry to him, put the hair off the
child’s forehead, and kissed him, and bade God bless him in such an
affectionate way as he never had used before. Father Holt blessed him too,
and then they took leave of my lady viscountess, who came from her
apartment with a pocket-handkerchief to her eyes, and her gentlewoman and
Mrs. Tusher supporting her.
“You are going to—to ride,” says she. “Oh, that I might come too!—but in
my situation I am forbidden horse exercise.”
“We kiss my lady marchioness’s hand,” says Mr. Holt.
“My lord, God speed you!” she said, stepping up and embracing my lord in a
grand manner. “Mr. Holt, I ask your blessing:” and she knelt down for
that, whilst Mrs. Tusher tossed her head up.
Mr. Holt gave the same benediction to the little page, who went down and
held my lord’s stirrups for him to mount; there were two servants waiting
there too—and they rode out of Castlewood gate.
As they crossed the bridge Harry could see an officer in scarlet ride up
touching his hat, and address my lord.
The party stopped, and came to some parley or discussion, which presently
ended, my lord putting his horse into a canter after taking off his hat
and making a bow to the officer who rode alongside him step for step: the
trooper accompanying him, falling back, and riding with my lord’s two men.
They cantered over the Green, and behind the elms (my lord waving his
hand, Harry thought), and so they disappeared.
That evening we had a great panic, the cow-boy coming at milking-time
riding one of our horses, which he had found grazing at the outer park
wall.
All night my lady viscountess was in a very quiet and subdued mood. She
scarce found fault with anybody; she played at cards for six hours; little
page Esmond went to sleep. He prayed for my lord and the good cause before
closing his eyes.
It was quite in the grey of the morning when the porter’s bell rang, and
old Lockwood waking up, let in one of my lord’s servants, who had gone
with him in the morning, and who returned with a melancholy story.
The officer who rode up to my lord had, it appeared, said to him, that it
was his duty to inform his lordship that he was not under arrest, but
under surveillance, and to request him not to ride abroad that day.
My lord replied that riding was good for his health, that if the captain
chose to accompany him he was welcome, and it was then that he made a bow,
and they cantered away together.
When he came on to Wansey Down, my lord all of a sudden pulled up, and the
party came to a halt at the crossway.
“Sir” says he to the officer, “we are four to two; will you be so kind as
to take that road, and leave me to go mine?”
“Your road is mine, my lord,” says the officer.
“Then,” says my lord, but he had no time to say more, for the officer,
drawing a pistol, snapped it at his lordship; as at the same moment Father
Holt, drawing a pistol, shot the officer through the head.
It was done, and the man dead in an instant of time. The orderly, gazing
at the officer, looked scared for a moment, and galloped away for his
life.
“Fire! fire!” cries out Father Holt, sending another shot after the
trooper, but the two servants were too much surprised to use their pieces,
and my lord calling to them to hold their hands, the fellow got away.
“Mr. Holt, _qui pensoit à tout_,” says Blaise, “gets off his horse,
examines the pockets of the dead officer for papers, gives his money to us
two, and says, ‘The wine is drawn, monsieur le marquis,’—why did he say
marquis to monsieur le vicomte?—‘we must drink it.’
“The poor gentleman’s horse was a better one than that I rode,” Blaise
continues; “Mr. Holt bids me get on him, and so I gave a cut to Whitefoot,
and she trotted home. We rode on towards Newbury; we heard firing towards
midday: at two o’clock a horseman comes up to us as we were giving our
cattle water at an inn—and says, All is done. The Ecossois declared an
hour too soon—General Ginckel was down upon them. The whole thing was at
an end.
“ ‘And we’ve shot an officer on duty, and let his orderly escape,’ says my
lord.
“ ‘Blaise,’ says Mr. Holt, writing two lines on his table-book, one for my
lady, and one for you, Master Harry; ‘you must go back to Castlewood, and
deliver these,’ and behold me.”
And he gave Harry the two papers. He read that to himself, which only
said, “Burn the papers in the cupboard, burn this. You know nothing about
anything.” Harry read this, ran upstairs to his mistress’s apartment,
where her gentlewoman slept near to the door, made her bring a light and
wake my lady, into whose hands he gave the paper. She was a wonderful
object to look at in her night attire, nor had Harry ever seen the like.
As soon as she had the paper in her hand, Harry stepped back to the
chaplain’s room, opened the secret cupboard over the fireplace, burned all
the papers in it, and, as he had seen the priest do before, took down one
of his reverence’s manuscript sermons, and half burnt that in the brazier.
By the time the papers were quite destroyed it was daylight. Harry ran
back to his mistress again. Her gentlewoman ushered him again into her
ladyship’s chamber; she told him (from behind her nuptial curtains) to bid
the coach be got ready, and that she would ride away anon.
But the mysteries of her ladyship’s toilet were as awfully long on this
day as on any other, and, long after the coach was ready, my lady was
still attiring herself. And just as the viscountess stepped forth from her
room, ready for departure, young Job Lockwood comes running up from the
village with news that a lawyer, three officers, and twenty or
four-and-twenty soldiers, were marching thence upon the house. Job had but
two minutes the start of them, and, ere he had well told his story, the
troop rode into our courtyard.
Chapter VI. The Issue Of The Plots.—The Death Of Thomas, Third Viscount Of
Castlewood; And The Imprisonment Of His Viscountess
At first my lady was for dying like Mary, Queen of Scots (to whom she
fancied she bore a resemblance in beauty), and, stroking her scraggy neck,
said, “They will find Isabel of Castlewood is equal to her fate.” Her
gentlewoman, Victoire, persuaded her that her prudent course was, as she
could not fly, to receive the troops as though she suspected nothing, and
that her chamber was the best place wherein to await them. So her black
japan casket which Harry was to carry to the coach was taken back to her
ladyship’s chamber, whither the maid and mistress retired. Victoire came
out presently, bidding the page to say her ladyship was ill, confined to
her bed with the rheumatism.
By this time the soldiers had reached Castlewood. Harry Esmond saw them
from the window of the tapestry parlour; a couple of sentinels were posted
at the gate—a half-dozen more walked towards the stable; and some others,
preceded by their commander, and a man in black, a lawyer probably, were
conducted by one of the servants to the stair leading up to the part of
the house which my lord and lady inhabited.
So the captain, a handsome kind man, and the lawyer, came through the
ante-room to the tapestry parlour, and where now was nobody but young
Harry Esmond, the page.
“Tell your mistress, little man,” says the captain kindly, “that we must
speak to her.”
“My mistress is ill abed,” said the page.
“What complaint has she?” asked the captain.
The boy said, “the rheumatism!”
“Rheumatism! that’s a sad complaint,” continues the good-natured captain;
“and the coach is in the yard to fetch the doctor, I suppose?”
“I don’t know,” says the boy.
“And how long has her ladyship been ill?”
“I don’t know,” says the boy.
“When did my lord go away?”
“Yesterday night.”
“With Father Holt?”
“With Mr. Holt.”
“And which way did they travel?” asks the lawyer.
“They travelled without me,” says the page.
“We must see Lady Castlewood.”
“I have orders that nobody goes in to her ladyship—she is sick,” says the
page; but at this moment Victoire came out. “Hush!” says she; and, as if
not knowing that any one was near, “What’s this noise?” says she. “Is this
gentleman the doctor?”
“Stuff! we must see Lady Castlewood,” says the lawyer, pushing by.
The curtains of her ladyship’s room were down, and the chamber dark, and
she was in bed with a nightcap on her head, and propped up by her pillows,
looking none the less ghastly because of the red which was still on her
cheeks, and which she could not afford to forgo.
“Is that the doctor?” she said.
“There is no use with this deception, madam,” Captain Westbury said (for
so he was named). “My duty is to arrest the person of Thomas, Viscount
Castlewood, a nonjuring peer—of Robert Tusher, Vicar of Castlewood—and
Henry Holt, known under various other names and designations, a Jesuit
priest, who officiated as chaplain here in the late king’s time, and is
now at the head of the conspiracy which was about to break out in this
country against the authority of their Majesties King William and Queen
Mary—and my orders are to search the house for such papers or traces of
the conspiracy as may be found here. Your ladyship will please to give me
your keys, and it will be as well for yourself that you should help us, in
every way, in our search.”
“You see, sir, that I have the rheumatism, and cannot move,” said the
lady, looking uncommonly ghastly as she sat up in her bed, where however
she had had her cheeks painted, and a new cap put on, so that she might at
least look her best when the officers came.
“I shall take leave to place a sentinel in the chamber, so that your
ladyship, in case you should wish to rise, may have an arm to lean on,”
Captain Westbury said. “Your woman will show me where I am to look;” and
Madame Victoire, chattering in her half-French and half-English jargon,
opened while the captain examined one drawer after another; but, as Harry
Esmond thought, rather carelessly, with a smile on his face, as if he was
only conducting the examination for form’s sake.
Before one of the cupboards Victoire flung herself down, stretching out
her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, cried, “_Non, jamais, monsieur
l’officier! Jamais!_ I will rather die than let you see this wardrobe.”
But Captain Westbury would open it, still with a smile on his face, which,
when the box was opened, turned into a fair burst of laughter. It
contained—not papers regarding the conspiracy—but my lady’s wigs, washes,
and rouge-pots, and Victoire said men were monsters, as the captain went
on with his perquisition. He tapped the back to see whether or no it was
hollow, and as he thrust his hands into the cupboard, my lady from her bed
called out with a voice that did not sound like that of a very sick woman,
“Is it your commission to insult ladies as well as to arrest gentlemen,
captain?”
“These articles are only dangerous when worn by your ladyship,” the
captain said with a low bow, and a mock grin of politeness. “I have found
nothing which concerns the Government as yet—only the weapons with which
beauty is authorized to kill,” says he, pointing to a wig with his
sword-tip. “We must now proceed to search the rest of the house.”
“You are not going to leave that wretch in the room with me,” cried my
lady, pointing to the soldier.
“What can I do, madam? Somebody you must have to smooth your pillow and
bring your medicine—permit me——”
“Sir!” screamed out my lady—
“Madam, if you are too ill to leave the bed,” the captain then said,
rather sternly, “I must have in four of my men to lift you off in the
sheet: I must examine this bed, in a word; papers may be hidden in a bed
as elsewhere; we know that very well and——”
Here it was her ladyship’s turn to shriek, for the captain, with his fist
shaking the pillows and bolsters, at last came to “burn”, as they say in
the play of forfeits, and wrenching away one of the pillows, said, “Look,
did not I tell you so? Here is a pillow stuffed with paper.”
“Some villain has betrayed us,” cried out my lady, sitting up in the bed,
showing herself full dressed under her night-rail.
“And now your ladyship can move, I am sure; permit me to give you my hand
to rise. You will have to travel for some distance, as far as Hexton
Castle to-night. Will you have your coach? Your woman shall attend you if
you like—and the japan-box?”
“Sir! you don’t strike a _man_ when he is down,” said my lady, with some
dignity: “can you not spare a woman?”
“Your ladyship must please to rise and let me search the bed,” said the
captain; “there is no more time to lose in bandying talk.”
And, without more ado, the gaunt old woman got up. Harry Esmond
recollected to the end of his life that figure, with the brocade dress and
the white night-rail, and the gold-clocked red stockings, and white
red-heeled shoes sitting up in the bed, and stepping down from it. The
trunks were ready packed for departure in her ante-room, and the horses
ready harnessed in the stable: about all which the captain seemed to know,
by information got from some quarter or other; and, whence, Esmond could
make a pretty shrewd guess in after-times, when Dr. Tusher complained that
King William’s Government had basely treated him for services done in that
cause.
And here he may relate, though he was then too young to know all that was
happening, what the papers contained, of which Captain Westbury had made a
seizure, and which papers had been transferred from the japan-box to the
bed when the officers arrived.
There was a list, of gentlemen of the county in Father Holt’s
handwriting—Mr. Freeman’s (King James’s) friends—a similar paper being
found among those of Sir John Fenwick and Mr. Coplestone, who suffered
death for this conspiracy.
There was a patent conferring the title of Marquis of Esmond on my Lord
Castlewood, and the heirs male of his body; his appointment as lord
lieutenant of the county, and major-general.(7)
There were various letters from the nobility and gentry, some ardent and
some doubtful, in the king’s service; and (very luckily for him) two
letters concerning Colonel Francis Esmond; one from Father Holt, which
said, “I have been to see this colonel at his house at Walcote near to
Wells, where he resides since the king’s departure, and pressed him very
eagerly in Mr. Freeman’s cause, showing him the great advantage he would
have by trading with that merchant, offering him large premiums there as
agreed between us. But he says no: he considers Mr. Freeman the head of
the firm, will never trade against him or embark with any other trading
company, but considers his duty was done when Mr. Freeman left England.
This colonel seems to care more for his wife and his beagles than for
affairs. He asked me much about young H. E., ‘that bastard,’ as he called
him: doubting my lord’s intentions respecting him. I reassured him on this
head, stating what I knew of the lad, and our intentions respecting him,
but with regard to Freeman he was inflexible.”
And another letter was from Colonel Esmond to his kinsman, to say that one
Captain Holton had been with him offering him large bribes to join, _you
know who_, and saying that the head of the house of Castlewood was deeply
engaged in that quarter. But for his part he had broke his sword when the
K. left the country, and would never again fight in that quarrel. The P.
of O. was a man, at least, of a noble courage, and his duty and, as he
thought, every Englishman’s, was to keep the country quiet, and the French
out of it: and, in fine, that he would have nothing to do with the scheme.
Of the existence of these two letters and the contents of the pillow,
Colonel Frank Esmond, who became Viscount Castlewood, told Henry Esmond
afterwards, when the letters were shown to his lordship, who congratulated
himself, as he had good reason, that he had not joined in the scheme which
proved so fatal to many concerned in it. But, naturally, the lad knew
little about these circumstances when they happened under his eyes: only
being aware that his patron and his mistress were in some trouble, which
had caused the flight of the one, and the apprehension of the other by the
officers of King William.
The seizure of the papers effected, the gentlemen did not pursue their
further search through Castlewood house very rigorously. They examined Mr.
Holt’s room, being led thither by his pupil, who showed, as the father had
bidden him, the place where the key of his chamber lay, opened the door
for the gentlemen, and conducted them into the room.
When the gentlemen came to the half-burned papers in the brazier, they
examined them eagerly enough, and their young guide was a little amused at
their perplexity.
“What are these?” says one.
“They’re written in a foreign language,” says the lawyer. “What are you
laughing at, little whelp?” adds he, turning round as he saw the boy
smile.
“Mr. Holt said they were sermons,” Harry said, “and bade me to burn them;”
which indeed was true of those papers.
“Sermons, indeed—it’s treason, I would lay a wager,” cries the lawyer.
“Egad! it’s Greek to me,” says Captain Westbury. “Can you read it, little
boy?”
“Yes, sir, a little,” Harry said.
“Then read, and read in English, sir, on your peril,” said the lawyer. And
Harry began to translate:—
“Hath not one of your own writers said, ‘The children of Adam are now
labouring as much as he himself ever did, about the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, shaking the boughs thereof, and seeking the fruit, being
for the most part unmindful of the tree of life.’ O blind generation! ’tis
this tree of knowledge to which the serpent has led you”—and here the boy
was obliged to stop, the rest of the page being charred by the fire: and
asked of the lawyer—“Shall I go on, sir?”
The lawyer said—“This boy is deeper than he seems: who knows that he is
not laughing at us?”
“Let’s have in Dick the Scholar,” cried Captain Westbury, laughing; and he
called to a trooper out of the window—“Ho, Dick, come in here and
construe.”
A thick-set soldier, with a square good-humoured face, came in at the
summons, saluting his officer.
“Tell us what is this, Dick,” says the lawyer.
“My name is Steele, sir,” says the soldier. “I may be Dick for my friends,
but I don’t name gentlemen of your cloth amongst them.”
“Well then, Steele.”
“Mr. Steele, sir, if you please. When you address a gentleman of his
Majesty’s Horse Guards, be pleased not to be so familiar.”
“I didn’t know, sir,” said the lawyer.
“How should you? I take it you are not accustomed to meet with gentlemen,”
says the trooper.
“Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper,” says Westbury.
“’Tis Latin,” says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting his officer,
“and from a sermon of Mr. Cudworth’s,” and he translated the words pretty
much as Henry Esmond had rendered them.
“What a young scholar you are,” says the captain to the boy.
“Depend on’t, he knows more than he tells,” says the lawyer. “I think we
will pack him off in the coach with old Jezebel.”
“For construing a bit of Latin?” said the captain very good-naturedly.
“I would as lief go there as anywhere,” Harry Esmond said, simply, “for
there is nobody to care for me.”
There must have been something touching in the child’s voice, or in this
description of his solitude—for the captain looked at him very
good-naturedly, and the trooper, called Steele, put his hand kindly on the
lad’s head, and said some words in the Latin tongue.
“What does he say?” says the lawyer.
“Faith, ask Dick himself,” cried Captain Westbury.
“I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had learned to
succour the miserable, and that’s not _your_ trade, Mr. Sheepskin,” said
the trooper.
“You had better leave Dick the Scholar alone, Mr. Corbet,” the captain
said. And Harry Esmond, always touched by a kind face and kind word, felt
very grateful to this good-natured champion.
The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach; and the countess and
Victoire came down and were put into the vehicle. This woman, who
quarrelled with Harry Esmond all day, was melted at parting with him, and
called him “dear angel”, and “poor infant”, and a hundred other names.
The viscountess, giving him her lean hand to kiss, bade him always be
faithful to the house of Esmond. “If evil should happen to my lord,” says
she, “his _successor_ I trust will be found, and give you protection.
Situated as I am, they will not dare wreak their vengeance on me _now_.”
And she kissed a medal she wore with great fervour, and Henry Esmond knew
not in the least what her meaning was; but hath since learned that, old as
she was, she was for ever expecting, by the good offices of saints and
relics, to have an heir to the title of Esmond.
Harry Esmond was too young to have been introduced into the secrets of
politics in which his patrons were implicated; for they put but few
questions to the boy (who was little of stature, and looked much younger
than his age), and such questions as they put he answered cautiously
enough, and professing even more ignorance than he had, for which his
examiners willingly enough gave him credit. He did not say a word about
the window or the cupboard over the fireplace; and these secrets quite
escaped the eyes of the searchers.
So then my lady was consigned to her coach, and sent off to Hexton, with
her woman and the man of law to bear her company, a couple of troopers
riding on either side of the coach. And Harry was left behind at the Hall,
belonging as it were to nobody, and quite alone in the world. The captain
and a guard of men remained in possession there; and the soldiers, who
were very good-natured and kind, ate my lord’s mutton and drank his wine,
and made themselves comfortable, as they well might do, in such pleasant
quarters.
The captains had their dinner served in my lord’s tapestry parlour, and
poor little Harry thought his duty was to wait upon Captain Westbury’s
chair, as his custom had been to serve his lord when he sat there.
After the departure of the countess, Dick the Scholar took Harry Esmond
under his special protection, and would examine him in his humanities, and
talk to him both of French and Latin, in which tongues the lad found, and
his new friend was willing enough to acknowledge, that he was even more
proficient than Scholar Dick. Hearing that he had learned them from a
Jesuit, in the praise of whom and whose goodness Harry was never tired of
speaking, Dick, rather to the boy’s surprise, who began to have an early
shrewdness, like many children bred up alone, showed a great deal of
theological science, and knowledge of the points at issue between the two
Churches; so that he and Harry would have hours of controversy together,
in which the boy was certainly worsted by the arguments of this singular
trooper. “I am no common soldier,” Dick would say, and indeed it was easy
to see by his learning, breeding, and many accomplishments, that he was
not. “I am of one of the most ancient families in the Empire; I have had
my education at a famous school, and a famous university; I learned my
first rudiments of Latin near to Smithfield, in London, where the martyrs
were roasted.”
“You hanged as many of ours,” interposed Harry; “and, for the matter of
persecution, Father Holt told me that a young gentleman of Edinburgh,
eighteen years of age, student at the college there, was hanged for heresy
only last year, though he recanted, and solemnly asked pardon for his
errors.”
“Faith! there has been too much persecution on both sides: but ’twas you
taught us.”
“Nay, ’twas the pagans began it,” cried the lad, and began to instance a
number of saints of the Church, from the Protomartyr downwards—“this one’s
fire went out under him: that one’s oil cooled in the cauldron: at a third
holy head the executioner chopped three times and it would not come off.
Show us martyrs in _your_ Church for whom such miracles have been done.”
“Nay,” says the trooper gravely, “the miracles of the first three
centuries belong to my Church as well as yours, Master Papist,” and then
added, with something of a smile upon his countenance, and a queer look at
Harry—“And yet, my little catechizer, I have sometimes thought about those
miracles, that there was not much good in them, since the victim’s head
always finished by coming off at the third or fourth chop, and the
cauldron, if it did not boil one day, boiled the next. Howbeit, in our
times, the Church has lost that questionable advantage of respites. There
never was a shower to put out Ridley’s fire, nor an angel to turn the edge
of Campion’s axe. The rack tore the limbs of Southwell the Jesuit and
Sympson the Protestant alike. For faith, everywhere multitudes die
willingly enough. I have read in Monsieur Rycaut’s _History of the Turks_,
of thousands of Mahomet’s followers rushing upon death in battle as upon
certain Paradise; and in the Great Mogul’s dominions people fling
themselves by hundreds under the cars of the idols annually, and the
widows burn themselves on their husbands’ bodies, as ’tis well known. ’Tis
not the dying for a faith that’s so hard, Master Harry—every man of every
nation has done that—’tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know
to my cost,” he added, with a sigh. “And ah!” he added, “my poor lad, I am
not strong enough to convince thee by my life—though to die for my
religion would give me the greatest of joys—but I had a dear friend in
Magdalen College in Oxford; I wish Joe Addison were here to convince thee,
as he quickly could—for I think he’s a match for the whole College of
Jesuits; and what’s more, in his life too. In that very sermon of Dr.
Cudworth’s which your priest was quoting from, and which suffered
martyrdom in the brazier,” Dick added, with a smile, “I had a thought of
wearing the black coat (but was ashamed of my life you see, and took to
this sorry red one)—I have often thought of Joe Addison—Doctor Cudworth
says, ‘A good conscience is the best looking-glass of Heaven’—and there’s
a serenity in my friend’s face which always reflects it—I wish you could
see him, Harry.”
“Did he do you a great deal of good?” asked the lad, simply.
“He might have done,” said the other—“at least he taught me to see and
approve better things. ’Tis my own fault, _deteriora sequi_.”
“You seem very good,” the boy said.
“I’m not what I seem, alas!” answered the trooper—and indeed, as it turned
out, poor Dick told the truth—for that very night, at supper in the hall,
where the gentlemen of the troop took their repasts, and passed most part
of their days dicing and smoking of tobacco, and singing and cursing, over
the Castlewood ale—Harry Esmond found Dick the Scholar in a woful state of
drunkenness. He hiccuped out a sermon; and his laughing companions bade
him sing a hymn, on which Dick, swearing he would run the scoundrel
through the body who insulted his religion, made for his sword, which was
hanging on the wall, and fell down flat on the floor under it, saying to
Harry, who ran forward to help him, “Ah, little Papist, I wish Joseph
Addison was here!”
Though the troopers of the king’s Life Guards were all gentlemen, yet the
rest of the gentlemen seemed ignorant and vulgar boors to Harry Esmond,
with the exception of this good-natured Corporal Steele the Scholar, and
Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant, who were always kind to the lad.
They remained for some weeks or months encamped in Castlewood, and Harry
learned from them, from time to time, how the lady at Hexton Castle was
treated, and the particulars of her confinement there. ’Tis known that
King William was disposed to deal very leniently with the gentry who
remained faithful to the old king’s cause; and no prince usurping a crown,
as his enemies said he did (righteously taking it as I think now), ever
caused less blood to be shed. As for women-conspirators, he kept spies on
the least dangerous, and locked up the others. Lady Castlewood had the
best rooms in Hexton Castle, and the gaoler’s garden to walk in; and
though she repeatedly desired to be led out to execution, like Mary Queen
of Scots, there never was any thought of taking her painted old head off,
or any desire to do aught but keep her person in security.
And it appeared she found that some were friends in her misfortune, whom
she had, in her prosperity, considered as her worst enemies. Colonel
Francis Esmond, my lord’s cousin and her ladyship’s, who had married the
Dean of Winchester’s daughter, and, since King James’s departure out of
England, had lived not very far away from Hexton town, hearing of his
kinswoman’s strait, and being friends with Colonel Brice, commanding for
King William in Hexton, and with the Church dignitaries there, came to
visit her ladyship in prison, offering to his uncle’s daughter any
friendly services which lay in his power. And he brought his lady and
little daughter to see the prisoner, to the latter of whom, a child of
great beauty, and many winning ways, the old viscountess took not a little
liking, although between her ladyship and the child’s mother there was
little more love than formerly. There are some injuries which women never
forgive one another; and Madam Francis Esmond, in marrying her cousin, had
done one of those irretrievable wrongs to Lady Castlewood. But as she was
now humiliated, and in misfortune, Madam Francis could allow a truce to
her enmity, and could be kind for a while, at least, to her husband’s
discarded mistress. So the little Beatrix, her daughter, was permitted
often to go and visit the imprisoned viscountess, who, in so far as the
child and its father were concerned, got to abate in her anger towards
that branch of the Castlewood family. And the letters of Colonel Esmond
coming to light, as has been said, and his conduct being known to the
king’s council, the colonel was put in a better position with the existing
Government than he had ever before been; any suspicions regarding his
loyalty were entirely done away; and so he was enabled to be of more
service to his kinswoman than he could otherwise have been.
And now there befell an event by which this lady recovered her liberty,
and the house of Castlewood got a new owner, and fatherless little Harry
Esmond a new and most kind protector and friend. Whatever that secret was
which Harry was to hear from my lord, the boy never heard it; for that
night when Father Holt arrived, and carried my lord away with him, was the
last on which Harry ever saw his patron. What happened to my lord may be
briefly told here. Having found the horses at the place where they were
lying, my lord and Father Holt rode together to Chatteris, where they had
temporary refuge with one of the father’s penitents in that city; but the
pursuit being hot for them, and the reward for the apprehension of one or
the other considerable, it was deemed advisable that they should separate;
and the priest betook himself to other places of retreat known to him,
whilst my lord passed over from Bristol into Ireland, in which kingdom
King James had a Court and an army. My lord was but a small addition to
this; bringing, indeed, only his sword and the few pieces in his pocket;
but the king received him with some kindness and distinction in spite of
his poor plight, confirmed him in his new title of marquis, gave him a
regiment, and promised him further promotion. But titles or promotion were
not to benefit him now. My lord was wounded at the fatal battle of the
Boyne, flying from which field (long after his master had set him an
example), he lay for a while concealed in the marshy country near to the
town of Trim, and more from catarrh and fever caught in the bogs than from
the steel of the enemy in the battle, sank and died. May the earth lie
light upon Thomas of Castlewood! He who writes this must speak in charity,
though this lord did him and his two grievous wrongs: for one of these he
would have made amends, perhaps, had life been spared him; but the other
lay beyond his power to repair, though ’tis to be hoped that a greater
Power than a priest has absolved him of it. He got the comfort of this
absolution, too, such as it was: a priest of Trim writing a letter to my
lady to inform her of this calamity.
But in those days letters were slow of travelling, and our priest’s took
two months or more on its journey from Ireland to England: where, when it
did arrive, it did not find my lady at her own house; she was at the
king’s house of Hexton Castle when the letter came to Castlewood, but it
was opened for all that by the officer in command there.
Harry Esmond well remembered the receipt of this letter, which Lockwood
brought in as Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant were on the green
playing at bowls, young Esmond looking on at the sport, or reading his
book in the arbour.
“Here’s news for Frank Esmond,” says Captain Westbury; “Harry, did you
ever see Colonel Esmond?” And Captain Westbury looked very hard at the boy
as he spoke.
Harry said he had seen him but once when he was at Hexton, at the ball
there.
“And did he say anything?”
“He said what I don’t care to repeat,” Harry answered. For he was now
twelve years of age: he knew what his birth was and the disgrace of it;
and he felt no love towards the man who had most likely stained his
mother’s honour and his own.
“Did you love my Lord Castlewood?”
“I wait until I know my mother, sir, to say,” the boy answered, his eyes
filling with tears.
“Something has happened to Lord Castlewood,” Captain Westbury said, in a
vary grave tone—“something which must happen to us all. He is dead of a
wound received at the Boyne, fighting for King James.”
“I am glad my lord fought for the right cause,” the boy said.
“It was better to meet death on the field like a man, than face it on
Tower Hill, as some of them may,” continued Mr. Westbury. “I hope he has
made some testament, or provided for thee somehow. This letter says, he
recommends _unicum filium suum dilectissimum_ to his lady. I hope he has
left you more than that.”
Harry did not know, he said. He was in the hands of Heaven and Fate; but
more lonely now, as it seemed to him, than he had been all the rest of his
life; and that night, as he lay in his little room which he still
occupied, the boy thought with many a pang of shame and grief of his
strange and solitary condition:—how he had a father and no father; a
nameless mother that had been brought to ruin, perhaps, by that very
father whom Harry could only acknowledge in secret and with a blush, and
whom he could neither love nor revere. And he sickened to think how Father
Holt, a stranger, and two or three soldiers, his acquaintances of the last
six weeks, were the only friends he had in the great wide world, where he
was now quite alone. The soul of the boy was full of love, and he longed
as he lay in the darkness there for some one upon whom he could bestow it.
He remembers, and must to his dying day, the thoughts and tears of that
long night, the hours tolling through it. Who was he and what? Why here
rather than elsewhere? I have a mind, he thought, to go to that priest at
Trim, and find out what my father said to him on his death-bed confession.
Is there any child in the whole world so unprotected as I am? Shall I get
up and quit this place, and run to Ireland? With these thoughts and tears
the lad passed that night away until he wept himself to sleep.
The next day, the gentlemen of the guard who had heard what had befallen
him were more than usually kind to the child, especially his friend
Scholar Dick, who told him about his own father’s death, which had
happened when Dick was a child at Dublin, not quite five years of age.
“That was the first sensation of grief,” Dick said, “I ever knew. I
remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat
weeping beside it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the
coffin, and calling papa; on which my mother caught me in her arms, and
told me in a flood of tears papa could not hear me, and would play with me
no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could
never come to us again. And this,” said Dick kindly, “has made me pity all
children ever since; and caused me to love thee, my poor fatherless,
motherless lad. And if ever thou wantest a friend, thou shalt have one in
Richard Steele.”
Harry Esmond thanked him, and was grateful. But what could Corporal Steele
do for him? take him to ride a spare horse, and be servant to the troop?
Though there might be a bar in Harry Esmond’s shield, it was a noble one.
The counsel of the two friends was, that little Harry should stay where he
was, and abide his fortune: so Esmond stayed on at Castlewood, awaiting
with no small anxiety the fate, whatever it was, which was over him.
Chapter VII. I Am Left At Castlewood An Orphan, And Find Most Kind
Protectors There
During the stay of the soldiers in Castlewood, honest Dick the Scholar was
the constant companion of the lonely little orphan lad Harry Esmond: and
they read together, and they played bowls together, and when the other
troopers or their officers, who were free-spoken over their cups (as was
the way of that day, when neither men nor women were over-nice), talked
unbecomingly of their amours and gallantries before the child, Dick, who
very likely was setting the whole company laughing, would stop their jokes
with a _maxima debetur pueris reverentia_, and once offered to lug out
against another trooper called Hulking Tom, who wanted to ask Harry Esmond
a ribald question.
Also, Dick seeing that the child had, as he said, a sensibility above his
years, and a great and praiseworthy discretion, confided to Harry his love
for a vintner’s daughter, near to the Tollyard, Westminster, whom Dick
addressed as Saccharissa in many verses of his composition, and without
whom he said it would be impossible that he could continue to live. He
vowed this a thousand times in a day, though Harry smiled to see the
lovelorn swain had his health and appetite as well as the most heart-whole
trooper in the regiment: and he swore Harry to secrecy too, which vow the
lad religiously kept, until he found that officers and privates were all
taken into Dick’s confidence, and had the benefit of his verses. And it
must be owned likewise that, while Dick was sighing after Saccharissa in
London, he had consolations in the country; for there came a wench out of
Castlewood village who had washed his linen, and who cried sadly when she
heard he was gone: and without paying her bill too, which Harry Esmond
took upon himself to discharge by giving the girl a silver pocket-piece,
which Scholar Dick had presented to him, when, with many embraces and
prayers for his prosperity, Dick parted from him, the garrison of
Castlewood being ordered away. Dick the Scholar said he would never forget
his young friend, nor indeed did he: and Harry was sorry when the kind
soldiers vacated Castlewood, looking forward with no small anxiety (for
care and solitude had made him thoughtful beyond his years) to his fate
when the new lord and lady of the house came to live there. He had lived
to be past twelve years old now; and had never had a friend, save this
wild trooper perhaps, and Father Holt; and had a fond and affectionate
heart, tender to weakness, that would fain attach itself to somebody, and
did not seem at rest until it had found a friend who would take charge of
it.
The instinct which led Henry Esmond to admire and love the gracious
person, the fair apparition of whose beauty and kindness had so moved him
when he first beheld her, became soon a devoted affection and passion of
gratitude, which entirely filled his young heart, that as yet, except in
the case of dear Father Holt, had had very little kindness for which to be
thankful. _O Dea certè_, thought he, remembering the lines out of the
_Aeneis_ which Mr. Holt had taught him. There seemed, as the boy thought,
in every look or gesture of this fair creature, an angelical softness and
bright pity—in motion or repose she seemed gracious alike; the tone of her
voice, though she uttered words ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that
amounted almost to anguish. It cannot be called love, that a lad of twelve
years of age, little more than a menial, felt for an exalted lady, his
mistress: but it was worship. To catch her glance, to divine her errand
and run on it before she had spoken it; to watch, to follow, adore her;
became the business of his life. Meanwhile, as is the way often, his idol
had idols of her own, and never thought of or suspected the admiration of
her little pigmy adorer.
My lady had on her side her three idols: first and foremost, Jove and
supreme ruler, was her lord, Harry’s patron, the good Viscount of
Castlewood. All wishes of his were laws with her. If he had a headache,
she was ill. If he frowned, she trembled. If he joked, she smiled and was
charmed. If he went a-hunting, she was always at the window to see him
ride away, her little son crowing on her arm, or on the watch till his
return. She made dishes for his dinner: spiced his wine for him: made the
toast for his tankard at breakfast: hushed the house when he slept in his
chair, and watched for a look when he woke. If my lord was not a little
proud of his beauty, my lady adored it. She clung to his arm as he paced
the terrace, her two fair little hands clasped round his great one; her
eyes were never tired of looking in his face and wondering at its
perfection. Her little son was his son, and had his father’s look and
curly brown hair. Her daughter Beatrix was his daughter, and had his
eyes—were there ever such beautiful eyes in the world? All the house was
arranged so as to bring him ease and give him pleasure. She liked the
small gentry round about to come and pay him court, never caring for
admiration for herself; those who wanted to be well with the lady must
admire him. Not regarding her dress, she would wear a gown to rags,
because he had once liked it: and, if he brought her a brooch or a ribbon,
would prefer it to all the most costly articles of her wardrobe.
My lord went to London every year for six weeks, and the family being too
poor to appear at Court with any figure, he went alone. It was not until
he was out of sight that her face showed any sorrow: and what a joy when
he came back! What preparation before his return! The fond creature had
his arm-chair at the chimney-side—delighting to put the children in it,
and look at them there. Nobody took his place at the table; but his silver
tankard stood there as when my lord was present.
A pretty sight it was to see, during my lord’s absence, or on those many
mornings when sleep or headache kept him abed, this fair young lady of
Castlewood, her little daughter at her knee, and her domestics gathered
round her reading the Morning Prayer of the English Church. Esmond long
remembered how she looked and spoke kneeling reverently before the sacred
book, the sun shining upon her golden hair until it made a halo round
about her. A dozen of the servants of the house kneeled in a line opposite
their mistress; for awhile Harry Esmond kept apart from these mysteries,
but Doctor Tusher showing him that the prayers read were those of the
Church of all ages, and the boy’s own inclination prompting him to be
always as near as he might to his mistress, and to think all things she
did right, from listening to the prayers in the antechamber, he came
presently to kneel down with the rest of the household in the parlour; and
before a couple of years my lady had made a thorough convert. Indeed, the
boy loved his catechizer so much that he would have subscribed to anything
she bade him, and was never tired of listening to her fond discourse and
simple comments upon the book, which she read to him in a voice of which
it was difficult to resist the sweet persuasion and tender appealing
kindness. This friendly controversy, and the intimacy which it occasioned,
bound the lad more fondly than ever to his mistress. The happiest period
of all his life was this; and the young mother, with her daughter and son,
and the orphan lad whom she protected, read and worked and played, and
were children together. If the lady looked forward—as what fond woman does
not?—towards the future, she had no plans from which Harry Esmond was left
out; and a thousand and a thousand times in his passionate and impetuous
way he vowed that no power should separate him from his mistress, and only
asked for some chance to happen by which he might show his fidelity to
her. Now, at the close of his life, as he sits and recalls in tranquillity
the happy and busy scenes of it, he can think, not ungratefully, that he
has been faithful to that early vow. Such a life is so simple that years
may be chronicled in a few lines. But few men’s life-voyages are destined
to be all prosperous; and this calm of which we are speaking was soon to
come to an end.
As Esmond grew, and observed for himself, he found of necessity much to
read and think of outside that fond circle of kinsfolk who had admitted
him to join hand with them. He read more books than they cared to study
with him; was alone in the midst of them many a time, and passed nights
over labours, futile perhaps, but in which they could not join him. His
dear mistress divined his thoughts with her usual jealous watchfulness of
affection: began to forebode a time when he would escape from his
home-nest; and, at his eager protestations to the contrary, would only
sigh and shake her head. Before those fatal decrees in life are executed,
there are always secret previsions and warning omens. When everything yet
seems calm, we are aware that the storm is coming. Ere the happy days were
over, two at least of that home-party felt that they were drawing to a
close; and were uneasy, and on the look-out for the cloud which was to
obscure their calm.
’Twas easy for Harry to see, however much his lady persisted in obedience
and admiration for her husband, that my lord tired of his quiet life, and
grew weary, and then testy, at those gentle bonds with which his wife
would have held him. As they say the Grand Lama of Thibet is very much
fatigued by his character of divinity, and yawns on his altar as his
bonzes kneel and worship him, many a home-god grows heartily sick of the
reverence with which his family devotees pursue him, and sighs for freedom
and for his old life, and to be off the pedestal on which his dependants
would have him sit for ever, whilst they adore him, and ply him with
flowers, and hymns, and incense, and flattery;—so, after a few years of
his marriage, my honest Lord Castlewood began to tire; all the high-flown
raptures and devotional ceremonies with which his wife, his chief
priestess, treated him, first sent him to sleep, and then drove him out of
doors; for the truth must be told, that my lord was a jolly gentleman,
with very little of the august or divine in his nature, though his fond
wife persisted in revering it—and, besides, he had to pay a penalty for
this love, which persons of his disposition seldom like to defray: and, in
a word, if he had a loving wife, had a very jealous and exacting one. Then
he wearied of this jealousy: then he broke away from it; then came, no
doubt, complaints and recriminations; then, perhaps, promises of amendment
not fulfilled; then upbraidings not the more pleasant because they were
silent, and only sad looks and tearful eyes conveyed them. Then, perhaps,
the pair reached that other stage which is not uncommon in married life,
when the woman perceives that the god of the honeymoon is a god no more;
only a mortal like the rest of us—and so she looks into her heart, and lo!
_vacuae sedes et inania arcana_. And now, supposing our lady to have a
fine genius and a brilliant wit of her own, and the magic spell and
infatuation removed from her which had led her to worship as a god a very
ordinary mortal—and what follows? They live together, and they dine
together, and they say “my dear” and “my love” as heretofore; but the man
is himself, and the woman herself: that dream of love is over, as
everything else is over in life; as flowers and fury, and griefs and
pleasures, are over.
Very likely the Lady Castlewood had ceased to adore her husband herself
long before she got off her knees, or would allow her household to
discontinue worshipping him. To do him justice, my lord never exacted this
subservience: he laughed and joked, and drank his bottle, and swore when
he was angry, much too familiarly for any one pretending to sublimity; and
did his best to destroy the ceremonial with which his wife chose to
surround him. And it required no great conceit on young Esmond’s part to
see that his own brains were better than his patron’s, who, indeed, never
assumed any airs of superiority over the lad, or over any dependant of
his, save when he was displeased, in which case he would express his mind,
in oaths, very freely; and who, on the contrary, perhaps, spoiled “Parson
Harry”, as he called young Esmond, by constantly praising his parts, and
admiring his boyish stock of learning.
It may seem ungracious in one who has received a hundred favours from his
patron to speak in any but a reverential manner of his elders; but the
present writer has had descendants of his own, whom he has brought up with
as little as possible of the servility at present exacted by parents from
children (under which mask of duty there often lurks indifference,
contempt, or rebellion): and as he would have his grandsons believe or
represent him to be not an inch taller than Nature has made him: so, with
regard to his past acquaintances, he would speak without anger, but with
truth, as far as he knows it, neither extenuating nor setting down aught
in malice.
So long, then, as the world moved according to Lord Castlewood’s wishes,
he was good-humoured enough; of a temper naturally sprightly and easy,
liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, and charmed to receive the
tribute of their laughter. All exercises of the body he could perform to
perfection—shooting at a mark and flying, breaking horses, riding at the
ring, pitching the quoit, playing at all games with great skill. And not
only did he do these things well, but he thought he did them to
perfection; hence he was often tricked about horses, which he pretended to
know better than any jockey; was made to play at ball and billiards by
sharpers who took his money; and came back from London wofully poorer each
time than he went, as the state of his affairs testified, when the sudden
accident came by which his career was brought to an end.
He was fond of the parade of dress, and passed as many hours daily at his
toilette as an elderly coquette. A tenth part of his day was spent in the
brushing of his teeth and the oiling of his hair, which was curling and
brown, and which he did not like to conceal under a periwig, such as
almost everybody of that time wore (we have the liberty of our hair back
now, but powder and pomatum along with it. When, I wonder, will these
monstrous poll-taxes of our age be withdrawn, and men allowed to carry
their colours, black, red, or grey, as nature made them?) And, as he liked
her to be well dressed, his lady spared no pains in that matter to please
him; indeed, she would dress her head or cut it off if he had bidden her.
It was a wonder to young Esmond, serving as page to my lord and lady, to
hear, day after day, to such company as came, the same boisterous stories
told by my lord, at which his lady never failed to smile or hold down her
head, and Doctor Tusher to burst out laughing at the proper point, or cry,
“Fie, my lord, remember my cloth,” but with such a faint show of
resistance, that it only provoked my lord further. Lord Castlewood’s
stories rose by degrees, and became stronger after the ale at dinner and
the bottle afterwards; my lady always taking flight after the very first
glass to Church and King, and leaving the gentlemen to drink the rest of
the toasts by themselves.
And, as Harry Esmond was her page, he also was called from duty at this
time. “My lord has lived in the army and with soldiers,” she would say to
the lad, “amongst whom great licence is allowed. You have had a different
nurture, and I trust these things will change as you grow older; not that
any fault attaches to my lord, who is one of the best and most religious
men in this kingdom.” And very likely she believed so. ’Tis strange what a
man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
And as Esmond has taken truth for his motto, it must be owned, even with
regard to that other angel, his mistress, that she had a fault of
character, which flawed her perfections. With the other sex perfectly
tolerant and kindly, of her own she was invariably jealous, and a proof
that she had this vice is, that though she would acknowledge a thousand
faults that she had not, to this which she had she could never be got to
own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to
Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord,
laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her
foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken at
Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady’s own waiting-woman squinted,
and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion were
ordinary country wenches, to whom Lady Castlewood was kind, as her nature
made her to everybody almost; but as soon as ever she had to do with a
pretty woman, she was cold, retiring, and haughty. The country ladies
found this fault in her; and though the men all admired her, their wives
and daughters complained of her coldness and airs, and said that
Castlewood was pleasanter in Lady Jezebel’s time (as the dowager was
called) than at present. Some few were of my mistress’s side. Old Lady
Blenkinsop Jointure, who had been at Court in King James the First’s time,
always took her side; and so did old Mistress Crookshank, Bishop
Crookshank’s daughter, of Hexton, who, with some more of their like,
pronounced my lady an angel; but the pretty women were not of this mind;
and the opinion of the country was, that my lord was tied to his wife’s
apron-strings, and that she ruled over him.
The second fight which Harry Esmond had, was at fourteen years of age,
with Bryan Hawkshaw, Sir John Hawkshaw’s son, of Bramblebrook, who
advancing this opinion, that my lady was jealous, and henpecked my lord,
put Harry into such a fury, that Harry fell on him, and with such rage,
that the other boy, who was two years older, and by far bigger than he,
had by far the worst of the assault, until it was interrupted by Doctor
Tusher walking out of the dinner room.
Bryan Hawkshaw got up, bleeding at the nose, having, indeed, been
surprised, as many a stronger man might have been, by the fury of the
assault upon him.
“You little bastard beggar!” he said, “I’ll murder you for this!”
And indeed he was big enough.
“Bastard or not,” said the other, grinding his teeth, “I have a couple of
swords, and if you like to meet me, as a man, on the terrace to-night——”
And here the doctor coming up, the colloquy of the young champions ended.
Very likely, big as he was, Hawkshaw did not care to continue a fight with
such a ferocious opponent as this had been.
Chapter VIII. After Good Fortune Comes Evil
Since my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu brought home the custom of inoculation
from Turkey (a perilous practice many deem it, and only a useless rushing
into the jaws of danger), I think the severity of the small-pox, that
dreadful scourge of the world, has somewhat been abated in our part of it;
and remembering in my time hundreds of the young and beautiful who have
been carried to the grave, or have only risen from their pillows
frightfully scarred and disfigured by this malady. Many a sweet face hath
left its roses on the bed, on which this dreadful and withering blight has
laid them. In my early days this pestilence would enter a village and
destroy half its inhabitants: at its approach it may well be imagined not
only the beautiful but the strongest were alarmed, and those fled who
could. One day in the year 1694 (I have good reason to remember it),
Doctor Tusher ran into Castlewood House, with a face of consternation,
saying that the malady had made its appearance at the blacksmith’s house
in the village, and that one of the maids there was down in the small-pox.
The blacksmith, beside his forge and irons for horses, had an alehouse for
men, which his wife kept, and his company sat on benches before the inn
door, looking at the smithy while they drank their beer. Now, there was a
pretty girl at this inn, the landlord’s men called Nancy Sievewright, a
bouncing fresh-looking lass, whose face was as red as the hollyhocks over
the pales of the garden behind the inn. At this time Harry Esmond was a
lad of sixteen, and somehow in his walks and rambles it often happened
that he fell in with Nancy Sievewright’s bonny face; if he did not want
something done at the blacksmith’s he would go and drink ale at the “Three
Castles”, or find some pretext for seeing this poor Nancy. Poor thing,
Harry meant or imagined no harm; and she, no doubt, as little, but the
truth is they were always meeting—in the lanes, or by the brook, or at the
garden-palings, or about Castlewood: it was, “Lord, Mr. Henry!” and “How
do you do, Nancy?” many and many a time in the week. ’Tis surprising the
magnetic attraction which draws people together from ever so far. I blush
as I think of poor Nancy now, in a red bodice and buxom purple cheeks and
a canvas petticoat; and that I devised schemes, and set traps, and made
speeches in my heart, which I seldom had courage to say when in presence
of that humble enchantress, who knew nothing beyond milking a cow, and
opened her black eyes with wonder when I made one of my fine speeches out
of Waller or Ovid. Poor Nancy! from the mist of far-off years thine honest
country face beams out; and I remember thy kind voice as if I had heard it
yesterday.
When Doctor Tusher brought the news that the small-pox was at the “Three
Castles”, whither a tramper, it was said, had brought the malady, Henry
Esmond’s first thought was of alarm for poor Nancy, and then of shame and
disquiet for the Castlewood family, lest he might have brought this
infection; for the truth is that Mr. Harry had been sitting in a back room
for an hour that day, where Nancy Sievewright was with a little brother
who complained of headache, and was lying stupefied and crying, either in
a chair by the corner of the fire, or in Nancy’s lap, or on mine.
Little Lady Beatrix screamed out at Dr. Tusher’s news; and my lord cried
out, “God bless me!” He was a brave man, and not afraid of death in any
shape but this. He was very proud of his pink complexion and fair hair—but
the idea of death by small-pox scared him beyond all other ends. “We will
take the children and ride away to-morrow to Walcote:” this was my lord’s
small house, inherited from his mother, near to Winchester.
“That is the best refuge in case the disease spreads,” said Dr. Tusher.
“’Tis awful to think of it beginning at the alehouse. Half the people of
the village have visited that to-day, or the blacksmith’s, which is the
same thing. My clerk Simons lodges with them—I can never go into my
reading-desk and have that fellow so near me. I won’t have that man near
me.”
“If a parishioner dying in the small-pox sent to you, would you not go?”
asked my lady, looking up from her frame of work, with her calm blue eyes.
“By the Lord, _I_ wouldn’t,” said my lord.
“We are not in a Popish country: and a sick man doth not absolutely need
absolution and confession,” said the doctor. “’Tis true they are a comfort
and a help to him when attainable, and to be administered with hope of
good. But in a case where the life of a parish priest in the midst of his
flock is highly valuable to them, he is not called upon to risk it (and
therewith the lives, future prospects, and temporal, even spiritual
welfare of his own family) for the sake of a single person, who is not
very likely in a condition even to understand the religious message
whereof the priest is the bringer—being uneducated, and likewise stupefied
or delirious by disease. If your ladyship or his lordship, my excellent
good friend and patron, were to take it——”
“God forbid!” cried my lord.
“Amen,” continued Dr. Tusher. “Amen to that prayer, my very good lord! for
your sake I would lay my life down”—and, to judge from the alarmed look of
the doctor’s purple face, you would have thought that that sacrifice was
about to be called for instantly.
To love children, and be gentle with them, was an instinct, rather than a
merit, in Henry Esmond, so much so, that he thought almost with a sort of
shame of his liking for them, and of the softness into which it betrayed
him; and on this day the poor fellow had not only had his young friend,
the milkmaid’s brother, on his knee, but had been drawing pictures, and
telling stories to the little Frank Esmond, who had occupied the same
place for an hour after dinner, and was never tired of Henry’s tales, and
his pictures of soldiers and horses. As luck would have it, Beatrix had
not on that evening taken her usual place, which generally she was glad
enough to have, upon her tutor’s lap. For Beatrix, from the earliest time,
was jealous of every caress which was given to her little brother Frank.
She would fling away even from the maternal arms, if she saw Frank had
been there before her; insomuch that Lady Castlewood was obliged not to
show her love for her son in the presence of the little girl, and embrace
one or the other alone. She would turn pale and red with rage if she
caught signs of intelligence or affection between Frank and his mother;
would sit apart, and not speak for a whole night, if she thought the boy
had a better fruit or a larger cake than hers; would fling away a ribbon
if he had one; and from the earliest age, sitting up in her little chair
by the great fireplace opposite to the corner where Lady Castlewood
commonly sat at her embroidery, would utter infantine sarcasms about the
favour shown to her brother. These, if spoken in the presence of Lord
Castlewood, tickled and amused his humour; he would pretend to love Frank
best, and dandle and kiss him, and roar with laughter at Beatrix’s
jealousy. But the truth is, my lord did not often witness these scenes,
nor very much trouble the quiet fireside at which his lady passed many
long evenings. My lord was hunting all day when the season admitted; he
frequented all the cockfights and fairs in the country, and would ride
twenty miles to see a main fought, or two clowns break their heads at a
cudgelling match; and he liked better to sit in his parlour drinking ale
and punch with Jack and Tom, than in his wife’s drawing-room: whither, if
he came, he brought only too often bloodshot eyes, a hiccuping voice, and
a reeling gait. The management of the house and the property, the care of
the few tenants and the village poor, and the accounts of the estate, were
in the hands of his lady and her young secretary, Harry Esmond. My lord
took charge of the stables, the kennel, and the cellar—and he filled this
and emptied it too.
So it chanced that upon this very day, when poor Harry Esmond had had the
blacksmith’s son, and the peer’s son, alike upon his knee, little Beatrix,
who would come to her tutor willingly enough with her book and her
writing, had refused him, seeing the place occupied by her brother, and,
luckily for her, had sat at the further end of the room, away from him,
playing with a spaniel dog which she had (and for which, by fits and
starts, she would take a great affection), and talking at Harry Esmond
over her shoulder, as she pretended to caress the dog, saying, that Fido
would love her, and she would love Fido, and nothing but Fido, all her
life.
When, then, the news was brought that the little boy at the “Three
Castles” was ill with the small-pox, poor Harry Esmond felt a shock of
alarm, not so much for himself as for his mistress’s son, whom he might
have brought into peril. Beatrix, who had pouted sufficiently (and who
whenever a stranger appeared began, from infancy almost, to play off
little graces to catch his attention), her brother being now gone to bed,
was for taking her place upon Esmond’s knee: for, though the doctor was
very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots
and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because she hated learning
the catechism.
But as she advanced towards Esmond from the corner where she had been
sulking, he started back and placed the great chair on which he was
sitting between him and her—saying in the French language to Lady
Castlewood, with whom the young lad had read much, and whom he had
perfected in this tongue—“Madam, the child must not approach me; I must
tell you that I was at the blacksmith’s to-day, and had his little boy
upon my lap.”
“Where you took my son afterwards,” Lady Castlewood said, very angry, and
turning red. “I thank you, sir, for giving him such company. Beatrix,” she
said in English, “I forbid you to touch Mr. Esmond. Come away, child—come
to your room. Come to your room—I wish your reverence good night—and you,
sir, had you not better go back to your friends at the alehouse?” Her
eyes, ordinarily so kind, darted flashes of anger as she spoke; and she
tossed up her head (which hung down commonly) with the mien of a princess.
“Hey-day!” says my lord, who was standing by the fireplace—indeed he was
in the position to which he generally came by that hour of the
evening—“Hey-day! Rachel, what are you in a passion about? Ladies ought
never to be in a passion. Ought they, Doctor Tusher? though it does good
to see Rachel in a passion—Damme, Lady Castlewood, you look dev’lish
handsome in a passion.”
“It is, my lord, because Mr. Henry Esmond, having nothing to do with his
time here, and not having a taste for our company, has been to the
alehouse, where he has _some friends_.”
My lord burst out with a laugh and an oath—“You young sly-boots, you’ve
been at Nancy Sievewright. D—— the young hypocrite, who’d have thought it
in him? I say, Tusher, he’s been after——”
“Enough, my lord,” said my lady, “don’t insult me with this talk.”
“Upon my word,” said poor Harry, ready to cry with shame and
mortification, “the honour of that young person is perfectly unstained for
me.”
“Oh, of course, of course,” says my lord, more and more laughing and
tipsy. “Upon his _honour_, doctor—Nancy Sieve——”
“Take Mistress Beatrix to bed,” my lady cried at this moment to Mrs.
Tucker her woman, who came in with her ladyship’s tea. “Put her into my
room—no, into yours,” she added quickly. “Go, my child: go, I say: not a
word!” And Beatrix, quite surprised at so sudden a tone of authority from
one who was seldom accustomed to raise her voice, went out of the room
with a scared countenance and waited even to burst out a-crying, until she
got to the door with Mrs. Tucker.
For once her mother took little heed of her sobbing, and continued to
speak eagerly—“My lord,” she said, “this young man—your dependant—told me
just now in French—he was ashamed to speak in his own language—that he had
been at the ale-house all day, where he has had that little wretch who is
now ill of the small-pox on his knee. And he comes home reeking from that
place—yes, reeking from it—and takes my boy into his lap without shame,
and sits down by me, yes, by _me_. He may have killed Frank for what I
know—killed our child. Why was he brought in to disgrace our house? Why is
he here? Let him go—let him go, I say, to-night, and pollute the place no
more.”
She had never once uttered a syllable of unkindness to Harry Esmond; and
her cruel words smote the poor boy, so that he stood for some moments
bewildered with grief and rage at the injustice of such a stab from such a
hand. He turned quite white from red, which he had been.
“I cannot help my birth, madam,” he said, “nor my other misfortune. And as
for your boy, if—if my coming nigh to him pollutes him now, it was not so
always. Good night, my lord. Heaven bless you and yours for your goodness
to me. I have tired her ladyship’s kindness out, and I will go;” and,
sinking down on his knee, Harry Esmond took the rough hand of his
benefactor and kissed it.
“He wants to go to the ale-house—let him go,” cried my lady.
“I’m d——d if he shall,” said my lord. “I didn’t think you could be so d——d
ungrateful, Rachel.”
Her reply was to burst into a flood of tears, and to quit the room with a
rapid glance at Harry Esmond. As my lord, not heeding them, and still in
great good humour, raised up his young client from his kneeling posture
(for a thousand kindnesses had caused the lad to revere my lord as a
father), and put his broad hand on Harry Esmond’s shoulder—
“She was always so,” my lord said; “the very notion of a woman drives her
mad. I took to liquor on that very account, by Jove, for no other reason
than that; for she can’t be jealous of a beer-barrel or a bottle of rum,
can she, doctor? D—— it, look at the maids—just look at the maids in the
house” (my lord pronounced all the words
together—just-look-at-the-maze-in-the-house: jever-see-such-maze?) “You
wouldn’t take a wife out of Castlewood now, would you, doctor?” and my
lord burst out laughing.
The doctor, who had been looking at my Lord Castlewood from under his
eyelids, said, “But joking apart, and, my lord, as a divine, I cannot
treat the subject in a jocular light, nor, as a pastor of this
congregation, look with anything but sorrow at the idea of so very young a
sheep going astray.”
“Sir,” said young Esmond, bursting out indignantly, “she told me that you
yourself were a horrid old man, and had offered to kiss her in the dairy.”
“For shame, Henry,” cried Doctor Tusher, turning as red as a turkey-cock,
while my lord continued to roar with laughter. “If you listen to the
falsehoods of an abandoned girl——”
“She is as honest as any woman in England, and as pure for me,” cried out
Henry, “and as kind, and as good. For shame on you to malign her!”
“Far be it from me to do so,” cried the doctor. “Heaven grant I may be
mistaken in the girl, and in you, sir, who have a truly _precocious_
genius; but that is not the point at issue at present. It appears that the
small-pox broke out in the little boy at the ‘Three Castles’; that it was
on him when you visited the ale-house, for your _own_ reasons; and that
you sat with the child for some time, and immediately afterwards with my
young lord.” The doctor raised his voice as he spoke, and looked towards
my lady, who had now come back, looking very pale, with a handkerchief in
her hand.
“This is all very true, sir,” said Lady Esmond, looking at the young man.
“’Tis to be feared that he may have brought the infection with him.”
“From the ale-house—yes,” said my lady.
“D—— it, I forgot when I collared you, boy,” cried my lord, stepping back.
“Keep off, Harry, my boy; there’s no good in running into the wolf’s jaws,
you know.”
My lady looked at him with some surprise, and instantly advancing to Henry
Esmond, took his hand. “I beg your pardon, Henry,” she said; “I spoke very
unkindly. I have no right to interfere with you—with your——”
My lord broke out into an oath. “Can’t you leave the boy alone, my lady?”
She looked a little red, and faintly pressed the lad’s hand as she dropped
it.
“There is no use, my lord,” she said; “Frank was on his knee as he was
making pictures, and was running constantly from Henry to me. The evil is
done, if any.”
“Not with me, damme,” cried my lord. “I’ve been smoking”—and he lighted
his pipe again with a coal—“and it keeps off infection; and as the disease
is in the village—plague take it—I would have you leave it. We’ll go
tomorrow to Walcote, my lady.”
“I have no fear,” said my lady; “I may have had it as an infant, it broke
out in our house then; and when four of my sisters had it at home, two
years before our marriage, I escaped it, and two of my dear sisters died.”
“I won’t run the risk,” said my lord; “I’m as bold as any man, but I’ll
not bear that.”
“Take Beatrix with you and go,” said my lady. “For us the mischief is
done; and Tucker can wait upon us, who has had the disease.”
“You take care to choose ’em ugly enough,” said my lord, at which her
ladyship hung down her head and looked foolish: and my lord, calling away
Tusher, bade him come to the oak parlour and have a pipe. The doctor made
a low bow to her ladyship (of which salaams he was profuse), and walked
off on his creaking square-toes after his patron.
When the lady and the young man were alone, there was a silence of some
moments, during which he stood at the fire, looking rather vacantly at the
dying embers, whilst her ladyship busied herself with her tambour-frame
and needles.
“I am sorry,” she said, after a pause, in a hard, dry voice,—“I _repeat_ I
am sorry that I showed myself so ungrateful for the safety of my son. It
was not at all my wish that you should leave us, I am sure, unless you
found pleasure elsewhere. But you must perceive, Mr. Esmond, that at your
age, and with your tastes, it is impossible that you can continue to stay
upon the intimate footing in which you have been in this family. You have
wished to go to the University, and I think ’tis quite as well that you
should be sent thither. I did not press this matter, thinking you a child,
as you are, indeed, in years—quite a child; and I should never have
thought of treating you otherwise until—until these _circumstances_ came
to light. And I shall beg my lord to dispatch you as quick as possible:
and will go on with Frank’s learning as well as I can (I owe my father
thanks for a little grounding, and you, I’m sure, for much that you have
taught me),—and—and I wish you a good night, Mr. Esmond.”
And with this she dropped a stately curtsy, and, taking her candle, went
away through the tapestry door, which led to her apartments. Esmond stood
by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to
see until she was gone; and then her image was impressed upon him, and
remained for ever fixed upon his memory. He saw her retreating, the taper
lighting up her marble face, her scarlet lip quivering, and her shining
golden hair. He went to his own room, and to bed, where he tried to read,
as his custom was; but he never knew what he was reading until afterwards
he remembered the appearance of the letters of the book (it was in
Montaigne’s _Essays_), and the events of the day passed before him—that
is, of the last hour of the day; for as for the morning, and the poor
milkmaid yonder, he never so much as once thought. And he could not get to
sleep until daylight, and woke with a violent headache, and quite
unrefreshed.
He had brought the contagion with him from the “Three Castles” sure
enough, and was presently laid up with the small-pox, which spared the
Hall no more than it did the cottage.
Chapter IX. I Have The Small-Pox, And Prepare To Leave Castlewood
When Harry Esmond passed through the crisis of that malady, and returned
to health again, he found that little Frank Esmond had also suffered and
rallied after the disease, and the lady his mother was down with it, with
a couple more of the household. “It was a providence, for which we all
ought to be thankful,” Doctor Tusher said, “that my lady and her son were
spared, while Death carried off the poor domestics of the house;” and
rebuked Harry for asking, in his simple way—for which we ought to be
thankful—that the servants were killed, or the gentlefolks were saved? Nor
could young Esmond agree in the doctor’s vehement protestations to my
lady, when he visited her during her convalescence, that the malady had
not in the least impaired her charms, and had not been churl enough to
injure the fair features of the Viscountess of Castlewood, whereas in
spite of these fine speeches, Harry thought that her ladyship’s beauty was
very much injured by the smallpox. When the marks of the disease cleared
away, they did not, it is true, leave furrows or scars on her face (except
one, perhaps, on her forehead over her left eyebrow); but the delicacy of
her rosy colour and complexion were gone: her eyes had lost their
brilliancy, her hair fell, and her face looked older. It was as if a
coarse hand had rubbed off the delicate tints of that sweet picture, and
brought it, as one has seen unskilful painting-cleaners do, to the dead
colour. Also, it must be owned, that for a year or two after the malady,
her ladyship’s nose was swollen and redder.
There would be no need to mention these trivialities, but that they
actually influenced many lives, as trifles will in the world, where a gnat
often plays a greater part than an elephant, and a mole-hill, as we know
in King William’s case, can upset an empire. When Tusher in his courtly
way (at which Harry Esmond always chafed and spoke scornfully) vowed and
protested that my lady’s face was none the worse—the lad broke out and
said, “It _is_ worse: and my mistress is not near so handsome as she was”;
on which poor Lady Esmond gave a rueful smile, and a look into a little
Venice glass she had, which showed her I suppose that what the stupid boy
said was only too true, for she turned away from the glass and her eyes
filled with tears.
The sight of these in Esmond’s heart always created a sort of rage of
pity, and seeing them on the face of the lady whom he loved best, the
young blunderer sank down on his knees, and besought her to pardon him,
saying that he was a fool and an idiot, that he was a brute to make such a
speech, he who had caused her malady, and Doctor Tusher told him that a
bear he was indeed, and a bear he would remain, at which speech poor young
Esmond was so dumb-stricken that he did not even growl.
“He is _my_ bear, and I will not have him baited, doctor,” my lady said,
patting her hand kindly on the boy’s head, as he was still kneeling at her
feet. “How your hair has come off! And mine, too,” she added with another
sigh.
“It is not for myself that I cared,” my lady said to Harry, when the
parson had taken his leave; “but _am_ I very much changed? Alas! I fear
’tis too true.”
“Madam, you have the dearest, and kindest, and sweetest face in the world,
I think,” the lad said; and indeed he thought and thinks so.
“Will my lord think so when he comes back?” the lady asked, with a sigh,
and another look at her Venice glass. “Suppose he should think as you do,
sir, that I am hideous—yes, you said hideous—he will cease to care for me.
’Tis all men care for in women, our little beauty. Why did he select me
from among my sisters? ’Twas only for that. We reign but for a day or two:
and be sure that Vashti knew Esther was coming.”
“Madam,” said Mr. Esmond, “Ahasuerus was the Grand Turk, and to change was
the manner of his country, and according to his law.”
“You are all Grand Turks for that matter,” said my lady, “or would be if
you could. Come, Frank, come, my child. You are well, praised be Heaven.
_Your_ locks are not thinned by this dreadful small-pox: nor your poor
face scarred—is it, my angel?”
Frank began to shout and whimper at the idea of such a misfortune. From
the very earliest time the young lord had been taught to admire his beauty
by his mother: and esteemed it as highly as any reigning toast valued
hers.
One day, as he himself was recovering from his fever and illness, a pang
of something like shame shot across young Esmond’s breast as he remembered
that he had never once, during his illness, given a thought to the poor
girl at the smithy, whose red cheeks but a month ago he had been so eager
to see. Poor Nancy! her cheeks had shared the fate of roses, and were
withered now. She had taken the illness on the same day with Esmond—she
and her brother were both dead of the small-pox, and buried under the
Castlewood yew-trees. There was no bright face looking now from the
garden, or to cheer the old smith at his lonely fireside. Esmond would
have liked to have kissed her in her shroud (like the lass in Mr. Prior’s
pretty poem), but she rested many foot below the ground, when Esmond after
his malady first trod on it.
Doctor Tusher brought the news of this calamity, about which Harry Esmond
longed to ask, but did not like. He said almost the whole village had been
stricken with the pestilence; seventeen persons were dead of it, among
them mentioning the names of poor Nancy and her little brother. He did not
fail to say how thankful we survivors ought to be. It being this man’s
business to flatter and make sermons, it must be owned he was most
industrious in it, and was doing the one or the other all day.
And so Nancy was gone; and Harry Esmond blushed that he had not a single
tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in Latin verses over the
rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs
deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that
surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright’s wife was an
ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long
face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a
funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and
are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could repeat, to his last
day, some of the doggerel lines in which his muse bewailed his pretty
lass; not without shame to remember how bad the verses were, and how good
he thought them; how false the grief, and yet how he was rather proud of
it. ’Tis an error, surely, to talk of the simplicity of youth. I think no
persons are more hypocritical, and have a more affected behaviour to one
another, than the young. They deceive themselves and each other with
artifices that do not impose upon men of the world; and so we got to
understand truth better, and grow simpler as we grow older.
When my lady heard of the fate which had befallen poor Nancy, she said
nothing so long as Tusher was by, but when he was gone, she took Harry
Esmond’s hand and said—
“Harry, I beg your pardon for those cruel words I used on the night you
were taken ill. I am shocked at the fate of the poor creature, and am sure
that nothing had happened of that with which, in my anger, I charged you.
And the very first day we go out, you must take me to the blacksmith, and
we must see if there is anything I can do to console the poor old man.
Poor man! to lose both his children! What should I do without mine!”
And this was, indeed, the very first walk which my lady took, leaning on
Esmond’s arm, after her illness. But her visit brought no consolation to
the old father; and he showed no softness, or desire to speak. “The Lord
gave and took away,” he said; and he knew what His servant’s duty was. He
wanted for nothing—less now than ever before, as there were fewer mouths
to feed. He wished her ladyship and Master Esmond good morning—he had
grown tall in his illness, and was but very little marked; and with this,
and a surly bow, he went in from the smithy to the house, leaving my lady,
somewhat silenced and shamefaced, at the door. He had a handsome stone put
up for his two children, which may be seen in Castlewood churchyard to
this very day; and before a year was out his own name was upon the stone.
In the presence of Death, that sovereign ruler, a woman’s coquetry is
scared; and her jealousy will hardly pass the boundaries of that grim
kingdom. ’Tis entirely of the earth that passion, and expires in the cold
blue air, beyond our sphere.
At length, when the danger was quite over, it was announced that my lord
and his daughter would return. Esmond well remembered the day. The lady,
his mistress, was in a flurry of fear: before my lord came, she went into
her room, and returned from it with reddened cheeks. Her fate was about to
be decided. Her beauty was gone—was her reign, too, over? A minute would
say. My lord came riding over the bridge—he could be seen from the great
window, clad in scarlet, and mounted on his grey hackney—his little
daughter ambled by him in a bright riding-dress of blue, on a shining
chestnut horse. My lady leaned against the great mantelpiece, looking on,
with one hand on her heart—she seemed only the more pale for those red
marks on either cheek. She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and withdrew
it, laughing hysterically—the cloth was quite red with the rouge when she
took it away. She ran to her room again, and came back with pale cheeks
and red eyes—her son in her hand—just as my lord entered, accompanied by
young Esmond, who had gone out to meet his protector, and to hold his
stirrup as he descended from horseback.
“What, Harry, boy!” my lord said good-naturedly, “you look as gaunt as a
greyhound. The small-pox hasn’t improved your beauty, and your side of the
house hadn’t never too much of it—ho, ho!”
And he laughed, and sprang to the ground with no small agility, looking
handsome and red, with a jolly face and brown hair, like a beef-eater;
Esmond kneeling again, as soon as his patron had descended, performed his
homage, and then went to greet the little Beatrix, and help her from her
horse.
“Fie! how yellow you look,” she said; “and there are one, two, red holes
in your face;” which, indeed, was very true; Harry Esmond’s harsh
countenance bearing, as long as it continued to be a human face, the marks
of the disease.
My lord laughed again, in high good humour.
“D—— it!” said he, with one of his usual oaths, “the little slut sees
everything. She saw the dowager’s paint t’other day, and asked her why she
wore that red stuff—didn’t you, Trix? and the Tower; and St. James’s; and
the play; and the Prince George, and the Princess Anne—didn’t you, Trix?”
“They are both very fat, and smelt of brandy,” the child said.
Papa roared with laughing.
“Brandy!” he said. “And how do you know, Miss Pert?”
“Because your lordship smells of it after supper, when I embrace you
before you go to bed,” said the young lady, who, indeed, was as pert as
her father said, and looked as beautiful a little gipsy as eyes ever gazed
on.
“And now for my lady,” said my lord, going up the stairs, and passing
under the tapestry curtain that hung before the drawing-room door. Esmond
remembered that noble figure handsomely arrayed in scarlet. Within the
last few months he himself had grown from a boy to be a man, and with his
figure, his thoughts had shot up, and grown manly.
My lady’s countenance, of which Harry Esmond was accustomed to watch the
changes, and with a solicitous affection to note and interpret the signs
of gladness or care, wore a sad and depressed look for many weeks after
her lord’s return: during which it seemed as if, by caresses and
entreaties, she strove to win him back from some ill humour he had, and
which he did not choose to throw off. In her eagerness to please him she
practised a hundred of those arts which had formerly charmed him, but
which seemed now to have lost their potency. Her songs did not amuse him;
and she hushed them and the children when in his presence. My lord sat
silent at his dinner, drinking greatly, his lady opposite to him, looking
furtively at his face, though also speechless. Her silence annoyed him as
much as her speech; and he would peevishly, and with an oath, ask her why
she held her tongue and looked so glum, or he would roughly check her when
speaking, and bid her not talk nonsense. It seemed as if, since his
return, nothing she could do or say could please him.
When a master and mistress are at strife in a house, the subordinates in
the family take the one side or the other. Harry Esmond stood in so great
fear of my lord, that he would run a league barefoot to do a message for
him; but his attachment for Lady Esmond was such a passion of grateful
regard, that to spare her a grief, or to do her a service, he would have
given his life daily: and it was by the very depth and intensity of this
regard that he began to divine how unhappy his adored lady’s life was, and
that a secret care (for she never spoke of her anxieties) was weighing
upon her.
Can any one, who has passed through the world and watched the nature of
men and women there, doubt what had befallen her? I have seen, to be sure,
some people carry down with them into old age the actual bloom of their
youthful love, and I know that Mr. Thomas Parr lived to be a hundred and
sixty years old. But, for all that, threescore and ten is the age of men,
and few get beyond it; and ’tis certain that a man who marries for mere
_beaux yeux_, as my lord did, considers his part of the contract at end
when the woman ceases to fulfil hers, and his love does not survive her
beauty. I know ’tis often otherwise, I say; and can think (as most men in
their own experience may) of many a house, where, lighted in early years,
the sainted lamp of love hath never been extinguished; but so there is Mr.
Parr, and so there is the great giant at the fair that is eight feet
high—exceptions to men—and that poor lamp whereof I speak, that lights at
first the nuptial chamber, is extinguished by a hundred winds and draughts
down the chimney, or sputters out for want of feeding. And then—and then
it is Chloe, in the dark, stark awake, and Strephon snoring unheeding; or
_vice versa_, ’tis poor Strephon that has married a heartless jilt, and
awoke out of that absurd vision of conjugal felicity, which was to last
for ever, and is over like any other dream. One and other has made his
bed, and so must lie in it, until that final day when life ends, and they
sleep separate.
About this time young Esmond, who had a knack of stringing verses, turned
some of Ovid’s epistles into rhymes, and brought them to his lady for her
delectation. Those which treated of forsaken women touched her immensely,
Harry remarked; and when Oenone called after Paris, and Medea bade Jason
come back again, the lady of Castlewood sighed, and said she thought that
part of the verses was the most pleasing. Indeed, she would have chopped
up the dean, her old father, in order to bring her husband back again. But
her beautiful Jason was gone, as beautiful Jasons will go, and the poor
enchantress had never a spell to keep him.
My lord was only sulky as long as his wife’s anxious face or behaviour
seemed to upbraid him. When she had got to master these, and to show an
outwardly cheerful countenance and behaviour, her husband’s good humour
returned partially, and he swore and stormed no longer at dinner, but
laughed sometimes, and yawned unrestrainedly; absenting himself often from
home, inviting more company thither, passing the greater part of his days
in the hunting-field, or over the bottle as before; but, with this
difference, that the poor wife could no longer see now, as she had done
formerly, the light of love kindled in his eyes. He was with her, but that
flame was out; and that once welcome beacon no more shone there.
What were this lady’s feelings when forced to admit the truth whereof her
foreboding glass had given her only too true warning, that with her beauty
her reign had ended, and the days of her love were over? What does a
seaman do in a storm if mast and rudder are carried away? He ships a
jurymast, and steers as he best can with an oar. What happens if your roof
falls in a tempest? After the first stun of the calamity the sufferer
starts up, gropes around to see that the children are safe, and puts them
under a shed out of the rain. If the palace burns down, you take shelter
in the barn. What man’s life is not overtaken by one or more of these
tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter
as best we may?
When Lady Castlewood found that her great ship had gone down, she began as
best she might, after she had rallied from the effects of the loss, to put
out small ventures of happiness; and hope for little gains and returns, as
a merchant on “Change, _indocilis pauperiem pati_,” having lost his
thousands, embarks a few guineas upon the next ship. She laid out her all
upon her children, indulging them beyond all measure, as was inevitable
with one of her kindness of disposition; giving all her thoughts to their
welfare—learning, that she might teach them, and improving her own many
natural gifts and feminine accomplishments, that she might impart them to
her young ones. To be doing good for some one else, is the life of most
good women. They are exuberant of kindness, as it were, and must impart it
to some one. She made herself a good scholar of French, Italian, and
Latin, having been grounded in these by her father in her youth: hiding
these gifts from her husband out of fear, perhaps, that they should offend
him, for my lord was no bookman—pish’d and psha’d at the notion of learned
ladies, and would have been angry that his wife could construe out of a
Latin book of which he could scarce understand two words. Young Esmond was
usher, or house tutor, under her or over her, as it might happen. During
my lord’s many absences, these schooldays would go on uninterruptedly: the
mother and daughter learning with surprising quickness: the latter by fits
and starts only, and as suited her wayward humour. As for the little lord,
it must be owned that he took after his father in the matter of
learning—liked marbles and play, and the great horse, and the little one
which his father brought him, and on which he took him out a-hunting—a
great deal better than Corderius and Lily; marshalled the village boys,
and had a little court of them, already flogging them, and domineering
over them with a fine imperious spirit, that made his father laugh when he
beheld it, and his mother fondly warn him. The cook had a son, the woodman
had two, the big lad at the porter’s lodge took his cuffs and his orders.
Doctor Tusher said he was a young nobleman of gallant spirit; and Harry
Esmond, who was his tutor, and eight years his little lordship’s senior,
had hard work sometimes to keep his own temper, and hold his authority
over his rebellious little chief and kinsman.
In a couple of years after that calamity had befallen which had robbed
Lady Castlewood of a little—a very little—of her beauty, and her careless
husband’s heart (if the truth must be told, my lady had found not only
that her reign was over, but that her successor was appointed, a princess
of a noble house in Drury Lane somewhere, who was installed and visited by
my lord at the town eight miles off—_pudet haec opprobria dicere nobis_)—a
great change had taken place in her mind, which, by struggles only known
to herself, at least never mentioned to any one, and unsuspected by the
person who caused the pain she endured—had been schooled into such a
condition as she could not very likely have imagined possible a score of
months since, before her misfortunes had begun.
She had oldened in that time as people do who suffer silently great mental
pain; and learned much that she had never suspected before. She was taught
by that bitter teacher Misfortune. A child, the mother of other children,
but two years back her lord was a god to her; his words her law; his smile
her sunshine; his lazy commonplaces listened to eagerly, as if they were
words of wisdom—all his wishes and freaks obeyed with a servile devotion.
She had been my lord’s chief slave and blind worshipper. Some women bear
farther than this, and submit not only to neglect but to unfaithfulness
too—but here this lady’s allegiance had failed her. Her spirit rebelled
and disowned any more obedience. First she had to bear in secret the
passion of losing the adored object; then to get a farther initiation, and
to find this worshipped being was but a clumsy idol: then to admit the
silent truth, that it was she was superior, and not the monarch her
master: that she had thoughts which his brains could never master, and was
the better of the two; quite separate from my lord although tied to him,
and bound as almost all people (save a very happy few) to work all her
life alone. My lord sat in his chair, laughing his laugh, cracking his
joke, his face flushing with wine—my lady in her place over against him—he
never suspecting that his superior was there, in the calm resigned lady,
cold of manner, with downcast eyes. When he was merry in his cups, he
would make jokes about her coldness, and, “D—— it, now my lady is gone, we
will have t’other bottle,” he would say. He was frank enough in telling
his thoughts, such as they were. There was little mystery about my lord’s
words or actions. His fair Rosamond did not live in a labyrinth, like the
lady of Mr. Addison’s opera, but paraded with painted cheeks and a tipsy
retinue in the country town. Had she a mind to be revenged, Lady
Castlewood could have found the way to her rival’s house easily enough;
and, if she had come with bowl and dagger, would have been routed off the
ground by the enemy with a volley of Billingsgate, which the fair person
always kept by her.
Meanwhile, it has been said, that for Harry Esmond his benefactress’s
sweet face had lost none of its charms. It had always the kindest of looks
and smiles for him—smiles, not so gay and artless perhaps as those which
Lady Castlewood had formerly worn, when, a child herself, playing with her
children, her husband’s pleasure and authority were all she thought of;
but out of her griefs and cares, as will happen I think when these trials
fall upon a kindly heart, and are not too unbearable, grew up a number of
thoughts and excellences which had never come into existence, had not her
sorrow and misfortunes engendered them. Sure, occasion is the father of
most that is good in us. As you have seen the awkward fingers and clumsy
tools of a prisoner cut and fashion the most delicate little pieces of
carved work; or achieve the most prodigious underground labours, and cut
through walls of masonry, and saw iron bars and fetters; ’tis misfortune
that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these
qualities had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave them
a being.
“’Twas after Jason left her, no doubt,” Lady Castlewood once said with one
of her smiles to young Esmond (who was reading to her a version of certain
lines out of Euripides), “that Medea became a learned woman and a great
enchantress.”
“And she could conjure the stars out of heaven,” the young tutor added,
“but she could not bring Jason back again.”
“What do you mean?” asked my lady, very angry.
“Indeed I mean nothing,” said the other, “save what I’ve read in books.
What should I know about such matters? I have seen no woman save you and
little Beatrix, and the parson’s wife and my late mistress, and your
ladyship’s woman here.”
“The men who wrote your books,” says my lady, “your Horaces, and Ovids,
and Virgils, as far as I know of them, all thought ill of us, as all the
heroes they wrote about used us basely. We were bred to be slaves always;
and even of our own times, as you are still the only lawgivers, I think
our sermons seem to say that the best woman is she who bears her master’s
chains most gracefully. ’Tis a pity there are no nunneries permitted by
our Church: Beatrix and I would fly to one, and end our days in peace
there away from you.”
“And is there no slavery in a convent?” says Esmond.
“At least if women are slaves there, no one sees them,” answered the lady.
“They don’t work in street-gangs with the public to jeer them: and if they
suffer, suffer in private. Here comes my lord home from hunting. Take away
the books. My lord does not love to see them. Lessons are over for to-day,
Mr. Tutor.” And with a curtsy and a smile she would end this sort of
colloquy.
Indeed “Mr. Tutor”, as my lady called Esmond, had now business enough on
his hands in Castlewood House. He had three pupils, his lady and her two
children, at whose lessons she would always be present; besides writing my
lord’s letters, and arranging his accompts for him—when these could be got
from Esmond’s indolent patron.
Of the pupils the two young people were but lazy scholars, and as my lady
would admit no discipline such as was then in use, my lord’s son only
learned what he liked, which was but little, and never to his life’s end
could be got to construe more than six lines of Virgil. Mistress Beatrix
chattered French prettily from a very early age; and sang sweetly, but
this was from her mother’s teaching—not Harry Esmond’s, who could scarce
distinguish between “Green Sleeves” and “Lillabullero”; although he had no
greater delight in life than to hear the ladies sing. He sees them now
(will he ever forget them?) as they used to sit together of the summer
evenings—the two golden heads over the page—the child’s little hand and
the mother’s beating the time, with their voices rising and falling in
unison.
But if the children were careless, ’twas a wonder how eagerly the mother
learned from her young tutor—and taught him too. The happiest instinctive
faculty was this lady’s—a faculty for discerning latent beauties and
hidden graces of books, especially books of poetry, as in a walk she would
spy out field-flowers and make posies of them, such as no other hand
could. She was a critic not by reason but by feeling; the sweetest
commentator of those books they read together; and the happiest hours of
young Esmond’s life, perhaps, were those passed in the company of this
kind mistress and her children.
These happy days were to end soon, however; and it was by the Lady
Castlewood’s own decree that they were brought to a conclusion. It
happened about Christmastime, Harry Esmond being now past sixteen years of
age, that his old comrade, adversary, and friend, Tom Tusher, returned
from his school in London, a fair, well-grown, and sturdy lad, who was
about to enter college, with an exhibition from his school, and a prospect
of after promotion in the Church. Tom Tusher’s talk was of nothing but
Cambridge, now; and the boys, who were good friends, examined each other
eagerly about their progress in books. Tom had learned some Greek and
Hebrew, besides Latin, in which he was pretty well skilled, and also had
given himself to mathematical studies under his father’s guidance, who was
a proficient in those sciences, of which Esmond knew nothing, nor could he
write Latin so well as Tom, though he could talk it better, having been
taught by his dear friend the Jesuit father, for whose memory the lad ever
retained the warmest affection, reading his books, keeping his swords
clean in the little crypt where the father had shown them to Esmond on the
night of his visit; and often of a night sitting in the chaplain’s room,
which he inhabited, over his books, his verses, and rubbish, with which
the lad occupied himself, he would look up at the window, thinking he
wished it might open and let in the good father. He had come and passed
away like a dream; but for the swords and books Harry might almost think
the father was an imagination of his mind—and for two letters which had
come to him, one from abroad full of advice and affection, another soon
after he had been confirmed by the Bishop of Hexton, in which Father Holt
deplored his falling away. But Harry Esmond felt so confident now of his
being in the right, and of his own powers as a casuist, that he thought he
was able to face the father himself in argument, and possibly convert him.
To work upon the faith of her young pupil, Esmond’s kind mistress sent to
the library of her father the dean, who had been distinguished in the
disputes of the late king’s reign; and, an old soldier now, had hung up
his weapons of controversy. These he took down from his shelves willingly
for young Esmond, whom he benefited by his own personal advice and
instruction. It did not require much persuasion to induce the boy to
worship with his beloved mistress. And the good old nonjuring dean
flattered himself with a conversion which in truth was owing to a much
gentler and fairer persuader.
Under her ladyship’s kind eyes (my lord’s being sealed in sleep pretty
generally), Esmond read many volumes of the works of the famous British
divines of the last age, and was familiar with Wake and Sherlock, with
Stillingfleet and Patrick. His mistress never tired to listen or to read,
to pursue the text with fond comments, to urge those points which her
fancy dwelt on most, or her reason deemed most important. Since the death
of her father the dean, this lady hath admitted a certain latitude of
theological reading, which her orthodox father would never have allowed;
his favourite writers appealing more to reason and antiquity than to the
passions or imaginations of their readers, so that the works of Bishop
Taylor, nay, those of Mr. Baxter and Mr. Law, have in reality found more
favour with my Lady Castlewood than the severer volumes of our great
English schoolmen.
In later life, at the University, Esmond reopened the controversy, and
pursued it in a very different manner, when his patrons had determined for
him that he was to embrace the ecclesiastical life. But though his
mistress’s heart was in this calling, his own never was much. After that
first fervour of simple devotion, which his beloved Jesuit priest had
inspired in him, speculative theology took but little hold upon the young
man’s mind. When his early credulity was disturbed, and his saints and
virgins taken out of his worship, to rank little higher than the
divinities of Olympus, his belief became acquiescence rather than ardour;
and he made his mind up to assume the cassock and bands, as another man
does to wear a breastplate and jack-boots, or to mount a merchant’s desk
for a livelihood, and from obedience and necessity, rather than from
choice. There were scores of such men in Mr. Esmond’s time at the
Universities, who were going to the Church with no better calling than
his.
When Thomas Tusher was gone, a feeling of no small depression and disquiet
fell upon young Esmond, of which, though he did not complain, his kind
mistress must have divined the cause: for soon after she showed not only
that she understood the reason of Harry’s melancholy, but could provide a
remedy for it. Her habit was thus to watch, unobservedly, those to whom
duty or affection bound her, and to prevent their designs, or to fulfil
them, when she had the power. It was this lady’s disposition to think
kindnesses, and devise silent bounties, and to scheme benevolence for
those about her. We take such goodness, for the most part, as if it was
our due; the Marys who bring ointment for our feet get but little thanks.
Some of us never feel this devotion at all, or are moved by it to
gratitude or acknowledgement; others only recall it years after, when the
days are past in which those sweet kindnesses were spent on us, and we
offer back our return for the debt by a poor tardy payment of tears. Then
forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the
past—oh, so bright and clear!—oh, so longed after!—because they are out of
reach; as holiday music from withinside a prison wall—or sunshine seen
through the bars; more prized because unattainable—more bright because of
the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.
All the notice, then, which Lady Castlewood seemed to take of Harry
Esmond’s melancholy, upon Tom Tusher’s departure, was, by a gaiety unusual
to her, to attempt to dispel his gloom. She made his three scholars
(herself being the chief one) more cheerful than ever they had been
before, and more docile too, all of them learning and reading much more
than they had been accustomed to do. “For who knows,” said the lady, “what
may happen, and whether we may be able to keep such a learned tutor long?”
Frank Esmond said he for his part did not want to learn any more, and
Cousin Harry might shut up his book whenever he liked, if he would come
out a-fishing; and little Beatrix declared she would send for Tom Tusher,
and _he_ would be glad enough to come to Castlewood, if Harry chose to go
away.
At last comes a messenger from Winchester one day, bearer of a letter with
a great black seal from the dean there, to say that his sister was dead,
and had left her fortune of 2,000_l._ among her six nieces, the dean’s
daughters; and many a time since has Harry Esmond recalled the flushed
face and eager look wherewith, after this intelligence, his kind lady
regarded him. She did not pretend to any grief about the deceased
relative, from whom she and her family had been many years parted.
When my lord heard of the news, he also did not make any very long face.
“The money will come very handy to furnish the music-room and the cellar,
which is getting low, and buy your ladyship a coach and a couple of horses
that will do indifferent to ride or for the coach. And Beatrix, you shall
have a spinet: and Frank, you shall have a little horse from Hexton Fair;
and Harry, you shall have five pounds to buy some books,” said my lord,
who was generous with his own, and indeed with other folks’ money. “I wish
your aunt would die once a year, Rachel; we could spend your money, and
all your sisters’, too.”
“I have but one aunt—and—and I have another use for the money, my lord,”
says my lady, turning very red.
“Another use, my dear; and what do you know about money?” cries my lord.
“And what the devil is there that I don’t give you which you want?”
“I intend to give this money—can’t you fancy how, my lord?”
My lord swore one of his large oaths that he did not know in the least
what she meant.
“I intend it for Harry Esmond to go to college.—Cousin Harry,” says my
lady, “you mustn’t stay longer in this dull place, but make a name to
yourself, and for us too, Harry.”
“D——n it, Harry’s well enough here,” says my lord, for a moment looking
rather sulky.
“Is Harry going away? You don’t mean to say you will go away?” cry out
Frank and Beatrix at one breath.
“But he will come back: and this will always be his home,” cries my lady,
with blue eyes looking a celestial kindness: “and his scholars will always
love him; won’t they?”
“By G——d, Rachel, you’re a good woman!” says my lord, seizing my lady’s
hand, at which she blushed very much, and shrank back, putting her
children before her. “I wish you joy, my kinsman,” he continued, giving
Harry Esmond a hearty slap on the shoulder. “I won’t balk your luck. Go to
Cambridge, boy; and when Tusher dies you shall have the living here, if
you are not better provided by that time. We’ll furnish the dining-room
and buy the horses another year. I’ll give thee a nag out of the stable:
take any one except my hack and the bay gelding and the coach-horses; and
God speed thee, my boy!”
“Have the sorrel, Harry; ’tis a good one. Father says ’tis the best in the
stable,” says little Frank, clapping his hands, and jumping up. “Let’s
come and see him in the stable.” And the other, in his delight and
eagerness, was for leaving the room that instant to arrange about his
journey.
The Lady Castlewood looked after him with sad penetrating glances. “He
wishes to be gone already, my lord,” said she to her husband.
The young man hung back abashed. “Indeed, I would stay for ever, if your
ladyship bade me,” he said.
“And thou wouldst be a fool for thy pains, kinsman,” said my lord. “Tut,
tut, man. Go and see the world. Sow thy wild oats; and take the best luck
that Fate sends thee. I wish I were a boy again that I might go to
college, and taste the Trumpington ale.”
“Ours indeed is but a dull home,” cries my lady, with a little of sadness,
and maybe of satire, in her voice: “an old glum house, half ruined, and
the rest only half furnished; a woman and two children are but poor
company for men that are accustomed to better. We are only fit to be your
worship’s handmaids, and your pleasures must of necessity lie elsewhere
than at home.”
“Curse me, Rachel, if I know now whether thou art in earnest or not,” said
my lord.
“In earnest, my lord!” says she, still clinging by one of her children.
“Is there much subject here for joke?” And she made him a grand curtsy,
and, giving a stately look to Harry Esmond, which seemed to say,
“Remember; you understand me, though he does not,” she left the room with
her children.
“Since she found out that confounded Hexton business,” my lord said—“and
be hanged to them that told her!—she has not been the same woman. She, who
used to be as humble as a milkmaid, is as proud as a princess,” says my
lord. “Take my counsel, Harry Esmond, and keep clear of women. Since I
have had anything to do with the jades, they have given me nothing but
disgust. I had a wife at Tangier, with whom, as she couldn’t speak a word
of my language, you’d have thought I might lead a quiet life. But she
tried to poison me, because she was jealous of a Jew girl. There was your
aunt, for aunt she is—aunt Jezebel, a pretty life your father led with
_her_, and here’s my lady. When I saw her on a pillion riding behind the
dean her father, she looked and was such a baby, that a sixpenny doll
might have pleased her. And now you see what she is—hands off,
highty-tighty, high and mighty, an empress couldn’t be grander. Pass us
the tankard, Harry, my boy. A mug of beer and a toast at morn, says my
host. A toast and a mug of beer at noon, says my dear. D——n it, Polly
loves a mug of ale, too, and laced with brandy, by Jove!” Indeed, I
suppose they drank it together; for my lord was often thick in his speech
at mid-day dinner; and at night at supper, speechless altogether.
Harry Esmond’s departure resolved upon, it seemed as if the Lady
Castlewood, too, rejoiced to lose him; for more than once, when the lad,
ashamed perhaps at his own secret eagerness to go away (at any rate
stricken with sadness at the idea of leaving those from whom he had
received so many proofs of love and kindness inestimable), tried to
express to his mistress his sense of gratitude to her, and his sorrow at
quitting those who had so sheltered and tended a nameless and houseless
orphan, Lady Castlewood cut short his protests of love and his
lamentations, and would hear of no grief, but only look forward to Harry’s
fame and prospects in life. “Our little legacy will keep you for four
years like a gentleman. Heaven’s Providence, your own genius, industry,
honour, must do the rest for you. Castlewood will always be a home for
you; and these children, whom you have taught and loved, will not forget
to love you. And Harry,” said she (and this was the only time when she
spoke with a tear in her eye, or a tremor in her voice), “it may happen in
the course of nature that I shall be called away from them: and their
father—and—and they will need true friends and protectors. Promise me that
you will be true to them—as—as I think I have been to you—and a mother’s
fond prayer and blessing go with you.”
“So help me God, madam, I will,” said Harry Esmond, falling on his knees,
and kissing the hand of his dearest mistress. “If you will have me stay
now, I will. What matters whether or no I make my way in life, or whether
a poor bastard dies as unknown as he is now? ’Tis enough that I have your
love and kindness surely; and to make you happy is duty enough for me.”
“Happy!” says she; “but indeed I ought to be, with my children, and——”
“Not happy!” cried Esmond (for he knew what her life was, though he and
his mistress never spoke a word concerning it). “If not happiness, it may
be ease. Let me stay and work for you—let me stay and be your servant.”
“Indeed, you are best away,” said my lady, laughing, as she put her hand
on the boy’s head for a moment. “You shall stay in no such dull place. You
shall go to college and distinguish yourself as becomes your name. That is
how you shall please me best; and—and if my children want you, or I want
you, you shall come to us; and I know we may count on you.”
“May Heaven forsake me if you may not,” Harry said, getting up from his
knee.
“And my knight longs for a dragon this instant that he may fight,” said my
lady, laughing; which speech made Harry Esmond start, and turn red; for
indeed the very thought was in his mind, that he would like that some
chance should immediately happen whereby he might show his devotion. And
it pleased him to think that his lady had called him “her knight”, and
often and often he recalled this to his mind, and prayed that he might be
her true knight, too.
My lady’s bedchamber window looked out over the country, and you could see
from it the purple hills beyond Castlewood village, the green common
betwixt that and the Hall, and the old bridge which crossed over the
river. When Harry Esmond went away for Cambridge, little Frank ran
alongside his horse as far as the bridge, and there Harry stopped for a
moment, and looked back at the house where the best part of his life had
been passed. It lay before him with its grey familiar towers, a pinnacle
or two shining in the sun, the buttresses and terrace walls casting great
blue shades on the grass. And Harry remembered all his life after how he
saw his mistress at the window looking out on him, in a white robe, the
little Beatrix’s chestnut curls resting at her mother’s side. Both waved a
farewell to him, and little Frank sobbed to leave him. Yes, he _would_ be
his lady’s true knight, he vowed in his heart; he waved her an adieu with
his hat. The village people had good-bye to say to him too. All knew that
Master Harry was going to college, and most of them had a kind word and a
look of farewell. I do not stop to say what adventures he began to
imagine, or what career to devise for himself, before he had ridden three
miles from home. He had not read Monsieur Galland’s ingenious Arabian
tales as yet; but be sure that there are other folks who build castles in
the air, and have fine hopes, and kick them down too, besides honest
Alnaschar.
Chapter X. I Go To Cambridge, And Do But Little Good There
My lord, who said he should like to revisit the old haunts of his youth,
kindly accompanied Harry Esmond in his first journey to Cambridge. Their
road lay through London, where my lord viscount would also have Harry stay
a few days to show him the pleasures of the town, before he entered upon
his University studies, and whilst here Harry’s patron conducted the young
man to my lady dowager’s house at Chelsey near London: the kind lady at
Castlewood having specially ordered that the young gentleman and the old
should pay a respectful visit in that quarter.
Her ladyship the viscountess dowager occupied a handsome new house in
Chelsey, with a garden behind it, and facing the river, always a bright
and animated sight with its swarms of sailors, barges, and wherries. Harry
laughed at recognizing in the parlour the well-remembered old piece of Sir
Peter Lely, wherein his father’s widow was represented as a virgin
huntress, armed with a gilt bow and arrow, and encumbered only with that
small quantity of drapery which it would seem the virgins in King
Charles’s day were accustomed to wear.
My lady dowager had left off this peculiar habit of huntress when she
married. But though she was now considerably past sixty years of age, I
believe she thought that airy nymph of the picture could still be easily
recognized in the venerable personage who gave an audience to Harry and
his patron.
She received the young man with even more favour than she showed to the
elder, for she chose to carry on the conversation in French, in which my
Lord Castlewood was no great proficient, and expressed her satisfaction at
finding that Mr. Esmond could speak fluently in that language. “’Twas the
only one fit for polite conversation,” she condescended to say, “and
suitable to persons of high breeding.”
My lord laughed afterwards, as the gentlemen went away, at his kinswoman’s
behaviour. He said he remembered the time when she could speak English
fast enough, and joked in his jolly way at the loss he had had of such a
lovely wife as that.
My lady viscountess deigned to ask his lordship news of his wife and
children; she had heard that Lady Castlewood had had the small-pox; she
hoped she was not so _very_ much disfigured as people said.
At this remark about his wife’s malady, my lord viscount winced and turned
red; but the dowager, in speaking of the disfigurement of the young lady,
turned to her looking-glass and examined her old wrinkled countenance in
it with such a grin of satisfaction, that it was all her guests could do
to refrain from laughing in her ancient face.
She asked Harry what his profession was to be; and my lord, saying that
the lad was to take orders, and have the living of Castlewood when old Dr.
Tusher vacated it; she did not seem to show any particular anger at the
notion of Harry’s becoming a Church of England clergyman, nay, was rather
glad than otherwise, that the youth should be so provided for. She bade
Mr. Esmond not to forget to pay her a visit whenever he passed through
London, and carried her graciousness so far as to send a purse with twenty
guineas for him, to the tavern at which my lord put up (the “Greyhound”,
in Charing Cross); and, along with this welcome gift for her kinsman, she
sent a little doll for a present to my lord’s little daughter Beatrix, who
was growing beyond the age of dolls by this time, and was as tall almost
as her venerable relative.
After seeing the town, and going to the plays, my Lord Castlewood and
Esmond rode together to Cambridge, spending two pleasant days upon the
journey. Those rapid new coaches were not established as yet, that
performed the whole journey between London and the University in a single
day; however, the road was pleasant and short enough to Harry Esmond, and
he always gratefully remembered that happy holiday, which his kind patron
gave him.
Mr. Esmond was entered a pensioner of Trinity College in Cambridge, to
which famous college my lord had also in his youth belonged. Dr. Montague
was master at this time, and received my lord viscount with great
politeness: so did Mr. Bridge, who was appointed to be Harry’s tutor. Tom
Tusher, who was of Emmanuel College, and was by this time a junior soph,
came to wait upon my lord, and to take Harry under his protection; and
comfortable rooms being provided for him in the great court close by the
gate, and near to the famous Mr. Newton’s lodgings, Harry’s patron took
leave of him with many kind words and blessings, and an admonition to him
to behave better at the University than my lord himself had ever done.
’Tis needless in these memoirs to go at any length into the particulars of
Harry Esmond’s college career. It was like that of a hundred young
gentlemen of that day. But he had the ill fortune to be older by a couple
of years than most of his fellow students; and by his previous solitary
mode of bringing up, the circumstances of his life, and the peculiar
thoughtfulness and melancholy that had naturally engendered, he was, in a
great measure, cut off from the society of comrades who were much younger
and higher-spirited than he. His tutor, who had bowed down to the ground,
as he walked my lord over the college grass-plats, changed his behaviour
as soon as the nobleman’s back was turned, and was—at least Harry thought
so—harsh and overbearing. When the lads used to assemble in their _greges_
in hall, Harry found himself alone in the midst of that little flock of
boys; they raised a great laugh at him when he was set on to read Latin,
which he did with the foreign pronunciation taught to him by his old
master, the Jesuit, than which he knew no other. Mr. Bridge, the tutor,
made him the object of clumsy jokes, in which he was fond of indulging.
The young man’s spirit was chafed, and his vanity mortified; and he found
himself, for some time, as lonely in this place as ever he had been at
Castlewood, whither he longed to return. His birth was a source of shame
to him, and he fancied a hundred slights and sneers from young and old,
who, no doubt, had treated him better had he met them himself more
frankly. And as he looks back, in calmer days, upon this period of his
life, which he thought so unhappy, he can see that his own pride and
vanity caused no small part of the mortifications which he attributed to
others’ ill will. The world deals good-naturedly with good-natured people,
and I never knew a sulky misanthropist who quarrelled with it, but it was
he, and not it, that was in the wrong. Tom Tusher gave Harry plenty of
good advice on this subject, for Tom had both good sense and good humour;
but Mr. Harry chose to treat his senior with a great deal of superfluous
disdain and absurd scorn, and would by no means part from his darling
injuries, in which, very likely, no man believed but himself. As for
honest Doctor Bridge, the tutor found, after a few trials of wit with the
pupil, that the younger man was an ugly subject for wit, and that the
laugh was often turned against him. This did not make tutor and pupil any
better friends; but had, so far, an advantage for Esmond, that Mr. Bridge
was induced to leave him alone; and so long as he kept his chapels, and
did the college exercises required of him, Bridge was content not to see
Harry’s glum face in his class, and to leave him to read and sulk for
himself in his own chamber.
A poem or two in Latin and English, which were pronounced to have some
merit, and a Latin oration (for Mr. Esmond could write that language
better than pronounce it), got him a little reputation both with the
authorities of the University and amongst the young men, with whom he
began to pass for more than he was worth. A few victories over their
common enemy Mr. Bridge, made them incline towards him, and look upon him
as the champion of their order against the seniors. Such of the lads as he
took into his confidence, found him not so gloomy and haughty as his
appearance led them to believe; and Don Dismallo, as he was called, became
presently a person of some little importance in his college, and was, as
he believes, set down by the seniors there as rather a dangerous
character.
Don Dismallo was a stanch young Jacobite, like the rest of his family;
gave himself many absurd airs of loyalty; used to invite young friends to
burgundy, and give the king’s health on King James’s birthday; wore black
on the day of his abdication; fasted on the anniversary of King William’s
coronation; and performed a thousand absurd antics, of which he smiles now
to think.
These follies caused many remonstrances on Tom Tusher’s part, who was
always a friend to the powers that be, as Esmond was always in opposition
to them. Tom was a Whig, while Esmond was a Tory. Tom never missed a
lecture, and capped the proctor with the profoundest of bows. No wonder he
sighed over Harry’s insubordinate courses, and was angry when the others
laughed at him. But that Harry was known to have my lord viscount’s
protection, Tom no doubt would have broken with him altogether. But honest
Tom never gave up a comrade as long as he was the friend of a great man.
This was not out of scheming on Tom’s part, but a natural inclination
towards the great. ’Twas no hypocrisy in him to flatter, but the bent of
his mind, which was always perfectly good-humoured, obliging, and servile.
Harry had very liberal allowances, for his dear mistress of Castlewood not
only regularly supplied him, but the dowager at Chelsey made her donation
annual, and received Esmond at her house near London every Christmas; but,
in spite of these benefactions, Esmond was constantly poor; whilst ’twas a
wonder with how small a stipend from his father, Tom Tusher contrived to
make a good figure. ’Tis true that Harry both spent, gave, and lent his
money very freely, which Thomas never did. I think he was like the famous
Duke of Marlborough in this instance, who, getting a present of fifty
pieces, when a young man, from some foolish woman who fell in love with
his good looks, showed the money to Cadogan in a drawer scores of years
after, where it had lain ever since he had sold his beardless honour to
procure it. I do not mean to say that Tom ever let out his good looks so
profitably, for nature had not endowed him with any particular charms of
person, and he ever was a pattern of moral behaviour, losing no
opportunity of giving the very best advice to his younger comrade; with
which article, to do him justice, he parted very freely. Not but that he
was a merry fellow, too, in his way; he loved a joke, if by good fortune
he understood it, and took his share generously of a bottle if another
paid for it, and especially if there was a young lord in company to drink
it. In these cases there was not a harder drinker in the University than
Mr. Tusher could be; and it was edifying to behold him, fresh shaved and
with smug face, singing out “Amen!” at early chapel in the morning. In his
reading, poor Harry permitted himself to go a-gadding after all the Nine
Muses, and so very likely had but little favour from any one of them;
whereas Tom Tusher, who had no more turn for poetry than a ploughboy,
nevertheless, by a dogged perseverance and obsequiousness in courting the
divine Calliope, got himself a prize, and some credit in the University,
and a fellowship at his college, as a reward for his scholarship. In this
time of Mr. Esmond’s life, he got the little reading which he ever could
boast of, and passed a good part of his days greedily devouring all the
books on which he could lay hand. In this desultory way the works of most
of the English, French, and Italian poets came under his eyes, and he had
a smattering of the Spanish tongue likewise, besides the ancient
languages, of which, at least of Latin, he was a tolerable master.
Then, about midway in his University career, he fell to reading for the
profession to which worldly prudence rather than inclination called him,
and was perfectly bewildered in theological controversy. In the course of
his reading (which was neither pursued with that seriousness or that
devout mind which such a study requires), the youth found himself, at the
end of one month, a Papist, and was about to proclaim his faith; the next
month a Protestant, with Chillingworth; and the third a sceptic, with
Hobbs and Bayle. Whereas honest Tom Tusher never permitted his mind to
stray out of the prescribed University path, accepted the Thirty-nine
Articles with all his heart, and would have signed and sworn to other
nine-and-thirty with entire obedience. Harry’s wilfulness in this matter,
and disorderly thoughts and conversation, so shocked and afflicted his
senior, that there grew up a coldness and estrangement between them, so
that they became scarce more than mere acquaintances, from having been
intimate friends when they came to college first. Politics ran high, too,
at the University; and here, also, the young men were at variance. Tom
professed himself, albeit a High Churchman, a strong King William’s-man;
whereas Harry brought his family Tory politics to college with him, to
which he must add a dangerous admiration for Oliver Cromwell, whose side,
or King James’s by turns, he often chose to take in the disputes which the
young gentlemen used to hold in each other’s rooms, where they debated on
the state of the nation, crowned and deposed kings, and toasted past and
present heroes or beauties in flagons of college ale.
Thus, either from the circumstances of his birth, or the natural
melancholy of his disposition, Esmond came to live very much by himself
during his stay at the University, having neither ambition enough to
distinguish himself in the college career, nor caring to mingle with the
mere pleasures and boyish frolics of the students, who were, for the most
part, two or three years younger than he. He fancied that the gentlemen of
the common-room of his college slighted him on account of his birth, and
hence kept aloof from their society. It may be that he made the ill will,
which he imagined came from them, by his own behaviour, which, as he looks
back on it in after-life, he now sees was morose and haughty. At any rate,
he was as tenderly grateful for kindness as he was susceptible of slight
and wrong; and, lonely as he was generally, yet had one or two very warm
friendships for his companions of those days.
One of these was a queer gentleman that resided in the University, though
he was no member of it, and was the professor of a science scarce
recognized in the common course of college education. This was a French
refugee officer, who had been driven out of his native country at the time
of the Protestant persecutions there, and who came to Cambridge, where he
taught the science of the small-sword, and set up a saloon-of-arms. Though
he declared himself a Protestant, ’twas said Mr. Moreau was a Jesuit in
disguise; indeed, he brought very strong recommendations to the Tory
party, which was pretty strong in that University, and very likely was one
of the many agents whom King James had in this country. Esmond found this
gentleman’s conversation very much more agreeable, and to his taste, than
the talk of the college divines in the common-room; he never wearied of
Moreau’s stories of the wars of Turenne and Condé, in which he had borne a
part; and being familiar with the French tongue from his youth, and in a
place where but few spoke it, his company became very agreeable to the
brave old professor of arms, whose favourite pupil he was, and who made
Mr. Esmond a very tolerable proficient in the noble science of _escrime_.
At the next term Esmond was to take his degree of Bachelor of Arts, and
afterwards, in proper season, to assume the cassock and bands which his
fond mistress would have him wear. Tom Tusher himself was a parson and a
fellow of his college by this time; and Harry felt that he would very
gladly cede his right to the living of Castlewood to Tom, and that his own
calling was in no way the pulpit. But as he was bound, before all things
in the world, to his dear mistress at home, and knew that a refusal on his
part would grieve her, he determined to give her no hint of his
unwillingness to the clerical office; and it was in this unsatisfactory
mood of mind that he went to spend the last vacation he should have at
Castlewood before he took orders.
Chapter XI. I Come Home For A Holiday To Castlewood, And Find A Skeleton
In The House
At his third long vacation, Esmond came as usual to Castlewood, always
feeling an eager thrill of pleasure when he found himself once more in the
house where he had passed so many years, and beheld the kind familiar eyes
of his mistress looking upon him. She and her children (out of whose
company she scarce ever saw him) came to greet him. Miss Beatrix was grown
so tall that Harry did not quite know whether he might kiss her or no; and
she blushed and held back when he offered that salutation, though she took
it, and even courted it, when they were alone. The young lord was shooting
up to be like his gallant father in look, though with his mother’s kind
eyes: the Lady of Castlewood herself seemed grown, too, since Harry saw
her—in her look more stately, in her person fuller, in her face, still as
ever most tender and friendly, a greater air of command and decision than
had appeared in that guileless sweet countenance which Harry remembered so
gratefully. The tone of her voice was so much deeper and sadder when she
spoke and welcomed him, that it quite startled Esmond, who looked up at
her surprised as she spoke, when she withdrew her eyes from him; nor did
she ever look at him afterwards when his own eyes were gazing upon her. A
something hinting at grief and secret, and filling his mind with alarm
undefinable, seemed to speak with that low thrilling voice of hers, and
look out of those dear sad eyes. Her greeting to Esmond was so cold that
it almost pained the lad (who would have liked to fall on his knees and
kiss the skirt of her robe, so fond and ardent was his respect and regard
for her), and he faltered in answering the questions which she, hesitating
on her side, began to put to him. Was he happy at Cambridge? Did he study
too hard? She hoped not. He had grown very tall, and looked very well.
“He has got a moustache!” cries out Master Esmond.
“Why does he not wear a peruke like my Lord Mohun?” asked Miss Beatrix.
“My lord says that nobody wears their own hair.”
“I believe you will have to occupy your old chamber,” says my lady. “I
hope the housekeeper has got it ready.”
“Why, mamma, you have been there ten times these three days yourself!”
exclaims Frank.
“And she cut some flowers which you planted in my garden—do you remember,
ever so many years ago?—when I was quite a little girl,” cries out Miss
Beatrix, on tiptoe. “And mamma put them in your window.”
“I remember when you grew well after you were ill that you used to like
roses,” said the lady, blushing like one of them. They all conducted Harry
Esmond to his chamber; the children running before, Harry walking by his
mistress hand-in-hand.
The old room had been ornamented and beautified not a little to receive
him. The flowers were in the window in a china vase; and there was a fine
new counterpane on the bed, which chatterbox Beatrix said mamma had made
too. A fire was crackling on the hearth, although it was June. My lady
thought the room wanted warming; everything was done to make him happy and
welcome: “And you are not to be a page any longer, but a gentleman and
kinsman, and to walk with papa and mamma,” said the children. And as soon
as his dear mistress and children had left him to himself, it was with a
heart overflowing with love and gratefulness that he flung himself down on
his knees by the side of the little bed, and asked a blessing upon those
who were so kind to him.
The children, who are always house tell-tales, soon made him acquainted
with the little history of the house and family. Papa had been to London
twice. Papa often went away now. Papa had taken Beatrix to Westlands,
where she was taller than Sir George Harper’s second daughter, though she
was two years older. Papa had taken Beatrix and Frank both to Bellminster,
where Frank had got the better of Lord Bellminster’s son in a
boxing-match—my lord, laughing, told Harry afterwards. Many gentlemen came
to stop with papa, and papa had gotten a new game from London, a French
game, called a billiard—that the French king played it very well: and the
Dowager Lady Castlewood had sent Miss Beatrix a present; and papa had
gotten a new chaise, with two little horses, which he drove himself,
beside the coach, which mamma went in; and Dr. Tusher was a cross old
plague, and they did not like to learn from him at all; and papa did not
care about them learning, and laughed when they were at their books, but
mamma liked them to learn, and taught them; and “I don’t think papa is
fond of mamma”, said Miss Beatrix, with her great eyes. She had come quite
close up to Harry Esmond by the time this prattle took place, and was on
his knee, and had examined all the points of his dress, and all the good
or bad features of his homely face.
“You shouldn’t say that papa is not fond of mamma,” said the boy, at this
confession. “Mamma never said so; and mamma forbade you to say it, Miss
Beatrix.”
’Twas this, no doubt, that accounted for the sadness in Lady Castlewood’s
eyes, and the plaintive vibrations of her voice. Who does not know of
eyes, lighted by love once, where the flame shines no more?—of lamps
extinguished, once properly trimmed and tended? Every man has such in his
house. Such mementoes make our splendidest chambers look blank and sad;
such faces seen in a day cast a gloom upon our sunshine. So oaths mutually
sworn, and invocations of Heaven, and priestly ceremonies, and fond
belief, and love, so fond and faithful that it never doubted but that it
should live for ever, are all of no avail towards making love eternal: it
dies, in spite of the banns and the priest; and I have often thought there
should be a visitation of the sick for it, and a funeral service, and an
extreme unction, and an _abi in pace_. It has its course, like all mortal
things—its beginning, progress, and decay. It buds and it blooms out into
sunshine, and it withers and ends. Strephon and Chloe languish apart; join
in a rapture: and presently you hear that Chloe is crying, and Strephon
has broken his crook across her back. Can you mend it so as to show no
marks of rupture? Not all the priests of Hymen, not all the incantations
to the gods, can make it whole!
Waking up from dreams, books, and visions of college honours, in which,
for two years, Harry Esmond had been immersed, he found himself instantly,
on his return home, in the midst of this actual tragedy of life, which
absorbed and interested him more than all his tutor taught him. The
persons whom he loved best in the world, and to whom he owed most, were
living unhappily together. The gentlest and kindest of women was suffering
ill-usage and shedding tears in secret: the man who made her wretched by
neglect, if not by violence, was Harry’s benefactor and patron. In houses
where, in place of that sacred, inmost flame of love, there is discord at
the centre, the whole, household becomes hypocritical, and each lies to
his neighbour. The husband (or it may be the wife) lies when the visitor
comes in, and wears a grin of reconciliation or politeness before him. The
wife lies (indeed, her business is to do that, and to smile, however much
she is beaten), swallows her tears, and lies to her lord and master; lies
in bidding little Jacky respect dear papa; lies in assuring grandpapa that
she is perfectly happy. The servants lie, wearing grave faces behind their
master’s chair, and pretending to be unconscious of the fighting; and so,
from morning till bedtime, life is passed in falsehood. And wiseacres call
this a proper regard of morals, and point out Baucis and Philemon as
examples of a good life.
If my lady did not speak of her griefs to Harry Esmond, my lord was by no
means reserved when in his cups, and spoke his mind very freely, bidding
Harry in his coarse way, and with his blunt language, beware of all women
as cheats, jades, jilts, and using other unmistakable monosyllables in
speaking of them. Indeed, ’twas the fashion of the day as I must own; and
there’s not a writer of my time of any note, with the exception of poor
Dick Steele, that does not speak of a woman as of a slave, and scorn and
use her as such. Mr. Pope, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Addison, Mr. Gay, every one
of ’em, sing in this key, each according to his nature and politeness; and
louder and fouler than all in abuse is Dr. Swift, who spoke of them as he
treated them, worst of all.
Much of the quarrels and hatred which arise between married people come in
my mind from the husband’s rage and revolt at discovering that his slave
and bedfellow, who is to minister to all his wishes, and is church-sworn
to honour and obey him—is his superior; and that _he_, and not she, ought
to be the subordinate of the twain; and in these controversies, I think,
lay the cause of my lord’s anger against his lady. When he left her, she
began to think for herself, and her thoughts were not in his favour. After
the illumination, when the love-lamp is put out that anon we spoke of, and
by the common daylight we look at the picture, what a daub it looks! what
a clumsy effigy! How many men and wives come to this knowledge, think you?
And if it be painful to a woman to find herself mated for life to a boor,
and ordered to love and honour a dullard; it is worse still for the man
himself perhaps, whenever in his dim comprehension the idea dawns that his
slave and drudge yonder is, in truth, his superior; that the woman who
does his bidding, and submits to his humour, should be his lord; that she
can think a thousand things beyond the power of his muddled brains; and
that in yonder head, on the pillow opposite to him, lie a thousand
feelings, mysteries of thought, latent scorns and rebellions, whereof he
only dimly perceives the existence as they look out furtively from her
eyes: treasures of love doomed to perish without a hand to gather them;
sweet fancies and images of beauty that would grow and unfold themselves
into flower; bright wit that would shine like diamonds could it be brought
into the sun: and the tyrant in possession crushes the outbreak of all
these, drives them back like slaves into the dungeon and darkness, and
chafes without that his prisoner is rebellious, and his sworn subject
undutiful and refractory. So the lamp was out in Castlewood Hall, and the
lord and lady there saw each other as they were. With her illness and
altered beauty my lord’s fire for his wife disappeared; with his
selfishness and faithlessness her foolish fiction of love and reverence
was rent away. Love!—who is to love what is base and unlovely?
Respect!—who is to respect what is gross and sensual? Not all the marriage
oaths sworn before all the parsons, cardinals, ministers, muftis, and
rabbins in the world, can bind to that monstrous allegiance. This couple
was living apart then; the woman happy to be allowed to love and tend her
children (who were never of her own goodwill away from her) and thankful
to have saved such treasures as these out of the wreck in which the better
part of her heart went down.
These young ones had had no instructors save their mother, and Doctor
Tusher for their theology occasionally, and had made more progress than
might have been expected under a tutor so indulgent and fond as Lady
Castlewood. Beatrix could sing and dance like a nymph. Her voice was her
father’s delight after dinner. She ruled over the house with little
imperial ways, which her parents coaxed and laughed at. She had long
learned the value of her bright eyes, and tried experiments in coquetry,
_in corpore vili_, upon rustics and country squires, until she should
prepare to conquer the world and the fashion. She put on a new ribbon to
welcome Harry Esmond, made eyes at him, and directed her young smiles at
him, not a little to the amusement of the young man, and the joy of her
father, who laughed his great laugh, and encouraged her in her thousand
antics. Lady Castlewood watched the child gravely and sadly: the little
one was pert in her replies to her mother, yet eager in her protestations
of love and promises of amendment; and as ready to cry (after a little
quarrel brought on by her own giddiness) until she had won back her
mamma’s favour, as she was to risk the kind lady’s displeasure by fresh
outbreaks of restless vanity. From her mother’s sad looks she fled to her
father’s chair and boozy laughter. She already set the one against the
other: and the little rogue delighted in the mischief which she knew how
to make so early.
The young heir of Castlewood was spoiled by father and mother both. He
took their caresses as men do, and as if they were his right. He had his
hawks and his spaniel dog, his little horse and his beagles. He had
learned to ride and to drink, and to shoot flying: and he had a small
court, the sons of the huntsman and woodman, as became the heir-apparent,
taking after the example of my lord his father. If he had a headache, his
mother was as much frightened as if the plague were in the house: my lord
laughed and jeered in his abrupt way—(indeed, ’twas on the day after New
Year’s Day, and an excess of mince-pie)—and said with some of his usual
oaths—“D——n it, Harry Esmond—you see how my lady takes on about Frank’s
megrim. She used to be sorry about me, my boy (pass the tankard, Harry),
and to be frightened if I had a headache once. She don’t care about my
head now. They’re like that—women are—all the same, Harry, all jilts in
their hearts. Stick to college—stick to punch and buttery ale: and never
see a woman that’s handsomer than an old cinder-faced bedmaker. That’s my
counsel.”
It was my lord’s custom to fling out many jokes of this nature, in
presence of his wife and children, at meals—clumsy sarcasms which my lady
turned many a time, or which, sometimes, she affected not to hear, or
which now and again would hit their mark and make the poor victim wince
(as you could see by her flushing face and eyes filling with tears), or
which again worked her up to anger and retort, when, in answer to one of
these heavy bolts, she would flash back with a quivering reply. The pair
were not happy; nor indeed was it happy to be with them. Alas that
youthful love and truth should end in bitterness and bankruptcy! To see a
young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple
loving each other is the best sight of all. Harry Esmond became the
confidant of one and the other—that is, my lord told the lad all his
griefs and wrongs (which were indeed of Lord Castlewood’s own making), and
Harry divined my lady’s; his affection leading him easily to penetrate the
hypocrisy under which Lady Castlewood generally chose to go disguised, and
see her heart aching whilst her face wore a smile. ’Tis a hard task for
women in life, that mask which the world bids them wear. But there is no
greater crime than for a woman who is ill used and unhappy to show that
she is so. The world is quite relentless about bidding her to keep a
cheerful face; and our women, like the Malabar wives, are forced to go
smiling and painted to sacrifice themselves with their husbands; their
relations being the most eager to push them on to their duty, and, under
their shouts and applauses, to smother and hush their cries of pain.
So, into the sad secret of his patron’s household, Harry Esmond became
initiated, he scarce knew how. It had passed under his eyes two years
before, when he could not understand it; but reading, and thought, and
experience of men, had oldened him; and one of the deepest sorrows of a
life which had never, in truth, been very happy, came upon him now, when
he was compelled to understand and pity a grief which he stood quite
powerless to relieve.
-------------------------------------
It hath been said my lord would never take the oath of allegiance, nor his
seat as a peer of the kingdom of Ireland, where, indeed, he had but a
nominal estate; and refused an English peerage which King William’s
Government offered him as a bribe to secure his loyalty.
He might have accepted this, and would doubtless, but for the earnest
remonstrances of his wife (who ruled her husband’s opinions better than
she could govern his conduct), and who being a simple-hearted woman, with
but one rule of faith and right, never thought of swerving from her
fidelity to the exiled family, or of recognizing any other sovereign but
King James; and, though she acquiesced in the doctrine of obedience to the
reigning power, no temptation, she thought, could induce her to
acknowledge the Prince of Orange as rightful monarch, nor to let her lord
so acknowledge him. So my Lord Castlewood remained a nonjuror all his life
nearly, though his self-denial caused him many a pang, and left him sulky
and out of humour.
The year after the Revolution, and all through King William’s life, ’tis
known there were constant intrigues for the restoration of the exiled
family; but if my Lord Castlewood took any share of these, as is probable,
’twas only for a short time, and when Harry Esmond was too young to be
introduced into such important secrets.
But in the year 1695, when that conspiracy of Sir John Fenwick, Colonel
Lowick, and others, was set on foot, for waylaying King William as he came
from Hampton Court to London, and a secret plot was formed, in which a
vast number of the nobility and people of honour were engaged; Father Holt
appeared at Castlewood, and brought a young friend with him, a gentleman
whom ’twas easy to see that both my lord and the father treated with
uncommon deference. Harry Esmond saw this gentleman, and knew and
recognized him in after-life, as shall be shown in its place; and he has
little doubt now that my lord viscount was implicated somewhat in the
transactions which always kept Father Holt employed and travelling hither
and thither under a dozen of different names and disguises. The father’s
companion went by the name of Captain James; and it was under a very
different name and appearance that Harry Esmond afterwards saw him.
It was the next year that the Fenwick conspiracy blew up, which is a
matter of public history now, and which ended in the execution of Sir John
and many more, who suffered manfully for their treason, and who were
attended to Tyburn by my lady’s father, Dean Armstrong, Mr. Collier, and
other stout nonjuring clergymen, who absolved them at the gallows’ foot.
’Tis known that when Sir John was apprehended, discovery was made of a
great number of names of gentlemen engaged in the conspiracy; when, with a
noble wisdom and clemency, the prince burned the list of conspirators
furnished to him, and said he would know no more. Now it was, after this,
that Lord Castlewood swore his great oath, that he would never, so help
him Heaven, be engaged in any transaction against that brave and merciful
man; and so he told Holt when the indefatigable priest visited him, and
would have had him engage in a farther conspiracy. After this my lord ever
spoke of King William as he was—as one of the wisest, the bravest, and the
greatest of men. My Lady Esmond (for her part) said she could never pardon
the king, first, for ousting his father-in-law from his throne, and
secondly, for not being constant to his wife, the Princess Mary. Indeed, I
think if Nero were to rise again, and be king of England, and a good
family man, the ladies would pardon him. My lord laughed at his wife’s
objections—the standard of virtue did not fit him much.
The last conference which Mr. Holt had with his lordship took place when
Harry was come home for his first vacation from college (Harry saw his old
tutor but for a half-hour, and exchanged no private words with him), and
their talk, whatever it might be, left my lord viscount very much
disturbed in mind—so much so, that his wife, and his young kinsman, Henry
Esmond, could not but observe his disquiet. After Holt was gone, my lord
rebuffed Esmond, and again treated him with the greatest deference; he
shunned his wife’s questions and company, and looked at his children with
such a face of gloom and anxiety, muttering, “Poor children—poor
children!” in a way that could not but fill those whose life it was to
watch him and obey him, with great alarm. For which gloom, each person
interested in the Lord Castlewood, framed in his or her own mind an
interpretation.
My lady, with a laugh of cruel bitterness, said, “I suppose the person at
Hexton has been ill, or has scolded him” (for my lord’s infatuation about
Mrs. Marwood was known only too well). Young Esmond feared for his money
affairs, into the condition of which he had been initiated; and that the
expenses, always greater than his revenue, had caused Lord Castlewood
disquiet.
One of the causes why my lord viscount had taken young Esmond into his
special favour was a trivial one, that hath not before been mentioned,
though it was a very lucky accident in Henry Esmond’s life. A very few
months after my lord’s coming to Castlewood, in the winter-time—the little
boy, being a child in a petticoat, trotting about—it happened that little
Frank was with his father after dinner, who fell asleep over his wine,
heedless of the child, who crawled to the fire; and, as good fortune would
have it, Esmond was sent by his mistress for the boy just as the poor
little screaming urchin’s coat was set on fire by a log; when Esmond,
rushing forward, tore the dress off the infant, so that his own hands were
burned more than the child’s, who was frightened rather than hurt, by this
accident. But certainly ’twas providential that a resolute person should
have come in at that instant, or the child had been burned to death
probably, my lord sleeping very heavily after drinking, and not waking so
cool as a man should who had a danger to face.
Ever after this the father, loud in his expressions of remorse and
humility for being a tipsy good-for-nothing, and of admiration for Harry
Esmond, whom his lordship would style a hero for doing a very trifling
service, had the tenderest regard for his son’s preserver, and Harry
became quite as one of the family. His burns were tended with the greatest
care by his kind mistress, who said that Heaven had sent him to be the
guardian of her children, and that she would love him all her life.
And it was after this, and from the very great love and tenderness which
had grown up in this little household, rather than to the exhortations of
Dean Armstrong (though these had no small weight with him), that Harry
came to be quite of the religion of his house and his dear mistress, of
which he has ever since been a professing member. As for Dr. Tusher’s
boasts that he was the cause of this conversion—even in these young days
Mr. Esmond had such a contempt for the doctor, that had Tusher bade him
believe anything (which he did not—never meddling at all), Harry would
that instant have questioned the truth on’t.
My lady seldom drank wine; but on certain days of the year, such as
birthdays (poor Harry had never a one) and anniversaries, she took a
little; and this day, the 29th December, was one. At the end, then, of
this year, ’96, it might have been a fortnight after Mr. Holt’s last
visit, Lord Castlewood being still very gloomy in mind, and sitting at
table—my lady bidding a servant bring her a glass of wine, and looking at
her husband with one of her sweet smiles, said—
“My lord, will you not fill a bumper too, and let me call a toast?”
“What is it, Rachel?” says he, holding out his empty glass to be filled.
“’Tis the 29th of December,” says my lady, with her fond look of
gratitude; “and my toast is, ‘Harry—and God bless him, who saved my boy’s
life!’ ”
My lord looked at Harry hard, and drank the glass, but clapped it down on
the table in a moment, and, with a sort of groan, rose up, and went out of
the room. What was the matter? We all knew that some great grief was over
him.
Whether my lord’s prudence had made him richer, or legacies had fallen to
him, which enabled him to support a greater establishment than that frugal
one which had been too much for his small means, Harry Esmond knew not;
but the house of Castlewood was now on a scale much more costly than it
had been during the first year of his lordship’s coming to the title.
There were more horses in the stable and more servants in the hall, and
many more guests coming and going now than formerly, when it was found
difficult enough by the strictest economy to keep the house as befitted
one of his lordship’s rank, and the estate out of debt. And it did not
require very much penetration to find, that many of the new acquaintances
at Castlewood were not agreeable to the lady there: not that she ever
treated them or any mortal with anything but courtesy; but they were
persons who could not be welcome to her; and whose society a lady so
refined and reserved could scarce desire for her children. There came
fuddling squires from the country round, who bawled their songs under her
windows and drank themselves tipsy with my lord’s punch and ale: there
came officers from Hexton, in whose company our little lord was made to
hear talk and to drink, and swear too in a way that made the delicate lady
tremble for her son. Esmond tried to console her by saying what he knew of
his college experience; that with this sort of company and conversation a
man must fall in sooner or later in his course through the world: and it
mattered very little whether he heard it at twelve years old or twenty—the
youths who quitted mother’s apron-strings the latest being not uncommonly
the wildest rakes. But it was about her daughter that Lady Castlewood was
the most anxious, and the danger which she thought menaced the little
Beatrix from the indulgences which her father gave her (it must be owned
that my lord, since these unhappy domestic differences especially, was at
once violent in his language to the children when angry, as he was too
familiar, not to say coarse, when he was in a good humour), and from the
company into which the careless lord brought the child.
Not very far off from Castlewood is Sark Castle, where the Marchioness of
Sark lived, who was known to have been a mistress of the late King
Charles—and to this house, whither indeed a great part of the country
gentry went, my lord insisted upon going, not only himself, but on taking
his little daughter and son to play with the children there. The children
were nothing loath, for the house was splendid, and the welcome kind
enough. But my lady, justly no doubt, thought that the children of such a
mother as that noted Lady Sark had been, could be no good company for her
two; and spoke her mind to her lord. His own language when he was thwarted
was not indeed of the gentlest: to be brief, there was a family dispute on
this, as there had been on many other points—and the lady was not only
forced to give in, for the other’s will was law—nor could she, on account
of their tender age, tell her children what was the nature of her
objection to their visit of pleasure, or indeed mention to them any
objection at all—but she had the additional secret mortification to find
them returning delighted with their new friends, loaded with presents from
them, and eager to be allowed to go back to a place of such delights as
Sark Castle. Every year she thought the company there would be more
dangerous to her daughter, as from a child Beatrix grew to a woman, and
her daily increasing beauty, and many faults of character too, expanded.
It was Harry Esmond’s lot to see one of the visits which the old lady of
Sark paid to the lady of Castlewood Hall: whither she came in state with
six chestnut horses and blue ribbons, a page on each carriage step, a
gentleman of the horse, and armed servants riding before and behind her.
And, but that it was unpleasant to see Lady Castlewood’s face, it was
amusing to watch the behaviour of the two enemies: the frigid patience of
the younger lady, and the unconquerable good humour of the elder—who would
see no offence whatever her rival intended, and who never ceased to smile
and to laugh, and to coax the children, and to pay compliments to every
man, woman, child, nay dog, or chair and table, in Castlewood, so bent was
she upon admiring everything there. She lauded the children, and wished—as
indeed she well might—that her own family had been brought up as well as
those cherubs. She had never seen such a complexion as dear
Beatrix’s—though to be sure she had a right to it from father and
mother—Lady Castlewood’s was indeed a wonder of freshness, and Lady Sark
sighed to think she had not been born a fair woman; and remarking Harry
Esmond, with a fascinating superannuated smile, she complimented him on
his wit, which she said she could see from his eyes and forehead; and
vowed that she would never have _him_ at Sark until her daughter were out
of the way.
Chapter XII. My Lord Mohun Comes Among Us For No Good
There had ridden along with this old princess’s cavalcade, two gentlemen;
her son, my Lord Firebrace, and his friend, my Lord Mohun, who both were
greeted with a great deal of cordiality by the hospitable Lord of
Castlewood. My Lord Firebrace was but a feeble-minded and weak-limbed
young nobleman, small in stature and limited in understanding—to judge
from the talk young Esmond had with him; but the other was a person of a
handsome presence, with the _bel air_, and a bright daring warlike aspect,
which, according to the chronicle of those days, had already achieved for
him the conquest of several beauties and toasts. He had fought and
conquered in France, as well as in Flanders; he had served a couple of
campaigns with the Prince of Baden on the Danube, and witnessed the rescue
of Vienna from the Turk. And he spoke of his military exploits pleasantly,
and with the manly freedom of a soldier, so as to delight all his hearers
at Castlewood, who were little accustomed to meet a companion so
agreeable.
On the first day this noble company came, my lord would not hear of their
departure before dinner, and carried away the gentlemen to amuse them,
whilst his wife was left to do the honours of her house to the old
marchioness and her daughter within. They looked at the stables, where my
Lord Mohun praised the horses, though there was but a poor show there:
they walked over the old house and gardens, and fought the siege of
Oliver’s time over again: they played a game of rackets in the old court,
where my Lord Castlewood beat my Lord Mohun, who said he loved ball of all
things, and would quickly come back to Castlewood for his revenge. After
dinner they played bowls, and drank punch in the green alley; and when
they parted they were sworn friends, my Lord Castlewood kissing the other
lord before he mounted on horseback, and pronouncing him the best
companion he had met for many a long day. All night long, over his
tobacco-pipe Castlewood did not cease to talk to Harry Esmond in praise of
his new friend, and in fact did not leave off speaking of him until his
lordship was so tipsy that he could not speak plainly any more.
At breakfast next day it was the same talk renewed; and when my lady said
there was something free in the Lord Mohun’s looks and manner of speech
which caused her to mistrust him, her lord burst out with one of his
laughs and oaths; said that he never liked man, woman, or beast, but what
she was sure to be jealous of it; that Mohun was the prettiest fellow in
England; that he hoped to see more of him whilst in the country; and that
he would let Mohun know what my Lady Prude said of him.
“Indeed,” Lady Castlewood said, “I liked his conversation well enough.
’Tis more amusing than that of most people I know. I thought it, I own,
too free; not from what he said, as rather from what he implied.”
“Psha! your ladyship does not know the world,” said her husband; “and you
have always been as squeamish as when you were a miss of fifteen.”
“You found no fault when I was a miss at fifteen.”
“Begad, madam, you are grown too old for a pinafore now; and I hold that
’tis for me to judge what company my wife shall see,” said my lord,
slapping the table.
“Indeed, Francis, I never thought otherwise,” answered my lady, rising and
dropping him a curtsy, in which stately action, if there was obedience,
there was defiance too; and in which a bystander, deeply interested in the
happiness of that pair as Harry Esmond was, might see how hopelessly
separated they were; what a great gulf of difference and discord had run
between them.
“By G——d! Mohun is the best fellow in England; and I’ll invite him here,
just to plague that woman. Did you ever see such a frigid insolence as it
is, Harry? That’s the way she treats me,” he broke out, storming, and his
face growing red as he clenched his fists and went on. “I’m nobody in my
own house. I’m to be the humble servant of that parson’s daughter. By
Jove! I’d rather she should fling the dish at my head than sneer at me as
she does. She puts me to shame before the children with her d——d airs;
and, I’ll swear, tells Frank and Beaty that papa’s a reprobate, and that
they ought to despise me.”
“Indeed and indeed, sir, I never heard her say a word out of respect
regarding you,” Harry Esmond interposed.
“No, curse it! I wish she would speak. But she never does. She scorns me,
and holds her tongue. She keeps off from me, as if I was a pestilence. By
George! she was fond enough of her pestilence once. And when I came
a-courting, you would see miss blush—blush red, by George! for joy. Why,
what do you think she said to me, Harry? She said herself, when I joked
with her about her d—d smiling red cheeks: ‘’Tis as they do at St.
James’s; I put up my red flag when my king comes.’ I was the king, you
see, she meant. But now, sir, look at her! I believe she would be glad if
I was dead; and dead I’ve been to her these five years—ever since you all
of you had the small-pox: and she never forgave me for going away.”
“Indeed, my lord, though ’twas hard to forgive, I think my mistress
forgave it,” Harry Esmond said; “and remember how eagerly she watched your
lordship’s return, and how sadly she turned away when she saw your cold
looks.”
“Damme!” cries out my lord; “would you have had me wait and catch the
small-pox? Where the deuce had been the good of that? I’ll bear danger
with any man—but not useless danger—no, no. Thank you for nothing. And—you
nod your head, and I know very well, Parson Harry, what you mean. There
was the—the other affair to make her angry. But is a woman never to
forgive a husband who goes a-tripping? Do you take me for a saint?”
“Indeed, sir, I do not,” says Harry, with a smile.
“Since that time my wife’s as cold as the statue at Charing Cross. I tell
thee she has no forgiveness in her, Henry. Her coldness blights my whole
life, and sends me to the punch-bowl, or driving about the country. My
children are not mine, but hers, when we are together. ’Tis only when she
is out of sight with her abominable cold glances, that run through me,
that they’ll come to me, and that I dare to give them so much as a kiss;
and that’s why I take ’em and love ’em in other people’s houses, Harry.
I’m killed by the very virtue of that proud woman. Virtue! give me the
virtue that can forgive; give me the virtue that thinks not of preserving
itself, but of making other folks happy. Damme, what matters a scar or two
if ’tis got in helping a friend in ill fortune?”
And my lord again slapped the table, and took a great draught from the
tankard. Harry Esmond admired as he listened to him, and thought how the
poor preacher of this self-sacrifice had fled from the small-pox, which
the lady had borne so cheerfully, and which had been the cause of so much
disunion in the lives of all in this house. “How well men preach,” thought
the young man, “and each is the example in his own sermon. How each has a
story in a dispute, and a true one, too, and both are right, or wrong as
you will!” Harry’s heart was pained within him, to watch the struggles and
pangs that tore the breast of this kind, manly friend and protector.
“Indeed, sir,” said he, “I wish to God that my mistress could hear you
speak as I have heard you; she would know much that would make her life
the happier, could she hear it.” But my lord flung away with one of his
oaths, and a jeer; he said that Parson Harry was a good fellow; but that
as for women, all women were alike—all jades and heartless. So a man
dashes a fine vase down and despises it for being broken. It may be
worthless—true: but who had the keeping of it, and who shattered it?
Harry, who would have given his life to make his benefactress and her
husband happy, bethought him, now that he saw what my lord’s state of mind
was, and that he really had a great deal of that love left in his heart,
and ready for his wife’s acceptance if she would take it, whether he could
not be a means of reconciliation between these two persons, whom he
revered the most in the world. And he cast about how he should break a
part of his mind to his mistress, and warn her that in his, Harry’s
opinion, at least, her husband was still her admirer, and even her lover.
But he found the subject a very difficult one to handle, when he ventured
to remonstrate, which he did in the very gravest tone (for long confidence
and reiterated proofs of devotion and loyalty had given him a sort of
authority in the house, which he resumed as soon as ever he returned to
it); and with a speech that should have some effect, as, indeed, it was
uttered with the speaker’s own heart, he ventured most gently to hint to
his adored mistress, that she was doing her husband harm by her ill
opinion of him, and that the happiness of all the family depended upon
setting her right.
She, who was ordinarily calm and most gentle, and full of smiles and soft
attentions, flushed up when young Esmond so spoke to her, and rose from
her chair, looking at him with a haughtiness and indignation that he had
never before known her to display. She was quite an altered being for that
moment; and looked an angry princess insulted by a vassal.
“Have you ever heard me utter a word in my lord’s disparagement?” she
asked hastily, hissing out her words, and stamping her foot.
“Indeed, no,” Esmond said, looking down.
“Are you come to me as his ambassador—_You?_” she continued.
“I would sooner see peace between you than anything else in the world,”
Harry answered, “and would go of any embassy that had that end.”
“So _you_ are my lord’s go-between?” she went on, not regarding this
speech. “You are sent to bid me back into slavery again, and inform me
that my lord’s favour is graciously restored to his handmaid? He is weary
of Covent Garden, is he, that he comes home and would have the fatted calf
killed?”
“There’s good authority for it, surely,” said Esmond.
“For a son, yes; but my lord is not my son. It was he who cast me away
from him. It was he who broke our happiness down, and he bids me to repair
it. It was he who showed himself to me at last, as he was, not as I had
thought him. It is he who comes before my children stupid and senseless
with wine—who leaves our company for that of frequenters of taverns and
bagnios—who goes from his home to the city yonder and his friends there,
and when he is tired of them returns hither, and expects that I shall
kneel and welcome him. And he sends _you_ as his chamberlain! What a proud
embassy! Monsieur, I make you my compliment of the new place.”
“It would be a proud embassy, and a happy embassy too, could I bring you
and my lord together,” Esmond replied.
“I presume you have fulfilled your mission now, sir. ’Twas a pretty one
for you to undertake. I don’t know whether ’tis your Cambridge philosophy,
or time, that has altered your ways of thinking,” Lady Castlewood
continued, still in a sarcastic tone. “Perhaps you too have learned to
love drink, and to hiccup over your wine or punch;—which is your worship’s
favourite liquor? Perhaps you too put up at the ‘Rose’ on your way through
London, and have your acquaintances in Covent Garden. My services to you,
sir, to principal and ambassador, to master and—and lackey.”
“Great Heavens, madam,” cried Harry, “what have I done that thus, for a
second time, you insult me? Do you wish me to blush for what I used to be
proud of, that I lived on your bounty? Next to doing you a service (which
my life would pay for), you know that to receive one from you is my
highest pleasure. What wrong have I done you that you should wound me so,
cruel woman?”
“What wrong?” she said, looking at Esmond with wild eyes. “Well, none—none
that you know of, Harry, or could help. Why did you bring back the
small-pox,” she added, after a pause, “from Castlewood village? You could
not help it, could you? Which of us knows whither fate leads us? But we
were all happy, Henry, till then.” And Harry went away from this colloquy,
thinking still that the estrangement between his patron and his beloved
mistress was remediable, and that each had at heart a strong attachment to
the other.
The intimacy between the Lords Mohun and Castlewood appeared to increase
as long as the former remained in the country; and my Lord of Castlewood
especially seemed never to be happy out of his new comrade’s sight. They
sported together, they drank, they played bowls and tennis: my Lord
Castlewood would go for three days to Sark, and bring back my Lord Mohun
to Castlewood—where indeed his lordship made himself very welcome to all
persons, having a joke or a new game at romps for the children, all the
talk of the town for my lord, and music and gallantry and plenty of the
_beau langage_ for my lady, and for Harry Esmond, who was never tired of
hearing his stories of his campaigns and his life at Vienna, Venice,
Paris, and the famous cities of Europe which he had visited both in peace
and war. And he sang at my lady’s harpsichord, and played cards or
backgammon, or his new game of billiards with my lord (of whom he
invariably got the better); always having a consummate good humour, and
bearing himself with a certain manly grace, that might exhibit somewhat of
the camp and Alsatia perhaps, but that had its charm and stamped him a
gentleman: and his manner to Lady Castlewood was so devoted and
respectful, that she soon recovered from the first feelings of dislike
which she had conceived against him—nay, before long, began to be
interested in his spiritual welfare, and hopeful of his conversion,
lending him books of piety, which he promised dutifully to study. With her
my lord talked of reform, of settling into quiet life, quitting the Court
and town, and buying some land in the neighbourhood—though it must be
owned that, when the two lords were together over their burgundy after
dinner, their talk was very different, and there was very little question
of conversion on my Lord Mohun’s part. When they got to their second
bottle, Harry Esmond used commonly to leave these two noble topers, who,
though they talked freely enough, Heaven knows, in his presence (Good
Lord, what a set of stories, of Alsatia and Spring Garden, of the taverns
and gaming-houses, of the ladies of the Court, and mesdames of the
theatres, he can recall out of their godly conversation!)—although I say
they talked before Esmond freely, yet they seemed pleased when he went
away, and then they had another bottle, and then they fell to cards, and
then my Lord Mohun came to her ladyship’s drawing-room; leaving his boon
companion to sleep off his wine.
’Twas a point of honour with the fine gentlemen of those days to lose or
win magnificently at their horse-matches, or games of cards and dice—and
you could never tell, from the demeanour of these two lords afterwards,
which had been successful and which the loser at their games. And when my
lady hinted to my lord that he played more than she liked, he dismissed
her with a “pish”, and swore that nothing was more equal than play betwixt
gentlemen, if they did but keep it up long enough. And these kept it up
long enough you may be sure. A man of fashion of that time often passed a
quarter of his day at cards, and another quarter at drink: I have known
many a pretty fellow, who was a wit too, ready of repartee, and possessed
of a thousand graces, who would be puzzled if he had to write more than
his name.
There is scarce any thoughtful man or woman, I suppose, but can look back
upon his course of past life, and remember some point, trifling as it may
have seemed at the time of occurrence, which has nevertheless turned and
altered his whole career. ’Tis with almost all of us, as in Monsieur
Massillon’s magnificent image regarding King William, a _grain de sable_
that perverts or perhaps overthrows us; and so it was but a light word
flung in the air, a mere freak of a perverse child’s temper, that brought
down a whole heap of crushing woes upon that family whereof Harry Esmond
formed a part.
Coming home to his dear Castlewood in the third year of his academical
course (wherein he had now obtained some distinction, his Latin Poem on
the death of the Duke of Gloucester, Princess Anne of Denmark’s son,
having gained him a medal, and introduced him to the society of the
University wits), Esmond found his little friend and pupil Beatrix grown
to be taller than her mother, a slim and lovely young girl, with cheeks
mantling with health and roses: with eyes like stars shining out of azure,
with waving bronze hair clustered about the fairest young forehead ever
seen: and a mien and shape haughty and beautiful, such as that of the
famous antique statue of the huntress Diana—at one time haughty, rapid,
imperious, with eyes and arrows that dart and kill. Harry watched and
wondered at this young creature, and likened her in his mind to Artemis
with the ringing bow and shafts flashing death upon the children of Niobe;
at another time she was coy and melting as Luna shining tenderly upon
Endymion. This fair creature, this lustrous Phoebe, was only young as yet,
nor had nearly reached her full splendour: but crescent and brilliant, our
young gentleman of the University, his head full of poetical fancies, his
heart perhaps throbbing with desires undefined, admired this rising young
divinity; and gazed at her (though only as at some “bright particular
star”, far above his earth) with endless delight and wonder. She had been
a coquette from the earliest times almost, trying her freaks and
jealousies, her wayward frolics and winning caresses, upon all that came
within her reach; she set her women quarrelling in the nursery, and
practised her eyes on the groom as she rode behind him on the pillion.
She was the darling and torment of father and mother. She intrigued with
each secretly; and bestowed her fondness and withdrew it, plied them with
tears, smiles, kisses, cajolements;—when the mother was angry, as happened
often, flew to the father, and sheltering behind him, pursued her victim;
when both were displeased, transferred her caresses to the domestics, or
watched until she could win back her parents’ good graces, either by
surprising them into laughter and good humour, or appeasing them by
submission and artful humility. She was _saevo laeta negotio_, like that
fickle goddess Horace describes, and of whose “malicious joy” a great poet
of our own has written so nobly—who, famous and heroic as he was, was not
strong enough to resist the torture of women.
It was but three years before, that the child, then but ten years old, had
nearly managed to make a quarrel between Harry Esmond and his comrade,
good-natured, phlegmatic Thomas Tusher, who never of his own seeking
quarrelled with anybody: by quoting to the latter some silly joke which
Harry had made regarding him—(it was the merest, idlest jest, though it
near drove two old friends to blows, and I think such a battle would have
pleased her)—and from that day Tom kept at a distance from her; and she
respected him, and coaxed him sedulously whenever they met. But Harry was
much more easily appeased, because he was fonder of the child: and when
she made mischief, used cutting speeches, or caused her friends pain, she
excused herself for her fault, not by admitting and deploring it, but by
pleading not guilty, and asserting innocence so constantly, and with such
seeming artlessness, that it was impossible to question her plea. In her
childhood, they were but mischiefs then which she did; but her power
became more fatal as she grew older—as a kitten first plays with a ball,
and then pounces on a bird and kills it. ’Tis not to be imagined that
Harry Esmond had all this experience at this early stage of his life,
whereof he is now writing the history—many things here noted were but
known to him in later days. Almost everything Beatrix did or undid seemed
good, or at least pardonable, to him then, and years afterwards.
It happened, then, that Harry Esmond came home to Castlewood for his last
vacation, with good hopes of a fellowship at his college, and a contented
resolve to advance his fortune that way. ’Twas in the first year of the
present century, Mr. Esmond (as far as he knew the period of his birth)
being then twenty-two years old. He found his quondam pupil shot up into
this beauty of which we have spoken, and promising yet more: her brother,
my lord’s son, a handsome high-spirited brave lad, generous and frank, and
kind to everybody, save perhaps his sister, with whom Frank was at war
(and not from his but her fault)—adoring his mother, whose joy he was: and
taking her side in the unhappy matrimonial differences which were now
permanent, while of course Mistress Beatrix ranged with her father. When
heads of families fall out, it must naturally be that their dependants
wear the one or the other party’s colour; and even in the parliaments in
the servants’ hall or the stables, Harry, who had an early observant turn,
could see which were my lord’s adherents and which my lady’s, and
conjecture pretty shrewdly how their unlucky quarrel was debated. Our
lackeys sit in judgement on us. My lord’s intrigues may be ever so
stealthily conducted, but his valet knows them; and my lady’s woman
carries her mistress’s private history to the servants’ scandal-market,
and exchanges it against the secrets of other abigails.
Chapter XIII. My Lord Leaves Us And His Evil Behind Him
My Lord Mohun (of whose exploits and fame some of the gentlemen of the
University had brought down but ugly reports) was once more a guest at
Castlewood, and seemingly more intimately allied with my lord even than
before. Once in the spring those two noblemen had ridden to Cambridge from
Newmarket, whither they had gone for the horse-racing, and had honoured
Harry Esmond with a visit at his rooms; after which Doctor Montague, the
master of the college, who had treated Harry somewhat haughtily, seeing
his familiarity with these great folks, and that my Lord Castlewood
laughed and walked with his hand on Harry’s shoulder, relented to Mr.
Esmond, and condescended to be very civil to him; and some days after his
arrival, Harry, laughing, told this story to Lady Esmond, remarking how
strange it was that men famous for learning and renowned over Europe,
should, nevertheless, so bow down to a title, and cringe to a nobleman
ever so poor. At this, Mistress Beatrix flung up her head, and said, it
became those of low origin to respect their betters; that the parsons made
themselves a great deal too proud, she thought; and that she liked the way
at Lady Sark’s best, where the chaplain, though he loved pudding, as all
parsons do, always went away before the custard.
“And when I am a parson,” says Mr. Esmond, “will you give me no custard,
Beatrix?”
“You—you are different,” Beatrix answered. “You are of our blood.”
“My father was a parson, as you call him,” said my lady.
“But mine is a peer of Ireland,” says Mistress Beatrix, tossing her head.
“Let people know their places. I suppose you will have me go down on my
knees and ask a blessing of Mr. Thomas Tusher, that has just been made a
curate, and whose mother was a waiting-maid.”
And she tossed out of the room, being in one of her flighty humours then.
When she was gone, my lady looked so sad and grave, that Harry asked the
cause of her disquietude. She said it was not merely what he said of
Newmarket, but what she had remarked, with great anxiety and terror, that
my lord, ever since his acquaintance with the Lord Mohun especially, had
recurred to his fondness for play, which he had renounced since his
marriage.
“But men promise more than they are able to perform in marriage,” said my
lady, with a sigh. “I fear he has lost large sums; and our property,
always small, is dwindling away under this reckless dissipation. I heard
of him in London with very wild company. Since his return letters and
lawyers are constantly coming and going: he seems to me to have a constant
anxiety, though he hides it under boisterousness and laughter. I looked
through—through the door last night, and—and before,” said my lady, “and
saw them at cards after midnight; no estate will bear that extravagance,
much less ours, which will be so diminished that my son will have nothing
at all, and my poor Beatrix no portion!”
“I wish I could help you, madam,” said Harry Esmond, sighing, and wishing
that unavailingly, and for the thousandth time in his life.
“Who can? Only God,” said Lady Esmond—“only God, in whose hands we are.”
And so it is, and for his rule over his family, and for his conduct to
wife and children—subjects over whom his power is monarchical—any one who
watches the world must think with trembling sometimes of the account which
many a man will have to render. For in our society there’s no law to
control the King of the Fireside. He is master of property, happiness—life
almost. He is free to punish, to make happy or unhappy—to ruin or to
torture. He may kill a wife gradually, and be no more questioned than the
Grand Seignior who drowns a slave at midnight. He may make slaves and
hypocrites of his children; or friends and freemen; or drive them into
revolt and enmity against the natural law of love. I have heard
politicians and coffee-house wiseacres talking over the newspaper, and
railing at the tyranny of the French king, and the emperor, and wondered
how these (who are monarchs, too, in their way) govern their own dominions
at home, where each man rules absolute? When the annals of each little
reign are shown to the Supreme Master, under whom we hold sovereignty,
histories will be laid bare of household tyrants as cruel as Amurath, and
as savage as Nero, and as reckless and dissolute as Charles.
If Harry Esmond’s patron erred, ’twas in the latter way, from a
disposition rather self-indulgent than cruel; and he might have been
brought back to much better feelings, had time been given to him to bring
his repentance to a lasting reform.
As my lord and his friend Lord Mohun were such close companions, Mistress
Beatrix chose to be jealous of the latter; and the two gentlemen often
entertained each other by laughing, in their rude boisterous way, at the
child’s freaks of anger and show of dislike. “When thou art old enough,
thou shalt marry Lord Mohun,” Beatrix’s father would say: on which the
girl would pout and say, “I would rather marry Tom Tusher.” And because
the Lord Mohun always showed an extreme gallantry to my Lady Castlewood,
whom he professed to admire devotedly, one day, in answer to this old joke
of her father’s, Beatrix said, “I think my lord would rather marry mamma
than marry me; and is waiting till you die to ask her.”
The words were said lightly and pertly by the girl one night before
supper, as the family party were assembled near the great fire. The two
lords, who were at cards, both gave a start; my lady turned as red as
scarlet, and bade Mistress Beatrix go to her own chamber; whereupon the
girl, putting on, as her wont was, the most innocent air, said, “I am sure
I meant no wrong; I am sure mamma talks a great deal more to Harry Esmond
than she does to papa—and she cried when Harry went away, and she never
does when papa goes away; and last night she talked to Lord Mohun for ever
so long, and sent us out of the room, and cried when we came back, and——”
“D——n!” cried out my Lord Castlewood, out of all patience. “Go out of the
room, you little viper!” and he started up and flung down his cards.
“Ask Lord Mohun what I said to him, Francis,” her ladyship said, rising up
with a scared face, but yet with a great and touching dignity and candour
in her look and voice. “Come away with me, Beatrix.” Beatrix sprung up
too; she was in tears now.
“Dearest mamma, what have I done?” she asked. “Sure I meant no harm.” And
she clung to her mother, and the pair went out sobbing together.
“I will tell you what your wife said to me, Frank,” my Lord Mohun
cried—“Parson Harry may hear it; and, as I hope for heaven, every word I
say is true. Last night, with tears in her eyes, your wife implored me to
play no more with you at dice or at cards, and you know best whether what
she asked was not for your good.”
“Of course it was, Mohun,” says my lord, in a dry hard voice. “Of course,
you are a model of a man: and the world knows what a saint you are.”
My Lord Mohun was separated from his wife, and had had many affairs of
honour: of which women as usual had been the cause.
“I am no saint, though your wife is—and I can answer for my actions as
other people must for their words,” said my Lord Mohun.
“By G——, my lord, you shall,” cried the other, starting up.
“We have another little account to settle first, my lord,” says Lord
Mohun. Whereupon Harry Esmond, filled with alarm for the consequences to
which this disastrous dispute might lead, broke out into the most vehement
expostulations with his patron and his adversary. “Gracious Heavens!” he
said, “my lord, are you going to draw a sword upon your friend in your own
house? Can you doubt the honour of a lady who is as pure as Heaven, and
would die a thousand times rather than do you a wrong? Are the idle words
of a jealous child to set friends at variance? Has not my mistress, as
much as she dared to, besought your lordship, as the truth must be told,
to break your intimacy with my Lord Mohun; and to give up the habit which
may bring ruin on your family? But for my Lord Mohun’s illness, had he not
left you?”
“Faith, Frank, a man with a gouty toe can’t run after other men’s wives,”
broke out my Lord Mohun, who indeed was in that way, and with a laugh and
a look at his swathed limb so frank and comical, that the other dashing
his fist across his forehead was caught by that infectious good humour,
and said with his oath, “—— it, Harry, I believe thee,” and so this
quarrel was over, and the two gentlemen, at swords drawn but just now,
dropped their points, and shook hands.
_Beati pacifici._ “Go, bring my lady back,” said Harry’s patron. Esmond
went away only too glad to be the bearer of such good news. He found her
at the door; she had been listening there, but went back as he came. She
took both his hands, hers were marble cold. She seemed as if she would
fall on his shoulder. “Thank you, and God bless you, my dear brother
Harry,” she said. She kissed his hand, Esmond felt her tears upon it: and
leading her into the room, and up to my lord, the Lord Castlewood with an
outbreak of feeling and affection, such as he had not exhibited for many a
long day, took his wife to his heart, and bent over and kissed her and
asked her pardon.
“’Tis time for me to go to roost. I will have my gruel abed,” said my Lord
Mohun: and limped off comically on Harry Esmond’s arm. “By George, that
woman is a pearl!” he said; “and ’tis only a pig that wouldn’t value her.
Have you seen the vulgar trapesing orange-girl whom Esmond”—but here Mr.
Esmond interrupted him, saying, that these were not affairs for him to
know.
My lord’s gentleman came in to wait upon his master, who was no sooner in
his nightcap and dressing-gown than he had another visitor whom his host
insisted on sending to him: and this was no other than the Lady Castlewood
herself with the toast and gruel, which her husband bade her make and
carry with her own hands in to her guest.
Lord Castlewood stood looking after his wife as she went on this errand,
and as he looked, Harry Esmond could not but gaze on him, and remarked in
his patron’s face an expression of love, and grief, and care, which very
much moved and touched the young man. Lord Castlewood’s hands fell down at
his sides, and his head on his breast, and presently he said—
“You heard what Mohun said, parson?”
“That my lady was a saint?”
“That there are two accounts to settle. I have been going wrong these five
years, Harry Esmond. Ever since you brought that damned small-pox into the
house, there has been a fate pursuing me, and I had best have died of it,
and not run away from it like a coward. I left Beatrix with her relations,
and went to London; and I fell among thieves, Harry, and I got back to
confounded cards and dice, which I hadn’t touched since my marriage—no,
not since I was in the duke’s guard, with those wild Mohocks. And I have
been playing worse and worse, and going deeper and deeper into it; and I
owe Mohun two thousand pounds now; and when it’s paid I am little better
than a beggar. I don’t like to look my boy in the face; he hates me, I
know he does. And I have spent Beaty’s little portion; and the Lord knows
what will come if I live; the best thing I can do is to die, and release
what portion of the estate is redeemable for the boy.”
Mohun was as much master at Castlewood as the owner of the Hall itself;
and his equipages filled the stables, where, indeed, there was room in
plenty for many more horses than Harry Esmond’s impoverished patron could
afford to keep. He had arrived on horseback with his people; but when his
gout broke out my Lord Mohun sent to London for a light chaise he had,
drawn by a pair of small horses, and running as swift, wherever roads were
good, as a Laplander’s sledge. When this carriage came, his lordship was
eager to drive the Lady Castlewood abroad in it, and did so many times,
and at a rapid pace, greatly to his companion’s enjoyment, who loved the
swift motion and the healthy breezes over the downs which lie hard upon
Castlewood, and stretch thence towards the sea. As this amusement was very
pleasant to her, and her lord, far from showing any mistrust of her
intimacy with Lord Mohun, encouraged her to be his companion; as if
willing, by his present extreme confidence, to make up for any past
mistrust which his jealousy had shown; the Lady Castlewood enjoyed herself
freely in this harmless diversion, which, it must be owned, her guest was
very eager to give her; and it seemed that she grew the more free with
Lord Mohun, and pleased with his company, because of some sacrifice which
his gallantry was pleased to make in her favour.
Seeing the two gentlemen constantly at cards still of evenings, Harry
Esmond one day deplored to his mistress that this fatal infatuation of her
lord should continue; and now they seemed reconciled together, begged his
lady to hint to her husband that he should play no more.
But Lady Castlewood, smiling archly and gaily, said she would speak to him
presently, and that, for a few nights more at least, he might be let to
have his amusement.
“Indeed, madam,” said Harry, “you know not what it costs you; and ’tis
easy for any observer who knows the game, to see that Lord Mohun is by far
the stronger of the two.”
“I know he is,” says my lady, still with exceeding good humour; “he is not
only the best player, but the kindest player in the world.”
“Madam, madam,” Esmond cried, transported and provoked. “Debts of honour
must be paid some time or other; and my master will be ruined if he goes
on.”
“Harry, shall I tell you a secret?” my lady replied, with kindness and
pleasure still in her eyes. “Francis will not be ruined if he goes on; he
will be rescued if he goes on. I repent of having spoken and thought
unkindly of the Lord Mohun when he was here in the past year. He is full
of much kindness and good: and ’tis my belief that we shall bring him to
better things. I have lent him Tillotson and your favourite Bishop Taylor,
and he is much touched, he says; and as a proof of his repentance—(and
herein lies my secret)—what do you think he is doing with Francis? He is
letting poor Frank win his money back again. He hath won already at the
last four nights; and my Lord Mohun says that he will not be the means of
injuring poor Frank and my dear children.”
“And in God’s name, what do you return him for this sacrifice?” asked
Esmond, aghast; who knew enough of men, and of this one in particular, to
be aware that such a finished rake gave nothing for nothing. “How, in
Heaven’s name, are you to pay him?”
“Pay him! With a mother’s blessing and a wife’s prayers!” cries my lady,
clasping her hands together. Harry Esmond did not know whether to laugh,
to be angry, or to love his dear mistress more than ever for the obstinate
innocency with which she chose to regard the conduct of a man of the
world, whose designs he knew better how to interpret. He told the lady,
guardedly, but so as to make his meaning quite clear to her, what he knew
in respect of the former life and conduct of this nobleman; of other women
against whom he had plotted, and whom he had overcome; of the conversation
which he Harry himself had had with Lord Mohun, wherein the lord made a
boast of his libertinism, and frequently avowed that he held all women to
be fair game (as his lordship styled this pretty sport), and that they
were all, without exception, to be won. And the return Harry had for his
entreaties and remonstrances was a fit of anger on Lady Castlewood’s part,
who would not listen to his accusations, she said, and retorted that he
himself must be very wicked and perverted, to suppose evil designs, where
she was sure none were meant. “And this is the good meddlers get of
interfering,” Harry thought to himself with much bitterness; and his
perplexity and annoyance were only the greater, because he could not speak
to my Lord Castlewood himself upon a subject of this nature, or venture to
advise or warn him regarding a matter so very sacred as his own honour, of
which my lord was naturally the best guardian.
But though Lady Castlewood would listen to no advice from her young
dependant, and appeared indignantly to refuse it when offered, Harry had
the satisfaction to find that she adopted the counsel which she professed
to reject; for the next day she pleaded a headache, when my Lord Mohun
would have had her drive out, and the next day the headache continued; and
next day, in a laughing gay way she proposed that the children should take
her place in his lordship’s car, for they would be charmed with a ride of
all things; and she must not have all the pleasure for herself. My lord
gave them a drive with a very good grace, though I dare say with rage and
disappointment inwardly—not that his heart was very seriously engaged in
his designs upon this simple lady: but the life of such men is often one
of intrigue, and they can no more go through the day without a woman to
pursue, than a fox-hunter without his sport after breakfast.
Under an affected carelessness of demeanour, and though there was no
outward demonstration of doubt upon his patron’s part since the quarrel
between the two lords, Harry yet saw that Lord Castlewood was watching his
guest very narrowly; and caught signs of distrust and smothered rage (as
Harry thought) which foreboded no good. On the point of honour Esmond knew
how touchy his patron was; and watched him almost as a physician watches a
patient, and it seemed to him that this one was slow to take the disease,
though he could not throw off the poison when once it had mingled with his
blood. We read in Shakespeare (whom the writer for his part considers to
be far beyond Mr. Congreve, Mr. Dryden, or any of the wits of the present
period) that when jealousy is once declared, nor poppy, nor mandragora,
nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, will ever soothe it or medicine it
away.
In fine, the symptoms seemed to be so alarming to this young physician
(who indeed young as he was had felt the kind pulses of all those dear
kinsmen), that Harry thought it would be his duty to warn my Lord Mohun,
and let him know that his designs were suspected and watched. So one day,
when in rather a pettish humour, his lordship had sent to Lady Castlewood,
who had promised to drive with him, and now refused to come, Harry
said—“My lord, if you will kindly give me a place by your side I will
thank you; I have much to say to you, and would like to speak to you
alone.”
“You honour me by giving me your confidence, Mr. Henry Esmond,” says the
other, with a very grand bow. My lord was always a fine gentleman, and
young as he was there was that in Esmond’s manner which showed that he was
a gentleman too, and that none might take a liberty with him—so the pair
went out, and mounted the little carriage which was in waiting for them in
the court, with its two little cream-coloured Hanoverian horses covered
with splendid furniture and champing at the bit.
“My lord,” says Harry Esmond, after they were got into the country, and
pointing to my Lord Mohun’s foot, which was swathed in flannel, and put up
rather ostentatiously on a cushion—“my lord, I studied medicine at
Cambridge.”
“Indeed, Parson Harry,” says he: “and are you going to take out a diploma:
and cure your fellow student of the——”
“Of the gout,” says Harry, interrupting him, and looking him hard in the
face; “I know a good deal about the gout.”
“I hope you may never have it. ’Tis an infernal disease,” says my lord,
“and its twinges are diabolical. Ah!” and he made a dreadful wry face, as
if he just felt a twinge.
“Your lordship would be much better if you took off all that flannel—it
only serves to inflame the toe,” Harry continued, looking his man full in
the face.
“Oh! it only serves to inflame the toe, does it?” says the other, with an
innocent air.
“If you took off that flannel, and flung that absurd slipper away, and
wore a boot,” continues Harry.
“You recommend me boots, Mr. Esmond?” asks my lord.
“Yes, boots and spurs. I saw your lordship three days ago run down the
gallery fast enough,” Harry goes on. “I am sure that taking gruel at night
is not so pleasant as claret to your lordship; and besides it keeps your
lordship’s head cool for play, whilst my patron’s is hot and flustered
with drink.”
“’Sdeath, sir, you dare not say that I don’t play fair?” cries my lord,
whipping his horses, which went away at a gallop.
“You are cool when my lord is drunk,” Harry continued; “your lordship gets
the better of my patron. I have watched you as I looked up from my books.”
“You young Argus!” says Lord Mohun, who liked Harry Esmond—and for whose
company and wit, and a certain daring manner, Harry had a great liking
too—“You young Argus! you may look with all your hundred eyes and see we
play fair. I’ve played away an estate of a night, and I’ve played my shirt
off my back; and I’ve played away my periwig and gone home in a nightcap.
But no man can say I ever took an advantage of him beyond the advantage of
the game. I played a dice-cogging scoundrel in Alsatia for his ears and
won ’em, and have one of ’em in my lodging in Bow Street in a bottle of
spirits. Harry Mohun will play any man for anything—always would.”
“You are playing awful stakes, my lord, in my patron’s house,” Harry said,
“and more games than are on the cards.”
“What do you mean, sir?” cries my lord, turning round, with a flush on his
face.
“I mean,” answers Harry, in a sarcastic tone, “that your gout is well—if
ever you had it.”
“Sir!” cried my lord, getting hot.
“And to tell the truth I believe your lordship has no more gout than I
have. At any rate, change of air will do you good, my Lord Mohun. And I
mean fairly that you had better go from Castlewood.”
“And were you appointed to give me this message?” cries the Lord Mohun.
“Did Frank Esmond commission you?”
“No one did. ’Twas the honour of my family that commissioned me.”
“And you are prepared to answer this?” cries the other, furiously lashing
his horses.
“Quite, my lord: your lordship will upset the carriage if you whip so
hotly.”
“By George, you have a brave spirit!” my lord cried out, bursting into a
laugh. “I suppose ’tis that infernal _botte de Jésuite_ that makes you so
bold,” he added.
“’Tis the peace of the family I love best in the world,” Harry Esmond said
warmly—“’tis the honour of a noble benefactor—the happiness of my dear
mistress and her children. I owe them everything in life, my lord; and
would lay it down for any one of them. What brings you here to disturb
this quiet household? What keeps you lingering month after month in the
country? What makes you feign illness and invent pretexts for delay? Is it
to win my poor patron’s money? Be generous, my lord, and spare his
weakness for the sake of his wife and children. Is it to practise upon the
simple heart of a virtuous lady? You might as well storm the Tower
single-handed. But you may blemish her name by light comments on it, or by
lawless pursuits—and I don’t deny that ’tis in your power to make her
unhappy. Spare these innocent people, and leave them.”
“By the Lord, I believe thou hast an eye to the pretty Puritan thyself,
Master Harry,” says my lord, with his reckless, good-humoured laugh, and
as if he had been listening with interest to the passionate appeal of the
young man. “Whisper, Harry. Art thou in love with her thyself? Hath tipsy
Frank Esmond come by the way of all flesh?”
“My lord, my lord,” cried Harry, his face flushing and his eyes filling as
he spoke, “I never had a mother, but I love this lady as one. I worship
her as a devotee worships a saint. To hear her name spoken lightly seems
blasphemy to me. Would you dare think of your own mother so, or suffer any
one so to speak of her! It is a horror to me to fancy that any man should
think of her impurely. I implore you, I beseech you, to leave her. Danger
will come out of it.”
“Danger, psha!” says my lord, giving a cut to the horses, which at this
minute—for we were got on to the Downs—fairly ran off into a gallop that
no pulling could stop. The rein broke in Lord Mohun’s hands, and the
furious beasts scampered madly forwards, the carriage swaying to and fro,
and the persons within it holding on to the sides as best they might,
until seeing a great ravine before them, where an upset was inevitable,
the two gentlemen leapt for their lives, each out of his side of the
chaise. Harry Esmond was quit for a fall on the grass, which was so severe
that it stunned him for a minute; but he got up presently very sick, and
bleeding at the nose, but with no other hurt. The Lord Mohun was not so
fortunate; he fell on his head against a stone, and lay on the ground dead
to all appearance.
This misadventure happened as the gentlemen were on their return
homewards; and my Lord Castlewood, with his son and daughter, who were
going out for a ride, met the ponies as they were galloping with the car
behind, the broken traces entangling their heels, and my lord’s people
turned and stopped them. It was young Frank who spied out Lord Mohun’s
scarlet coat as he lay on the ground, and the party made up to that
unfortunate gentleman and Esmond, who was now standing over him. His large
periwig and feathered hat had fallen off, and he was bleeding profusely
from a wound on the forehead, and looking, and being, indeed, a corpse.
“Great God! he’s dead!” says my lord. “Ride, some one: fetch a
doctor—stay. I’ll go home and bring back Tusher; he knows surgery,” and my
lord, with his son after him, galloped away.
They were scarce gone when Harry Esmond, who was indeed but just come to
himself, bethought him of a similar accident which he had seen on a ride
from Newmarket to Cambridge, and taking off a sleeve of my lord’s coat,
Harry, with a penknife, opened a vein in his arm, and was greatly
relieved, after a moment, to see the blood flow. He was near half an hour
before he came to himself, by which time Doctor Tusher and little Frank
arrived, and found my lord not a corpse indeed, but as pale as one.
After a time, and when he was able to bear motion, they put my lord upon a
groom’s horse, and gave the other to Esmond, the men walking on each side
of my lord, to support him, if need were, and worthy Doctor Tusher with
them. Little Frank and Harry rode together at a foot pace.
When we rode together home, the boy said: “We met mamma, who was walking
on the terrace with the doctor, and papa frightened her, and told her you
were dead——”
“That I was dead?” asks Harry.
“Yes. Papa says: ‘Here’s poor Harry killed, my dear;’ on which mamma gives
a great scream; and oh, Harry! she drops down; and I thought she was dead,
too. And you never saw such a way as papa was in: he swore one of his
great oaths: and he turned quite pale; and then he began to laugh somehow,
and he told the doctor to take his horse, and me to follow him; and we
left him. And I looked back, and saw him dashing water out of the fountain
on to mamma. Oh, she was so frightened!”
Musing upon this curious history—for my Lord Mohun’s name was Henry too,
and they called each other Frank and Harry often—and not a little
disturbed and anxious, Esmond rode home. His dear lady was on the terrace
still, one of her women with her, and my lord no longer there. There are
steps and a little door thence down into the road. My lord passed, looking
very ghastly, with a handkerchief over his head, and without his hat and
periwig, which a groom carried, but his politeness did not desert him, and
he made a bow to the lady above.
“Thank Heaven you are safe,” she said.
“And so is Harry, too, mamma,” says little Frank,—“huzzay!”
Harry Esmond got off the horse to run to his mistress, as did little
Frank, and one of the grooms took charge of the two beasts, while the
other, hat and periwig in hand, walked by my lord’s bridle to the front
gate, which lay half a mile away.
“Oh, my boy! what a fright you have given me!” Lady Castlewood said, when
Harry Esmond came up, greeting him with one of her shining looks, and a
voice of tender welcome; and she was so kind as to kiss the young man
(’twas the second time she had so honoured him), and she walked into the
house between him and her son, holding a hand of each.
Chapter XIV. We Ride After Him To London
After a repose of a couple of days, the Lord Mohun was so far recovered of
his hurt as to be able to announce his departure for the next morning;
when, accordingly, he took leave of Castlewood, proposing to ride to
London by easy stages, and lie two nights upon the road. His host treated
him with a studied and ceremonious courtesy, certainly different from my
lord’s usual frank and careless demeanour; but there was no reason to
suppose that the two lords parted otherwise than good friends, though
Harry Esmond remarked that my lord viscount only saw his guest in company
with other persons, and seemed to avoid being alone with him. Nor did he
ride any distance with Lord Mohun, as his custom was with most of his
friends, whom he was always eager to welcome and unwilling to lose; but
contented himself, when his lordship’s horses were announced, and their
owner appeared booted for his journey, to take a courteous leave of the
ladies of Castlewood, by following the Lord Mohun downstairs to his
horses, and by bowing and wishing him a good day, in the courtyard. “I
shall see you in London before very long, Mohun,” my lord said, with, a
smile; “when we will settle our accounts together.”
“Do not let them trouble you, Frank,” said the other good-naturedly, and,
holding out his hand, looked rather surprised at the grim and stately
manner in which his host received his parting salutation: and so, followed
by his people, he rode away.
Harry Esmond was witness of the departure. It was very different to my
lord’s coming, for which great preparation had been made (the old house
putting on its best appearance to welcome its guest), and there was a
sadness and constraint about all persons that day, which filled Mr. Esmond
with gloomy forebodings, and sad indefinite apprehensions. Lord Castlewood
stood at the door watching his guest and his people as they went out under
the arch of the outer gate. When he was there, Lord Mohun turned once
more, my lord viscount slowly raised his beaver and bowed. His face wore a
peculiar livid look, Harry thought. He cursed and kicked away his dogs,
which came jumping about him—then he walked up to the fountain in the
centre of the court, and leaned against a pillar and looked into the
basin. As Esmond crossed over to his own room, late the chaplain’s, on the
other side of the court, and turned to enter in at the low door, he saw
Lady Castlewood looking through the curtains of the great window of the
drawing-room overhead, at my lord as he stood regarding the fountain.
There was in the court a peculiar silence somehow; and the scene remained
long in Esmond’s memory;—the sky bright overhead; the buttresses of the
building and the sundial casting shadow over the gilt _memento mori_
inscribed underneath; the two dogs, a black greyhound and a spaniel nearly
white, the one with his face up to the sun, and the other snuffing amongst
the grass and stones, and my lord leaning over the fountain, which was
plashing audibly. ’Tis strange how that scene and the sound of that
fountain remain fixed on the memory of a man who has beheld a hundred
sights of splendour, and danger too, of which he has kept no account.
It was Lady Castlewood, she had been laughing all the morning, and
especially gay and lively before her husband and his guest, who, as soon
as the two gentlemen went together from her room, ran to Harry, the
expression of her countenance quite changed now, and with a face and eyes
full of care, and said, “Follow them, Harry, I am sure something has gone
wrong.” And so it was that Esmond was made an eavesdropper at this lady’s
orders: and retired to his own chamber, to give himself time in truth to
try and compose a story which would soothe his mistress, for he could not
but have his own apprehension that some serious quarrel was pending
between the two gentlemen.
And now for several days the little company at Castlewood sat at table as
of evenings: this care, though unnamed and invisible, being nevertheless
present alway, in the minds of at least three persons there. My lord was
exceeding gentle and kind. Whenever he quitted the room, his wife’s eyes
followed him. He behaved to her with a kind of mournful courtesy and
kindness remarkable in one of his blunt ways and ordinary rough manner. He
called her by her Christian name often and fondly, was very soft and
gentle with the children, especially with the boy, whom he did not love,
and being lax about church generally, he went thither and performed all
the offices (down even to listening to Doctor Tusher’s sermon) with great
devotion.
“He paces his room all night; what is it? Henry, find out what it is,”
Lady Castlewood said constantly to her young dependant. “He has sent three
letters to London,” she said, another day.
“Indeed, madam, they were to a lawyer,” Harry answered, who knew of these
letters, and had seen a part of the correspondence, which related to a new
loan my lord was raising; and when the young man remonstrated with his
patron, my lord said, “He was only raising money to pay off an old debt on
the property, which must be discharged.”
Regarding the money, Lady Castlewood was not in the least anxious. Few
fond women feel money-distressed; indeed you can hardly give a woman a
greater pleasure than to bid her pawn her diamonds for the man she loves;
and I remember hearing Mr. Congreve say of my Lord Marlborough, that the
reason why my lord was so successful with women as a young man was,
because he took money of them. “There are few men who will make such a
sacrifice for them,” says Mr. Congreve, who knew a part of the sex pretty
well.
Harry Esmond’s vacation was just over, and, as hath been said, he was
preparing to return to the University for his last term before taking his
degree and entering into the Church. He had made up his mind for this
office, not indeed with that reverence which becomes a man about to enter
upon a duty so holy, but with a worldly spirit of acquiescence in the
prudence of adopting that profession for his calling. But his reasoning
was that he owed all to the family of Castlewood, and loved better to be
near them than anywhere else in the world; that he might be useful to his
benefactors, who had the utmost confidence in him and affection for him in
return; that he might aid in bringing up the young heir of the house and
acting as his governor; that he might continue to be his dear patron’s and
mistress’s friend and adviser, who both were pleased to say that they
should ever look upon him as such: and so, by making himself useful to
those he loved best, he proposed to console himself for giving up of any
schemes of ambition which he might have had in his own bosom. Indeed, his
mistress had told him that she would not have him leave her; and whatever
she commanded was will to him.
The Lady Castlewood’s mind was greatly relieved in the last few days of
this well-remembered holiday time, by my lord’s announcing one morning,
after the post had brought him letters from London, in a careless tone,
that the Lord Mohun was gone to Paris, and was about to make a great
journey in Europe; and though Lord Castlewood’s own gloom did not wear
off, or his behaviour alter, yet this cause of anxiety being removed from
his lady’s mind, she began to be more hopeful and easy in her spirits:
striving too, with all her heart, and by all the means of soothing in her
power, to call back my lord’s cheerfulness and dissipate his moody humour.
He accounted for it himself, by saying that he was out of health; that he
wanted to see his physician; that he would go to London, and consult
Doctor Cheyne. It was agreed that his lordship and Harry Esmond should
make the journey as far as London together; and of a Monday morning, the
10th of October, in the year 1700, they set forwards towards London on
horseback. The day before being Sunday, and the rain pouring down, the
family did not visit church; and at night my lord read the service to his
family, very finely, and with a peculiar sweetness and gravity—speaking
the parting benediction, Harry thought, as solemn as ever he heard it. And
he kissed and embraced his wife and children before they went to their own
chambers with more fondness than he was ordinarily wont to show, and with
a solemnity and feeling of which they thought in after days with no small
comfort.
They took horse the next morning (after adieux from the family as tender
as on the night previous), lay that night on the road, and entered London
at nightfall; my lord going to the “Trumpet”, in the Cockpit, Whitehall, a
house used by the military in his time as a young man, and accustomed by
his lordship ever since.
An hour after my lord’s arrival (which showed that his visit had been
arranged beforehand), my lord’s man of business arrived from Gray’s Inn;
and thinking that his patron might wish to be private with the lawyer,
Esmond was for leaving them: but my lord said his business was short;
introduced Mr. Esmond particularly to the lawyer, who had been engaged for
the family in the old lord’s time; who said that he had paid the money, as
desired that day, to my Lord Mohun himself, at his lodgings in Bow Street;
that his lordship had expressed some surprise, as it was not customary to
employ lawyers, he said, in such transactions between men of honour; but,
nevertheless, he had returned my lord viscount’s note of hand, which he
held at his client’s disposition.
“I thought the Lord Mohun had been in Paris!” cried Mr. Esmond, in great
alarm and astonishment.
“He is come back at my invitation,” said my lord viscount. “We have
accounts to settle together.”
“I pray Heaven they are over, sir,” says Esmond.
“Oh, quite,” replied the other, looking hard at the young man. “He was
rather troublesome about that money which I told you I had lost to him at
play. And now ’tis paid, and we are quits on that score, and we shall meet
good friends again.”
“My lord,” cried out Esmond, “I am sure you are deceiving me, and that
there is a quarrel between the Lord Mohun and you.”
“Quarrel—pish! We shall sup together this very night, and drink a bottle.
Every man is ill-humoured who loses such a sum as I have lost. But now
’tis paid, and my anger is gone with it.”
“Where shall we sup, sir?” says Harry.
“_We!_ Let some gentlemen wait till they are asked,” says my lord
viscount, with a laugh. “You go to Duke Street, and see Mr. Betterton. You
love the play, I know. Leave me to follow my own devices; and in the
morning we’ll breakfast together, with what appetite we may, as the play
says.”
“By G——! my lord, I will not leave you this night,” says Harry Esmond. “I
think I know the cause of your dispute. I swear to you ’tis nothing. On
the very day the accident befell Lord Mohun, I was speaking to him about
it. I know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry on his part.”
“You know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry between Lord Mohun
and my wife,” says my lord, in a thundering voice—“you knew of this, and
did not tell me?”
“I knew more of it than my dear mistress did herself, sir—a thousand times
more. How was she, who was as innocent as a child, to know what was the
meaning of the covert addresses of a villain?”
“A villain he is, you allow, and would have taken my wife away from me.”
“Sir, she is as pure as an angel,” cried young Esmond.
“Have I said a word against her?” shrieks out my lord. “Did I ever doubt
that she was pure? It would have been the last day of her life when I did.
Do you fancy I think that _she_ would go astray? No, she hasn’t passion
enough for that. She neither sins nor forgives. I know her temper—and now
I’ve lost her: by Heaven I love her ten thousand times more than ever I
did—yes, when she was young and as beautiful as an angel—when she smiled
at me in her old father’s house, and used to lie in wait for me there as I
came from hunting—when I used to fling my head down on her little knees
and cry like a child on her lap—and swear I would reform and drink no
more, and play no more, and follow women no more; when all the men of the
Court used to be following her—when she used to look with her child more
beautiful, by George, than the Madonna in the Queen’s Chapel. I am not
good like her, I know it. Who is—by Heaven, who is? I tired and wearied
her, I know that very well. I could not talk to her. You men of wit and
books could do that, and I couldn’t—I felt I couldn’t. Why, when you was
but a boy of fifteen I could hear you two together talking your poetry and
your books till I was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But
you were always a good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And I
felt she didn’t belong to me: and the children don’t. And I besotted
myself, and gambled, and drank, and took to all sorts of devilries out of
despair and fury. And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, I know she
likes him.”
“Indeed, and on my soul, you are wrong, sir,” Esmond cried.
“She takes letters from him,” cries my lord—“look here Harry,” and he
pulled out a paper with a brown stain of blood upon it. “It fell from him
that day he wasn’t killed. One of the grooms picked it up from the ground
and gave it me. Here it is in their d——d comedy jargon. ‘Divine
Gloriana—Why look so coldly on your slave who adores you? Have you no
compassion on the tortures you have seen me suffering? Do you vouchsafe no
reply to billets that are written with the blood of my heart.’ She had
more letters from him.”
“But she answered none,” cries Esmond.
“That’s not Mohun’s fault,” says my lord, “and I will be revenged on him,
as God’s in heaven, I will.”
“For a light word or two, will you risk your lady’s honour and your
family’s happiness, my lord?” Esmond interposed beseechingly.
“Psha—there shall be no question of my wife’s honour,” said my lord; “we
can quarrel on plenty of grounds beside. If I live, that villain will be
punished; if I fall, my family will be only the better: there will only be
a spendthrift the less to keep in the world: and Frank has better teaching
than his father. My mind is made up, Harry Esmond, and whatever the event
is I am easy about it. I leave my wife and you as guardians to the
children.”
Seeing that my lord was bent upon pursuing this quarrel, and that no
entreaties would draw him from it, Harry Esmond (then of a hotter and more
impetuous nature than now, when care, and reflection, and grey hairs have
calmed him) thought it was his duty to stand by his kind generous patron,
and said—“My lord, if you are determined upon war, you must not go into it
alone. ’Tis the duty of our house to stand by its chief: and I should
neither forgive myself nor you if you did not call me, or I should be
absent from you at a moment of danger.”
“Why, Harry, my poor boy, you are bred for a parson,” says my lord, taking
Esmond by the hand very kindly: “and it were a great pity that you should
meddle in the matter.”
“Your lordship thought of being a churchman once,” Harry answered, “and
your father’s orders did not prevent him fighting at Castlewood against
the Roundheads. Your enemies are mine, sir: I can use the foils, as you
have seen, indifferently well, and don’t think I shall be afraid when the
buttons are taken off ’em.” And then Harry explained with some blushes and
hesitation (for the matter was delicate, and he feared lest, by having put
himself forward in the quarrel, he might have offended his patron), how he
had himself expostulated with the Lord Mohun, and proposed to measure
swords with him if need were, and he could not be got to withdraw
peaceably in this dispute. “And I should have beat him, sir,” says Harry,
laughing. “He never could parry that _botte_ I brought from Cambridge. Let
us have half an hour of it, and rehearse—I can teach it your lordship:
’tis the most delicate point in the world, and if you miss it your
adversary’s sword is through you.”
“By George, Harry! you ought to be the head of the house,” says my lord
gloomily. “You had been better Lord Castlewood than a lazy sot like me,”
he added, drawing his hand across his eyes, and surveying his kinsman with
very kind and affectionate glances.
“Let us take our coats off and have half an hour’s practice before
nightfall,” says Harry, after thankfully grasping his patron’s manly hand.
“You are but a little bit of a lad,” says my lord good-humouredly; “but,
in faith, I believe you could do for that fellow. No, my boy,” he
continued, “I’ll have none of your feints and tricks of stabbing: I can
use my sword pretty well too, and will fight my own quarrel my own way.”
“But I shall be by to see fair play,” cries Harry.
“Yes, God bless you—you shall be by.”
“When is it, sir?” says Harry, for he saw that the matter had been
arranged privately, and beforehand, by my lord.
“’Tis arranged thus: I sent off a courier to Jack Westbury to say that I
wanted him specially. He knows for what, and will be here presently, and
drink part of that bottle of sack. Then we shall go to the theatre in Duke
Street, where we shall meet Mohun; and then we shall all go sup at the
‘Rose’ or the ‘Greyhound’. Then we shall call for cards, and there will be
probably a difference over the cards—and then, God help us!—either a
wicked villain and traitor shall go out of the world, or a poor worthless
devil, that doesn’t care to remain in it. I am better away, Hal—my wife
will be all the happier when I am gone,” says my lord, with a groan, that
tore the heart of Harry Esmond so that he fairly broke into a sob over his
patron’s kind hand.
“The business was talked over with Mohun before he left home—Castlewood I
mean”—my lord went on. “I took the letter in to him, which I had read, and
I charged him with his villany, and he could make no denial of it, only he
said that my wife was innocent.”
“And so she is; before Heaven, my lord, she is!” cries Harry.
“No doubt, no doubt. They always are,” says my lord. “No doubt, when she
heard he was killed, she fainted from accident.”
“But, my lord, _my_ name is Harry,” cried out Esmond, burning red. “You
told my lady, ‘Harry was killed!’ ”
“Damnation! shall I fight you too?” shouts my lord, in a fury. “Are you,
you little serpent, warmed by my fire, going to sting—_you?_—No, my boy,
you’re an honest boy; you are a good boy.” (And here he broke from rage
into tears even more cruel to see.) “You are an honest boy, and I love
you; and, by Heavens, I am so wretched that I don’t care what sword it is
that ends me. Stop, here’s Jack Westbury. Well, Jack! Welcome, old boy!
This is my kinsman, Harry Esmond.”
“Who brought your bowls for you at Castlewood, sir,” says Harry, bowing;
and the three gentlemen sat down and drank of that bottle of sack which
was prepared for them.
“Harry is number three,” says my lord. “You needn’t be afraid of him,
Jack.” And the colonel gave a look, as much as to say, “Indeed, he don’t
look as if I need.” And then my lord explained what he had only told by
hints before. When he quarrelled with Lord Mohun he was indebted to his
lordship in a sum of sixteen hundred pounds, for which Lord Mohun said he
proposed to wait until my lord viscount should pay him. My lord had raised
the sixteen hundred pounds and sent them to Lord Mohun that morning, and
before quitting home had put his affairs into order, and was now quite
ready to abide the issue of the quarrel.
When we had drunk a couple of bottles of sack, a coach was called, and the
three gentlemen went to the Duke’s Playhouse, as agreed. The play was one
of Mr. Wycherley’s—_Love in a Wood_.
Harry Esmond has thought of that play ever since with a kind of terror,
and of Mrs. Bracegirdle, the actress who performed the girl’s part in the
comedy. She was disguised as a page, and came and stood before the
gentlemen as they sat on the stage, and looked over her shoulder with a
pair of arch black eyes, and laughed at my lord, and asked what ailed the
gentlemen from the country, and had he had bad news from Bullock Fair?
Between the acts of the play the gentlemen crossed over and conversed
freely. There were two of Lord Mohun’s party, Captain Macartney, in a
military habit, and a gentleman in a suit of blue velvet and silver in a
fair periwig, with a rich fall of point of Venice lace—my lord the Earl of
Warwick and Holland. My lord had a paper of oranges, which he ate and
offered to the actresses, joking with them. And Mrs. Bracegirdle, when my
Lord Mohun said something rude, turned on him, and asked him what he did
there, and whether he and his friends had come to stab anybody else, as
they did poor Will Mountford? My lord’s dark face grew darker at this
taunt, and wore a mischievous fatal look. They that saw it remembered it,
and said so afterward.
When the play was ended the two parties joined company; and my Lord
Castlewood then proposed that they should go to a tavern and sup.
Lockit’s, the “Greyhound”, in Charing Cross, was the house selected. All
six marched together that way; the three lords going ahead, Lord Mohun’s
captain, and Colonel Westbury, and Harry Esmond, walking behind them. As
they walked, Westbury told Harry Esmond about his old friend Dick the
Scholar, who had got promotion, and was cornet of the Guards, and had
wrote a book called the _Christian Hero_, and had all the Guards to laugh
at him for his pains, for the Christian Hero was breaking the commandments
constantly, Westbury said, and had fought one or two duels already. And,
in a lower tone, Westbury besought young Mr. Esmond to take no part in the
quarrel. “There was no need for more seconds than one,” said the colonel,
“and the captain or Lord Warwick might easily withdraw.” But Harry said
no; he was bent on going through with the business. Indeed, he had a plan
in his head, which, he thought, might prevent my lord viscount from
engaging.
They went in at the bar of the tavern, and desired a private room and wine
and cards, and when the drawer had brought these, they began to drink and
call healths, and as long as the servants were in the room appeared very
friendly.
Harry Esmond’s plan was no other than to engage in talk with Lord Mohun,
to insult him, and so get the first of the quarrel. So when cards were
proposed he offered to play. “Psha!” says my Lord Mohun (whether wishing
to save Harry, or not choosing to try the _botte de Jésuite_, it is not to
be known)—“young gentlemen from college should not play these stakes. You
are too young.”
“Who dares say I am too young?” broke out Harry. “Is your lordship
afraid?”
“Afraid!” cries out Mohun.
But my good lord viscount saw the move—“I’ll play you for ten moidores,
Mohun,” says he—“You silly boy, we don’t play for groats here as you do at
Cambridge:” and Harry, who had no such sum in his pocket (for his
half-year’s salary was always pretty well spent before it was due), fell
back with rage and vexation in his heart that he had not money enough to
stake.
“I’ll stake the young gentleman a crown,” says the Lord Mohun’s captain.
“I thought crowns were rather scarce with the gentlemen of the army,” says
Harry.
“Do they birch at college?” says the captain.
“They birch fools,” says Harry, “and they cane bullies, and they fling
puppies into the water.”
“Faith, then, there’s some escapes drowning,” says the captain, who was an
Irishman; and all the gentlemen began to laugh, and made poor Harry only
more angry.
My Lord Mohun presently snuffed a candle. It was when the drawers brought
in fresh bottles and glasses and were in the room—on which my lord
viscount said—“The deuce take you, Mohun, how damned awkward you are!
Light the candle, you drawer.”
“Damned awkward is a damned awkward expression, my lord,” says the other.
“Town gentlemen don’t use such words—or ask pardon if they do.”
“I’m a country gentleman,” says my lord viscount.
“I see it by your manner,” says my Lord Mohun. “No man shall say ‘damned
awkward’ to me.”
“I fling the words in your face, my lord,” says the other; “shall I send
the cards too?”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen! before the servants?” cry out Colonel Westbury and
my Lord Warwick in a breath. The drawers go out of the room hastily. They
tell the people below of the quarrel upstairs.
“Enough has been said,” says Colonel Westbury. “Will your lordships meet
to-morrow morning?”
“Will my Lord Castlewood withdraw his words?” asks the Earl of Warwick.
“My Lord Castlewood will be —— first,” says Colonel Westbury.
“Then we have nothing for it. Take notice, gentlemen, there have been
outrageous words—reparation asked and refused.”
“And refused,” says my Lord Castlewood, putting on his hat. “Where shall
the meeting be? and when?”
“Since my lord refuses me satisfaction, which I deeply regret, there is no
time so good as now,” says my Lord Mohun. “Let us have chairs and go to
Leicester Field.”
“Are your lordship and I to have the honour of exchanging a pass or two?”
says Colonel Westbury, with a low bow to my Lord of Warwick and Holland.
“It is an honour for me,” says my lord, with a profound congée, “to be
matched with a gentleman who has been at Mons and Namur.”
“Will your reverence permit me to give you a lesson?” says the captain.
“Nay, nay, gentlemen, two on a side are plenty,” says Harry’s patron.
“Spare the boy, Captain Macartney,” and he shook Harry’s hand—for the last
time, save one, in his life.
At the bar of the tavern all the gentlemen stopped, and my lord viscount
said, laughing, to the barwoman, that those cards set people sadly
a-quarrelling; but that the dispute was over now, and the parties were all
going away to my Lord Mohun’s house, in Bow Street, to drink a bottle more
before going to bed.
A half-dozen of chairs were now called, and the six gentlemen stepping
into them, the word was privately given to the chairmen to go to Leicester
Field, where the gentlemen were set down opposite the “Standard” Tavern.
It was midnight, and the town was abed by this time, and only a few lights
in the windows of the houses; but the night was bright enough for the
unhappy purpose which the disputants came about; and so all six entered
into that fatal square, the chairmen standing without the railing and
keeping the gate, lest any persons should disturb the meeting.
All that happened there hath been matter of public notoriety, and is
recorded, for warning to lawless men, in the annals of our country. After
being engaged for not more than a couple of minutes, as Harry Esmond
thought (though being occupied at the time with his own adversary’s point,
which was active, he may not have taken a good note of time), a cry from
the chairmen without, who were smoking their pipes, and leaning over the
railings of the field as they watched the dim combat within, announced
that some catastrophe had happened which caused Esmond to drop his sword
and look round, at which moment his enemy wounded him in the right hand.
But the young man did not heed this hurt much, and ran up to the place
where he saw his dear master was down.
My Lord Mohun was standing over him.
“Are you much hurt, Frank?” he asked, in a hollow voice.
“I believe I’m a dead man,” my lord said from the ground.
“No, no, not so,” says the other; “and I call God to witness, Frank
Esmond, that I would have asked your pardon, had you but given me a
chance. In—in the first cause of our falling out, I swear that no one was
to blame but me, and—and that my lady——”
“Hush!” says my poor lord viscount, lifting himself on his elbow, and
speaking faintly. “’Twas a dispute about the cards—the cursed cards.
Harry, my boy, are you wounded, too? God help thee! I loved thee, Harry,
and thou must watch over my little Frank—and—and carry this little heart
to my wife.”
And here my dear lord felt in his breast for a locket he wore there, and,
in the act, fell back, fainting.
We were all at this terrified, thinking him dead; but Esmond and Colonel
Westbury bade the chairmen to come into the field; and so my lord was
carried to one Mr. Aimes, a surgeon, in Long Acre, who kept a bath, and
there the house was wakened up, and the victim of this quarrel carried in.
My lord viscount was put to bed, and his wound looked to by the surgeon,
who seemed both kind and skilful. When he had looked to my lord, he
bandaged up Harry Esmond’s hand (who, from loss of blood, had fainted too,
in the house, and may have been some time unconscious); and when the young
man came to himself, you may be sure he eagerly asked what news there were
of his dear patron; on which the surgeon carried him to the room where the
Lord Castlewood lay; who had already sent for a priest; and desired
earnestly, they said, to speak with his kinsman. He was lying on a bed,
very pale and ghastly, with that fixed, fatal look in his eyes, which
betokens death; and faintly beckoning all the other persons away from him
with his hand, and crying out “Only Harry Esmond”, the hand fell powerless
down on the coverlet, as Harry came forward, and knelt down and kissed it.
“Thou art all but a priest, Harry,” my lord viscount gasped out, with a
faint smile, and pressure of his cold hand. “Are they all gone? Let me
make thee a death-bed confession.”
And with sacred Death waiting, as it were, at the bed-foot, as an awful
witness of his words, the poor dying soul gasped out his last wishes in
respect of his family;—his humble profession of contrition for his
faults;—and his charity towards the world he was leaving. Some things he
said concerned Harry Esmond as much as they astonished him. And my lord
viscount, sinking visibly, was in the midst of these strange confessions,
when the ecclesiastic for whom my lord had sent, Mr. Atterbury, arrived.
This gentleman had reached to no great church dignity as yet, but was only
preacher at St. Bride’s, drawing all the town thither by his eloquent
sermons. He was godson to my lord, who had been pupil to his father; had
paid a visit to Castlewood from Oxford more than once; and it was by his
advice, I think, that Harry Esmond was sent to Cambridge, rather than to
Oxford, of which place Mr. Atterbury, though a distinguished member, spoke
but ill.
Our messenger found the good priest already at his books, at five o’clock
in the morning, and he followed the man eagerly to the house where my poor
lord viscount lay—Esmond watching him, and taking his dying words from his
mouth.
My lord, hearing of Mr. Atterbury’s arrival, and squeezing Esmond’s hand,
asked to be alone with the priest; and Esmond left them there for this
solemn interview. You may be sure that his own prayers and grief
accompanied that dying benefactor. My lord had said to him that which
confounded the young man—informed him of a secret which greatly concerned
him. Indeed, after hearing it, he had had good cause for doubt and dismay;
for mental anguish as well as resolution. While the colloquy between Mr.
Atterbury and his dying penitent took place within, an immense contest of
perplexity was agitating Lord Castlewood’s young companion.
At the end of an hour—it may be more—Mr. Atterbury came out of the room
looking very hard at Esmond, and holding a paper.
“He is on the brink of God’s awful judgement,” the priest whispered. “He
has made his breast clean to me. He forgives and believes, and makes
restitution. Shall it be in public? Shall we call a witness to sign it?”
“God knows,” sobbed out the young man, “my dearest lord has only done me
kindness all his life.”
The priest put the paper into Esmond’s hand. He looked at it. It swam
before his eyes.
“’Tis a confession,” he said.
“’Tis as you please,” said Mr. Atterbury.
There was a fire in the room, where the cloths were drying for the baths,
and there lay a heap in a corner, saturated with the blood of my dear
lord’s body. Esmond went to the fire, and threw the paper into it. ’Twas a
great chimney with glazed Dutch tiles. How we remember such trifles in
such awful moments!—the scrap of the book that we have read in a great
grief—the taste of that last dish that we have eaten before a duel or some
such supreme meeting or parting. On the Dutch tiles at the bagnio was a
rude picture representing Jacob in hairy gloves, cheating Isaac of Esau’s
birthright. The burning paper lighted it up.
“’Tis only a confession, Mr. Atterbury,” said the young man. He leaned his
head against the mantelpiece: a burst of tears came to his eyes. They were
the first he had shed as he sat by his lord, scared by this calamity and
more yet by what the poor dying gentleman had told him, and shocked to
think that he should be the agent of bringing this double misfortune on
those he loved best.
“Let us go to him,” said Mr. Esmond. And accordingly they went into the
next chamber, where, by this time, the dawn had broke, which showed my
lord’s poor pale face and wild appealing eyes, that wore that awful fatal
look of coming dissolution. The surgeon was with him. He went into the
chamber as Atterbury came out thence. My lord viscount turned round his
sick eyes towards Esmond. It choked the other to hear that rattle in his
throat.
“My lord viscount,” says Mr. Atterbury, “Mr. Esmond wants no witnesses,
and hath burned the paper.”
“My dearest master!” Esmond said, kneeling down, and taking his hand and
kissing it.
My lord viscount sprang up in his bed, and flung his arms round Esmond.
“God bl—bless...,” was all he said. The blood rushed from his mouth,
deluging the young man. My dearest lord was no more. He was gone with a
blessing on his lips, and love and repentance and kindness in his manly
heart.
“_Benedicti benedicentes_,” says Mr. Atterbury, and the young man kneeling
at the bedside, groaned out an Amen.
“Who shall take the news to her?” was Mr. Esmond’s next thought. And on
this he besought Mr. Atterbury to bear the tidings to Castlewood. He could
not face his mistress himself with those dreadful news. Mr. Atterbury
complying kindly, Esmond writ a hasty note on his table-book to my lord’s
man, bidding him get the horses for Mr. Atterbury, and ride with him, and
send Esmond’s own valise to the Gatehouse prison, whither he resolved to
go and give himself up.
Book II. Contains Mr. Esmond’s Military Life, And Other Matters
Appertaining To The Esmond Family
Chapter I. I Am In Prison, And Visited, But Not Consoled There
Those may imagine, who have seen death untimely strike down persons
revered and beloved, and know how unavailing consolation is, what was
Harry Esmond’s anguish after being an actor in that ghastly midnight scene
of blood and homicide. He could not, he felt, have faced his dear
mistress, and told her that story. He was thankful that kind Atterbury
consented to break the sad news to her; but, besides his grief, which he
took into prison with him, he had that in his heart which secretly cheered
and consoled him.
A great secret had been told to Esmond by his unhappy stricken kinsman,
lying on his death-bed. Were he to disclose it, as in equity and honour he
might do, the discovery would but bring greater grief upon those whom he
loved best in the world, and who were sad enough already. Should he bring
down shame and perplexity upon all those beings to whom he was attached by
so many tender ties of affection and gratitude? degrade his father’s
widow? impeach and sully his father’s and kinsman’s honour? and for what?
for a barren title, to be worn at the expense of an innocent boy, the son
of his dearest benefactress. He had debated this matter in his conscience,
whilst his poor lord was making his dying confession. On one side were
ambition, temptation, justice even; but love, gratitude, and fidelity,
pleaded on the other. And when the struggle was over in Harry’s mind, a
glow of righteous happiness filled it; and it was with grateful tears in
his eyes that he returned thanks to God for that decision which he had
been enabled to make.
“When I was denied by my own blood,” thought he; “these dearest friends
received and cherished me. When I was a nameless orphan myself, and needed
a protector, I found one in yonder kind soul, who has gone to his account
repenting of the innocent wrong he has done.”
And with this consoling thought he went away to give himself up at the
prison, after kissing the cold lips of his benefactor.
It was on the third day after he had come to the Gatehouse prison (where
he lay in no small pain from his wound, which inflamed and ached
severely); and with those thoughts and resolutions that have been just
spoke of, to depress, and yet to console him, that H. Esmond’s keeper came
and told him that a visitor was asking for him, and though he could not
see her face, which was enveloped in a black hood, her whole figure, too,
being veiled and covered with the deepest mourning, Esmond knew at once
that his visitor was his dear mistress.
He got up from his bed, where he was lying, being very weak; and advancing
towards her, as the retiring keeper shut the door upon him and his guest
in that sad place, he put forward his left hand (for the right was wounded
and bandaged), and he would have taken that kind one of his mistress,
which had done so many offices of friendship for him for so many years.
But the Lady Castlewood went back from him, putting back her hood, and
leaning against the great stanchioned door which the gaoler had just
closed upon them. Her face was ghastly white, as Esmond saw it, looking
from the hood; and her eyes, ordinarily so sweet and tender, were fixed at
him with such a tragic glance of woe and anger, as caused the young man,
unaccustomed to unkindness from that person, to avert his own glances from
her face.
“And this, Mr. Esmond,” she said, “is where I see you; and ’tis to this
you have brought me!”
“You have come to console me in my calamity, madam,” said he (though, in
truth, he scarce knew how to address her, his emotions at beholding her,
so overpowered him).
She advanced a little, but stood silent and trembling, looking out at him
from her black draperies, with her small white hands clasped together, and
quivering lips and hollow eyes.
“Not to reproach me,” he continued, after a pause, “My grief is sufficient
as it is.”
“Take back your hand—do not touch me with it!” she cried. “Look! there’s
blood on it!”
“I wish they had taken it all,” said Esmond; “if you are unkind to me.”
“Where is my husband?” she broke out. “Give me back my husband, Henry? Why
did you stand by at midnight and see him murdered? Why did the traitor
escape who did it? You, the champion of your house, who offered to die for
us! You that he loved and trusted, and to whom I confided him—you that
vowed devotion and gratitude, and I believed you—yes, I believed you—why
are you here, and my noble Francis gone? Why did you come among us? You
have only brought us grief and sorrow; and repentance, bitter, bitter
repentance, as a return for our love and kindness. Did I ever do you a
wrong, Henry? You were but an orphan child when I first saw you—when _he_
first saw you, who was so good, and noble, and trusting. He would have had
you sent away, but, like a foolish woman, I besought him to let you stay.
And you pretended to love us, and we believed you—and you made our house
wretched, and my husband’s heart went from me: and I lost him through
you—I lost him—the husband of my youth, I say. I worshipped him: you know
I worshipped him—and he was changed to me. He was no more my Francis of
old—my dear, dear soldier. He loved me before he saw you; and I loved him;
oh, God is my witness how I loved him! Why did he not send you from among
us? ’Twas only his kindness, that could refuse me nothing then. And, young
as you were—yes, and weak and alone—there was evil, I knew there was evil
in keeping you. I read it in your face and eyes. I saw that they boded
harm to us—and it came, I knew it would. Why did you not die when you had
the small-pox—and I came myself and watched you, and you didn’t know me in
your delirium—and you called out for me, though I was there at your side.
All that has happened since, was a just judgement on my wicked heart—my
wicked jealous heart. Oh, I am punished—awfully punished! My husband lies
in his blood—murdered for defending me, my kind, kind, generous lord—and
you were by, and you let him die, Henry!”
These words, uttered in the wildness of her grief, by one who was
ordinarily quiet, and spoke seldom except with a gentle smile and a
soothing tone, rung in Esmond’s ear; and ’tis said that he repeated many
of them in the fever into which he now fell from his wound, and perhaps
from the emotion which such passionate, undeserved upbraidings caused him.
It seemed as if his very sacrifices and love for this lady and her family
were to turn to evil and reproach: as if his presence amongst them was
indeed a cause of grief, and the continuance of his life but woe and
bitterness to theirs. As the Lady Castlewood spoke bitterly, rapidly,
without a tear, he never offered a word of appeal or remonstrance; but sat
at the foot of his prison-bed, stricken only with the more pain at
thinking it was that soft and beloved hand which should stab him so
cruelly, and powerless against her fatal sorrow. Her words as she spoke
struck the chords of all his memory, and the whole of his boyhood and
youth passed within him; whilst this lady, so fond and gentle but
yesterday—this good angel whom he had loved and worshipped—stood before
him, pursuing him with keen words and aspect malign.
“I wish I were in my lord’s place,” he groaned out. “It was not my fault
that I was not there, madam. But Fate is stronger than all of us, and
willed what has come to pass. It had been better for me to have died when
I had the illness.”
“Yes, Henry,” said she—and as she spoke she looked at him with a glance
that was at once so fond and so sad, that the young man, tossing up his
arms, wildly fell back, hiding his head in the coverlet of the bed. As he
turned he struck against the wall with his wounded hand, displacing the
ligature; and he felt the blood rushing again from the wound. He
remembered feeling a secret pleasure at the accident—and thinking,
“Suppose I were to end now, who would grieve for me?”
This haemorrhage, or the grief and despair in which the luckless young man
was at the time of the accident, must have brought on a deliquium
presently; for he had scarce any recollection afterwards, save of some
one, his mistress probably, seizing his hand—and then of the buzzing noise
in his ears as he awoke, with two or three persons of the prison around
his bed, whereon he lay in a pool of blood from his arm.
It was now bandaged up again by the prison surgeon, who happened to be in
the place; and the governor’s wife and servant, kind people both, were
with the patient. Esmond saw his mistress still in the room when he awoke
from his trance; but she went away without a word; though the governor’s
wife told him that she sat in her room for some time afterward, and did
not leave the prison until she heard that Esmond was likely to do well.
Days afterwards, when Esmond was brought out of a fever which he had, and
which attacked him that night pretty sharply, the honest keeper’s wife
brought her patient a handkerchief fresh washed and ironed, and at the
corner of which he recognized his mistress’s well-known cipher and
viscountess’s crown. “The lady had bound it round his arm when he fainted,
and before she called for help,” the keeper’s wife said; “poor lady; she
took on sadly about her husband. He has been buried to-day, and a many of
the coaches of the nobility went with him,—my Lord Marlborough’s and my
Lord Sunderland’s, and many of the officers of the Guards, in which he
served in the old king’s time; and my lady has been with her two children
to the king at Kensington, and asked for justice against my Lord Mohun,
who is in hiding, and my lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland, who is
ready to give himself up and take his trial.”
Such were the news, coupled with assertions about her own honesty and that
of Molly her maid, who would never have stolen a certain trumpery gold
sleeve-button of Mr. Esmond’s that was missing after his fainting fit,
that the keeper’s wife brought to her lodger. His thoughts followed to
that untimely grave, the brave heart, the kind friend, the gallant
gentleman, honest of word and generous of thought (if feeble of purpose,
but are his betters much stronger than he?) who had given him bread and
shelter when he had none; home and love when he needed them; and who, if
he had kept one vital secret from him, had done that of which he repented
ere dying—a wrong indeed, but one followed by remorse, and occasioned by
almost irresistible temptation.
Esmond took his handkerchief when his nurse left him, and very likely
kissed it, and looked at the bauble embroidered in the corner. “It has
cost thee grief enough,” he thought, “dear lady, so loving and so tender.
Shall I take it from thee and thy children? No, never! Keep it, and wear
it, my little Frank, my pretty boy. If I cannot make a name for myself, I
can die without one. Some day, when my dear mistress sees my heart, I
shall be righted; or if not here or now, why, elsewhere; where Honour doth
not follow us, but where Love reigns perpetual.”
’Tis needless to narrate here, as the reports of the lawyers already have
chronicled them, the particulars or issue of that trial which ensued upon
my Lord Castlewood’s melancholy homicide. Of the two lords engaged in that
said matter, the second, my lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland, who had
been engaged with Colonel Westbury, and wounded by him, was found not
guilty by his peers, before whom he was tried (under the presidence of the
Lord Steward, Lord Somers); and the principal, the Lord Mohun, being found
guilty of the manslaughter (which, indeed, was forced upon him, and of
which he repented most sincerely), pleaded his clergy; and so was
discharged without any penalty. The widow of the slain nobleman, as it was
told us in prison, showed an extraordinary spirit; and, though she had to
wait for ten years before her son was old enough to compass it, declared
she would have revenge of her husband’s murderer. So much and suddenly had
grief, anger, and misfortune appeared to change her. But fortune, good or
ill, as I take it, does not change men and women. It but develops their
characters. As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he
does not know till he takes up the pen to write, so the heart is a secret
even to him (or her) who has it in his own breast. Who hath not found
himself surprised into revenge, or action, or passion, for good or evil;
whereof the seeds lay within him, latent and unsuspected, until the
occasion called them forth? With the death of her lord, a change seemed to
come over the whole conduct and mind of Lady Castlewood; but of this we
shall speak in the right season and anon.
The lords being tried then before their peers at Westminster, according to
their privilege, being brought from the Tower with state processions and
barges, and accompanied by lieutenants and axe-men, the commoners engaged
in that melancholy fray took their trial at Newgate, as became them; and,
being all found guilty, pleaded likewise their benefit of clergy. The
sentence, as we all know, in these cases is, that the culprit lies a year
in prison, or during the king’s pleasure, and is burned in the hand, or
only stamped with a cold iron; or this part of the punishment is
altogether remitted at the grace of the sovereign. So Harry Esmond found
himself a criminal and a prisoner at two-and-twenty years old; as for the
two colonels, his comrades, they took the matter very lightly. Duelling
was a part of their business; and they could not in honour refuse any
invitations of that sort.
But the case was different with Mr. Esmond. His life was changed by that
stroke of the sword which destroyed his kind patron’s. As he lay in
prison, old Dr. Tusher fell ill and died; and Lady Castlewood appointed
Thomas Tusher to the vacant living; about the filling of which she had a
thousand times fondly talked to Harry Esmond: how they never should part;
how he should educate her boy; how to be a country clergyman, like saintly
George Herbert, or pious Dr. Ken, was the happiness and greatest lot in
life; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for her part, she
owned rather to holding Queen Bess’s opinion, that a bishop should have no
wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she would find a good wife for
Harry Esmond: and so on, with a hundred pretty prospects told by fireside
evenings, in fond prattle, as the children played about the hall. All
these plans were overthrown now. Thomas Tusher wrote to Esmond, as he lay
in prison, announcing that his patroness had conferred upon him the living
his reverend father had held for many years; that she never, after the
tragical events which had occurred (whereof Tom spoke with a very edifying
horror), could see in the revered Tusher’s pulpit, or at her son’s table,
the man who was answerable for the father’s life; that her ladyship bade
him to say that she prayed for her kinsman’s repentance and his worldly
happiness; that he was free to command her aid for any scheme of life
which he might propose to himself; but that on this side of the grave she
would see him no more. And Tusher, for his own part, added that Harry
should have his prayers as a friend of his youth, and commended him whilst
he was in prison to read certain works of theology, which his reverence
pronounced to be very wholesome for sinners in his lamentable condition.
And this was the return for a life of devotion—this the end of years of
affectionate intercourse and passionate fidelity! Harry would have died
for his patron, and was held as little better than his murderer: he had
sacrificed, she did not know how much, for his mistress, and she threw him
aside—he had endowed her family with all they had, and she talked about
giving him alms as to a menial! The grief for his patron’s loss: the pains
of his own present position, and doubts as to the future: all these were
forgotten under the sense of the consummate outrage which he had to
endure, and overpowered by the superior pang of that torture.
He writ back a letter to Mr. Tusher from his prison, congratulating his
reverence upon his appointment to the living of Castlewood: sarcastically
bidding him to follow in the footsteps of his admirable father, whose gown
had descended upon him—thanking her ladyship for her offer of alms, which
he said he should trust not to need; and beseeching her to remember that,
if ever her determination should change towards him, he would be ready to
give her proofs of a fidelity which had never wavered, and which ought
never to have been questioned by that house. “And if we meet no more, or
only as strangers in this world,” Mr. Esmond concluded, “a sentence
against the cruelty and injustice of which I disdain to appeal; hereafter
she will know who was faithful to her, and whether she had any cause to
suspect the love and devotion of her kinsman and servant.”
After the sending of this letter, the poor young fellow’s mind was more at
ease than it had been previously. The blow had been struck, and he had
borne it. His cruel goddess had shaken her wings and fled: and left him
alone and friendless, but _virtute sua_. And he had to bear him up, at
once the sense of his right and the feeling of his wrongs, his honour and
his misfortune. As I have seen men waking and running to arms at a sudden
trumpet; before emergency a manly heart leaps up resolute; meets the
threatening danger with undaunted countenance; and, whether conquered or
conquering, faces it always. Ah! no man knows his strength or his
weakness, till occasion proves them. If there be some thoughts and actions
of his life from the memory of which a man shrinks with shame, sure there
are some which he may be proud to own and remember; forgiven injuries,
conquered temptations (now and then), and difficulties vanquished by
endurance.
-------------------------------------
It was these thoughts regarding the living, far more than any great
poignancy of grief respecting the dead, which affected Harry Esmond whilst
in prison after his trial: but it may be imagined that he could take no
comrade of misfortune into the confidence of his feelings, and they
thought it was remorse and sorrow for his patron’s loss which affected the
young man, in error of which opinion he chose to leave them. As a
companion he was so moody and silent that the two officers, his fellow
sufferers, left him to himself mostly, liked little very likely what they
knew of him, consoled themselves with dice, cards, and the bottle, and
whiled away their own captivity in their own way. It seemed to Esmond as
if he lived years in that prison: and was changed and aged when he came
out of it. At certain periods of life we live years of emotion in a few
weeks—and look back on those times, as on great gaps between the old life
and the new. You do not know how much you suffer in those critical
maladies of the heart, until the disease is over and you look back on it
afterwards. During the time, the suffering is at least sufferable. The day
passes in more or less of pain, and the night wears away somehow. ’Tis
only in after-days that we see what the danger has been—as a man out
a-hunting or riding for his life looks at a leap, and wonders how he
should have survived the taking of it. O dark months of grief and rage! of
wrong and cruel endurance! He is old now who recalls you. Long ago he has
forgiven and blest the soft hand that wounded him: but the mark is there,
and the wound is cicatrized only—no time, tears, caresses, or repentance,
can obliterate the scar. We are indocile to put up with grief, however.
_Reficimus rates quassas_: we tempt the ocean again and again, and try
upon new ventures. Esmond thought of his early time as a novitiate, and of
this past trial as an initiation before entering into life—as our young
Indians undergo tortures silently before they pass to the rank of warriors
in the tribe.
The officers, meanwhile, who were not let into the secret of the grief
which was gnawing at the side of their silent young friend, and being
accustomed to such transactions, in which one comrade or another was daily
paying the forfeit of the sword, did not of course bemoan themselves very
inconsolably about the fate of their late companion in arms. This one told
stories of former adventures of love, or war, or pleasure, in which poor
Frank Esmond had been engaged; t’other recollected how a constable had
been bilked, or a tavern-bully beaten: whilst my lord’s poor widow was
sitting at his tomb worshipping him as an actual saint and spotless
hero—so the visitors said who had news of Lady Castlewood; and Westbury
and Macartney had pretty nearly had all the town to come and see them.
The duel, its fatal termination, the trial of the two peers and the three
commoners concerned, had caused the greatest excitement in the town. The
prints and News Letters were full of them. The three gentlemen in Newgate
were almost as much crowded as the bishops in the Tower, or a highwayman
before execution. We were allowed to live in the governor’s house, as hath
been said, both before trial and after condemnation, waiting the king’s
pleasure; nor was the real cause of the fatal quarrel known, so closely
had my lord and the two other persons who knew it kept the secret, but
every one imagined that the origin of the meeting was a gambling dispute.
Except fresh air, the prisoners had, upon payment, most things they could
desire. Interest was made that they should not mix with the vulgar
convicts, whose ribald choruses and loud laughter and curses could be
heard from their own part of the prison, where they and the miserable
debtors were confined pell-mell.
Chapter II. I Come To The End Of My Captivity, But Not Of My Trouble
Among the company which came to visit the two officers was an old
acquaintance of Harry Esmond; that gentleman of the Guards, namely, who
had been so kind to Harry when Captain Westbury’s troop had been quartered
at Castlewood more than seven years before. Dick the Scholar was no longer
Dick the Trooper now, but Captain Steele of Lucas’s Fusiliers, and
secretary to my Lord Cutts, that famous officer of King William’s, the
bravest and most beloved man of the English army. The two jolly prisoners
had been drinking with a party of friends (for our cellar and that of the
keepers of Newgate, too, were supplied with endless hampers of burgundy
and champagne that the friends of the colonels sent in); and Harry, having
no wish for their drink or their conversation, being too feeble in health
for the one and too sad in spirits for the other, was sitting apart in his
little room, reading such books as he had, one evening, when honest
Colonel Westbury, flushed with liquor, and always good-humoured in and out
of his cups, came laughing into Harry’s closet, and said, “Ho, young
Killjoy! here’s a friend come to see thee; he’ll pray with thee, or he’ll
drink with thee; or he’ll drink and pray turn about. Dick, my Christian
hero, here’s the little scholar of Castlewood.”
Dick came up and kissed Esmond on both cheeks, imparting a strong perfume
of burnt sack along with his caress to the young man.
“What! is this the little man that used to talk Latin and fetch our bowls?
How tall thou art grown! I protest I should have known thee anywhere. And
so you have turned ruffian and fighter; and wanted to measure swords with
Mohun, did you? I protest that Mohun said at the Guard dinner yesterday,
where there was a pretty company of us, that the young fellow wanted to
fight him, and was the better man of the two.”
“I wish we could have tried and proved it, Mr. Steele,” says Esmond,
thinking of his dead benefactor, and his eyes filling with tears.
With the exception of that one cruel letter which he had from his
mistress, Mr. Esmond heard nothing from her, and she seemed determined to
execute her resolve of parting from him and disowning him. But he had news
of her, such as it was, which Mr. Steele assiduously brought him from the
prince’s and princesses’ Court, where our honest captain had been advanced
to the post of gentleman waiter. When off duty there, Captain Dick often
came to console his friends in captivity; a good nature and a friendly
disposition towards all who were in ill fortune no doubt prompting him to
make his visits, and good fellowship and good wine to prolong them.
“Faith,” says Westbury, “the little scholar was the first to begin the
quarrel—I mind me of it now—at Lockit’s. I always hated that fellow Mohun.
What was the real cause of the quarrel betwixt him and poor Frank? I would
wager ’twas a woman.”
“’Twas a quarrel about play—on my word, about play,” Harry said. “My poor
lord lost great sums to his guest at Castlewood. Angry words passed
between them; and, though Lord Castlewood was the kindest and most pliable
soul alive, his spirit was very high; and hence that meeting which has
brought us all here,” says Mr. Esmond, resolved never to acknowledge that
there had ever been any other but cards for the duel.
“I do not like to use bad words of a nobleman,” says Westbury; “but if my
Lord Mohun were a commoner, I would say, ’twas a pity he was not hanged.
He was familiar with dice and women at a time other boys are at school,
being birched; he was as wicked as the oldest rake, years ere he had done
growing; and handled a sword and a foil, and a bloody one too, before ever
he used a razor. He held poor Will Mountford in talk that night, when
bloody Dick Hill ran him through. He will come to a bad end, will that
young lord; and no end is bad enough for him,” says honest Mr. Westbury:
whose prophecy was fulfilled twelve years after, upon that fatal day when
Mohun fell, dragging down one of the bravest and greatest gentlemen in
England in his fall.
From Mr. Steele, then, who brought the public rumour, as well as his own
private intelligence, Esmond learned the movements of his unfortunate
mistress. Steele’s heart was of very inflammable composition; and the
gentleman usher spoke in terms of boundless admiration both of the widow
(that most beautiful woman, as he said) and of her daughter, who, in the
captain’s eyes, was a still greater paragon. If the pale widow, whom
Captain Richard, in his poetic rapture, compared to a Niobe in tears—to a
Sigismunda—to a weeping Belvidera, was an object the most lovely and
pathetic which his eyes had ever beheld, or for which his heart had
melted, even her ripened perfections and beauty were as nothing compared
to the promise of that extreme loveliness which the good captain saw in
her daughter. It was _matre pulcra filia pulcrior_. Steele composed
sonnets whilst he was on duty in his prince’s antechamber, to the maternal
and filial charms. He would speak for hours about them to Harry Esmond;
and, indeed, he could have chosen few subjects more likely to interest the
unhappy young man, whose heart was now as always devoted to these ladies;
and who was thankful to all who loved them, or praised them, or wished
them well.
Not that his fidelity was recompensed by any answering kindness, or show
of relenting even, on the part of a mistress obdurate now after ten years
of love and benefactions. The poor young man getting no answer, save
Tusher’s, to that letter which he had written, and being too proud to
write more, opened a part of his heart to Steele, than whom no man, when
unhappy, could find a kinder hearer or more friendly emissary; described
(in words which were no doubt pathetic, for they came _imo pectore_, and
caused honest Dick to weep plentifully) his youth, his constancy, his fond
devotion to that household which had reared him; his affection how earned,
and how tenderly requited until but yesterday, and (as far as he might)
the circumstances and causes for which that sad quarrel had made of Esmond
a prisoner under sentence, a widow and orphans of those whom in life he
held dearest. In terms that might well move a harder-hearted man than
young Esmond’s confidant—for, indeed, the speaker’s own heart was half
broke as he uttered them; he described a part of what had taken place in
that only sad interview which his mistress had granted him; how she had
left him with anger and almost imprecation, whose words and thoughts until
then had been only blessing and kindness; how she had accused him of the
guilt of that blood, in exchange for which he would cheerfully have
sacrificed his own (indeed, in this the Lord Mohun, the Lord Warwick, and
all the gentlemen engaged, as well as the common rumour out of
doors—Steele told him—bore out the luckless young man); and with all his
heart, and tears, he besought Mr. Steele to inform his mistress of her
kinsman’s unhappiness, and to deprecate that cruel anger she showed him.
Half frantic with grief at the injustice done him, and contrasting it with
a thousand soft recollections of love and confidence gone by, that made
his present misery inexpressibly more bitter, the poor wretch passed many
a lonely day and wakeful night in a kind of powerless despair and rage
against his iniquitous fortune. It was the softest hand that struck him,
the gentlest and most compassionate nature that persecuted him. “I would
as lief,” he said, “have pleaded guilty to the murder, and have suffered
for it like any other felon, as have to endure the torture to which my
mistress subjects me.”
Although the recital of Esmond’s story, and his passionate appeals and
remonstrances, drew so many tears from Dick who heard them, they had no
effect upon the person whom they were designed to move. Esmond’s
ambassador came back from the mission with which the poor young gentleman
had charged him, with a sad blank face and a shake of the head, which told
that there was no hope for the prisoner; and scarce a wretched culprit in
that prison of Newgate ordered for execution, and trembling for a
reprieve, felt more cast down than Mr. Esmond, innocent and condemned.
As had been arranged between the prisoner and his counsel in their
consultations, Mr. Steele had gone to the dowager’s house in Chelsey,
where it has been said the widow and her orphans were, had seen my lady
viscountess and pleaded the cause of her unfortunate kinsman. “And I think
I spoke well, my poor boy,” says Mr. Steele; “for who would not speak well
in such a cause, and before so beautiful a judge? I did not see the lovely
Beatrix (sure her famous namesake of Florence was never half so
beautiful), only the young viscount was in the room with the Lord
Churchill, my Lord of Marlborough’s eldest son. But these young gentlemen
went off to the garden, I could see them from the window tilting at each
other with poles in a mimic tournament (grief touches the young but
lightly, and I remember that I beat a drum at the coffin of my own
father). My lady viscountess looked out at the two boys at their game, and
said—‘You see, sir, children are taught to use weapons of death as toys,
and to make a sport of murder’; and as she spoke she looked so lovely, and
stood there in herself so sad and beautiful an instance of that doctrine
whereof I am a humble preacher, that had I not dedicated my little volume
of the _Christian Hero_ (I perceive, Harry, thou hast not cut the leaves
of it. The sermon is good, believe me, though the preacher’s life may not
answer it)—I say, hadn’t I dedicated the volume to Lord Cutts, I would
have asked permission to place her ladyship’s name on the first page. I
think I never saw such a beautiful violet as that of her eyes, Harry. Her
complexion is of the pink of the blush-rose, she hath an exquisite turned
wrist and dimpled hand, and I make no doubt——”
“Did you come to tell me about the dimples on my lady’s hand?” broke out
Mr. Esmond, sadly.
“A lovely creature in affliction seems always doubly beautiful to me,”
says the poor captain, who indeed was but too often in a state to see
double, and so checked he resumed the interrupted thread of his story. “As
I spoke my business,” Mr. Steele said, “and narrated to your mistress what
all the world knows, and the other side hath been eager to
acknowledge—that you had tried to put yourself between the two lords, and
to take your patron’s quarrel on your own point; I recounted the general
praises of your gallantry, besides my Lord Mohun’s particular testimony to
it; I thought the widow listened with some interest, and her eyes—I have
never seen such a violet, Harry—looked up at mine once or twice. But after
I had spoken on this theme for a while she suddenly broke away with a cry
of grief. ‘I would to God, sir,’ she said, ‘I had never heard that word
gallantry which you use, or known the meaning of it. My lord might have
been here but for that; my home might be happy; my poor boy have a father.
It was what you gentlemen call gallantry came into my home, and drove my
husband on to the cruel sword that killed him. You should not speak the
word to a Christian woman, sir—a poor widowed mother of orphans, whose
home was happy until the world came into it—the wicked godless world, that
takes the blood of the innocent, and lets the guilty go free.’
“As the afflicted lady spoke in this strain, sir,” Mr. Steele continued,
“it seemed as if indignation moved her, even more than grief.
‘Compensation!’ she went on passionately, her cheeks and eyes kindling;
‘what compensation does your world give the widow for her husband, and the
children for the murderer of their father? The wretch who did the deed has
not even a punishment. Conscience! what conscience has he, who can enter
the house of a friend, whisper falsehood and insult to a woman that never
harmed him, and stab the kind heart that trusted him? My lord—my Lord
Wretch, my Lord Villain’s, my Lord Murderer’s peers meet to try him, and
they dismiss him with a word or two of reproof, and send him into the
world again, to pursue women with lust and falsehood, and to murder
unsuspecting guests that harbour him. That day, my lord—my Lord
Murderer—(I will never name him)—was let loose, a woman was executed at
Tyburn for stealing in a shop. But a man may rob another of his life, or a
lady of her honour, and shall pay no penalty! I take my child, run to the
throne, and on my knees ask for justice, and the king refuses me. The
king! he is no king of mine—he never shall be. He, too, robbed the throne
from the king his father—the true king—and he has gone unpunished, as the
great do.’
“I then thought to speak for you,” Mr. Steele continued, “and I interposed
by saying, ‘There was one, madam, who, at least, would have put his own
breast between your husband’s and my Lord Mohun’s sword. Your poor young
kinsman, Harry Esmond, hath told me that he tried to draw the quarrel on
himself.’
“ ‘Are you come from _him_?’ asked the lady” (so Mr. Steele went on),
“rising up with a great severity and stateliness. ‘I thought you had come
from the princess. I saw Mr. Esmond in his prison, and bade him farewell.
He brought misery into my house. He never should have entered it.’
“ ‘Madam, madam, he is not to blame,’ I interposed,” continued Mr. Steele.
“ ‘Do I blame him to you, sir?’ asked the widow. ‘If ’tis he who sent you,
say that I have taken counsel, where’—she spoke with a very pallid cheek
now, and a break in her voice—‘where all who ask may have it;—and that it
bids me to part from him, and to see him no more. We met in the prison for
the last time—at least for years to come. It may be, in years hence,
when—when our knees and our tears and our contrition have changed our
sinful hearts, sir, and wrought our pardon, we may meet again—but not now.
After what has passed, I could not bear to see him. I wish him well, sir;
but I wish him farewell, too; and if he has that—that regard towards us
which he speaks of, I beseech him to prove it by obeying me in this.’
“ ‘I shall break the young man’s heart, madam, by this hard sentence,’ ”
Mr. Steele said.
“The lady shook her head,” continued my kind scholar. “ ‘The hearts of
young men, Mr. Steele, are not so made,’ she said. ‘Mr. Esmond will find
other—other friends. The mistress of this house has relented very much
towards the late lord’s son,’ she added, with a blush, ‘and has promised
me, that is, has promised that she will care for his fortune. Whilst I
live in it, after the horrid, horrid deed which has passed, Castlewood
must never be a home to him—never. Nor would I have him write to
me—except—no—I would have him never write to me, nor see him more. Give
him, if you will, my parting—Hush! not a word of this before my daughter.’
“Here the fair Beatrix entered from the river, with her cheeks flushing
with health, and looking only the more lovely and fresh for the mourning
habiliments which she wore. And my lady viscountess said—
“ ‘Beatrix, this is Mr. Steele, gentleman-usher to the prince’s highness.
When does your new comedy appear, Mr. Steele?’ I hope thou wilt be out of
prison for the first night, Harry.”
The sentimental captain concluded his sad tale, saying, “Faith, the beauty
of _Filia pulcrior_ drove _pulcram matrem_ out of my head; and yet as I
came down the river, and thought about the pair, the pallid dignity and
exquisite grace of the matron had the uppermost, and I thought her even
more noble than the virgin!”
-------------------------------------
The party of prisoners lived very well in Newgate, and with comforts very
different to those which were awarded to the poor wretches there (his
insensibility to their misery, their gaiety still more frightful, their
curses and blasphemy, hath struck with a kind of shame since—as proving
how selfish, during his imprisonment, his own particular grief was, and
how entirely the thoughts of it absorbed him): if the three gentlemen
lived well under the care of the warden of Newgate, it was because they
paid well: and indeed the cost at the dearest ordinary or the grandest
tavern in London could not have furnished a longer reckoning, than our
host of the “Handcuff Inn”—as Colonel Westbury called it. Our rooms were
the three in the gate over Newgate—on the second story looking up Newgate
Street towards Cheapside and Paul’s Church. And we had leave to walk on
the roof, and could see thence Smithfield and the Bluecoat Boys’ School,
Gardens, and the Chartreux, where, as Harry Esmond remembered, Dick the
Scholar, and his friend Tom Tusher, had had their schooling.
Harry could never have paid his share of that prodigious heavy reckoning
which my landlord brought to his guests once a week: for he had but three
pieces in his pockets that fatal night before the duel, when the gentlemen
were at cards, and offered to play five. But whilst he was yet ill at the
Gatehouse, after Lady Castlewood had visited him there, and before his
trial, there came one in an orange-tawny coat and blue lace, the livery
which the Esmonds always wore, and brought a sealed packet for Mr. Esmond,
which contained twenty guineas, and a note saying that a counsel had been
appointed for him, and that more money would be forthcoming whenever he
needed it.
’Twas a queer letter from the scholar as she was, or as she called
herself: the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood, written in the strange
barbarous French which she and many other fine ladies of that time—witness
Her Grace of Portsmouth—employed. Indeed, spelling was not an article of
general commodity in the world then, and my Lord Marlborough’s letters can
show that he, for one, had but a little share of this part of grammar.
Mong Coussin (my lady viscountess dowager wrote), je scay que vous
vous etes bravement batew et grievement bléssay—du costé de feu M.
le Vicomte. M. le Compte de Varique ne se playt qua parlay de
vous: M. de Moon auçy. Il di que vous avay voulew vous bastre
avecque luy—que vous estes plus fort que luy sur
l’ayscrimme—quil’y a surtout certaine Botte que vous scavay quil
n’a jammay sceu pariay: et que c’en eut été fay de luy si vouseluy
vous vous fussiay battews ansamb. Aincy ce pauv Vicompte est mort.
Mort et peutayt—Mon coussin, mon coussin! jay dans la tayste que
vous n’estes quung pety Monst—angcy que les Esmonds ong tousjours
esté. La veuve est chay moy. J’ay recuilly cet’ pauve famme. Elle
est furieuse cont vous, allans tous les jours chercher le Roy
(d’icy) démandant à gran cri revanche pour son Mary. Elle ne veux
voyre ni entende parlay de vous: pourtant elle ne fay qu’en parlay
milfoy par jour. Quand vous seray hor prison venay me voyre.
J’auray soing de vous. Si cette petite Prude veut se défaire de
song pety Monste (Hélas je craing qùil ne soy trotar!) je m’en
chargeray. J’ay encor quelqu interay et quelques escus de costay.
La Veuve se raccommode avec Miladi Marlboro qui est tout puiçante
avecque la Reine Anne. Cet dam sentéraysent pour la petite prude;
qui pourctant a un fi du mesme asge que vous savay.
En sortant de prisong venez icy. Je ne puy vous recevoir chay-moy
à cause des méchansetés du monde, may pre du moy vous aurez
logement.
ISABELLE VICOMPTESSE D’ESMOND.
Marchioness of Esmond this lady sometimes called herself, in virtue of
that patent which had been given by the late King James to Harry Esmond’s
father; and in this state she had her train carried by a knight’s wife, a
cup and cover of assay to drink from, and fringed cloth.
He who was of the same age as little Francis, whom we shall henceforth
call Viscount Castlewood here, was H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, born in the
same year and month with Frank, and just proclaimed at St. Germains, King
of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.
Chapter III. I Take The Queen’s Pay In Quin’s Regiment
The fellow in the orange-tawny livery with blue lace and facings was in
waiting when Esmond came out of prison, and, taking the young gentleman’s
slender baggage, led the way out of that odious Newgate, and by Fleet
Conduit, down to the Thames, where a pair of oars was called, and they
went up the river to Chelsea. Esmond thought the sun had never shone so
bright; nor the air felt so fresh and exhilarating. Temple Garden, as they
rowed by, looked like the garden of Eden to him, and the aspect of the
quays, wharves, and buildings by the river, Somerset House, and
Westminster (where the splendid new bridge was just beginning), Lambeth
tower and palace, and that busy shining scene of the Thames swarming with
boats and barges, filled his heart with pleasure and cheerfulness—as well
such a beautiful scene might to one who had been a prisoner so long, and
with so many dark thoughts deepening the gloom of his captivity. They
rowed up at length to the pretty village of Chelsey, where the nobility
have many handsome country-houses; and so came to my lady viscountess’s
house, a cheerful new house in the row facing the river, with a handsome
garden behind it, and a pleasant look-out both towards Surrey and
Kensington, where stands the noble ancient palace of the Lord Warwick,
Harry’s reconciled adversary.
Here in her ladyship’s saloon, the young man saw again some of those
pictures which had been at Castlewood, and which she had removed thence on
the death of her lord, Harry’s father. Specially, and in the place of
honour, was Sir Peter Lely’s picture of the Honourable Mistress Isabella
Esmond as Diana, in yellow satin, with a bow in her hand and a crescent in
her forehead; and dogs frisking about her. ’Twas painted about the time
when royal Endymions were said to find favour with this virgin huntress;
and, as goddesses have youth perpetual, this one believed to the day of
her death that she never grew older: and always persisted in supposing the
picture was still like her.
After he had been shown to her room by the groom of the chamber, who
filled many offices besides in her ladyship’s modest household; and after
a proper interval, his elderly goddess Diana vouchsafed to appear to the
young man. A blackamoor in a Turkish habit, with red boots and a silver
collar, on which the viscountess’s arms were engraven, preceded her and
bore her cushion; then came her gentlewoman; a little pack of spaniels
barking and frisking about preceded the austere huntress—then, behold, the
viscountess herself “dropping odours”. Esmond recollected from his
childhood that rich aroma of musk which his mother-in-law (for she may be
called so) exhaled. As the sky grows redder and redder towards sunset, so,
in the decline of her years, the cheeks of my lady dowager blushed more
deeply. Her face was illuminated with vermilion, which appeared the
brighter from the white paint employed to set it off. She wore the
ringlets which had been in fashion in King Charles’s time; whereas the
ladies of King William’s had head-dresses like the towers of Cybele. Her
eyes gleamed out from the midst of this queer structure of paint, dyes,
and pomatums. Such was my lady viscountess, Mr. Esmond’s father’s widow.
He made her such a profound bow as her dignity and relationship merited:
and advanced with the greatest gravity, and once more kissed that hand,
upon the trembling knuckles of which glittered a score of
rings—remembering old times when that trembling hand made him tremble.
“Marchioness,” says he, bowing, and on one knee, “is it only the hand I
may have the honour of saluting?” For, accompanying that inward laughter,
which the sight of such an astonishing old figure might well produce in
the young man, there was goodwill too, and the kindness of consanguinity.
She had been his father’s wife, and was his grandfather’s daughter. She
had suffered him in old days, and was kind to him now after her fashion.
And now that bar-sinister was removed from Esmond’s thought, and that
secret opprobrium no longer cast upon his mind, he was pleased to feel
family ties and own them—perhaps secretly vain of the sacrifice he had
made, and to think that he, Esmond, was really the chief of his house, and
only prevented by his own magnanimity from advancing his claim.
At least, ever since he had learned that secret from his poor patron on
his dying bed, actually as he was standing beside it, he had felt an
independency which he had never known before, and which since did not
desert him. So he called his old aunt marchioness, but with an air as if
he was the Marquis of Esmond who so addressed her.
Did she read in the young gentleman’s eyes, which had now no fear of hers
or their superannuated authority, that he knew or suspected the truth
about his birth? She gave a start of surprise at his altered manner:
indeed, it was quite a different bearing to that of the Cambridge student
who had paid her a visit two years since, and whom she had dismissed with
five pieces sent by the groom of the chamber. She eyed him, then trembled
a little more than was her wont, perhaps, and said, “Welcome, cousin”, in
a frightened voice.
His resolution, as has been said before, had been quite different, namely,
so to bear himself through life as if the secret of his birth was not
known to him; but he suddenly and rightly determined on a different
course. He asked that her ladyship’s attendants should be dismissed, and
when they were private—“Welcome, nephew, at least, madam, it should be,”
he said, “A great wrong has been done to me and to you, and to my poor
mother, who is no more.”
“I declare before Heaven that I was guiltless of it,” she cried out,
giving up her cause at once. “It was your wicked father who——”
“Who brought this dishonour on our family,” says Mr. Esmond. “I know it
full well. I want to disturb no one. Those who are in present possession
have been my dearest benefactors, and are quite innocent of intentional
wrong to me. The late lord, my dear patron, knew not the truth until a few
months before his death, when Father Holt brought the news to him.”
“The wretch! he had it in confession! He had it in confession!” cried out
the dowager lady.
“Not so. He learned it elsewhere as well as in confession,” Mr. Esmond
answered. “My father, when wounded at the Boyne, told the truth to a
French priest, who was in hiding after the battle, as well as to the
priest there, at whose house he died. This gentleman did not think fit to
divulge the story till he met with Mr. Holt at St. Omer’s. And the latter
kept it back for his own purpose, and until he had learned whether my
mother was alive or no. She is dead years since: my poor patron told me
with his dying breath; and I doubt him not. I do not know even whether I
could prove a marriage. I would not if I could. I do not care to bring
shame on our name, or grief upon those whom I love, however hardly they
may use me. My father’s son, madam, won’t aggravate the wrong my father
did you. Continue to be his widow, and give me your kindness. ’Tis all I
ask from you; and I shall never speak of this matter again.”
“_Mais vous êtes un noble jeune homme!_” breaks out my lady, speaking, as
usual with her when she was agitated, in the French language.
“_Noblesse oblige_,” says Mr. Esmond, making her a low bow. “There are
those alive to whom, in return for their love to me, I often fondly said I
would give my life away. Shall I be their enemy now, and quarrel about a
title? What matters who has it? ’Tis with the family still.”
“What can there be in that little prude of a woman, that makes men so
_raffoler_ about her?” cries out my lady dowager. “She was here for a
month petitioning the king. She is pretty, and well conserved; but she has
not the _bel air_. In his late Majesty’s Court all the men pretended to
admire her; and she was no better than a little wax doll. She is better
now, and looks the sister of her daughter: but what mean you all by
bepraising her? Mr. Steele, who was in waiting on Prince George, seeing
her with her two children going to Kensington, writ a poem about her; and
says he shall wear her colours, and dress in black for the future. Mr.
Congreve says he will write a _Mourning Widow_, that shall be better than
his _Mourning Bride_. Though their husbands quarrelled and fought when
that wretch Churchill deserted the king (for which he deserved to be
hung), Lady Marlborough has again gone wild about the little widow;
insulted me in my own drawing-room, by saying that ’twas not the _old_
widow, but the young viscountess, she had come to see. Little Castlewood
and little Lord Churchill are to be sworn friends, and have boxed each
other twice or thrice like brothers already. ’Twas that wicked young Mohun
who, coming back from the provinces last year, where he had disinterred
her, raved about her all the winter; said she was a pearl set before
swine; and killed poor stupid Frank. The quarrel was all about his wife. I
know ’twas all about her. Was there anything between her and Mohun,
nephew? Tell me now; was there anything? About yourself, I do not ask you
to answer questions.” Mr. Esmond blushed up. “My lady’s virtue is like
that of a saint in heaven, madam,” he cried out.
“Eh!—_mon neveu_. Many saints get to Heaven after having a deal to repent
of. I believe you are like all the rest of the fools, and madly in love
with her.”
“Indeed, I loved and honoured her before all the world,” Esmond answered.
“I take no shame in that.”
“And she has shut her door on you—given the living to that horrid young
cub, son of that horrid old bear, Tusher, and says she will never see you
more. _Monsieur mon neveu_—we are all like that. When I was a young woman,
I’m positive that a thousand duels were fought about me. And when poor
Monsieur de Souchy drowned himself in the canal at Bruges because I danced
with Count Springbock, I couldn’t squeeze out a single tear, but danced
till five o’clock the next morning. ’Twas the count—no, ’twas my Lord
Ormonde that paid the fiddles, and his Majesty did me the honour of
dancing all night with me.—How you are grown! You have got the _bel air_.
You are a black man. Our Esmonds are all black. The little prude’s son is
fair; so was his father—fair and stupid. You were an ugly little wretch
when you came to Castlewood—you were all eyes, like a young crow. We
intended you should be a priest. That awful Father Holt—how he used to
frighten me when I was ill! I have a comfortable director now—the Abbé
Douillette—a dear man. We make meagre on Fridays always. My cook is a
devout pious man. You, of course, are of the right way of thinking. They
say the Prince of Orange is very ill indeed.”
In this way the old dowager rattled on remorselessly to Mr. Esmond, who
was quite astounded with her present volubility, contrasting it with her
former haughty behaviour to him. But she had taken him into favour for the
moment, and chose not only to like him, as far as her nature permitted,
but to be afraid of him; and he found himself to be as familiar with her
now as a young man, as when a boy, he had been timorous and silent. She
was as good as her word respecting him. She introduced him to her company,
of which she entertained a good deal—of the adherents of King James of
course—and a great deal of loud intriguing took place over her
card-tables. She presented Mr. Esmond as her kinsman to many persons of
honour; she supplied him not illiberally with money, which he had no
scruple in accepting from her, considering the relationship which he bore
to her, and the sacrifices which he himself was making in behalf of the
family. But he had made up his mind to continue at no woman’s
apron-strings longer; and perhaps had cast about how he should distinguish
himself, and make himself a name, which his singular fortune had denied
him. A discontent with his former bookish life and quietude,—a bitter
feeling of revolt at that slavery in which he had chosen to confine
himself for the sake of those whose hardness towards him made his heart
bleed,—a restless wish to see men and the world,—led him to think of the
military profession: at any rate, to desire to see a few campaigns, and
accordingly he pressed his new patroness to get him a pair of colours; and
one day had the honour of finding himself appointed an ensign in Colonel
Quin’s regiment of Fusiliers on the Irish establishment.
Mr. Esmond’s commission was scarce three weeks old when that accident
befell King William which ended the life of the greatest, the wisest, the
bravest, and most clement sovereign whom England ever knew. ’Twas the
fashion of the hostile party to assail this great prince’s reputation
during his life; but the joy which they and all his enemies in Europe
showed at his death, is a proof of the terror in which they held him.
Young as Esmond was, he was wise enough (and generous enough too, let it
be said) to scorn that indecency of gratulation which broke out amongst
the followers of King James in London, upon the death of this illustrious
prince, this invincible warrior, this wise and moderate statesman. Loyalty
to the exiled king’s family was traditional, as has been said, in that
house to which Mr. Esmond belonged. His father’s widow had all her hopes,
sympathies, recollections, prejudices, engaged on King James’s side; and
was certainly as noisy a conspirator as ever asserted the king’s rights,
or abused his opponent’s, over a quadrille table or a dish of bohea. Her
ladyship’s house swarmed with ecclesiastics, in disguise and out; with
tale-bearers from St. Germains; and quidnuncs that knew the last news from
Versailles; nay, the exact force and number of the next expedition which
the French king was to send from Dunkirk, and which was to swallow up the
Prince of Orange, his army, and his Court. She had received the Duke of
Berwick when he landed here in ’96. She kept the glass he drank from,
vowing she never would use it till she drank King James the Third’s health
in it on his Majesty’s return; she had tokens from the queen, and relics
of the saint who, if the story was true, had not always been a saint as
far as she and many others were concerned. She believed in the miracles
wrought at his tomb, and had a hundred authentic stories of wondrous cures
effected by the blessed king’s rosaries, the medals which he wore, the
locks of his hair, or what not. Esmond remembered a score of marvellous
tales which the credulous old woman told him. There was the Bishop of
Autun, that was healed of a malady he had for forty years, and which left
him after he said mass for the repose of the king’s soul. There was
Monsieur Marais, a surgeon in Auvergne, who had a palsy in both his legs,
which was cured through the king’s intercession. There was Philip Pitet,
of the Benedictines, who had a suffocating cough, which wellnigh killed
him, but he besought relief of Heaven through the merits and intercession
of the blessed king, and he straightway felt a profuse sweat breaking out
all over him, and was recovered perfectly. And there was the wife of
Monsieur Lepervier, dancing-master to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, who was
entirely eased of a rheumatism by the king’s intercession, of which
miracle there could be no doubt, for her surgeon and his apprentice had
given their testimony, under oath, that they did not in any way contribute
to the cure. Of these tales, and a thousand like them, Mr. Esmond believed
as much as he chose. His kinswoman’s greater faith had swallow for them
all.
The English High Church party did not adopt these legends. But truth and
honour, as they thought, bound them to the exiled king’s side; nor had the
banished family any warmer supporter than that kind lady of Castlewood, in
whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her husband, very much
more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously though
he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of thinking
himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she chose for him. To
one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance to any sovereign but the
one was impossible. To serve King William for interest’s sake would have
been a monstrous hypocrisy and treason. Her pure conscience could no more
have consented to it than to a theft, a forgery, or any other base action.
Lord Castlewood might have been won over, no doubt, but his wife never
could: and he submitted his conscience to hers in this case as he did in
most others, when he was not tempted too sorely. And it was from his
affection and gratitude most likely, and from that eager devotion for his
mistress, which characterized all Esmond’s youth, that the young man
subscribed to this, and other articles of faith, which his fond
benefactress set him. Had she been a Whig, he had been one; had she
followed Mr. Fox, and turned Quaker, no doubt he would have abjured
ruffles and a periwig, and have forsworn swords, lace coats, and clocked
stockings. In the scholars’ boyish disputes at the University, where
parties ran very high, Esmond was noted as a Jacobite, and very likely
from vanity as much as affection took the side of his family.
Almost the whole of the clergy of the country and more than a half of the
nation were on this side. Ours is the most loyal people in the world
surely; we admire our kings, and are faithful to them long after they have
ceased to be true to us. ’Tis a wonder to any one who looks back at the
history of the Stuart family to think how they kicked their crowns away
from them; how they flung away chances after chances; what treasures of
loyalty they dissipated, and how fatally they were bent on consummating
their own ruin. If ever men had fidelity, ’twas they; if ever men
squandered opportunity, ’twas they; and, of all the enemies they had, they
themselves were the most fatal.(8)
When the Princess Anne succeeded, the wearied nation was glad enough to
cry a truce from all these wars, controversies, and conspiracies, and to
accept in the person of a princess of the blood royal a compromise between
the parties into which the country was divided. The Tories could serve
under her with easy consciences; though a Tory herself, she represented
the triumph of the Whig opinion. The people of England, always liking that
their princes should be attached to their own families, were pleased to
think the princess was faithful to hers; and up to the very last day and
hour of her reign, and but for that fatality which he inherited from his
fathers along with their claims to the English crown, King James the Third
might have worn it. But he neither knew how to wait an opportunity, nor to
use it when he had it; he was venturesome when he ought to have been
cautious, and cautious when he ought to have dared everything. ’Tis with a
sort of rage at his inaptitude that one thinks of his melancholy story. Do
the Fates deal more specially with kings than with common men? One is apt
to imagine so, in considering the history of that royal race, in whose
behalf so much fidelity, so much valour, so much blood were desperately
and bootlessly expended.
The king dead then, the Princess Anne (ugly Anne Hyde’s daughter, our
dowager at Chelsey called her) was proclaimed by trumpeting heralds all
over the town from Westminster to Ludgate Hill, amidst immense jubilations
of the people.
Next week my Lord Marlborough was promoted to the Garter, and to be
captain-general of her Majesty’s forces at home and abroad. This
appointment only inflamed the dowager’s rage, or, as she thought it, her
fidelity to her rightful sovereign. “The princess is but a puppet in the
hands of that fury of a woman, who comes into my drawing-room and insults
me to my face. What can come to a country that is given over to such a
woman?” says the dowager: “As for that double-faced traitor, my Lord
Marlborough, he has betrayed every man and every woman with whom he has
had to deal, except his horrid wife, who makes him tremble. ’Tis all over
with the country when it has got into the clutches of such wretches as
these.”
Esmond’s old kinswoman saluted the new powers in this way; but some good
fortune at least occurred to a family which stood in great need of it, by
the advancement of these famous personages who benefited humbler people
that had the luck of being in their favour. Before Mr. Esmond left England
in the month of August, and being then at Portsmouth, where he had joined
his regiment, and was busy at drill, learning the practice and mysteries
of the musket and pike, he heard that a pension on the Stamp Office had
been got for his late beloved mistress, and that the young Mistress
Beatrix was also to be taken into Court. So much good, at least, had come
of the poor widow’s visit to London, not revenge upon her husband’s
enemies, but reconcilement to old friends, who pitied, and seemed inclined
to serve her. As for the comrades in prison and the late misfortune;
Colonel Westbury was with the captain-general gone to Holland; Captain
Macartney was now at Portsmouth, with his regiment of Fusiliers and the
force under command of his grace the Duke of Ormonde, bound for Spain it
was said; my Lord Warwick was returned home; and Lord Mohun, so far from
being punished for the homicide which had brought so much grief and change
into the Esmond family, was gone in company of my Lord Macclesfield’s
splendid embassy to the Elector of Hanover, carrying the Garter to his
highness, and a complimentary letter from the queen.
Chapter IV. Recapitulations
From such fitful lights as could be cast upon his dark history by the
broken narrative of his poor patron, torn by remorse and struggling in the
last pangs of dissolution, Mr. Esmond had been made to understand so far,
that his mother was long since dead; and so there could be no question as
regarded her or her honour, tarnished by her husband’s desertion and
injury, to influence her son in any steps which he might take either for
prosecuting or relinquishing his own just claims. It appeared from my poor
lord’s hurried confession, that he had been made acquainted with the real
facts of the case only two years since, when Mr. Holt visited him, and
would have implicated him in one of those many conspiracies by which the
secret leaders of King James’s party in this country were ever
endeavouring to destroy the Prince of Orange’s life or power; conspiracies
so like murder, so cowardly in the means used, so wicked in the end, that
our nation has sure done well in throwing off all allegiance and fidelity
to the unhappy family that could not vindicate its right except by such
treachery—by such dark intrigue and base agents. There were designs
against King William that were no more honourable than the ambushes of
cut-throats and footpads. ’Tis humiliating to think that a great prince,
possessor of a great and sacred right, and upholder of a great cause,
should have stooped to such baseness of assassination and treasons as are
proved by the unfortunate King James’s own warrant and sign-manual given
to his supporters in this country. What he and they called levying war
was, in truth, no better than instigating murder. The noble Prince of
Orange burst magnanimously through those feeble meshes of conspiracy in
which his enemies tried to envelop him: it seemed as if their cowardly
daggers broke upon the breast of his undaunted resolution. After King
James’s death, the queen and her people at St. Germains—priests and women
for the most part—continued their intrigues in behalf of the young prince,
James the Third, as he was called in France and by his party here (this
prince, or Chevalier de St. George, was born in the same year with
Esmond’s young pupil Frank, my lord viscount’s son): and the prince’s
affairs, being in the hands of priests and women, were conducted as
priests and women will conduct them, artfully, cruelly, feebly, and to a
certain bad issue. The moral of the Jesuit’s story I think as wholesome a
one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and
dexterous plot-builders in the world—there always comes a day when the
roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its
cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion
for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to
weak people, hangers-on of weak courts. ’Tis the nature of such to hate
and envy the strong, and conspire their ruin; and the conspiracy succeeds
very well, and everything presages the satisfactory overthrow of the great
victim; until one day Gulliver rouses himself, shakes off the little
vermin of an enemy, and walks away unmolested. Ah! the Irish soldiers
might well say after the Boyne, “Change kings with us, and we will fight
it over again.” Indeed, the fight was not fair between the two. ’Twas a
weak priest-ridden, woman-ridden man, with such puny allies and weapons as
his own poor nature led him to choose, contending against the schemes, the
generalship, the wisdom, and the heart of a hero.
On one of these many coward’s errands, then (for, as I view them now, I
can call them no less), Mr. Holt had come to my lord at Castlewood,
proposing some infallible plan for the Prince of Orange’s destruction, in
which my lord viscount, loyalist as he was, had indignantly refused to
join. As far as Mr. Esmond could gather from his dying words, Holt came to
my lord with a plan of insurrection, and offer of the renewal, in his
person, of that marquis’s title which King James had conferred on the
preceding viscount; and on refusal of this bribe, a threat was made, on
Holt’s part, to upset my lord viscount’s claim to his estate and title of
Castlewood altogether. To back this astounding piece of intelligence, of
which Henry Esmond’s patron now had the first light, Holt came armed with
the late lord’s dying declaration, after the affair of the Boyne, at Trim,
in Ireland, made both to the Irish priest and a French ecclesiastic of
Holt’s order, that was with King James’s army. Holt showed, or pretended
to show, the marriage certificate of the late Viscount Esmond with my
mother, in the city of Brussels, in the year 1677, when the viscount, then
Thomas Esmond, was serving with the English army in Flanders; he could
show, he said, that this Gertrude, deserted by her husband long since, was
alive, and a professed nun in the year 1685, at Brussels, in which year
Thomas Esmond married his uncle’s daughter, Isabella, now called
Viscountess Dowager of Castlewood; and leaving him, for twelve hours, to
consider this astounding news (so the poor dying lord said), disappeared
with his papers in the mysterious way in which he came. Esmond knew how,
well enough: by that window from which he had seen the father issue:—but
there was no need to explain to my poor lord, only to gather from his
parting lips the words which he would soon be able to utter no more.
Ere the twelve hours were over, Holt himself was a prisoner, implicated in
Sir John Fenwick’s conspiracy, and locked up at Hexton first, whence he
was transferred to the Tower; leaving the poor lord viscount, who was not
aware of the others being taken, in daily apprehension of his return, when
(as my Lord Castlewood declared, calling God to witness, and with tears in
his dying eyes) it had been his intention at once to give up his estate
and his title to their proper owner, and to retire to his own house at
Walcote with his family. “And would to God I had done it,” the poor lord
said; “I would not be here now, wounded to death, a miserable, stricken
man!”
My lord waited day after day, and, as may be supposed, no messenger came;
but at a month’s end Holt got means to convey to him a message out of the
Tower, which was to this effect: that he should consider all unsaid that
had been said, and that things were as they were.
“I had a sore temptation,” said my poor lord. “Since I had come into this
cursed title of Castlewood, which hath never prospered with me, I have
spent far more than the income of that estate and my paternal one, too. I
calculated all my means down to the last shilling, and found I never could
pay you back, my poor Harry, whose fortune I had had for twelve years. My
wife and children must have gone out of the house dishonoured, and
beggars. God knows, it hath been a miserable one for me and mine. Like a
coward, I clung to that respite which Holt gave me. I kept the truth from
Rachel and you. I tried to win money of Mohun, and only plunged deeper
into debt; I scarce dared look thee in the face when I saw thee. This
sword hath been hanging over my head these two years. I swear I felt happy
when Mohun’s blade entered my side.”
After lying ten months in the Tower, Holt, against whom nothing could be
found except that he was a Jesuit priest, known to be in King James’s
interest, was put on shipboard by the incorrigible forgiveness of King
William, who promised him, however, a hanging if ever he should again set
foot on English shore. More than once, whilst he was in prison himself,
Esmond had thought where those papers could be, which the Jesuit had shown
to his patron, and which had such an interest for himself. They were not
found on Mr. Holt’s person when that father was apprehended, for had such
been the case my lords of the council had seen them, and this family
history had long since been made public. However, Esmond cared not to seek
the papers. His resolution being taken; his poor mother dead; what matter
to him that documents existed proving his right to a title which he was
determined not to claim, and of which he vowed never to deprive that
family which he loved best in the world? Perhaps he took a greater pride
out of his sacrifice than he would have had in those honours which he was
resolved to forgo. Again, as long as these titles were not forthcoming,
Esmond’s kinsman, dear young Francis, was the honourable and undisputed
owner of the Castlewood estate and title. The mere word of a Jesuit could
not overset Frank’s right of occupancy, and so Esmond’s mind felt actually
at ease to think the papers were missing, and in their absence his dear
mistress and her son the lawful lady and lord of Castlewood.
Very soon after his liberation, Mr. Esmond made it his business to ride to
that village of Ealing where he had passed his earliest years in this
country, and to see if his old guardians were still alive and inhabitants
of that place. But the only relic which he found of old Monsieur
Pastoureau was a stone in the churchyard, which told that Athanasius
Pastoureau, a native of Flanders, lay there buried, aged 87 years. The old
man’s cottage, which Esmond perfectly recollected, and the garden (where
in his childhood he had passed many hours of play and reverie, and had
many a beating from his termagant of a foster-mother), were now in the
occupation of quite a different family; and it was with difficulty that he
could learn in the village what had come of Pastoureau’s widow and
children. The clerk of the parish recollected her—the old man was scarce
altered in the fourteen years that had passed since last Esmond set eyes
on him. It appeared she had pretty soon consoled herself after the death
of her old husband, whom she ruled over, by taking a new one younger than
herself, who spent her money and ill-treated her and her children. The
girl died; one of the boys ’listed; the other had gone apprentice. Old Mr.
Rogers, the clerk, said he had heard that Mrs. Pastoureau was dead too.
She and her husband had left Ealing this seven year; and so Mr. Esmond’s
hopes of gaining any information regarding his parentage from this family,
were brought to an end. He gave the old clerk a crown-piece for his news,
smiling to think of the time when he and his little playfellows had slunk
out of the churchyard, or hidden behind the gravestones, at the approach
of this awful authority.
Who was his mother? What had her name been? When did she die? Esmond
longed to find some one who could answer these questions to him, and
thought even of putting them to his aunt the viscountess, who had
innocently taken the name which belonged of right to Henry’s mother. But
she knew nothing, or chose to know nothing, on this subject, nor, indeed,
could Mr. Esmond press her much to speak on it. Father Holt was the only
man who could enlighten him, and Esmond felt he must wait until some fresh
chance or new intrigue might put him face to face with his old friend, or
bring that restless indefatigable spirit back to England again.
The appointment to his ensigncy, and the preparations necessary for the
campaign, presently gave the young gentleman other matters to think of.
His new patroness treated him very kindly and liberally; she promised to
make interest and pay money, too, to get him a company speedily; she bade
him procure a handsome outfit, both of clothes and of arms, and was
pleased to admire him when he made his first appearance in his laced
scarlet coat, and to permit him to salute her on the occasion of this
interesting investiture. “Red,” says she, tossing up her old head, “hath
always been the colour worn by the Esmonds.” And so her ladyship wore it
on her own cheeks very faithfully to the last. She would have him be
dressed, she said, as became his father’s son, and paid cheerfully for his
five-pound beaver, his black buckled periwig, and his fine holland shirts,
and his swords, and his pistols, mounted with silver. Since the day he was
born, poor Harry had never looked such a fine gentleman: his liberal
stepmother filled his purse with guineas, too, some of which Captain
Steele and a few choice spirits helped Harry to spend in an entertainment
which Dick ordered (and, indeed, would have paid for, but that he had no
money when the reckoning was called for; nor would the landlord give him
any more credit) at the “Garter”, over against the gate of the Palace, in
Pall Mall.
The old viscountess, indeed, if she had done Esmond any wrong formerly,
seemed inclined to repair it by the present kindness of her behaviour: she
embraced him copiously at parting, wept plentifully, bade him write by
every packet, and gave him an inestimable relic, which she besought him to
wear round his neck—a medal, blessed by I know not what Pope, and worn by
his late sacred Majesty King James. So Esmond arrived at his regiment with
a better equipage than most young officers could afford. He was older than
most of his seniors, and had a further advantage which belonged but to
very few of the army gentlemen in his day—many of whom could do little
more than write their names—that he had read much, both at home and at the
University, was master of two or three languages, and had that further
education which neither books nor years will give, but which some men get
from the silent teaching of adversity. She is a great schoolmistress, as
many a poor fellow knows, that hath held his hand out to her ferule, and
whimpered over his lesson before her awful chair.
Chapter V. I Go On The Vigo Bay Expedition, Taste Salt Water And Smell
Powder
The first expedition in which Mr. Esmond had the honour to be engaged,
rather resembled one of the invasions projected by the redoubted Captain
Avory or Captain Kid, than a war between crowned heads, carried on by
generals of rank and honour. On the 1st day of July, 1702, a great fleet,
of a hundred and fifty sail, set sail from Spithead, under the command of
Admiral Shovell, having on board 12,000 troops, with his grace the Duke of
Ormond as the captain-general of the expedition. One of these 12,000
heroes having never been to sea before, or, at least, only once in his
infancy, when he made the voyage to England from that unknown country
where he was born—one of those 12,000—the junior ensign of Colonel Quin’s
regiment of Fusiliers—was in a quite unheroic state of corporal
prostration a few hours after sailing; and an enemy, had he boarded the
ship, would have had easy work of him. From Portsmouth we put into
Plymouth, and took in fresh reinforcements. We were off Finisterre on the
31st of July, so Esmond’s table-book informs him; and on the 8th of August
made the rock of Lisbon. By this time the ensign was grown as bold as an
admiral, and a week afterwards had the fortune to be under fire for the
first time—and under water, too—his boat being swamped in the surf in
Toros Bay, where the troops landed. The ducking of his new coat was all
the harm the young soldier got in this expedition, for, indeed, the
Spaniards made no stand before our troops, and were not in strength to do
so.
But the campaign, if not very glorious, was very pleasant. New sights of
nature, by sea and land—a life of action, beginning now for the first
time—occupied and excited the young man. The many accidents, and the
routine of ship-board—the military duty—the new acquaintances, both of his
comrades in arms, and of the officers of the fleet—served to cheer and
occupy his mind, and waken it out of that selfish depression into which
his late unhappy fortunes had plunged him. He felt as if the ocean
separated him from his past care, and welcomed the new era of life which
was dawning for him. Wounds heal rapidly in a heart of two-and-twenty;
hopes revive daily; and courage rallies, in spite of a man. Perhaps, as
Esmond thought of his late despondency and melancholy, and how
irremediable it had seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months
back, he was almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so
cheerful.
To see with one’s own eyes men and countries, is better than reading all
the books of travel in the world: and it was with extreme delight and
exultation that the young man found himself actually on his grand tour,
and in the view of people and cities which he had read about as a boy. He
beheld war for the first time—the pride, pomp, and circumstance of it, at
least, if not much of the danger. He saw actually, and with his own eyes,
those Spanish cavaliers and ladies whom he had beheld in imagination in
that immortal story of Cervantes, which had been the delight of his
youthful leisure. ’Tis forty years since Mr. Esmond witnessed those
scenes, but they remain as fresh in his memory as on the day when first he
saw them as a young man. A cloud, as of grief, that had lowered over him,
and had wrapped the last years of his life in gloom, seemed to clear away
from Esmond during this fortunate voyage and campaign. His energies seemed
to awaken and to expand, under a cheerful sense of freedom. Was his heart
secretly glad to have escaped from that fond but ignoble bondage at home?
Was it that the inferiority to which the idea of his base birth had
compelled him, vanished with the knowledge of that secret, which though,
perforce, kept to himself, was yet enough to cheer and console him? At any
rate, young Esmond of the army was quite a different being to the sad
little dependant of the kind Castlewood household, and the melancholy
student of Trinity Walks; discontented with his fate, and with the
vocation into which that drove him, and thinking, with a secret
indignation, that the cassock and bands, and the very sacred office with
which he had once proposed to invest himself, were, in fact, but marks of
a servitude which was to continue all his life long. For, disguise it as
he might to himself, he had all along felt that to be Castlewood’s
chaplain was to be Castlewood’s inferior still, and that his life was but
to be a long, hopeless servitude. So, indeed, he was far from grudging his
old friend Tom Tusher’s good fortune (as Tom, no doubt, thought it). Had
it been a mitre and Lambeth which his friends offered him, and not a small
living and a country parsonage, he would have felt as much a slave in one
case as in the other, and was quite happy and thankful to be free.
The bravest man I ever knew in the army, and who had been present in most
of King William’s actions, as well as in the campaigns of the great Duke
of Marlborough, could never be got to tell us of any achievement of his,
except that once Prince Eugene ordered him up a tree to reconnoitre the
enemy, which feat he could not achieve on account of the horseman’s boots
he wore; and on another day that he was very nearly taken prisoner because
of these jackboots, which prevented him from running away. The present
narrator shall imitate this laudable reserve, and doth not intend to dwell
upon his military exploits, which were in truth not very different from
those of a thousand other gentlemen. This first campaign of Mr. Esmond’s
lasted but a few days; and as a score of books have been written
concerning it, it may be dismissed very briefly here.
When our fleet came within view of Cadiz, our commander sent a boat with a
white flag and a couple of officers to the Governor of Cadiz, Don Scipio
de Brancaccio, with a letter from his grace, in which he hoped that as Don
Scipio had formerly served with the Austrians against the French in
England, ’twas to be hoped that his excellency would now declare himself
against the French king and for the Austrian in the war between King
Philip and King Charles. But his excellency, Don Scipio, prepared a reply,
in which he announced that, having served his former king with honour and
fidelity, he hoped to exhibit the same loyalty and devotion towards his
present sovereign, King Philip V; and by the time this letter was ready,
the officers who had been taken to see the town, and the Alameda, and the
theatre, where bull-fights are fought, and the convents, where the
admirable works of Don Bartholomew Murillo inspired one of them with a
great wonder and delight—such as he had never felt before—concerning this
divine art of painting; and these sights over, and a handsome refection
and chocolate being served to the English gentlemen, they were accompanied
back to their shallop with every courtesy, and were the only two officers
of the English army that saw at that time that famous city.
The general tried the power of another proclamation on the Spaniards, in
which he announced that we only came in the interest of Spain and King
Charles, and for ourselves wanted to make no conquest nor settlement in
Spain at all. But all this eloquence was lost upon the Spaniards, it would
seem: the Captain-General of Andalusia would no more listen to us than the
Governor of Cadiz; and in reply to his grace’s proclamation, the Marquis
of Villadarias fired off another, which those who knew the Spanish thought
rather the best of the two; and of this number was Harry Esmond, whose
kind Jesuit in old days had instructed him, and now had the honour of
translating for his grace these harmless documents of war. There was a
hard touch for his grace, and, indeed, for other generals in her Majesty’s
service, in the concluding sentence of the Don: “That he and his council
had the generous example of their ancestors to follow, who had never yet
sought their elevation in the blood or in the flight of their kings.
‘_Mori pro patria_’ was his device, which the duke might communicate to
the princess who governed England.”
Whether the troops were angry at this repartee or no, ’tis certain
something put them in a fury; for, not being able to get possession of
Cadiz, our people seized upon Port St. Mary’s and sacked it, burning down
the merchants’ storehouses, getting drunk with the famous wines there,
pillaging and robbing quiet houses and convents, murdering and doing
worse. And the only blood which Mr. Esmond drew in this shameful campaign,
was the knocking down an English sentinel with a half-pike, who was
offering insult to a poor trembling nun. Is she going to turn out a
beauty? or a princess? or perhaps Esmond’s mother that he had lost and
never seen? Alas no, it was but a poor wheezy old dropsical woman, with a
wart on her nose. But having been early taught a part of the Roman
religion, he never had the horror of it that some Protestants have shown,
and seem to think to be a part of ours.
After the pillage and plunder of St. Mary’s, and an assault upon a fort or
two, the troops all took shipping, and finished their expedition, at any
rate, more brilliantly than it had begun. Hearing that the French fleet
with a great treasure was in Vigo Bay, our admirals, Rooke and Hopson,
pursued the enemy thither; the troops landed and carried the forts that
protected the bay, Hopson passing the boom first on board his ship the
_Torbay_, and the rest of the ships, English and Dutch, following him.
Twenty ships were burned or taken in the port of Redondilla, and a vast
deal more plunder than was ever accounted for; but poor men before that
expedition were rich afterwards, and so often was it found and remarked
that the Vigo officers came home with pockets full of money, that the
notorious Jack Shafto, who made such a figure at the coffee-houses and
gaming-tables in London, and gave out that he had been a soldier at Vigo,
owned, when he was about to be hanged, that Bagshot Heath had been his
Vigo, and that he only spoke of La Redondilla to turn away people’s eyes
from the real place where the booty lay. Indeed, Hounslow or Vigo—which
matters much? The latter was a bad business, though Mr. Addison did sing
its praises in Latin. That honest gentleman’s muse had an eye to the main
chance; and I doubt whether she saw much inspiration in the losing side.
But though Esmond, for his part, got no share of this fabulous booty, one
great prize which he had out of the campaign was, that excitement of
action and change of scene, which shook off a great deal of his previous
melancholy. He learnt at any rate to bear his fate cheerfully. He brought
back a browned face, a heart resolute enough, and a little pleasant store
of knowledge and observation, from that expedition, which was over with
the autumn, when the troops were back in England again; and Esmond giving
up his post of secretary to General Lumley, whose command was over, and
parting with that officer with many kind expressions of goodwill on the
general’s side, had leave to go to London, to see if he could push his
fortunes any way further, and found himself once more in his dowager
aunt’s comfortable quarters at Chelsey, and in greater favour than ever
with the old lady. He propitiated her with a present of a comb, a fan, and
a black mantle, such as the ladies of Cadiz wear, and which my lady
viscountess pronounced became her style of beauty mightily. And she was
greatly edified at hearing of that story of his rescue of the nun, and
felt very little doubt but that her King James’s relic, which he had
always dutifully worn in his desk, had kept him out of danger, and averted
the shot of the enemy. My lady made feasts for him, introduced him to more
company, and pushed his fortunes with such enthusiasm and success, that
she got a promise of a company for him through the Lady Marlborough’s
interest, who was graciously pleased to accept of a diamond worth a couple
of hundred guineas, which Mr. Esmond was enabled to present to her
ladyship through his aunt’s bounty, and who promised that she would take
charge of Esmond’s fortune. He had the honour to make his appearance at
the queen’s drawing-room occasionally, and to frequent my Lord
Marlborough’s levees. That great man received the young one with very
especial favour, so Esmond’s comrades said, and deigned to say that he had
received the best reports of Mr. Esmond, both for courage and ability,
whereon you may be sure the young gentleman made a profound bow, and
expressed himself eager to serve under the most distinguished captain in
the world.
Whilst his business was going on thus prosperously, Esmond had his share
of pleasure, too, and made his appearance along with other young gentlemen
at the coffee-houses, the theatres, and the Mall. He longed to hear of his
dear mistress and her family: many a time, in the midst of the gaieties
and pleasures of the town, his heart fondly reverted to them; and often as
the young fellows of his society were making merry at the tavern, and
calling toasts (as the fashion of that day was) over their wine, Esmond
thought of persons—of two fair women, whom he had been used to adore
almost, and emptied his glass with a sigh.
By this time the elder viscountess had grown tired again of the younger,
and whenever she spoke of my lord’s widow, ’twas in terms by no means
complimentary towards that poor lady: the younger woman not needing her
protection any longer, the elder abused her. Most of the family quarrels
that I have seen in life (saving always those arising from money disputes,
when a division of twopence-halfpenny will often drive the dearest
relatives into war and estrangement), spring out of jealousy and envy.
Jack and Tom, born of the same family and to the same fortune, live very
cordially together, not until Jack is ruined when Tom deserts him, but
until Tom makes a sudden rise in prosperity, which Jack can’t forgive. Ten
times to one ’tis the unprosperous man that is angry, not the other who is
in fault. ’Tis Mrs. Jack, who can only afford a chair that sickens at Mrs.
Tom’s new coach-and-six, cries out against her sister’s airs, and sets her
husband against his brother. ’Tis Jack who sees his brother shaking hands
with a lord (with whom Jack would like to exchange snuff-boxes himself),
that goes home and tells his wife how poor Tom is spoiled, he fears, and
no better than a sneak, parasite, and beggar on horseback. I remember how
furious the coffee-house wits were with Dick Steele when he set up his
coach, and fine house in Bloomsbury: they began to forgive him when the
bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling Dick’s
country-house. And yet Dick in the spunging-house, or Dick in the Park,
with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle,
kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele: and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly
right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of
his just claim, to be spent by Dick upon champagne and fiddlers, laced
clothes, fine furniture, and parasites, Jew and Christian, male and
female, who clung to him. As, according to the famous maxim of Monsieur de
Rochefoucault, “in our friends’ misfortunes there’s something secretly
pleasant to us”; so, on the other hand, their good fortune is
disagreeable. If ’tis hard for a man to bear his own good luck, ’tis
harder still for his friends to bear it for him; and but few of them
ordinarily can stand that trial: whereas one of the “precious uses” of
adversity is, that it is a great reconciler; that it brings back averted
kindness, disarms animosity, and causes yesterday’s enemy to fling his
hatred aside, and hold out a hand to the fallen friend of old days.
There’s pity and love, as well as envy, in the same heart and towards the
same person. The rivalry stops when the competitor tumbles; and, as I view
it, we should look at these agreeable and disagreeable qualities of our
humanity humbly alike. They are consequent and natural, and our kindness
and meanness both manly.
So you may either read the sentence, that the elder of Esmond’s two
kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty, when that had lost somewhat of
its freshness, perhaps; and forgot most her grievances against the other,
when the subject of them was no longer prosperous and enviable; or we may
say more benevolently (but the sum comes to the same figures, worked
either way), that Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel, when
Rachel was unhappy; and, bestirring herself in behalf of the poor widow
and her children, gave them shelter and friendship. The ladies were quite
good friends as long as the weaker one needed a protector. Before Esmond
went away on his first campaign, his mistress was still on terms of
friendship (though a poor little chit, a woman that had evidently no
spirit in her, &c.) with the elder Lady Castlewood; and Mistress Beatrix
was allowed to be a beauty.
But between the first year of Queen Anne’s reign, and the second, sad
changes for the worse had taken place in the two younger ladies, at least
in the elder’s description of them. Rachel, Viscountess Castlewood, had no
more face than a dumpling, and Mrs. Beatrix was grown quite coarse, and
was losing all her beauty. Little Lord Blandford (she never would call him
Lord Blandford; his father was Lord Churchill—the king, whom he betrayed,
had made him Lord Churchill, and he was Lord Churchill still)—might be
making eyes at her; but his mother, that vixen of a Sarah Jennings, would
never hear of such a folly. Lady Marlborough had got her to be a maid of
honour at Court to the princess, but she would repent of it. The widow
Francis (she was but Mrs. Francis Esmond) was a scheming, artful,
heartless hussy. She was spoiling her brat of a boy, and she would end by
marrying her chaplain.
“What, Tusher?” cried Mr. Esmond, feeling a strange pang of rage and
astonishment.
“Yes—Tusher, my maid’s son; and who has got all the qualities of his
father, the lackey in black, and his accomplished mamma, the
waiting-woman,” cries my lady. “What, do you suppose that a sentimental
widow, who will live down in that dingy dungeon of a Castlewood, where she
spoils her boy, kills the poor with her drugs, has prayers twice a day and
sees nobody but the chaplain—what do you suppose she can do, _mon cousin_,
but let the horrid parson, with his great square toes, and hideous little
green eyes, make love to her? _Cela c’est vu, mon cousin._ When I was a
girl at Castlewood, all the chaplains fell in love with me—they’ve nothing
else to do.”
My lady went on with more talk of this kind, though, in truth, Esmond had
no idea of what she said further, so entirely did her first words occupy
his thought. Were they true? Not all, nor half, nor a tenth part of what
the garrulous old woman said, was true. Could this be so? No ear had
Esmond for anything else, though his patroness chattered on for an hour.
Some young gentlemen of the town, with whom Esmond had made acquaintance,
had promised to present him to that most charming of actresses, and lively
and agreeable of women, Mrs. Bracegirdle, about whom Harry’s old adversary
Mohun had drawn swords, a few years before my poor lord and he fell out.
The famous Mr. Congreve had stamped with his high approval, to the which
there was no gainsaying, this delightful person: and she was acting in
Dick Steele’s comedies, and finally, and for twenty-four hours after
beholding her, Mr. Esmond felt himself, or thought himself, to be as
violently enamoured of this lovely brunette, as were a thousand other
young fellows about the city. To have once seen her was to long to behold
her again; and to be offered the delightful privilege of her acquaintance,
was a pleasure the very idea of which set the young lieutenant’s heart on
fire. A man cannot live with comrades under the tents without finding out
that he too is five-and-twenty. A young fellow cannot be cast down by
grief and misfortune ever so severe but some night he begins to sleep
sound, and some day when dinner-time comes to feel hungry for a beefsteak.
Time, youth, and good health, new scenes and the excitement of action and
a campaign, had pretty well brought Esmond’s mourning to an end; and his
comrades said that Don Dismal, as they called him, was Don Dismal no more.
So when a party was made to dine at the “Rose”, and go to the playhouse
afterward, Esmond was as pleased as another to take his share of the
bottle and the play.
How was it that the old aunt’s news, or it might be scandal, about Tom
Tusher, caused such a strange and sudden excitement in Tom’s old
playfellow? Hadn’t he sworn a thousand times in his own mind that the lady
of Castlewood, who had treated him with such kindness once, and then had
left him so cruelly, was, and was to remain henceforth, indifferent to him
for ever? Had his pride and his sense of justice not long since helped him
to cure the pain of that desertion—was it even a pain to him now? Why, but
last night as he walked across the fields and meadows to Chelsey from Pall
Mall, had he not composed two or three stanzas of a song, celebrating
Bracegirdle’s brown eyes, and declaring them a thousand times more
beautiful than the brightest blue ones that ever languished under the
lashes of an insipid fair beauty! But Tom Tusher! Tom Tusher, the
waiting-woman’s son, raising up his little eyes to his mistress! Tom
Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood’s widow! Rage and contempt filled
Mr. Harry’s heart at the very notion; the honour of the family, of which
he was the chief, made it his duty to prevent so monstrous an alliance,
and to chastise the upstart who could dare to think of such an insult to
their house. ’Tis true Mr. Esmond often boasted of republican principles,
and could remember many fine speeches he had made at college and
elsewhere, with _worth_ and not _birth_ for a text: but Tom Tusher to take
the place of the noble Castlewood—faugh! ’twas as monstrous as King
Hamlet’s widow taking off her weeds for Claudius. Esmond laughed at all
widows, all wives, all women; and were the banns about to be published, as
no doubt they were, that very next Sunday at Walcote Church, Esmond swore
that he would be present to shout No! in the face of the congregation, and
to take a private revenge upon the ears of the bridegroom.
Instead of going to dinner then at the “Rose” that night, Mr. Esmond bade
his servant pack a portmanteau and get horses, and was at Farnham,
half-way on the road to Walcote, thirty miles off, before his comrades had
got to their supper after the play. He bade his man give no hint to my
lady dowager’s household of the expedition on which he was going: and as
Chelsey was distant from London, the roads bad, and infested by footpads,
and Esmond often in the habit, when engaged in a party of pleasure, of
lying at a friend’s lodging in town, there was no need that his old aunt
should be disturbed at his absence—indeed, nothing more delighted the old
lady than to fancy that _mon cousin_, the incorrigible young sinner, was
abroad boxing the watch, or scouring St. Giles’s. When she was not at her
books of devotion, she thought Etheridge and Sedley very good reading. She
had a hundred pretty stories about Rochester, Harry Jermyn, and Hamilton;
and if Esmond would but have run away with the wife even of a citizen,
’tis my belief she would have pawned her diamonds (the best of them went
to our Lady of Chaillot) to pay his damages.
My lord’s little house of Walcote, which he inhabited before he took his
title and occupied the house of Castlewood—lies about a mile from
Winchester, and his widow had returned to Walcote after my lord’s death as
a place always dear to her, and where her earliest and happiest days had
been spent, cheerfuller than Castlewood, which was too large for her
straitened means, and giving her, too, the protection of the ex-dean, her
father. The young viscount had a year’s schooling at the famous college
there, with Mr. Tusher as his governor. So much news of them Mr. Esmond
had had during the past year from the old viscountess, his own father’s
widow; from the young one there had never been a word.
Twice or thrice in his benefactor’s lifetime, Esmond had been to Walcote;
and now, taking but a couple of hours’ rest only at the inn on the road,
he was up again long before daybreak, and made such good speed that he was
at Walcote by two o’clock of the day. He rid to the inn of the village,
where he alighted and sent a man thence to Mr. Tusher, with a message that
a gentleman from London would speak with him on urgent business. The
messenger came back to say the doctor was in town, most likely at prayers
in the cathedral. My lady viscountess was there too; she always went to
cathedral prayers every day.
The horses belonged to the post-house at Winchester. Esmond mounted again,
and rode on to the “George”; whence he walked, leaving his grumbling
domestic at last happy with a dinner, straight to the cathedral. The organ
was playing: the winter’s day was already growing grey: as he passed under
the street-arch into the cathedral-yard, and made his way into the ancient
solemn edifice.
Chapter VI. The 29th December
There was scarce a score of persons in the Cathedral besides the dean and
some of his clergy, and the choristers, young and old, that performed the
beautiful evening prayer. But Dr. Tusher was one of the officiants, and
read from the eagle, in an authoritative voice, and a great black periwig;
and in the stalls, still in her black widow’s hood, sat Esmond’s dear
mistress, her son by her side, very much grown, and indeed a noble-looking
youth, with his mother’s eyes, and his father’s curling brown hair, that
fell over his _point de Venise_—a pretty picture such as Vandyke might
have painted. Monsieur Rigaud’s portrait of my lord viscount, done at
Paris afterwards, gives but a French version of his manly, frank, English
face. When he looked up there were two sapphire beams out of his eyes,
such as no painter’s palette has the colour to match, I think. On this day
there was not much chance of seeing that particular beauty of my young
lord’s countenance; for the truth is, he kept his eyes shut for the most
part, and, the anthem being rather long, was asleep.
But the music ceasing, my lord woke up, looking about him, and his eyes
lighting on Mr. Esmond, who was sitting opposite him, gazing with no small
tenderness and melancholy upon two persons who had had so much of his
heart for so many years; Lord Castlewood, with a start, pulled at his
mother’s sleeve (her face had scarce been lifted from her book), and said,
“Look, mother!” so loud, that Esmond could hear on the other side of the
church, and the old dean on his throned stall. Lady Castlewood looked for
an instant as her son bade her, and held up a warning finger to Frank;
Esmond felt his whole face flush, and his heart throbbing, as that dear
lady beheld him once more. The rest of the prayers were speedily over: Mr.
Esmond did not hear them; nor did his mistress, very likely, whose hood
went more closely over her face, and who never lifted her head again until
the service was over, the blessing given, and Mr. Dean, and his procession
of ecclesiastics, out of the inner chapel.
Young Castlewood came clambering over the stalls before the clergy were
fairly gone, and, running up to Esmond, eagerly embraced him. “My dear,
dearest old Harry,” he said, “are you come back? Have you been to the
wars? You’ll take me with you when you go again? Why didn’t you write to
us? Come to mother.”
Mr. Esmond could hardly say more than a “God bless you, my boy”, for his
heart was very full and grateful at all this tenderness on the lad’s part;
and he was as much moved at seeing Frank, as he was fearful about that
other interview which was now to take place; for he knew not if the widow
would reject him as she had done so cruelly a year ago.
“It was kind of you to come back to us, Henry,” Lady Esmond said, “I
thought you might come.”
“We read of the fleet coming to Portsmouth. Why did you not come from
Portsmouth?” Frank asked, or my lord viscount, as he now must be called.
Esmond had thought of that too. He would have given one of his eyes so
that he might see his dear friends again once more; but believing that his
mistress had forbidden him her house, he had obeyed her, and remained at a
distance.
“You had but to ask, and you knew I would be here,” he said.
She gave him her hand, her little fair hand: there was only her marriage
ring on it. The quarrel was all over. The year of grief and estrangement
was passed. They never had been separated. His mistress had never been out
of his mind all that time. No, not once. No, not in the prison; nor in the
camp; nor on shore before the enemy; nor at sea under the stars of solemn
midnight, nor as he watched the glorious rising of the dawn: not even at
the table, where he sat carousing with friends, or at the theatre yonder,
where he tried to fancy that other eyes were brighter than hers. Brighter
eyes there might be, and faces more beautiful, but none so dear—no voice
so sweet as that of his beloved mistress, who had been sister, mother,
goddess to him during his youth—goddess now no more, for he knew of her
weaknesses; and by thought, by suffering, and that experience it brings,
was older now than she; but more fondly cherished as woman perhaps than
ever she had been adored as divinity.
What is it? Where lies it? the secret which makes one little hand the
dearest of all? Whoever can unriddle that mystery? Here she was, her son
by his side, his dear boy. Here she was, weeping and happy. She took his
hand in both hers; he felt her tears. It was a rapture of reconciliation.
“Here comes Squaretoes,” says Frank. “Here’s Tusher.”
Tusher, indeed, now appeared, creaking on his great heels. Mr. Tom had
divested himself of his alb or surplice, and came forward habited in his
cassock and great black periwig. How had Harry Esmond ever been for a
moment jealous of this fellow?
“Give us thy hand, Tom Tusher,” he said. The chaplain made him a very low
and stately bow. “I am charmed to see Captain Esmond,” says he. “My lord
and I have read the _Reddas incolumem precor_, and applied it, I am sure,
to you. You come back with Gaditanian laurels: when I heard you were bound
thither, I wished, I am sure, I was another Septimius. My lord viscount,
your lordship remembers _Septimi, Gades aditure mecum?_”
“There’s an angle of earth that I love better than Gades, Tusher,” says
Mr. Esmond. “’Tis that one where your reverence hath a parsonage, and
where our youth was brought up.”
“A house that has so many sacred recollections to me,” says Mr. Tusher
(and Harry remembered how Tom’s father used to flog him there)—“a house
near to that of my respected patron, my most honoured patroness, must ever
be a dear abode to me. But, madam, the verger waits to close the gates on
your ladyship.”
“And Harry’s coming home to supper. Huzzay! huzzay!” cries my lord.
“Mother, shall I run home and bid Beatrix put her ribbons on? Beatrix is a
maid of honour, Harry. Such a fine set-up minx!”
“Your heart was never in the Church, Harry,” the widow said, in her sweet
low tone, as they walked away together. (Now, it seemed they had never
been parted, and again, as if they had been ages asunder.) “I always
thought you had no vocation that way; and that ’twas a pity to shut you
out from the world. You would but have pined and chafed at Castlewood: and
’tis better you should make a name for yourself. I often said so to my
dear lord. How he loved you! ’Twas my lord that made you stay with us.”
“I asked no better than to stay near you always,” said Mr. Esmond.
“But to go was best, Harry. When the world cannot give peace, you will
know where to find it; but one of your strong imagination and eager
desires must try the world first before he tires of it. ’Twas not to be
thought of, or if it once was, it was only by my selfishness that you
should remain as chaplain to a country gentleman and tutor to a little
boy. You are of the blood of the Esmonds, kinsman; and that was always
wild in youth. Look at Francis. He is but fifteen, and I scarce can keep
him in my nest. His talk is all of war and pleasure, and he longs to serve
in the next campaign. Perhaps he and the young Lord Churchill shall go the
next. Lord Marlborough has been good to us. You know how kind they were in
my misfortune. And so was your—your father’s widow. No one knows how good
the world is, till grief comes to try us. ’Tis through my Lady
Marlborough’s goodness that Beatrix hath her place at Court; and Frank is
under my Lord Chamberlain. And the dowager lady, your father’s widow, has
promised to provide for you—has she not?”
Esmond said, “Yes. As far as present favour went, Lady Castlewood was very
good to him. And should her mind change,” he added gaily, “as ladies’
minds will, I am strong enough to bear my own burden, and make my way
somehow. Not by the sword very likely. Thousands have a better genius for
that than I, but there are many ways in which a young man of good parts
and education can get on in the world; and I am pretty sure, one way or
other, of promotion!” Indeed, he had found patrons already in the army,
and amongst persons very able to serve him, too; and told his mistress of
the flattering aspect of fortune. They walked as though they had never
been parted, slowly, with the grey twilight closing round them.
“And now we are drawing near to home,” she continued. “I knew you would
come, Harry, if—if it was but to forgive me for having spoken unjustly to
you after that horrid—horrid misfortune. I was half frantic with grief
then when I saw you. And I know now—they have told me. That wretch, whose
name I can never mention, even has said it: how you tried to avert the
quarrel, and would have taken it on yourself, my poor child: but it was
God’s will that I should be punished, and that my dear lord should fall.”
“He gave me his blessing on his death-bed,” Esmond said. “Thank God for
that legacy!”
“Amen, amen! dear Henry,” says the lady, pressing his arm. “I knew it. Mr.
Atterbury, of St. Bride’s, who was called to him, told me so. And I
thanked God, too, and in my prayers ever since remembered it.”
“You had spared me many a bitter night, had you told me sooner,” Mr.
Esmond said.
“I know it, I know it,” she answered, in a tone of such sweet humility, as
made Esmond repent that he should ever have dared to reproach her. “I know
how wicked my heart has been; and I have suffered too, my dear. I
confessed to Mr. Atterbury—I must not tell any more. He—I said I would not
write to you or go to you—and it was better even that, having parted, we
should part. But I knew you would come back—I own that. That is no one’s
fault. And to-day, Henry, in the anthem, when they sang it, ‘When the Lord
turned the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream’, I thought,
yes, like them that dream—them that dream. And then it went, ‘They that
sow in tears shall reap in joy; and he that goeth forth and weepeth, shall
doubtless come home again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him’;
I looked up from the book, and saw you. I was not surprised when I saw
you. I knew you would come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine round your
head.”
She smiled an almost wild smile as she looked up at him. The moon was up
by this time, glittering keen in the frosty sky. He could see, for the
first time now clearly, her sweet careworn face.
“Do you know what day it is?” she continued. “It is the 29th of
December—it is your birthday! But last year we did not drink it—no, no. My
lord was cold, and my Harry was likely to die; and my brain was in a
fever; and we had no wine. But now—now you are come again, bringing your
sheaves with you, my dear.” She burst into a wild flood of weeping as she
spoke; she laughed and sobbed on the young man’s heart, crying out wildly,
“bringing your sheaves with you—your sheaves with you!”
As he had sometimes felt, gazing up from the deck at midnight into the
boundless starlit depths overhead, in a rapture of devout wonder at that
endless brightness and beauty—in some such a way as now, the depth of this
pure devotion (which was, for the first time, revealed to him quite) smote
upon him, and filled his heart with thanksgiving. Gracious God, who was
he, weak and friendless creature, that such a love should be poured out
upon him? Not in vain, not in vain has he lived—hard and thankless should
he be to think so—that has such a treasure given him. What is ambition
compared to that? but selfish vanity. To be rich, to be famous? What do
these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when
you lie hidden away under the ground, along with the idle titles engraven
on your coffin? But only true love lives after you—follows your memory
with secret blessing—or precedes you, and intercedes for you. _Non omnis
moriar_—if dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and
hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
“If—if ’tis so, dear lady,” Mr. Esmond said, “why should I ever leave you?
If God hath given me this great boon—and near or far from me, as I know
now—the heart of my dearest mistress follows me; let me have that blessing
near me, nor ever part with it till life separate us. Come away—leave this
Europe, this place which has so many sad recollections for you. Begin a
new life in a new world. My good lord often talked of visiting that land
in Virginia which King Charles gave us—gave his ancestor. Frank will give
us that. No man there will ask if there is a blot on my name, or inquire
in the woods what my title is.”
“And my children—and my duty—and my good father?—Henry,” she broke out.
“He has none but me now; for soon my sister will leave him, and the old
man will be alone. He has conformed since the new queen’s reign; and here
in Winchester, where they love him, they have found a church for him. When
the children leave me, I will stay with him. I cannot follow them into the
great world, where their way lies—it scares me. They will come and visit
me; and you will, sometimes, Henry—yes, sometimes, as now, in the holy
Advent season, when I have seen and blessed you once more.”
“I would leave all to follow you,” said Mr. Esmond; “and can you not be as
generous for me, dear lady?”
“Hush, boy!” she said, and it was with a mother’s sweet plaintive tone and
look that she spoke. “The world is beginning for you. For me, I have been
so weak and sinful that I must leave it, and pray out an expiation, dear
Henry. Had we houses of religion as there were once, and many divines of
our Church would have them again, I often think I would retire to one and
pass my life in penance. But I would love you still—yes, there is no sin
in such a love as mine now; and my dear lord in heaven may see my heart;
and knows the tears that have washed my sin away—and now—now my duty is
here, by my children whilst they need me, and by my poor old father,
and——”
“And not by me?” Henry said.
“Hush!” she said again, and raised her hand up to his lip. “I have been
your nurse. You could not see me, Harry, when you were in the small-pox,
and I came and sat by you. Ah! I prayed that I might die, but it would
have been in sin, Henry. Oh, it is horrid to look back to that time. It is
over now and past, and it has been forgiven me. When you need me again I
will come ever so far. When your heart is wounded, then come to me, my
dear. Be silent! let me say all. You never loved me, dear Henry—no, you do
not now, and I thank Heaven for it. I used to watch you, and knew by a
thousand signs that it was so. Do you remember how glad you were to go
away to college? ’Twas I sent you. I told my papa that, and Mr. Atterbury
too, when I spoke to him in London. And they both gave me
absolution—both—and they are godly men, having authority to bind and to
loose. And they forgave me, as my dear lord forgave me before he went to
heaven.”
“I think the angels are not all in heaven,” Mr. Esmond said. And as a
brother folds a sister to his heart; and as a mother cleaves to her son’s
breast—so for a few moments Esmond’s beloved mistress came to him and
blessed him.
Chapter VII. I Am Made Welcome At Walcote
As they came up to the house at Walcote, the windows from within were
lighted up with friendly welcome; the supper-table was spread in the
oak-parlour; it seemed as if forgiveness and love were awaiting the
returning prodigal. Two or three familiar faces of domestics were on the
lookout at the porch—the old housekeeper was there, and young Lockwood
from Castlewood in my lord’s livery of tawny and blue. His dear mistress
pressed his arm as they passed into the hall. Her eyes beamed out on him
with affection indescribable. “Welcome,” was all she said: as she looked
up, putting back her fair curls and black hood. A sweet rosy smile blushed
on her face: Harry thought he had never seen her look so charming. Her
face was lighted with a joy that was brighter than beauty—she took a hand
of her son who was in the hall waiting his mother—she did not quit
Esmond’s arm.
“Welcome, Harry!” my young lord echoed after her. “Here, we are all come
to say so. Here’s old Pincot, hasn’t she grown handsome?” and Pincot, who
was older, and no handsomer than usual, made a curtsy to the captain, as
she called Esmond, and told my lord to “Have done, now.”
“And here’s Jack Lockwood. He’ll make a famous grenadier, Jack; and so
shall I; we’ll both ’list under you, cousin. As soon as I am seventeen, I
go to the army—every gentleman goes to the army. Look! who comes here—ho,
ho!” he burst into a laugh. “’Tis Mistress Trix, with a new ribbon; I knew
she would put one on as soon as she heard a captain was coming to supper.”
This laughing colloquy took place in the hall of Walcote House: in the
midst of which is a staircase that leads from an open gallery, where are
the doors of the sleeping-chambers: and from one of these, a wax candle in
her hand, and illuminating her, came Mistress Beatrix—the light falling
indeed upon the scarlet ribbon which she wore, and upon the most brilliant
white neck in the world.
Esmond had left a child and found a woman, grown beyond the common height;
and arrived at such a dazzling completeness of beauty, that his eyes might
well show surprise and delight at beholding her. In hers there was a
brightness so lustrous and melting, that I have seen a whole assembly
follow her as if by an attraction irresistible: and that night the great
duke was at the playhouse after Ramillies, every soul turned and looked
(she chanced to enter at the opposite side of the theatre at the same
moment) at her, and not at him. She was a brown beauty: that is, her eyes,
hair, and eyebrows and eyelashes, were dark: her hair curling with rich
undulations, and waving over her shoulders; but her complexion was as
dazzling white as snow in sunshine; except her cheeks, which were a bright
red, and her lips, which were of a still deeper crimson. Her mouth and
chin, they said, were too large and full, and so they might be for a
goddess in marble, but not for a woman whose eyes were fire, whose look
was love, whose voice was the sweetest low song, whose shape was perfect
symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot as it planted itself on
the ground, was firm but flexible, and whose motion, whether rapid or
slow, was always perfect grace—agile as a nymph, lofty as a queen—now
melting, now imperious, now sarcastic, there was no single movement of
hers but was beautiful. As he thinks of her, he who writes feels young
again, and remembers a paragon.
So she came holding her dress with one fair rounded arm, and her taper
before her, tripping down the stair to greet Esmond.
“She hath put on her scarlet stockings and white shoes,” says my lord,
still laughing. “Oh, my fine mistress! is this the way you set your cap at
the captain!” She approached, shining smiles upon Esmond, who could look
at nothing but her eyes. She advanced holding forward her head, as if she
would have him kiss her as he used to do when she was a child.
“Stop,” she said, “I am grown too big! Welcome, cousin Harry,” and she
made him an arch curtsy, sweeping down to the ground almost, with the most
gracious bend, looking up the while with the brightest eyes and sweetest
smile. Love seemed to radiate from her. Harry eyed her with such a rapture
as the first lover is described as having by Milton.
“_N’est-ce pas?_” says my lady, in a low, sweet voice, still hanging on
his arm.
Esmond turned round with a start and a blush, as he met his mistress’s
clear eyes. He had forgotten her, wrapt in admiration of the _filia
pulcrior_.
“Right foot forward, toe turned out, so: now drop the curtsy, and show the
red stockings, Trix. They’ve silver clocks, Harry. The dowager sent ’em.
She went to put ’em on,” cries my lord.
“Hush, you stupid child!” says miss, smothering her brother with kisses;
and then she must come and kiss her mamma, looking all the while at Harry,
over his mistress’s shoulder. And if she did not kiss him, she gave him
both her hands, and then took one of his in both hands, and said, “Oh,
Harry, we’re so, _so_ glad you’re come!”
“There are woodcocks for supper,” says my lord: “huzzay! It was such a
hungry sermon.”
“And it is the 29th of December; and our Harry has come home.”
“Huzzay, old Pincot!” again says my lord; and my dear lady’s lips looked
as if they were trembling with a prayer. She would have Harry lead in
Beatrix to the supper-room, going herself with my young lord viscount; and
to this party came Tom Tusher directly, whom four at least out of the
company of five wished away. Away he went, however, as soon as the
sweetmeats were put down, and then, by the great crackling fire, his
mistress or Beatrix, with her blushing graces, filling his glass for him,
Harry told the story of his campaign, and passed the most delightful night
his life had ever known. The sun was up long ere he was, so deep, sweet,
and refreshing was his slumber. He woke as if angels had been watching at
his bed all night. I dare say one that was as pure and loving as an angel
had blest his sleep with her prayers.
Next morning the chaplain read prayers to the little household at Walcote,
as the custom was; Esmond thought Mistress Beatrix did not listen to
Tusher’s exhortation much: her eyes were wandering everywhere during the
service, at least whenever he looked up he met them. Perhaps he also was
not very attentive to his reverence the chaplain. “This might have been my
life,” he was thinking; “this might have been my duty from now till old
age. Well, were it not a pleasant one to be with these dear friends and
part from ’em no more? Until—until the destined lover comes and takes away
pretty Beatrix”—and the best part of Tom Tusher’s exposition, which may
have been very learned and eloquent, was quite lost to poor Harry by this
vision of the destined lover, who put the preacher out.
All the while of the prayers, Beatrix knelt a little way before Harry
Esmond. The red stockings were changed for a pair of grey, and black
shoes, in which her feet looked to the full as pretty. All the roses of
spring could not vie with the brightness of her complexion; Esmond thought
he had never seen anything like the sunny lustre of her eyes. My lady
viscountess looked fatigued, as if with watching, and her face was pale.
Miss Beatrix remarked these signs of indisposition in her mother, and
deplored them. “I am an old woman,” says my lady, with a kind smile; “I
cannot hope to look as young as you do, my dear.”
“She’ll never look as good as you do if she lives till she’s a hundred,”
says my lord, taking his mother by the waist, and kissing her hand.
“Do I look very wicked, cousin?” says Beatrix, turning full round on
Esmond, with her pretty face so close under his chin, that the soft
perfumed hair touched it. She laid her finger-tips on his sleeve as she
spoke; and he put his other hand over hers.
“I’m like your looking-glass,” says he, “and that can’t flatter you.”
“He means that you are always looking at him, my dear,” says her mother,
archly. Beatrix ran away from Esmond at this, and flew to her mamma, whom
she kissed, stopping my lady’s mouth with her pretty hand.
“And Harry is very good to look at,” says my lady, with her fond eyes
regarding the young man.
“If ’tis good to see a happy face,” says he, “you see that.” My lady said
“Amen”, with a sigh; and Harry thought the memory of her dead lord rose up
and rebuked her back again into sadness; for her face lost the smile, and
resumed its look of melancholy.
“Why, Harry, how fine we look in our scarlet and silver, and our black
periwig,” cries my lord. “Mother, I am tired of my own hair. When shall I
have a peruke? Where did you get your steenkirk, Harry?”
“It’s some of my lady dowager’s lace,” says Harry; “she gave me this and a
number of other fine things.”
“My lady dowager isn’t such a bad woman,” my lord continued.
“She’s not so—so red as she’s painted,” says Miss Beatrix.
Her brother broke into a laugh. “I’ll tell her you said so; by the lord,
Trix, I will,” he cries out.
“She’ll know that you hadn’t the wit to say it, my lord,” says Miss
Beatrix.
“We won’t quarrel the first day Harry’s here, will we, mother?” said the
young lord. “We’ll see if we can get on to the new year without a fight.
Have some of this Christmas pie? and here comes the tankard; no, it’s
Pincot with the tea.”
“Will the captain choose a dish?” asks Mistress Beatrix.
“I say, Harry,” my lord goes on, “I’ll show thee my horses after
breakfast; and we’ll go a bird-netting to-night, and on Monday there’s a
cock-match at Winchester—do you love cock-fighting, Harry?—between the
gentlemen of Sussex and the gentlemen of Hampshire, at ten pound the
battle, and fifty pound the odd battle to show one-and-twenty cocks.”
“And what will you do, Beatrix, to amuse our kinsman?” asks my lady.
“I’ll listen to him,” says Beatrix; “I am sure he has a hundred things to
tell us. And I’m jealous already of the Spanish ladies. Was that a
beautiful nun at Cadiz that you rescued from the soldiers? Your man talked
of it last night in the kitchen, and Mrs. Betty told me this morning as
she combed my hair. And he says you must be in love, for you sat on deck
all night, and scribbled verses all day in your table-book.” Harry thought
if he had wanted a subject for verses yesterday, to-day he had found one:
and not all the Lindamiras and Ardelias of the poets were half so
beautiful as this young creature; but he did not say so, though some one
did for him.
This was his dear lady who, after the meal was over, and the young people
were gone, began talking of her children with Mr. Esmond, and of the
characters of one and the other, and of her hopes and fears for both of
them. “’Tis not while they are at home,” she said, “and in their mother’s
nest, I fear for them—’tis when they are gone into the world, whither I
shall not be able to follow them. Beatrix will begin her service next
year. You may have heard a rumour about—about my Lord Blandford. They were
both children; and it is but idle talk. I know my kinswoman would never
let him make such a poor marriage as our Beatrix would be. There’s scarce
a princess in Europe that she thinks is good enough for him or for her
ambition.”
“There’s not a princess in Europe to compare with her,” says Esmond.
“In beauty? No, perhaps not,” answered my lady. “She is most beautiful,
isn’t she? ’Tis not a mother’s partiality that deceives me. I marked you
yesterday when she came down the stair: and read it in your face. We look
when you don’t fancy us looking, and see better than you think, dear
Harry: and just now when they spoke about your poems—you writ pretty lines
when you were but a boy—you thought Beatrix was a pretty subject for
verse, did not you, Harry?” (The gentleman could only blush for a reply.)
“And so she is—nor are you the first her pretty face has captivated. ’Tis
quickly done. Such a pair of bright eyes as hers learn their power very
soon, and use it very early.” And, looking at him keenly with hers, the
fair widow left him.
And so it is—a pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue
a man; to enslave him, and inflame him; to make him even forget; they
dazzle him so that the past becomes straightway dim to him; and he so
prizes them that he would give all his life to possess ’em. What is the
fond love of dearest friends compared to this treasure? Is memory as
strong as expectancy? fruition, as hunger? gratitude, as desire? I have
looked at royal diamonds in the jewel-rooms in Europe, and thought how
wars have been made about ’em: Mogul sovereigns deposed and strangled for
them, or ransomed with them: millions expended to buy them; and daring
lives lost in digging out the little shining toys that I value no more
than the button in my hat. And so there are other glittering baubles (of
rare water too) for which men have been set to kill and quarrel ever since
mankind began; and which last but for a score of years, when their sparkle
is over. Where are those jewels now that beamed under Cleopatra’s
forehead, or shone in the sockets of Helen?
The second day after Esmond’s coming to Walcote, Tom Tusher had leave to
take a holiday, and went off in his very best gown and bands to court the
young woman whom his reverence desired to marry, and who was not a
viscount’s widow, as it turned out, but a brewer’s relict at Southampton,
with a couple of thousand pounds to her fortune: for honest Tom’s heart
was under such excellent control, that Venus herself without a portion
would never have caused it to flutter. So he rode away on his heavy-paced
gelding to pursue his jog-trot loves, leaving Esmond to the society of his
dear mistress and her daughter, and with his young lord for a companion,
who was charmed not only to see an old friend, but to have the tutor and
his Latin books put out of the way.
The boy talked of things and people, and not a little about himself, in
his frank artless way. ’Twas easy to see that he and his sister had the
better of their fond mother, for the first place in whose affections,
though they fought constantly, and though the kind lady persisted that she
loved both equally, ’twas not difficult to understand that Frank was his
mother’s darling and favourite. He ruled the whole household (always
excepting rebellious Beatrix) not less now than when he was a child
marshalling the village boys in playing at soldiers, and caning them
lustily too, like the sturdiest corporal. As for Tom Tusher, his reverence
treated the young lord with that politeness and deference which he always
showed for a great man, whatever his age or his stature was. Indeed, with
respect to this young one, it was impossible not to love him, so frank and
winning were his manners, his beauty, his gaiety, the ring of his
laughter, and the delightful tone of his voice. Wherever he went, he
charmed and domineered. I think his old grandfather, the dean, and the
grim old housekeeper, Mrs. Pincot, were as much his slaves as his mother
was: and as for Esmond, he found himself presently submitting to a certain
fascination the boy had, and slaving it like the rest of the family. The
pleasure which he had in Frank’s mere company and converse exceeded that
which he ever enjoyed in the society of any other man, however delightful
in talk, or famous for wit. His presence brought sunshine into a room, his
laugh, his prattle, his noble beauty and brightness of look cheered and
charmed indescribably. At the least tale of sorrow, his hands were in his
purse, and he was eager with sympathy and bounty. The way in which women
loved and petted him, when, a year or two afterwards, he came upon the
world, yet a mere boy, and the follies which they did for him (as indeed
he for them), recalled the career of Rochester, and outdid the successes
of Grammont. His very creditors loved him; and the hardest usurers, and
some of the rigid prudes of the other sex too, could deny him nothing. He
was no more witty than another man, but what he said, he said and looked
as no man else could say or look it. I have seen the women at the comedy
at Bruxelles crowd round him in the lobby: and as he sat on the stage more
people looked at him than at the actors, and watched him; and I remember
at Ramillies, when he was hit and fell, a great big red-haired Scotch
sergeant flung his halbert down, burst out a-crying like a woman, seizing
him up as if he had been an infant, and carrying him out of the fire. This
brother and sister were the most beautiful couple ever seen; though after
he winged away from the maternal nest this pair were seldom together.
Sitting at dinner two days after Esmond’s arrival (it was the last day of
the year), and so happy a one to Harry Esmond, that to enjoy it was quite
worth all the previous pain which he had endured and forgot: my young
lord, filling a bumper, and bidding Harry take another, drank to his
sister, saluting her under the title of “marchioness”.
“Marchioness!” says Harry, not without a pang of wonder, for he was
curious and jealous already.
“Nonsense, my lord,” says Beatrix, with a toss of her head. My lady
viscountess looked up for a moment at Esmond, and cast her eyes down.
“The Marchioness of Blandford,” says Frank, “don’t you know—hath not Rouge
Dragon told you?” (My lord used to call the dowager at Chelsey by this and
other names.) “Blandford has a lock of her hair: the duchess found him on
his knees to Mistress ’Trix, and boxed his ears, and said Dr. Hare should
whip him.”
“I wish Mr. Tusher would whip you too,” says Beatrix.
My lady only said: “I hope you will tell none of these silly stories
elsewhere than at home, Francis.”
“’Tis true, on my word,” continues Frank: “look at Harry scowling, mother,
and see how Beatrix blushes as red as the silver-clocked stockings.”
“I think we had best leave the gentlemen to their wine and their talk,”
says Mistress Beatrix, rising up with the air of a young queen, tossing
her rustling, flowing draperies about her, and quitting the room, followed
by her mother.
Lady Castlewood again looked at Esmond, as she stooped down and kissed
Frank. “Do not tell those silly stories, child,” she said: “do not drink
much wine, sir; Harry never loved to drink wine.” And she went away, too,
in her black robes, looking back on the young man with her fair, fond
face.
“Egad! it’s true,” says Frank, sipping his wine with the air of a lord.
“What think you of this Lisbon—real Collares? ’Tis better than your heady
port: we got it out of one of the Spanish ships that came from Vigo last
year: my mother bought it at Southampton, as the ship was lying there—the
_Rose_, Captain Hawkins.”
“Why, I came home in that ship,” says Harry.
“And it brought home a good fellow and good wine,” says my lord. “I say,
Harry, I wish thou hadst not that cursed bar sinister.”
“And why not the bar sinister?” asks the other.
“Suppose I go to the army and am killed—every gentleman goes to the
army—who is to take care of the women? ’Trix will never stop at home;
mother’s in love with you,—yes, I think mother’s in love with you. She was
always praising you, and always talking about you; and when she went to
Southampton, to see the ship, I found her out. But you see it is
impossible: we are of the oldest blood in England; we came in with the
Conqueror; we were only baronets,—but what then? we were forced into that.
James the First forced our great-grandfather. We are above titles; we old
English gentry don’t want ’em; the queen can make a duke any day. Look at
Blandford’s father, Duke Churchill, and Duchess Jennings, what were they,
Harry? Damn it, sir, what are they, to turn up their noses at us? Where
were they, when our ancestor rode with King Henry at Agincourt, and filled
up the French king’s cup after Poictiers? ’Fore George, sir, why shouldn’t
Blandford marry Beatrix? By G——! he _shall_ marry Beatrix, or tell me the
reason why. We’ll marry with the best blood of England, and none but the
best blood of England. You are an Esmond, and you can’t help your birth,
my boy. Let’s have another bottle. What! no more? I’ve drunk three parts
of this myself. I had many a night with my father; you stood to him like a
man, Harry. You backed your blood; you can’t help your misfortune, you
know,—no man can help that.”
The elder said he would go in to his mistress’s tea-table. The young lad,
with a heightened colour and voice, began singing a snatch of a song, and
marched out of the room. Esmond heard him presently calling his dogs about
him, and cheering and talking to them; and by a hundred of his looks and
gestures, tricks of voice and gait, was reminded of the dead lord, Frank’s
father.
And so, the Sylvester Night passed away; the family parted long before
midnight, Lady Castlewood remembering, no doubt, former New-Year’s Eves,
when healths were drunk, and laughter went round in the company of him to
whom years, past, and present, and future, were to be as one; and so cared
not to sit with her children and hear the cathedral bells ringing the
birth of the year 1703. Esmond heard the chimes as he sat in his own
chamber, ruminating by the blazing fire there, and listened to the last
notes of them, looking out from his window towards the city, and the great
grey towers of the cathedral lying under the frosty sky, with the keen
stars shining above.
The sight of these brilliant orbs no doubt made him think of other
luminaries. “And so her eyes have already done execution,” thought
Esmond—“on whom?—who can tell me?” Luckily his kinsman was by, and Esmond
knew he would have no difficulty in finding out Mistress Beatrix’s history
from the simple talk of the boy.
Chapter VIII. Family Talk
What Harry admired and submitted to in the pretty lad, his kinsman, was
(for why should he resist it?) the calmness of patronage which my young
lord assumed, as if to command was his undoubted right, and all the world
(below his degree) ought to bow down to Viscount Castlewood.
“I know my place, Harry,” he said. “I’m not proud—the boys at Winchester
College say I’m proud: but I’m not proud. I am simply Francis James
Viscount Castlewood in the peerage of Ireland. I might have been (do you
know that?) Francis James Marquis and Earl of Esmond in that of England.
The late lord refused the title which was offered to him by my godfather,
his late Majesty. You should know that—you are of our family, you know—you
cannot help your bar sinister, Harry, my dear fellow; and you belong to
one of the best families in England, in spite of that; and you stood by my
father, and by G——! I’ll stand by you. You shall never want a friend,
Harry, while Francis James Viscount Castlewood has a shilling. It’s now
1703—I shall come of age in 1709. I shall go back to Castlewood; I shall
live at Castlewood; I shall build up the house. My property will be pretty
well restored by then. The late viscount mismanaged my property, and left
it in a very bad state. My mother is living close, as you see, and keeps
me in a way hardly befitting a peer of these realms; for I have but a pair
of horses, a governor, and a man that is valet and groom. But when I am of
age, these things will be set right, Harry. Our house will be as it should
be. You’ll always come to Castlewood, won’t you? You shall always have
your two rooms in the court kept for you; and if anybody slights you, d——
them! let them have a care of _me_. I shall marry early—’Trix will be a
duchess by that time, most likely; for a cannon-ball may knock over his
grace any day, you know.”
“How?” says Harry.
“Hush, my dear!” says my lord viscount. “You are of the family—you are
faithful to us, by George, and I tell you everything. Blandford will marry
her—or ——” and here he put his little hand on his sword—“you understand
the rest. Blandford knows which of us two is the best weapon. At
small-sword, or back-sword, or sword and dagger, if he likes: I can beat
him. I have tried him, Harry; and begad, he knows I am a man not to be
trifled with.”
“But you do not mean,” says Harry, concealing his laughter, but not his
wonder, “that you can force my Lord Blandford, the son of the first man of
this kingdom, to marry your sister at sword’s point?”
“I mean to say that we are cousins by the mother’s side, though that’s
nothing to boast of. I mean to say that an Esmond is as good as a
Churchill; and when the king comes back, the Marquis of Esmond’s sister
may be a match for any nobleman’s daughter in the kingdom. There are but
two marquises in all England, William Herbert, Marquis of Powis, and
Francis James, Marquis of Esmond; and hark you, Harry, now swear you’ll
never mention this. Give me your honour as a gentleman, for you _are_ a
gentleman, though you are a——”
“Well, well,” says Harry, a little impatient.
“Well, then, when after my late viscount’s misfortune, my mother went up
with us to London, to ask for justice against you all (as for Mohun, I’ll
have his blood, as sure as my name is Francis Viscount Esmond), we went to
stay with our cousin my Lady Marlborough, with whom we had quarrelled for
ever so long. But when misfortune came, she stood by her blood:—so did the
dowager viscountess stand by her blood,—so did you. Well, sir, whilst my
mother was petitioning the late Prince of Orange—for I will never call him
king—and while you were in prison, we lived at my Lord Marlborough’s
house, who was only a little there, being away with the army in Holland.
And then ... I say, Harry, you won’t tell, now?”
Harry again made a vow of secrecy.
“Well, there used to be all sorts of fun, you know: my Lady Marlborough
was very fond of us, and she said I was to be her page; and she got ’Trix
to be a maid of honour, and while she was up in her room crying, we used
to be always having fun, you know; and the duchess used to kiss me, and so
did her daughters, and Blandford fell tremendous in love with ’Trix, and
she liked him; and one day he—he kissed her behind a door—he did
though,—and the duchess caught him, and she banged such a box of the ear
both to ’Trix and Blandford—you should have seen it! And then she said
that we must leave directly, and abused my mamma, who was cognizant of the
business; but she wasn’t—never thinking about anything but father. And so
we came down to Walcote. Blandford being locked up, and not allowed to see
’Trix. But _I_ got at him. I climbed along the gutter, and in through the
window, where he was crying.
“ ‘Marquis,’ says I, when he had opened it and helped me in, ‘you know I
wear a sword,’ for I had brought it.
“ ‘Oh, viscount,’ says he—‘oh, my dearest Frank!’ and he threw himself
into my arms and burst out a-crying. ‘I do love Mistress Beatrix so, that
I shall die if I don’t have her.’
“ ‘My dear Blandford,’ says I, ‘you are young to think of marrying;’ for
he was but fifteen, and a young fellow of that age can scarce do so, you
know.
“ ‘But I’ll wait twenty years, if she’ll have me,’ says he. ‘I’ll never
marry—no never, never, never, marry anybody but her. No, not a princess,
though they would have me do it ever so. If Beatrix will wait for me, her
Blandford swears he will be faithful.’ And he wrote a paper (it wasn’t
spelt right, for he wrote: ‘I’m ready to _sine with my blode_’, which you
know, Harry, isn’t the way of spelling it), and vowing that he would marry
none other but the Honourable Mistress Gertrude Beatrix Esmond, only
sister of his dearest friend Francis James, fourth Viscount Esmond. And so
I gave him a locket of her hair.”
“A locket of her hair!” cries Esmond.
“Yes. ’Trix gave me one after the fight with the duchess that very day. I
am sure I didn’t want it; and so I gave it him, and we kissed at parting,
and said—‘Good-bye, brother.’ And I got back through the gutter; and we
set off home that very evening. And he went to King’s College, in
Cambridge, and _I’m_ going to Cambridge soon; and if he doesn’t stand to
his promise (for he’s only wrote once),—he knows I wear a sword, Harry.
Come along, and let’s go see the cocking-match at Winchester.
“....But I say,” he added laughing, after a pause, “I don’t think ’Trix
will break her heart about him. Law bless you! Whenever she sees a man,
she makes eyes at him; and young Sir Wilmot Crawley of Queen’s Crawley,
and Anthony Henley of Alresford, were at swords drawn about her, at the
Winchester Assembly, a month ago.”
That night Mr. Harry’s sleep was by no means so pleasant or sweet as it
had been on the first two evenings after his arrival at Walcote. “So the
bright eyes have been already shining on another,” thought he, “and the
pretty lips, or the cheeks at any rate, have begun the work which they
were made for. Here’s a girl not sixteen, and one young gentleman is
already whimpering over a lock of her hair, and two country squires are
ready to cut each other’s throats that they may have the honour of a dance
with her. What a fool am I to be dallying about this passion, and singeing
my wings in this foolish flame. Wings!—why not say crutches? There is but
eight years’ difference between us, to be sure; but in life I am thirty
years older. How could I ever hope to please such a sweet creature as
that, with my rough ways and glum face? Say that I have merit ever so
much, and won myself a name, could she ever listen to me? She must be my
lady marchioness, and I remain a nameless bastard. O my master, my
master!” (here he fell to thinking with a passionate grief of the vow
which he had made to his poor dying lord); “O my mistress, dearest and
kindest, will you be contented with the sacrifice which the poor orphan
makes for you, whom you love, and who so loves you?”
And then came a fiercer pang of temptation. “A word from me,” Harry
thought, “a syllable of explanation, and all this might be changed; but
no, I swore it over the dying bed of my benefactor. For the sake of him
and his; for the sacred love and kindness of old days; I gave my promise
to him, and may kind Heaven enable me to keep my vow!”
The next day, although Esmond gave no sign of what was going on in his
mind, but strove to be more than ordinarily gay and cheerful when he met
his friends at the morning meal, his dear mistress, whose clear eyes it
seemed no emotion of his could escape, perceived that something troubled
him, for she looked anxiously towards him more than once during the
breakfast, and when he went up to his chamber afterwards she presently
followed him, and knocked at his door.
As she entered, no doubt the whole story was clear to her at once, for she
found our young gentleman packing his valise, pursuant to the resolution
which he had come to over-night of making a brisk retreat out of this
temptation.
She closed the door very carefully behind her, and then leant against it,
very pale, her hands folded before her, looking at the young man, who was
kneeling over his work of packing. “Are you going so soon?” she said.
He rose up from his knees, blushing, perhaps, to be so discovered, in the
very act, as it were, and took one of her fair little hands—it was that
which had her marriage ring on—and kissed it.
“It is best that it should be so, dearest lady,” he said.
“I knew you were going, at breakfast. I—I thought you might stay. What has
happened? Why can’t you remain longer with us? What has Frank told you—you
were talking together late last night?”
“I had but three days’ leave from Chelsea,” Esmond said, as gaily as he
could. “My aunt—she lets me call her aunt—is my mistress now; I owe her my
lieutenancy and my laced coat. She has taken me into high favour; and my
new general is to dine at Chelsea to-morrow—General Lumley, madam—who has
appointed me his aide de camp, and on whom I must have the honour of
waiting. See, here is a letter from the dowager; the post brought it last
night; and I would not speak of it, for fear of disturbing our last merry
meeting.”
My lady glanced at the letter, and put it down with a smile that was
somewhat contemptuous. “I have no need to read the letter,” says
she—(indeed, ’twas as well she did not; for the Chelsea missive, in the
poor dowager’s usual French jargon, permitted him a longer holiday than he
said. “_Je vous donne_,” quoth her ladyship, “_oui jour, pour vous fatigay
parfaictement de vos parens fatigans_”)—“I have no need to read the
letter,” says she. “What was it Frank told you last night?”
“He told me little I did not know,” Mr. Esmond answered. “But I have
thought of that little, and here’s the result; I have no right to the name
I bear, dear lady; and it is only by your sufferance that I am allowed to
keep it. If I thought for an hour of what has perhaps crossed your mind
too——”
“Yes, I did, Harry,” said she; “I thought of it; and think of it. I would
sooner call you my son than the greatest prince in Europe—yes, than the
greatest prince. For who is there so good and so brave, and who would love
her as you would? But there are reasons a mother can’t tell.”
“I know them,” said Mr. Esmond, interrupting her with a smile.—“I know
there’s Sir Wilmot Crawley of Queen’s Crawley, and Mr. Anthony Henley of
the Grange, and my Lord Marquis of Blandford, that seems to be the
favoured suitor. You shall ask me to wear my lady marchioness’s favours
and to dance at her ladyship’s wedding.”
“Oh, Harry, Harry, it is none of these follies that frighten me,” cried
out Lady Castlewood. “Lord Churchill is but a child, his outbreak about
Beatrix was a mere boyish folly. His parents would rather see him buried
than married to one below him in rank. And do you think that I would stoop
to sue for a husband for Francis Esmond’s daughter; or submit to have my
girl smuggled into that proud family to cause a quarrel between son and
parents, and to be treated only as an inferior? I would disdain such a
meanness. Beatrix would scorn it. Ah! Henry, ’tis not with you the fault
lies, ’tis with her. I know you both, and love you: need I be ashamed of
that love now? No, never, never, and ’tis not you, dear Harry, that is
unworthy. ’Tis for my poor Beatrix I tremble—whose headstrong will
frightens me; whose jealous temper (they say I was jealous too, but, pray
God, I am cured of that sin) and whose vanity no words or prayers of mine
can cure—only suffering, only experience, and remorse afterwards. Oh,
Henry, she will make no man happy who loves her. Go away, my son, leave
her: love us always, and think kindly of us: and for me, my dear, you know
that these walls contain all that I love in the world.”
In after-life, did Esmond find the words true which his fond mistress
spoke from her sad heart? Warning he had: but I doubt others had warning
before his time, and since: and he benefited by it as most men do.
My young lord viscount was exceeding sorry when he heard that Harry could
not come to the cock-match with him, and must go to London, but no doubt
my lord consoled himself when the Hampshire cocks won the match; and he
saw every one of the battles, and crowed properly over the conquered
Sussex gentlemen.
As Esmond rode towards town his servant, coming up to him, informed him
with a grin, that Mistress Beatrix had brought out a new gown and blue
stockings for that day’s dinner, in which she intended to appear, and had
flown into a rage and given her maid a slap on the face soon after she
heard he was going away. Mistress Beatrix’s woman, the fellow said, came
down to the servants’ hall, crying, and with the mark of a blow still on
her cheek: but Esmond peremptorily ordered him to fall back and be silent,
and rode on with thoughts enough of his own to occupy him—some sad ones,
some inexpressibly dear and pleasant.
His mistress, from whom he had been a year separated, was his dearest
mistress again. The family from which he had been parted, and which he
loved with the fondest devotion, was his family once more. If Beatrix’s
beauty shone upon him, it was with a friendly lustre, and he could regard
it with much such a delight as he brought away after seeing the beautiful
pictures of the smiling Madonnas in the convent at Cadiz, when he was
dispatched thither with a flag: and as for his mistress, ’twas difficult
to say with what a feeling he regarded her. ’Twas happiness to have seen
her: ’twas no great pang to part; a filial tenderness, a love that was at
once respect and protection, filled his mind as he thought of her; and
near her or far from her, and from that day until now, and from now till
death is past, and beyond it, he prays that sacred flame may ever burn.
Chapter IX. I Make The Campaign Of 1704
Mr. Esmond rode up to London then, where, if the dowager had been angry at
the abrupt leave of absence he took, she was mightily pleased at his
speedy return.
He went immediately and paid his court to his new general, General Lumley,
who received him graciously, having known his father, and also, he was
pleased to say, having had the very best accounts of Mr. Esmond from the
officer whose aide de camp he had been at Vigo. During this winter Mr.
Esmond was gazetted to a lieutenancy in Brigadier Webb’s regiment of
Fusiliers, then with their colonel in Flanders; but being now attached to
the suite of Mr. Lumley, Esmond did not join his own regiment until more
than a year afterwards, and after his return from the campaign of
Blenheim, which was fought the next year. The campaign began very early,
our troops marching out of their quarters before the winter was almost
over, and investing the city of Bonn, on the Rhine, under the duke’s
command. His grace joined the army in deep grief of mind, with crape on
his sleeve, and his household in mourning; and the very same packet which
brought the commander-in-chief over, brought letters to the forces which
preceded him, and one from his dear mistress to Esmond, which interested
him not a little.
The young Marquis of Blandford, his grace’s son, who had been entered in
King’s College in Cambridge (whither my lord viscount had also gone, to
Trinity, with Mr. Tusher as his governor), had been seized with small-pox,
and was dead at sixteen years of age, and so poor Frank’s schemes for his
sister’s advancement were over, and that innocent childish passion nipped
in the birth.
Esmond’s mistress would have had him return, at least her letters hinted
as much; but in the presence of the enemy this was impossible, and our
young man took his humble share in the siege, which need not be described
here, and had the good luck to escape without a wound of any sort, and to
drink his general’s health after the surrender. He was in constant
military duty this year, and did not think of asking for a leave of
absence, as one or two of his less fortunate friends did, who were cast
away in that tremendous storm which happened towards the close of
November, that “which of late o’er pale Britannia past” (as Mr. Addison
sang of it), and in which scores of our greatest ships and 15,000 of our
seamen went down.
They said that our duke was quite heartbroken by the calamity which had
befallen his family; but his enemies found that he could subdue them, as
well as master his grief. Successful as had been this great general’s
operations in the past year, they were far enhanced by the splendour of
his victory in the ensuing campaign. His grace the captain-general went to
England after Bonn, and our army fell back into Holland, where, in April,
1704, his grace again found the troops embarking from Harwich and landing
at Maesland Sluys: thence his grace came immediately to the Hague, where
he received the foreign ministers, general officers, and other people of
quality. The greatest honours were paid to his grace everywhere—at the
Hague, Utrecht, Ruremonde, and Maestricht; the civic authorities coming to
meet his coaches: salvos of cannon saluting him, canopies of state being
erected for him where he stopped, and feasts prepared for the numerous
gentlemen following in his suite. His grace reviewed the troops of the
States-General between Liége and Maestricht, and afterwards the English
forces, under the command of General Churchill, near Bois-le-Duc. Every
preparation was made for a long march; and the army heard, with no small
elation, that it was the commander-in-chief’s intention to carry the war
out of the Low Countries, and to march on the Mozelle. Before leaving our
camp at Maestricht, we heard that the French, under the Marshal Villeroy,
were also bound towards the Mozelle.
Towards the end of May, the army reached Coblentz; and next day, his
grace, and the generals accompanying him, went to visit the Elector of
Treves at his Castle of Ehrenbreitstein, the horse and dragoons passing
the Rhine whilst the duke was entertained at a grand feast by the Elector.
All as yet was novelty, festivity, and splendour—a brilliant march of a
great and glorious army through a friendly country, and sure through some
of the most beautiful scenes of nature which I ever witnessed.
The foot and artillery, following after the horse as quick as possible,
crossed the Rhine under Ehrenbreitstein, and so to Castel, over against
Mayntz, in which city his grace, his generals, and his retinue were
received at the landing-place by the Elector’s coaches, carried to his
highness’s palace amidst the thunder of cannon, and then once more
magnificently entertained. Gidlingen, in Bavaria, was appointed as the
general rendezvous of the army, and thither, by different routes, the
whole forces of English, Dutch, Danes, and German auxiliaries took their
way. The foot and artillery under General Churchill passed the Neckar, at
Heidelberg; and Esmond had an opportunity of seeing that city and palace,
once so famous and beautiful (though shattered and battered by the French,
under Turenne, in the late war), where his grandsire had served the
beautiful and unfortunate Electress-Palatine, the first King Charles’s
sister.
At Mindelsheim, the famous Prince of Savoy came to visit our commander,
all of us crowding eagerly to get a sight of that brilliant and intrepid
warrior; and our troops were drawn up in battalia before the prince, who
was pleased to express his admiration of this noble English army. At
length we came in sight of the enemy between Dillingen and Lawingen, the
Brentz lying between the two armies. The Elector, judging that Donauwort
would be the point of his grace’s attack, sent a strong detachment of his
best troops to Count Darcos, who was posted at Schellenberg, near that
place, where great entrenchments were thrown up, and thousands of pioneers
employed to strengthen the position.
On the 2nd of July, his grace stormed the post, with what success on our
part need scarce be told. His grace advanced with six thousand foot,
English and Dutch, thirty squadrons and three regiments of Imperial
cuirassiers, the duke crossing the river at the head of the cavalry.
Although our troops made the attack with unparalleled courage and
fury—rushing up to the very guns of the enemy, and being slaughtered
before their works—we were driven back many times, and should not have
carried them, but that the Imperialists came up under the Prince of Baden,
when the enemy could make no head against us: we pursued him into the
trenches, making a terrible slaughter there, and into the very Danube,
where a great part of his troops, following the example of their generals,
Count Darcos and the Elector himself, tried to save themselves by
swimming. Our army entered Donauwort, which the Bavarians evacuated; and
where ’twas said the Elector purposed to have given us a warm reception,
by burning us in our beds; the cellars of the houses, when we took
possession of them, being found stuffed with straw. But though the links
were there, the link-boys had run away. The townsmen saved their houses,
and our general took possession of the enemy’s ammunition in the arsenals,
his stores, and magazines. Five days afterwards a great _Te Deum_ was sung
in Prince Lewis’s army, and a solemn day of thanksgiving held in our own;
the Prince of Savoy’s compliments coming to his grace the captain-general
during the day’s religious ceremony, and concluding, as it were, with an
amen.
And now, having seen a great military march through a friendly country;
the pomps and festivities of more than one German court; the severe
struggle of a hotly-contested battle, and the triumph of victory; Mr.
Esmond beheld another part of military duty; our troops entering the
enemy’s territory, and putting all around them to fire and sword; burning
farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and
drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror, and
murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing
the valour of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes,
so brutal, mean, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part of
the drama of war? You, gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, and
compliment yourselves in the songs of triumph with which our chieftains
are bepraised—you pretty maidens, that come tumbling down the stairs when
the fife and drum call you, and huzzah for the British Grenadiers—do you
take account that these items go to make up the amount of the triumph you
admire, and form part of the duties of the heroes you fondle? Our chief,
whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshipped almost,
had this of the godlike in him, that he was impassible before victory,
before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obstacle or the most
trivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men drawn in battalia, or a
peasant slaughtered at the door of his burning hovel; before a carouse of
drunken German lords, or a monarch’s court, or a cottage-table, where his
plans were laid, or an enemy’s battery, vomiting flame and death, and
strewing corpses round about him;—he was always cold, calm, resolute, like
fate. He performed a treason or a court-bow, he told a falsehood as black
as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He
took a mistress, and left her; he betrayed his benefactor, and supported
him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always, and having
no more remorse than Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis when
she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the Prince of Savoy’s
officers say, the prince became possessed with a sort of warlike fury; his
eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither, raging; he shrieked curses
and encouragement, yelling and harking his bloody war-dogs on, and himself
always at the first of the hunt. Our duke was as calm at the mouth of the
cannon as at the door of a drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been
the great man he was, had he had a heart either for love or hatred, or
pity or fear, or regret, or remorse. He achieved the highest deed of
daring, or deepest calculation of thought, as he performed the very
meanest action of which a man is capable; told a lie, or cheated a fond
woman, or robbed a poor beggar of a halfpenny, with a like awful serenity
and equal capacity of the highest and lowest acts of our nature.
His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there were parties
of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but there existed
such a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain of the world, and
such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the
very men whom he notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used
and injured—(for he used all men, great and small, that came near him, as
his instruments alike, and took something of theirs, either some quality
or some property—the blood of a soldier, it might be, or a jewelled hat,
or a hundred thousand crowns from a king, or a portion out of a starving
sentinel’s three farthings; or (when he was young) a kiss from a woman,
and the gold chain off her neck, taking all he could from woman or man,
and having, as I have said, this of the godlike in him, that he could see
a hero perish or a sparrow fall, with the same amount of sympathy for
either. Not that he had no tears; he could always order up this reserve at
the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, and
whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to a
shoeblack, as he would flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty, be
humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you whenever he
saw occasion)—But yet those of the army, who knew him best and had
suffered most from him, admired him most of all: and as he rode along the
lines to battle or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling
from before the enemy’s charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got
new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his face, and felt that his
will made them irresistible.
After the great victory of Blenheim the enthusiasm of the army for the
duke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted to a sort of
rage—nay, the very officers who cursed him in their hearts, were among the
most frantic to cheer him. Who could refuse his meed of admiration to such
a victory and such a victor? Not he who writes: a man may profess to be
ever so much a philosopher; but he who fought on that day must feel a
thrill of pride as he recalls it.
The French right was posted near to the village of Blenheim, on the
Danube, where the Marshal Tallard’s quarters were; their line extending
through, it may be a league and a half, before Lutzingen and up to a woody
hill, round the base of which, and acting against the Prince of Savoy,
were forty of his squadrons. Here was a village that the Frenchmen had
burned, the wood being, in fact, a better shelter and easier of guard than
any village.
Before these two villages and the French lines ran a little stream, not
more than two foot broad, through a marsh (that was mostly dried up from
the heats of the weather), and this stream was the only separation between
the two armies—ours coming up and ranging themselves in line of battle
before the French, at six o’clock in the morning; so that our line was
quite visible to theirs; and the whole of this great plain was black and
swarming with troops for hours before the cannonading began.
On one side and the other this cannonading lasted many hours. The French
guns being in position in front of their line, and doing severe damage
among our horse especially, and on our right wing of Imperialists under
the Prince of Savoy, who could neither advance his artillery nor his
lines, the ground before him being cut up by ditches, morasses, and very
difficult of passage for the guns.
It was past midday when the attack began on our left, where Lord Cutts
commanded, the bravest and most beloved officer in the English army. And
now, as if to make his experience in war complete, our young aide de camp
having seen two great armies facing each other in line of battle, and had
the honour of riding with orders from one end to other of the line, came
in for a not uncommon accompaniment of military glory, and was knocked on
the head, along with many hundred of brave fellows, almost at the very
commencement of this famous day of Blenheim. A little after noon, the
disposition for attack being completed with much delay and difficulty, and
under a severe fire from the enemy’s guns, that were better posted and
more numerous than ours, a body of English and Hessians, with
Major-General Wilkes commanding at the extreme left of our line, marched
upon Blenheim, advancing with great gallantry, the major-general on foot,
with his officers, at the head of the column, and marching, with his hat
off, intrepidly in the face of the enemy, who was pouring in a tremendous
fire from his guns and musketry, to which our people were instructed not
to reply, except with pike and bayonet when they reached the French
palisades. To these Wilkes walked intrepidly, and struck the woodwork with
his sword before our people charged it. He was shot down at the instant,
with his colonel, major, and several officers; and our troops cheering and
huzzaing, and coming on, as they did, with immense resolution and
gallantry, were nevertheless stopped by the murderous fire from behind the
enemy’s defences, and then attacked in flank by a furious charge of French
horse which swept out of Blenheim, and cut down our men in great numbers.
Three fierce and desperate assaults of our foot were made and repulsed by
the enemy; so that our columns of foot were quite shattered, and fell
back, scrambling over the little rivulet, which we had crossed so
resolutely an hour before, and pursued by the French cavalry, slaughtering
us and cutting us down.
And now the conquerors were met by a furious charge of English horse under
Esmond’s general, General Lumley, behind whose squadrons the flying foot
found refuge, and formed again, whilst Lumley drove back the French horse,
charging up to the village of Blenheim and the palisades where Wilkes, and
many hundred more gallant Englishmen, lay in slaughtered heaps. Beyond
this moment, and of this famous victory, Mr. Esmond knows nothing; for a
shot brought down his horse and our young gentleman on it, who fell
crushed and stunned under the animal; and came to his senses he knows not
how long after, only to lose them again from pain and loss of blood. A dim
sense, as of people groaning round about him, a wild incoherent thought or
two for her who occupied so much of his heart now, and that here his
career, and his hopes, and misfortunes were ended, he remembers in the
course of these hours. When he woke up it was with a pang of extreme pain,
his breast-plate was taken off, his servant was holding his head up, the
good and faithful lad of Hampshire(9) was blubbering over his master, whom
he found and had thought dead, and a surgeon was probing a wound in the
shoulder, which he must have got at the same moment when his horse was
shot and fell over him. The battle was over at this end of the field, by
this time: the village was in possession of the English, its brave
defenders prisoners, or fled, or drowned, many of them, in the
neighbouring waters of the Donau. But for honest Lockwood’s faithful
search after his master, there had no doubt been an end of Esmond here,
and of this his story. The marauders were out rifling the bodies as they
lay on the field, and Jack had brained one of these gentry with the
club-end of his musket, who had eased Esmond of his hat and periwig, his
purse, and fine silver-mounted pistols which the dowager gave him, and was
fumbling in his pockets for further treasure, when Jack Lockwood came up
and put an end to the scoundrel’s triumph.
Hospitals for our wounded were established at Blenheim, and here for
several weeks Esmond lay in very great danger of his life; the wound was
not very great from which he suffered, and the ball extracted by the
surgeon on the spot where our young gentleman received it; but a fever set
in next day, as he was lying in hospital, and that almost carried him
away. Jack Lockwood said he talked in the wildest manner during his
delirium; that he called himself the Marquis of Esmond, and seizing one of
the surgeon’s assistants who came to dress his wounds, swore that he was
Madam Beatrix, and that he would make her a duchess if she would but say
yes. He was passing the days in these crazy fancies, and _vana somnia_,
whilst the army was singing _Te Deum_ for the victory, and those famous
festivities were taking place at which our duke, now made a Prince of the
Empire, was entertained by the King of the Romans and his nobility. His
grace went home by Berlin and Hanover, and Esmond lost the festivities
which took place at those cities, and which his general shared in company
of the other general officers who travelled with our great captain. When
he could move it was by the Duke of Wirtemburg’s city of Stuttgard that he
made his way homewards, revisiting Heidelberg again, whence he went to
Manheim, and hence had a tedious but easy water journey down the river of
Rhine, which he had thought a delightful and beautiful voyage indeed, but
that his heart was longing for home, and something far more beautiful and
delightful.
As bright and welcome as the eyes almost of his mistress shone the lights
of Harwich, as the packet came in from Holland. It was not many hours ere
he, Esmond, was in London, of that you may be sure, and received with open
arms by the old dowager of Chelsea, who vowed, in her jargon of French and
English, that he had the _air noble_, that his pallor embellished him,
that he was an Amadis and deserved a Gloriana; and, O flames and darts!
what was his joy at hearing that his mistress was come into waiting, and
was now with her Majesty at Kensington! Although Mr. Esmond had told Jack
Lockwood to get horses and they would ride for Winchester that night; when
he heard this news he countermanded the horses at once; his business lay
no longer in Hants; all his hope and desire lay within a couple of miles
of him in Kensington Park wall. Poor Harry had never looked in the glass
before so eagerly to see whether he had the _bel air_, and his paleness
really did become him; he never took such pains about the curl of his
periwig, and the taste of his embroidery and point-lace, as now, before
Mr. Amadis presented himself to Madam Gloriana. Was the fire of the French
lines half so murderous as the killing glances from her ladyship’s eyes? O
darts and raptures, how beautiful were they!
And as, before the blazing sun of morning, the moon fades away in the sky
almost invisible; Esmond thought, with a blush perhaps, of another sweet
pale face, sad and faint, and fading out of sight, with its sweet fond
gaze of affection; such a last look it seemed to cast as Eurydice might
have given, yearning after her lover, when Fate and Pluto summoned her,
and she passed away into the shades.
Chapter X. An Old Story About A Fool And A Woman
Any taste for pleasure which Esmond had (and he liked to _desipere in
loco_, neither more nor less than most young men of his age) he could now
gratify to the utmost extent, and in the best company which the town
afforded. When the army went into winter quarters abroad, those of the
officers who had interest or money easily got leave of absence, and found
it much pleasanter to spend their time in Pall Mall and Hyde Park, than to
pass the winter away behind the fortifications of the dreary old Flanders
towns, where the English troops were gathered. Yatches and packets passed
daily between the Dutch and Flemish ports and Harwich; the roads thence to
London and the great inns were crowded with army gentlemen; the taverns
and ordinaries of the town swarmed with red-coats; and our great duke’s
levees at St. James’s were as thronged as they had been at Ghent and
Brussels, where we treated him, and he us, with the grandeur and ceremony
of a sovereign. Though Esmond had been appointed to a lieutenancy in the
Fusilier regiment, of which that celebrated officer, Brigadier John
Richmond Webb, was colonel, he had never joined the regiment, nor been
introduced to its excellent commander, though they had made the same
campaign together, and been engaged in the same battle. But being aide de
camp to General Lumley, who commanded the division of horse, and the army
marching to its point of destination on the Danube by different routes,
Esmond had not fallen in, as yet, with his commander and future comrades
of the fort; and it was in London, in Golden Square, where Major-General
Webb lodged, that Captain Esmond had the honour of first paying his
respects to his friend, patron, and commander of after-days.
Those who remember this brilliant and accomplished gentleman may recollect
his character, upon which he prided himself, I think, not a little, of
being the handsomest man in the army; a poet who writ a dull copy of
verses upon the battle of Oudenarde three years after, describing Webb,
says:—
To noble danger Webb conducts the way,
His great example all his troops obey;
Before the front the general sternly rides,
With such an air as Mars to battle strides:
Propitious Heaven must sure a hero save,
Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave.
Mr. Webb thought these verses quite as fine as Mr. Addison’s on the
Blenheim campaign, and, indeed, to be Hector _à la mode de Paris_, was
part of this gallant gentleman’s ambition. It would have been difficult to
find an officer in the whole army, or amongst the splendid courtiers and
cavaliers of the Maison-du-Roy, that fought under Vendosme and Villeroy in
the army opposed to ours, who was a more accomplished soldier and perfect
gentleman, and either braver or better-looking. And, if Mr. Webb believed
of himself what the world said of him, and was deeply convinced of his own
indisputable genius, beauty, and valour, who has a right to quarrel with
him very much? This self-content of his kept him in general good humour,
of which his friends and dependants got the benefit.
He came of a very ancient Wiltshire family, which he respected above all
families in the world: he could prove a lineal descent from King Edward
the First, and his first ancestor, Roaldus de Richmond, rode by William
the Conqueror’s side on Hastings field. “We were gentlemen, Esmond,” he
used to say, “when the Churchills were horseboys.” He was a very tall man,
standing in his pumps six feet three inches (in his great jack-boots, with
his tall, fair periwig, and hat and feather, he could not have been less
than eight feet high). “I am taller than Churchill,” he would say,
surveying himself in the glass, “and I am a better made man; and if the
women won’t like a man that hasn’t a wart on his nose, faith, I can’t help
myself, and Churchill has the better of me there.” Indeed, he was always
measuring himself with the duke, and always asking his friends to measure
them. And talking in this frank way, as he would do, over his cups, wags
would laugh and encourage him; friends would be sorry for him; schemers
and flatterers would egg him on, and tale-bearers carry the stories to
head quarters, and widen the difference which already existed there
between the great captain and one of the ablest and bravest lieutenants he
ever had.
His rancour against the duke was so apparent, that one saw it in the first
half-hour’s conversation with General Webb; and his lady, who adored her
general, and thought him a hundred times taller, handsomer, and braver
than a prodigal nature had made him, hated the great duke with such an
intensity as it becomes faithful wives to feel against their husbands’
enemies. Not that my lord duke was so yet; Mr. Webb had said a thousand
things against him, which his superior had pardoned; and his grace, whose
spies were everywhere, had heard a thousand things more that Webb had
never said. But it cost this great man no pains to pardon; and he passed
over an injury or a benefit alike easily.
Should any child of mine take the pains to read these, his ancestor’s
memoirs, I would not have him judge of the great duke(10) by what a
contemporary has written of him. No man hath been so immensely lauded and
decried as this great statesman and warrior; as, indeed, no man ever
deserved better the very greatest praise and the strongest censure. If the
present writer joins with the latter faction, very likely a private pique
of his own may be the cause of his ill-feeling.
On presenting himself at the commander-in-chief’s levee, his grace had not
the least remembrance of General Lumley’s aide de camp, and though he knew
Esmond’s family perfectly well, having served with both lords (my Lord
Francis and the viscount, Esmond’s father) in Flanders, and in the Duke of
York’s Guard, the Duke of Marlborough, who was friendly and serviceable to
the (so-styled) legitimate representatives of the Viscount Castlewood,
took no sort of notice of the poor lieutenant who bore their name. A word
of kindness or acknowledgement, or a single glance of approbation, might
have changed Esmond’s opinion of the great man; and instead of a satire,
which his pen cannot help writing, who knows but that the humble historian
might have taken the other side of panegyric? We have but to change the
point of view, and the greatest action looks mean; as we turn the
perspective-glass, and a giant appears a pigmy. You may describe, but who
can tell whether your sight is clear or not, or your means of information
accurate? Had the great man said but a word of kindness to the small one
(as he would have stepped out of his gilt chariot to shake hands with
Lazarus in rags and sores, if he thought Lazarus could have been of any
service to him), no doubt Esmond would have fought for him with pen and
sword to the utmost of his might; but my lord the lion did not want master
mouse at this moment, and so Muscipulus went off and nibbled in
opposition.
So it was, however, that a young gentleman, who, in the eyes of his
family, and in his own, doubtless, was looked upon as a consummate hero,
found that the great hero of the day took no more notice of him than of
the smallest drummer in his grace’s army. The dowager at Chelsea was
furious against this neglect of her family, and had a great battle with
Lady Marlborough (as Lady Castlewood insisted on calling the duchess). Her
grace was now mistress of the robes to her Majesty, and one of the
greatest personages in this kingdom, as her husband was in all Europe, and
the battle between the two ladies took place in the queen’s drawing-room.
The duchess, in reply to my aunt’s eager clamour, said haughtily, that she
had done her best for the legitimate branch of the Esmonds, and could not
be expected to provide for the bastard brats of the family.
“Bastards,” says the viscountess, in a fury, “there are bastards amongst
the Churchills, as your grace knows, and the Duke of Berwick is provided
for well enough.”
“Madam,” says the duchess, “you know whose fault it is that there are no
such dukes in the Esmond family too, and how that little scheme of a
certain lady miscarried.”
Esmond’s friend, Dick Steele, who was in waiting on the prince, heard the
controversy between the ladies at Court, “And faith,” says Dick, “I think,
Harry, thy kinswoman had the worst of it.”
He could not keep the story quiet; ’twas all over the coffee-houses ere
night; it was printed in a News Letter before a month was over, and “The
Reply of her Grace the Duchess of M-rlb-r-gh, to a Popish Lady of the
Court, once a favourite of the late K— J-m-s,” was printed in half a dozen
places, with a note stating that this duchess, when the head of this
lady’s family came by his death lately in a fatal duel, never rested until
she got a pension for the orphan heir, and widow, from her Majesty’s
bounty. The squabble did not advance poor Esmond’s promotion much, and
indeed made him so ashamed of himself that he dared not show his face at
the commander-in-chief’s levees again.
-------------------------------------
During those eighteen months which had passed since Esmond saw his dear
mistress, her good father, the old dean, quitted this life, firm in his
principles to the very last, and enjoining his family always to remember
that the queen’s brother, King James the Third, was their rightful
sovereign. He made a very edifying end, as his daughter told Esmond, and,
not a little to her surprise, after his death (for he had lived always
very poorly) my lady found that her father had left no less a sum than
3,000_l._ behind him, which he bequeathed to her.
With this little fortune Lady Castlewood was enabled, when her daughter’s
turn at Court came, to come to London, where she took a small genteel
house at Kensington, in the neighbourhood of the Court, bringing her
children with her, and here it was that Esmond found his friends.
As for the young lord, his University career had ended rather abruptly.
Honest Tusher, his governor, had found my young gentleman quite
ungovernable. My lord worried his life away with tricks; and broke out, as
home-bred lads will, into a hundred youthful extravagances, so that Dr.
Bentley, the new master of Trinity, thought fit to write to the
Viscountess Castlewood, my lord’s mother, and beg her to remove the young
nobleman from a college where he declined to learn, and where he only did
harm by his riotous example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set fire to
Nevil’s Court, that beautiful new quadrangle of our college, which Sir
Christopher Wren had lately built. He knocked down a proctor’s man that
wanted to arrest him in a midnight prank; he gave a dinner party on the
Prince of Wales’s birthday, which was within a fortnight of his own, and
the twenty young gentlemen then present sallied out after their wine,
having toasted King James’s health with open windows, and sung cavalier
songs, and shouted, “God save the King!” in the great court, so that the
master came out of his lodge at midnight, and dissipated the riotous
assembly.
This was my lord’s crowning freak, and the Rev. Thomas Tusher, domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Castlewood, finding his
prayers and sermons of no earthly avail to his lordship, gave up his
duties of governor; went and married his brewer’s widow at Southampton,
and took her and her money to his parsonage-house at Castlewood.
My lady could not be angry with her son for drinking King James’s health,
being herself a loyal Tory, as all the Castlewood family were, and
acquiesced with a sigh, knowing, perhaps, that her refusal would be of no
avail to the young lord’s desire for a military life. She would have liked
him to be in Mr. Esmond’s regiment, hoping that Harry might act as
guardian and adviser to his wayward young kinsman; but my young lord would
hear of nothing but the Guards, and a commission was got for him in the
Duke of Ormonde’s regiment; so Esmond found my lord, ensign and
lieutenant, when he returned from Germany after the Blenheim campaign.
The effect produced by both Lady Castlewood’s children when they appeared
in public was extraordinary, and the whole town speedily rang with their
fame; such a beautiful couple, it was declared, never had been seen; the
young maid of honour was toasted at every table and tavern, and as for my
young lord, his good looks were even more admired than his sister’s. A
hundred songs were written about the pair, and as the fashion of that day
was, my young lord was praised in these Anacreontics as warmly as
Bathyllus. You may be sure that he accepted very complacently the town’s
opinion of him, and acquiesced with that frankness and charming good
humour he always showed in the idea that he was the prettiest fellow in
all London.
The old dowager at Chelsea, though she could never be got to acknowledge
that Mrs. Beatrix was any beauty at all (in which opinion, as it may be
imagined, a vast number of the ladies agreed with her), yet, on the very
first sight of young Castlewood, she owned she fell in love with him; and
Henry Esmond, on his return to Chelsea, found himself quite superseded in
her favour by her younger kinsman. That feat of drinking the king’s health
at Cambridge would have won her heart, she said, if nothing else did. “How
had the dear young fellow got such beauty?” she asked. “Not from his
father—certainly not from his mother. How had he come by such noble
manners, and the perfect _bel air_? That countrified Walcote widow could
never have taught him.” Esmond had his own opinion about the countrified
Walcote widow, who had a quiet grace, and serene kindness, that had always
seemed to him the perfection of good breeding, though he did not try to
argue this point with his aunt. But he could agree in most of the praises
which the enraptured old dowager bestowed on my lord viscount, than whom
he never beheld a more fascinating and charming gentleman. Castlewood had
not wit so much as enjoyment. “The lad looks good things,” Mr. Steele used
to say; “and his laugh lights up a conversation as much as ten repartees
from Mr. Congreve. I would as soon sit over a bottle with him as with Mr.
Addison; and rather listen to his talk than hear Nicolini. Was ever man so
gracefully drunk as my Lord Castlewood? I would give anything to carry my
wine (though, indeed, Dick bore his very kindly, and plenty of it, too)
like this incomparable young man. When he is sober he is delightful; and
when tipsy, perfectly irresistible.” And referring to his favourite,
Shakespeare (who was quite out of fashion until Steele brought him back
into the mode), Dick compared Lord Castlewood to Prince Hal, and was
pleased to dub Esmond as ancient Pistol.
The mistress of the robes, the greatest lady in England after the queen,
or even before her Majesty, as the world said, though she never could be
got to say a civil word to Beatrix, whom she had promoted to her place as
maid of honour, took her brother into instant favour. When young
Castlewood, in his new uniform, and looking like a prince out of a
fairy-tale, went to pay his duty to her grace, she looked at him for a
minute in silence, the young man blushing and in confusion before her,
then fairly burst out a-crying, and kissed him before her daughters and
company. “He was my boy’s friend,” she said, through her sobs. “My
Blandford might have been like him.” And everybody saw, after this mark of
the duchess’s favour, that my young lord’s promotion was secure, and
people crowded round the favourite’s favourite, who became vainer and
gayer, and more good-humoured than ever.
Meanwhile Madam Beatrix was making her conquests on her own side, and
amongst them was one poor gentleman, who had been shot by her young eyes
two years before, and had never been quite cured of that wound; he knew,
to be sure, how hopeless any passion might be, directed in that quarter,
and had taken that best, though ignoble, _remedium amoris_, a speedy
retreat from before the charmer, and a long absence from her; and not
being dangerously smitten in the first instance, Esmond pretty soon got
the better of his complaint, and if he had it still, did not know he had
it, and bore it easily. But when he returned after Blenheim, the young
lady of sixteen, who had appeared the most beautiful object his eyes had
ever looked on two years back, was now advanced to a perfect ripeness and
perfection of beauty, such as instantly enthralled the poor devil, who had
already been a fugitive from her charms. Then he had seen her but for two
days, and fled; now he beheld her day after day, and when she was at
Court, watched after her; when she was at home, made one of the family
party; when she went abroad, rode after her mother’s chariot; when she
appeared in public places, was in the box near her, or in the pit looking
at her; when she went to church was sure to be there, though he might not
listen to the sermon, and be ready to hand her to her chair if she deigned
to accept of his services, and select him from a score of young men who
were always hanging round about her. When she went away, accompanying her
Majesty to Hampton Court, a darkness fell over London. Gods, what nights
has Esmond passed, thinking of her, rhyming about her, talking about her!
His friend Dick Steele was at this time courting the young lady, Mrs.
Scurlock, whom he married; she had a lodging in Kensington Square, hard by
my Lady Castlewood’s house there. Dick and Harry, being on the same
errand, used to meet constantly at Kensington. They were always prowling
about that place, or dismally walking thence, or eagerly running thither.
They emptied scores of bottles at the “King’s Arms”, each man prating of
his love, and allowing the other to talk on condition that he might have
his own turn as a listener. Hence arose an intimacy between them, though
to all the rest of their friends they must have been insufferable.
Esmond’s verses to “Gloriana at the Harpsichord”, to “Gloriana’s Nosegay”,
to “Gloriana at Court”, appeared this year in the _Observator_.—Have you
never read them? They were thought pretty poems, and attributed by some to
Mr. Prior.
This passion did not escape—how should it?—the clear eyes of Esmond’s
mistress: he told her all; what will a man not do when frantic with love?
To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he not make
others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart of a part of its own
pain? Day after day he would seek his dear mistress, pour insane hopes,
supplications, rhapsodies, raptures, into her ear. She listened, smiled,
consoled, with untiring pity and sweetness. Esmond was the eldest of her
children, so she was pleased to say; and as for her kindness, who ever had
or would look for aught else from one who was an angel of goodness and
pity? After what has been said, ’tis needless almost to add that poor
Esmond’s suit was unsuccessful. What was a nameless, penniless lieutenant
to do, when some of the greatest in the land were in the field? Esmond
never so much as thought of asking permission to hope so far above his
reach as he knew this prize was—and passed his foolish, useless life in
mere abject sighs and impotent longing. What nights of rage, what days of
torment, of passionate unfulfilled desire, of sickening jealousy, can he
recall! Beatrix thought no more of him than of the lackey that followed
her chair. His complaints did not touch her in the least; his raptures
rather fatigued her; she cared for his verses no more than for Dan
Chaucer’s, who’s dead these ever so many hundred years; she did not hate
him; she rather despised him, and just suffered him.
One day, after talking to Beatrix’s mother, his dear, fond, constant
mistress—for hours—for all day long—pouring out his flame and his passion,
his despair and rage, returning again and again to the theme, pacing the
room, tearing up the flowers on the table, twisting and breaking into bits
the wax out of the standish, and performing a hundred mad freaks of
passionate folly; seeing his mistress at last quite pale and tired out
with sheer weariness of compassion, and watching over his fever for the
hundredth time, Esmond seized up his hat, and took his leave. As he got
into Kensington Square, a sense of remorse came over him for the wearisome
pain he had been inflicting upon the dearest and kindest friend ever man
had. He went back to the house, where the servant still stood at the open
door, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress where he had left her in
the embrasure of the window, looking over the fields towards Chelsea. She
laughed, wiping away at the same time the tears which were in her kind
eyes; he flung himself down on his knees, and buried his head in her lap.
She had in her hand the stalk of one of the flowers, a pink, that he had
torn to pieces. “Oh, pardon me, pardon me, my dearest and kindest,” he
said; “I am in hell, and you are the angel that brings me a drop of
water.”
“I am your mother, you are my son, and I love you always,” she said,
holding her hands over him; and he went away comforted and humbled in
mind, as he thought of that amazing and constant love and tenderness with
which this sweet lady ever blessed and pursued him.
Chapter XI. The Famous Mr. Joseph Addison
The gentlemen ushers had a table at Kensington, and the Guard a very
splendid dinner daily at St. James’s, at either of which ordinaries Esmond
was free to dine. Dick Steele liked the Guard-table better than his own at
the gentleman ushers’, where there was less wine and more ceremony; and
Esmond had many a jolly afternoon in company of his friend, and a hundred
times at least saw Dick into his chair. If there is verity in wine,
according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick’s must
have been! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with kindness.
His talk was not witty so much as charming. He never said a word that
could anger anybody, and only became the more benevolent the more tipsy he
grew. Many of the wags derided the poor fellow in his cups, and chose him
as a butt for their satire; but there was a kindness about him, and a
sweet playful fancy, that seemed to Esmond far more charming than the
pointed talk of the brightest wits, with their elaborate repartees and
affected severities. I think Steele shone rather than sparkled. Those
famous _beaux-esprits_ of the coffee-houses (Mr. William Congreve, for
instance, when his gout and his grandeur permitted him to come among us)
would make many brilliant hits—half a dozen in a night sometimes—but, like
sharpshooters, when they had fired their shot, they were obliged to retire
under cover till their pieces were loaded again, and wait till they got
another chance at their enemy; whereas Dick never thought that his
bottle-companion was a butt to aim at—only a friend to shake by the hand.
The poor fellow had half the town in his confidence; everybody knew
everything about his loves and his debts, his creditors or his mistress’s
obduracy. When Esmond first came on to the town, honest Dick was all
flames and raptures for a young lady, a West India fortune, whom he
married. In a couple of years the lady was dead, the fortune was all but
spent, and the honest widower was as eager in pursuit of a new paragon of
beauty as if he had never courted and married and buried the last one.
Quitting the Guard-table on one sunny afternoon, when by chance Dick had a
sober fit upon him, he and his friend were making their way down Germain
Street, and Dick all of a sudden left his companion’s arm, and ran after a
gentleman who was poring over a folio volume at the book-shop near to St.
James’s Church. He was a fair, tall man, in a snuff-coloured suit, with a
plain sword, very sober, and almost shabby in appearance—at least when
compared to Captain Steele, who loved to adorn his jolly round person with
the finest of clothes, and shone in scarlet and gold lace. The captain
rushed up, then, to the student of the bookstall, took him in his arms,
hugged him, and would have kissed him—for Dick was always hugging and
bussing his friends—but the other stepped back with a flush on his pale
face, seeming to decline this public manifestation of Steele’s regard.
“My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thyself this age?” cries the
captain, still holding both his friend’s hands; “I have been languishing
for thee this fortnight.”
“A fortnight is not an age, Dick,” says the other, very good-humouredly.
(He had light blue eyes, extraordinary bright, and a face perfectly
regular and handsome, like a tinted statue.) “And I have been hiding
myself—where do you think?”
“What! not across the water, my dear Joe?” says Steele, with a look of
great alarm: “thou knowest I have always——”
“No,” says his friend, interrupting him with a smile: “we are not come to
such straits as that, Dick. I have been hiding, sir, at a place where
people never think of finding you—at my own lodgings, whither I am going
to smoke a pipe now and drink a glass of sack; will your honour come?”
“Harry Esmond, come hither,” cries out Dick. “Thou hast heard me talk over
and over again at my dearest Joe, my guardian angel.”
“Indeed,” says Mr. Esmond, with a bow, “it is not from you only that I
have learnt to admire Mr. Addison. We loved good poetry at Cambridge, as
well as at Oxford; and I have some of yours by heart, though I have put on
a red-coat ... ‘_O qui canoro blandius Orpheo vocale ducis carmen_’; shall
I go on, sir?” says Mr. Esmond, who indeed had read and loved the charming
Latin poems of Mr. Addison, as every scholar of that time knew and admired
them.
“This is Captain Esmond who was at Blenheim,” says Steele.
“Lieutenant Esmond,” says the other, with a low bow; “at Mr. Addison’s
service.”
“I have heard of you,” says Mr. Addison, with a smile; as, indeed,
everybody about town had heard that unlucky story about Esmond’s dowager
aunt and the duchess.
“We were going to the ‘George’, to take a bottle before the play,” says
Steele; “wilt thou be one, Joe?”
Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard by, where he was still rich
enough to give a good bottle of wine to his friends; and invited the two
gentlemen to his apartment in the Haymarket, whither we accordingly went.
“I shall get credit with my landlady,” says he, with a smile, “when she
sees two such fine gentlemen as you come up my stair.” And he politely
made his visitors welcome to his apartment, which was indeed but a shabby
one, though no grandee of the land could receive his guests with a more
perfect and courtly grace than this gentleman. A frugal dinner, consisting
of a slice of meat and a penny loaf, was awaiting the owner of the
lodgings. “My wine is better than my meat,” says Mr. Addison; “my Lord
Halifax sent me the burgundy.” And he set a bottle and glasses before his
friends, and eat his simple dinner in a very few minutes, after which the
three fell to, and began to drink. “You see,” says Mr. Addison, pointing
to his writing-table, whereon was a map of the action at Hochstedt, and
several other gazettes and pamphlets relating to the battle, “that I, too,
am busy about your affairs, captain. I am engaged as a poetical gazetteer,
to say truth, and am writing a poem on the campaign.”
So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him what he knew about the
famous battle, drew the river on the table, _aliquo mero_, and with the
aid of some bits of tobacco-pipe, showed the advance of the left wing,
where he had been engaged.
A sheet or two of the verses lay already on the table beside our bottles
and glasses, and Dick having plentifully refreshed himself from the
latter, took up the pages of manuscript, writ out with scarce a blot or
correction, in the author’s slim, neat handwriting, and began to read
therefrom with great emphasis and volubility. At pauses of the verse the
enthusiastic reader stopped and fired off a great salvo of applause.
Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison’s friend.
“You are like the German burghers,” says he, “and the princes on the
Mozelle; when our army came to a halt, they always sent a deputation to
compliment the chief, and fired a salute with all their artillery from
their walls.”
“And drunk the great chief’s health afterward, did not they?” says Captain
Steele, gaily filling up a bumper;—he never was tardy at that sort of
acknowledgement of a friend’s merit.
“And the duke, since you will have me act his grace’s part,” says Mr.
Addison, with a smile and something of a blush, “pledged his friends in
return. Most serene Elector of Covent Garden, I drink to your highness’s
health,” and he filled himself a glass. Joseph required scarce more
pressing than Dick to that sort of amusement; but the wine never seemed at
all to fluster Mr. Addison’s brains; it only unloosed his tongue, whereas
Captain Steele’s head and speech were quite overcome by a single bottle.
No matter what the verses were, and, to say truth, Mr. Esmond found some
of them more than indifferent, Dick’s enthusiasm for his chief never
faltered, and in every line from Addison’s pen, Steele found a
master-stroke. By the time Dick had come to that part of the poem, wherein
the bard describes as blandly as though he were recording a dance at the
Opera, or a harmless bout of bucolic cudgelling at a village fair, that
bloody and ruthless part of our campaign, with the remembrance whereof
every soldier who bore a part in it must sicken with shame—when we were
ordered to ravage and lay waste the Elector’s country; and with fire and
murder, slaughter and crime, a great part of his dominions was overrun:
when Dick came to the lines—
In vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand
With sword and fire, and ravages the land.
In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn,
A thousand villages to ashes turn.
To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat,
And mixed with bellowing herds confusedly bleat.
Their trembling lords the common shade partake,
And cries of infants found in every brake.
The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands,
Loath to obey his leader’s just commands.
The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed,
To see his just commands so well obeyed:
by this time wine and friendship had brought poor Dick to a perfectly
maudlin state, and he hiccuped out the last line with a tenderness that
set one of his auditors a-laughing.
“I admire the licence of you poets,” says Esmond to Mr. Addison. (Dick,
after reading of the verses, was fain to go off, insisting on kissing his
two dear friends before his departure, and reeling away with his periwig
over his eyes.) “I admire your art: the murder of the campaign is done to
military music, like a battle at the Opera, and the virgins shriek in
harmony, as our victorious grenadiers march into their villages. Do you
know what a scene it was” (by this time, perhaps, the wine had warmed Mr.
Esmond’s head too),—“what a triumph you are celebrating? what scenes of
shame and horror were enacted, over which the commander’s genius presided,
as calm as though he didn’t belong to our sphere? You talk of the
‘listening soldier fixed in sorrow’, the ‘leader’s grief swayed by
generous pity’; to my belief the leader cared no more for bleating flocks
than he did for infants’ cries, and many of our ruffians butchered one or
the other with equal alacrity. I was ashamed of my trade when I saw those
horrors perpetrated, which came under every man’s eyes. You hew out of
your polished verses a stately image of smiling victory; I tell you ’tis
an uncouth, distorted, savage idol; hideous, bloody, and barbarous. The
rites performed before it are shocking to think of. You great poets should
show it as it is—ugly and horrible, not beautiful and serene. Oh, sir, had
you made the campaign, believe me, you never would have sung it so.”
During this little outbreak, Mr. Addison was listening, smoking out of his
long pipe, and smiling very placidly. “What would you have?” says he. “In
our polished days, and according to the rules of art, ’tis impossible that
the Muse should depict tortures or begrime her hands with the horrors of
war. These are indicated rather than described; as in the Greek tragedies,
that, I dare say, you have read (and sure there can be no more elegant
specimens of composition); Agamemnon is slain, or Medea’s children
destroyed, away from the scene;—the chorus occupying the stage and singing
of the action to pathetic music. Something of this I attempt, my dear sir,
in my humble way: ’tis a panegyric I mean to write, and not a satire. Were
I to sing as you would have me, the town would tear the poet in pieces,
and burn his book by the hands of the common hangman. Do you not use
tobacco? Of all the weeds grown on earth, sure the nicotian is the most
soothing and salutary. We must paint our great duke,” Mr. Addison went on,
“not as a man, which no doubt he is, with weaknesses like the rest of us,
but as a hero. ’Tis in a triumph, not a battle, that your humble servant
is riding his sleek Pegasus. We college-poets trot, you know, on very easy
nags; it hath been, time out of mind, part of the poet’s profession to
celebrate the actions of heroes in verse, and to sing the deeds which you
men of war perform. I must follow the rules of my art, and the composition
of such a strain as this must be harmonious and majestic, not familiar, or
too near the vulgar truth. _Si parva licet_: if Virgil could invoke the
divine Augustus, a humbler poet from the banks of the Isis may celebrate a
victory and a conqueror of our own nation, in whose triumphs every Briton
has a share, and whose glory and genius contributes to every citizen’s
individual honour. When hath there been, since our Henrys’ and Edwards’
days, such a great feat of arms as that from which you yourself have
brought away marks of distinction? If ’tis in my power to sing that song
worthily, I will do so, and be thankful to my Muse. If I fail as a poet,
as a Briton at least I will show my loyalty and fling up my cap and huzzah
for the conqueror:
————“Rheni pacator et Istri
Omnis in hoc uno variis discordia cessit
Ordinibus; laetatur eques, plauditque senator,
Votaque patricio certant plebeia favori.”
“There were as brave men on that field,” says Mr. Esmond (who never could
be made to love the Duke of Marlborough, nor to forget those stories which
he used to hear in his youth regarding that great chief’s selfishness and
treachery)—“there were men at Blenheim as good as the leader, whom neither
knights nor senators applauded, nor voices plebeian or patrician favoured,
and who lie there forgotten, under the clods. What poet is there to sing
them?”
“To sing the gallant souls of heroes sent to Hades!” says Mr. Addison,
with a smile: “would you celebrate them all? If I may venture to question
anything in such an admirable work, the catalogue of the ships in Homer
hath always appeared to me as somewhat wearisome; what had the poem been,
supposing the writer had chronicled the names of captains, lieutenants,
rank and file? One of the greatest of a great man’s qualities is success;
’tis the result of all the others; ’tis a latent power in him which
compels the favour of the gods, and subjugates fortune. Of all his gifts I
admire that one in the great Marlborough. To be brave? every man is brave.
But in being victorious, as he is, I fancy there is something divine. In
presence of the occasion, the great soul of the leader shines out, and the
god is confessed. Death itself respects him, and passes by him to lay
others low. War and carnage flee before him to ravage other parts of the
field, as Hector from before the divine Achilles. You say he hath no pity;
no more have the gods, who are above it, and superhuman. The fainting
battle gathers strength at his aspect; and, wherever he rides, victory
charges with him.”
A couple of days after, when Mr. Esmond revisited his poetic friend, he
found this thought, struck out in the fervour of conversation, improved
and shaped into those famous lines, which are in truth the noblest in the
poem of the _Campaign_. As the two gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr.
Addison solacing himself with his customary pipe; the little maidservant
that waited on his lodging came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced
clothes, that had evidently been figuring at Court or a great man’s levee.
The courtier coughed a little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked round
the room curiously, which was shabby enough, as was the owner in his worn
snuff-coloured suit and plain tie-wig.
“How goes on the _magnum opus_, Mr. Addison?” says the Court gentleman on
looking down at the papers that were on the table.
“We were but now over it,” says Addison (the greatest courtier in the land
could not have a more splendid politeness, or greater dignity of manner);
“here is the plan,” says he, “on the table; _hac ibat Simois_, here ran
the little river Nebel: _hic est Sigeia tellus_, here are Tallard’s
quarters, at the bowl of this pipe, at the attack of which Captain Esmond
was present. I have the honour to introduce him to Mr. Boyle; and Mr.
Esmond was but now depicting _aliquo praelia mixta mero_, when you came
in.” In truth the two gentlemen had been so engaged when the visitor
arrived, and Addison, in his smiling way, speaking of Mr. Webb, colonel of
Esmond’s regiment (who commanded a brigade in the action, and greatly
distinguished himself there), was lamenting that he could find never a
suitable rhyme for Webb, otherwise the brigade should have had a place in
the poet’s verses. “And for you, you are but a lieutenant,” says Addison,
“and the Muse can’t occupy herself with any gentleman under the rank of a
field-officer.”
Mr. Boyle was all impatient to hear, saying that my Lord Treasurer and my
Lord Halifax were equally anxious; and Addison, blushing, began reading of
his verses, and, I suspect, knew their weak parts as well as the most
critical hearer. When he came to the lines describing the angel, that
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage,
he read with great animation, looking at Esmond, as much as to say, “You
know where that simile came from—from our talk, and our bottle of
burgundy, the other day.”
The poet’s two hearers were caught with enthusiasm, and applauded the
verses with all their might. The gentleman of the Court sprang up in great
delight. “Not a word more, my dear sir,” says he. “Trust me with the
papers—I’ll defend them with my life. Let me read them over to my Lord
Treasurer, whom I am appointed to see in half an hour. I venture to
promise, the verses shall lose nothing by my reading, and then, sir, we
shall see whether Lord Halifax has a right to complain that his friend’s
pension is no longer paid.” And without more ado, the courtier in lace
seized the manuscript pages, placed them in his breast with his ruffled
hand over his heart, executed a most gracious wave of the hat with the
disengaged hand, and smiled and bowed out of the room, leaving an odour of
pomander behind him.
“Does not the chamber look quite dark,” says Addison, surveying it, “after
the glorious appearance and disappearance of that gracious messenger? Why,
he illuminated the whole room. Your scarlet, Mr. Esmond, will bear any
light; but this threadbare old coat of mine, how very worn it looked under
the glare of that splendour! I wonder whether they will do anything for
me,” he continued. “When I came out of Oxford into the world, my patrons
promised me great things; and you see where their promises have landed me,
in a lodging up two pair of stairs, with a sixpenny dinner from the cook’s
shop. Well, I suppose this promise will go after the others, and fortune
will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time these seven years. ‘I
puff the prostitute away,’ ” says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of
his pipe. “There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, that is not bearable;
no hardship even in honest dependence that an honest man may not put up
with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, puffed up with her praises of
me, and thinking to make a figure in the world with the parts and learning
which had got me no small name in our college. The world is the ocean, and
Isis and Charwell are but little drops, of which the sea takes no account.
My reputation ended a mile beyond Maudlin Tower; no one took note of me;
and I learned this, at least, to bear up against evil fortune with a
cheerful heart. Friend Dick hath made a figure in the world, and has
passed me in the race long ago. What matters a little name or a little
fortune? There is no fortune that a philosopher cannot endure. I have been
not unknown as a scholar, and yet forced to live by turning bear-leader,
and teaching a boy to spell. What then? The life was not pleasant, but
possible—the bear was bearable. Should this venture fail, I will go back
to Oxford; and some day, when you are a general, you shall find me a
curate in a cassock and bands, and I shall welcome your honour to my
cottage in the country, and to a mug of penny ale. ’Tis not poverty that’s
the hardest to bear, or the least happy lot in life,” says Mr. Addison,
shaking the ash out of his pipe. “See, my pipe is smoked out. Shall we
have another bottle? I have still a couple in the cupboard, and of the
right sort. No more?—let us go abroad and take a turn on the Mall, or look
in at the theatre and see Dick’s comedy. ’Tis not a masterpiece of wit;
but Dick is a good fellow, though he doth not set the Thames on fire.”
Within a month after this day, Mr. Addison’s ticket had come up a
prodigious prize in the lottery of life. All the town was in an uproar of
admiration of his poem, the _Campaign_, which Dick Steele was spouting at
every coffee-house in Whitehall and Covent Garden. The wits on the other
side of Temple Bar saluted him at once as the greatest poet the world had
seen for ages; the people huzza’ed for Marlborough and for Addison, and,
more than this, the party in power provided for the meritorious poet, and
Mr. Addison got the appointment of Commissioner of Excise, which the
famous Mr. Locke vacated, and rose from this place to other dignities and
honours; his prosperity from henceforth to the end of his life being
scarce ever interrupted. But I doubt whether he was not happier in his
garret in the Haymarket, than ever he was in his splendid palace at
Kensington; and I believe the fortune that came to him in the shape of the
countess his wife, was no better than a shrew and a vixen.
-------------------------------------
Gay as the town was, ’twas but a dreary place for Mr. Esmond, whether his
charmer was in it or out of it, and he was glad when his general gave him
notice that he was going back to his division of the army which lay in
winter quarters at Bois-le-Duc. His dear mistress bade him farewell with a
cheerful face; her blessing he knew he had always, and wheresoever fate
carried him. Mrs. Beatrix was away in attendance on her Majesty at Hampton
Court, and kissed her fair finger-tips to him, by way of adieu, when he
rode thither to take his leave. She received her kinsman in a waiting-room
where there were half a dozen more ladies of the Court, so that his
high-flown speeches, had he intended to make any (and very likely he did),
were impossible; and she announced to her friends that her cousin was
going to the army, in as easy a manner as she would have said he was going
to a chocolate-house. He asked with a rather rueful face, if she had any
orders for the army? and she was pleased to say that she would like a
mantle of Mechlin lace. She made him a saucy curtsy in reply to his own
dismal bow. She deigned to kiss her finger-tips from the window, where she
stood laughing with the other ladies, and chanced to see him as he made
his way to the “Toy”. The dowager at Chelsea was not sorry to part with
him this time. “_Mon cher, vous êtes triste comme un sermon_,” she did him
the honour to say to him; indeed, gentlemen in his condition are by no
means amusing companions, and besides, the fickle old woman had now found
a much more amiable favourite, and _raffole_’d for her darling lieutenant
of the Guard. Frank remained behind for a while, and did not join the army
till later, in the suite of his grace the commander-in-chief. His dear
mother, on the last day before Esmond went away, and when the three dined
together, made Esmond promise to befriend her boy, and besought Frank to
take the example of his kinsman as of a loyal gentleman and brave soldier,
so she was pleased to say; and at parting, betrayed not the least sign of
faltering or weakness, though, God knows, that fond heart was fearful
enough when others were concerned, though so resolute in bearing its own
pain.
Esmond’s general embarked at Harwich. ’Twas a grand sight to see Mr. Webb
dressed in scarlet on the deck, waving his hat as our yacht put off, and
the guns saluted from the shore. Harry did not see his viscount again,
until three months after, at Bois-le-Duc, when his grace the duke came to
take the command, and Frank brought a budget of news from home: how he had
supped with this actress, and got tired of that; how he had got the better
of Mr. St. John, both over the bottle, and with Mrs. Mountford, of the
Haymarket Theatre (a veteran charmer of fifty, with whom the young
scapegrace chose to fancy himself in love); how his sister was always at
her tricks, and had jilted a young baron for an old earl. “I can’t make
out Beatrix,” he said; “she cares for none of us—she only thinks about
herself; she is never happy unless she is quarrelling; but as for my
mother—my mother, Harry, is an angel.” Harry tried to impress on the young
fellow the necessity of doing everything in his power to please that
angel; not to drink too much; not to go into debt; not to run after the
pretty Flemish girls, and so forth, as became a senior speaking to a lad.
“But Lord bless thee!” the boy said; “I may do what I like, and I know she
will love me all the same;” and so, indeed, he did what he liked.
Everybody spoiled him, and his grave kinsman as much as the rest.
Chapter XII. I Get A Company In The Campaign Of 1706
On Whit Sunday, the famous 23rd of May, 1706, my young lord first came
under the fire of the enemy, whom we found posted in order of battle,
their lines extending three miles or more, over the high ground behind the
little Gheet river, and having on his left the little village of Anderkirk
or Autre-église, and on his right Ramillies, which has given its name to
one of the most brilliant and disastrous days of battle that history ever
hath recorded.
Our duke here once more met his old enemy of Blenheim, the Bavarian
Elector and the Mareschal Villeroy, over whom the Prince of Savoy had
gained the famous victory of Chiari. What Englishman or Frenchman doth not
know the issue of that day? Having chosen his own ground, having a force
superior to the English, and besides the excellent Spanish and Bavarian
troops, the whole Maison-du-Roy with him, the most splendid body of horse
in the world,—in an hour (and in spite of the prodigious gallantry of the
French Royal Household, who charged through the centre of our line and
broke it), this magnificent army of Villeroy was utterly routed by troops
that had been marching for twelve hours, and by the intrepid skill of a
commander, who did, indeed, seem in the presence of the enemy to be the
very Genius of Victory.
I think it was more from conviction than policy, though that policy was
surely the most prudent in the world, that the great duke always spoke of
his victories with an extraordinary modesty, and as if it was not so much
his own admirable genius and courage which achieved these amazing
successes, but as if he was a special and fatal instrument in the hands of
Providence, that willed irresistibly the enemy’s overthrow. Before his
actions he always had the church service read solemnly, and professed an
undoubting belief that our queen’s arms were blessed and our victory sure.
All the letters which he writ after his battles show awe rather than
exultation; and he attributes the glory of these achievements, about which
I have heard mere petty officers and men bragging with a pardonable
vainglory, in no wise to his own bravery or skill, but to the
superintending protection of Heaven, which he ever seemed to think was our
especial ally. And our army got to believe so, and the enemy learnt to
think so too; for we never entered into a battle without a perfect
confidence that it was to end in a victory; nor did the French, after the
issue of Blenheim, and that astonishing triumph of Ramillies, ever meet us
without feeling that the game was lost before it was begun to be played,
and that our general’s fortune was irresistible. Here, as at Blenheim, the
duke’s charger was shot, and ’twas thought for a moment he was dead. As he
mounted another, Binfield, his master of the horse, kneeling to hold his
grace’s stirrup, had his head shot away by a cannon-ball. A French
gentleman of the Royal Household, that was a prisoner with us, told the
writer that at the time of the charge of the Household, when their horse
and ours were mingled, an Irish officer recognized the Prince-Duke, and
calling out—“Marlborough, Marlborough!” fired his pistol at him _à bout
portant_, and that a score more carbines and pistols were discharged at
him. Not one touched him: he rode through the French Cuirassiers sword in
hand, and entirely unhurt, and calm and smiling rallied the German horse,
that was reeling before the enemy, brought these and twenty squadrons of
Orkney’s back upon them, and drove the French across the river
again—leading the charge himself, and defeating the only dangerous move
the French made that day.
Major-General Webb commanded on the left of our line, and had his own
regiment under the orders of their beloved colonel. Neither he nor they
belied their character for gallantry on this occasion; but it was about
his dear young lord that Esmond was anxious, never having sight of him
save once, in the whole course of the day, when he brought an order from
the commander-in-chief to Mr. Webb. When our horse, having charged round
the right flank of the enemy by Overkirk, had thrown him into entire
confusion, a general advance was made, and our whole line of foot,
crossing the little river and the morass, ascended the high ground where
the French were posted, cheering as they went, the enemy retreating before
them. ’Twas a service of more glory than danger, the French battalions
never waiting to exchange push of pike or bayonet with ours; and the
gunners flying from their pieces which our line left behind us as they
advanced, and the French fell back.
At first it was a retreat orderly enough; but presently the retreat became
a rout, and a frightful slaughter of the French ensued on this panic; so
that an army of sixty thousand men was utterly crushed and destroyed in
the course of a couple of hours. It was as if a hurricane had seized a
compact and numerous fleet, flung it all to the winds, shattered, sunk,
and annihilated it; _afflavit Deus, et dissipati sunt_. The French army of
Flanders was gone, their artillery, their standards, their treasure,
provisions, and ammunition were all left behind them: the poor devils had
even fled without their soup-kettles, which are as much the palladia of
the French infantry as of the Grand Signor’s Janizaries, and round which
they rally even more than round their lilies.
The pursuit, and a dreadful carnage which ensued (for the dregs of a
battle, however brilliant, are ever a base residue of rapine, cruelty, and
drunken plunder), was carried far beyond the field of Ramillies.
Honest Lockwood, Esmond’s servant, no doubt wanted to be among the
marauders himself and take his share of the booty; for when, the action
over, and the troops got to their ground for the night, the captain bade
Lockwood get a horse, he asked, with a very rueful countenance, whether
his honour would have him come too; but his honour only bade him go about
his own business, and Jack hopped away quite delighted as soon as he saw
his master mounted. Esmond made his way, and not without danger and
difficulty, to his grace’s head quarters, and found for himself very
quickly where the aides de camp’s quarters were, in an outbuilding of a
farm, where several of these gentlemen were seated, drinking and singing,
and at supper. If he had any anxiety about his boy, ’twas relieved at
once. One of the gentlemen was singing a song to a tune that Mr. Farquhar
and Mr. Gay both had used in their admirable comedies, and very popular in
the army of that day; after the song came a chorus, “Over the hills and
far away”; and Esmond heard Frank’s fresh voice soaring, as it were, over
the songs of the rest of the young men—a voice that had always a certain
artless, indescribable pathos with it, and indeed which caused Mr.
Esmond’s eyes to fill with tears now, out of thankfulness to God the child
was safe and still alive to laugh and sing.
When the song was over Esmond entered the room, where he knew several of
the gentlemen present, and there sat my young lord, having taken off his
cuirass, his waistcoat open, his face flushed, his long yellow hair
hanging over his shoulders, drinking with the rest; the youngest, gayest,
handsomest there. As soon as he saw Esmond, he clapped down his glass, and
running towards his friend, put both his arms round him and embraced him.
The other’s voice trembled with joy as he greeted the lad; he had thought
but now as he stood in the courtyard under the clear-shining moonlight:
“Great God! what a scene of murder is here within a mile of us; what
hundreds and thousands have faced danger to-day; and here are these lads
singing over their cups, and the same moon that is shining over yonder
horrid field is looking down on Walcote very likely, while my lady sits
and thinks about her boy that is at the war.” As Esmond embraced his young
pupil now, ’twas with the feeling of quite religious thankfulness, and an
almost paternal pleasure that he beheld him.
Round his neck was a star with a striped ribbon, that was made of small
brilliants and might be worth a hundred crowns. “Look,” says he, “won’t
that be a pretty present for mother?”
“Who gave you the Order?” says Harry, saluting the gentleman: “did you win
it in battle?”
“I won it,” cried the other, “with my sword and my spear. There was a
mousquetaire that had it round his neck—such a big mousquetaire, as big as
General Webb. I called out to him to surrender, and that I’d give him
quarter: he called me a _petit polisson_, and fired his pistol at me, and
then sent it at my head with a curse. I rode at him, sir, drove my sword
right under his arm-hole, and broke it in the rascal’s body. I found a
purse in his holster with sixty-five louis in it, and a bundle of
love-letters, and a flask of Hungary-water. _Vive la guerre!_ there are
the ten pieces you lent me. I should like to have a fight every day;” and
he pulled at his little moustache and bade a servant bring a supper to
Captain Esmond.
Harry fell to with a very good appetite; he had tasted nothing since
twenty hours ago, at early dawn. Master Grandson, who read this, do you
look for the history of battles and sieges? Go, find them in the proper
books; this is only the story of your grandfather and his family. Far more
pleasant to him than the victory, though for that too he may say
_meminisse juvat_, it was to find that the day was over, and his dear
young Castlewood was unhurt.
And would you, sirrah, wish to know how it was that a sedate captain of
foot, a studious and rather solitary bachelor of eight or nine and twenty
years of age, who did not care very much for the jollities which his
comrades engaged in, and was never known to lose his heart in any garrison
town—should you wish to know why such a man had so prodigious a
tenderness, and tended so fondly a boy of eighteen, wait, my good friend,
until thou art in love with thy schoolfellow’s sister, and then see how
mighty tender thou wilt be towards him. Esmond’s general and his grace the
prince-duke were notoriously at variance, and the former’s friendship was
in no wise likely to advance any man’s promotion, of whose services Webb
spoke well; but rather likely to injure him, so the army said, in the
favour of the greater man. However, Mr. Esmond had the good fortune to be
mentioned very advantageously by Major-General Webb in his report after
the action; and the major of his regiment and two of the captains having
been killed upon the day of Ramillies, Esmond, who was second of the
lieutenants, got his company, and had the honour of serving as Captain
Esmond in the next campaign.
My lord went home in the winter, but Esmond was afraid to follow him. His
dear mistress wrote him letters more than once, thanking him, as mothers
know how to thank, for his care and protection of her boy, extolling
Esmond’s own merits with a great deal more praise than they deserved; for
he did his duty no better than any other officer; and speaking sometimes,
though gently and cautiously, of Beatrix. News came from home of at least
half a dozen grand matches that the beautiful maid of honour was about to
make. She was engaged to an earl, our gentlemen of St. James’s said, and
then jilted him for a duke, who, in his turn, had drawn off. Earl or duke
it might be who should win this Helen, Esmond knew she would never bestow
herself on a poor captain. Her conduct, it was clear, was little
satisfactory to her mother, who scarcely mentioned her, or else the kind
lady thought it was best to say nothing, and leave time to work out its
cure. At any rate, Harry was best away from the fatal object which always
wrought him so much mischief; and so he never asked for leave to go home,
but remained with his regiment that was garrisoned in Brussels, which city
fell into our hands when the victory of Ramillies drove the French out of
Flanders.
Chapter XIII. I Meet An Old Acquaintance In Flanders, And Find My Mother’s
Grave And My Own Cradle There
Being one day in the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels, admiring the
antique splendour of the architecture (and always entertaining a great
tenderness and reverence for the Mother Church, that hath been as wickedly
persecuted in England as ever she herself persecuted in the days of her
prosperity), Esmond saw kneeling at a side altar, an officer in a green
uniform coat, very deeply engaged in devotion. Something familiar in the
figure and posture of the kneeling man struck Captain Esmond, even before
he saw the officer’s face. As he rose up, putting away into his pocket a
little black breviary, such as priests use, Esmond beheld a countenance so
like that of his friend and tutor of early days, Father Holt, that he
broke out into an exclamation of astonishment and advanced a step towards
the gentleman, who was making his way out of church. The German officer
too looked surprised when he saw Esmond, and his face from being pale grew
suddenly red. By this mark of recognition, the Englishman knew that he
could not be mistaken; and though the other did not stop, but on the
contrary rather hastily walked away towards the door, Esmond pursued him
and faced him once more, as the officer helping himself to holy water,
turned mechanically towards the altar to bow to it ere he quitted the
sacred edifice.
“My father!” says Esmond in English.
“Silence! I do not understand. I do not speak English,” says the other in
Latin.
Esmond smiled at this sign of confusion, and replied in the same language.
“I should know my father in any garment, black or white, shaven or
bearded,” for the Austrian officer was habited quite in the military
manner, and had as warlike a moustachio as any Pandour.
He laughed—we were on the church steps by this time, passing through the
crowd of beggars that usually is there holding up little trinkets for sale
and whining for alms. “You speak Latin,” says he, “in the English way,
Harry Esmond; you have forsaken the old true Roman tongue you once knew.”
His tone was very frank, and friendly quite; the kind voice of fifteen
years back; he gave Esmond his hand as he spoke.
“Others have changed their coats too, my father,” says Esmond, glancing at
his friend’s military decoration.
“Hush! I am Mr. or Captain von Holtz, in the Bavarian Elector’s service,
and on a mission to his highness the Prince of Savoy. You can keep a
secret I know from old times.”
“Captain von Holtz,” says Esmond, “I am your very humble servant.”
“And you, too, have changed your coat,” continues the other, in his
laughing way; “I have heard of you at Cambridge and afterwards: we have
friends everywhere; and I am told that Mr. Esmond at Cambridge was as good
a fencer as he was a bad theologian.” (So, thinks Esmond, my old _maitre
d’armes_ was a Jesuit as they said.)
“Perhaps you are right,” says the other, reading his thoughts quite as he
used to do in old days: “you were all but killed at Hochstedt of a wound
in the left side. You were before that at Vigo, aide de camp to the Duke
of Ormonde. You got your company the other day after Ramillies; your
general and the prince-duke are not friends; he is of the Webbs of Lydiard
Tregoze, in the county of York, a relation of my Lord St. John. Your
cousin, Monsieur de Castlewood, served his first campaign this year in the
Guard; yes, I do know a few things as you see.”
Captain Esmond laughed in his turn. “You have indeed a curious knowledge,”
he says. A foible of Mr. Holt’s, who did know more about books and men
than, perhaps, almost any person Esmond had ever met, was omniscience;
thus in every point he here professed to know, he was nearly right, but
not quite. Esmond’s wound was in the right side, not the left, his first
general was General Lumley; Mr. Webb came out of Wiltshire, not out of
Yorkshire; and so forth. Esmond did not think fit to correct his old
master in these trifling blunders, but they served to give him a knowledge
of the other’s character, and he smiled to think that this was his oracle
of early days; only now no longer infallible or divine.
“Yes,” continues Father Holt, or Captain von Holtz, “for a man who has not
been in England these eight years, I know what goes on in London very
well. The old dean is dead, my Lady Castlewood’s father. Do you know that
your recusant bishops wanted to consecrate him Bishop of Southampton, and
that Collier is Bishop of Thetford by the same imposition? The Princess
Anne has the gout and eats too much; when the king returns, Collier will
be an archbishop.”
“Amen!” says Esmond, laughing; “and I hope to see your eminence no longer
in jack-boots, but red stockings, at Whitehall.”
“You are always with us—I know that—I heard of that when you were at
Cambridge; so was the late lord; so is the young viscount.”
“And so was my father before me,” said Mr. Esmond, looking calmly at the
other, who did not, however, show the least sign of intelligence in his
impenetrable grey eyes—how well Harry remembered them and their look! only
crows’ feet were wrinkled round them—marks of black old Time had settled
there.
Esmond’s face chose to show no more sign of meaning than the father’s.
There may have been on the one side and the other just the faintest
glitter of recognition, as you see a bayonet shining out of an ambush; but
each party fell back, when everything was again dark.
“And you, _mon capitaine_, where have you been?” says Esmond, turning away
the conversation from this dangerous ground, where neither chose to
engage.
“I may have been in Pekin,” says he, “or I may have been in Paraguay—who
knows where? I am now Captain von Holtz, in the service of his electoral
highness, come to negotiate exchange of prisoners with his highness of
Savoy.”
’Twas well known that very many officers in our army were well-affected
towards the young king at St. Germains, whose right to the throne was
undeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by far
the greater part of the English people would have preferred, to the having
a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity,
boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current.
It wounded our English pride to think, that a shabby High-Dutch duke,
whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many of the princes
of our ancient English nobility, who could not speak a word of our
language, and whom we chose to represent as a sort of German boor, feeding
on train-oil and sauerkraut, with a bevy of mistresses in a barn, should
come to reign over the proudest and most polished people in the world.
Were we, the conquerors of the Grand Monarch, to submit to that ignoble
domination? What did the Hanoverian’s Protestantism matter to us? Was it
not notorious (we were told and led to believe so) that one of the
daughters of this Protestant hero was being bred up with no religion at
all, as yet, and ready to be made Lutheran or Roman, according as the
husband might be, whom her parents should find for her? This talk, very
idle and abusive much of it was, went on at a hundred mess-tables in the
army; there was scarce an ensign that did not hear it, or join in it, and
everybody knew, or affected to know, that the commander-in-chief himself
had relations with his nephew, the Duke of Berwick (’twas by an
Englishman, thank God, that we were beaten at Almanza), and that his grace
was most anxious to restore the royal race of his benefactors, and to
repair his former treason.
This is certain, that for a considerable period no officer in the duke’s
army lost favour with the commander-in-chief for entertaining or
proclaiming his loyalty towards the exiled family. When the Chevalier de
St. George, as the King of England called himself, came with the dukes of
the French blood royal, to join the French army under Vendosme, hundreds
of ours saw him and cheered him, and we all said he was like his father in
this, who, seeing the action of La Hogue fought between the French ships
and ours, was on the side of his native country during the battle. But
this, at least the chevalier knew, and every one knew, that, however well
our troops and their general might be inclined towards the prince
personally, in the face of the enemy there was no question at all.
Wherever my lord duke found a French army, he would fight and beat it, as
he did at Oudenarde, two years after Ramillies, where his grace achieved
another of his transcendent victories; and the noble young prince, who
charged gallantly along with the magnificent Maison-du-Roy, sent to
compliment his conquerors after the action.
In this battle, where the young Electoral Prince of Hanover behaved
himself very gallantly, fighting on our side, Esmond’s dear General Webb
distinguished himself prodigiously, exhibiting consummate skill and
coolness as a general, and fighting with the personal bravery of a common
soldier. Esmond’s good luck again attended him; he escaped without a hurt,
although more than a third of his regiment was killed, had again the
honour to be favourably mentioned in his commander’s report, and was
advanced to the rank of major. But of this action there is little need to
speak, as it hath been related in every _Gazette_, and talked of in every
hamlet in this country. To return from it to the writer’s private affairs,
which here, in his old age, and at a distance, he narrates for his
children who come after him. Before Oudenarde, and after that chance
rencontre with Captain von Holtz at Brussels, a space of more than a year
elapsed, during which the captain of Jesuits and the captain of Webb’s
Fusiliers were thrown very much together. Esmond had no difficulty in
finding out (indeed, the other made no secret of it to him, being assured
from old times of his pupil’s fidelity), that the negotiator of prisoners
was an agent from St. Germains, and that he carried intelligence between
great personages in our camp and that of the French. “My business,” said
he, “and I tell you, both because I can trust you, and your keen eyes have
already discovered it, is between the King of England and his subjects,
here engaged in fighting the French king. As between you and them, all the
Jesuits in the world will not prevent your quarrelling: fight it out,
gentlemen. St. George for England, I say—and you know who says so,
wherever he may be.”
I think Holt loved to make a parade of mystery, as it were, and would
appear and disappear at our quarters as suddenly as he used to return and
vanish in the old days at Castlewood. He had passes between both armies,
and seemed to know (but with that inaccuracy which belonged to the good
father’s omniscience) equally well what passed in the French camp and in
ours. One day he would give Esmond news of a great _feste_ that took place
in the French quarters, of a supper of Monsieur de Rohan’s, where there
was play and violins, and then dancing and masques: the king drove thither
in Marshal Villar’s own guinguette. Another day he had the news of his
Majesty’s ague, the king had not had a fit these ten days, and might be
said to be well. Captain Holtz made a visit to England during this time,
so eager was he about negotiating prisoners; and ’twas on returning from
this voyage that he began to open himself more to Esmond, and to make him,
as occasion served, at their various meetings, several of those
confidences which are here set down all together.
The reason of his increased confidence was this: upon going to London, the
old director of Esmond’s aunt, the dowager, paid her ladyship a visit at
Chelsey, and there learnt from her that Captain Esmond was acquainted with
the secret of his family, and was determined never to divulge it. The
knowledge of this fact raised Esmond in his old tutor’s eyes, so Holt was
pleased to say, and he admired Harry very much for his abnegation.
“The family at Castlewood have done far more for me than my own ever did,”
Esmond said. “I would give my life for them. Why should I grudge the only
benefit that ’tis in my power to confer on them?” The good father’s eyes
filled with tears at this speech, which to the other seemed very simple:
he embraced Esmond, and broke out into many admiring expressions; he said
he was a _noble cœur_, that he was proud of him, and fond of him as his
pupil and friend—regretted more than ever that he had lost him, and been
forced to leave him in those early times, when he might have had an
influence over him, have brought him into that only true Church to which
the father belonged, and enlisted him in the noblest army in which a man
ever engaged—meaning his own Society of Jesus, which numbers (says he) in
its troops the greatest heroes the world ever knew;—warriors, brave enough
to dare or endure anything, to encounter any odds, to die any
death;—soldiers that have won triumphs a thousand times more brilliant
than those of the greatest general; that have brought nations on their
knees to their sacred banner, the Cross; that have achieved glories and
palms incomparably brighter than those awarded to the most splendid
earthly conquerors—crowns of immortal light, and seats in the high places
of Heaven.
Esmond was thankful for his old friend’s good opinion, however little he
might share the Jesuit father’s enthusiasm. “I have thought of that
question, too,” says he, “dear father,” and he took the other’s
hand—“thought it out for myself, as all men must, and contrive to do the
right, and trust to Heaven as devoutly in my way as you in yours. Another
six months of you as a child, and I had desired no better. I used to weep
upon my pillow at Castlewood as I thought of you, and I might have been a
brother of your order; and who knows,” Esmond added, with a smile, “a
priest in full orders, and with a pair of moustachios, and a Bavarian
uniform.”
“My son,” says Father Holt, turning red, “in the cause of religion and
loyalty all disguises are fair.”
“Yes,” broke in Esmond, “all disguises are fair, you say; and all
uniforms, say I, black or red,—a black cockade or a white one—or a laced
hat, or a sombrero, with a tonsure under it. I cannot believe that St.
Francis Xavier sailed over the sea in a cloak, or raised the dead—I tried;
and very nearly did once, but cannot. Suffer me to do the right, and to
hope for the best in my own way.”
Esmond wished to cut short the good father’s theology, and succeeded; and
the other, sighing over his pupil’s invincible ignorance, did not withdraw
his affection from him, but gave him his utmost confidence—as much, that
is to say, as a priest can give: more than most do; for he was naturally
garrulous, and too eager to speak.
Holt’s friendship encouraged Captain Esmond to ask, what he long wished to
know, and none could tell him, some history of the poor mother whom he had
often imagined in his dreams, and whom he never knew. He described to Holt
those circumstances which are already put down in the first part of this
story—the promise he had made to his dear lord, and that dying friend’s
confession; and he besought Mr. Holt to tell him what he knew regarding
the poor woman from whom he had been taken.
“She was of this very town,” Holt said, and took Esmond to see the street
where her father lived, and where, as he believed, she was born. “In 1676,
when your father came hither in the retinue of the late king, then Duke of
York, and banished hither in disgrace, Captain Thomas Esmond became
acquainted with your mother, pursued her, and made a victim of her; he
hath told me in many subsequent conversations, which I felt bound to keep
private then, that she was a woman of great virtue and tenderness, and in
all respects a most fond, faithful creature. He called himself Captain
Thomas, having good reason to be ashamed of his conduct towards her, and
hath spoken to me many times with sincere remorse for that, as with fond
love for her many amiable qualities. He owned to having treated her very
ill; and that at this time his life was one of profligacy, gambling, and
poverty. She became with child of you; was cursed by her own parents at
that discovery; though she never upbraided, except by her involuntary
tears, and the misery depicted on her countenance, the author of her
wretchedness and ruin.
“Thomas Esmond—Captain Thomas, as he was called—became engaged in a
gaming-house brawl, of which the consequence was a duel, and a wound so
severe that he never—his surgeon said—could outlive it. Thinking his death
certain, and touched with remorse, he sent for a priest of the very Church
of St. Gudule where I met you; and on the same day, after his making
submission to our Church, was married to your mother a few weeks before
you were born. My Lord Viscount Castlewood, Marquis of Esmond, by King
James’s patent, which I myself took to your father, your lordship was
christened at St. Gudule by the same curé who married your parents, and by
the name of Henry Thomas, son of E. Thomas, officier Anglais, and Gertrude
Maes. You see you belong to us from your birth, and why I did not christen
you when you became my dear little pupil at Castlewood.
“Your father’s wound took a favourable turn—perhaps his conscience was
eased by the right he had done—and to the surprise of the doctors he
recovered. But as his health came back, his wicked nature, too, returned.
He was tired of the poor girl, whom he had ruined; and receiving some
remittance from his uncle, my lord the old viscount then in England, he
pretended business, promised return, and never saw your poor mother more.
“He owned to me, in confession first, but afterwards in talk before your
aunt, his wife, else I never could have disclosed what I now tell you,
that on coming to London he writ a pretended confession to poor Gertrude
Maes—Gertrude Esmond—of his having been married in England previously,
before uniting himself with her; said that his name was not Thomas; that
he was about to quit Europe for the Virginia plantations, where, indeed,
your family had a grant of land from King Charles the First; sent her a
supply of money, the half of the last hundred guineas he had, entreated
her pardon, and bade her farewell.
“Poor Gertrude never thought that the news in this letter might be untrue
as the rest of your father’s conduct to her. But though a young man of her
own degree, who knew her history, and whom she liked before she saw the
English gentleman who was the cause of all her misery, offered to marry
her, and to adopt you as his own child, and give you his name, she refused
him. This refusal only angered her father, who had taken her home; she
never held up her head there, being the subject of constant unkindness
after her fall; and some devout ladies of her acquaintance offering to pay
a little pension for her, she went into a convent, and you were put out to
nurse.
“A sister of the young fellow, who would have adopted you as his son, was
the person who took charge of you. Your mother and this person were
cousins. She had just lost a child of her own, which you replaced, your
own mother being too sick and feeble to feed you; and presently your nurse
grew so fond of you, that she even grudged letting you visit the convent
where your mother was, and where the nuns petted the little infant, as
they pitied and loved its unhappy parent. Her vocation became stronger
every day, and at the end of two years she was received as a sister of the
house.
“Your nurse’s family were silk-weavers out of France, whither they
returned to Arras in French Flanders, shortly before your mother took her
vows, carrying you with them, then a child of three years old. ’Twas a
town, before the late vigorous measures of the French king, full of
Protestants, and here your nurse’s father, old Pastoureau, he with whom
you afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted the reformed doctrines, perverting
all his house with him. They were expelled thence by the edict of his most
Christian Majesty, and came to London, and set up their looms in
Spittlefields. The old man brought a little money with him, and carried on
his trade, but in a poor way. He was a widower; by this time his daughter,
a widow too, kept house for him, and his son and he laboured together at
their vocation. Meanwhile your father had publicly owned his conversion
just before King Charles’s death (in whom our Church had much such another
convert), was reconciled to my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and married, as
you know, to his daughter.
“It chanced that the younger Pastoureau, going with a piece of brocade to
the mercer, who employed him, on Ludgate Hill, met his old rival coming
out of an ordinary there. Pastoureau knew your father at once, seized him
by the collar, and upbraided him as a villain, who had seduced his
mistress, and afterwards deserted her and her son. Mr. Thomas Esmond also
recognized Pastoureau at once, besought him to calm his indignation, and
not to bring a crowd round about them; and bade him to enter into the
tavern, out of which he had just stepped, when he would give him any
explanation. Pastoureau entered, and heard the landlord order the drawer
to show Captain Thomas to a room; it was by his Christian name that your
father was familiarly called at his tavern haunts, which, to say the
truth, were none of the most reputable.
“I must tell you that Captain Thomas, or my lord viscount afterwards, was
never at a loss for a story, and could cajole a woman or a dun with a
volubility, and an air of simplicity at the same time, of which many a
creditor of his has been the dupe. His tales used to gather verisimilitude
as he went on with them. He strung together fact after fact with a
wonderful rapidity and coherence. It required, saving your presence, a
very long habit of acquaintance with your father to know when his lordship
was l——,—telling the truth or no.
“He told me with rueful remorse when he was ill—for the fear of death set
him instantly repenting, and with shrieks of laughter when he was well,
his lordship having a very great sense of humour—how in half an hour’s
time, and before a bottle was drunk, he had completely succeeded in biting
poor Pastoureau. The seduction he owned too: that he could not help: he
was quite ready with tears at a moment’s warning, and shed them profusely
to melt his credulous listener. He wept for your mother even more than
Pastoureau did, who cried very heartily, poor fellow, as my lord informed
me; he swore upon his honour that he had twice sent money to Brussels, and
mentioned the name of the merchant with whom it was lying for poor
Gertrude’s use. He did not even know whether she had a child or no, or
whether she was alive or dead; but got these facts easily out of honest
Pastoureau’s answers to him. When he heard that she was in a convent, he
said he hoped to end his days in one himself, should he survive his wife,
whom he hated, and had been forced by a cruel father to marry; and when he
was told that Gertrude’s son was alive, and actually in London, ‘I
started,’ says he; ‘for then, damme, my wife was expecting to lie-in, and
I thought should this old Put, my father-in-law, run rusty, here would be
a good chance to frighten him.’
“He expressed the deepest gratitude to the Pastoureau family for their
care of the infant; you were now near six years old; and on Pastoureau
bluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant and see the
darling child, that they never wished to see his ill-omened face again
within their doors; that he might have the boy, though they should all be
very sorry to lose him; and that they would take his money, they being
poor, if he gave it; or bring him up, by God’s help, as they had hitherto
done, without: he acquiesced in this at once, with a sigh, said, ‘Well,
’twas better that the dear child should remain with friends who had been
so admirably kind to him’; and in his talk to me afterwards, honestly
praised and admired the weaver’s conduct and spirit; owned that the
Frenchman was a right fellow, and he, the Lord have mercy upon him, a sad
villain.
“Your father,” Mr. Holt went on to say, “was good-natured with his money
when he had it; and having that day received a supply from his uncle, gave
the weaver ten pieces with perfect freedom, and promised him further
remittances. He took down eagerly Pastoureau’s name and place of abode in
his table-book, and when the other asked him for his own, gave, with the
utmost readiness, his name as Captain Thomas, New Lodge, Penzance,
Cornwall; he said he was in London for a few days only on business
connected with his wife’s property; described her as a shrew, though a
woman of kind disposition; and depicted his father as a Cornish squire, in
an infirm state of health, at whose death he hoped for something handsome,
when he promised richly to reward the admirable protector of his child,
and to provide for the boy. ‘And by Gad, sir,’ he said to me in his
strange laughing way, ‘I ordered a piece of brocade of the very same
pattern as that which the fellow was carrying, and presented it to my wife
for a morning wrapper, to receive company after she lay-in of our little
boy.’
“Your little pension was paid regularly enough; and when your father
became Viscount Castlewood on his uncle’s demise, I was employed to keep a
watch over you, and ’twas at my instance that you were brought home. Your
foster-mother was dead; her father made acquaintance with a woman whom he
married, who quarrelled with his son. The faithful creature came back to
Brussels to be near the woman he loved, and died, too, a few months before
her. Will you see her cross in the convent cemetery? The superior is an
old penitent of mine, and remembers Sœur Marie Madeleine fondly still.”
-------------------------------------
Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and saw, amidst a
thousand black crosses, casting their shadows across the grassy mounds,
that particular one which marked his mother’s resting-place. Many more of
those poor creatures that lay there had adopted that same name, with which
sorrow had rebaptized her, and which fondly seemed to hint their
individual story of love and grief. He fancied her in tears and darkness,
kneeling at the foot of her cross, under which her cares were buried.
Surely he knelt down, and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so much
as in awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her), and in pity
for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been made to suffer. To
this cross she brought them; for this heavenly bridegroom she exchanged
the husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had left her. A thousand
such hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of the
grass over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat. A nun, veiled
in black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping sister’s bedside (so fresh
made, that the spring had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it);
beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the
spires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and
lit first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away
presently with a leaf in its mouth: then came a sound as of chanting, from
the chapel of the sisters hard by; others had long since filled the place,
which poor Mary Magdalene once had there, were kneeling at the same stall,
and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart had
found consolation. Might she sleep in peace—might she sleep in peace; and
we, too, when our struggles and pains are over! But the earth is the
Lord’s as the heaven is; we are alike His creatures here and yonder. I
took a little flower off the hillock, and kissed it, and went my way, like
the bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the world
again. Silent receptacle of death! tranquil depth of calm, out of reach of
tempest and trouble! I felt as one who had been walking below the sea, and
treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks.
Chapter XIV. The Campaign Of 1707, 1708
During the whole of the year which succeeded that in which the glorious
battle of Ramillies had been fought, our army made no movement of
importance, much to the disgust of very many of our officers remaining
inactive in Flanders, who said that his grace the captain-general had had
fighting enough, and was all for money now, and the enjoyment of his five
thousand a year and his splendid palace at Woodstock, which was now being
built. And his grace had sufficient occupation fighting his enemies at
home this year, where it begun to be whispered that his favour was
decreasing, and his duchess losing her hold on the queen, who was
transferring her royal affections to the famous Mrs. Masham, and Mrs.
Masham’s humble servant, Mr. Harley. Against their intrigues, our duke
passed a great part of his time intriguing. Mr. Harley was got out of
office, and his grace, in so far, had a victory. But her Majesty,
convinced against her will, was of that opinion still, of which the poet
says people are when so convinced, and Mr. Harley before long had his
revenge.
Meanwhile the business of fighting did not go on any way to the
satisfaction of Marlborough’s gallant lieutenants. During all 1707, with
the French before us, we had never so much as a battle; our army in Spain
was utterly routed at Almanza by the gallant Duke of Berwick; and we of
Webb’s, which regiment the young duke had commanded before his father’s
abdication, were a little proud to think that it was our colonel who had
achieved this victory. “I think if I had had Galway’s place, and my
Fusiliers,” says our general, “we would not have laid down our arms, even
to our old colonel, as Galway did; and Webb’s officers swore if we had had
Webb, at least we would not have been taken prisoners.” Our dear old
general talked incautiously of himself and of others; a braver or a more
brilliant soldier never lived than he; but he blew his honest trumpet
rather more loudly than became a commander of his station, and, mighty man
of valour as he was, shook his great spear, and blustered before the army
too fiercely.
Mysterious Mr. Holtz went off on a secret expedition in the early part of
1708, with great elation of spirits, and a prophecy to Esmond that a
wonderful something was about to take place. This secret came out on my
friend’s return to the army, whither he brought a most rueful and dejected
countenance, and owned that the great something he had been engaged upon
had failed utterly. He had been indeed with that luckless expedition of
the Chevalier de St. George, who was sent by the French king with ships
and an army from Dunkirk, and was to have invaded and conquered Scotland.
But that ill wind which ever opposed all the projects upon which the
prince ever embarked, prevented the Chevalier’s invasion of Scotland, as
’tis known, and blew poor Monsieur von Holtz back into our camp again, to
scheme and foretell, and to pry about as usual. The Chevalier (the King of
England, as some of us held him) went from Dunkirk to the French army to
make the campaign against us. The Duke of Burgundy had the command this
year, having the Duke of Berry with him, and the famous Mareschal Vendosme
and the Duke of Matignon to aid him in the campaign. Holtz, who knew
everything that was passing in Flanders and France (and the Indies for
what I know), insisted that there would be no more fighting in 1708 than
there had been in the previous year, and that our commander had reasons
for keeping him quiet. Indeed, Esmond’s general, who was known as a
grumbler, and to have a hearty mistrust of the great duke, and hundreds
more officers besides, did not scruple to say that these private reasons
came to the duke in the shape of crown-pieces from the French king, by
whom the generalissimo was bribed to avoid a battle. There were plenty of
men in our lines, quidnuncs, to whom Mr. Webb listened only too willingly,
who could specify the exact sums the duke got, how much fell to Cadogan’s
share, and what was the precise fee given to Doctor Hare.
And the successes with which the French began the campaign of 1708, served
to give strength to these reports of treason, which were in everybody’s
mouth. Our general allowed the enemy to get between us and Ghent, and
declined to attack him, though for eight-and-forty hours the armies were
in presence of each other. Ghent was taken, and on the same day Monsieur
de la Mothe summoned Bruges; and these two great cities fell into the
hands of the French without firing a shot. A few days afterwards La Mothe
seized upon the fort of Plashendall: and it began to be supposed that all
Spanish Flanders, as well as Brabant, would fall into the hands of the
French troops; when the Prince Eugene arrived from the Mozelle, and then
there was no more shilly-shallying.
The Prince of Savoy always signalized his arrival at the army by a great
feast (my lord duke’s entertainments were both seldom and shabby): and I
remember our general returning from this dinner with the two
commanders-in-chief; his honest head a little excited by wine, which was
dealt out much more liberally by the Austrian than by the English
commander:—“Now,” says my general, slapping the table, with an oath, “he
must fight; and when he is forced to it, d—— it, no man in Europe can
stand up against Jack Churchill.” Within a week the battle of Oudenarde
was fought, when, hate each other as they might, Esmond’s general and the
commander-in-chief were forced to admire each other, so splendid was the
gallantry of each upon this day.
The brigade commanded by Major-General Webb gave and received about as
hard knocks as any that were delivered in that action, in which Mr. Esmond
had the fortune to serve at the head of his own company in his regiment,
under the command of their own colonel as major-general; and it was his
good luck to bring the regiment out of action as commander of it, the four
senior officers above him being killed in the prodigious slaughter which
happened on that day. I like to think that Jack Haythorn, who sneered at
me for being a bastard and a parasite of Webb’s, as he chose to call me,
and with whom I had had words, shook hands with me the day before the
battle begun. Three days before, poor Brace, our lieutenant-colonel, had
heard of his elder brother’s death, and was heir to a baronetcy in
Norfolk, and four thousand a year. Fate, that had left him harmless
through a dozen campaigns, seized on him just as the world was worth
living for, and he went into action, knowing, as he said, that the luck
was going to turn against him. The major had just joined us—a creature of
Lord Marlborough, put in much to the dislike of the other officers, and to
be a spy upon us, as it was said. I know not whether the truth was so, nor
who took the tattle of our mess to head quarters, but Webb’s regiment, as
its colonel, was known to be in the commander-in-chief’s black books: “And
if he did not dare to break it up at home,” our gallant old chief used to
say, “he was determined to destroy it before the enemy;” so that poor
Major Proudfoot was put into a post of danger.
Esmond’s dear young viscount, serving as aide de camp to my lord duke,
received a wound, and won an honourable name for himself in the _Gazette_;
and Captain Esmond’s name was sent in for promotion by his general, too,
whose favourite he was. It made his heart beat to think that certain eyes
at home, the brightest in the world, might read the page on which his
humble services were recorded; but his mind was made up steadily to keep
out of their dangerous influence, and to let time and absence conquer that
passion he had still lurking about him. Away from Beatrix, it did not
trouble him; but he knew as certain that if he returned home, his fever
would break out again, and avoided Walcote as a Lincolnshire man avoids
returning to his fens, where he is sure that the ague is lying in wait for
him.
We of the English party in the army, who were inclined to sneer at
everything that came out of Hanover, and to treat as little better than
boors and savages the Elector’s court and family, were yet forced to
confess that, on the day of Oudenarde, the young electoral prince, then
making his first campaign, conducted himself with the spirit and courage
of an approved soldier. On this occasion his electoral highness had better
luck than the King of England, who was with his cousins in the enemy’s
camp, and had to run with them at the ignominious end of the day. With the
most consummate generals in the world before them, and an admirable
commander on their own side, they chose to neglect the councils, and to
rush into a combat with the former, which would have ended in the utter
annihilation of their army but for the great skill and bravery of the Duke
of Vendosme, who remedied, as far as courage and genius might, the
disasters occasioned by the squabbles and follies of his kinsmen, the
legitimate princes of the blood royal.
“If the Duke of Berwick had but been in the army, the fate of the day
would have been very different,” was all that poor Mr. von Holtz could
say; “and you would have seen that the hero of Almanza was fit to measure
swords with the conqueror of Blenheim.”
The business relative to the exchange of prisoners was always going on,
and was at least that ostensible one which kept Mr. Holtz perpetually on
the move between the forces of the French and the Allies. I can answer for
it, that he was once very near hanged as a spy by Major-General Wayne,
when he was released and sent on to head quarters by a special order of
the commander-in-chief. He came and went, always favoured, wherever he
was, by some high though occult protection. He carried messages between
the Duke of Berwick and his uncle, our duke. He seemed to know as well
what was taking place in the prince’s quarter as our own: he brought the
compliments of the King of England to some of our officers, the gentlemen
of Webb’s among the rest, for their behaviour on that great day; and after
Wynendael, when our general was chafing at the neglect of our
commander-in-chief, he said he knew how that action was regarded by the
chiefs of the French army, and that the stand made before Wynendael wood
was the passage by which the Allies entered Lille.
“Ah!” says Holtz (and some folks were very willing to listen to him), “if
the king came by his own, how changed the conduct of affairs would be! His
Majesty’s very exile has this advantage, that he is enabled to read
England impartially, and to judge honestly of all the eminent men. His
sister is always in the hand of one greedy favourite or another, through
whose eyes she sees, and to whose flattery or dependants she gives away
everything. Do you suppose that his Majesty, knowing England so well as he
does, would neglect such a man as General Webb? He ought to be in the
House of Peers as Lord Lydiard. The enemy and all Europe know his merit;
it is that very reputation which certain great people, who hate all
equality and independence, can never pardon.” It was intended that these
conversations should be carried to Mr. Webb. They were welcome to him, for
great as his services were, no man could value them more than John
Richmond Webb did himself, and the differences between him and Marlborough
being notorious, his grace’s enemies in the army and at home began to
court Webb, and set him up against the all-grasping domineering chief. And
soon after the victory of Oudenarde, a glorious opportunity fell into
General Webb’s way, which that gallant warrior did not neglect, and which
gave him the means of immensely increasing his reputation at home.
After Oudenarde, and against the counsels of Marlborough, it was said, the
Prince of Savoy sat down before Lille, the capital of French Flanders, and
commenced that siege, the most celebrated of our time, and almost as
famous as the siege of Troy itself, for the feats of valour performed in
the assault and the defence. The enmity of that Prince of Savoy against
the French king was a furious personal hate, quite unlike the calm
hostility of our great English general, who was no more moved by the game
of war than that of billiards, and pushed forward his squadrons, and drove
his red battalions hither and thither as calmly as he would combine a
stroke or make a cannon with the balls. The game over (and he played it so
as to be pretty sure to win it), not the least animosity against the other
party remained in the breast of this consummate tactician. Whereas between
the Prince of Savoy and the French it was _guerre à mort_. Beaten off in
one quarter, as he had been at Toulon in the last year, he was back again
on another frontier of France, assailing it with his indefatigable fury.
When the prince came to the army, the smouldering fires of war were
lighted up and burst out into a flame. Our phlegmatic Dutch allies were
made to advance at a quick march—our calm duke forced into action. The
prince was an army in himself against the French; the energy of his hatred
prodigious, indefatigable—infectious over hundreds of thousands of men.
The emperor’s general was repaying, and with a vengeance, the slight the
French king had put upon the fiery little Abbé of Savoy. Brilliant and
famous as a leader himself, and beyond all measure daring and intrepid,
and enabled to cope with almost the best of those famous men of war who
commanded the armies of the French king, Eugene had a weapon, the equal of
which could not be found in France, since the cannon-shot of Sasbach laid
low the noble Turenne, and could hurl Marlborough at the heads of the
French host, and crush them as with a rock, under which all the gathered
strength of their strongest captains must go down.
The English duke took little part in that vast siege of Lille, which the
Imperial generalissimo pursued with all his force and vigour, further than
to cover the besieging lines from the Duke of Burgundy’s army, between
which and the Imperialists our duke lay. Once, when Prince Eugene was
wounded, our duke took his highness’s place in the trenches; but the siege
was with the Imperialists, not with us. A division under Webb and Rantzau
was detached into Artois and Picardy upon the most painful and odious
service that Mr. Esmond ever saw in the course of his military life. The
wretched towns of the defenceless provinces, whose young men had been
drafted away into the French armies, which year after year the insatiable
war devoured, were left at our mercy; and our orders were to show them
none. We found places garrisoned by invalids, and children and women: poor
as they were, and as the costs of this miserable war had made them, our
commission was to rob these almost starving wretches—to tear the food out
of their granaries, and strip them of their rags. ’Twas an expedition of
rapine and murder we were sent on: our soldiers did deeds such as an
honest man must blush to remember. We brought back money and provisions in
quantity to the duke’s camp; there had been no one to resist us, and yet
who dares to tell with what murder and violence, with what brutal cruelty,
outrage, insult, that ignoble booty had been ravished from the innocent
and miserable victims of the war?
Meanwhile, gallantly as the operations before Lille had been conducted,
the Allies had made but little progress, and ’twas said when we returned
to the Duke of Marlborough’s camp, that the siege would never be brought
to a satisfactory end, and that the Prince of Savoy would be forced to
raise it. My Lord Marlborough gave this as his opinion openly; those who
mistrusted him, and Mr. Esmond owns himself to be of the number, hinted
that the duke had his reasons why Lille should not be taken, and that he
was paid to that end by the French king. If this was so, and I believe it,
General Webb had now a remarkable opportunity of gratifying his hatred of
the commander-in-chief, of balking that shameful avarice, which was one of
the basest and most notorious qualities of the famous duke, and of showing
his own consummate skill as a commander. And when I consider all the
circumstances preceding the event which will now be related, that my lord
duke was actually offered certain millions of crowns provided that the
siege of Lille should be raised; that the Imperial army before it was
without provisions and ammunition, and must have decamped but for the
supplies that they received; that the march of the convoy destined to
relieve the siege was accurately known to the French; and that the force
covering it was shamefully inadequate to that end, and by six times
inferior to Count de la Mothe’s army, which was sent to intercept the
convoy; when ’tis certain that the Duke of Berwick, de la Mothe’s chief,
was in constant correspondence with his uncle, the English generalissimo:
I believe on my conscience that ’twas my Lord Marlborough’s intention to
prevent those supplies, of which the Prince of Savoy stood in absolute
need, from ever reaching his highness; that he meant to sacrifice the
little army which covered this convoy, and to betray it as he had betrayed
Tollemache at Brest; as he betrayed every friend he had, to further his
own schemes of avarice or ambition. But for the miraculous victory which
Esmond’s general won over an army six or seven times greater than his own,
the siege of Lille must have been raised; and it must be remembered that
our gallant little force was under the command of a general whom
Marlborough hated, that he was furious with the conqueror, and tried by
the most open and shameless injustice afterwards to rob him of the credit
of his victory.
Chapter XV. General Webb Wins The Battle Of Wynendael
By the besiegers and besieged of Lille, some of the most brilliant feats
of valour were performed that ever illustrated any war. On the French side
(whose gallantry was prodigious, the skill and bravery of Marshal
Boufflers actually eclipsing those of his conqueror, the Prince of Savoy)
may be mentioned that daring action of Messieurs de Luxembourg and
Tournefort, who, with a body of horse and dragoons, carried powder into
the town, of which the besieged were in extreme want, each soldier
bringing a bag with forty pounds of powder behind him; with which perilous
provision they engaged our own horse, faced the fire of the foot brought
out to meet them: and though half of the men were blown up in the dreadful
errand they rode on, a part of them got into the town with the succours of
which the garrison was so much in want. A French officer, Monsieur du
Bois, performed an act equally daring, and perfectly successful. The
duke’s great army lying at Helchin, and covering the siege, and it being
necessary for Monsieur de Vendosme to get news of the condition of the
place, Captain du Bois performed his famous exploit: not only passing
through the lines of the siege, but swimming afterwards no less than seven
moats and ditches: and coming back the same way, swimming with his letters
in his mouth.
By these letters Monsieur de Boufflers said that he could undertake to
hold the place till October; and that, if one of the convoys of the Allies
could be intercepted, they must raise the siege altogether.
Such a convoy as hath been said was now prepared at Ostend, and about to
march for the siege; and on the 27th September, we (and the French too)
had news that it was on its way. It was composed of 700 waggons,
containing ammunition of all sorts, and was escorted out of Ostend by
2,000 infantry and 300 horse. At the same time Monsieur de la Mothe
quitted Bruges, having with him five-and-thirty battalions, and upwards of
sixty squadrons and forty guns, in pursuit of the convoy.
Major-General Webb had meanwhile made up a force of twenty battalions, and
three squadrons of dragoons, at Turout, whence he moved to cover the
convoy and pursue la Mothe: with whose advanced guard ours came up upon
the great plain of Turout, and before the little wood and castle of
Wynendael; behind which the convoy was marching.
As soon as they came in sight of the enemy, our advanced troops were
halted, with the wood behind them, and the rest of our force brought up as
quickly as possible, our little body of horse being brought forward to the
opening of the plain, as our general said, to amuse the enemy. When
Monsieur la Mothe came up he found us posted in two lines in front of the
wood; and formed his own army in battle facing ours, in eight lines, four
of infantry in front, and dragoons and cavalry behind.
The French began the action, as usual, with a cannonade which lasted three
hours, when they made their attack, advancing in twelve lines, four of
foot and four of horse, upon the allied troops in the wood where we were
posted. Their infantry behaved ill; they were ordered to charge with the
bayonet, but, instead, began to fire, and almost at the very first
discharge from our men, broke and fled. The cavalry behaved better; with
these alone, who were three or four times as numerous as our whole force,
Monsieur de la Mothe might have won victory: but only two of our
battalions were shaken in the least; and these speedily rallied: nor could
the repeated attacks of the French horse cause our troops to budge an inch
from the position in the wood in which our general had placed them.
After attacking for two hours, the French retired at night-fall entirely
foiled. With all the loss we had inflicted upon him, the enemy was still
three times stronger than we: and it could not be supposed that our
general could pursue M. de la Mothe, or do much more than hold our ground
about the wood, from which the Frenchman had in vain attempted to dislodge
us. La Mothe retired behind his forty guns, his cavalry protecting them
better than it had been enabled to annoy us; and meanwhile the convoy,
which was of more importance than all our little force, and the safe
passage of which we would have dropped to the last man to accomplish,
marched away in perfect safety during the action, and joyfully reached the
besieging camp before Lille.
Major-General Cadogan, my lord duke’s quartermaster-general (and between
whom and Mr. Webb there was no love lost), accompanied the convoy, and
joined Mr. Webb with a couple of hundred horse just as the battle was
over, and the enemy in full retreat. He offered, readily enough, to charge
with his horse upon the French as they fell back; but his force was too
weak to inflict any damage upon them; and Mr. Webb, commanding as
Cadogan’s senior, thought enough was done in holding our ground before an
enemy that might still have overwhelmed us had we engaged him in the open
territory, and in securing the safe passage of the convoy. Accordingly,
the horse brought up by Cadogan did not draw a sword; and only prevented,
by the good countenance they showed, any disposition the French might have
had to renew the attack on us. And no attack coming, at nightfall General
Cadogan drew off with his squadron, being bound for head quarters, the two
generals at parting grimly saluting each other.
“He will be at Roncq time enough to lick my lord duke’s trenchers at
supper,” says Mr. Webb.
Our own men lay out in the woods of Wynendael that night, and our general
had his supper in the little castle there.
“If I was Cadogan, I would have a peerage for this day’s work,” General
Webb said; “and Harry, thou shouldst have a regiment. Thou hast been
reported in the last two actions: thou wert near killed in the first. I
shall mention thee in my dispatch to his grace the commander-in-chief, and
recommend thee to poor Dick Harwood’s vacant majority. Have you ever a
hundred guineas to give Cardonnel? Slip them into his hand to-morrow, when
you go to head quarters with my report.”
In this report the major-general was good enough to mention Captain
Esmond’s name with particular favour; and that gentleman carried the
dispatch to head quarters the next day, and was not a little pleased to
bring back a letter by his grace’s secretary, addressed to
Lieutenant-General Webb. The Dutch officer dispatched by Count Nassau
Woudenbourg, Vælt-Mareschal Auverquerque’s son, brought back also a
complimentary letter to his commander, who had seconded Mr. Webb in the
action with great valour and skill.
Esmond, with a low bow and a smiling face, presented his dispatch, and
saluted Mr. Webb as Lieutenant-General, as he gave it in. The gentlemen
round about him—he was riding with his suite on the road to Menin as
Esmond came up with him—gave a cheer, and he thanked them, and opened the
dispatch with rather a flushed eager face.
He slapped it down on his boot in a rage after he had read it. “’Tis not
even writ with his own hand. Read it out, Esmond.” And Esmond read it
out:—
“Sir—Mr. Cadogan is just now come in, and has acquainted me with
the success of the action you had yesterday in the afternoon
against the body of troops commanded by Monsieur de la Mothe, at
Wynendael, which must be attributed chiefly to your good conduct
and resolution. You may be sure I shall do you justice at home,
and be glad on all occasions to own the service you have done in
securing this convoy.—Yours, &c., M.”
“Two lines by that d——d Cardonnel, and no more, for the taking of
Lille—for beating five times our number—for an action as brilliant as the
best he ever fought,” says poor Mr. Webb. “Lieutenant-General! That’s not
his doing. I was the oldest major-general. By ——, I believe he had been
better pleased if I had been beat.”
The letter to the Dutch officer was in French, and longer and more
complimentary than that to Mr. Webb.
“And this is the man,” he broke out, “that’s gorged with gold—that’s
covered with titles and honours that we won for him—and that grudges even
a line of praise to a comrade in arms! Hasn’t he enough? Don’t we fight
that he may roll in riches? Well, well, wait for the _Gazette_, gentlemen.
The queen and the country will do us justice if his grace denies it us.”
There were tears of rage in the brave warrior’s eyes as he spoke; and he
dashed them off his face on to his glove. He shook his fist in the air.
“Oh, by the Lord!” says he, “I know what I had rather have than a
peerage!”
“And what is that, sir?” some of them asked.
“I had rather have a quarter of an hour with John Churchill, on a fair
green field, and only a pair of rapiers between my shirt and his ——”
“Sir!” interposes one.
“Tell him so! I know that’s what you mean. I know every word goes to him
that’s dropped from every general officer’s mouth. I don’t say he’s not
brave. Curse him! he’s brave enough; but we’ll wait for the _Gazette_,
gentlemen. God save her Majesty! she’ll do us justice.”
The _Gazette_ did not come to us till a month afterwards; when my general
and his officers had the honour to dine with Prince Eugene in Lille; his
highness being good enough to say that we had brought the provisions, and
ought to share in the banquet. ’Twas a great banquet. His grace of
Marlborough was on his highness’s right, and on his left the Mareschal de
Boufflers, who had so bravely defended the place. The chief officers of
either army were present; and you may be sure Esmond’s general was
splendid this day: his tall noble person, and manly beauty of face, made
him remarkable anywhere; he wore, for the first time, the star of the
Order of Generosity, that his Prussian Majesty had sent to him for his
victory. His Highness, the Prince of Savoy, called a toast to the
conqueror of Wynendael. My lord duke drank it with rather a sickly smile.
The aides de camp were present; and Harry Esmond and his dear young lord
were together, as they always strove to be when duty would permit: they
were over against the table where the generals were, and could see all
that passed pretty well. Frank laughed at my lord duke’s glum face: the
affair of Wynendael, and the captain-general’s conduct to Webb, had been
the talk of the whole army. When his highness spoke, and gave—“_Le
vainqueur de Wynendael; son armée et sa victoire_,” adding, “_qui nous
font diner à Lille aujourdhuy_”—there was a great cheer through the hall;
for Mr. Webb’s bravery, generosity, and very weaknesses of character
caused him to be beloved in the army.
“Like Hector, handsome, and like Paris, brave!” whispers Frank Castlewood.
“A Venus, an elderly Venus, couldn’t refuse him a pippin. Stand up, Harry.
See, we are drinking the army of Wynendael. Ramillies is nothing to it.
Huzzay! Huzzay!”
At this very time, and just after our general had made his
acknowledgement, some one brought in an English _Gazette_—and was passing
it from hand to hand down the table. Officers were eager enough to read
it; mothers and sisters at home must have sickened over it. There scarce
came out a _Gazette_ for six years that did not tell of some heroic death
or some brilliant achievement.
“Here it is—Action of Wynendael—here you are, general,” says Frank,
seizing hold of the little dingy paper that soldiers love to read so; and,
scrambling over from our bench, he went to where the general sat, who knew
him, and had seen many a time at his table his laughing, handsome face,
which everybody loved who saw. The generals in their great perukes made
way for him. He handed the paper over General Dohna’s buff coat to our
general on the opposite side.
He came hobbling back, and blushing at his feat: “I thought he’d like it,
Harry,” the young fellow whispered. “Didn’t I like to read my name after
Ramillies, in the _London Gazette_?—Viscount Castlewood serving a
volunteer—I say, what’s yonder?”
Mr. Webb, reading the _Gazette_, looked very strange—slapped it down on
the table—then sprung up in his place, and began,—“Will your highness
please to ——”
His grace the Duke of Marlborough here jumped up too—“There’s some
mistake, my dear General Webb.”
“Your grace had better rectify it,” says Mr. Webb, holding out the letter;
but he was five off his grace the prince duke, who, besides, was higher
than the general (being seated with the Prince of Savoy, the Electoral
Prince of Hanover, and the envoys of Prussia and Denmark, under a
baldaquin), and Webb could not reach him, tall as he was.
“Stay,” says he, with a smile, as if catching at some idea, and then, with
a perfect courtesy, drawing his sword, he ran the _Gazette_ through with
the point, and said, “Permit me to hand it to your grace.”
The duke looked very black. “Take it,” says he, to his master of the
horse, who was waiting behind him.
The lieutenant-general made a very low bow, and retired and finished his
glass. The _Gazette_ in which Mr. Cardonnel, the duke’s secretary, gave an
account of the victory of Wynendael, mentioned Mr. Webb’s name, but gave
the sole praise and conduct of the action to the duke’s favourite, Mr.
Cadogan.
There was no little talk and excitement occasioned by this strange
behaviour of General Webb, who had almost drawn a sword upon the
commander-in-chief; but the general, after the first outbreak of his
anger, mastered it outwardly altogether; and, by his subsequent behaviour,
had the satisfaction of even more angering the commander-in-chief, than he
could have done by any public exhibition of resentment.
On returning to his quarters, and consulting with his chief adviser, Mr.
Esmond, who was now entirely in the general’s confidence, and treated by
him as a friend, and almost a son, Mr. Webb writ a letter to his grace the
commander-in-chief, in which he said:—
Your grace must be aware that the sudden perusal of the _London
Gazette_, in which your grace’s secretary, Mr. Cardonnel, hath
mentioned Major-General Cadogan’s name, as the officer commanding
in the late action of Wynendael, must have caused a feeling of
anything but pleasure to the general who fought that action.
Your grace must be aware that Mr. Cadogan was not even present at
the battle, though he arrived with squadrons of horse at its
close, and put himself under the command of his superior officer.
And as the result of the battle of Wynendael, in which
Lieutenant-General Webb had the good fortune to command, was the
capture of Lille, the relief of Brussels, then invested by the
enemy under the Elector of Bavaria, the restoration of the great
cities of Ghent and Bruges, of which the enemy (by treason within
the walls) had got possession in the previous year: Mr. Webb
cannot consent to forgo the honours of such a success and service,
for the benefit of Mr. Cadogan, or any other person.
As soon as the military operations of the year are over,
Lieutenant-General Webb will request permission to leave the army,
and return to his place in Parliament, where he gives notice to
his grace the commander-in-chief, that he shall lay his case
before the House of Commons, the country, and her majesty the
queen.
By his eagerness to rectify that false statement of the _Gazette_,
which had been written by his grace’s secretary, Mr. Cardonnel,
Mr. Webb, not being able to reach his grace the commander-in-chief
on account of the gentlemen seated between them, placed the paper
containing the false statement on his sword, so that it might more
readily arrive in the hands of his Grace the Duke of Marlborough,
who surely would wish to do justice to every officer of his army.
Mr. Webb knows his duty too well to think of insubordination to
his superior officer, or of using his sword in a campaign against
any but the enemies of her majesty. He solicits permission to
return to England immediately the military duties will permit, and
take with him to England Captain Esmond, of his regiment, who
acted as his aide de camp, and was present during the entire
action, and noted by his watch the time when Mr. Cadogan arrived
at its close.
The commander-in-chief could not but grant this permission, nor could he
take notice of Webb’s letter, though it was couched in terms the most
insulting. Half the army believed that the cities of Ghent and Bruges were
given up by a treason, which some in our army very well understood; that
the commander-in-chief would not have relieved Lille if he could have
helped himself; that he would not have fought that year had not the Prince
of Savoy forced him. When the battle once began, then, for his own renown,
my Lord Marlborough would fight as no man in the world ever fought better;
and no bribe on earth could keep him from beating the enemy.(11)
But the matter was taken up by the subordinates; and half the army might
have been by the ears, if the quarrel had not been stopped. General
Cadogan sent an intimation to General Webb to say that he was ready if
Webb liked, and would meet him. This was a kind of invitation our stout
old general was always too ready to accept, and ’twas with great
difficulty we got the general to reply that he had no quarrel with Mr.
Cadogan, who had behaved with perfect gallantry, but only with those at
head quarters, who had belied him. Mr. Cardonnel offered General Webb
reparation; Mr. Webb said he had a cane at the service of Mr. Cardonnel,
and the only satisfaction he wanted from him was one he was not likely to
get, namely, the truth. The officers in our staff of Webb’s, and those in
the immediate suite of the general, were ready to come to blows; and hence
arose the only affair in which Mr. Esmond ever engaged as principal, and
that was from a revengeful wish to wipe off an old injury.
My Lord Mohun, who had a troop in Lord Macclesfield’s regiment of the
Horse Guards, rode this campaign with the duke. He had sunk by this time
to the very worst reputation; he had had another fatal duel in Spain; he
had married, and forsaken his wife; he was a gambler, a profligate, and
debauchee. He joined just before Oudenarde; and, as Esmond feared, as soon
as Frank Castlewood heard of his arrival, Frank was for seeking him out,
and killing him. The wound my lord got at Oudenarde prevented their
meeting, but that was nearly healed, and Mr. Esmond trembled daily lest
any chance should bring his boy and this known assassin together. They met
at the mess-table of Handyside’s regiment at Lille; the officer commanding
not knowing of the feud between the two noblemen.
Esmond had not seen the hateful handsome face of Mohun for nine years,
since they had met on that fatal night in Leicester Field. It was degraded
with crime and passion now; it wore the anxious look of a man who has
three deaths—and who knows how many hidden shames and lusts, and crimes,
on his conscience. He bowed with a sickly low bow, and slunk away when our
host presented us round to one another. Frank Castlewood had not known him
till then, so changed was he. He knew the boy well enough.
’Twas curious to look at the two—especially the young man, whose face
flushed up when he heard the hated name of the other; and who said in his
bad French and his brave boyish voice—“He had long been anxious to meet my
Lord Mohun.” The other only bowed, and moved away from him. I do him
justice, he wished to have no quarrel with the lad.
Esmond put himself between them at table. “D—— it,” says Frank, “why do
you put yourself in the place of a man who is above you in degree? My Lord
Mohun should walk after me. I want to sit by my Lord Mohun.”
Esmond whispered to Lord Mohun, that Frank was hurt in the leg at
Oudenarde; and besought the other to be quiet. Quiet enough he was for
some time; disregarding the many taunts which young Castlewood flung at
him, until after several healths, when my Lord Mohun got to be rather in
liquor.
“Will you go away, my lord?” Mr. Esmond said to him, imploring him to quit
the table.
“No, by G——,” says my Lord Mohun. “I’ll not go away for any man;” he was
quite flushed with wine by this time.
The talk got round to the affairs of yesterday. Webb had offered to
challenge the commander-in-chief: Webb had been ill-used: Webb was the
bravest, handsomest, vainest man in the army. Lord Mohun did not know that
Esmond was Webb’s aide de camp. He began to tell some stories against the
general; which, from t’other side of Esmond, young Castlewood
contradicted.
“I can’t bear any more of this,” says my Lord Mohun.
“Nor can I, my lord,” says Mr. Esmond, starting up. “The story my Lord
Mohun has told respecting General Webb is false, gentlemen—false, I
repeat,” and making a low bow to Lord Mohun, and without a single word
more, Esmond got up and left the dining-room. These affairs were common
enough among the military of those days. There was a garden behind the
house, and all the party turned instantly into it; and the two gentlemen’s
coats were off and their points engaged within two minutes after Esmond’s
words had been spoken. If Captain Esmond had put Mohun out of the world,
as he might, a villain would have been punished and spared further
villanies—but who is one man to punish another? I declare upon my honour
that my only thought was to prevent Lord Mohun from mischief with Frank,
and the end of this meeting was, that after half a dozen passes my lord
went home with a hurt which prevented him from lifting his right arm for
three months.
“Oh, Harry, why didn’t you kill the villain?” young Castlewood asked. “I
can’t walk without a crutch: but I could have met him on horseback with
sword and pistol.” But Harry Esmond said, “’Twas best to have no man’s
life on one’s conscience, not even that villain’s”; and this affair, which
did not occupy three minutes, being over, the gentlemen went back to their
wine, and my Lord Mohun to his quarters, where he was laid up with a fever
which had spared mischief had it proved fatal. And very soon after this
affair Harry Esmond and his general left the camp for London; whither a
certain reputation had preceded the captain, for my Lady Castlewood of
Chelsea received him as if he had been a conquering hero. She gave a great
dinner to Mr. Webb, where the general’s chair was crowned with laurels;
and her ladyship called Esmond’s health in a toast, to which my kind
general was graciously pleased to bear the strongest testimony: and took
down a mob of at least forty coaches to cheer our general as he came out
of the House of Commons, the day when he received the thanks of Parliament
for his action. The mob huzza’ed and applauded him, as well as the fine
company: it was splendid to see him waving his hat, and bowing, and laying
his hand upon his Order of Generosity. He introduced Mr. Esmond to Mr. St.
John and the Right Honourable Robert Harley, Esquire, as he came out of
the House walking between them; and was pleased to make many flattering
observations regarding Mr. Esmond’s behaviour during the three last
campaigns.
Mr. St. John (who had the most winning presence of any man I ever saw,
excepting always my peerless young Frank Castlewood) said he had heard of
Mr. Esmond before from Captain Steele, and how he had helped Mr. Addison
to write his famous poem of the _Campaign_.
“’Twas as great an achievement as the victory of Blenheim itself,” Mr.
Harley said, who was famous as a judge and patron of letters, and so,
perhaps, it may be—though for my part I think there are twenty beautiful
lines, but all the rest is commonplace, and Mr. Addison’s hymn worth a
thousand such poems.
All the town was indignant at my lord duke’s unjust treatment of General
Webb, and applauded the vote of thanks which the House of Commons gave to
the general for his victory at Wynendael. ’Tis certain that the capture of
Lille was the consequence of that lucky achievement, and the humiliation
of the old French king, who was said to suffer more at the loss of this
great city, than from any of the former victories our troops had won over
him. And, I think, no small part of Mr. Webb’s exultation at his victory,
arose from the idea that Marlborough had been disappointed of a great
bribe the French king had promised him, should the siege be raised. The
very sum of money offered to him was mentioned by the duke’s enemies; and
honest Mr. Webb chuckled at the notion, not only of beating the French,
but of beating Marlborough too, and intercepting a convoy of three
millions of French crowns, that were on their way to the generalissimo’s
insatiable pockets. When the general’s lady went to the queen’s
drawing-room, all the Tory women crowded round her with congratulations,
and made her a train greater than the Duchess of Marlborough’s own. Feasts
were given to the general by all the chiefs of the Tory party, who vaunted
him as the duke’s equal in military skill; and perhaps used the worthy
soldier as their instrument, whilst he thought they were but acknowledging
his merits as a commander. As the general’s aide de camp, and favourite
officer, Mr. Esmond came in for a share of his chief’s popularity, and was
presented to her Majesty, and advanced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel,
at the request of his grateful chief.
We may be sure there was one family in which any good fortune that
happened to Esmond, caused such a sincere pride and pleasure, that he, for
his part, was thankful he could make them so happy. With these fond
friends, Blenheim and Oudenarde seemed to be mere trifling incidents of
the war; and Wynendael was its crowning victory. Esmond’s mistress never
tired to hear accounts of the battle; and I think General Webb’s lady grew
jealous of her, for the general was for ever at Kensington, and talking on
that delightful theme. As for his aide de camp, though, no doubt, Esmond’s
own natural vanity was pleased at the little share of reputation which his
good fortune had won him, yet it was chiefly precious to him (he may say
so, now that he hath long since outlived it) because it pleased his
mistress, and, above all, because Beatrix valued it.
As for the old dowager of Chelsea, never was an old woman in all England
more delighted nor more gracious than she. Esmond had his quarters in her
ladyship’s house, where the domestics were instructed to consider him as
their master. She bade him give entertainments, of which she defrayed the
charges, and was charmed when his guests were carried away tipsy in their
coaches. She must have his picture taken; and accordingly he was painted
by Mr. Jervas, in his red coat, and smiling upon a bombshell, which was
bursting at the corner of the piece. She vowed that unless he made a great
match, she should never die easy, and was for ever bringing young ladies
to Chelsea, with pretty faces and pretty fortunes, at the disposal of the
colonel. He smiled to think how times were altered with him, and of the
early days in his father’s lifetime, when a trembling page he stood before
her, with her ladyship’s basin and ewer, or crouched in her coach-step.
The only fault she found with him was, that he was more sober than an
Esmond ought to be; and would neither be carried to bed by his valet, nor
lose his heart to any beauty, whether of St. James’s or Covent Garden.
What is the meaning of fidelity in love, and whence the birth of it? ’Tis
a state of mind that men fall into, and depending on the man rather than
the woman. We love being in love, that’s the truth on’t. If we had not met
Joan, we should have met Kate, and adored her. We know our mistresses are
no better than many other women, nor no prettier, nor no wiser, nor no
wittier. ’Tis not for these reasons we love a woman, or for any special
quality or charm I know of; we might as well demand that a lady should be
the tallest woman in the world, like the Shropshire giantess,(12) as that
she should be a paragon in any other character, before we began to love
her. Esmond’s mistress had a thousand faults beside her charms: he knew
both perfectly well! She was imperious, she was light-minded, she was
flighty, she was false, she had no reverence in her character; she was in
everything, even in beauty, the contrast of her mother, who was the most
devoted and the least selfish of women. Well, from the very first moment
he saw her on the stairs at Walcote, Esmond knew he loved Beatrix. There
might be better women—he wanted that one. He cared for none other. Was it
because she was gloriously beautiful? Beautiful as she was, he had heard
people say a score of times in their company, that Beatrix’s mother looked
as young, and was the handsomer of the two. Why did her voice thrill in
his ear so? She could not sing near so well as Nicolini or Mrs. Tofts;
nay, she sang out of tune, and yet he liked to hear her better than St.
Cecilia. She had not a finer complexion than Mrs. Steele (Dick’s wife,
whom he had now got, and who ruled poor Dick with a rod of pickle), and
yet to see her dazzled Esmond; he would shut his eyes, and the thought of
her dazzled him all the same. She was brilliant and lively in talk, but
not so incomparably witty as her mother, who, when she was cheerful, said
the finest things; but yet to hear her, and to be with her, was Esmond’s
greatest pleasure. Days passed away between him and these ladies, he
scarce knew how. He poured his heart out to them, so as he never could in
any other company, where he hath generally passed for being moody, or
supercilious and silent. This society(13) was more delightful than that of
the greatest wits to him. May Heaven pardon him the lies he told the
dowager at Chelsea, in order to get a pretext for going away to
Kensington; the business at the Ordnance which he invented; the interview
with his general, the courts and statesman’s levees which he _didn’t_
frequent and describe; who wore a new suit on Sunday at St. James’s or at
the queen’s birthday; how many coaches filled the street at Mr. Harley’s
levee; how many bottles he had had the honour to drink overnight with Mr.
St. John at the “Cocoa Tree,” or at the “Garter” with Mr. Walpole and Mr.
Steele.
Mistress Beatrix Esmond had been a dozen times on the point of making
great matches, so the Court scandal said; but for his part Esmond never
would believe the stories against her; and came back, after three years’
absence from her, not so frantic as he had been perhaps, but still
hungering after her and no other; still hopeful, still kneeling, with his
heart in his hand for the young lady to take. We were now got to 1709. She
was near twenty-two years old, and three years at Court, and without a
husband.
“’Tis not for want of being asked,” Lady Castlewood said, looking into
Esmond’s heart, as she could, with that perceptiveness affection gives.
“But she will make no mean match, Harry: she will not marry as I would
have her; the person whom I should like to call my son, and Henry Esmond
knows who that is, is best served by my not pressing his claim. Beatrix is
so wilful, that what I would urge on her, she would be sure to resist. The
man who would marry her will not be happy with her, unless he be a great
person, and can put her in a great position. Beatrix loves admiration more
than love; and longs, beyond all things, for command. Why should a mother
speak so of her child? You are my son, too, Harry. You should know the
truth about your sister. I thought you might cure yourself of your
passion,” my lady added fondly. “Other people can cure themselves of that
folly, you know. But I see you are still as infatuated as ever. When we
read your name in the _Gazette_, I pleaded for you, my poor boy. Poor boy,
indeed! You are growing a grave old gentleman now, and I am an old woman.
She likes your fame well enough, and she likes your person. She says you
have wit, and fire, and good breeding, and are more natural than the fine
gentlemen of the Court. But this is not enough. She wants a
commander-in-chief, and not a colonel. Were a duke to ask her, she would
leave an earl whom she had promised. I told you so before. I know not how
my poor girl is so worldly.”
“Well,” says Esmond, “a man can but give his best and his all. She has
that from me. What little reputation I have won, I swear I cared for it
because I thought Beatrix would be pleased with it. What care I to be a
colonel or a general? Think you ’twill matter a few score years hence,
what our foolish honours to-day are? I would have had a little fame, that
she might wear it in her hat. If I had anything better, I would endow her
with it. If she wants my life, I would give it her. If she marries
another, I will say God bless him. I make no boast, nor no complaint. I
think my fidelity is folly, perhaps. But so it is. I cannot help myself. I
love her. You are a thousand times better: the fondest, the fairest, the
dearest, of women. Sure, my dear lady, I see all Beatrix’s faults as well
as you do. But she is my fate. ’Tis endurable. I shall not die for not
having her. I think I should be no happier if I won her. _Que
voulez-vous?_ as my lady of Chelsea would say. _Je l’aime_.”
“I wish she would have you,” said Harry’s fond mistress, giving a hand to
him. He kissed the fair hand (’twas the prettiest dimpled little hand in
the world, and my Lady Castlewood, though now almost forty years old, did
not look to be within ten years of her age). He kissed and kept her fair
hand, as they talked together.
“Why,” says he, “should she hear me? She knows what I would say. Far or
near, she knows I’m her slave. I have sold myself for nothing, it may be.
Well, ’tis the price I choose to take. I am worth nothing, or I am worth
all.”
“You are such a treasure,” Esmond’s mistress was pleased to say, “that the
woman who has your love, shouldn’t change it away against a kingdom, I
think. I am a country-bred woman, and cannot say but the ambitions of the
town seem mean to me. I never was awe-stricken by my lady duchess’s rank
and finery, or afraid,” she added, with a sly laugh, “of anything but her
temper. I hear of Court ladies who pine because her Majesty looks cold on
them; and great noblemen who would give a limb that they might wear a
garter on the other. This worldliness, which I can’t comprehend, was born
with Beatrix, who, on the first day of her waiting, was a perfect
courtier. We are like sisters, and she the eldest sister, somehow. She
tells me I have a mean spirit. I laugh, and say she adores a
coach-and-six. I cannot reason her out of her ambition. ’Tis natural to
her, as to me to love quiet, and be indifferent about rank and riches.
What are they, Harry? and for how long do they last? Our home is not
here.” She smiled as she spoke, and looked like an angel that was only on
earth on a visit. “Our home is where the just are, and where our sins and
sorrows enter not. My father used to rebuke me, and say that I was too
hopeful about Heaven. But I cannot help my nature, and grow obstinate as I
grow to be an old woman; and as I love my children so, sure our Father
loves us with a thousand and a thousand times greater love. It must be
that we shall meet yonder, and be happy. Yes, you—and my children, and my
dear lord. Do you know, Harry, since his death, it has always seemed to me
as if his love came back to me, and that we are parted no more. Perhaps he
is here now, Harry—I think he is. Forgiven I am sure he is: even Mr.
Atterbury absolved him, and he died forgiving. Oh, what a noble heart he
had! How generous he was! I was but fifteen, and a child when he married
me. How good he was to stoop to me! He was always good to the poor and
humble.” She stopped, then presently, with a peculiar expression, as if
her eyes were looking into Heaven, and saw my lord there, she smiled, and
gave a little laugh. “I laugh to see you, sir,” she says; “when you come,
it seems as if you never were away.” One may put her words down, and
remember them, but how describe her sweet tones, sweeter than music.
My young lord did not come home at the end of the campaign, and wrote that
he was kept at Bruxelles on military duty. Indeed, I believe he was
engaged in laying siege to a certain lady, who was of the suite of Madame
de Soissons, the Prince of Savoy’s mother, who was just dead, and who,
like the Flemish fortresses, was taken and retaken a great number of times
during the war, and occupied by French, English, and Imperialists. Of
course, Mr. Esmond did not think fit to enlighten Lady Castlewood
regarding the young scapegrace’s doings: nor had he said a word about the
affair with Lord Mohun, knowing how abhorrent that man’s name was to his
mistress. Frank did not waste much time or money on pen and ink; and, when
Harry came home with his general, only writ two lines to his mother, to
say his wound in the leg was almost healed, that he would keep his coming
of age next year—that the duty aforesaid would keep him at Bruxelles, and
that Cousin Harry would tell all the news.
But from Bruxelles, knowing how the Lady Castlewood always liked to have a
letter about the famous 29th of December, my lord writ her a long and full
one, and in this he must have described the affair with Mohun; for when
Mr. Esmond came to visit his mistress one day, early in the new year, to
his great wonderment, she and her daughter both came up and saluted him,
and after them the dowager of Chelsea, too, whose chairman had just
brought her ladyship from her village to Kensington across the fields.
After this honour, I say, from the two ladies of Castlewood, the dowager
came forward in great state, with her grand tall head-dress of King
James’s reign, that she never forsook, and said, “Cousin Henry, all our
family have met; and we thank you, cousin, for your noble conduct towards
the head of our house.” And pointing to her blushing cheek, she made Mr.
Esmond aware that he was to enjoy the rapture of an embrace there. Having
saluted one cheek, she turned to him the other. “Cousin Harry,” said both
the other ladies, in a little chorus, “we thank you for your noble
conduct;” and then Harry became aware that the story of the Lille affair
had come to his kinswomen’s ears. It pleased him to hear them all saluting
him as one of their family.
The tables of the dining-room were laid for a great entertainment; and the
ladies were in gala dresses—my lady of Chelsea in her highest _tour_, my
lady viscountess out of black, and looking fair and happy, _à ravir_; and
the maid of honour attired with that splendour which naturally
distinguished her, and wearing on her beautiful breast the French
officer’s star which Frank had sent home after Ramillies.
“You see, ’tis a gala day with us,” says she, glancing down to the star
complacently, “and we have our orders on. Does not mamma look charming?
’Twas I dressed her!” Indeed, Esmond’s dear mistress, blushing as he
looked at her, with her beautiful fair hair and an elegant dress,
according to the _mode_, appeared to have the shape and complexion of a
girl of twenty.
On the table was a fine sword, with a red velvet scabbard, and a beautiful
chased silver handle, with a blue ribbon for a sword-knot. “What is this?”
says the captain, going up to look at this pretty piece.
Mrs. Beatrix advanced towards it. “Kneel down,” says she: “we dub you our
knight with this”—and she waved the sword over his head—“my lady dowager
hath given the sword; and I give the ribbon, and mamma hath sewn on the
fringe.”
“Put the sword on him, Beatrix,” says her mother. “You are our knight,
Harry—our true knight. Take a mother’s thanks and prayers for defending
her son, my dear, dear friend.” She could say no more, and even the
dowager was affected, for a couple of rebellious tears made sad marks down
those wrinkled old roses which Esmond had just been allowed to salute.
“We had a letter from dearest Frank,” his mother said, “three days since,
whilst you were on your visit to your friend Captain Steele, at Hampton.
He told us all that you had done, and how nobly you had put yourself
between him and that—that wretch.”
“And I adopt you from this day,” says the dowager; “and I wish I was
richer, for your sake, son Esmond,” she added, with a wave of her hand;
and as Mr. Esmond dutifully went down on his knee before her ladyship, she
cast her eyes up to the ceiling (the gilt chandelier, and the twelve wax
candles in it, for the party was numerous), and invoked a blessing from
that quarter upon the newly adopted son.
“Dear Frank,” says the other viscountess, “how fond he is of his military
profession! He is studying fortification very hard. I wish he were here.
We shall keep his coming of age at Castlewood next year.”
“If the campaign permit us,” says Mr. Esmond.
“I am never afraid when he is with you,” cries the boy’s mother. “I am
sure my Henry will always defend him.”
“But there will be a peace before next year; we know it for certain,”
cries the maid of honour. “Lord Marlborough will be dismissed, and that
horrible duchess turned out of all her places. Her Majesty won’t speak to
her now. Did you see her at Bushy, Harry? she is furious, and she ranges
about the park like a lioness, and tears people’s eyes out.”
“And the Princess Anne will send for somebody,” says my lady of Chelsea,
taking out her medal and kissing it.
“Did you see the king at Oudenarde, Harry?” his mistress asked. She was a
stanch Jacobite, and would no more have thought of denying her king than
her God.
“I saw the young Hanoverian only:” Harry said, “the Chevalier de St.
George——”
“The king, sir, the king!” said the ladies and Miss Beatrix; and she
clapped her pretty hands, and cried, “Vive le Roy!”
By this time there came a thundering knock, that drove in the doors of the
house almost. It was three o’clock, and the company were arriving; and
presently the servant announced Captain Steele and his lady.
Captain and Mrs. Steele, who were the first to arrive, had driven to
Kensington from their country-house, the Hovel at Hampton Wick, “Not from
our mansion in Bloomsbury Square,” as Mrs. Steele took care to inform the
ladies. Indeed Harry had ridden away from Hampton that very morning,
leaving the couple by the ears; for from the chamber where he lay, in a
bed that was none of the cleanest, and kept awake by the company which he
had in his own bed, and the quarrel which was going on in the next room,
he could hear both night and morning the curtain lecture which Mrs. Steele
was in the habit of administering to poor Dick.
At night it did not matter so much for the culprit; Dick was fuddled, and
when in that way no scolding could interrupt his benevolence. Mr. Esmond
could hear him coaxing and speaking in that maudlin manner, which punch
and claret produce, to his beloved Prue, and beseeching her to remember
that there was a _distiwisht officer ithe nex roob_, who would overhear
her. She went on, nevertheless, calling him a drunken wretch, and was only
interrupted in her harangues by the captain’s snoring.
In the morning, the unhappy victim awoke to a headache and consciousness,
and the dialogue of the night was resumed. “Why do you bring captains home
to dinner when there’s not a guinea in the house? How am I to give dinners
when you leave me without a shilling? How am I to go trapesing to
Kensington in my yellow satin sack before all the fine company? I’ve
nothing fit to put on; I never have:” and so the dispute went on—Mr.
Esmond interrupting the talk when it seemed to be growing too intimate by
blowing his nose as loudly as ever he could, at the sound of which trumpet
there came a lull. But Dick was charming, though his wife was odious, and
’twas to give Mr. Steele pleasure, that the ladies of Castlewood, who were
ladies of no small fashion, invited Mrs. Steele.
Besides the captain and his lady, there was a great and notable assemblage
of company: my lady of Chelsea having sent her lackeys and liveries to aid
the modest attendance at Kensington. There was Lieutenant-General Webb,
Harry’s kind patron, of whom the dowager took possession, and who
resplended in velvet and gold lace; there was Harry’s new acquaintance,
the Right Honourable Henry St. John, Esquire, the general’s kinsman, who
was charmed with the Lady Castlewood, even more than with her daughter;
there was one of the greatest noblemen in the kingdom, the Scots Duke of
Hamilton, just created Duke of Brandon in England; and two other noble
lords of the Tory party, my Lord Ashburnham, and another I have forgot;
and for ladies, her grace the Duchess of Ormonde and her daughters, the
Lady Mary and the Lady Betty, the former one of Mistress Beatrix’s
colleagues in waiting on the queen.
“What a party of Tories!” whispered Captain Steele to Esmond, as we were
assembled in the parlour before dinner. Indeed, all the company present,
save Steele, were of that faction.
Mr. St. John made his special compliments to Mrs. Steele, and so charmed
her that she declared she would have Steele a Tory too.
“Or will you have me a Whig?” says Mr. St. John. “I think, madam, you
could convert a man to anything.”
“If Mr. St. John ever comes to Bloomsbury Square I will teach him what I
know,” says Mrs. Steele, dropping her handsome eyes. “Do you know
Bloomsbury Square?”
“Do I know the Mall? Do I know the Opera? Do I know the reigning toast?
Why, Bloomsbury is the very height of the mode,” says Mr. St. John. “’Tis
_rus in urbe_. You have gardens all the way to Hampstead, and palaces
round about you—Southampton House and Montague House.”
“Where you wretches go and fight duels,” cries Mrs. Steele.
“Of which the ladies are the cause!” says her entertainer. “Madam, is Dick
a good swordsman? How charming the _Tatler_ is! We all recognized your
portrait in the 49th number, and I have been dying to know you ever since
I read it. ‘Aspasia must be allowed to be the first of the beauteous order
of love.’ Doth not the passage run so? ‘In this accomplished lady love is
the constant effect, though it is never the design; yet though her mien
carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate
check to loose behaviour, and to love her is a liberal education.’ ”
“Oh, indeed!” says Mrs. Steele, who did not seem to understand a word of
what the gentleman was saying.
“Who could fail to be accomplished under such a mistress?” says Mr. St.
John, still gallant and bowing.
“Mistress! upon my word, sir!” cries the lady. “If you mean me, sir, I
would have you know that I am the captain’s wife.”
“Sure we all know it,” answers Mr. St. John, keeping his countenance very
gravely; and Steele broke in, saying, “’Twas not about Mrs. Steele I writ
that paper—though I am sure she is worthy of any compliment I can pay
her—but of the Lady Elizabeth Hastings.”(14)
“I hear Mr. Addison is equally famous as a wit and a poet,” says Mr. St.
John. “Is it true that his hand is to be found in your _Tatler_, Mr.
Steele?”
“Whether ’tis the sublime or the humorous, no man can come near him,”
cries Steele.
“A fig, Dick, for your Mr. Addison!” cries out his lady: “a gentleman who
gives himself such airs and holds his head so high now. I hope your
ladyship thinks as I do: I can’t bear those very fair men with white
eyelashes—a black man for me.” (All the black men at table applauded, and
made Mrs. Steele a bow for this compliment.) “As for this Mr. Addison,”
she went on, “he comes to dine with the captain sometimes, never says a
word to me, and then they walk upstairs, both tipsy, to a dish of tea. I
remember your Mr. Addison when he had but one coat to his back, and that
with a patch at the elbow.”
“Indeed—a patch at the elbow! You interest me,” says Mr. St. John. “’Tis
charming to hear of one man of letters from the charming wife of another.”
“Law, I could tell you ever so much about ’em,” continues the voluble
lady. “What do you think the captain has got now?—a little hunchback
fellow—a little hop-o’-my-thumb creature that he calls a poet—a little
Popish brat!”
“Hush, there are two in the room,” whispers her companion.
“Well, I call him Popish because his name is Pope,” says the lady. “’Tis
only my joking way. And this little dwarf of a fellow has wrote a pastoral
poem—all about shepherds and shepherdesses, you know.”
“A shepherd should have a little crook,” says my mistress, laughing from
her end of the table: on which Mrs. Steele said, “She did not know, but
the captain brought home this queer little creature when she was in bed
with her first boy, and it was a mercy he had come no sooner; and Dick
raved about his _genus_, and was always raving about some nonsense or
other.”
“Which of the _Tatlers_ do you prefer, Mrs. Steele?” asked Mr. St. John.
“I never read but one, and think it all a pack of rubbish, sir,” says the
lady. “Such stuff about Bickerstaffe, and Distaff, and Quarterstaff, as it
all is! There’s the captain going on still with the burgundy—I know he’ll
be tipsy before he stops—Captain Steele!”
“I drink to your eyes, my dear,” says the captain, who seemed to think his
wife charming, and to receive as genuine all the satiric compliments which
Mr. St. John paid her.
All this while the maid of honour had been trying to get Mr. Esmond to
talk, and no doubt voted him a dull fellow. For, by some mistake, just as
he was going to pop into the vacant place, he was placed far away from
Beatrix’s chair, who sat between his grace and my Lord Ashburnham, and
shrugged her lovely white shoulders, and cast a look as if to say, “Pity
me,” to her cousin. My lord duke and his young neighbour were presently in
a very animated and close conversation. Mrs. Beatrix could no more help
using her eyes than the sun can help shining, and setting those it shines
on a-burning. By the time the first course was done the dinner seemed long
to Esmond: by the time the soup came he fancied they must have been hours
at table: and as for the sweets and jellies he thought they never would be
done.
At length the ladies rose, Beatrix throwing a Parthian glance at her duke
as she retreated; a fresh bottle and glasses were fetched, and toasts were
called. Mr. St. John asked his grace the Duke of Hamilton and the company
to drink to the health of his grace the Duke of Brandon. Another lord gave
General Webb’s health, “and may he get the command the bravest officer in
the world deserves.” Mr. Webb thanked the company, complimented his aide
de camp, and fought his famous battle over again.
“_Il est fatiguant_,” whispers Mr. St. John, “_avec sa trompette de
Wynendael_.”
Captain Steele, who was not of our side, loyally gave the health of the
Duke of Marlborough, the greatest general of the age.
“I drink to the greatest general with all my heart,” says Mr. Webb; “there
can be no gainsaying that character of him. My glass goes to the general,
and not to the duke, Mr. Steele.” And the stout old gentleman emptied his
bumper; to which Dick replied by filling and emptying a pair of brimmers,
one for the general and one for the duke.
And now his grace of Hamilton, rising up, with flashing eyes (we had all
been drinking pretty freely), proposed a toast to the lovely, to the
incomparable Mrs. Beatrix Esmond; we all drank it with cheers, and my Lord
Ashburnham especially, with a shout of enthusiasm.
“What a pity there is a Duchess of Hamilton,” whispers St. John, who drank
more wine and yet was more steady than most of the others, and we entered
the drawing-room where the ladies were at their tea. As for poor Dick, we
were obliged to leave him alone at the dining-table, where he was
hiccupping out the lines from the _Campaign_, in which the greatest poet
had celebrated the greatest general in the world; and Harry Esmond found
him, half an hour afterwards, in a more advanced stage of liquor, and
weeping about the treachery of Tom Boxer.
The drawing-room was all dark to poor Harry, in spite of the grand
illumination. Beatrix scarce spoke to him. When my lord duke went away,
she practised upon the next in rank, and plied my young Lord Ashburnham
with all the fire of her eyes and the fascinations of her wit. Most of the
party were set to cards, and Mr. St. John, after yawning in the face of
Mrs. Steele, whom he did not care to pursue any more, and talking in his
most brilliant animated way to Lady Castlewood, whom he pronounced to be
beautiful, of a far higher order of beauty than her daughter, presently
took his leave, and went his way. The rest of the company speedily
followed, my Lord Ashburnham the last, throwing fiery glances at the
smiling young temptress, who had bewitched more hearts than his in her
thrall.
No doubt, as a kinsman of the house, Mr. Esmond thought fit to be the last
of all in it; he remained after the coaches had rolled away—after his
dowager aunt’s chair and flambeaux had marched off in the darkness towards
Chelsea, and the town’s-people had gone to bed, who had been drawn into
the square to gape at the unusual assemblage of chairs and chariots,
lackeys and torchmen. The poor mean wretch lingered yet for a few minutes,
to see whether the girl would vouchsafe him a smile, or a parting word of
consolation. But her enthusiasm of the morning was quite died out, or she
chose to be in a different mood. She fell to joking about the dowdy
appearance of Lady Betty, and mimicked the vulgarity of Mrs. Steele; and
then she put up her little hand to her mouth and yawned, lighted a taper,
and shrugged her shoulders, and dropping Mr. Esmond a saucy curtsy, sailed
off to bed.
“The day began so well, Henry, that I had hoped it might have ended
better,” was all the consolation that poor Esmond’s fond mistress could
give him; and as he trudged home through the dark alone, he thought, with
bitter rage in his heart, and a feeling of almost revolt against the
sacrifice he had made:—“She would have me,” thought he, “had I but a name
to give her. But for my promise to her father, I might have my rank and my
mistress too.”
I suppose a man’s vanity is stronger than any other passion in him; for I
blush, even now, as I recall the humiliation of those distant days, the
memory of which still smarts, though the fever of baulked desire has
passed away more than a score of years ago. When the writer’s descendants
come to read this memoir, I wonder will they have lived to experience a
similar defeat and shame? Will they ever have knelt to a woman, who has
listened to them, and played with them, and laughed at them—who beckoning
them with lures and caresses, and with Yes, smiling from her eyes, has
tricked them on to their knees, and turned her back and left them? All
this shame Mr. Esmond had to undergo; and he submitted, and revolted, and
presently came crouching back for more.
After this _feste_, my young Lord Ashburnham’s coach was for ever rolling
in and out of Kensington Square; his lady-mother came to visit Esmond’s
mistress, and at every assembly in the town, wherever the maid of honour
made her appearance, you might be pretty sure to see the young gentleman
in a new suit every week, and decked out in all the finery that his tailor
or embroiderer could furnish for him. My lord was for ever paying Mr.
Esmond compliments, bidding him to dinner, offering him horses to ride,
and giving him a thousand uncouth marks of respect and goodwill. At last,
one night at the coffee-house, whither my lord came considerably flushed
and excited with drink, he rushes up to Mr. Esmond, and cries out—“Give me
joy, my dearest colonel; I am the happiest of men.”
“The happiest of men needs no dearest colonel to give him joy,” says Mr.
Esmond. “What is the cause of this supreme felicity?”
“Haven’t you heard?” says he. “Don’t you know? I thought the family told
you everything: the adorable Beatrix hath promised to be mine.”
“What!” cries out Mr. Esmond, who had spent happy hours with Beatrix that
very morning—had writ verses for her, that she had sung at the
harpsichord.
“Yes,” says he; “I waited on her to-day. I saw you walking towards
Knightsbridge as I passed in my coach; and she looked so lovely, and spoke
so kind, that I couldn’t help going down on my knees, and—and—sure I’m the
happiest of men in all the world; and I’m very young; but she says I shall
get older: and you know I shall be of age in four months; and there’s very
little difference between us; and I’m so happy. I should like to treat the
company to something. Let us have a bottle—a dozen bottles—and drink the
health of the finest woman in England.”
-------------------------------------
Esmond left the young lord tossing off bumper after bumper, and strolled
away to Kensington to ask whether the news was true. ’Twas only too sure:
his mistress’s sad, compassionate face told him the story; and then she
related what particulars of it she knew, and how my young lord had made
his offer, half an hour after Esmond went away that morning, and in the
very room where the song lay yet on the harpsichord, which Esmond had
writ, and they had sung together.
Book III. Containing The End Of Mr. Esmond’s Adventures In England
Chapter I. I Come To An End Of My Battles And Bruises
That feverish desire to gain a little reputation which Esmond had had,
left him now perhaps that he had attained some portion of his wish, and
the great motive of his ambition was over. His desire for military honour
was that it might raise him in Beatrix’s eyes. ’Twas next to nobility and
wealth the only kind of rank she valued. It was the stake quickest won or
lost too; for law is a very long game that requires a life to practise;
and to be distinguished in letters or the Church would not have forwarded
the poor gentleman’s plans in the least. So he had no suit to play but the
red one, and he played it; and this, in truth, was the reason of his
speedy promotion; for he exposed himself more than most gentlemen do, and
risked more to win more. Is he the only man that hath set his life against
a stake which may be not worth the winning? Another risks his life (and
his honour, too, sometimes) against a bundle of bank-notes, or a yard of
blue ribbon, or a seat in Parliament; and some for the mere pleasure and
excitement of the sport; as a field of a hundred huntsmen will do, each
out-bawling and out-galloping the other at the tail of a dirty fox, that
is to be the prize of the foremost happy conqueror.
When he heard this news of Beatrix’s engagement in marriage, Colonel
Esmond knocked under to his fate, and resolved to surrender his sword,
that could win him nothing now he cared for; and in this dismal frame of
mind he determined to retire from the regiment, to the great delight of
the captain next in rank to him, who happened to be a young gentleman of
good fortune, who eagerly paid Mr. Esmond a thousand guineas for his
majority in Webb’s regiment, and was knocked on the head the next
campaign. Perhaps Esmond would not have been sorry to share his fate. He
was more the Knight of the Woful Countenance than ever he had been. His
moodiness must have made him perfectly odious to his friends under the
tents, who like a jolly fellow, and laugh at a melancholy warrior always
sighing after Dulcinea at home.
Both the ladies of Castlewood approved of Mr. Esmond quitting the army,
and his kind general coincided in his wish of retirement, and helped in
the transfer of his commission, which brought a pretty sum into his
pocket. But when the commander-in-chief came home, and was forced, in
spite of himself, to appoint Lieutenant-General Webb to the command of a
division of the army in Flanders, the lieutenant-general prayed Colonel
Esmond so urgently to be his aide de camp and military secretary, that
Esmond could not resist his kind patron’s entreaties, and again took the
field, not attached to any regiment, but under Webb’s orders. What must
have been the continued agonies of fears(15) and apprehensions which
racked the gentle breasts of wives and matrons in those dreadful days,
when every _Gazette_ brought accounts of deaths and battles, and when the
present anxiety over, and the beloved person escaped, the doubt still
remained that a battle might be fought, possibly, of which the next
Flanders letter would bring the account; so they, the poor tender
creatures, had to go on sickening and trembling through the whole
campaign. Whatever these terrors were on the part of Esmond’s mistress
(and that tenderest of women must have felt them most keenly for both her
sons, as she called them), she never allowed them outwardly to appear, but
hid her apprehension as she did her charities and devotion. ’Twas only by
chance that Esmond, wandering in Kensington, found his mistress coming out
of a mean cottage there, and heard that she had a score of poor retainers,
whom she visited and comforted in their sickness and poverty, and who
blessed her daily. She attended the early church daily (though of a Sunday
especially, she encouraged and advanced all sorts of cheerfulness and
innocent gaiety in her little household): and by notes entered into a
table-book of hers at this time, and devotional compositions writ with a
sweet artless fervour, such as the best divines could not surpass, showed
how fond her heart was, how humble and pious her spirit, what pangs of
apprehension she endured silently, and with what a faithful reliance she
committed the care of those she loved to the awful Dispenser of death and
life.
As for her ladyship at Chelsea, Esmond’s newly-adopted mother, she was now
of an age when the danger of any second party doth not disturb the rest
much. She cared for trumps more than for most things in life. She was firm
enough in her own faith, but no longer very bitter against ours. She had a
very good-natured, easy French director, Monsieur Gauthier by name, who
was a gentleman of the world, and would take a hand of cards with Dean
Atterbury, my lady’s neighbour at Chelsea, and was well with all the High
Church party. No doubt Monsieur Gauthier knew what Esmond’s peculiar
position was, for he corresponded with Holt, and always treated Colonel
Esmond with particular respect and kindness; but for good reasons the
colonel and the abbé never spoke on this matter together, and so they
remained perfect good friends.
All the frequenters of my lady of Chelsea’s house were of the Tory and
High Church party. Madame Beatrix was as frantic about the king as her
elderly kinswoman: she wore his picture on her heart; she had a piece of
his hair; she vowed he was the most injured, and gallant, and
accomplished, and unfortunate, and beautiful of princes. Steele, who
quarrelled with very many of his Tory friends, but never with Esmond, used
to tell the colonel that his kinswoman’s house was a rendezvous of Tory
intrigues; that Gauthier was a spy; that Atterbury was a spy; that letters
were constantly going from that house to the queen at St. Germains; on
which Esmond, laughing, would reply, that they used to say in the army the
Duke of Marlborough was a spy too, and as much in correspondence with that
family as any Jesuit. And without entering very eagerly into the
controversy, Esmond had frankly taken the side of his family. It seemed to
him that King James the Third was undoubtedly King of England by right:
and at his sister’s death it would be better to have him than a foreigner
over us. No man admired King William more; a hero and a conqueror, the
bravest, justest, wisest of men—but ’twas by the sword he conquered the
country, and held and governed it by the very same right that the great
Cromwell held it, who was truly and greatly a sovereign. But that a
foreign despotic prince, out of Germany, who happened to be descended from
King James the First, should take possession of this empire, seemed to Mr.
Esmond a monstrous injustice—at least, every Englishman had a right to
protest, and the English prince, the heir-at-law, the first of all. What
man of spirit with such a cause would not back it? What man of honour with
such a crown to win would not fight for it? But that race was destined.
That prince had himself against him, an enemy he could not overcome. He
never dared to draw his sword, though he had it. He let his chances slip
by as he lay in the lap of opera-girls, or snivelled at the knees of
priests asking pardon; and the blood of heroes, and the devotedness of
honest hearts, and endurance, courage, fidelity, were all spent for him in
vain.
But let us return to my lady of Chelsea, who, when her son Esmond
announced to her ladyship that he proposed to make the ensuing campaign,
took leave of him with perfect alacrity, and was down to piquet with her
gentlewoman before he had well quitted the room on his last visit. “Tierce
to a king,” were the last words he ever heard her say: the game of life
was pretty nearly over for the good lady, and three months afterwards she
took to her bed, where she flickered out without any pain, so the Abbé
Gauthier wrote over to Mr. Esmond, then with his general on the frontier
of France. The Lady Castlewood was with her at her ending, and had written
too, but these letters must have been taken by a privateer in the packet
that brought them; for Esmond knew nothing of their contents until his
return to England.
My Lady Castlewood had left everything to Colonel Esmond, “as a reparation
for the wrong done to him”; ’twas writ in her will. But her fortune was
not much, for it never had been large, and the honest viscountess had
wisely sunk most of the money she had upon an annuity which terminated
with her life. However, there was the house and furniture, plate and
pictures at Chelsea, and a sum of money lying at her merchant’s, Sir
Josiah Child, which altogether would realize a sum of near three hundred
pounds per annum, so that Mr. Esmond found himself, if not rich, at least
easy for life. Likewise, there were the famous diamonds which had been
said to be worth fabulous sums, though the goldsmith pronounced they would
fetch no more than four thousand pounds. These diamonds, however, Colonel
Esmond reserved, having a special use for them: but the Chelsea house,
plate, goods, &c., with the exception of a few articles which he kept
back, were sold by his orders; and the sums resulting from the sale
invested in the public securities so as to realize the aforesaid annual
income of three hundred pounds.
Having now something to leave, he made a will, and dispatched it home. The
army was now in presence of the enemy; and a great battle expected every
day. ’Twas known that the general-in-chief was in disgrace, and the
parties at home strong against him; and there was no stroke this great and
resolute player would not venture to recall his fortune when it seemed
desperate. Frank Castlewood was with Colonel Esmond; his general having
gladly taken the young nobleman on to his staff. His studies of
fortifications at Bruxelles were over by this time. The fort he was
besieging had yielded, I believe, and my lord had not only marched in with
flying colours, but marched out again. He used to tell his boyish
wickednesses with admirable humour, and was the most charming young
scapegrace in the army.
’Tis needless to say that Colonel Esmond had left every penny of his
little fortune to this boy. It was the colonel’s firm conviction that the
next battle would put an end to him: for he felt aweary of the sun, and
quite ready to bid that and the earth farewell. Frank would not listen to
his comrade’s gloomy forebodings, but swore they would keep his birthday
at Castlewood that autumn, after the campaign. He had heard of the
engagement at home. “If Prince Eugene goes to London,” says Frank, “and
Trix can get hold of him, she’ll jilt Ashburnham for his highness. I tell
you, she used to make eyes at the Duke of Marlborough, when she was only
fourteen and ogling poor little Blandford. _I_ wouldn’t marry her, Harry,
no not if her eyes were twice as big. I’ll take my fun. I’ll enjoy for the
next three years every possible pleasure. I’ll sow my wild oats then, and
marry some quiet, steady, modest, sensible viscountess; hunt my harriers;
and settle down at Castlewood. Perhaps I’ll represent the county—no,
damme, _you_ shall represent the county. You have the brains of the
family. By the Lord, my dear old Harry, you have the best head and the
kindest heart in all the army; and every man says so—and when the queen
dies, and the king comes back, why shouldn’t you go to the House of
Commons and be a minister, and be made a peer, and that sort of thing?
_You_ be shot in the next action! I wager a dozen of burgundy you are not
touched. Mohun is well of his wound. He is always with Corporal John now.
As soon as ever I see his ugly face I’ll spit in it. I took lessons of
Father—of Captain Holtz at Bruxelles. What a man that is! He knows
everything.” Esmond bade Frank have a care; that Father Holt’s knowledge
was rather dangerous; not, indeed, knowing as yet how far the father had
pushed his instructions with his young pupil.
The gazetteers and writers, both of the French and English side, have
given accounts sufficient of that bloody battle of Blarignies or
Malplaquet, which was the last and the hardest-earned of the victories of
the great Duke of Marlborough. In that tremendous combat, near upon two
hundred and fifty thousand men were engaged, more than thirty thousand of
whom were slain or wounded (the Allies lost twice as many men as they
killed of the French, whom they conquered): and this dreadful slaughter
very likely took place because a great general’s credit was shaken at
home, and he thought to restore it by a victory. If such were the motives
which induced the Duke of Marlborough to venture that prodigious stake,
and desperately sacrifice thirty thousand brave lives, so that he might
figure once more in a _Gazette_, and hold his places and pensions a little
longer, the event defeated the dreadful and selfish design, for the
victory was purchased at a cost which no nation, greedy of glory as it may
be, would willingly pay for any triumph. The gallantry of the French was
as remarkable as the furious bravery of their assailants. We took a few
score of their flags, and a few pieces of their artillery; but we left
twenty thousand of the bravest soldiers of the world round about the
entrenched lines, from which the enemy was driven. He retreated in perfect
good order; the panic-spell seemed to be broke, under which the French had
laboured ever since the disaster of Hochstedt; and, fighting now on the
threshold of their country, they showed an heroic ardour of resistance,
such as had never met us in the course of their aggressive war. Had the
battle been more successful, the conqueror might have got the price for
which he waged it. As it was (and justly, I think), the party adverse to
the duke in England were indignant at the lavish extravagance of
slaughter, and demanded more eagerly than ever the recall of a chief,
whose cupidity and desperation might urge him further still. After this
bloody fight of Malplaquet, I can answer for it, that in the Dutch
quarters and our own, and amongst the very regiments and commanders, whose
gallantry was most conspicuous upon this frightful day of carnage, the
general cry was, that there was enough of the war. The French were driven
back into their own boundary, and all their conquests and booty of
Flanders disgorged. As for the Prince of Savoy, with whom our
commander-in-chief, for reasons of his own, consorted more closely than
ever, ’twas known that he was animated not merely by a political hatred,
but by personal rage against the old French king: the Imperial
Generalissimo never forgot the slight put by Lewis upon the Abbé de
Savoie; and in the humiliation or ruin of his most Christian Majesty, the
Holy Roman Emperor found his account. But what were these quarrels to us,
the free citizens of England and Holland? Despot as he was, the French
monarch was yet the chief of European civilization, more venerable in his
age and misfortunes than at the period of his most splendid successes;
whilst his opponent was but a semi-barbarous tyrant, with a pillaging
murderous horde of Croats and Pandours, composing a half of his army,
filling our camp with their strange figures, bearded like the miscreant
Turks their neighbours, and carrying into Christian warfare their native
heathen habits of rapine, lust, and murder. Why should the best blood in
England and France be shed in order that the Holy Roman and Apostolic
master of these ruffians should have his revenge over the Christian king?
And it was to this end we were fighting; for this that every village and
family in England was deploring the death of beloved sons and fathers. We
dared not speak to each other, even at table, of Malplaquet, so frightful
were the gaps left in our army by the cannon of that bloody action. ’Twas
heartrending, for an officer who had a heart, to look down his line on a
parade-day afterwards, and miss hundreds of faces of comrades—humble or of
high rank—that had gathered but yesterday full of courage and cheerfulness
round the torn and blackened flags. Where were our friends? As the great
duke reviewed us, riding along our lines with his fine suite of prancing
aides de camp and generals, stopping here and there to thank an officer
with those eager smiles and bows of which his grace was always lavish,
scarce a huzzah could be got for him, though Cadogan, with an oath, rode
up and cried—“D—n you, why don’t you cheer?” But the men had no heart for
that: not one of them but was thinking, “Where’s my comrade?—where’s my
brother that fought by me, or my dear captain that led me yesterday?”
’Twas the most gloomy pageant I ever looked on; and the _Te Deum_, sung by
our chaplains, the most woful and dreary satire.
Esmond’s general added one more to the many marks of honour which he had
received in the front of a score of battles, and got a wound in the groin,
which laid him on his back; and you may be sure he consoled himself by
abusing the commander-in-chief, as he lay groaning:—“Corporal John’s as
fond of me,” he used to say, “as King David was of General Uriah; and so
he always gives me the post of danger.” He persisted, to his dying day, in
believing that the duke intended he should be beat at Wynendael, and sent
him purposely with a small force, hoping that he might be knocked on the
head there. Esmond and Frank Castlewood both escaped without hurt, though
the division which our general commanded suffered even more than any
other, having to sustain not only the fury of the enemy’s cannonade, which
was very hot and well-served, but the furious and repeated charges of the
famous Maison-du-Roy, which we had to receive and beat off again and
again, with volleys of shot and hedges of iron, and our four lines of
musketeers and pikemen. They said the King of England charged us no less
than twelve times that day, along with the French Household. Esmond’s late
regiment, General Webb’s own Fusiliers, served in the division which their
colonel commanded. The general was thrice in the centre of the square of
the Fusiliers, calling the fire at the French charges; and, after the
action, his grace the Duke of Berwick sent his compliments to his old
regiment and their colonel for their behaviour on the field.
We drank my Lord Castlewood’s health and majority, the 25th of September,
the army being then before Mons: and here Colonel Esmond was not so
fortunate as he had been in actions much more dangerous, and was hit by a
spent ball just above the place where his former wound was, which caused
the old wound to open again, fever, spitting of blood, and other ugly
symptoms, to ensue; and, in a word, brought him near to death’s door. The
kind lad, his kinsman, attended his elder comrade with a very praiseworthy
affectionateness and care until he was pronounced out of danger by the
doctors, when Frank went off, passed the winter at Bruxelles, and
besieged, no doubt, some other fortress there. Very few lads would have
given up their pleasures so long and so gaily as Frank did; his cheerful
prattle soothed many long days of Esmond’s pain and languor. Frank was
supposed to be still at his kinsman’s bedside for a month after he had
left it, for letters came from his mother at home full of thanks to the
younger gentleman for his care of his elder brother (so it pleased
Esmond’s mistress now affectionately to style him); nor was Mr. Esmond in
a hurry to undeceive her, when the good young fellow was gone for his
Christmas holiday. It was as pleasant to Esmond on his couch to watch the
young man’s pleasure at the idea of being free, as to note his simple
efforts to disguise his satisfaction on going away. There are days when a
flask of champagne at a cabaret, and a red-cheeked partner to share it,
are too strong temptations for any young fellow of spirit. I am not going
to play the moralist, and cry “Fie!” For ages past, I know how old men
preach, and what young men practise; and that patriarchs have had their
weak moments, too, long since Father Noah toppled over after discovering
the vine. Frank went off, then, to his pleasures at Bruxelles, in which
capital many young fellows of our army declared they found infinitely
greater diversion even than in London: and Mr. Henry Esmond remained in
his sick-room, where he writ a fine comedy, that his mistress pronounced
to be sublime, and that was acted no less than three successive nights in
London in the next year.
Here, as he lay nursing himself, ubiquitous Mr. Holtz reappeared, and
stopped a whole month at Mons, where he not only won over Colonel Esmond
to the king’s side in politics (that side being always held by the Esmond
family); but where he endeavoured to reopen the controversial question
between the Churches once more, and to recall Esmond to that religion in
which, in his infancy, he had been baptized. Holtz was a casuist, both
dexterous and learned, and presented the case between the English Church
and his own in such a way that those who granted his premisses ought
certainly to allow his conclusions. He touched on Esmond’s delicate state
of health, chance of dissolution, and so forth; and enlarged upon the
immense benefits that the sick man was likely to forgo—benefits which the
Church of England did not deny to those of the Roman communion, as how
should she, being derived from that Church, and only an offshoot from it.
But Mr. Esmond said that his Church was the church of his country, and to
that he chose to remain faithful: other people were welcome to worship and
to subscribe any other set of articles, whether at Rome or at Augsburg.
But if the good father meant that Esmond should join the Roman communion
for fear of consequences, and that all England ran the risk of being
damned for heresy, Esmond, for one, was perfectly willing to take his
chance of the penalty along with the countless millions of his fellow
countrymen, who were bred in the same faith, and along with some of the
noblest, the truest, the purest, the wisest, the most pious and learned
men and women in the world.
As for the political question, in that Mr. Esmond could agree with the
father much more readily, and had come to the same conclusion, though,
perhaps, by a different way. The right-divine, about which Dr. Sacheverel
and the High Church party in England were just now making a bother, they
were welcome to hold as they chose. If Henry Cromwell and his father
before him, had been crowned and anointed (and bishops enough would have
been found to do it), it seemed to Mr. Esmond that they would have had the
right-divine just as much as any Plantagenet, or Tudor, or Stuart. But the
desire of the country being unquestionably for an hereditary monarchy,
Esmond thought an English king out of St. Germains was better and fitter
than a German prince from Herrenhausen, and that if he failed to satisfy
the nation, some other Englishman might be found to take his place; and
so, though with no frantic enthusiasm, or worship of that monstrous
pedigree which the Tories chose to consider divine, he was ready to say,
“God save King James!” when Queen Anne went the way of kings and
commoners.
“I fear, colonel, you are no better than a republican at heart,” says the
priest, with a sigh.
“I am an Englishman,” says Harry, “and take my country as I find her. The
will of the nation being for Church and King, I am for Church and King,
too; but English Church, and English King; and that is why your Church
isn’t mine, though your king is.”
Though they lost the day at Malplaquet, it was the French who were elated
by that action, whilst the conquerors were dispirited by it; and the enemy
gathered together a larger army than ever, and made prodigious efforts for
the next campaign. Marshal Berwick was with the French this year; and we
heard that Mareschal Villars was still suffering of his wound, was eager
to bring our duke to action, and vowed he would fight us in his coach.
Young Castlewood came flying back from Bruxelles, as soon as he heard that
righting was to begin; and the arrival of the Chevalier de St. George was
announced about May. “It’s the king’s third campaign, and it’s mine,”
Frank liked saying. He was come back a greater Jacobite than ever, and
Esmond suspected that some fair conspirators at Bruxelles had been
inflaming the young man’s ardour. Indeed, he owned that he had a message
from the queen, Beatrix’s godmother, who had given her name to Frank’s
sister the year before he and his sovereign were born.
However desirous Marshal Villars might be to fight, my lord duke did not
seem disposed to indulge him this campaign. Last year his grace had been
all for the Whigs and Hanoverians; but finding, on going to England, his
country cold towards himself, and the people in a ferment of High-Church
loyalty, the duke comes back to his army cooled towards the Hanoverians,
cautious with the Imperialists, and particularly civil and polite towards
the Chevalier de St. George. ’Tis certain that messengers and letters were
continually passing between his grace and his brave nephew, the Duke of
Berwick, in the opposite camp. No man’s caresses were more opportune than
his grace’s, and no man ever uttered expressions of regard and affection
more generously. He professed to Monsieur de Torcy, so Mr. St. John told
the writer, quite an eagerness to be cut in pieces for the exiled queen
and her family; nay more, I believe, this year he parted with a portion of
the most precious part of himself—his money—which he sent over to the
royal exiles. Mr. Tunstal, who was in the prince’s service, was twice or
thrice in and out of our camp; the French, in theirs of Arlieu and about
Arras. A little river, the Canihe, I think ’twas called (but this is writ
away from books and Europe; and the only map the writer hath of these
scenes of his youth, bears no mark of this little stream), divided our
pickets from the enemy’s. Our sentries talked across the stream, when they
could make themselves understood to each other, and when they could not,
grinned, and handed each other their brandy-flasks or their pouches of
tobacco. And one fine day of June, riding thither with the officer who
visited the outposts (Colonel Esmond was taking an airing on horseback,
being too weak for military duty), they came to this river, where a number
of English and Scots were assembled, talking to the good-natured enemy on
the other side.
Esmond was especially amused with the talk of one long fellow, with a
great curling red moustache, and blue eyes, that was half a dozen inches
taller than his swarthy little comrades on the French side of the stream,
and being asked by the colonel, saluted him, and said that he belonged to
the Royal Cravats.
From his way of saying “Royal Cravat”, Esmond at once knew that the
fellow’s tongue had first wagged on the banks of the Liffey, and not the
Loire; and the poor soldier—a deserter probably—did not like to venture
very deep into French conversation, lest his unlucky brogue should peep
out. He chose to restrict himself to such few expressions in the French
language as he thought he had mastered easily; and his attempt at disguise
was infinitely amusing. Mr. Esmond whistled “Lillibullero,” at which
Teague’s eyes began to twinkle, and then flung him a dollar, when the poor
boy broke out with a “God bless—that is, _Dieu bénisse votre honor_”, that
would infallibly have sent him to the provost-marshal had he been on our
side of the river.
Whilst this parley was going on, three officers on horseback, on the
French side, appeared at some little distance, and stopped as if eyeing
us, when one of them left the other two, and rode close up to us who were
by the stream. “Look, look!” says the Royal Cravat, with great agitation,
“_pas lui_, that’s he; not him, _l’autre_,” and pointed to the distant
officer on a chestnut horse, with a cuirass shining in the sun, and over
it a broad blue ribbon.
“Please to take Mr. Hamilton’s services to my Lord Marlborough—my lord
duke,” says the gentleman in English; and, looking to see that the party
were not hostilely disposed, he added, with a smile, “There’s a friend of
yours, gentlemen, yonder; he bids me to say that he saw some of your faces
on the 11th of September last year.”
As the gentleman spoke, the other two officers rode up, and came quite
close. We knew at once who it was. It was the king, then two-and-twenty
years old, tall and slim, with deep brown eyes, that looked melancholy,
though his lips wore a smile. We took off our hats and saluted him. No
man, sure, could see for the first time, without emotion, the youthful
inheritor of so much fame and misfortune. It seemed to Mr. Esmond that the
prince was not unlike young Castlewood, whose age and figure he resembled.
The Chevalier de St. George acknowledged the salute, and looked at us
hard. Even the idlers on our side of the river set up a hurrah. As for the
Royal Cravat, he ran to the prince’s stirrup, knelt down and kissed his
boot, and bawled and looked a hundred ejaculations and blessings. The
prince bade the aide de camp give him a piece of money; and when the party
saluting us had ridden away, Cravat spat upon the piece of gold by way of
benediction, and swaggered away, pouching his coin and twirling his honest
carroty moustache.
The officer in whose company Esmond was, the same little captain of
Handyside’s regiment, Mr. Sterne, who had proposed the garden at Lille,
when my Lord Mohun and Esmond had their affair, was an Irishman too, and
as brave a little soul as ever wore a sword. “Bedad,” says Roger Sterne,
“that long fellow spoke French so beautiful that I shouldn’t have known he
wasn’t a foreigner, till he broke out with his hulla-balloing, and only an
Irish calf can bellow like that.”—And Roger made another remark in his
wild way, in which there was sense as well as absurdity—“If that young
gentleman,” says he, “would but ride over to our camp instead of
Villars’s, toss up his hat and say, ‘Here am I, the king, who’ll follow
me?’ by the Lord, Esmond, the whole army would rise and carry him home
again, and beat Villars, and take Paris by the way.”
The news of the prince’s visit was all through the camp quickly, and
scores of ours went down in hopes to see him. Major Hamilton, whom we had
talked with, sent back by a trumpet several silver pieces for officers
with us. Mr. Esmond received one of these: and that medal, and a
recompense not uncommon amongst princes, were the only rewards he ever had
from a royal person, whom he endeavoured not very long after to serve.
Esmond quitted the army almost immediately after this, following his
general home; and, indeed, being advised to travel in the fine weather and
attempt to take no further part in the campaign. But he heard from the
army, that of the many who crowded to see the Chevalier de St. George,
Frank Castlewood had made himself most conspicuous: my lord viscount
riding across the little stream bareheaded to where the prince was, and
dismounting and kneeling before him to do him homage. Some said that the
prince had actually knighted him, but my lord denied that statement,
though he acknowledged the rest of the story, and said:—“From having been
out of favour with Corporal John,” as he called the duke, before, his
grace warned him not to commit those follies, and smiled on him cordially
ever after.
“And he was so kind to me,” Frank writ, “that I thought I would put in a
good word for Master Harry, but when I mentioned your name he looked as
black as thunder, and said he had never heard of you.”
Chapter II. I Go Home, And Harp On The Old String
After quitting Mons and the army, and as he was waiting for a packet at
Ostend, Esmond had a letter from his young kinsman Castlewood at
Bruxelles, conveying intelligence whereof Frank besought him to be the
bearer to London, and which caused Colonel Esmond no small anxiety.
The young scapegrace, being one-and-twenty years old, and being anxious to
sow his “wild otes”, as he wrote, had married Mademoiselle de Wertheim,
daughter of Count de Wertheim, Chamberlain to the Emperor, and having a
post in the Household of the Governor of the Netherlands.
PS. (the young gentleman wrote): Clotilda is _older than me_,
which perhaps may be objected to her: but I am so _old a raik_
that the age makes no difference, and I am _determined_ to reform.
We were married at St. Gudule, by Father Holt. She is heart and
soul for the _good cause_. And here the cry is _Vif-le-Roy_, which
my mother will _join in_, and Trix _too_. Break this news to ’em
gently: and tell Mr. Finch, my agent, to press the people for
their rents, and send me the _ryno_ anyhow. Clotilda sings, and
plays on the Spinet _beautifully_. She is a fair beauty. And if
it’s a son, you shall stand _Godfather_. I’m going to leave the
army, having had _enuf of soldering_; and my lord duke
_recommends_ me. I shall pass the winter here: and stop at least
until Clo’s lying-in. I call her _old Clo_, but nobody else shall.
She is the cleverest woman in all Bruxelles: understanding
painting, music, poetry, and perfect at _cookery and puddens_. I
borded with the count, that’s how I came to know her. There are
four counts her brothers. One an abbey—three with the prince’s
army. They have a lawsuit for _an immense fortune_: but are now in
a _pore way_. Break this to mother, who’ll take anything from
_you_. And write, and bid Finch write _amediately_. Hostel de
’l’Aigle Noire, Bruxelles, Flanders.
So Frank had married a Roman Catholic lady, and an heir was expected, and
Mr. Esmond was to carry this intelligence to his mistress at London. ’Twas
a difficult embassy; and the colonel felt not a little tremor as he neared
the capital.
He reached his inn late, and sent a messenger to Kensington to announce
his arrival and visit the next morning. The messenger brought back news
that the Court was at Windsor, and the fair Beatrix absent and engaged in
her duties there. Only Esmond’s mistress remained in her house at
Kensington. She appeared in Court but once in the year; Beatrix was quite
the mistress and ruler of the little mansion, inviting the company
thither, and engaging in every conceivable frolic of town pleasure. Whilst
her mother, acting as the young lady’s protectress and elder sister,
pursued her own path, which was quite modest and secluded.
As soon as ever Esmond was dressed (and he had been awake long before the
town), he took a coach for Kensington, and reached it so early that he met
his dear mistress coming home from morning prayers. She carried her
Prayer-book, never allowing a footman to bear it, as everybody else did:
and it was by this simple sign Esmond knew what her occupation had been.
He called to the coachman to stop, and jumped out as she looked towards
him. She wore her hood as usual, and she turned quite pale when she saw
him. To feel that kind little hand near to his heart seemed to give him
strength. They soon were at the door of her ladyship’s house—and within
it.
With a sweet sad smile she took his hand and kissed it.
“How ill you have been: how weak you look, my dear Henry,” she said.
’Tis certain the colonel did look like a ghost, except that ghosts do not
look very happy, ’tis said. Esmond always felt so on returning to her
after absence, indeed whenever he looked in her sweet kind face.
“I am come back to be nursed by my family,” says he. “If Frank had not
taken care of me after my wound, very likely I should have gone
altogether.”
“Poor Frank, good Frank!” says his mother. “You’ll always be kind to him,
my lord,” she went on. “The poor child never knew he was doing you a
wrong.”
“My lord!” cries out Colonel Esmond. “What do you mean, dear lady?”
“I am no lady,” says she; “I am Rachel Esmond, Francis Esmond’s widow, my
lord. I cannot bear that title. Would we never had taken it from him who
has it now. But we did all in our power, Henry: we did all in our power;
and my lord and I—that is——”
“Who told you this tale, dearest lady?” asked the colonel.
“Have you not had the letter I writ you? I writ to you at Mons directly I
heard it,” says Lady Esmond.
“And from whom?” again asked Colonel Esmond—and his mistress then told him
that on her death-bed the dowager countess, sending for her, had presented
her with this dismal secret as a legacy. “’Twas very malicious of the
dowager,” Lady Esmond said, “to have had it so long, and to have kept the
truth from me. ‘Cousin Rachel,’ she said,” and Esmond’s mistress could not
forbear smiling as she told the story, “ ‘cousin Rachel,’ cries the
dowager, ‘I have sent for you, as the doctors say I may go off any day in
this dysentery; and to ease my conscience of a great load that has been on
it. You always have been a poor creature and unfit for great honour, and
what I have to say won’t, therefore, affect you so much. You must know,
cousin Rachel, that I have left my house, plate, and furniture, three
thousand pounds in money, and my diamonds that my late revered saint and
sovereign, King James, presented me with, to my Lord Viscount Castlewood.’
“ ‘To my Frank?’ ” says Lady Castlewood: “ ‘I was in hopes——
“ ‘To Viscount Castlewood, my dear, Viscount Castlewood, and Baron Esmond
of Shandon in the kingdom of Ireland, Earl and Marquis of Esmond under
patent of his Majesty King James the Second, conferred upon my husband the
late marquis—for I am Marchioness of Esmond before God and man.’
“ ‘And have you left poor Harry nothing, dear marchioness?’ ” asks Lady
Castlewood (she hath told me the story completely since with her quiet
arch way; the most charming any woman ever had: and I set down the
narrative here at length so as to have done with it). “ ‘And have you left
poor Harry nothing?’ ” asks my dear lady: “for you know, Henry,” she says
with her sweet smile, “I used always to pity Esau—and I think I am on his
side—though papa tried very hard to convince me the other way.
“ ‘Poor Harry!’ says the old lady. ‘So you want something left to poor
Harry: he, he! (reach me the drops, cousin). Well then, my dear, since you
want poor Harry to have a fortune: you must understand that ever since the
year 1691, a week after the battle of the Boyne, where the Prince of
Orange defeated his royal sovereign and father, for which crime he is now
suffering in flames (ugh, ugh), Henry Esmond hath been Marquis of Esmond
and Earl of Castlewood in the United Kingdom, and Baron and Viscount
Castlewood of Shandon in Ireland, and a baronet—and his eldest son will
be, by courtesy, styled Earl of Castlewood—he! he! What do you think of
that, my dear?’
“ ‘Gracious mercy! how long have you known this?’ ” cries the other lady
(thinking perhaps that the old marchioness was wandering in her wits).
“ ‘My husband, before he was converted, was a wicked wretch,’ ” the sick
sinner continued. “ ‘When he was in the Low Countries he seduced a
weaver’s daughter; and added to his wickedness by marrying her. And then
he came to this country and married me—a poor girl—a poor innocent young
thing—I say,’ though she was past forty, you know, Harry, when she
married: and as for being innocent—‘Well,’ she went on, ‘I knew nothing of
my lord’s wickedness for three years after our marriage, and after the
burial of our poor little boy I had it done over again, my dear. I had
myself married by Father Holt in Castlewood chapel, as soon as ever I
heard the creature was dead—and having a great illness then, arising from
another sad disappointment I had, the priest came and told me that my lord
had a son before our marriage, and that the child was at nurse in England;
and I consented to let the brat be brought home, and a queer little
melancholy child it was when it came.
“ ‘Our intention was to make a priest of him: and he was bred for this,
until you perverted him from it, you wicked woman. And I had again hopes
of giving an heir to my lord, when he was called away upon the king’s
business, and died fighting gloriously at the Boyne Water.
“ ‘Should I be disappointed—I owed your husband no love, my dear, for he
had jilted me in the most scandalous way; and I thought there would be
time to declare the little weaver’s son for the true heir. But I was
carried off to prison, where your husband was so kind to me—urging all his
friends to obtain my release, and using all his credit in my favour—that I
relented towards him, especially as my director counselled me to be
silent; and that it was for the good of the king’s service that the title
of our family should continue with your husband the late viscount, whereby
his fidelity would be always secured to the king. And a proof of this is,
that a year before your husband’s death, when he thought of taking a place
under the Prince of Orange, Mr. Holt went to him, and told him what the
state of the matter was, and obliged him to raise a large sum for his
Majesty: and engaged him in the true cause so heartily, that we were sure
of his support on any day when it should be considered advisable to attack
the usurper. Then his sudden death came; and there was a thought of
declaring the truth. But ’twas determined to be best for the king’s
service to let the title still go with the younger branch; and there’s no
sacrifice a Castlewood wouldn’t make for that cause, my dear.
“ ‘As for Colonel Esmond, he knew the truth already’ (and then, Harry,” my
mistress said, “she told me of what had happened at my dear husband’s
death-bed). ‘He doth not intend to take the title, though it belongs to
him. But it eases my conscience that you should know the truth, my dear.
And your son is lawfully Viscount Castlewood so long as his cousin doth
not claim the rank.’ ”
This was the substance of the dowager’s revelation. Dean Atterbury had
knowledge of it, Lady Castlewood said, and Esmond very well knows how:
that divine being the clergyman for whom the late lord had sent on his
death-bed: and when Lady Castlewood would instantly have written to her
son, and conveyed the truth to him, the dean’s advice was that a letter
should be writ to Colonel Esmond rather; that the matter should be
submitted to his decision, by which alone the rest of the family were
bound to abide.
“And can my dearest lady doubt what that will be?” says the colonel.
“It rests with you, Harry, as the head of our house.”
“It was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord’s bedside,” says
Colonel Esmond. “The children must know nothing of this. Frank and his
heirs after him must bear our name. ’Tis his rightfully; I have not even a
proof of that marriage of my father and mother, though my poor lord, on
his death-bed, told me that Father Holt had brought such a proof to
Castlewood. I would not seek it when I was abroad. I went and looked at my
poor mother’s grave in her convent. What matter to her now? No court of
law on earth, upon my mere word, would deprive my lord viscount and set me
up. I am the head of the house, dear lady; but Frank is Viscount of
Castlewood still. And rather than disturb him, I would turn monk, or
disappear in America.”
As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been
willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond
creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed both his
hands in an outbreak of passionate love and gratitude, such as could not
but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and thankful that God had
given him the power to show his love for her, and to prove it by some
little sacrifice on his own part. To be able to bestow benefits or
happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred upon
a man—and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or vanity,
could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to confer
some kindness upon his best and dearest friends?
“Dearest saint,” says he—“purest soul, that has had so much to suffer,
that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. ’Tis
for me to kneel, not for you: ’tis for me to be thankful that I can make
you happy. Hath my life any other aim? Blessed be God that I can serve
you! What pleasure, think you, could all the world give me compared to
that?”
“Don’t raise me,” she said, in a wild way, to Esmond, who would have
lifted her. “Let me kneel—let me kneel, and—and—worship you.”
-------------------------------------
Before such a partial judge, as Esmond’s dear mistress owned herself to
be, any cause which he might plead was sure to be given in his favour; and
accordingly he found little difficulty in reconciling her to the news
whereof he was bearer, of her son’s marriage to a foreign lady, Papist
though she was. Lady Castlewood never could be brought to think so ill of
that religion as other people in England thought of it: she held that ours
was undoubtedly a branch of the Church Catholic, but that the Roman was
one of the main stems on which, no doubt, many errors had been grafted
(she was, for a woman, extraordinarily well versed in this controversy,
having acted, as a girl, as secretary to her father, the late dean, and
written many of his sermons, under his dictation); and if Frank had chosen
to marry a lady of the Church of South Europe, as she would call the Roman
communion, that was no need why she should not welcome her as a
daughter-in-law: and accordingly she writ to her new daughter a very
pretty, touching letter (as Esmond thought, who had cognizance of it
before it went), in which the only hint of reproof was a gentle
remonstrance that her son had not written to herself, to ask a fond
mother’s blessing for that step which he was about taking. “Castlewood
knew very well,” so she wrote to her son, “that she never denied him
anything in her power to give, much less would she think of opposing a
marriage that was to make his happiness, as she trusted, and keep him out
of wild courses, which had alarmed her a good deal: and she besought him
to come quickly to England, to settle down in his family house of
Castlewood (‘It is his family house,’ says she, to Colonel Esmond, ‘though
only his own house by your forbearance’), and to receive the accompt of
her stewardship during his ten years’ minority.” By care and frugality,
she had got the estate into a better condition than ever it had been since
the Parliamentary wars; and my lord was now master of a pretty, small
income, not encumbered of debts, as it had been, during his father’s
ruinous time. “But in saving my son’s fortune,” says she, “I fear I have
lost a great part of my hold on him.” And, indeed, this was the case; her
ladyship’s daughter complaining that their mother did all for Frank, and
nothing for her; and Frank himself being dissatisfied at the narrow,
simple way of his mother’s living at Walcote, where he had been brought up
more like a poor parson’s son, than a young nobleman that was to make a
figure in the world. ’Twas this mistake in his early training, very
likely, that set him so eager upon pleasure when he had it in his power;
nor is he the first lad that has been spoiled by the over-careful fondness
of women. No training is so useful for children, great or small, as the
company of their betters in rank or natural parts; in whose society they
lose the overweening sense of their own importance, which stay-at-home
people very commonly learn.
But, as a prodigal that’s sending in a schedule of his debts to his
friends, never puts all down, and, you may be sure, the rogue keeps back
some immense swingeing bill, that he doesn’t dare to own; so the poor
Frank had a very heavy piece of news to break to his mother, and which he
hadn’t the courage to introduce into his first confession. Some misgivings
Esmond might have, upon receiving Frank’s letter, and knowing into what
hands the boy had fallen; but whatever these misgivings were, he kept them
to himself, not caring to trouble his mistress with any fears that might
be groundless.
However, the next mail which came from Bruxelles, after Frank had received
his mother’s letter there, brought back a joint composition from himself
and his wife, who could spell no better than her young scapegrace of a
husband, full of expressions of thanks, love, and duty to the dowager
viscountess, as my poor lady now was styled; and along with this letter
(which was read in a family council, namely, the viscountess, Mistress
Beatrix, and the writer of this memoir, and which was pronounced to be
vulgar by the maid of honour, and felt to be so by the other two), there
came a private letter for Colonel Esmond from poor Frank, with another
dismal commission for the colonel to execute, at his best opportunity; and
this was to announce that Frank had seen fit, “by the exhortation of Mr.
Holt, the influence of his Clotilda, and the blessing of Heaven and the
saints,” says my lord, demurely, “to change his religion, and be received
into the bosom of that Church of which his sovereign, many of his family,
and the greater part of the civilized world, were members.” And his
lordship added a postscript, of which Esmond knew the inspiring genius
very well, for it had the genuine twang of the seminary, and was quite
unlike poor Frank’s ordinary style of writing and thinking; in which he
reminded Colonel Esmond that he too was, by birth, of that Church; and
that his mother and sister should have his lordship’s prayers to the
saints (an inestimable benefit, truly!) for their conversion.
If Esmond had wanted to keep this secret he could not; for a day or two
after receiving this letter, a notice from Bruxelles appeared in the
_Post-Boy_, and other prints, announcing that “a young Irish lord, the
Viscount C-stle-w—d, just come to his majority, and who had served the
last campaigns with great credit, as aide de camp to his grace the Duke of
Marlborough, had declared for the Popish religion at Bruxelles, and had
walked in a procession barefoot, with a wax taper in his hand.” The
notorious Mr. Holt, who had been employed as a Jacobite agent during the
last reign, and many times pardoned by King William, had been, the
_Post-Boy_ said, the agent of this conversion.
The Lady Castlewood was as much cast down by this news as Miss Beatrix was
indignant at it. “So,” says she, “Castlewood is no longer a home for us,
mother. Frank’s foreign wife will bring her confessor, and there will be
frogs for dinner; and all Tusher’s and my grandfather’s sermons are flung
away upon my brother. I used to tell you that you killed him with the
Catechism, and that he would turn wicked as soon as he broke from his
mammy’s leading-strings. Oh, mother, you would not believe that the young
scapegrace was playing you tricks, and that sneak of a Tusher was not a
fit guide for him. Oh, those parsons! I hate ’em all,” says Mistress
Beatrix, clapping her hands together; “yes, whether they wear cassocks and
buckles, or beards and bare feet. There’s a horrid Irish wretch who never
misses a Sunday at Court, and who pays me compliments there, the horrible
man; and if you want to know what parsons are, you should see his
behaviour, and hear him talk of his own cloth. They’re all the same,
whether they’re bishops or bonzes, or Indian fakirs. They try to domineer,
and they frighten us with kingdom come; and they wear a sanctified air in
public, and expect us to go down on our knees and ask their blessing; and
they intrigue, and they grasp, and they backbite, and they slander worse
than the worst courtier or the wickedest old woman. I heard this Mr. Swift
sneering at my Lord Duke of Marlborough’s courage the other day. He! that
Teague from Dublin! because his grace is not in favour, dares to say this
of him; and he says this that it may get to her Majesty’s ear, and to coax
and wheedle Mrs. Masham. They say the Elector of Hanover has a dozen of
mistresses in his Court at Herrenhausen, and if he comes to be king over
us, I wager that the bishops and Mr. Swift, that wants to be one, will
coax and wheedle them. Oh, those priests and their grave airs! I’m sick of
their square toes and their rustling cassocks. I should like to go to a
country where there was not one, or turn Quaker, and get rid of ’em; and I
would, only the dress is not becoming, and I’ve much too pretty a figure
to hide it. Haven’t I, cousin?” and here she glanced at her person and the
looking-glass, which told her rightly that a more beautiful shape and face
never were seen.
“I made that onslaught on the priests,” says Miss Beatrix, afterwards, “in
order to divert my poor dear mother’s anguish about Frank. Frank is as
vain as a girl, cousin. Talk of us girls being vain, what are _we_ to you?
It was easy to see that the first woman who chose would make a fool of
him, or the first robe—I count a priest and a woman all the same. We are
always caballing; we are not answerable for the fibs we tell; we are
always cajoling and coaxing, or threatening; and we are always making
mischief, Colonel Esmond—mark my word for that, who know the the world,
sir, and have to make my way in it. I see as well as possible how Frank’s
marriage hath been managed. The count, our papa-in-law, is always away at
the coffee-house. The countess, our mother, is always in the kitchen
looking after the dinner. The countess, our sister, is at the spinet. When
my lord comes to say he is going on the campaign, the lovely Clotilda
bursts into tears, and faints so; he catches her in his arms—no, sir, keep
your distance, cousin, if you please—she cries on his shoulder, and he
says, ‘Oh, my divine, my adored, my beloved Clotilda, are you sorry to
part with me?’ ‘Oh, my Francisco,’ says she, ‘oh, my lord!’ and at this
very instant mamma and a couple of young brothers, with moustachios and
long rapiers, come in from the kitchen, where they have been eating bread
and onions. Mark my word, you will have all this woman’s relations at
Castlewood three months after she has arrived there. The old count and
countess, and the young counts and all the little countesses her sisters.
Counts! every one of these wretches says he is a count. Guiscard, that
stabbed Mr. Harvy, said he was a count; and I believe he was a barber. All
Frenchmen are barbers—Fiddle-dee! don’t contradict me—or else
dancing-masters, or else priests;” and so she rattled on.
“Who was it taught _you_ to dance, cousin Beatrix?” says the colonel.
She laughed out the air of a minuet, and swept a low curtsy, coming up to
the recover with the prettiest little foot in the world pointed out. Her
mother came in as she was in this attitude; my lady had been in her
closet, having taken poor Frank’s conversion in a very serious way; the
madcap girl ran up to her mother, put her arms round her waist, kissed
her, tried to make her dance, and said: “Don’t be silly, you kind little
mamma, and cry about Frank turning Papist. What a figure he must be, with
a white sheet and a candle walking in a procession barefoot!” And she
kicked off her little slippers (the wonderfullest little shoes with
wonderful tall red heels, Esmond pounced upon one as it fell close beside
him), and she put on the drollest little _moue_, and marched up and down
the room holding Esmond’s cane by way of taper. Serious as her mood was,
Lady Castlewood could not refrain from laughing; and as for Esmond he
looked on with that delight with which the sight of this fair creature
always inspired him: never had he seen any woman so arch, so brilliant,
and so beautiful.
Having finished her march, she put out her foot for her slipper. The
colonel knelt down: “If you will be Pope I will turn Papist,” says he; and
her holiness gave him gracious leave to kiss the little stockinged foot
before he put the slipper on.
Mamma’s feet began to pat on the floor during this operation, and Beatrix,
whose bright eyes nothing escaped, saw that little mark of impatience. She
ran up and embraced her mother, with her usual cry of, “Oh, you silly
little mamma: your feet are quite as pretty as mine,” says she: “they are,
cousin, though she hides ’em; but the shoemaker will tell you that he
makes for both off the same last.”
“You are taller than I am, dearest,” says her mother, blushing over her
whole sweet face—“and—and it is your hand, my dear, and not your foot he
wants you to give him,” and she said it with a hysteric laugh, that had
more of tears than laughter in it; laying her head on her daughter’s fair
shoulder, and hiding it there. They made a very pretty picture together,
and looked like a pair of sisters—the sweet simple matron seeming younger
than her years, and her daughter, if not older, yet somehow, from a
commanding manner and grace which she possessed above most women, her
mother’s superior and protectress.
“But, oh!” cries my mistress, recovering herself after this scene, and
returning to her usual sad tone, “’tis a shame that we should laugh and be
making merry on a day when we ought to be down on our knees and asking
pardon.”
“Asking pardon for what?” says saucy Mrs. Beatrix,—“because Frank takes it
into his head to fast on Fridays, and worship images? You know if you had
been born a Papist, mother, a Papist you would have remained to the end of
your days. ’Tis the religion of the king and of some of the best quality.
For my part, I’m no enemy to it, and think Queen Bess was not a penny
better than Queen Mary.”
“Hush, Beatrix! Do not jest with sacred things, and remember of what
parentage you come,” cries my lady. Beatrix was ordering her ribbons, and
adjusting her tucker, and performing a dozen provoking pretty ceremonies,
before the glass. The girl was no hypocrite at least. She never at that
time could be brought to think but of the world and her beauty; and seemed
to have no more sense of devotion than some people have of music, that
cannot distinguish one air from another. Esmond saw this fault in her, as
he saw many others—a bad wife would Beatrix Esmond make, he thought, for
any man under the degree of a prince. She was born to shine in great
assemblies, and to adorn palaces, and to command everywhere—to conduct an
intrigue of politics, or to glitter in a queen’s train. But to sit at a
homely table, and mend the stockings of a poor man’s children! that was no
fitting duty for her, or at least one that she wouldn’t have broke her
heart in trying to do. She was a princess, though she had scarce a
shilling to her fortune; and one of her subjects—the most abject and
devoted wretch, sure, that ever drivelled at a woman’s knees—was this
unlucky gentleman; who bound his good sense, and reason, and independence,
hand and foot; and submitted them to her.
And who does not know how ruthlessly women will tyrannize when they are
let to domineer? and who does not know how useless advice is? I could give
good counsel to my descendants, but I know they’ll follow their own way,
for all their grandfather’s sermon. A man gets his own experience about
women, and will take nobody’s hearsay; nor, indeed, is the young fellow
worth a fig that would. ’Tis I that am in love with my mistress, not my
old grandmother that counsels me; ’tis I that have fixed the value of the
thing I would have, and know the price I would pay for it. It may be
worthless to you, but ’tis all my life to me. Had Esmond possessed the
Great Mogul’s crown and all his diamonds, or all the Duke of Marlborough’s
money, or all the ingots sunk at Vigo, he would have given them all for
this woman. A fool he was, if you will; but so is a sovereign a fool, that
will give half a principality for a little crystal as big as a pigeon’s
egg, and called a diamond: so is a wealthy nobleman a fool, that will face
danger or death, and spend half his life, and all his tranquillity,
caballing for a blue ribbon: so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that hath been
known to pay ten thousand crowns for a tulip. There’s some particular
prize we all of us value, and that every man of spirit will venture his
life for. With this, it may be to achieve a great reputation for learning;
with that, to be a man of fashion, and the admiration of the town; with
another, to consummate a great work of art or poetry, and go to
immortality that way; and with another, for a certain time of his life,
the sole object and aim is a woman.
Whilst Esmond was under the domination of this passion, he remembers many
a talk he had with his intimates, who used to rally our Knight of the
Rueful Countenance at his devotion, whereof he made no disguise, to
Beatrix; and it was with replies such as the above he met his friends’
satire. “Granted, I am a fool,” says he, “and no better than you; but you
are no better than I. You have your folly you labour for; give me the
charity of mine. What flatteries do you, Mr. St. John, stoop to whisper in
the ears of a queen’s favourite? What nights of labour doth not the
laziest man in the world endure, forgoing his bottle, and his boon
companions, forgoing Lais, in whose lap he would like to be yawning, that
he may prepare a speech full of lies, to cajole three hundred stupid
country gentlemen in the House of Commons, and get the hiccuping cheers of
the October Club! What days will you spend in your jolting chariot!” (Mr.
Esmond often rode to Windsor, and especially, of later days, with the
secretary.) “What hours will you pass on your gouty feet—and how humbly
will you kneel down to present a dispatch—you, the proudest man in the
world, that has not knelt to God since you were a boy, and in that posture
whisper, flatter, adore almost, a stupid woman, that’s often boozy with
too much meat and drink, when Mr. Secretary goes for his audience! If my
pursuit is vanity, sure yours is too.” And then the secretary would fly
out in such a rich flow of eloquence, as this pen cannot pretend to
recall; advocating his scheme of ambition, showing the great good he would
do for his country when he was the undisputed chief of it; backing his
opinion with a score of pat sentences from Greek and Roman authorities (of
which kind of learning he made rather an ostentatious display), and
scornfully vaunting the very arts and meannesses by which fools were to be
made to follow him, opponents to be bribed or silenced, doubters
converted, and enemies overawed.
“I am Diogenes,” says Esmond, laughing, “that is taken up for a ride in
Alexander’s chariot. I have no desire to vanquish Darius or to tame
Bucephalus. I do not want what you want, a great name or a high place: to
have them would bring me no pleasure. But my moderation is taste, not
virtue; and I know that what I do want, is as vain as that which you long
after. Do not grudge me my vanity, if I allow yours; or rather, let us
laugh at both indifferently, and at ourselves, and at each other.”
“If your charmer holds out,” says St. John, “at this rate, she may keep
you twenty years besieging her, and surrender by the time you are seventy,
and she is old enough to be a grandmother. I do not say the pursuit of a
particular woman is not as pleasant a pastime as any other kind of
hunting,” he added; “only, for my part, I find the game won’t run long
enough. They knock under too soon—that’s the fault I find with ’em.”
“The game which you pursue is in the habit of being caught, and used to
being pulled down,” says Mr. Esmond.
“But Dulcinea del Toboso is peerless, eh?” says the other. “Well, honest
Harry, go and attack windmills—perhaps thou art not more mad than other
people,” St. John added, with a sigh.
Chapter III. A Paper Out Of The “Spectator”
Doth any young gentleman of my progeny, who may read his old grandfather’s
papers, chance to be presently suffering under the passion of Love? There
is a humiliating cure, but one that is easy and almost specific for the
malady—which is, to try an alibi. Esmond went away from his mistress and
was cured a half-dozen times; he came back to her side, and instantly fell
ill again of the fever. He vowed that he could leave her and think no more
of her, and so he could pretty well, at least, succeed in quelling that
rage and longing he had whenever he was with her; but as soon as he
returned he was as bad as ever again. Truly a ludicrous and pitiable
object, at least exhausting everybody’s pity but his dearest mistress’s,
Lady Castlewood’s, in whose tender breast he reposed all his dreary
confessions, and who never tired of hearing him and pleading for him.
Sometimes Esmond would think there was hope. Then again he would be
plagued with despair, at some impertinence or coquetry of his mistress.
For days they would be like brother and sister, or the dearest
friends—she, simple, fond, and charming—he, happy beyond measure at her
good behaviour. But this would all vanish on a sudden. Either he would be
too pressing, and hint his love, when she would rebuff him instantly, and
give his vanity a box on the ear: or he would be jealous, and with perfect
good reason, of some new admirer that had sprung up, or some rich young
gentleman newly arrived in the town, that this incorrigible flirt would
set her nets and baits to draw in. If Esmond remonstrated, the little
rebel would say—“Who are you? I shall go my own way, sirrah, and that way
is towards a husband, and I don’t want _you_ on the way. I am for your
betters, colonel, for your betters: do you hear that? You might do if you
had an estate and were younger; only eight years older than I, you say!
pish, you are a hundred years older. You are an old, old Graveairs, and I
should make you miserable, that would be the only comfort I should have in
marrying you. But you have not money enough to keep a cat decently after
you have paid your man his wages, and your landlady her bill. Do you think
I’m going to live in a lodging, and turn the mutton at a string whilst
your honour nurses the baby? Fiddlestick, and why did you not get this
nonsense knocked out of your head when you were in the wars? You are come
back more dismal and dreary than ever. You and mamma are fit for each
other. You might be Darby and Joan, and play cribbage to the end of your
lives.”
“At least you own to your worldliness, my poor Trix,” says her mother.
“Worldliness—O my pretty lady! Do you think that I am a child in the
nursery, and to be frightened by Bogey? Worldliness, to be sure; and pray,
madam, where is the harm of wishing to be comfortable? When you are gone,
you dearest old woman, or when I am tired of you and have run away from
you, where shall I go? Shall I go and be head nurse to my Popish
sister-in-law, take the children their physic, and whip ’em, and put ’em
to bed when they are naughty? Shall I be Castlewood’s upper servant, and
perhaps marry Tom Tusher? _Merci!_ I have been long enough Frank’s humble
servant. Why am I not a man? I have ten times his brains, and had I worn
the—well, don’t let your ladyship be frightened—had I worn a sword and
periwig instead of this mantle and commode, to which nature has condemned
me—(though ’tis a pretty stuff, too—cousin Esmond! you will go to the
Exchange to-morrow, and get the exact counterpart of this ribbon, sir, do
you hear?)—I would have made our name talked about. So would Graveairs
here have made something out of our name if he had represented it. My Lord
Graveairs would have done very well. Yes, you have a very pretty way, and
would have made a very decent, grave speaker;” and here she began to
imitate Esmond’s way of carrying himself, and speaking to his face, and so
ludicrously that his mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself
could see there was some likeness in the fantastical malicious caricature.
“Yes,” says she, “I solemnly vow, own, and confess, that I want a good
husband. Where’s the harm of one? My face is my fortune. Who’ll come?—buy,
buy, buy! I cannot toil, neither can I spin, but I can play twenty-three
games on the cards. I can dance the last dance, I can hunt the stag, and I
think I could shoot flying. I can talk as wicked as any woman of my years,
and know enough stories to amuse a sulky husband for at least one thousand
and one nights. I have a pretty taste for dress, diamonds, gambling, and
old china. I love sugar-plums, Malines lace (that you brought me, cousin,
is very pretty), the opera, and everything that is useless and costly. I
have got a monkey and a little black boy—Pompey, sir, go and give a dish
of chocolate to Colonel Graveairs,—and a parrot and a spaniel, and I must
have a husband. Cupid, you hear?”
“Iss, missis,” says Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peterborow gave
her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his
mistress’s name on it.
“Iss, missis!” says Beatrix, imitating the child. “And if husband not
come, Pompey must go fetch one.”
And Pompey went away grinning with his chocolate tray, as Miss Beatrix ran
up to her mother and ended her sally of mischief in her common way, with a
kiss—no wonder that upon paying such a penalty her fond judge pardoned
her.
-------------------------------------
When Mr. Esmond came home, his health was still shattered; and he took a
lodging near to his mistress’s, at Kensington, glad enough to be served by
them, and to see them day after day. He was enabled to see a little
company—and of the sort he liked best. Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison both did
him the honour to visit him: and drank many a flask of good claret at his
lodging, whilst their entertainer, through his wound, was kept to diet
drink and gruel. These gentlemen were Whigs, and great admirers of my Lord
Duke of Marlborough; and Esmond was entirely of the other party. But their
different views of politics did not prevent the gentlemen from agreeing in
private, nor from allowing, on one evening when Esmond’s kind old patron,
Lieutenant-General Webb, with a stick and a crutch, hobbled up to the
colonel’s lodging (which was prettily situate at Knightsbridge, between
London and Kensington, and looking over the Gardens), that the
lieutenant-general was a noble and gallant soldier—and even that he had
been hardly used in the Wynendael affair. He took his revenge in talk,
that must be confessed; and if Mr. Addison had had a mind to write a poem
about Wynendael, he might have heard from the commander’s own lips the
story a hundred times over.
Mr. Esmond, forced to be quiet, betook himself to literature for a
relaxation, and composed his comedy, whereof the prompter’s copy lieth in
my walnut escritoire, sealed up and docketed, _The Faithful Fool_, a
Comedy, as it was performed by her Majesty’s servants. ’Twas a very
sentimental piece; and Mr. Steele, who had more of that kind of sentiment
than Mr. Addison, admired it, whilst the other rather sneered at the
performance; though he owned that, here and there, it contained some
pretty strokes. He was bringing out his own play of _Cato_ at the time,
the blaze of which quite extinguished Esmond’s farthing candle: and his
name was never put to the piece, which was printed as by a Person of
Quality. Only nine copies were sold, though Mr. Dennis, the great critic,
praised it, and said ’twas a work of great merit; and Colonel Esmond had
the whole impression burned one day in a rage, by Jack Lockwood, his man.
All this comedy was full of bitter satiric strokes against a certain young
lady. The plot of the piece was quite a new one. A young woman was
represented with a great number of suitors, selecting a pert fribble of a
peer, in place of the hero (but ill-acted, I think, by Mr. Wilks, the
Faithful Fool), who persisted in admiring her. In the fifth act, Teraminta
was made to discover the merits of Eugenio (the F. F.), and to feel a
partiality for him too late; for he announced that he had bestowed his
hand and estate upon Rosaria, a country lass, endowed with every virtue.
But it must be owned that the audience yawned through the play; and that
it perished on the third night, with only half a dozen persons to behold
its agonies. Esmond and his two mistresses came to the first night, and
Miss Beatrix fell asleep; whilst her mother, who had not been to a play
since King James the Second’s time, thought the piece, though not
brilliant, had a very pretty moral.
Mr. Esmond dabbled in letters, and wrote a deal of prose and verse at this
time of leisure. When displeased with the conduct of Miss Beatrix, he
would compose a satire, in which he relieved his mind. When smarting under
the faithlessness of women, he dashed off a copy of verses, in which he
held the whole sex up to scorn. One day, in one of these moods, he made a
little joke, in which (swearing him to secrecy) he got his friend Dick
Steele to help him; and, composing a paper, he had it printed exactly like
Steele’s paper, and by his printer, and laid on his mistress’s
breakfast-table the following:—
“SPECTATOR.
No. 341. Tuesday, April 1, 1712.
Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur.—HORACE.
Thyself the moral of the Fable see.—CREECH.
“Jocasta is known as a woman of learning and fashion, and as one of the
most amiable persons of this Court and country. She is at home two
mornings of the week, and all the wits and a few of the beauties of London
flock to her assemblies. When she goes abroad to Tunbridge or the Bath, a
retinue of adorers rides the journey with her; and, besides the London
beaux, she has a crowd of admirers at the Wells, the polite amongst the
natives of Sussex and Somerset pressing round her tea-tables, and being
anxious for a nod from her chair. Jocasta’s acquaintance is thus very
numerous. Indeed, ’tis one smart writer’s work to keep her visiting-book—a
strong footman is engaged to carry it; and it would require a much
stronger head, even than Jocasta’s own, to remember the names of all her
dear friends.
“Either at Epsom Wells or at Tunbridge (for of this important matter
Jocasta cannot be certain) it was her ladyship’s fortune to become
acquainted with a young gentleman, whose conversation was so sprightly,
and manners amiable, that she invited the agreeable young spark to visit
her if ever he came to London, where her house in Spring Garden should be
open to him. Charming as he was, and without any manner of doubt a pretty
fellow, Jocasta hath such a regiment of the like continually marching
round her standard, that ’tis no wonder her attention is distracted
amongst them. And so, though this gentleman made a considerable impression
upon her, and touched her heart for at least three-and-twenty minutes, it
must be owned that she has forgotten his name. He is a dark man, and may
be eight-and-twenty years old. His dress is sober, though of rich
materials. He has a mole on his forehead over his left eye; has a blue
ribbon to his cane and sword, and wears his own hair.
“Jocasta was much flattered by beholding her admirer (for that everybody
admires who sees her is a point which she never can for a moment doubt) in
the next pew to her at St. James’s Church last Sunday; and the manner in
which he appeared to go to sleep during the sermon—though from under his
fringed eyelids it was evident he was casting glances of respectful
rapture towards Jocasta—deeply moved and interested her. On coming out of
church, he found his way to her chair, and made her an elegant bow as she
stepped into it. She saw him at Court afterwards, where he carried himself
with a most distinguished air, though none of her acquaintances knew his
name; and the next night he was at the play, where her ladyship was
pleased to acknowledge him from the side-box.
“During the whole of the comedy she racked her brains so to remember his
name, that she did not hear a word of the piece: and having the happiness
to meet him once more in the lobby of the playhouse, she went up to him in
a flutter, and bade him remember that she kept two nights in the week, and
that she longed to see him at Spring Garden.
“He appeared on Tuesday, in a rich suit, showing a very fine taste both in
the tailor and wearer; and though a knot of us were gathered round the
charming Jocasta, fellows who pretended to know every face upon the town,
not one could tell the gentleman’s name in reply to Jocasta’s eager
inquiries, flung to the right and left of her as he advanced up the room
with a bow that would become a duke.
“Jocasta acknowledged this salute with one of those smiles and curtsies of
which that lady hath the secret. She curtsies with a languishing air, as
if to say, ‘You are come at last. I have been pining for you:’ and then
she finishes her victim with a killing look, which declares: ‘O Philander!
I have no eyes but for you.’ Camilla hath as good a curtsy perhaps, and
Thalestris much such another look; but the glance and the curtsy together
belong to Jocasta of all the English beauties alone.
“ ‘Welcome to London, sir,’ says she. ‘One can see you are from the
country by your looks.’ She would have said ‘Epsom’, or ‘Tunbridge’, had
she remembered rightly at which place she had met the stranger; but, alas!
she had forgotten.
“The gentleman said, ‘he had been in town but three days; and one of his
reasons for coming hither was to have the honour of paying his court to
Jocasta.’
“She said, ‘the waters had agreed with her but indifferently.’
“ ‘The waters were for the sick,’ the gentleman said: ‘the young and
beautiful came but to make them sparkle. And, as the clergyman read the
service on Sunday,’ he added, ‘your ladyship reminded me of the angel that
visited the pool.’ A murmur of approbation saluted this sally. Manilio,
who is a wit when he is not at cards, was in such a rage that he revoked
when he heard it.
“Jocasta was an angel visiting the waters; but at which of the Bethesdas?
She was puzzled more and more; and, as her way always is, looked the more
innocent and simple, the more artful her intentions were.
“ ‘We were discoursing,’ says she, ‘about spelling of names and words when
you came. Why should we say goold and write gold, and call china chayny,
and Cavendish Candish, and Cholmondeley Chumley? If we call Pulteney
Poltney, why shouldn’t we call poultry pultry—and——’
“ ‘Such an enchantress as your ladyship,’ says he, ‘is mistress of all
sorts of spells.’ But this was Dr. Swift’s pun, and we all knew it.
“ ‘And—and how do you spell your name?’ says she, coming to the point, at
length; for this sprightly conversation had lasted much longer than is
here set down, and been carried on through at least three dishes of tea.
“ ‘Oh, madam,’ says he, ‘_I spell my name with the y_.’ And laying down
his dish, my gentleman made another elegant bow, and was gone in a moment.
“Jocasta hath had no sleep since this mortification, and the stranger’s
disappearance. If balked in anything, she is sure to lose her health and
temper; and we, her servants, suffer, as usual, during the angry fits of
our queen. Can you help us, Mr. Spectator, who know everything, to read
this riddle for her, and set at rest all our minds? We find in her list,
Mr. Berty, Mr. Smith, Mr. Pike, Mr. Tyler—who may be Mr. Bertie, Mr.
Smyth, Mr. Pyke, Mr. Tiler, for what we know. She hath turned away the
clerk of her visiting-book, a poor fellow with a great family of children.
Read me this riddle, good Mr. Shortface, and oblige your admirer—OEDIPUS.”
THE “TRUMPET” COFFEE-HOUSE, Whitehall.
“MR. SPECTATOR—I am a gentleman but little acquainted with the town,
though I have had a university education, and passed some years serving my
country abroad, where my name is better known than in the coffee-houses
and St. James’s.
“Two years since my uncle died, leaving me a pretty estate in the county
of Kent; and being at Tunbridge Wells last summer, after my mourning was
over, and on the look-out, if truth must be told, for some young lady who
would share with me the solitude of my great Kentish house, and be kind to
my tenantry (for whom a woman can do a great deal more good than the
best-intentioned man can), I was greatly fascinated by a young lady of
London, who was the toast of all the company at the Wells. Everyone knows
Saccharissa’s beauty; and I think, Mr. Spectator, no one better than
herself.
“My table-book informs me that I danced no less than seven-and-twenty sets
with her at the assembly. I treated her to the fiddles twice. I was
admitted on several days to her lodging, and received by her with a great
deal of distinction, and, for a time, was entirely her slave. It was only
when I found, from common talk of the company at the Wells, and from
narrowly watching one, who I once thought of asking the most sacred
question a man can put to a woman, that I became aware how unfit she was
to be a country gentleman’s wife; and that this fair creature was but a
heartless worldly jilt, playing with affections that she never meant to
return, and, indeed, incapable of returning them. ’Tis admiration such
women want, not love that touches them; and I can conceive, in her old
age, no more wretched creature than this lady will be, when her beauty
hath deserted her, when her admirers have left her, and she hath neither
friendship nor religion to console her.
“Business calling me to London, I went to St. James’s Church last Sunday,
and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the
whole service was so pert, languishing, and absurd; she flirted her fan,
and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut
my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld
hers (and very bright they are) still staring at me. I fell in with her
afterwards at Court, and at the playhouse; and here nothing would satisfy
her but she must elbow through the crowd and speak to me, and invite me to
the assembly, which she holds at her house, nor very far from Ch-r-ng
Cr-ss.
“Having made her a promise to attend, of course I kept my promise; and
found the young widow in the midst of a half-dozen of card-tables, and a
crowd of wits and admirers. I made the best bow I could, and advanced
towards her; and saw by a peculiar puzzled look in her face, though she
tried to hide her perplexity, that she had forgotten even my name.
“Her talk, artful as it was, convinced me that I had guessed aright. She
turned the conversation most ridiculously upon the spelling of names and
words; and I replied with as ridiculous, fulsome compliments as I could
pay her: indeed, one in which I compared her to an angel visiting the
sick-wells, went a little too far; nor should I have employed it, but that
the allusion came from the Second Lesson last Sunday, which we both had
heard, and I was pressed to answer her.
“Then she came to the question, which I knew was awaiting me, and asked
how I _spelt_ my name? ‘Madam,’ says I, turning on my heel, ‘I spell it
with the _y_.’ And so I left her, wondering at the light-heartedness of
the town-people, who forget and make friends so easily, and resolved to
look elsewhere for a partner for your constant reader.
“CYMON WYLDOATS.
“You know my real name, Mr. Spectator, in which there is no such a letter
as _hupsilon_. But if the lady, whom I have called Saccharissa, wonders
that I appear no more at the tea-tables, she is hereby respectfully
informed the reason _y_.”
-------------------------------------
The above is a parable, whereof the writer will now expound the meaning.
Jocasta was no other than Miss Esmond, maid of honour to her Majesty. She
had told Mr. Esmond this little story of having met a gentleman,
somewhere, and forgetting his name, when the gentleman, with no such
malicious intentions as those of “Cymon” in the above fable, made the
answer simply as above; and we all laughed to think how little Mistress
Jocasta-Beatrix had profited by her artifice and precautions.
As for Cymon he was intended to represent yours and her very humble
servant, the writer of the apologue and of this story, which we had
printed on a _Spectator_ paper at Mr. Steele’s office, exactly as those
famous journals were printed, and which was laid on the table at breakfast
in place of the real newspaper. Mistress Jocasta, who had plenty of wit,
could not live without her _Spectator_ to her tea; and this sham
_Spectator_ was intended to convey to the young woman that she herself was
a flirt, and that Cymon was a gentleman of honour and resolution, seeing
all her faults, and determined to break the chains once and for ever.
For though enough hath been said about this love business already—enough,
at least, to prove to the writer’s heirs what a silly fond fool their old
grandfather was, who would like them to consider him a a very wise old
gentleman; yet not near all has been told concerning this matter, which,
if it were allowed to take in Esmond’s journal the space it occupied in
his time, would weary his kinsmen and women of a hundred years’ time
beyond all endurance; and form such a diary of folly and drivelling,
raptures and rage, as no man of ordinary vanity would like to leave behind
him.
The truth is, that, whether she laughed at him or encouraged him; whether
she smiled or was cold, and turned her smiles on another—worldly and
ambitious, as he knew her to be; hard and careless, as she seemed to grow
with her Court life, and a hundred admirers that came to her and left her;
Esmond, do what he would, never could get Beatrix out of his mind; thought
of her constantly at home or away. If he read his name in a _Gazette_, or
escaped the shot of a cannon-ball or a greater danger in the campaign, as
has happened to him more than once, the instant thought after the honour
achieved or the danger avoided, was “What will _she_ say of it?” “Will
this distinction or the idea of this peril elate her or touch her, so as
to be better inclined towards me?” He could no more help this passionate
fidelity of temper than he could help the eyes he saw with—one or the
other seemed a part of his nature; and knowing every one of her faults as
well as the keenest of her detractors, and the folly of an attachment to
such a woman, of which the fruition could never bring him happiness for
above a week, there was yet a charm about this Circe from which the poor
deluded gentleman could not free himself; and for a much longer period
than Ulysses (another middle-aged officer, who had travelled much, and
been in the foreign wars), Esmond felt himself enthralled and besotted by
the wiles of this enchantress. Quit her! He could no more quit her, as the
Cymon of this story was made to quit his false one, than he could lose his
consciousness of yesterday. She had but to raise her finger, and he would
come back from ever so far; she had but to say, “I have discarded
such-and-such an adorer,” and the poor infatuated wretch would be sure to
come and _rôder_ about her mother’s house, willing to be put on the ranks
of suitors, though he knew he might be cast off the next week. If he were
like Ulysses in his folly at least, she was in so far like Penelope, that
she had a crowd of suitors, and undid day after day and night after night
the handiwork of fascination and the web of coquetry with which she was
wont to allure and entertain them.
Part of her coquetry may have come from her position about the Court,
where the beautiful maid of honour was the light about which a thousand
beaux came and fluttered; where she was sure to have a ring of admirers
round her, crowding to listen to her repartees as much as to admire her
beauty; and where she spoke and listened to much free talk, such as one
never would have thought the lips or ears of Rachel Castlewood’s daughter
would have uttered or heard. When in waiting at Windsor or Hampton, the
Court ladies and gentlemen would be making riding parties together; Mrs.
Beatrix in a horseman’s coat and hat, the foremost after the staghounds
and over the park fences, a crowd of young fellows at her heels. If the
English country ladies at this time were the most pure and modest of any
ladies in the world—the English town and Court ladies permitted themselves
words and behaviour that were neither modest nor pure; and claimed, some
of them, a freedom which those who love that sex most would never wish to
grant them. The gentlemen of my family that follow after me (for I don’t
encourage the ladies to pursue any such studies), may read in the works of
Mr. Congreve, and Dr. Swift, and others, what was the conversation and
what the habits of our time.
The most beautiful woman in England in 1712, when Esmond returned to this
country, a lady of high birth, and though of no fortune to be sure, with a
thousand fascinations of wit and manners—Beatrix Esmond—was now
six-and-twenty years old, and Beatrix Esmond still. Of her hundred adorers
she had not chosen one for a husband; and those who had asked had been
jilted by her; and more still had left her. A succession of near ten
years’ crops of beauties had come up since her time, and had been reaped
by proper _husband_men, if we may make an agricultural simile, and had
been housed comfortably long ago. Her own contemporaries were sober
mothers by this time; girls with not a tithe of her charms, or her wit,
having made good matches, and now claiming precedence over the spinster
who but lately had derided and outshone them. The young beauties were
beginning to look down on Beatrix as an old maid, and sneer, and call her
one of Charles the Second’s ladies, and ask whether her portrait was not
in the Hampton Court Gallery? But still she reigned, at least in one man’s
opinion, superior over all the little misses that were the toasts of the
young lads; and in Esmond’s eyes was ever perfectly lovely and young.
Who knows how many were nearly made happy by possessing her, or, rather,
how many were fortunate in escaping this siren? ’Tis a marvel to think
that her mother was the purest and simplest woman in the whole world, and
that this girl should have been born from her. I am inclined to fancy, my
mistress, who never said a harsh word to her children (and but twice or
thrice only to one person), must have been too fond and pressing with the
maternal authority; for her son and her daughter both revolted early; nor
after their first flight from the nest could they ever be brought back
quite to the fond mother’s bosom. Lady Castlewood, and perhaps it was as
well, knew little of her daughter’s life and real thoughts. How was she to
apprehend what passed in queens’ antechambers and at Court tables? Mrs.
Beatrix asserted her own authority so resolutely that her mother quickly
gave in. The maid of honour had her own equipage; went from home and came
back at her own will: her mother was alike powerless to resist her or to
lead her, or to command or to persuade her.
She had been engaged once, twice, thrice, to be married, Esmond believed.
When he quitted home, it hath been said, she was promised to my Lord
Ashburnham, and now, on his return, behold his lordship was just married
to Lady Mary Butler, the Duke of Ormonde’s daughter, and his fine houses,
and twelve thousand a year of fortune, for which Miss Beatrix had rather
coveted him, was out of her power. To her Esmond could say nothing in
regard to the breaking of this match; and, asking his mistress about it,
all Lady Castlewood answered was: “Do not speak to me about it, Harry. I
cannot tell you how or why they parted, and I fear to inquire. I have told
you before, that with all her kindness, and wit, and generosity, and that
sort of splendour of nature she has; I can say but little good of poor
Beatrix, and look with dread at the marriage she will form. Her mind is
fixed on ambition only, and making a great figure: and, this achieved, she
will tire of it as she does of everything. Heaven help her husband,
whoever he shall be! My Lord Ashburnham was a most excellent young man,
gentle and yet manly, of very good parts, so they told me, and as my
little conversation would enable me to judge: and a kind temper—kind and
enduring I’m sure he must have been, from all that he had to endure. But
he quitted her at last, from some crowning piece of caprice or tyranny of
hers; and now he has married a young woman that will make him a thousand
times happier than my poor girl ever could.”
The rupture, whatever its cause was (I heard the scandal, but indeed shall
not take pains to repeat at length in this diary the trumpery coffee-house
story), caused a good deal of low talk; and Mr. Esmond was present at my
lord’s appearance at the birthday with his bride, over whom the revenge
that Beatrix took was to look so imperial and lovely that the modest
downcast young lady could not appear beside her, and Lord Ashburnham, who
had his reasons for wishing to avoid her, slunk away quite shamefaced, and
very early. This time his grace the Duke of Hamilton, whom Esmond had seen
about her before, was constant at Miss Beatrix’s side: he was one of the
most splendid gentlemen of Europe, accomplished by books, by travel, by
long command of the best company, distinguished as a statesman, having
been ambassador in King William’s time, and a noble speaker in the Scots
Parliament, where he had led the party that was against the union, and
though now five- or six-and-forty years of age, a gentleman so high in
stature, accomplished in wit, and favoured in person, that he might
pretend to the hand of any princess in Europe.
“Should you like the duke for a cousin?” says Mr. Secretary St. John,
whispering to Colonel Esmond in French; “it appears that the widower
consoles himself.”
But to return to our little _Spectator_ paper and the conversation which
grew out of it. Miss Beatrix at first was quite _bit_ (as the phrase of
that day was) and did not “smoke” the authorship of the story: indeed
Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he could Mr. Steele’s manner (as
for the other author of the _Spectator_, his prose style I think is
altogether inimitable); and Dick, who was the idlest and best-natured of
men, would have let the piece pass into his journal and go to posterity as
one of his own lucubrations, but that Esmond did not care to have a lady’s
name whom he loved sent forth to the world in a light so unfavourable.
Beatrix pished and psha’d over the paper; Colonel Esmond watching with no
little interest her countenance as she read it.
“How stupid your friend Mr. Steele becomes!” cries Miss Beatrix. “Epsom
and Tunbridge! Will he never have done with Epsom and Tunbridge, and with
beaux at church, and Jocastas and Lindamiras? Why does he not call women
Nelly and Betty, as their godfathers and godmothers did for them in their
baptism?”
“Beatrix, Beatrix!” says her mother, “speak gravely of grave things.”
“Mamma thinks the Church Catechism came from Heaven, I believe,” says
Beatrix, with a laugh, “and was brought down by a bishop from a mountain.
Oh, how I used to break my heart over it! Besides, I had a Popish
god-mother, mamma; why did you give me one?”
“I gave you the queen’s name,” says her mother, blushing. “And a very
pretty name it is,” said somebody else.
Beatrix went on reading—“Spell my name with a _y_—why, you wretch,” says
she, turning round to Colonel Esmond, “you have been telling my story to
Mr. Steele—or stop—you have written the paper yourself to turn me into
ridicule. For shame, sir!”
Poor Mr. Esmond felt rather frightened, and told a truth, which was
nevertheless an entire falsehood. “Upon my honour,” says he, “I have not
even read the _Spectator_ of this morning.” Nor had he, for that was not
the _Spectator_, but a sham newspaper put in its place.
She went on reading: her face rather flushed as she read. “No,” she says,
“I think you couldn’t have written it. I think it must have been Mr.
Steele when he was drunk—and afraid of his horrid vulgar wife. Whenever I
see an enormous compliment to a woman, and some outrageous panegyric about
female virtue, I always feel sure that the captain and his better half
have fallen out overnight, and that he has been brought home tipsy, or has
been found out in ——”
“Beatrix!” cries the Lady Castlewood.
“Well, mamma! Do not cry out before you are hurt. I am not going to say
anything wrong. I won’t give you more annoyance than I can help, you
pretty kind mamma. Yes, and your little Trix is a naughty little Trix, and
she leaves undone those things which she ought to have done, and does
those things which she ought not to have done, and there’s——well now—I
won’t go on. Yes, I will, unless you kiss me.” And with this the young
lady lays aside her paper, and runs up to her mother and performs a
variety of embraces with her ladyship, saying as plain as eyes could speak
to Mr. Esmond—“There, sir: would not _you_ like to play the very same
pleasant game?”
“Indeed, madam, I would,” says he.
“Would what?” asked Miss Beatrix.
“What you meant when you looked at me in that provoking way,” answers
Esmond.
“What a confessor!” cries Beatrix, with a laugh.
“What is it Henry would like, my dear?” asks her mother, the kind soul,
who was always thinking what we would like, and how she could please us.
The girl runs up to her—“Oh, you silly kind mamma,” she says, kissing her
again, “that’s what Harry would like;” and she broke out into a great
joyful laugh: and Lady Castlewood blushed as bashful as a maid of sixteen.
“Look at her, Harry,” whispers Beatrix, running up, and speaking in her
sweet low tones. “Doesn’t the blush become her? Isn’t she pretty? She
looks younger than I am: and I am sure she is a hundred million thousand
times better.”
Esmond’s kind mistress left the room, carrying her blushes away with her.
“If we girls at Court could grow such roses as that,” continues Beatrix,
with her laugh, “what wouldn’t we do to preserve ’em? We’d clip their
stalks and put ’em in salt and water. But those flowers don’t bloom at
Hampton Court and Windsor, Henry.” She paused for a minute, and the smile
fading away from her April face, gave place to a menacing shower of tears:
“Oh, how good she is, Harry,” Beatrix went on to say. “Oh, what a saint
she is! Her goodness frightens me. I’m not fit to live with her. I should
be better, I think, if she were not so perfect. She has had a great sorrow
in her life, and a great secret; and repented of it. It could not have
been my father’s death. She talks freely about that; nor could she have
loved him very much—though who knows what we women do love, and why?”
“What, and why, indeed,” says Mr. Esmond.
“No one knows,” Beatrix went on, without noticing this interruption except
by a look, “what my mother’s life is. She hath been at early prayer this
morning: she passes hours in her closet; if you were to follow her
thither, you would find her at prayers now. She tends the poor of the
place—the horrid dirty poor! She sits through the curate’s sermons—oh,
those dreary sermons! And you see, _on a beau dire_; but good as they are,
people like her are not fit to commune with us of the world. There is
always, as it were, a third person present, even when I and my mother are
alone. She can’t be frank with me quite; who is always thinking of the
next world, and of her guardian angel, perhaps that’s in company. Oh,
Harry, I’m jealous of that guardian angel!” here broke out Mistress
Beatrix. “It’s horrid, I know; but my mother’s life is all for Heaven, and
mine—all for earth. We can never be friends quite; and then, she cares
more for Frank’s little finger than she does for me—I know she does: and
she loves you, sir, a great deal too much; and I hate you for it. I would
have had her all to myself; but she wouldn’t. In my childhood, it was my
father she loved—(Oh, how could she? I remember him kind and handsome, but
so stupid, and not being able to speak after drinking wine). And then, it
was Frank; and now, it is Heaven and the clergyman. How I would have loved
her! From a child I used to be in a rage that she loved anybody but me;
but she loved you all better—all, I know she did. And now, she talks of
the blessed consolation of religion. Dear soul! she thinks she is happier
for believing, as she must, that we are all of us wicked and miserable
sinners; and this world is only a _pied à terre_ for the good, where they
stay for a night, as we do, coming from Walcote, at that great, dreary,
uncomfortable Hounslow inn, in those horrid beds. Oh, do you remember
those horrid beds?—and the chariot comes and fetches them to Heaven the
next morning.”
“Hush, Beatrix,” says Mr. Esmond.
“Hush, indeed. You are a hypocrite, too, Henry, with your grave airs and
your glum face. We are all hypocrites. Oh dear me! We are all alone,
alone, alone,” says poor Beatrix, her fair breast heaving with a sigh.
“It was I that writ every line of that paper, my dear,” says Mr. Esmond.
“You are not so worldly as you think yourself, Beatrix, and better than we
believe you. The good we have in us we doubt of; and the happiness that’s
to our hand we throw away. You bend your ambition on a great marriage and
establishment—and why? You’ll tire of them when you win them; and be no
happier with a coronet on your coach——”
“Than riding pillion with Lubin to market,” says Beatrix. “Thank you,
Lubin!”
“I’m a dismal shepherd, to be sure,” answers Esmond, with a blush; “and
require a nymph that can tuck my bed-clothes up, and make me water-gruel.
Well, Tom Lockwood can do that. He took me out of the fire upon his
shoulders, and nursed me through my illness as love will scarce ever do.
Only good wages, and a hope of my clothes, and the contents of my
portmanteau. How long was it that Jacob served an apprenticeship for
Rachel?”
“For mamma?” says Beatrix. “Is it mamma your honour wants, and that I
should have the happiness of calling you papa?”
Esmond blushed again. “I spoke of a Rachel that a shepherd courted five
thousand years ago; when shepherds were longer lived than now. And my
meaning was, that since I saw you first after our separation—a child you
were then——”
“And I put on my best stockings to captivate you, I remember, sir.”
“You have had my heart ever since then, such as it was; and such as you
were, I cared for no other woman. What little reputation I have won, it
was that you might be pleased with it: and, indeed, it is not much; and I
think a hundred fools in the army have got and deserved quite as much. Was
there something in the air of that dismal old Castlewood that made us all
gloomy, and dissatisfied, and lonely under its ruined old roof? We were
all so, even when together and united, as it seemed, following our
separate schemes, each as we sat round the table.”
“Dear, dreary old place!” cries Beatrix. “Mamma hath never had the heart
to go back thither since we left it, when—never mind how many years ago,”
and she flung back her curls, and looked over her fair shoulder at the
mirror superbly, as if she said, “Time, I defy you.”
“Yes,” says Esmond, who had the art, as she owned, of divining many of her
thoughts. “You can afford to look in the glass still; and only be pleased
by the truth it tells you. As for me, do you know what my scheme is? I
think of asking Frank to give me the Virginia estate King Charles gave our
grandfather.” (She gave a superb curtsy, as much as to say, “Our
grandfather, indeed! Thank you, Mr. Bastard.”) “Yes, I know you are
thinking of my bar-sinister, and so am I. A man cannot get over it in this
country; unless, indeed, he wears it across a king’s arms, when ’tis a
highly honourable coat: and I am thinking of retiring into the
plantations, and building myself a wigwam in the woods, and perhaps, if I
want company, suiting myself with a squaw. We will send your ladyship furs
over for the winter; and, when you are old, we’ll provide you with
tobacco. I am not quite clever enough, or not rogue enough—I know not
which—for the Old World. I may make a place for myself in the new, which
is not so full; and found a family there. When you are a mother yourself,
and a great lady, perhaps I shall send you over from the plantation some
day a little barbarian that is half Esmond half Mohock, and you will be
kind to him for his father’s sake, who was, after all, your kinsman; and
whom you loved a little.”
“What folly you are talking, Harry!” says Miss Beatrix, looking with her
great eyes.
“’Tis sober earnest,” says Esmond. And, indeed, the scheme had been
dwelling a good deal in his mind for some time past, and especially since
his return home, when he found how hopeless, and even degrading to
himself, his passion was. “No,” says he, then, “I have tried half a dozen
times now. I can bear being away from you well enough; but being with you
is intolerable” (another low curtsy on Mrs. Beatrix’s part), “and I will
go. I have enough to buy axes and guns for my men, and beads and blankets
for the savages; and I’ll go and live amongst them.”
“_Mon ami_,” she says, quite kindly, and taking Esmond’s hand, with an air
of great compassion. “You can’t think that in our position anything more
than our present friendship is possible. You are our elder brother—as such
we view you, pitying your misfortune, not rebuking you with it. Why, you
are old enough and grave enough to be our father. I always thought you a
hundred years old, Harry, with your solemn face and grave air. I feel as a
sister to you, and can no more. Isn’t that enough, sir?” And she put her
face quite close to his—who knows with what intention?
“It’s too much,” says Esmond, turning away. “I can’t bear this life, and
shall leave it. I shall stay, I think, to see you married, and then
freight a ship, and call it the _Beatrix_, and bid you all——”
Here the servant, flinging the door open, announced his grace the Duke of
Hamilton, and Esmond started back with something like an imprecation on
his lips, as the nobleman entered, looking splendid in his star and green
ribbon. He gave Mr. Esmond just that gracious bow which he would have
given to a lackey who fetched him a chair or took his hat, and seated
himself by Miss Beatrix, as the poor colonel went out of the room with a
hang-dog look.
Esmond’s mistress was in the lower room as he passed downstairs. She often
met him as he was coming away from Beatrix; and she beckoned him into the
apartment.
“Has she told you, Harry?” Lady Castlewood said.
“She has been very frank—very,” says Esmond.
“But—but about what is going to happen?”
“What is going to happen?” says he, his heart beating.
“His grace the Duke of Hamilton has proposed to her,” says my lady. “He
made his offer yesterday. They will marry as soon as his mourning is over;
and you have heard his grace is appointed ambassador to Paris; and the
ambassadress goes with him.”
Chapter IV. Beatrix’s New Suitor
The gentleman whom Beatrix had selected was, to be sure, twenty years
older than the colonel, with whom she quarrelled for being too old; but
this one was but a nameless adventurer, and the other the greatest duke in
Scotland, with pretensions even to a still higher title. My Lord Duke of
Hamilton had, indeed, every merit belonging to a gentleman, and he had had
the time to mature his accomplishments fully, being upwards of fifty years
old when Madam Beatrix selected him for a bridegroom. Duke Hamilton, then
Earl of Arran, had been educated at the famous Scottish University of
Glasgow, and, coming to London, became a great favourite of Charles the
Second, who made him a lord of his bedchamber, and afterwards appointed
him ambassador to the French king, under whom the earl served two
campaigns as his Majesty’s aide de camp; and he was absent on this service
when King Charles died.
King James continued my lord’s promotion—made him master of the wardrobe,
and colonel of the Royal Regiment of Horse; and his lordship adhered
firmly to King James, being of the small company that never quitted that
unfortunate monarch till his departure out of England; and then it was, in
1688, namely, that he made the friendship with Colonel Francis Esmond,
that had always been, more or less, maintained in the two families.
The earl professed a great admiration for King William always, but never
could give him his allegiance; and was engaged in more than one of the
plots in the late great king’s reign, which always ended in the plotters’
discomfiture, and generally in their pardon, by the magnanimity of the
king. Lord Arran was twice prisoner in the Tower during this reign,
undauntedly saying, when offered his release, upon parole not to engage
against King William, that he would not give his word, because “he was
sure he could not keep it”; but, nevertheless, he was both times
discharged without any trial; and the king bore this noble enemy so little
malice, that when his mother, the Duchess of Hamilton, of her own right,
resigned her claim on her husband’s death, the earl was, by patent signed
at Loo, 1690, created Duke of Hamilton, Marquis of Clydesdale, and Earl of
Arran, with precedency from the original creation. His grace took the
oaths and his seat in the Scottish Parliament in 1700: was famous there
for his patriotism and eloquence, especially in the debates about the
Union Bill, which Duke Hamilton opposed with all his strength, though he
would not go the length of the Scottish gentry, who were for resisting it
by force of arms. ’Twas said he withdrew his opposition all of a sudden,
and in consequence of letters from the king at St. Germains, who entreated
him on his allegiance not to thwart the queen, his sister, in this
measure; and the duke, being always bent upon effecting the king’s return
to his kingdom through a reconciliation between his Majesty and Queen
Anne, and quite averse to his landing with arms and French troops, held
aloof, and kept out of Scotland during the time when the Chevalier de St.
George’s descent from Dunkirk was projected, passing his time in England
in his great estate of Staffordshire.
When the Whigs went out of office in 1710, the queen began to show his
grace the very greatest marks of her favour. He was created Duke of
Brandon and Baron of Dutton in England; having the Thistle already
originally bestowed on him by King James the Second, his grace was now
promoted to the honour of the Garter—a distinction so great and
illustrious, that no subject hath ever borne them hitherto together. When
this objection was made to her Majesty, she was pleased to say, “Such a
subject as the Duke of Hamilton has a pre-eminent claim to every mark of
distinction which a crowned head can confer. I will henceforth wear both
orders myself.”
At the Chapter held at Windsor in October, 1712, the duke and other
knights, including Lord-Treasurer, the new-created Earl of Oxford and
Mortimer, were installed; and a few days afterwards his grace was
appointed Ambassador-Extraordinary to France, and his equipages, plate,
and liveries commanded, of the most sumptuous kind, not only for his
excellency the ambassador, but for her excellency the ambassadress, who
was to accompany him. Her arms were already quartered on the coach panels,
and her brother was to hasten over on the appointed day to give her away.
His lordship was a widower, having married, in 1698, Elizabeth, daughter
of Digby, Lord Gerard, by which marriage great estates came into the
Hamilton family; and out of these estates came, in part, that tragic
quarrel which ended the duke’s career.
-------------------------------------
From the loss of a tooth to that of a mistress there’s no pang that is not
bearable. The apprehension is much more cruel than the certainty; and we
make up our mind to the misfortune when ’tis irremediable, part with the
tormentor, and mumble our crust on t’other side of the jaws. I think
Colonel Esmond was relieved when a ducal coach-and-six came and whisked
his charmer away out of his reach, and placed her in a higher sphere. As
you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the clouds at the
end of the piece where Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the divine company
of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song as a goddess: so
when this portentous elevation was accomplished in the Esmond family, I am
not sure that every one of us did not treat the divine Beatrix with
special honours; at least, the saucy little beauty carried her head with a
toss of supreme authority, and assumed a touch-me-not air, which all her
friends very good-humouredly bowed to.
An old army acquaintance of Colonel Esmond’s, honest Tom Trett, who had
sold his company, married a wife, and turned merchant in the city, was
dreadfully gloomy for a long time, though living in a fine house on the
river, and carrying on a great trade to all appearance. At length Esmond
saw his friend’s name in the _Gazette_ as a bankrupt; and a week after
this circumstance my bankrupt walks into Mr. Esmond’s lodging with a face
perfectly radiant with good humour, and as jolly and careless as when they
had sailed from Southampton ten years before for Vigo. “This bankruptcy,”
says Tom, “has been hanging over my head these three years; the thought
hath prevented my sleeping, and I have looked at poor Polly’s head on
t’other pillow, and then towards my razor on the table, and thought to put
an end to myself, and so give my woes the slip. But now we are bankrupts:
Tom Trett pays as many shillings in the pound as he can; his wife has a
little cottage at Fulham, and her fortune secured to herself. I am afraid
neither of bailiff nor of creditor; and for the last six nights have slept
easy.” So it was that when Fortune shook her wings and left him, honest
Tom cuddled himself up in his ragged virtue, and fell asleep.
Esmond did not tell his friend how much his story applied to Esmond too;
but he laughed at it, and used it; and having fairly struck his docket in
this love transaction, determined to put a cheerful face on his
bankruptcy. Perhaps Beatrix was a little offended at his gaiety. “Is this
the way, sir, that you receive the announcement of your misfortune,” says
she, “and do you come smiling before me as if you were glad to be rid of
me?”
Esmond would not be put off from his good humour, but told her the story
of Tom Trett and his bankruptcy. “I have been hankering after the grapes
on the wall,” says he, “and lost my temper because they were beyond my
reach; was there any wonder? They’re gone now, and another has them—a
taller man than your humble servant has won them.” And the colonel made
his cousin a low bow.
“A taller man, cousin Esmond!” says she. “A man of spirit would have
scaled the wall, sir, and seized them! A man of courage would have fought
for ’em, not gaped for ’em.”
“A duke has but to gape and they drop into his mouth,” says Esmond, with
another low bow.
“Yes, sir,” says she, “a duke _is_ a taller man than you. And why should I
not be grateful to one such as his grace, who gives me his heart and his
great name? It is a great gift he honours me with; I know ’tis a bargain
between us; and I accept it, and will do my utmost to perform my part of
it. ’Tis no question of sighing and philandering between a nobleman of his
grace’s age and a girl who hath little of that softness in her nature. Why
should I not own that I am ambitious, Harry Esmond; and if it be no sin in
a man to covet honour, why should a woman too not desire it? Shall I be
frank with you, Harry, and say that if you had not been down on your
knees, and so humble, you might have fared better with me? A woman of my
spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry, and not by sighs and rueful
faces. All the time you are worshipping and singing hymns to me, I know
very well I am no goddess, and grow weary of the incense. So would you
have been weary of the goddess too—when she was called Mrs. Esmond, and
got out of humour because she had not pin-money enough, and was forced to
go about in an old gown. Eh! cousin, a goddess in a mob-cap, that has to
make her husband’s gruel, ceases to be divine—I am sure of it. I should
have been sulky and scolded; and of all the proud wretches in the world
Mr. Esmond is the proudest, let me tell him that. You never fall into a
passion; but you never forgive, I think. Had you been a great man, you
might have been good humoured; but being nobody, sir, you are too great a
man for me; and I’m afraid of you, cousin—there; and I won’t worship you,
and you’ll never be happy except with a woman who will. Why, after I
belonged to you, and after one of my tantrums, you would have put the
pillow over my head some night, and smothered me, as the black man does
the woman in the play that you’re so fond of. What’s the creature’s
name?—Desdemona. You would, you little black-eyed Othello!”
“I think I should, Beatrix,” says the colonel.
“And I want no such ending. I intend to live to be a hundred, and to go to
ten thousand routs and balls, and to play cards every night of my life
till the year eighteen hundred. And I like to be the first of my company,
sir; and I like flattery and compliments, and you give me none; and I like
to be made to laugh, sir, and who’s to laugh at _your_ dismal face, I
should like to know; and I like a coach-and-six or a coach-and-eight; and
I like diamonds, and a new gown every week; and people to say—‘That’s the
duchess—How well her grace looks—Make way for Madame l’Ambassadrice
d’Angleterre—Call her excellency’s people’—that’s what I like. And as for
you, you want a woman to bring your slippers and cap, and to sit at your
feet, and cry, ‘O caro! O bravo!’ whilst you read your Shakespeares, and
Miltons, and stuff. Mamma would have been the wife for you, had you been a
little older, though you look ten years older than she does—you do, you
glum-faced, blue-bearded, little old man! You might have sat, like Darby
and Joan, and flattered each other; and billed and cooed like a pair of
old pigeons on a perch. I want my wings and to use them, sir.” And she
spread out her beautiful arms, as if indeed she could fly off like the
pretty “Gawrie”, whom the man in the story was enamoured of.
“And what will your Peter Wilkins say to your flight?” says Esmond, who
never admired this fair creature more than when she rebelled and laughed
at him.
“A duchess knows her place,” says she, with a laugh. “Why, I have a son
already made for me, and thirty years old (my Lord Arran), and four
daughters. How they will scold, and what a rage they will be in, when I
come to take the head of the table! But I give them only a month to be
angry; at the end of that time they shall love me every one, and so shall
Lord Arran, and so shall all his grace’s Scots vassals and followers in
the Highlands. I’m bent on it; and, when I take a thing in my head, ’tis
done. His grace is the greatest gentleman in Europe, and I’ll try and make
him happy; and, when the king comes back, you may count on my protection,
Cousin Esmond—for come back the king will and shall: and I’ll bring him
back from Versailles, if he comes under my hoop.”
“I hope the world will make you happy, Beatrix,” says Esmond, with a sigh.
“You’ll be Beatrix till you are my lady duchess—will you not? I shall then
make your grace my very lowest bow.”
“None of these sighs and this satire, cousin,” she says. “I take his
grace’s great bounty thankfully—yes, thankfully; and will wear his honours
becomingly. I do not say he hath touched my heart; but he has my
gratitude, obedience, admiration—I have told him that, and no more; and
with that his noble heart is content. I have told him all—even the story
of that poor creature that I was engaged to—and that I could not love; and
I gladly gave his word back to him, and jumped for joy to get back my own.
I am twenty-five years old.”
“Twenty-six, my dear,” says Esmond.
“Twenty-five, sir—I choose to be twenty-five; and, in eight years, no man
hath ever touched my heart. Yes—you did once, for a little, Harry, when
you came back after Lille, and engaging with that murderer, Mohun, and
saving Frank’s life. I thought I could like you; and mamma begged me hard,
on her knees, and I did—for a day. But the old chill came over me, Henry,
and the old fear of you and your melancholy; and I was glad when you went
away, and engaged with my Lord Ashburnham, that I might hear no more of
you, that’s the truth. You are too good for me somehow. I could not make
you happy, and should break my heart in trying, and not being able to love
you. But if you had asked me when we gave you the sword, you might have
had me, sir, and we both should have been miserable by this time. I talked
with that silly lord all night just to vex you and mamma, and I succeeded,
didn’t I? How frankly we can talk of these things! It seems a thousand
years ago: and, though we are here sitting in the same room, there’s a
great wall between us. My dear, kind, faithful, gloomy old cousin! I can
like you now, and admire you too, sir, and say that you are brave, and
very kind, and very true, and a fine gentleman for all—for all your little
mishap at your birth,” says she, wagging her arch head.
“And now, sir,” says she, with a curtsy, “we must have no more talk except
when mamma is by, as his grace is with us; for he does not half like you,
cousin, and is as jealous as the black man in your favourite play.”
Though the very kindness of the words stabbed Mr. Esmond with the keenest
pang, he did not show his sense of the wound by any look of his (as
Beatrix, indeed, afterwards owned to him), but said, with a perfect
command of himself and an easy smile, “The interview must not end yet, my
dear, until I have had my last word. Stay, here comes your mother” (indeed
she came in here with her sweet anxious face, and Esmond, going up, kissed
her hand respectfully). “My dear lady may hear, too, the last words, which
are no secrets, and are only a parting benediction accompanying a present
for your marriage from an old gentleman your guardian; for I feel as if I
was the guardian of all the family, and an old, old fellow that is fit to
be the grandfather of you all; and in this character let me make my lady
duchess her wedding present. They are the diamonds my father’s widow left
me. I had thought Beatrix might have had them a year ago; but they are
good enough for a duchess, though not bright enough for the handsomest
woman in the world.” And he took the case out of his pocket in which the
jewels were, and presented them to his cousin.
She gave a cry of delight, for the stones were indeed very handsome, and
of great value; and the next minute the necklace was where Belinda’s cross
is in Mr. Pope’s admirable poem, and glittering on the whitest and most
perfectly-shaped neck in all England.
The girl’s delight at receiving these trinkets was so great, that after
rushing to the looking-glass and examining the effect they produced upon
that fair neck which they surrounded, Beatrix was running back with her
arms extended, and was perhaps for paying her cousin with a price, that he
would have liked no doubt to receive from those beautiful rosy lips of
hers, but at this moment the door opened, and his grace the bridegroom
elect was announced.
He looked very black upon Mr. Esmond, to whom he made a very low bow
indeed, and kissed the hand of each lady in his most ceremonious manner.
He had come in his chair from the palace hard by, and wore his two stars
of the Garter and the Thistle.
“Look, my lord duke,” says Mrs. Beatrix, advancing to him, and showing the
diamonds on her breast.
“Diamonds,” says his grace. “Hm! they seem pretty.”
“They are a present on my marriage,” says Beatrix.
“From her Majesty?” asks the duke. “The queen is very good.”
“From my cousin Henry—from our cousin Henry”—cry both the ladies in a
breath.
“I have not the honour of knowing the gentleman. I thought that my Lord
Castlewood had no brother: and that on your ladyship’s side there were no
nephews.”
“From our cousin, Colonel Henry Esmond, my lord,” says Beatrix, taking the
colonel’s hand very bravely—“who was left guardian to us by our father,
and who has a hundred times shown his love and friendship for our family.”
“The Duchess of Hamilton receives no diamonds but from her husband,
madam,” says the duke—“may I pray you to restore these to Mr. Esmond?”
“Beatrix Esmond may receive a present from our kinsman and benefactor, my
lord duke,” says Lady Castlewood, with an air of great dignity. “She is my
daughter yet: and if her mother sanctions the gift—no one else hath the
right to question it.”
“Kinsman and benefactor!” says the duke. “I know of no kinsman: and I do
not choose that my wife should have for benefactor a——”
“My lord,” says Colonel Esmond.
“I am not here to bandy words,” says his grace: “frankly I tell you that
your visits to this house are too frequent, and that I choose no presents
for the Duchess of Hamilton from gentlemen that bear a name they have no
right to.”
“My lord!” breaks out Lady Castlewood, “Mr. Esmond hath the best right to
that name of any man in the world: and ’tis as old and as honourable as
your grace’s.”
My lord duke smiled, and looked as if Lady Castlewood was mad, that was so
talking to him.
“If I called him benefactor,” said my mistress, “it is because he has been
so to us—yes, the noblest, the truest, the bravest, the dearest of
benefactors. He would have saved my husband’s life from Mohun’s sword. He
did save my boy’s, and defended him from that villain. Are those no
benefits?”
“I ask Colonel Esmond’s pardon,” says his grace, if possible more haughty
than before; “I would say not a word that should give him offence, and
thank him for his kindness to your ladyship’s family. My Lord Mohun and I
are connected, you know, by marriage—though neither by blood nor
friendship; but I must repeat what I said, that my wife can receive no
presents from Colonel Esmond.”
“My daughter may receive presents from the Head of our House: my daughter
may thankfully take kindness from her father’s, her mother’s, her
brother’s dearest friend; and be grateful for one more benefit besides the
thousand we owe him,” cries Lady Esmond. “What is a string of diamond
stones compared to that affection he hath given us—our dearest preserver
and benefactor? We owe him not only Frank’s life, but our all—yes, our
all,” says my mistress, with a heightened colour and a trembling voice.
“The title we bear is his, if he would claim it. ’Tis we who have no right
to our name: not he that’s too great for it. He sacrificed his name at my
dying lord’s bedside—sacrificed it to my orphan children; gave up rank and
honour because he loved us so nobly. His father was Viscount of Castlewood
and Marquis of Esmond before him; and he is his father’s lawful son and
true heir, and we are the recipients of his bounty, and he the chief of a
house that’s as old as your own. And if he is content to forgo his name
that my child may bear it, we love him and honour him and bless him under
whatever name he bears”—and here the fond and affectionate creature would
have knelt to Esmond again, but that he prevented her; and Beatrix,
running up to her with a pale face and a cry of alarm, embraced her and
said, “Mother, what is this?”
“’Tis a family secret, my lord duke,” says Colonel Esmond: “poor Beatrix
knew nothing of it: nor did my lady till a year ago. And I have as good a
right to resign my title as your grace’s mother to abdicate hers to you.”
“I should have told everything to the Duke of Hamilton,” said my mistress,
“had his grace applied to me for my daughter’s hand, and not to Beatrix. I
should have spoken with you this very day in private, my lord, had not
your words brought about this sudden explanation—and now ’tis fit Beatrix
should hear it; and know, as I would have all the world know, what we owe
to our kinsman and patron.”
And then in her touching way, and having hold of her daughter’s hand, and
speaking to her rather than my lord duke, Lady Castlewood told the story
which you know already—lauding up to the skies her kinsman’s behaviour. On
his side Mr. Esmond explained the reasons that seemed quite sufficiently
cogent with him, why the succession in the family, as at present it stood,
should not be disturbed; and he should remain, as he was, Colonel Esmond.
“And Marquis of Esmond, my lord,” says his grace, with a low bow. “Permit
me to ask your lordship’s pardon for words that were uttered in ignorance;
and to beg for the favour of your friendship. To be allied to you, sir,
must be an honour under whatever name you are known” (so his grace was
pleased to say): “and in return for the splendid present you make my wife,
your kinswoman, I hope you will please to command any service that James
Douglas can perform. I shall never be easy until I repay you a part of my
obligations at least; and ere very long, and with the mission her Majesty
hath given me,” says the duke, “that may perhaps be in my power. I shall
esteem it as a favour, my lord, if Colonel Esmond will give away the
bride.”
“And if he will take the usual payment in advance, he is welcome,” says
Beatrix, stepping up to him; and as Esmond kissed her, she whispered, “Oh,
why didn’t I know you before?”
My lord duke was as hot as a flame at this salute, but said never a word:
Beatrix made him a proud curtsy, and the two ladies quitted the room
together.
“When does your excellency go for Paris?” asks Colonel Esmond.
“As soon after the ceremony as may be,” his grace answered. “’Tis fixed
for the first of December: it cannot be sooner. The equipage will not be
ready till then. The queen intends the embassy should be very grand—and I
have law business to settle. That ill-omened Mohun has come, or is coming,
to London again: we are in a lawsuit about my late Lord Gerard’s property;
and he hath sent to me to meet him.”
Chapter V. Mohun Appears For The Last Time In This History
Besides my Lord Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, who, for family reasons, had
kindly promised his protection and patronage to Colonel Esmond, he had
other great friends in power now, both able and willing to assist him, and
he might, with such allies, look forward to as fortunate advancement in
civil life at home as he had got rapid promotion abroad. His grace was
magnanimous enough to offer to take Mr. Esmond as secretary on his Paris
embassy, but no doubt he intended that proposal should be rejected; at any
rate, Esmond could not bear the thoughts of attending his mistress farther
than the church-door after her marriage, and so declined that offer which
his generous rival made him.
Other gentlemen, in power, were liberal at least of compliments and
promises to Colonel Esmond. Mr. Harley, now become my Lord Oxford and
Mortimer, and installed Knight of the Garter on the same day as his grace
of Hamilton had received the same honour, sent to the colonel to say that
a seat in Parliament should be at his disposal presently, and Mr. St. John
held out many flattering hopes of advancement to the colonel when he
should enter the House. Esmond’s friends were all successful, and the most
successful and triumphant of all was his dear old commander, General Webb,
who was now appointed Lieutenant-General of the Land Forces, and received
with particular honour by the ministry, by the queen, and the people out
of doors, who huzza’d the brave chief when they used to see him in his
chariot, going to the House or to the Drawing-room, or hobbling on foot to
his coach from St. Stephen’s upon his glorious old crutch and stick, and
cheered him as loud as they had ever done Marlborough.
That great duke was utterly disgraced; and honest old Webb dated all his
grace’s misfortunes from Wynendael, and vowed that Fate served the traitor
right. Duchess Sarah had also gone to ruin; she had been forced to give up
her keys, and her places, and her pensions:—“Ah, ah!” says Webb, “she
would have locked up three millions of French crowns with her keys had I
but been knocked on the head, but I stopped that convoy at Wynendael.” Our
enemy Cardonnel was turned out of the House of Commons (along with Mr.
Walpole) for malversation of public money. Cadogan lost his place of
Lieutenant of the Tower. Marlborough’s daughters resigned their posts of
ladies of the bedchamber; and so complete was the duke’s disgrace, that
his son-in-law, Lord Bridgewater, was absolutely obliged to give up his
lodging at St. James’s, and had his half-pension, as Master of the Horse,
taken away. But I think the lowest depth of Marlborough’s fall was when he
humbly sent to ask General Webb when he might wait upon him; he who had
commanded the stout old general, who had injured him and sneered at him,
who had kept him dangling in his antechamber, who could not even after his
great service condescend to write him a letter in his own hand. The nation
was as eager for peace, as ever it had been hot for war. The Prince of
Savoy came amongst us, had his audience of the queen, and got his famous
Sword of Honour, and strove with all his force to form a Whig party
together, to bring over the young Prince of Hanover—to do anything which
might prolong the war, and consummate the ruin of the old sovereign whom
he hated so implacably. But the nation was tired of the struggle; so
completely wearied of it that not even our defeat at Denain could rouse us
into any anger, though such an action so lost two years before, would have
set all England in a fury. ’Twas easy to see that the great Marlborough
was not with the army. Eugene was obliged to fall back in a rage, and
forgo the dazzling revenge of his life. ’Twas in vain the duke’s side
asked, “Would we suffer our arms to be insulted? Would we not send back
the only champion who could repair our honour?” The nation had had its
bellyful of fighting; nor could taunts or outcries goad up our Britons any
more.
For a statesman, that was always prating of liberty, and had the grandest
philosophic maxims in his mouth, it must be owned that Mr. St. John
sometimes rather acted like a Turkish than a Greek philosopher, and
especially fell foul of one unfortunate set of men, the men of letters,
with a tyranny a little extraordinary in a man who professed to respect
their calling so much. The literary controversy at this time was very
bitter, the Government side was the winning one, the popular one, and I
think might have been the merciful one. ’Twas natural that the Opposition
should be peevish and cry out; some men did so from their hearts, admiring
the Duke of Marlborough’s prodigious talents, and deploring the disgrace
of the greatest general the world ever knew: ’twas the stomach that caused
other patriots to grumble, and such men cried out because they were poor,
and paid to do so. Against these my Lord Bolingbroke never showed the
slightest mercy, whipping a dozen into prison or into the pillory without
the least commiseration.
From having been a man of arms Mr. Esmond had now come to be a man of
letters, but on a safer side than that in which the above-cited poor
fellows ventured their liberties and ears. There was no danger on ours,
which was the winning side; besides, Mr. Esmond pleased himself by
thinking that he writ like a gentleman if he did not always succeed as a
wit.
Of the famous wits of that age, who have rendered Queen Anne’s reign
illustrious, and whose works will be in all Englishmen’s hands in ages yet
to come, Mr. Esmond saw many, but at public places chiefly; never having a
great intimacy with any of them, except with honest Dick Steele and Mr.
Addison, who parted company with Esmond, however, when that gentleman
became a declared Tory, and lived on close terms with the leading persons
of that party. Addison kept himself to a few friends, and very rarely
opened himself except in their company. A man more upright and
conscientious than he, it was not possible to find in public life, and one
whose conversation was so various, easy, and delightful. Writing now in my
mature years, I own that I think Addison’s politics were the right, and
were my time to come over again, I would be a Whig in England and not a
Tory; but with people that take a side in politics, ’tis men rather than
principles that commonly bind them. A kindness or a slight puts a man
under one flag or the other, and he marches with it to the end of the
campaign. Esmond’s master in war was injured by Marlborough, and hated
him: and the lieutenant fought the quarrels of his leader. Webb coming to
London was used as a weapon by Marlborough’s enemies (and true steel he
was, that honest chief); nor was his aide de camp, Mr. Esmond, an
unfaithful or unworthy partisan. ’Tis strange here, and on a foreign soil,
and in a land that is independent in all but the name (for that the North
American colonies shall remain dependants on yonder little island for
twenty years more, I never can think), to remember how the nation at home
seemed to give itself up to the domination of one or other aristocratic
party, and took a Hanoverian king, or a French one, according as either
prevailed. And while the Tories, the October Club gentlemen, the High
Church parsons that held by the Church of England, were for having a
Papist king, for whom many of their Scottish and English leaders, firm
churchmen all, laid down their lives with admirable loyalty and devotion;
they were governed by men who had notoriously no religion at all, but used
it as they would use any opinion for the purpose of forwarding their own
ambition. The Whigs, on the other hand, who professed attachment to
religion and liberty too, were compelled to send to Holland or Hanover for
a monarch around whom they could rally. A strange series of compromises is
that English history; compromise of principle, compromise of party,
compromise of worship! The lovers of English freedom and independence
submitted their religious consciences to an Act of Parliament; could not
consolidate their liberty without sending to Zell or the Hague for a king
to live under; and could not find amongst the proudest people in the world
a man speaking their own language, and understanding their laws, to govern
them. The Tory and High Church patriots were ready to die in defence of a
Papist family that had sold us to France; the great Whig nobles, the
sturdy Republican recusants who had cut off Charles Stuart’s head for
treason, were fain to accept a king whose title came to him through a
royal grandmother, whose own royal grandmother’s head had fallen under
Queen Bess’s hatchet. And our proud English nobles sent to a petty German
town for a monarch to come and reign in London; and our prelates kissed
the ugly hands of his Dutch mistresses, and thought it no dishonour. In
England you can but belong to one party or t’other, and you take the house
you live in with all its encumbrances, its retainers, its antique
discomforts, and ruins even; you patch up, but you never build up anew.
Will we of the New World submit much longer, even nominally, to this
ancient British superstition? There are signs of the times which make me
think that ere long we shall care as little about King George here, and
peers temporal and peers spiritual, as we do for King Canute or the
Druids.
This chapter began about the wits, my grandson may say, and hath wandered
very far from their company. The pleasantest of the wits I knew were the
Doctors Garth and Arbuthnot, and Mr. Gay, the author of _Trivia_, the most
charming kind soul that ever laughed at a joke or cracked a bottle. Mr.
Prior I saw, and he was the earthen pot swimming with the pots of brass
down the stream, and always and justly frightened lest he should break in
the voyage. I met him both at London and Paris, where he was performing
piteous congees to the Duke of Shrewsbury, not having courage to support
the dignity which his undeniable genius and talent had won him, and
writing coaxing letters to Secretary St. John, and thinking about his
plate and his place, and what on earth should become of him should his
party go out. The famous Mr. Congreve I saw a dozen of times at Button’s,
a splendid wreck of a man, magnificently attired, and though gouty, and
almost blind, bearing a brave face against fortune.
The great Mr. Pope (of whose prodigious genius I have no words to express
my admiration) was quite a puny lad at this time, appearing seldom in
public places. There were hundreds of men, wits, and pretty fellows
frequenting the theatres and coffee-houses of that day—whom _nunc
prescribere longum est_. Indeed I think the most brilliant of that sort I
ever saw was not till fifteen years afterwards, when I paid my last visit
in England, and met young Harry Fielding, son of the Fielding that served
in Spain and afterwards in Flanders with us, and who for fun and humour
seemed to top them all. As for the famous Dr. Swift, I can say of him,
“_vidi tantum_.” He was in London all these years up to the death of the
queen; and in a hundred public places where I saw him, but no more; he
never missed Court of a Sunday, where once or twice he was pointed out to
your grandfather. He would have sought me out eagerly enough had I been a
great man with a title to my name, or a star on my coat. At Court the
doctor had no eyes but for the very greatest. Lord Treasurer and St. John
used to call him Jonathan, and they paid him with this cheap coin for the
service they took of him. He writ their lampoons, fought their enemies,
flogged and bullied in their service, and it must be owned with a
consummate skill and fierceness. ’Tis said he hath lost his intellect now,
and forgotten his wrongs and his rage against mankind. I have always
thought of him and of Marlborough as the two greatest men of that age. I
have read his books (who doth not know them?) here in our calm woods, and
imagine a giant to myself as I think of him, a lonely fallen Prometheus,
groaning as the vulture tears him. Prometheus I saw, but when first I ever
had any words with him, the giant stepped out of a sedan-chair in the
Poultry, whither he had come with a tipsy Irish servant parading before
him, who announced him, bawling out his reverence’s name, whilst his
master below was as yet haggling with the chairman. I disliked this Mr.
Swift, and heard many a story about him, of his conduct to men, and his
words to women. He could flatter the great as much as he could bully the
weak; and Mr. Esmond, being younger and hotter in that day than now, was
determined, should he ever meet this dragon, not to run away from his
teeth and his fire.
Men have all sorts of motives which carry them onwards in life, and are
driven into acts of desperation, or it may be of distinction, from a
hundred different causes. There was one comrade of Esmond’s, an honest
little Irish lieutenant of Handyside’s, who owed so much money to a camp
sutler, that he began to make love to the man’s daughter, intending to pay
his debt that way; and at the battle of Malplaquet, flying away from the
debt and lady too, he rushed so desperately on the French lines, that he
got his company; and came a captain out of the action, and had to marry
the sutler’s daughter after all, who brought him his cancelled debt to her
father as poor Rogers’s fortune. To run out of the reach of bill and
marriage, he ran on the enemy’s pikes; and as these did not kill him he
was thrown back upon t’other horn of his dilemma. Our great duke at the
same battle was fighting, not the French, but the Tories in England; and
risking his life and the army’s, not for his country but for his pay and
places; and for fear of his wife at home, that only being in life whom he
dreaded. I have asked about men in my own company (new drafts of poor
country boys were perpetually coming over to us during the wars, and
brought from the ploughshare to the sword), and found that a half of them
under the flags were driven thither on account of a woman: one fellow was
jilted by his mistress and took the shilling in despair; another jilted
the girl, and fled from her and the parish to the tents where the law
could not disturb him. Why go on particularizing? What can the sons of
Adam and Eve expect, but to continue in that course of love and trouble
their father and mother set out on? O my grandson! I am drawing nigh to
the end of that period of my history, when I was acquainted with the great
world of England and Europe, my years are past the Hebrew poet’s limit,
and I say unto thee, all my troubles and joys too, for that matter, have
come from a woman; as thine will when thy destined course begins. ’Twas a
woman that made a soldier of me, that set me intriguing afterwards; I
believe I would have spun smocks for her had she so bidden me; what
strength I had in my head I would have given her; hath not every man in
his degree had his Omphale and Delilah? Mine befooled me on the banks of
the Thames, and in dear old England; thou mayest find thine own by
Rappahannoc.
To please that woman then I tried to distinguish myself as a soldier, and
afterwards as a wit and a politician; as to please another I would have
put on a black cassock and a pair of bands, and had done so but that a
superior fate intervened to defeat that project. And I say, I think the
world is like Captain Esmond’s company I spoke of anon; and, could you see
every man’s career in life, you would find a woman clogging him; or
clinging round his march and stopping him; or cheering him and goading
him; or beckoning him out of her chariot, so that he goes up to her, and
leaves the race to be run without him; or bringing him the apple, and
saying “Eat”; or fetching him the daggers and whispering “Kill! yonder
lies Duncan, and a crown, and an opportunity”.
Your grandfather fought with more effect as a politician than as a wit;
and having private animosities and grievances of his own and his general’s
against the great duke in command of the army, and more information on
military matters than most writers, who had never seen beyond the fire of
a tobacco-pipe at Wills’s, he was enabled to do good service for that
cause which he embarked in, and for Mr. St. John and his party. But he
disdained the abuse in which some of the Tory writers indulged; for
instance, Dr. Swift, who actually chose to doubt the Duke of Marlborough’s
courage, and was pleased to hint that his grace’s military capacity was
doubtful: nor were Esmond’s performances worse for the effect they were
intended to produce (though no doubt they could not injure the Duke of
Marlborough nearly so much in the public eyes as the malignant attacks of
Swift did, which were carefully directed so as to blacken and degrade
him), because they were writ openly and fairly by Mr. Esmond, who made no
disguise of them, who was now out of the army, and who never attacked the
prodigious courage and talents, only the selfishness and rapacity, of the
chief.
The colonel then, having writ a paper for one of the Tory journals, called
the _Post-Boy_ (a letter upon Bouchain, that the town talked about for two
whole days, when the appearance of an Italian singer supplied a fresh
subject for conversation), and having business at the Exchange, where Mrs.
Beatrix wanted a pair of gloves or a fan very likely, Esmond went to
correct his paper, and was sitting at the printer’s, when the famous Dr.
Swift came in, his Irish fellow with him that used to walk before his
chair, and bawled out his master’s name with great dignity.
Mr. Esmond was waiting for the printer too, whose wife had gone to the
tavern to fetch him, and was meantime engaged in drawing a picture of a
soldier on horseback for a dirty little pretty boy of the printer’s wife,
whom she had left behind her.
“I presume you are the editor of the _Post-Boy_, sir?” says the doctor, in
a grating voice that had an Irish twang; and he looked at the colonel from
under his two bushy eyebrows with a pair of very clear blue eyes. His
complexion was muddy, his figure rather fat, his chin double. He wore a
shabby cassock, and a shabby hat over his black wig, and he pulled out a
great gold watch, at which he looks very fierce.
“I am but a contributor, Dr. Swift,” says Esmond, with the little boy
still on his knee. He was sitting with his back in the window, so that the
doctor could not see him.
“Who told you I was Dr. Swift?” says the doctor, eyeing the other very
haughtily.
“Your reverence’s valet bawled out your name,” says the colonel. “I should
judge you brought him from Ireland.”
“And pray, sir, what right have you to judge whether my servant came from
Ireland or no? I want to speak with your employer, Mr. Leach. I’ll thank
ye go fetch him.”
“Where’s your papa, Tommy?” asks the colonel of the child, a smutty little
wretch in a frock.
Instead of answering, the child begins to cry; the doctor’s appearance had
no doubt frightened the poor little imp.
“Send that squalling little brat about his business, and do what I bid ye,
sir,” says the doctor.
“I must finish the picture first for Tommy,” says the colonel, laughing.
“Here, Tommy, will you have your Pandour with whiskers or without?”
“Whisters,” says Tommy, quite intent on the picture.
“Who the devil are ye, sir?” cries the doctor; “are ye a printer’s man or
are ye not?” he pronounced it like _naught_.
“Your reverence needn’t raise the devil to ask who I am,” says Colonel
Esmond. “Did you ever hear of Dr. Faustus, little Tommy? or Friar Bacon,
who invented gunpowder, and set the Thames on fire?”
Mr. Swift turned quite red, almost purple. “I did not intend any offence,
sir,” says he.
“I daresay, sir, you offended without meaning,” says the other drily.
“Who are ye, sir? Do you know who I am, sir? You are one of the pack of
Grub-Street scribblers that my friend Mr. Secretary hath laid by the
heels. How dare ye, sir, speak to me in this tone?” cries the doctor, in a
great fume.
“I beg your honour’s humble pardon if I have offended your honour,” says
Esmond, in a tone of great humility. “Rather than be sent to the Compter,
or be put in the pillory, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do. But Mrs. Leach,
the printer’s lady, told me to mind Tommy whilst she went for her husband
to the tavern, and I daren’t leave the child lest he should fall into the
fire; but if your reverence will hold him——”
“I take the little beast!” says the doctor, starting back. “I am engaged
to your betters, fellow. Tell Mr. Leach that when he makes an appointment
with Dr. Swift he had best keep it, do ye hear? And keep a respectful
tongue in your head, sir, when you address a person like me.”
“I’m but a poor broken-down soldier,” says the colonel, “and I’ve seen
better days, though I am forced now to turn my hand to writing. We can’t
help our fate, sir.”
“You’re the person that Mr. Leach hath spoken to me of, I presume. Have
the goodness to speak civilly when you are spoken to—and tell Leach to
call at my lodgings in Bury Street, and bring the papers with him to-night
at ten o’clock. And the next time you see me, you’ll know me, and be
civil, Mr. Kemp.”
Poor Kemp, who had been a lieutenant at the beginning of the war, and
fallen into misfortune, was the writer of the _Post-Boy_, and now took
honest Mr. Leach’s pay in place of her Majesty’s. Esmond had seen this
gentleman, and a very ingenious, hard-working honest fellow he was,
toiling to give bread to a great family, and watching up many a long
winter night to keep the wolf from his door. And Mr. St. John, who had
liberty always on his tongue, had just sent a dozen of the Opposition
writers into prison, and one actually into the pillory, for what he called
libels, but libels not half so violent as those writ on our side. With
regard to this very piece of tyranny, Esmond had remonstrated strongly
with the secretary, who laughed and said, the rascals were served quite
right; and told Esmond a joke of Swift’s regarding the matter. Nay, more,
this Irishman, when St. John was about to pardon a poor wretch condemned
to death for rape, absolutely prevented the secretary from exercising this
act of good nature, and boasted that he had had the man hanged; and great
as the doctor’s genius might be, and splendid his ability, Esmond for one
would affect no love for him, and never desired to make his acquaintance.
The doctor was at Court every Sunday assiduously enough, a place the
colonel frequented but rarely, though he had a great inducement to go
there in the person of a fair maid of honour of her Majesty’s; and the
airs and patronage Mr. Swift gave himself, forgetting gentlemen of his
country whom he knew perfectly, his loud talk at once insolent and
servile, nay, perhaps his very intimacy with lord treasurer and the
secretary, who indulged all his freaks and called him Jonathan, you may be
sure, were remarked by many a person of whom the proud priest himself took
no note, during that time of his vanity and triumph.
’Twas but three days after the 15th of November, 1712 (Esmond minds him
well of the date), that he went by invitation to dine with his general,
the foot of whose table he used to take on these festive occasions, as he
had done at many a board, hard and plentiful, during the campaign. This
was a great feast, and of the latter sort; the honest old gentleman loved
to treat his friends splendidly: his grace of Ormonde, before he joined
his army as generalissimo, my Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, one of her
Majesty’s secretaries of state, my Lord Orkney, that had served with us
abroad, being of the party. His grace of Hamilton, master of the ordnance,
and in whose honour the feast had been given, upon his approaching
departure as ambassador to Paris, had sent an excuse to General Webb at
two o’clock, but an hour before the dinner: nothing but the most immediate
business, his grace said, should have prevented him having the pleasure of
drinking a parting glass to the health of General Webb. His absence
disappointed Esmond’s old chief, who suffered much from his wounds
besides; and though the company was grand, it was rather gloomy. St. John
came last, and brought a friend with him:—“I’m sure,” says my general,
bowing very politely, “my table hath always a place for Dr. Swift.”
Mr. Esmond went up to the doctor with a bow and a smile:—“I gave Dr.
Swift’s message,” says he, “to the printer: I hope he brought your
pamphlet to your lodgings in time.” Indeed poor Leach had come to his
house very soon after the doctor left it, being brought away rather tipsy
from the tavern by his thrifty wife; and he talked of cousin Swift in a
maudlin way, though of course Mr. Esmond did not allude to this
relationship. The doctor scowled, blushed, and was much confused, and said
scarce a word during the whole of dinner. A very little stone will
sometimes knock down these Goliaths of wit; and this one was often
discomfited when met by a man of any spirit; he took his place sulkily,
put water in his wine that the others drank plentifully, and scarce said a
word.
The talk was about the affairs of the day, or rather about persons than
affairs: my Lady Marlborough’s fury, her daughters in old clothes and
mob-caps looking out from their windows and seeing the company pass to the
Drawing-room; the gentleman-usher’s horror when the Prince of Savoy was
introduced to her Majesty in a tie-wig, no man out of a full-bottomed
periwig ever having kissed the royal hand before; about the Mohawks and
the damage they were doing, rushing through the town, killing and
murdering. Some one said the ill-omened face of Mohun had been seen at the
theatre the night before, and Macartney and Meredith with him. Meant to be
a feast, the meeting, in spite of drink, and talk, was as dismal as a
funeral. Every topic started subsided into gloom. His grace of Ormonde
went away because the conversation got upon Denain, where we had been
defeated in the last campaign. Esmond’s general was affected at the
allusion to this action too, for his comrade of Wynendael, the Count of
Nassau-Woudenberg, had been slain there. Mr. Swift, when Esmond pledged
him, said he drank no wine, and took his hat from the peg and went away,
beckoning my Lord Bolingbroke to follow him; but the other bade him take
his chariot and save his coach-hire, he had to speak with Colonel Esmond;
and when the rest of the company withdrew to cards, these two remained
behind in the dark.
Bolingbroke always spoke freely when he had drunk freely. His enemies
could get any secret out of him in that condition; women were even
employed to ply him, and take his words down. I have heard that my Lord
Stair, three years after, when the secretary fled to France and became the
pretender’s minister, got all the information he wanted by putting female
spies over St. John in his cups. He spoke freely now:—“Jonathan knows
nothing of this for certain, though he suspects it, and by George, Webb
will take an archbishopric, and Jonathan a—no, damme—Jonathan will take an
archbishopric from James, I warrant me, gladly enough. Your duke hath the
string of the whole matter in his hand,” the secretary went on. “We have
that which will force Marlborough to keep his distance, and he goes out of
London in a fortnight. Prior hath his business; he left me this morning,
and mark me, Harry, should fate carry off our august, our beloved, our
most gouty and plethoric queen, and defender of the faith, _la bonne cause
triomphera. A la santé de la bonne cause!_ Everything good comes from
France. Wine comes from France; give us another bumper to the _bonne
cause_.” We drank it together.
“Will the _bonne cause_ turn Protestant?” asked Mr. Esmond.
“No, hang it,” says the other, “he’ll defend our faith as in duty bound,
but he’ll stick by his own. The Hind and the Panther shall run in the same
car, by Jove. Righteousness and peace shall kiss each other; and we’ll
have Father Massillon to walk down the aisle of St. Paul’s, cheek by jowl,
with Dr. Sacheverel. Give us more wine; here’s a health to the _bonne
cause_, kneeling—damme, let’s drink it kneeling.” He was quite flushed and
wild with wine as he was talking.
“And suppose,” says Esmond, who always had this gloomy apprehension, “the
_bonne cause_ should give us up to the French, as his father and uncle did
before him?”
“Give us up to the French!” starts up Bolingbroke; “is there any English
gentleman that fears that? You who have seen Blenheim and Ramillies,
afraid of the French! Your ancestors and mine, and brave old Webb’s
yonder, have met them in a hundred fields, and our children will be ready
to do the like. Who’s he that wishes for more men from England? My cousin
Westmoreland? Give us up to the French, pshaw!”
“His uncle did,” says Mr. Esmond.
“And what happened to his grandfather?” broke out St. John, filling out
another bumper. “Here’s to the greatest monarch England ever saw; here’s
to the Englishman that made a kingdom of her. Our great king came from
Huntingdon, not Hanover; our fathers didn’t look for a Dutchman to rule
us. Let him come and we’ll keep him, and we’ll show him Whitehall. If he’s
a traitor let us have him here to deal with him; and then there are
spirits here as great as any that have gone before. There are men here
that can look at danger in the face and not be frightened at it. Traitor,
treason! what names are these to scare you and me? Are all Oliver’s men
dead, or his glorious name forgotten in fifty years? Are there no men
equal to him, think you, as good—aye, as good? God save the king! and, if
the monarchy fails us, God save the British republic!”
He filled another great bumper, and tossed it up and drained it wildly,
just as the noise of rapid carriage-wheels approaching was stopped at our
door, and after a hurried knock and a moment’s interval, Mr. Swift came
into the hall, ran upstairs to the room we were dining in, and entered it
with a perturbed face. St. John, excited with drink, was making some wild
quotation out of _Macbeth_, but Swift stopped him.
“Drink no more, my lord, for God’s sake,” says he, “I come with the most
dreadful news.”
“Is the queen dead?” cries out Bolingbroke, seizing on a water-glass.
“No, Duke Hamilton is dead, he was murdered an hour ago by Mohun and
Macartney; they had a quarrel this morning; they gave him not so much time
as to write a letter. He went for a couple of his friends, and he is dead,
and Mohun, too, the bloody villain, who was set on him. They fought in
Hyde Park just before sunset; the duke killed Mohun, and Macartney came up
and stabbed him, and the dog is fled. I have your chariot below; send to
every part of the country and apprehend that villain; come to the duke’s
house and see if any life be left in him.”
“O Beatrix, Beatrix,” thought Esmond, “and here ends my poor girl’s
ambition!”
Chapter VI. Poor Beatrix
There had been no need to urge upon Esmond the necessity of a separation
between him and Beatrix: Fate had done that completely; and I think from
the very moment poor Beatrix had accepted the duke’s offer, she began to
assume the majestic air of a duchess, nay, queen elect, and to carry
herself as one sacred and removed from us common people. Her mother and
kinsman both fell into her ways, the latter scornfully perhaps, and
uttering his usual gibes at her vanity and his own. There was a certain
charm about this girl of which neither Colonel Esmond nor his fond
mistress could forgo the fascination; in spite of her faults and her pride
and wilfulness, they were forced to love her; and, indeed, might be set
down as the two chief flatterers of the brilliant creature’s court.
Who, in the course of his life, hath not been so bewitched, and worshipped
some idol or another? Years after this passion hath been dead and buried,
along with a thousand other worldly cares and ambitions, he who felt it
can recall it out of its grave, and admire, almost as fondly as he did in
his youth, that lovely queenly creature. I invoke that beautiful spirit
from the shades and love her still; or rather I should say such a past is
always present to a man; such a passion once felt forms a part of his
whole being, and cannot be separated from it; it becomes a portion of the
man of to-day, just as any great faith or conviction, the discovery of
poetry, the awakening of religion, ever afterward influence him; just as
the wound I had at Blenheim, and of which I wear the scar, hath become
part of my frame and influenced my whole body, nay spirit, subsequently,
though ’twas got and healed forty years ago. Parting and forgetting! What
faithful heart can do these? Our great thoughts, our great affections, the
Truths of our life, never leave us. Surely, they cannot separate from our
consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go; and are of
their nature divine and immortal.
With the horrible news of this catastrophe, which was confirmed by the
weeping domestics at the duke’s own door, Esmond rode homewards as quick
as his lazy coach would carry him, devising all the time how he should
break the intelligence to the person most concerned in it; and if a satire
upon human vanity could be needed, that poor soul afforded it in the
altered company and occupations in which Esmond found her. For days
before, her chariot had been rolling the street from mercer to
toyshop—from goldsmith to laceman: her taste was perfect, or at least the
fond bridegroom had thought so, and had given entire authority over all
tradesmen, and for all the plate, furniture, and equipages, with which his
grace the ambassador wished to adorn his splendid mission. She must have
her picture by Kneller, a duchess not being complete without a portrait,
and a noble one he made, and actually sketched in, on a cushion, a coronet
which she was about to wear. She vowed she would wear it at King James the
Third’s coronation, and never a princess in the land would have become
ermine better. Esmond found the antechamber crowded with milliners and
toyshop women, obsequious goldsmiths with jewels, salvers, and tankards;
and mercer’s men with hangings, and velvets, and brocades. My lady duchess
elect was giving audience to one famous silversmith from Exeter “Change,”
who brought with him a great chased salver, of which he was pointing out
the beauties as Colonel Esmond entered. “Come,” says she, “cousin, and
admire the taste of this pretty thing.” I think Mars and Venus were lying
in the golden bower, that one gilt Cupid carried off the war-god’s
casque—another his sword—another his great buckler, upon which my Lord
Duke Hamilton’s arms with ours were to be engraved—and a fourth was
kneeling down to the reclining goddess with the ducal coronet in his
hands, God help us! The next time Mr. Esmond saw that piece of plate, the
arms were changed, the ducal coronet had been replaced by a viscount’s; it
formed part of the fortune of the thrifty goldsmith’s own daughter, when
she married my Lord Viscount Squanderfield two years after.
“Isn’t this a beautiful piece?” says Beatrix, examining it, and she
pointed out the arch graces of the Cupids, and the fine carving of the
languid prostrate Mars. Esmond sickened as he thought of the warrior dead
in his chamber, his servants and children weeping around him; and of this
smiling creature attiring herself, as it were, for that nuptial death-bed.
“’Tis a pretty piece of vanity,” says he, looking gloomily at the
beautiful creature: there were flambeaux in the room lighting up the
brilliant mistress of it. She lifted up the great gold salver with her
fair arms.
“Vanity!” says she haughtily. “What is vanity in you, sir, is propriety in
me. You ask a Jewish price for it, Mr. Graves; but have it I will, if only
to spite Mr. Esmond.”
“O Beatrix, lay it down!” says Mr. Esmond. “Herodias! you know not what
you carry in the charger.”
She dropped it with a clang; the eager goldsmith running to seize his
fallen ware. The lady’s face caught the fright from Esmond’s pale
countenance, and her eyes shone out like beacons of alarm:—“What is it,
Henry?” says she, running to him, and seizing both his hands. “What do you
mean by your pale face and gloomy tones?”
“Come away, come away!” says Esmond, leading her: she clung frightened to
him, and he supported her upon his heart, bidding the scared goldsmith
leave them. The man went into the next apartment, staring with surprise,
and hugging his precious charger.
“O my Beatrix, my sister!” says Esmond, still holding in his arms the
pallid and affrighted creature, “you have the greatest courage of any
woman in the world; prepare to show it now, for you have a dreadful trial
to bear.”
She sprang away from the friend who would have protected her:—“Hath he
left me?” says she. “We had words this morning: he was very gloomy, and I
angered him: but he dared not, he dared not!” As she spoke a burning blush
flushed over her whole face and bosom. Esmond saw it reflected in the
glass by which she stood, with clenched hands, pressing her swelling
heart.
“He has left you,” says Esmond, wondering that rage rather than sorrow was
in her looks.
“And he is alive,” cries Beatrix, “and you bring me this commission! He
has left me, and you haven’t dared to avenge me! You, that pretend to be
the champion of our house, have let me suffer this insult! Where is
Castlewood? I will go to my brother.”
“The duke is not alive, Beatrix,” said Esmond.
She looked at her cousin wildly, and fell back to the wall as though shot
in the breast:—“And you come here, and—and—you killed him?”
“No; thank Heaven,” her kinsman said, “the blood of that noble heart doth
not stain my sword! In its last hour it was faithful to thee, Beatrix
Esmond. Vain and cruel woman! kneel and thank the awful Heaven which
awards life and death, and chastises pride, that the noble Hamilton died
true to you; at least that ’twas not your quarrel, or your pride, or your
wicked vanity, that drove him to his fate. He died by the bloody sword
which already had drank your own father’s blood. O woman, O sister! to
that sad field where two corpses are lying—for the murderer died too by
the hand of the man he slew—can you bring no mourners but your revenge and
your vanity? God help and pardon thee, Beatrix, as He brings this awful
punishment to your hard and rebellious heart.”
Esmond had scarce done speaking, when his mistress came in. The colloquy
between him and Beatrix had lasted but a few minutes, during which time
Esmond’s servant had carried the disastrous news through the household.
The army of Vanity Fair, waiting without, gathered up all their fripperies
and fled aghast. Tender Lady Castlewood had been in talk above with Dean
Atterbury, the pious creature’s almoner and director; and the dean had
entered with her as a physician whose place was at a sick-bed. Beatrix’s
mother looked at Esmond and ran towards her daughter, with a pale face and
open heart and hands, all kindness and pity. But Beatrix passed her by,
nor would she have any of the medicaments of the spiritual physician. “I
am best in my own room and by myself,” she said. Her eyes were quite dry;
nor did Esmond ever see them otherwise, save once, in respect to that
grief. She gave him a cold hand as she went out: “Thank you, brother,” she
said, in a low voice, and with a simplicity more touching than tears; “all
you have said is true and kind, and I will go away and ask pardon.” The
three others remained behind, and talked over the dreadful story. It
affected Dr. Atterbury more even than us, as it seemed. The death of
Mohun, her husband’s murderer, was more awful to my mistress than even the
duke’s unhappy end. Esmond gave at length what particulars he knew of
their quarrel, and the cause of it. The two noblemen had long been at war
with respect to the Lord Gerard’s property, whose two daughters my lord
duke and Mohun had married. They had met by appointment that day at the
lawyer’s in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; had words which, though they appeared
very trifling to those who heard them, were not so to men exasperated by
long and previous enmity. Mohun asked my lord duke where he could see his
grace’s friends, and within an hour had sent two of his own to arrange
this deadly duel. It was pursued with such fierceness, and sprung from so
trifling a cause, that all men agreed at the time that there was a party,
of which these three notorious brawlers were but agents, who desired to
take Duke Hamilton’s life away. They fought three on a side, as in that
tragic meeting twelve years back, which hath been recounted already, and
in which Mohun performed his second murder. They rushed in, and closed
upon each other at once without any feints or crossing of swords even, and
stabbed one at the other desperately, each receiving many wounds; and
Mohun having his death-wound, and my lord duke lying by him, Macartney
came up and stabbed his grace as he lay on the ground, and gave him the
blow of which he died. Colonel Macartney denied this, of which the horror
and indignation of the whole kingdom would nevertheless have him guilty,
and fled the country, whither he never returned.
What was the real cause of the Duke Hamilton’s death—a paltry quarrel that
might easily have been made up, and with a ruffian so low, base,
profligate, and degraded with former crimes and repeated murders, that a
man of such a renown and princely rank as my lord duke might have
disdained to sully his sword with the blood of such a villain. But his
spirit was so high that those who wished his death knew that his courage
was like his charity, and never turned any man away; and he died by the
hands of Mohun, and the other two cut-throats that were set on him. The
queen’s ambassador to Paris died, the loyal and devoted servant of the
House of Stuart, and a royal prince of Scotland himself, and carrying the
confidence, the repentance of Queen Anne along with his own open devotion,
and the goodwill of millions in the country more, to the queen’s exiled
brother and sovereign.
That party to which Lord Mohun belonged had the benefit of his service,
and now were well rid of such a ruffian. He, and Meredith, and Macartney,
were the Duke of Marlborough’s men; and the two colonels had been broke
but the year before for drinking perdition to the Tories. His grace was a
Whig now and a Hanoverian, and as eager for war as Prince Eugene himself.
I say not that he was privy to Duke Hamilton’s death, I say that his party
profited by it; and that three desperate and bloody instruments were found
to effect that murder.
As Esmond and the dean walked away from Kensington discoursing of this
tragedy, and how fatal it was to the cause which they both had at heart;
the street-criers were already out with their broadsides, shouting through
the town the full, true, and horrible account of the death of Lord Mohun
and Duke Hamilton in a duel. A fellow had got to Kensington, and was
crying it in the square there at very early morning, when Mr. Esmond
happened to pass by. He drove the man from under Beatrix’s very window,
whereof the casement had been set open. The sun was shining though ’twas
November: he had seen the market-carts rolling into London, the guard
relieved at the Palace, the labourers trudging to their work in the
gardens between Kensington and the City—the wandering merchants and
hawkers filling the air with their cries. The world was going to its
business again, although dukes lay dead and ladies mourned for them; and
kings, very likely, lost their chances. So night and day pass away, and
to-morrow comes, and our place knows us not. Esmond thought of the
courier, now galloping on the north road to inform him, who was Earl of
Arran yesterday, that he was Duke of Hamilton to-day, and of a thousand
great schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant heart,
beating a few hours since, and now in a little dust quiescent.
Chapter VII. I Visit Castlewood Once More
Thus, for a third time, Beatrix’s ambitious hopes were circumvented, and
she might well believe that a special malignant fate watched and pursued
her, tearing her prize out of her hand just as she seemed to grasp it, and
leaving her with only rage and grief for her portion. Whatever her
feelings might have been of anger or of sorrow (and I fear me that the
former emotion was that which most tore her heart), she would take no
confidant, as people of softer natures would have done under such a
calamity; her mother and her kinsman knew that she would disdain their
pity, and that to offer it would be but to infuriate the cruel wound which
fortune had inflicted. We knew that her pride was awfully humbled and
punished by this sudden and terrible blow; she wanted no teaching of ours
to point out the sad moral of her story. Her fond mother could give but
her prayers, and her kinsman his faithful friendship and patience to the
unhappy stricken creature; and it was only by hints, and a word or two
uttered months afterwards, that Beatrix showed she understood their silent
commiseration, and on her part was secretly thankful for their
forbearance. The people about the Court said there was that in her manner
which frightened away scoffing and condolence: she was above their triumph
and their pity, and acted her part in that dreadful tragedy greatly and
courageously; so that those who liked her least were yet forced to admire
her. We, who watched her after her disaster, could not but respect the
indomitable courage and majestic calm with which she bore it. “I would
rather see her tears than her pride,” her mother said, who was accustomed
to bear her sorrows in a very different way, and to receive them as the
stroke of God, with an awful submission and meekness. But Beatrix’s nature
was different to that tender parent’s; she seemed to accept her grief, and
to defy it; nor would she allow it (I believe not even in private, and in
her own chamber) to extort from her the confession of even a tear of
humiliation or a cry of pain. Friends and children of our race, who come
after me, in which way will you bear your trials? I know one that prays
God will give you love rather than pride, and that the Eye all-seeing
shall find you in the humble place. Not that we should judge proud spirits
otherwise than charitably. ’Tis nature hath fashioned some for ambition
and dominion, as it hath formed others for obedience and gentle
submission. The leopard follows his nature as the lamb does, and acts
after leopard law; she can neither help her beauty, nor her courage, nor
her cruelty; nor a single spot on her shining coat; nor the conquering
spirit which impels her; nor the shot which brings her down.
-------------------------------------
During that well-founded panic the Whigs had, lest the queen should
forsake their Hanoverian prince, bound by oaths and treaties as she was to
him, and recall her brother, who was allied to her by yet stronger ties of
nature and duty; the Prince of Savoy, and the boldest of that party of the
Whigs, were for bringing the young Duke of Cambridge over, in spite of the
queen and the outcry of her Tory servants, arguing that the electoral
prince, a peer and prince of the blood-royal of this realm too, and in the
line of succession to the crown, had a right to sit in the Parliament
whereof he was a member, and to dwell in the country which he one day was
to govern. Nothing but the strongest ill will expressed by the queen, and
the people about her, and menaces of the royal resentment, should this
scheme be persisted in, prevented it from being carried into effect.
The boldest on our side were, in like manner, for having our prince into
the country. The undoubted inheritor of the right divine; the feelings of
more than half the nation, of almost all the clergy, of the gentry of
England and Scotland with him; entirely innocent of the crime for which
his father suffered—brave, young, handsome, unfortunate—who in England
would dare to molest the prince should he come among us, and fling himself
upon British generosity, hospitality, and honour? An invader with an army
of Frenchmen behind him, Englishmen of spirit would resist to the death,
and drive back to the shores whence he came; but a prince, alone, armed
with his right only, and relying on the loyalty of his people, was sure,
many of his friends argued, of welcome, at least of safety, among us. The
hand of his sister the queen, of the people his subjects, never could be
raised to do him a wrong. But the queen was timid by nature, and the
successive ministers she had, had private causes for their irresolution.
The bolder and honester men, who had at heart the illustrious young
exile’s cause, had no scheme of interest of their own to prevent them from
seeing the right done, and, provided only he came as an Englishman, were
ready to venture their all to welcome and defend him.
St. John and Harley both had kind words in plenty for the prince’s
adherents, and gave him endless promises of future support; but hints and
promises were all they could be got to give; and some of his friends were
for measures much bolder, more efficacious, and more open. With a party of
these, some of whom are yet alive, and some whose names Mr. Esmond has no
right to mention, he found himself engaged the year after that miserable
death of Duke Hamilton, which deprived the prince of his most courageous
ally in this country. Dean Atterbury was one of the friends whom Esmond
may mention, as the brave bishop is now beyond exile and persecution, and
to him, and one or two more, the colonel opened himself of a scheme of his
own, that, backed by a little resolution on the prince’s part, could not
fail of bringing about the accomplishment of their dearest wishes.
My young Lord Viscount Castlewood had not come to England to keep his
majority, and had now been absent from the country for several years. The
year when his sister was to be married and Duke Hamilton died, my lord was
kept at Bruxelles by his wife’s lying-in. The gentle Clotilda could not
bear her husband out of her sight; perhaps she mistrusted the young
scapegrace should he ever get loose from her leading-strings; and she kept
him by her side to nurse the baby and administer posset to the gossips.
Many a laugh poor Beatrix had had about Frank’s uxoriousness: his mother
would have gone to Clotilda when her time was coming, but that the
mother-in-law was already in possession, and the negotiations for poor
Beatrix’s marriage were begun. A few months after the horrid catastrophe
in Hyde Park, my mistress and her daughter retired to Castlewood, where my
lord, it was expected, would soon join them. But, to say truth, their
quiet household was little to his taste; he could be got to come to
Walcote but once after his first campaign; and then the young rogue spent
more than half his time in London, not appearing at Court, or in public
under his own name and title, but frequenting plays, bagnios, and the very
worst company, under the name of Captain Esmond (whereby his innocent
kinsman got more than once into trouble); and so under various pretexts,
and in pursuit of all sorts of pleasures, until he plunged into the lawful
one of marriage, Frank Castlewood had remained away from this country, and
was unknown, save amongst the gentlemen of the army, with whom he had
served abroad. The fond heart of his mother was pained by this long
absence. ’Twas all that Henry Esmond could do to soothe her natural
mortification, and find excuses for his kinsman’s levity.
In the autumn of the year 1713, Lord Castlewood thought of returning home.
His first child had been a daughter; Clotilda was in the way of gratifying
his lordship with a second, and the pious youth thought that, by bringing
his wife to his ancestral home, by prayers to St. Philip of Castlewood,
and what not, Heaven might be induced to bless him with a son this time,
for whose coming the expectant mamma was very anxious.
The long-debated peace had been proclaimed this year at the end of March;
and France was open to us. Just as Frank’s poor mother had made all things
ready for Lord Castlewood’s reception, and was eagerly expecting her son,
it was by Colonel Esmond’s means that the kind lady was disappointed of
her longing, and obliged to defer once more the darling hope of her heart.
Esmond took horses to Castlewood. He had not seen its ancient grey towers
and well-remembered woods for nearly fourteen years, and since he rode
thence with my lord, to whom his mistress with her young children by her
side waved an adieu, what ages seem to have passed since then, what years
of action and passion, of care, love, hope, disaster! The children were
grown up now, and had stories of their own. As for Esmond, he felt to be a
hundred years old; his dear mistress only seemed unchanged; she looked and
welcomed him quite as of old. There was the fountain in the court babbling
its familiar music, the old hall and its furniture, the carved chair my
late lord used, the very flagon he drank from. Esmond’s mistress knew he
would like to sleep in the little room he used to occupy; ’twas made ready
for him, and wall-flowers and sweet herbs set in the adjoining chamber,
the chaplain’s room.
In tears of not unmanly emotion, with prayers of submission to the awful
Dispenser of death and life, of good and evil fortune, Mr. Esmond passed a
part of that first night at Castlewood, lying awake for many hours as the
clock kept tolling (in tones so well remembered), looking back, as all men
will, that revisit their home of childhood, over the great gulf of time,
and surveying himself on the distant bank yonder, a sad little melancholy
boy, with his lord still alive—his dear mistress, a girl yet, her children
sporting around her. Years ago, a boy on that very bed, when she had
blessed him and called him her knight, he had made a vow to be faithful
and never desert her dear service. Had he kept that fond boyish promise?
Yes, before Heaven; yes, praise be to God! His life had been hers; his
blood, his fortune, his name, his whole heart ever since had been hers and
her children’s. All night long he was dreaming his boyhood over again, and
waking fitfully; he half fancied he heard Father Holt calling to him from
the next chamber, and that he was coming in and out from the mysterious
window.
Esmond rose up before the dawn, passed into the next room, where the air
was heavy with the odour of the wall-flowers; looked into the brasier
where the papers had been burnt, into the old presses where Holt’s books
and papers had been kept, and tried the spring, and whether the window
worked still. The spring had not been touched for years, but yielded at
length, and the whole fabric of the window sank down. He lifted it and it
relapsed into its frame; no one had ever passed thence since Holt used it
sixteen years ago.
Esmond remembered his poor lord saying, on the last day of his life, that
Holt used to come in and out of the house like a ghost, and knew that the
father liked these mysteries, and practised such secret disguises,
entrances, and exits; this was the way the ghost came and went, his pupil
had always conjectured. Esmond closed the casement up again as the dawn
was rising over Castlewood village; he could hear the clinking at the
blacksmith’s forge yonder among the trees, across the green, and past the
river, on which a mist still lay sleeping.
Next Esmond opened that long cupboard over the woodwork of the
mantelpiece, big enough to hold a man, and in which Mr. Holt used to keep
sundry secret properties of his. The two swords he remembered so well as a
boy, lay actually there still, and Esmond took them out and wiped them,
with a strange curiosity of emotion. There were a bundle of papers here,
too, which no doubt had been left at Holt’s last visit to the place, in my
lord viscount’s life, that very day when the priest had been arrested and
taken to Hexham Castle. Esmond made free with these papers, and found
treasonable matter of King William’s reign, the names of Charnock and
Perkins, Sir John Fenwick and Sir John Friend, Rookwood and Lodwick, Lords
Montgomery and Ailesbury, Clarendon and Yarmouth, that had all been
engaged in plots against the usurper; a letter from the Duke of Berwick
too, and one from the king at St. Germains, offering to confer upon his
trusty and well-beloved Francis Viscount Castlewood the titles of Earl and
Marquis of Esmond, bestowed by patent royal, and in the fourth year of his
reign, upon Thomas Viscount Castlewood and the heirs male of his body, in
default of which issue the ranks and dignities were to pass to Francis
aforesaid.
This was the paper, whereof my lord had spoken, which Holt showed him the
very day he was arrested, and for an answer to which he would come back in
a week’s time. I put these papers hastily into the crypt whence I had
taken them, being interrupted by a tapping of a light finger at the ring
of the chamber-door: ’twas my kind mistress, with her face full of love
and welcome. She, too, had passed the night wakefully, no doubt; but
neither asked the other how the hours had been spent. There are things we
divine without speaking, and know though they happen out of our sight.
This fond lady hath told me that she knew both days when I was wounded
abroad. Who shall say how far sympathy reaches, and how truly love can
prophesy? “I looked into your room,” was all she said; “the bed was
vacant, the little old bed! I knew I should find you here.” And tender and
blushing faintly with a benediction in her eyes, the gentle creature
kissed him.
They walked out, hand-in-hand, through the old court, and to the
terrace-walk, where the grass was glistening with dew, and the birds in
the green woods above were singing their delicious choruses under the
blushing morning sky. How well all things were remembered! The ancient
towers and gables of the hall darkling against the east, the purple
shadows on the green slopes, the quaint devices and carvings of the dial,
the forest-crowned heights, the fair yellow plain cheerful with crops and
corn, the shining river rolling through it towards the pearly hills
beyond; all these were before us, along with a thousand beautiful memories
of our youth, beautiful and sad, but as real and vivid in our minds as
that fair and always-remembered scene our eyes beheld once more. We forget
nothing. The memory sleeps, but awakens again; I often think how it shall
be when, after the last sleep of death, the réveillé shall arouse us for
ever, and the past in one flash of self-consciousness rush back, like the
soul, revivified.
The house would not be up for some hours yet (it was July, and the dawn
was only just awake), and here Esmond opened himself to his mistress, of
the business he had in hand, and what part Frank was to play in it. He
knew he could confide anything to her, and that the fond soul would die
rather than reveal it; and bidding her keep the secret from all, he laid
it entirely before his mistress (always as stanch a little loyalist as any
in the kingdom), and indeed was quite sure that any plan of his was secure
of her applause and sympathy. Never was such a glorious scheme to her
partial mind, never such a devoted knight to execute it. An hour or two
may have passed whilst they were having their colloquy. Beatrix came out
to them just as their talk was over; her tall beautiful form robed in
sable (which she wore without ostentation ever since last year’s
catastrophe), sweeping over the green terrace, and casting its shadows
before her across the grass.
She made us one of her grand curtsies smiling, and called us “the young
people”. She was older, paler, and more majestic than in the year before;
her mother seemed the youngest of the two. She never once spoke of her
grief, Lady Castlewood told Esmond, or alluded, save by a quiet word or
two, to the death of her hopes.
When Beatrix came back to Castlewood she took to visiting all the cottages
and all the sick. She set up a school of children, and taught singing to
some of them. We had a pair of beautiful old organs in Castlewood Church,
on which she played admirably, so that the music there became to be known
in the country for many miles round, and no doubt people came to see the
fair organist as well as to hear her. Parson Tusher and his wife were
established at the vicarage, but his wife had brought him no children
wherewith Tom might meet his enemies at the gate. Honest Tom took care not
to have many such, his great shovel-hat was in his hand for everybody. He
was profuse of bows and compliments. He behaved to Esmond as if the
colonel had been a commander-in-chief; he dined at the hall that day,
being Sunday, and would not partake of pudding except under extreme
pressure. He deplored my lord’s perversion, but drank his lordship’s
health very devoutly; and an hour before at church sent the colonel to
sleep, with a long, learned, and refreshing sermon.
Esmond’s visit home was but for two days; the business he had in hand
calling him away and out of the country. Ere he went, he saw Beatrix but
once alone, and then she summoned him out of the long tapestry room, where
he and his mistress were sitting, quite as in old times, into the
adjoining chamber, that had been Viscountess Isabel’s sleeping-apartment,
and where Esmond perfectly well remembered seeing the old lady sitting up
in the bed, in her night-rail, that morning when the troop of guard came
to fetch her. The most beautiful woman in England lay in that bed now,
whereof the great damask hangings were scarce faded since Esmond saw them
last.
Here stood Beatrix in her black robes, holding a box in her hand; ’twas
that which Esmond had given her before her marriage, stamped with a
coronet which the disappointed girl was never to wear; and containing his
aunt’s legacy of diamonds.
“You had best take these with you, Harry,” says she; “I have no need of
diamonds any more.” There was not the least token of emotion in her quiet
low voice. She held out the black shagreen-case with her fair arm, that
did not shake in the least. Esmond saw she wore a black velvet bracelet on
it, with my lord duke’s picture in enamel; he had given it her but three
days before he fell.
Esmond said the stones were his no longer, and strove to turn off that
proffered restoration with a laugh: “Of what good,” says he, “are they to
me? The diamond loop to his hat did not set off Prince Eugene, and will
not make my yellow face look any handsomer.”
“You will give them to your wife, cousin,” says she. “My cousin, your wife
has a lovely complexion and shape.”
“Beatrix,” Esmond burst out, the old fire flaming out as it would at
times, “will you wear those trinkets at your marriage? You whispered once
you did not know me: you know me better now: how I sought, what I have
sighed for, for ten years, what forgone!”
“A price for your constancy, my lord!” says she; “such a _preux chevalier_
wants to be paid. Oh fie, cousin!”
“Again,” Esmond spoke out, “if I do something you have at heart; something
worthy of me and you; something that shall make me a name with which to
endow you; will you take it? There was a chance for me once, you said; is
it impossible to recall it? Never shake your head, but hear me: say you
will hear me a year hence. If I come back to you and bring you fame, will
that please you? If I do what you desire most—what he who is dead desired
most—will that soften you?”
“What is it, Henry?” says she, her face lighting up; “what mean you?”
“Ask no questions,” he said, “wait, and give me but time; if I bring back
that you long for, that I have a thousand times heard you pray for, will
you have no reward for him who has done you that service? Put away those
trinkets, keep them: it shall not be at my marriage, it shall not be at
yours, but if man can do it, I swear a day shall come when there shall be
a feast in your house, and you shall be proud to wear them. I say no more
now; put aside these words, and lock away yonder box until the day when I
shall remind you of both. All I pray of you now is, to wait and to
remember.”
“You are going out of the country?” says Beatrix, in some agitation.
“Yes, to-morrow,” says Esmond.
“To Lorraine, cousin?” says Beatrix, laying her hand on his arm; ’twas the
hand on which she wore the duke’s bracelet. “Stay, Harry!” continued she,
with a tone that had more despondency in it than she was accustomed to
show. “Hear a last word. I do love you. I do admire you—who would not,
that has known such love as yours has been for us all? But I think I have
no heart; at least, I have never seen the man that could touch it; and,
had I found him, I would have followed him in rags had he been a private
soldier, or to sea, like one of those buccaneers you used to read to us
about when we were children. I would do anything for such a man, bear
anything for him: but I never found one. You were ever too much of a slave
to win my heart; even my lord duke could not command it. I had not been
happy had I married him. I knew that three months after our engagement—and
was too vain to break it. O Harry! I cried once or twice, not for him, but
with tears of rage because I could not be sorry for him. I was frightened
to find I was glad of his death; and were I joined to you, I should have
the same sense of servitude, the same longing to escape. We should both be
unhappy, and you the most, who are as jealous as the duke was himself. I
tried to love him; I tried, indeed I did: affected gladness when he came:
submitted to hear when he was by me, and tried the wife’s part I thought I
was to play for the rest of my days. But half an hour of that complaisance
wearied me, and what would a lifetime be? My thoughts were away when he
was speaking; and I was thinking, Oh that this man would drop my hand, and
rise up from before my feet! I knew his great and noble qualities, greater
and nobler than mine a thousand times, as yours are, cousin, I tell you, a
million and a million times better. But ’twas not for these I took him. I
took him to have a great place in the world, and I lost it. I lost it, and
do not deplore him—and I often thought, as I listened to his fond vows and
ardent words, Oh, if I yield to this man, and meet _the other_, I shall
hate him and leave him! I am not good, Harry: my mother is gentle and good
like an angel. I wonder how she should have had such a child. She is weak,
but she would die rather than do a wrong; I am stronger than she, but I
would do it out of defiance. I do not care for what the parsons tell me
with their droning sermons: I used to see them at Court as mean and as
worthless as the meanest woman there. Oh, I am sick and weary of the
world! I wait but for one thing, and when ’tis done, I will take Frank’s
religion and your poor mother’s, and go into a nunnery, and end like her.
Shall I wear the diamonds then?—they say the nuns wear their best trinkets
the day they take the veil. I will put them away as you bid me; farewell,
cousin, mamma is pacing the next room, racking her little head to know
what we have been saying. She is jealous, all women are. I sometimes think
that is the only womanly quality I have.”
“Farewell. Farewell, brother!” She gave him her cheek as a brotherly
privilege. The cheek was as cold as marble.
Esmond’s mistress showed no signs of jealousy when he returned to the room
where she was. She had schooled herself so as to look quite inscrutably,
when she had a mind. Amongst her other feminine qualities she had that of
being a perfect dissembler.
He rid away from Castlewood to attempt the task he was bound on, and stand
or fall by it; in truth his state of mind was such, that he was eager for
some outward excitement to counteract that gnawing malady which he was
inwardly enduring.
Chapter VIII. I Travel To France And Bring Home A Portrait Of Rigaud
Mr. Esmond did not think fit to take leave at Court, or to inform all the
world of Pall Mall and the coffee-houses, that he was about to quit
England; and chose to depart in the most private manner possible. He
procured a pass as for a Frenchman, through Dr. Atterbury, who did that
business for him, getting the signature even from Lord Bolingbroke’s
office, without any personal application to the secretary. Lockwood, his
faithful servant, he took with him to Castlewood, and left behind there:
giving out ere he left London that he himself was sick, and gone to
Hampshire for country air, and so departed as silently as might be upon
his business.
As Frank Castlewood’s aid was indispensable for Mr. Esmond’s scheme, his
first visit was to Bruxelles (passing by way of Antwerp, where the Duke of
Marlborough was in exile), and in the first-named place Harry found his
dear young Benedict, the married man, who appeared to be rather out of
humour with his matrimonial chain, and clogged with the obstinate embraces
which Clotilda kept round his neck. Colonel Esmond was not presented to
her; but Monsieur Simon was, a gentleman of the Royal Cravat (Esmond
bethought him of the regiment of his honest Irishman, whom he had seen
that day after Malplaquet, when he first set eyes on the young king); and
Monsieur Simon was introduced to the Viscountess Castlewood, _née_
Comptesse Wertheim; to the numerous counts, the Lady Clotilda’s tall
brothers; to her father the chamberlain; and to the lady his wife, Frank’s
mother-in-law, a tall and majestic person of large proportions, such as
became the mother of such a company of grenadiers as her warlike sons
formed. The whole race were at free quarters in the little castle nigh to
Bruxelles which Frank had taken; rode his horses; drank his wine; and
lived easily at the poor lad’s charges. Mr. Esmond had always maintained a
perfect fluency in the French, which was his mother tongue; and if this
family (that spoke French with the twang which the Flemings use)
discovered any inaccuracy in Mr. Simon’s pronunciation, ’twas to be
attributed to the latter’s long residence in England, where he had married
and remained ever since he was taken prisoner at Blenheim. His story was
perfectly pat; there were none there to doubt it save honest Frank, and he
was charmed with his kinsman’s scheme, when he became acquainted with it;
and, in truth, always admired Colonel Esmond with an affectionate
fidelity, and thought his cousin the wisest and best of all cousins and
men. Frank entered heart and soul into the plan, and liked it the better
as it was to take him to Paris, out of reach of his brothers, his father,
and his mother-in-law, whose attentions rather fatigued him.
Castlewood, I have said, was born in the same year as the Prince of Wales;
had not a little of the prince’s air, height, and figure; and, especially
since he had seen the Chevalier de St. George on the occasion before
named, took no small pride in his resemblance to a person so illustrious;
which likeness he increased by all the means in his power, wearing fair
brown periwigs, such as the prince wore, and ribbons, and so forth, of the
chevalier’s colour. This resemblance was, in truth, the circumstance on
which Mr. Esmond’s scheme was founded; and, having secured Frank’s secrecy
and enthusiasm, he left him to continue his journey, and see the other
personages on whom its success depended. The place whither Mr. Simon next
travelled was Bar, in Lorraine, where that merchant arrived with a
consignment of broadcloths, valuable laces from Malines, and letters for
his correspondent there.
Would you know how a prince, heroic from misfortunes, and descended from a
line of kings, whose race seemed to be doomed like the Atridae of
old—would you know how he was employed, when the envoy who came to him
through danger and difficulty beheld him for the first time? The young
king, in a flannel jacket, was at tennis with the gentlemen of his suite,
crying out after the balls, and swearing like the meanest of his subjects.
The next time Mr. Esmond saw him, ’twas when Monsieur Simon took a packet
of laces to Miss Oglethorpe; the prince’s antechamber in those days, at
which ignoble door men were forced to knock for admission to his Majesty.
The admission was given, the envoy found the king and the mistress
together; the pair were at cards, and his Majesty was in liquor. He cared
more for three honours than three kingdoms; and a half-dozen glasses of
ratafia made him forget all his woes and his losses, his father’s crown,
and his grandfather’s head.
Mr. Esmond did not open himself to the prince then. His Majesty was scarce
in a condition to hear him; and he doubted whether a king who drank so
much could keep a secret in his fuddled head; or whether a hand that shook
so, was strong enough to grasp at a crown. However at last, and after
taking counsel with the prince’s advisers, amongst whom were many
gentlemen, honest and faithful, Esmond’s plan was laid before the king,
and her actual Majesty Queen Oglethorpe, in council. The prince liked the
scheme well enough; ’twas easy and daring, and suited to his reckless
gaiety and lively youthful spirit. In the morning after he had slept his
wine off, he was very gay, lively, and agreeable. His manner had an
extreme charm of archness, and a kind simplicity; and, to do her justice,
her Oglethorpean Majesty was kind, acute, resolute, and of good counsel;
she gave the prince much good advice that he was too weak to follow, and
loved him with a fidelity which he returned with an ingratitude quite
royal.
Having his own forebodings regarding his scheme should it ever be
fulfilled, and his usual sceptic doubts as to the benefit which might
accrue to the country by bringing a tipsy young monarch back to it,
Colonel Esmond had his audience of leave and quiet. Monsieur Simon took
his departure. At any rate the youth at Bar was as good as the older
Pretender at Hanover; if the worst came to the worst, the Englishman could
be dealt with as easy as the German. Monsieur Simon trotted on that long
journey from Nancy to Paris, and saw that famous town, stealthily and like
a spy, as in truth he was; and where, sure, more magnificence and more
misery is heaped together, more rags and lace, more filth and gilding,
than in any city in this world. Here he was put in communication with the
king’s best friend, his half-brother, the famous Duke of Berwick; Esmond
recognized him as the stranger who had visited Castlewood now near twenty
years ago. His grace opened to him when he found that Mr. Esmond was one
of Webb’s brave regiment, that had once been his grace’s own. He was the
sword and buckler indeed of the Stuart cause: there was no stain on his
shield except the bar across it, which Marlborough’s sister left him. Had
Berwick been his father’s heir, James the Third had assuredly sat on the
English throne. He could dare, endure, strike, speak, be silent. The fire
and genius, perhaps, he had not (that were given to baser men), but except
these he had some of the best qualities of a leader. His grace knew
Esmond’s father and history; and hinted at the latter in such a way as
made the colonel to think he was aware of the particulars of that story.
But Esmond did not choose to enter on it, nor did the duke press him. Mr.
Esmond said, “No doubt he should come by his name if ever greater people
came by theirs.”
What confirmed Esmond in his notion that the Duke of Berwick knew of his
case was, that when the colonel went to pay his duty at St. Germains, her
Majesty once addressed him by the title of Marquis. He took the queen the
dutiful remembrances of her goddaughter, and the lady whom, in the days of
her prosperity, her Majesty had befriended. The queen remembered Rachel
Esmond perfectly well, had heard of my Lord Castlewood’s conversion, and
was much edified by that act of Heaven in his favour. She knew that others
of that family had been of the only true Church too: “Your father and your
mother, _monsieur le marquis_,” her Majesty said (that was the only time
she used the phrase). Monsieur Simon bowed very low, and said he had found
other parents than his own who had taught him differently; but these had
only one king: on which her Majesty was pleased to give him a medal
blessed by the Pope, which had been found very efficacious in cases
similar to his own, and to promise she would offer up prayers for his
conversion and that of the family: which no doubt this pious lady did,
though up to the present moment, and after twenty-seven years, Colonel
Esmond is bound to say that neither the medal nor the prayers have had the
slightest known effect upon his religious convictions.
As for the splendour of Versailles, Monsieur Simon, the merchant, only
beheld them as a humble and distant spectator, seeing the old king but
once, when he went to feed his carps; and asking for no presentation at
his Majesty’s Court.
By this time my Lord Viscount Castlewood was got to Paris, where, as the
London prints presently announced, her ladyship was brought to bed of a
son and heir. For a long while afterwards she was in a delicate state of
health, and ordered by the physicians not to travel; otherwise ’twas well
known that the Viscount Castlewood proposed returning to England, and
taking up his residence at his own seat.
Whilst he remained at Paris, my Lord Castlewood had his picture done by
the famous French painter Monsieur Rigaud, a present for his mother in
London; and this piece Monsieur Simon took back with him when he returned
to that city, which he reached about May, in the year 1714, very soon
after which time my Lady Castlewood and her daughter, and their kinsman,
Colonel Esmond, who had been at Castlewood all this time, likewise
returned to London; her ladyship occupying her house at Kensington, Mr.
Esmond returning to his lodgings at Knightsbridge, nearer the town, and
once more making his appearance at all public places, his health greatly
improved by his long stay in the country.
The portrait of my lord, in a handsome gilt frame, was hung up in the
place of honour in her ladyship’s drawing-room. His lordship was
represented in his scarlet uniform of Captain of the Guard, with a
light-brown periwig, a cuirass under his coat, a blue ribbon, and a fall
of Bruxelles lace. Many of her ladyship’s friends admired the piece beyond
measure, and flocked to see it; Bishop Atterbury, Mr. Lesly, good old Mr.
Collier, and others amongst the clergy, were delighted with the
performance, and many among the first quality examined and praised it;
only I must own that Dr. Tusher happening to come up to London, and seeing
the picture (it was ordinarily covered by a curtain, but on this day Miss
Beatrix happened to be looking at it when the doctor arrived), the Vicar
of Castlewood vowed he could not see any resemblance in the piece to his
old pupil, except perhaps, a little about the chin and the periwig; but we
all of us convinced him, that he had not seen Frank for five years or
more; that he knew no more about the fine arts than a ploughboy, and that
he must be mistaken; and we sent him home assured that the piece was an
excellent likeness. As for my Lord Bolingbroke, who honoured her ladyship
with a visit occasionally, when Colonel Esmond showed him the picture he
burst out laughing, and asked what devilry he was engaged on? Esmond owned
simply that the portrait was not that of Viscount Castlewood, besought the
secretary on his honour to keep the secret, said that the ladies of the
house were enthusiastic Jacobites, as was well known; and confessed that
the picture was that of the Chevalier St. George.
The truth is, that Mr. Simon, waiting upon Lord Castlewood one day at
Monsieur Rigaud’s, whilst his lordship was sitting for his picture,
affected to be much struck with a piece representing the chevalier,
whereof the head only was finished, and purchased it of the painter for a
hundred crowns. It had been intended the artist said, for Miss Oglethorpe,
the prince’s mistress, but that young lady quitting Paris, had left the
work on the artist’s hands; and taking this piece home, when my lord’s
portrait arrived, Colonel Esmond, alias Monsieur Simon, had copied the
uniform and other accessories from my lord’s picture to fill up Rigaud’s
incomplete canvas: the colonel all his life having been a practitioner of
painting, and especially followed it during his long residence in the
cities of Flanders, among the masterpieces of Vandyck and Rubens. My
grandson hath the piece, such as it is, in Virginia now.
At the commencement of the month of June, Miss Beatrix Esmond, and my lady
viscountess, her mother, arrived from Castlewood; the former to resume her
service at Court, which had been interrupted by the fatal catastrophe of
Duke Hamilton’s death. She once more took her place, then, in her
Majesty’s suite and at the maids’ table, being always a favourite with
Mrs. Masham, the queen’s chief woman, partly perhaps on account of her
bitterness against the Duchess of Marlborough, whom Miss Beatrix loved no
better than her rival did. The gentlemen about the Court, my Lord
Bolingbroke amongst others, owned that the young lady had come back
handsomer than ever, and that the serious and tragic air, which her face
now involuntarily wore, became her better than her former smiles and
archness.
All the old domestics at the little house of Kensington Square were
changed; the old steward that had served the family any time these
five-and-twenty years, since the birth of the children of the house, was
dispatched into the kingdom of Ireland to see my lord’s estate there: the
housekeeper, who had been my lady’s woman time out of mind, and the
attendant of the young children, was sent away grumbling to Walcote, to
see to the new painting and preparing of that house, which my lady dowager
intended to occupy for the future, giving up Castlewood to her
daughter-in-law, that might be expected daily from France. Another servant
the viscountess had was dismissed too—with a gratuity—on the pretext that
her ladyship’s train of domestics must be diminished; so, finally, there
was not left in the household a single person who had belonged to it
during the time my young Lord Castlewood was yet at home.
For the plan which Colonel Esmond had in view, and the stroke he intended,
’twas necessary that the very smallest number of persons should be put in
possession of his secret. It scarce was known, except to three or four out
of his family, and it was kept to a wonder.
On the 10th of June, 1714, there came by Mr. Prior’s messenger from Paris,
a letter from my Lord Viscount Castlewood to his mother, saying that he
had been foolish in regard of money matters, that he was ashamed to own he
had lost at play, and by other extravagances; and that instead of having
great entertainments as he had hoped at Castlewood this year, he must live
as quiet as he could, and make every effort to be saving. So far every
word of poor Frank’s letter was true, nor was there a doubt that he and
his tall brothers-in-law had spent a great deal more than they ought, and
engaged the revenues of the Castlewood property, which the fond mother had
husbanded and improved so carefully during the time of her guardianship.
His “Clotilda”, Castlewood went on to say, “was still delicate, and the
physicians thought her lying-in had best take place at Paris. He should
come without her ladyship, and be at his mother’s house about the 17th or
18th day of June, proposing to take horse from Paris immediately, and
bringing but a single servant with him; and he requested that the lawyers
of Gray’s Inn might be invited to meet him with their account, and the
land-steward come from Castlewood with his, so that he might settle with
them speedily, raise a sum of money whereof he stood in need, and be back
to his viscountess by the time of her lying-in.” Then his lordship gave
some of the news of the town, sent his remembrance to kinsfolk, and so the
letter ended. ’Twas put in the common post, and no doubt the French police
and the English there had a copy of it, to which they were exceeding
welcome.
Two days after another letter was dispatched by the public post of France,
in the same open way, and this, after giving news of the fashion at Court
there, ended by the following sentences, in which, but for those that had
the key, ’twould be difficult for any man to find any secret lurked at
all:—
(The king will take) medicine on Thursday. His Majesty is better
than he hath been of late, though incommoded by indigestion from
his too great appetite. Madame Maintenon continues well. They have
performed a play of Mons. Racine at St. Cyr. The Duke of
Shrewsbury and Mr. Prior, our envoy, and all the English nobility
here were present at it. (The Viscount Castlewood’s passports)
were refused to him, ’twas said; his lordship being sued by a
goldsmith for _Vaisselle plate_, and a pearl necklace supplied to
Mademoiselle Meruel of the French Comedy. ’Tis a pity such news
should get abroad (and travel to England) about our young nobility
here. Mademoiselle Meruel has been sent to the Fort l’Evesque;
they say she has ordered not only plate, but furniture, and a
chariot and horses (under that lord’s name), of which extravagance
his unfortunate viscountess knows nothing.
(His majesty will be) eighty-two years of age on his next
birthday. The Court prepares to celebrate it with a great feast.
Mr. Prior is in a sad way about their refusing at home to send him
his plate. All here admired my lord viscount’s portrait, and said
it was a masterpiece of Rigaud. Have you seen it? It is (at the
Lady Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square). I think no English
painter could produce such a piece.
Our poor friend the abbé hath been at the Bastille, but is now
transported to the Conciergerie (where his friends may visit him.
They are to ask for) a remission of his sentence soon. Let us hope
the poor rogue will have repented in prison.
(The Lord Castlewood) has had the affair of the plate made up, and
departs for England.
Is not this a dull letter? I have a cursed headache with drinking
with Mat and some more overnight, and tipsy or sober am
Thine ever ——.
All this letter, save some dozen of words which I have put above between
brackets, was mere idle talk, though the substance of the letter was as
important as any letter well could be. It told those that had the key,
that _the king will take the Viscount Castlewood’s passports and travel to
England under that lord’s name. His Majesty will be at the Lady
Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square, where his friends may visit him;
they are to ask for the Lord Castlewood_. This note may have passed under
Mr. Prior’s eyes, and those of our new allies the French, and taught them
nothing; though it explains sufficiently to persons in London what the
event was which was about to happen, as ’twill show those who read my
memoirs a hundred years hence, what was that errand on which Colonel
Esmond of late had been busy. Silently and swiftly to do that about which
others were conspiring, and thousands of Jacobites all over the country,
clumsily caballing; alone to effect that which the leaders here were only
talking about; to bring the Prince of Wales into the country openly in the
face of all, under Bolingbroke’s very eyes, the walls placarded with the
proclamation signed with the secretary’s name, and offering five hundred
pounds reward for his apprehension: this was a stroke, the playing and
winning of which might well give any adventurous spirit pleasure: the loss
of the stake might involve a heavy penalty, but all our family were eager
to risk that for the glorious chance of winning the game.
Nor should it be called a game, save perhaps with the chief player, who
was not more or less sceptical than most public men with whom he had
acquaintance in that age. (Is there ever a public man in England that
altogether believes in his party? Is there one, however doubtful, that
will not fight for it?) Young Frank was ready to fight without much
thinking, he was a Jacobite as his father before him was; all the Esmonds
were Royalists. Give him but the word, he would cry, “God save King
James!” before the palace guard, or at the Maypole in the Strand; and with
respect to the women, as is usual with them, ’twas not a question of party
but of faith; their belief was a passion; either Esmond’s mistress or her
daughter would have died for it cheerfully. I have laughed often, talking
of King William’s reign, and said I thought Lady Castlewood was
disappointed the king did not persecute the family more; and those who
know the nature of women may fancy for themselves, what needs not here be
written down, the rapture with which these neophytes received the mystery
when made known to them; the eagerness with which they looked forward to
its completion; the reverence which they paid the minister who initiated
them into that secret Truth, now known only to a few, but presently to
reign over the world. Sure there is no bound to the trustingness of women.
Look at Arria worshipping the drunken clodpate of a husband who beats her;
look at Cornelia treasuring as a jewel in her maternal heart the oaf her
son; I have known a woman preach Jesuit’s bark, and afterwards Dr.
Berkeley’s tar-water, as though to swallow them were a divine decree, and
to refuse them no better than blasphemy.
On his return from France Colonel Esmond put himself at the head of this
little knot of fond conspirators. No death or torture he knew would
frighten them out of their constancy. When he detailed his plan for
bringing the king back, his elder mistress thought that that restoration
was to be attributed under Heaven to the Castlewood family and to its
chief, and she worshipped and loved Esmond, if that could be, more than
ever she had done. She doubted not for one moment of the success of his
scheme, to mistrust which would have seemed impious in her eyes. And as
for Beatrix, when she became acquainted with the plan, and joined it, as
she did with all her heart, she gave Esmond one of her searching bright
looks: “Ah, Harry,” says she, “why were you not the head of our house? You
are the only one fit to raise it; why do you give that silly boy the name
and the honour? But ’tis so in the world; those get the prize that don’t
deserve or care for it. I wish I could give you _your_ silly prize,
cousin, but I can’t; I have tried and I can’t.” And she went away, shaking
her head mournfully, but always, it seemed to Esmond, that her liking and
respect for him was greatly increased, since she knew what capability he
had both to act and bear; to do and to forgo.
Chapter IX. The Original Of The Portrait Comes To England
’Twas announced in the family that my Lord Castlewood would arrive, having
a confidential French gentleman in his suite, who acted as secretary to
his lordship, and who being a Papist, and a foreigner of a good family,
though now in rather a menial place, would have his meals served in his
chamber, and not with the domestics of the house. The viscountess gave up
her bedchamber contiguous to her daughter’s, and having a large convenient
closet attached to it, in which a bed was put up, ostensibly for Monsieur
Baptiste, the Frenchman; though, ’tis needless to say, when the doors of
the apartments were locked, and the two guests retired within it, the
young viscount became the servant of the illustrious prince whom he
entertained, and gave up gladly the more convenient and airy chamber and
bed to his master. Madam Beatrix also retired to the upper region, her
chamber being converted into a sitting-room for my lord. The better to
carry the deceit, Beatrix affected to grumble before the servants, and to
be jealous that she was turned out of her chamber to make way for my lord.
No small preparations were made, you may be sure, and no slight tremor of
expectation caused the hearts of the gentle ladies of Castlewood to
flutter, before the arrival of the personages who were about to honour
their house. The chamber was ornamented with flowers; the bed covered with
the very finest of linen; the two ladies insisting on making it
themselves, and kneeling down at the bedside and kissing the sheets out of
respect for the web that was to hold the sacred person of a king. The
toilet was of silver and crystal; there was a copy of _Eikon Basilike_
laid on the writing-table; a portrait of the martyred king hung always
over the mantel, having a sword of my poor Lord Castlewood underneath it,
and a little picture or emblem which the widow loved always to have before
her eyes on waking, and in which the hair of her lord and her two children
was worked together. Her books of private devotions, as they were all of
the English Church, she carried away with her to the upper apartment which
she destined for herself. The ladies showed Mr. Esmond, when they were
completed, the fond preparations they had made. ’Twas then Beatrix knelt
down and kissed the linen sheets. As for her mother, Lady Castlewood made
a curtsy at the door, as she would have done to the altar on entering a
church, and owned that she considered the chamber in a manner sacred.
The company in the servants’ hall never for a moment supposed that these
preparations were made for any other person than the young viscount, the
lord of the house, whom his fond mother had been for so many years without
seeing. Both ladies were perfect housewives, having the greatest skill in
the making of confections, scented waters, &c., and keeping a notable
superintendence over the kitchen. Calves enough were killed to feed an
army of prodigal sons, Esmond thought, and laughed when he came to wait on
the ladies, on the day when the guests were to arrive, to find two pairs
of the finest and roundest arms to be seen in England (my Lady Castlewood
was remarkable for this beauty of her person), covered with flour up above
the elbows, and preparing paste, and turning rolling-pins in the
housekeeper’s closet. The guest would not arrive till supper-time, and my
lord would prefer having that meal in his own chamber. You may be sure the
brightest plate of the house was laid out there, and can understand why it
was that the ladies insisted that they alone would wait upon the young
chief of the family.
Taking horse, Colonel Esmond rode rapidly to Rochester, and there awaited
the king in that very town where his father had last set his foot on the
English shore. A room had been provided at an inn there for my Lord
Castlewood and his servant; and Colonel Esmond timed his ride so well that
he had scarce been half an hour in the place, and was looking over the
balcony into the yard of the inn, when two travellers rode in at the
inn-gate, and the colonel running down, the next moment embraced his dear
young lord.
My lord’s companion, acting the part of a domestic, dismounted, and was
for holding the viscount’s stirrup; but Colonel Esmond, calling to his own
man, who was in the court, bade him take the horses and settle with the
lad who had ridden the post along with the two travellers, crying out in a
cavalier tone in the French language to my lord’s companion, and affecting
to grumble that my lord’s fellow was a Frenchman, and did not know the
money or habits of the country:—“My man will see to the horses, Baptiste,”
says Colonel Esmond: “do you understand English?” “Very leetle.” “So,
follow my lord and wait upon him at dinner in his own room.” The landlord
and his people came up presently bearing the dishes; ’twas well they made
a noise and stir in the gallery, or they might have found Colonel Esmond
on his knee before Lord Castlewood’s servant, welcoming his Majesty to his
kingdom, and kissing the hand of the king. We told the landlord that the
Frenchman would wait on his master; and Esmond’s man was ordered to keep
sentry in the gallery without the door. The prince dined with a good
appetite, laughing and talking very gaily, and condescendingly bidding his
two companions to sit with him at table. He was in better spirits than
poor Frank Castlewood, who Esmond thought might be wobegone on account of
parting with his divine Clotilda; but the prince wishing to take a short
siesta after dinner, and retiring to an inner chamber where there was a
bed, the cause of poor Frank’s discomfiture came out; and bursting into
tears, with many expressions of fondness, friendship, and humiliation, the
faithful lad gave his kinsman to understand that he now knew all the
truth, and the sacrifices which Colonel Esmond had made for him.
Seeing no good in acquainting poor Frank with that secret, Mr. Esmond had
entreated his mistress also not to reveal it to her son. The prince had
told the poor lad all as they were riding from Dover: “I had as lief he
had shot me, cousin,” Frank said: “I knew you were the best and the
bravest, and the kindest of all men” (so the enthusiastic young fellow
went on); “but I never thought I owed you what I do, and can scarce bear
the weight of the obligation.”
“I stand in the place of your father,” says Mr. Esmond kindly, “and sure a
father may dispossess himself in favour of his son. I abdicate the
twopenny crown, and invest you with the kingdom of Brentford; don’t be a
fool and cry; you make a much taller and handsomer viscount than ever I
could.” But the fond boy with oaths and protestations, laughter and
incoherent outbreaks of passionate emotion, could not be got, for some
little time, to put up with Esmond’s raillery; wanted to kneel down to
him, and kissed his hand; asked him and implored him to order something,
to bid Castlewood give his own life up or take somebody else’s; anything,
so that he might show his gratitude for the generosity Esmond showed him.
“The k——, _he_ laughed,” Frank said, pointing to the door where the
sleeper was, and speaking in a low tone, “I don’t think he should have
laughed as he told me the story. As we rode along from Dover, talking in
French, he spoke about you, and your coming to him at Bar; he called you
‘_le grand sérieux_’, Don Bellianis of Greece, and I don’t know what
names; mimicking your manner” (here Castlewood laughed himself)—“and he
did it very well. He seems to sneer at everything. He is not like a king:
somehow, Harry, I fancy you are like a king. He does not seem to think
what a stake we are all playing. He would have stopped at Canterbury to
run after a barmaid there, had I not implored him to come on. He hath a
house at Chaillot where he used to go and bury himself for weeks away from
the queen, and with all sorts of bad company,” says Frank, with a demure
look; “you may smile, but I am not the wild fellow I was; no, no, I have
been taught better,” says Castlewood devoutly, making a sign on his
breast.
“Thou art my dear brave boy,” says Colonel Esmond, touched at the young
fellow’s simplicity, “and there will be a noble gentleman at Castlewood so
long as my Frank is there.”
The impetuous young lad was for going down on his knees again, with
another explosion of gratitude, but that we heard the voice from the next
chamber of the august sleeper, just waking, calling out:—“_Eh, La-Fleur,
un verre d’eau_”; his Majesty came out yawning:—“A pest,” says he, “upon
your English ale; ’tis so strong that, _ma foi_, it hath turned my head.”
The effect of the ale was like a spur upon our horses, and we rode very
quickly to London, reaching Kensington at nightfall. Mr. Esmond’s servant
was left behind at Rochester, to take care of the tired horses, whilst we
had fresh beasts provided along the road. And galloping by the prince’s
side the colonel explained to the Prince of Wales what his movements had
been; who the friends were that knew of the expedition; whom, as Esmond
conceived, the prince should trust; entreating him, above all, to maintain
the very closest secrecy until the time should come when his royal
highness should appear. The town swarmed with friends of the prince’s
cause; there were scores of correspondents with St. Germains; Jacobites
known and secret; great in station and humble; about the Court and the
queen; in the Parliament, Church, and among the merchants in the City. The
prince had friends numberless in the army, in the Privy Council, and the
officers of state. The great object, as it seemed, to the small band of
persons who had concerted that bold stroke, who had brought the queen’s
brother into his native country, was, that his visit should remain unknown
till the proper time came, when his presence should surprise friends and
enemies alike; and the latter should be found so unprepared and disunited,
that they should not find time to attack him. We feared more from his
friends than from his enemies. The lies, and tittle-tattle sent over to
St. Germains by the Jacobite agents about London, had done an incalculable
mischief to his cause, and wofully misguided him, and it was from these
especially, that the persons engaged in the present venture were anxious
to defend the chief actor in it.(16)
The party reached London by nightfall, leaving their horses at the
Posting-House over against Westminster, and being ferried over the water
where Lady Esmond’s coach was already in waiting. In another hour we were
all landed at Kensington, and the mistress of the house had that
satisfaction which her heart had yearned after for many years, once more
to embrace her son, who on his side, with all his waywardness, ever
retained a most tender affection for his parent.
She did not refrain from this expression of her feeling, though the
domestics were by, and my Lord Castlewood’s attendant stood in the hall.
Esmond had to whisper to him in French to take his hat off. Monsieur
Baptiste was constantly neglecting his part with an inconceivable levity:
more than once on the ride to London, little observations of the stranger,
light remarks, and words betokening the greatest ignorance of the country
the prince came to govern, had hurt the susceptibility of the two
gentlemen forming his escort; nor could either help owning in his secret
mind that they would have had his behaviour otherwise, and that the
laughter and the lightness, not to say licence, which characterized his
talk, scarce befitted such a great prince, and such a solemn occasion. Not
but that he could act at proper times with spirit and dignity. He had
behaved, as we all knew, in a very courageous manner on the field. Esmond
had seen a copy of the letter the prince writ with his own hand when urged
by his friends in England to abjure his religion, and admired that manly
and magnanimous reply by which he refused to yield to the temptation.
Monsieur Baptiste took off his hat, blushing at the hint Colonel Esmond
ventured to give him, and said:—“_Tenez, elle est jolie, la petite mère;
Foi-de-Chevalier! elle est charmante; mais l’autre, qui est cette nymphe,
cet astre qui brille, cette Diane qui descend sur nous?_” And he started
back, and pushed forward, as Beatrix was descending the stair. She was in
colours for the first time at her own house; she wore the diamonds Esmond
gave her; it had been agreed between them, that she should wear these
brilliants on the day when the king should enter the house, and a queen
she looked, radiant in charms, and magnificent and imperial in beauty.
Castlewood himself was startled by that beauty and splendour; he stepped
back and gazed at his sister as though he had not been aware before (nor
was he, very likely) how perfectly lovely she was, and I thought blushed
as he embraced her. The prince could not keep his eyes off her; he quite
forgot his menial part, though he had been schooled to it, and a little
light portmanteau prepared expressly that he should carry it. He pressed
forward before my lord viscount. ’Twas lucky the servants’ eyes were busy
in other directions, or they must have seen that this was no servant, or
at least a very insolent and rude one.
Again Colonel Esmond was obliged to cry out, “Baptiste”, in a loud
imperious voice, “have a care to the valise”; at which hint the wilful
young man ground his teeth together with something very like a curse
between them, and then gave a brief look of anything but pleasure to his
Mentor. Being reminded, however, he shouldered the little portmanteau, and
carried it up the stair, Esmond preceding him, and a servant with lighted
tapers. He flung down his burden sulkily in the bedchamber:—“A prince that
will wear a crown must wear a mask,” says Mr. Esmond, in French.
“_Ah, peste!_ I see how it is,” says Monsieur Baptiste, continuing the
talk in French. “The Great Serious is seriously”—“alarmed for Monsieur
Baptiste,” broke in the colonel. Esmond neither liked the tone with which
the prince spoke of the ladies, nor the eyes with which he regarded them.
The bedchamber and the two rooms adjoining it, the closet and the
apartment which was to be called my lord’s parlour, were already lighted
and awaiting their occupier; and the collation laid for my lord’s supper.
Lord Castlewood and his mother and sister came up the stair a minute
afterwards, and, so soon as the domestics had quitted the apartment,
Castlewood and Esmond uncovered, and the two ladies went down on their
knees before the prince, who graciously gave a hand to each. He looked his
part of prince much more naturally than that of servant, which he had just
been trying, and raised them both with a great deal of nobility, as well
as kindness in his air. “Madam,” says he, “my mother will thank your
ladyship for your hospitality to her son; for you, madam,” turning to
Beatrix, “I cannot bear to see so much beauty in such a posture. You will
betray Monsieur Baptiste if you kneel to him; sure ’tis his place rather
to kneel to you.”
A light shone out of her eyes; a gleam bright enough to kindle passion in
any breast. There were times when this creature was so handsome, that she
seemed, as it were, like Venus revealing herself a goddess in a flash of
brightness. She appeared so now; radiant, and with eyes bright with a
wonderful lustre. A pang, as of rage and jealousy, shot through Esmond’s
heart, as he caught the look she gave the prince; and he clenched his hand
involuntarily and looked across to Castlewood, whose eyes answered his
alarm-signal, and were also on the alert. The prince gave his subjects an
audience of a few minutes, and then the two ladies and Colonel Esmond
quitted the chamber. Lady Castlewood pressed his hand as they descended
the stair, and the three went down to the lower rooms, where they waited
awhile till the travellers above should be refreshed and ready for their
meal.
Esmond looked at Beatrix, blazing with her jewels on her beautiful neck.
“I have kept my word,” says he: “And I mine,” says Beatrix, looking down
on the diamonds.
“Were I the Mogul emperor,” says the colonel, “you should have all that
were dug out of Golconda.”
“These are a great deal too good for me,” says Beatrix, dropping her head
on her beautiful breast,—“so are you all, all:” and when she looked up
again, as she did in a moment, and after a sigh, her eyes, as they gazed
at her cousin, wore that melancholy and inscrutable look which ’twas
always impossible to sound.
When the time came for the supper, of which we were advertised by a
knocking overhead, Colonel Esmond and the two ladies went to the upper
apartment, where the prince already was, and by his side the young
viscount, of exactly the same age, shape, and with features not
dissimilar, though Frank’s were the handsomer of the two. The prince sat
down, and bade the ladies sit. The gentlemen remained standing; there was,
indeed, but one more cover laid at the table:—“Which of you will take it?”
says he.
“The head of our house,” says Lady Castlewood, taking her son’s hand, and
looking towards Colonel Esmond with a bow and a great tremor of the voice;
“the Marquis of Esmond will have the honour of serving the king.”
“I shall have the honour of waiting on his royal highness,” says Colonel
Esmond, filling a cup of wine, and, as the fashion of that day was, he
presented it to the king on his knee.
“I drink to my hostess and her family,” says the prince, with no very
well-pleased air; but the cloud passed immediately off his face, and he
talked to the ladies in a lively, rattling strain, quite undisturbed by
poor Mr. Esmond’s yellow countenance, that I dare say looked very glum.
When the time came to take leave, Esmond marched homewards to his
lodgings, and met Mr. Addison on the road that night, walking to a cottage
he had at Fulham, the moon shining on his handsome serene face:—“What
cheer, brother?” says Addison, laughing; “I thought it was a footpad
advancing in the dark, and behold ’tis an old friend. We may shake hands,
colonel, in the dark, ’tis better than fighting by daylight. Why should we
quarrel, because I am a Whig and thou art a Tory? Turn thy steps and walk
with me to Fulham, where there is a nightingale still singing in the
garden, and a cool bottle in a cave I know of; you shall drink to the
Pretender if you like, and I will drink my liquor my own way: I have had
enough of good liquor?—no, never! There is no such word as enough as a
stopper for good wine. Thou wilt not come? Come any day, come soon. You
know I remember _Simois_ and the _Sigeia tellus_, and the _praelia mixta
mero, mixta mero_,” he repeated, with ever so slight a touch of _merum_ in
his voice, and walked back a little way on the road with Esmond, bidding
the other remember he was always his friend, and indebted to him for his
aid in the _Campaign_ poem. And very likely Mr. Under Secretary would have
stepped in and taken t’other bottle at the colonel’s lodgings, had the
latter invited him, but Esmond’s mood was none of the gayest, and he bade
his friend an inhospitable good-night at the door.
“I have done the deed,” thought he, sleepless, and looking out into the
night; “he is here, and I have brought him; he and Beatrix are sleeping
under the same roof now. Whom did I mean to serve in bringing him? Was it
the prince, was it Henry Esmond? Had I not best have joined the manly
creed of Addison yonder, that scouts the old doctrine of right divine,
that boldly declares that Parliament and people consecrate the sovereign,
not bishops, nor genealogies, nor oils, nor coronations.” The eager gaze
of the young prince, watching every movement of Beatrix, haunted Esmond
and pursued him. The prince’s figure appeared before him in his feverish
dreams many times that night. He wished the deed undone, for which he had
laboured so. He was not the first that has regretted his own act, or
brought about his own undoing. Undoing? Should he write that word in his
late years? No, on his knees before Heaven, rather be thankful for what
then he deemed his misfortune, and which hath caused the whole subsequent
happiness of his life.
Esmond’s man, honest John Lockwood, had served his master and the family
all his life, and the colonel knew that he could answer for John’s
fidelity as for his own. John returned with the horses from Rochester
betimes the next morning, and the colonel gave him to understand that on
going to Kensington, where he was free of the servants’ hall, and indeed
courting Mrs. Beatrix’s maid, he was to ask no questions, and betray no
surprise, but to vouch stoutly that the young gentleman he should see in a
red coat there was my Lord Viscount Castlewood, and that his attendant in
grey was Monsieur Baptiste the Frenchman. He was to tell his friends in
the kitchen such stories as he remembered of my lord viscount’s youth at
Castlewood; what a wild boy he was; how he used to drill Jack and cane
him, before ever he was a soldier; everything, in fine, he knew respecting
my lord viscount’s early days. Jack’s ideas of painting had not been much
cultivated during his residence in Flanders with his master; and, before
my young lord’s return, he had been easily got to believe that the picture
brought over from Paris, and now hanging in Lady Castlewood’s
drawing-room, was a perfect likeness of her son, the young lord. And the
domestics having all seen the picture many times, and catching but a
momentary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on the night of their
arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity of the portrait; and
next day, when they saw the original of the piece habited exactly as he
was represented in the painting, with the same periwig, ribbon, and
uniform of the Guard, quite naturally addressed the gentleman as my Lord
Castlewood, my lady viscountess’s son.
The secretary of the night previous was now the viscount; the viscount
wore the secretary’s grey frock; and John Lockwood was instructed to hint
to the world below stairs that my lord being a Papist, and very devout in
that religion, his attendant might be no other than his chaplain from
Bruxelles; hence, if he took his meals in my lord’s company there was
little reason for surprise. Frank was further cautioned to speak English
with a foreign accent, which task he performed indifferently well, and
this caution was the more necessary because the prince himself scarce
spoke our language like a native of the island; and John Lockwood laughed
with the folks below stairs at the manner in which my lord, after five
years abroad, sometimes forgot his own tongue and spoke it like a
Frenchman. “I warrant,” says he, “that with the English beef and beer, his
lordship will soon get back the proper use of his mouth;” and, to do his
new lordship justice, he took to beer and beef very kindly.
The prince drank so much, and was so loud and imprudent in his talk after
his drink, that Esmond often trembled for him. His meals were served as
much as possible in his own chamber, though frequently he made his
appearance in Lady Castlewood’s parlour and drawing-room, calling Beatrix
“sister”, and her ladyship “mother”, or “madam”, before the servants. And,
choosing to act entirely up to the part of brother and son, the prince
sometimes saluted Mrs. Beatrix and Lady Castlewood with a freedom which
his secretary did not like, and which, for his part, set Colonel Esmond
tearing with rage.
The guests had not been three days in the house when poor Jack Lockwood
came with a rueful countenance to his master, and said: “My lord, that
is—the gentleman, has been tampering with Mrs. Lucy” (Jack’s sweetheart),
“and given her guineas and a kiss.” I fear that Colonel Esmond’s mind was
rather relieved than otherwise, when he found that the ancillary beauty
was the one whom the prince had selected. His royal tastes were known to
lie that way, and continued so in after-life. The heir of one of the
greatest names, of the greatest kingdoms, and of the greatest misfortunes
in Europe, was often content to lay the dignity of his birth and grief at
the wooden shoes of a French chambermaid, and to repent afterwards (for he
was very devout) in ashes taken from the dustpan. ’Tis for mortals such as
these that nations suffer, that parties struggle, that warriors fight and
bleed. A year afterwards gallant heads were falling, and Nithsdale in
escape, and Derwentwater on the scaffold; whilst the heedless ingrate, for
whom they risked and lost all, was tippling with his seraglio of
mistresses in his _petite maison_ of Chaillot.
Blushing to be forced to bear such an errand, Esmond had to go to the
prince and warn him that the girl whom his highness was bribing, was John
Lockwood’s sweetheart, an honest resolute man, who had served in six
campaigns, and feared nothing, and who knew that the person, calling
himself Lord Castlewood, was not his young master: and the colonel
besought the prince to consider what the effect of a single man’s jealousy
might be, and to think of other designs he had in hand, more important
than the seduction of a waiting-maid, and the humiliation of a brave man.
Ten times, perhaps, in the course of as many days, Mr. Esmond had to warn
the royal young adventurer of some imprudence or some freedom. He received
these remonstrances very testily, save perhaps in this affair of poor
Lockwood’s, when he deigned to burst out a-laughing, and said, “What! the
_soubrette_ has peached to the _amoureux_, and Crispin is angry, and
Crispin has served, and Crispin has been a corporal, has he? Tell him we
will reward his valour with a pair of colours, and recompense his
fidelity.”
Colonel Esmond ventured to utter some other words of entreaty, but the
prince, stamping imperiously, cried out, “_Assez, milord: je m’ennuye à la
prêche_; I am not come to London to go to the sermon.” And he complained
afterwards to Castlewood, that “_le petit jaune, le noir colonel, le
Marquis Misanthrope_” (by which facetious names his royal highness was
pleased to designate Colonel Esmond), “fatigued him with his grand airs
and virtuous homilies.”
The Bishop of Rochester, and other gentlemen engaged in the transaction
which had brought the prince over, waited upon his royal highness,
constantly asking for my Lord Castlewood on their arrival at Kensington,
and being openly conducted to his royal highness in that character, who
received them either in my lady’s drawing-room below, or above in his own
apartment; and all implored him to quit the house as little as possible,
and to wait there till the signal should be given for him to appear. The
ladies entertained him at cards, over which amusement he spent many hours
in each day and night. He passed many hours more in drinking, during which
time he would rattle and talk very agreeably, and especially if the
colonel was absent, whose presence always seemed to frighten him; and the
poor “_Colonel Noir_” took that hint as a command accordingly, and seldom
intruded his black face upon the convivial hours of this august young
prisoner. Except for those few persons of whom the porter had the list,
Lord Castlewood was denied to all friends of the house who waited on his
lordship. The wound he had received had broke out again from his journey
on horseback, so the world and the domestics were informed. And Doctor
A——,(17) his physician (I shall not mention his name, but he was physician
to the Queen, of the Scots nation, and a man remarkable for his
benevolence as well as his wit), gave orders that he should be kept
perfectly quiet until the wound should heal. With this gentleman, who was
one of the most active and influential of our party, and the others before
spoken of, the whole secret lay; and it was kept with so much
faithfulness, and the story we told so simple and natural, that there was
no likelihood of a discovery except from the imprudence of the prince
himself, and an adventurous levity that we had the greatest difficulty to
control. As for Lady Castlewood, although she scarce spoke a word, ’twas
easy to gather from her demeanour, and one or two hints she dropped, how
deep her mortification was at finding the hero whom she had chosen to
worship all her life (and whose restoration had formed almost the most
sacred part of her prayers), no more than a man, and not a good one. She
thought misfortune might have chastened him; but that instructress had
rather rendered him callous than humble. His devotion, which was quite
real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed good-humour,
gaiety, even wit enough; but there was a levity in his acts and words that
he had brought from among those libertine devotees with whom he had been
bred, and that shocked the simplicity and purity of the English lady,
whose guest he was. Esmond spoke his mind to Beatrix pretty freely about
the prince, getting her brother to put in a word of warning. Beatrix was
entirely of their opinion; she thought he was very light, very light and
reckless; she could not even see the good looks Colonel Esmond had spoken
of. The prince had bad teeth, and a decided squint. How could we say he
did not squint? His eyes were fine, but there was certainly a cast in
them. She rallied him at table with wonderful wit; she spoke of him
invariably as of a mere boy; she was more fond of Esmond than ever,
praised him to her brother, praised him to the prince, when his royal
highness was pleased to sneer at the colonel, and warmly espoused his
cause: “And if your Majesty does not give him the Garter his father had,
when the Marquis of Esmond comes to your Majesty’s Court, I will hang
myself in my own garters, or will cry my eyes out.” “Rather than lose
those,” says the prince, “he shall be made archbishop and colonel of the
Guard” (it was Frank Castlewood who told me of this conversation over
their supper).
“Yes,” cries she, with one of her laughs,—(I fancy I hear it now; thirty
years afterwards I hear that delightful music)—“yes, he shall be
Archbishop of Esmond and Marquis of Canterbury.”
“And what will your ladyship be?” says the prince; “you have but to choose
your place.”
“I,” says Beatrix, “will be mother of the maids to the queen of his
Majesty King James the Third—_Vive le Roy!_” and she made him a great
curtsy, and drank a part of a glass of wine in his honour.
“The prince seized hold of the glass and drank the last drop of it,”
Castlewood said, “and my mother, looking very anxious, rose up and asked
leave to retire. But that ’Trix is my mother’s daughter, Harry,” Frank
continued, “I don’t know what a horrid fear I should have of her. I wish—I
wish this business were over. You are older than I am, and wiser, and
better, and I owe you everything, and would die for you—before George I
would; but I wish the end of this were come.”
Neither of us very likely passed a tranquil night; horrible doubts and
torments racked Esmond’s soul; ’twas a scheme of personal ambition, a
daring stroke for a selfish end—he knew it. What cared he, in his heart,
who was king? Were not his very sympathies and secret convictions on the
other side—on the side of People, Parliament, Freedom? And here was he,
engaged for a prince, that had scarce heard the word “liberty”; that
priests and women, tyrants by nature both, made a tool of. The misanthrope
was in no better humour after hearing that story, and his grim face more
black and yellow than ever.
Chapter X. We Entertain A Very Distinguished Guest At Kensington
Should any clue be found to the dark intrigues at the latter end of Queen
Anne’s time, or any historian be inclined to follow it, ’twill be
discovered, I have little doubt, that not one of the great personages
about the queen had a defined scheme of policy, independent of that
private and selfish interest which each was bent on pursuing; St. John was
for St. John, and Harley for Oxford, and Marlborough for John Churchill,
always; and according as they could get help from St. Germains or Hanover,
they sent over proffers of allegiance to the princes there, or betrayed
one to the other: one cause, or one sovereign, was as good as another to
them, so that they could hold the best place under him; and like Lockit
and Peachem, the Newgate chiefs in the _Rogues’ Opera_ Mr. Gay wrote
afterwards, had each in his hand documents and proofs of treason which
would hang the other, only he did not dare to use the weapon, for fear of
that one which his neighbour also carried in his pocket. Think of the
great Marlborough, the greatest subject in all the world, a conqueror of
princes, that had marched victorious over Germany, Flanders, and France,
that had given the law to sovereigns abroad, and been worshipped as a
divinity at home, forced to sneak out of England—his credit, honours,
places, all taken from him; his friends in the army broke and ruined; and
flying before Harley, as abject and powerless as a poor debtor before a
bailiff with a writ. A paper, of which Harley got possession, and showing
beyond doubt that the duke was engaged with the Stuart family, was the
weapon with which the treasurer drove Marlborough out of the kingdom. He
fled to Antwerp, and began intriguing instantly on the other side, and
came back to England, as all know, a Whig and a Hanoverian.
Though the treasurer turned out of the army and office every man, military
or civil, known to be the duke’s friend, and gave the vacant posts among
the Tory party; he, too, was playing the double game between Hanover and
St. Germains, awaiting the expected catastrophe of the queen’s death to be
master of the state, and offer it to either family that should bribe him
best, or that the nation should declare for. Whichever the king was,
Harley’s object was to reign over him; and to this end he supplanted the
former famous favourite, decried the actions of the war which had made
Marlborough’s name illustrious, and disdained no more than the great
fallen competitor of his, the meanest arts, flatteries, intimidations,
that would secure his power. If the greatest satirist the world ever hath
seen had writ against Harley, and not for him, what a history had he left
behind of the last years of Queen Anne’s reign! But Swift, that scorned
all mankind, and himself not the least of all, had this merit of a
faithful partisan, that he loved those chiefs who treated him well, and
stuck by Harley bravely in his fall, as he gallantly had supported him in
his better fortune.
Incomparably more brilliant, more splendid, eloquent, accomplished, than
his rival, the great St. John could be as selfish as Oxford was, and could
act the double part as skilfully as ambidextrous Churchill. He whose talk
was always of liberty, no more shrunk from using persecution and the
pillory against his opponents, than if he had been at Lisbon and Grand
Inquisitor. This lofty patriot was on his knees at Hanover and St.
Germains too; notoriously of no religion, he toasted Church and queen as
boldly as the stupid Sacheverel, whom he used and laughed at; and to serve
his turn, and to overthrow his enemy, he could intrigue, coax, bully,
wheedle, fawn on the Court favourite, and creep up the back-stair as
silently as Oxford who supplanted Marlborough, and whom he himself
supplanted. The crash of my Lord Oxford happened at this very time whereat
my history is now arrived. He was come to the very last days of his power,
and the agent whom he employed to overthrow the conqueror of Blenheim, was
now engaged to upset the conqueror’s conqueror, and hand over the staff of
government to Bolingbroke, who had been panting to hold it.
In expectation of the stroke that was now preparing, the Irish regiments
in the French service were all brought round about Boulogne in Picardy, to
pass over if need were with the Duke of Berwick; the soldiers of France no
longer, but subjects of James the Third of England and Ireland King. The
fidelity of the great mass of the Scots (though a most active, resolute,
and gallant Whig party, admirably and energetically ordered and
disciplined, was known to be in Scotland too) was notoriously unshaken in
their king. A very great body of Tory clergy, nobility, and gentry, were
public partisans of the exiled prince; and the indifferents might be
counted on to cry King George or King James, according as either should
prevail. The queen, especially in her latter days, inclined towards her
own family. The prince was lying actually in London, within a stone’s-cast
of his sister’s palace; the first minister toppling to his fall, and so
tottering that the weakest push of a woman’s finger would send him down;
and as for Bolingbroke, his successor, we know on whose side his power and
his splendid eloquence would be on the day when the queen should appear
openly before her council and say:—“This, my lords, is my brother; here is
my father’s heir, and mine after me.”
During the whole of the previous year the queen had had many and repeated
fits of sickness, fever, and lethargy, and her death had been constantly
looked for by all her attendants. The Elector of Hanover had wished to
send his son, the Duke of Cambridge—to pay his court to his cousin the
queen, the Elector said;—in truth, to be on the spot when death should
close her career. Frightened perhaps to have such a _memento mori_ under
her royal eyes, her Majesty had angrily forbidden the young prince’s
coming into England. Either she desired to keep the chances for her
brother open yet; or the people about her did not wish to close with the
Whig candidate till they could make terms with him. The quarrels of her
ministers before her face at the Council board, the pricks of conscience
very likely, the importunities of her ministers, and constant turmoil and
agitation round about her, had weakened and irritated the princess
extremely; her strength was giving way under these continual trials of her
temper, and from day to day it was expected she must come to a speedy end
of them. Just before Viscount Castlewood and his companion came from
France, her Majesty was taken ill. The St. Anthony’s fire broke out on the
royal legs; there was no hurry for the presentation of the young lord at
Court, or that person who should appear under his name; and my lord
viscount’s wound breaking out opportunely, he was kept conveniently in his
chamber until such time as his physician should allow him to bend his knee
before the queen. At the commencement of July, that influential lady, with
whom it has been mentioned that our party had relations, came frequently
to visit her young friend, the maid of honour, at Kensington, and my lord
viscount (the real or supposititious), who was an invalid at Lady
Castlewood’s house.
On the 27th day of July, the lady in question, who held the most intimate
post about the queen, came in her chair from the palace hard by, bringing
to the little party in Kensington Square, intelligence of the very highest
importance. The final blow had been struck, and my Lord of Oxford and
Mortimer was no longer treasurer. The staff was as yet given to no
successor, though my Lord Bolingbroke would undoubtedly be the man. And
now the time was come, the queen’s Abigail said: and now my Lord
Castlewood ought to be presented to the sovereign.
After that scene which Lord Castlewood witnessed and described to his
cousin, who passed such a miserable night of mortification and jealousy as
he thought over the transaction; no doubt the three persons who were set
by nature as protectors over Beatrix came to the same conclusion, that she
must be removed from the presence of a man whose desires towards her were
expressed only too clearly; and who was no more scrupulous in seeking to
gratify them than his father had been before him. I suppose Esmond’s
mistress, her son, and the colonel himself, had been all secretly debating
this matter in their minds, for when Frank broke out, in his blunt way,
with:—“I think Beatrix had best be anywhere but here,”—Lady Castlewood
said:—“I thank you, Frank, I have thought so too”; and Mr. Esmond, though
he only remarked that it was not for him to speak, showed plainly, by the
delight on his countenance, how very agreeable that proposal was to him.
“One sees that you think with us, Henry,” says the viscountess, with ever
so little of sarcasm in her tone: “Beatrix is best out of this house
whilst we have our guest in it, and as soon as this morning’s business is
done, she ought to quit London.”
“What morning’s business?” asked Colonel Esmond, not knowing what had been
arranged, though in fact the stroke next in importance to that of bringing
the prince, and of having him acknowledged by the queen, was now being
performed at the very moment we three were conversing together.
The Court-lady with whom our plan was concerted, and who was a chief agent
in it, the Court-physician, and the Bishop of Rochester, who were the
other two most active participators in our plan, had held many councils in
our house at Kensington and elsewhere, as to the means best to be adopted
for presenting our young adventurer to his sister the queen. The simple
and easy plan proposed by Colonel Esmond had been agreed to by all
parties, which was that on some rather private day, when there were not
many persons about the Court, the prince should appear there as my Lord
Castlewood, should be greeted by his sister-in-waiting, and led by that
other lady into the closet of the queen. And according to her Majesty’s
health or humour, and the circumstances that might arise during the
interview; it was to be left to the discretion of those present at it, and
to the prince himself, whether he should declare that it was the queen’s
own brother, or the brother of Beatrix Esmond, who kissed her royal hand.
And this plan being determined on, we were all waiting in very much
anxiety for the day and signal of execution.
Two mornings after that supper, it being the 27th day of July, the Bishop
of Rochester breakfasting with Lady Castlewood and her family, and the
meal scarce over, Dr. A——’s coach drove up to our house at Kensington, and
the doctor appeared amongst the party there, enlivening a rather gloomy
company; for the mother and daughter had had words in the morning in
respect to the transactions of that supper, and other adventures perhaps,
and on the day succeeding. Beatrix’s haughty spirit brooked remonstrances
from no superior, much less from her mother, the gentlest of creatures,
whom the girl commanded rather than obeyed. And feeling she was wrong, and
that by a thousand coquetries (which she could no more help exercising on
every man that came near her, than the sun can help shining on great and
small) she had provoked the prince’s dangerous admiration, and allured him
to the expression of it, she was only the more wilful and imperious the
more she felt her error.
To this party, the prince being served with chocolate in his bedchamber,
where he lay late sleeping away the fumes of his wine, the doctor came,
and by the urgent and startling nature of his news, dissipated instantly
that private and minor unpleasantry under which the family of Castlewood
was labouring.
He asked for the guest; the guest was above in his own apartment: he bade
_Monsieur Baptiste_ go up to his master instantly, and requested that _my
Lord Viscount Castlewood_ would straightway put his uniform on, and come
away in the doctor’s coach now at the door.
He then informed Madam Beatrix what her part of the comedy was to be:—“In
half an hour,” says he, “her Majesty and her favourite lady will take the
air in the cedar-walk behind the new banqueting-house. Her Majesty will be
drawn in a garden-chair, Madam Beatrix Esmond and _her brother_, _my Lord
Viscount Castlewood_, will be walking in the private garden (here is Lady
Masham’s key), and will come unawares upon the royal party. The man that
draws the chair will retire, and leave the queen, the favourite, and the
maid of honour and her brother together; Mrs. Beatrix will present her
brother, and then!—and then, my lord bishop will pray for the result of
the interview, and his Scots clerk will say Amen! Quick, put on your hood,
Madam Beatrix; why doth not his Majesty come down? Such another chance may
not present itself for months again.”
The prince was late and lazy, and indeed had all but lost that chance
through his indolence. The queen was actually about to leave the garden
just when the party reached it; the doctor, the bishop, the maid of honour
and her brother went off together in the physician’s coach, and had been
gone half an hour when Colonel Esmond came to Kensington Square.
The news of this errand, on which Beatrix was gone, of course for a moment
put all thoughts of private jealousy out of Colonel Esmond’s head. In half
an hour more the coach returned; the bishop descended from it first, and
gave his arm to Beatrix, who now came out. His lordship went back into the
carriage again, and the maid of honour entered the house alone. We were
all gazing at her from the upper window, trying to read from her
countenance the result of the interview from which she had just come.
She came into the drawing-room in a great tremor and very pale; she asked
for a glass of water as her mother went to meet her, and after drinking
that and putting off her hood, she began to speak:—“We may all hope for
the best,” says she; “it has cost the queen a fit. Her Majesty was in her
chair in the cedar-walk accompanied only by Lady ——, when we entered by
the private wicket from the west side of the garden, and turned towards
her, the doctor following us. They waited in a side-walk hidden by the
shrubs, as we advanced towards the chair. My heart throbbed so I scarce
could speak; but my prince whispered, ‘Courage, Beatrix’, and marched on
with a steady step. His face was a little flushed, but he was not afraid
of the danger. He who fought so bravely at Malplaquet fears nothing.”
Esmond and Castlewood looked at each other at this compliment, neither
liking the sound of it.
“The prince uncovered,” Beatrix continued, “and I saw the queen turning
round to Lady Masham, as if asking who these two were. Her Majesty looked
very pale and ill, and then flushed up; the favourite made us a signal to
advance, and I went up, leading my prince by the hand, quite close to the
chair: ‘Your Majesty will give my lord viscount your hand to kiss,’ says
her lady, and the queen put out her hand, which the prince kissed,
kneeling on his knee, he who should kneel to no mortal man or woman.
“ ‘You have been long from England, my lord,’ says the queen: ‘why were
you not here to give a home to your mother and sister?’
“ ‘I am come, madam, to stay now, if the queen desires me,’ says the
prince, with another low bow.
“ ‘You have taken a foreign wife, my lord, and a foreign religion; was not
that of England good enough for you?’
“ ‘In returning to my father’s Church,’ says the prince, ‘I do not love my
mother the less, nor am I the less faithful servant of your Majesty.’
“Here,” says Beatrix, “the favourite gave me a little signal with her hand
to fall back, which I did, though I died to hear what should pass; and
whispered something to the queen, which made her Majesty start and utter
one or two words in a hurried manner, looking towards the prince, and
catching hold with her hand of the arm of her chair. He advanced still
nearer towards it; he began to speak very rapidly; I caught the words,
‘Father, blessing, forgiveness,’—and then presently the prince fell on his
knees; took from his breast a paper he had there, handed it to the queen,
who, as soon as she saw it, flung up both her arms with a scream, and took
away that hand nearest the prince, and which he endeavoured to kiss. He
went on speaking with great animation of gesture, now clasping his hands
together on his heart, now opening them as though to say: ‘I am here, your
brother, in your power.’ Lady Masham ran round on the other side of the
chair, kneeling too, and speaking with great energy. She clasped the
queen’s hand on her side, and picked up the paper her Majesty had let
fall. The prince rose and made a further speech as though he would go; the
favourite on the other hand urging her mistress, and then, running back to
the prince, brought him back once more close to the chair. Again he knelt
down and took the queen’s hand, which she did not withdraw, kissing it a
hundred times; my lady all the time, with sobs and supplications, speaking
over the chair. This while the queen sat with a stupefied look, crumpling
the paper with one hand, as my prince embraced the other; then of a sudden
she uttered several piercing shrieks, and burst into a great fit of
hysteric tears and laughter. ‘Enough, enough, sir, for this time,’ I heard
Lady Masham say; and the chairman, who had withdrawn round the
banqueting-room, came back, alarmed by the cries: ‘Quick,’ says Lady
Masham, ‘get some help,’ and I ran towards the doctor, who, with the
Bishop of Rochester, came up instantly. Lady Masham whispered the prince
he might hope for the very best; and to be ready to-morrow; and he hath
gone away to the Bishop of Rochester’s house, to meet several of his
friends there. And so the great stroke is struck,” says Beatrix, going
down on her knees, and clasping her hands, “God save the King: God save
the King!”
Beatrix’s tale told, and the young lady herself calmed somewhat of her
agitation, we asked with regard to the prince, who was absent with Bishop
Atterbury, and were informed that ’twas likely he might remain abroad the
whole day. Beatrix’s three kinsfolk looked at one another at this
intelligence; ’twas clear the same thought was passing through the minds
of all.
But who should begin to break the news? Monsieur Baptiste, that is Frank
Castlewood, turned very red, and looked towards Esmond; the colonel bit
his lips, and fairly beat a retreat into the window: it was Lady
Castlewood that opened upon Beatrix with the news which we knew would do
anything but please her.
“We are glad,” says she, taking her daughter’s hand, and speaking in a
gentle voice, “that the guest is away.”
Beatrix drew back in an instant, looking round her at us three, and as if
divining a danger. “Why glad?” says she, her breast beginning to heave;
“are you so soon tired of him?”
“We think one of us is devilishly too fond of him,” cries out Frank
Castlewood.
“And which is it—you, my lord, or is it mamma, who is jealous because he
drinks my health? or is it the head of the family” (here she turned with
an imperious look towards Colonel Esmond), “who has taken of late to
preach the king sermons?”
“We do not say you are too free with his Majesty.”
“I thank you, madam,” says Beatrix, with a toss of the head and a curtsy.
But her mother continued, with very great calmness and dignity—“At least
we have not said so, though we might, were it possible for a mother to say
such words to her own daughter, your father’s daughter.”
“_Eh! mon père_,” breaks out Beatrix, “was no better than other persons’
fathers;” and again she looked towards the colonel.
We all felt a shock as she uttered those two or three French words; her
manner was exactly imitated from that of our foreign guest.
“You had not learned to speak French a month ago, Beatrix,” says her
mother, sadly, “nor to speak ill of your father.”
Beatrix, no doubt, saw that slip she had made in her flurry, for she
blushed crimson: “I have learnt to honour the king,” says she, drawing up,
“and ’twere as well that others suspected neither his Majesty nor me.”
“If you respected your mother a little more,” Frank said, “’Trix, you
would do yourself no hurt.”
“I am no child,” says she, turning round on him; “we have lived very well
these five years without the benefit of your advice or example, and I
intend to take neither now. Why does not the head of the house speak?” she
went on; “he rules everything here. When his chaplain has done singing the
psalms, will his lordship deliver the sermon? I am tired of the psalms.”
The prince had used almost the very same words, in regard to Colonel
Esmond, that the imprudent girl repeated in her wrath.
“You show yourself a very apt scholar, madam,” says the colonel; and,
turning to his mistress, “Did your guest use these words in your
ladyship’s hearing, or was it to Beatrix in private that he was pleased to
impart his opinion regarding my tiresome sermon?”
“Have you seen him alone?” cries my lord, starting up with an oath: “by
God, have you seen him alone?”
“Were he here, you wouldn’t dare so to insult me; no, you would not dare!”
cries Frank’s sister. “Keep your oaths, my lord, for your wife; we are not
used here to such language. ’Till you came, there used to be kindness
between me and mamma, and I cared for her when you never did, when you
were away for years with your horses, and your mistress, and your Popish
wife.”
“By ——,” says my lord, rapping out another oath, “Clotilda is an angel;
how dare you say a word against Clotilda?”
Colonel Esmond could not refrain from a smile, to see how easy Frank’s
attack was drawn off by that feint:—“I fancy Clotilda is not the subject
in hand,” says Mr. Esmond, rather scornfully; “her ladyship is at Paris, a
hundred leagues off, preparing baby-linen. It is about my Lord
Castlewood’s sister, and not his wife, the question is.”
“He is not my Lord Castlewood,” says Beatrix, “and he knows he is not; he
is Colonel Francis Esmond’s son, and no more, and he wears a false title;
and he lives on another man’s land, and he knows it.” Here was another
desperate sally of the poor beleaguered garrison, and an _alerte_ in
another quarter. “Again, I beg your pardon,” says Esmond. “If there are no
proofs of my claim, I have no claim. If my father acknowledged no heir,
yours was his lawful successor, and my Lord Castlewood hath as good a
right to his rank and small estate as any man in England. But that again
is not the question, as you know very well: let us bring our talk back to
it, as you will have me meddle in it. And I will give you frankly my
opinion, that a house where a prince lies all day, who respects no woman,
is no house for a young unmarried lady; that you were better in the
country than here; that he is here on a great end, from which no folly
should divert him; and that having nobly done your part of this morning,
Beatrix, you should retire off the scene awhile, and leave it to the other
actors of the play.”
As the colonel spoke with a perfect calmness and politeness, such as ’tis
to be hoped he hath always shown to women,(18) his mistress stood by him
on one side of the table, and Frank Castlewood on the other, hemming in
poor Beatrix, that was behind it, and, as it were, surrounding her with
our approaches.
Having twice sallied out and been beaten back, she now, as I expected,
tried the _ultima ratio_ of women, and had recourse to tears. Her
beautiful eyes filled with them; I never could bear in her, nor in any
woman, that expression of pain:—“I am alone,” sobbed she; “you are three
against me—my brother, my mother, and you. What have I done, that you
should speak and look so unkindly at me? Is it my fault that the prince
should, as you say, admire me? Did I bring him here? Did I do aught but
what you bade me, in making him welcome? Did you not tell me that our duty
was to die for him? Did you not teach me, mother, night and morning, to
pray for the king, before even ourselves? What would you have of me,
cousin, for you are the chief of the conspiracy against me; I know you
are, sir, and that my mother and brother are acting but as you bid them;
whither would you have me go?”
“I would but remove from the prince,” says Esmond gravely, “a dangerous
temptation; Heaven forbid I should say you would yield: I would only have
him free of it. Your honour needs no guardian, please God, but his
imprudence doth. He is so far removed from all women by his rank, that his
pursuit of them cannot but be unlawful. We would remove the dearest and
fairest of our family from the chance of that insult, and that is why we
would have you go, dear Beatrix.”
“Harry speaks like a book,” says Frank, with one of his oaths, “and, by
——, every word he saith is true. You can’t help being handsome, ’Trix; no
more can the prince help following you. My council is that you go out of
harm’s way; for, by the Lord, were the prince to play any tricks with you,
king as he is, or is to be, Harry Esmond and I would have justice of him.”
“Are not two such champions enough to guard me?” says Beatrix, something
sorrowfully; “sure, with you two watching, no evil could happen to me.”
“In faith, I think not, Beatrix,” says Colonel Esmond; “nor if the prince
knew us would he try.”
“But does he know you?” interposed Lady Esmond, very quiet: “he comes of a
country where the pursuit of kings is thought no dishonour to a woman. Let
us go, dearest Beatrix. Shall we go to Walcote or to Castlewood? We are
best away from the city; and when the prince is acknowledged, and our
champions have restored him, and he hath his own house at St. James’s or
Windsor, we can come back to ours here. Do you not think so, Harry and
Frank?”
Frank and Harry thought with her, you may be sure.
“We will go, then,” says Beatrix, turning a little pale; “Lady Masham is
to give me warning to-night how her Majesty is, and to-morrow——”
“I think we had best go to-day, my dear,” says my Lady Castlewood; “we
might have the coach and sleep at Hounslow, and reach home to-morrow. ’Tis
twelve o’clock; bid the coach, cousin, be ready at one.”
“For shame!” burst out Beatrix, in a passion of tears and mortification.
“You disgrace me by your cruel precautions; my own mother is the first to
suspect me, and would take me away as my gaoler. I will not go with you,
mother; I will go as no one’s prisoner. If I wanted to deceive, do you
think I could find no means of evading you? My family suspects me. As
those mistrust me that ought to love me most, let me leave them; I will
go, but I will go alone: to Castlewood, be it. I have been unhappy there
and lonely enough; let me go back, but spare me at least the humiliation
of setting a watch over my misery, which is a trial I can’t bear. Let me
go when you will, but alone, or not at all. You three can stay and triumph
over my unhappiness, and I will bear it as I have borne it before. Let my
gaoler-in-chief go order the coach that is to take me away. I thank you,
Henry Esmond, for your share in the conspiracy. All my life long I’ll
thank you, and remember you; and you, brother, and you, mother, how shall
I show my gratitude to you for your careful defence of my honour?”
She swept out of the room with the air of an empress, flinging glances of
defiance at us all, and leaving us conquerors of the field, but scared,
and almost ashamed of our victory. It did indeed seem hard and cruel that
we three should have conspired the banishment and humiliation of that fair
creature. We looked at each other in silence; ’twas not the first stroke
by many of our actions in that unlucky time, which, being done, we wished
undone. We agreed it was best she should go alone, speaking stealthily to
one another, and under our breaths, like persons engaged in an act they
felt ashamed in doing.
In a half-hour, it might be, after our talk she came back, her countenance
wearing the same defiant air which it had borne when she left us. She held
a shagreen-case in her hand; Esmond knew it as containing his diamonds
which he had given to her for her marriage with Duke Hamilton, and which
she had worn so splendidly on the inauspicious night of the prince’s
arrival. “I have brought back,” says she, “to the Marquis of Esmond the
present he deigned to make me in days when he trusted me better than now.
I will never accept a benefit or a kindness from Henry Esmond more, and I
give back these family diamonds, which belonged to one king’s mistress, to
the gentleman that suspected I would be another. Have you been upon your
message of coach-caller, my lord marquis; will you send your valet to see
that I do not run away?” We were right, yet, by her manner, she had put us
all in the wrong; we were conquerors, yet the honours of the day seemed to
be with the poor oppressed girl.
That luckless box containing the stones had first been ornamented with a
baron’s coronet, when Beatrix was engaged to the young gentleman from whom
she parted, and afterwards the gilt crown of a duchess figured on the
cover, which also poor Beatrix was destined never to wear. Lady Castlewood
opened the case mechanically and scarce thinking what she did; and behold,
besides the diamonds, Esmond’s present, there lay in the box the enamelled
miniature of the late duke, which Beatrix had laid aside with her mourning
when the king came into the house; and which the poor heedless thing very
likely had forgotten.
“Do you leave this, too, Beatrix?” says her mother, taking the miniature
out and with a cruelty she did not very often show; but there are some
moments when the tenderest women are cruel, and some triumphs which angels
can’t forgo.(19)
Having delivered this stab, Lady Esmond was frightened at the effect of
her blow. It went to poor Beatrix’s heart; she flushed up and passed a
handkerchief across her eyes, and kissed the miniature, and put it into
her bosom:—“I had forgot it,” says she; “my injury made me forget my
grief, my mother has recalled both to me. Farewell, mother, I think I
never can forgive you; something hath broke between us that no tears nor
years can repair. I always said I was alone; you never loved me, never—and
were jealous of me from the time I sat on my father’s knee. Let me go
away, the sooner the better; I can bear to be with you no more.”
“Go, child,” says her mother, still very stern; “go and bend your proud
knees and ask forgiveness; go, pray in solitude for humility and
repentance. ’Tis not your reproaches that make me unhappy, ’tis your hard
heart, my poor Beatrix; may God soften it, and teach you one day to feel
for your mother!”
If my mistress was cruel, at least she never could be got to own as much.
Her haughtiness quite overtopped Beatrix’s; and, if the girl had a proud
spirit, I very much fear it came to her by inheritance.
Chapter XI. Our Guest Quits Us As Not Being Hospitable Enough
Beatrix’s departure took place within an hour, her maid going with her in
the post-chaise, and a man armed on the coach-box to prevent any danger of
the road. Esmond and Frank thought of escorting the carriage, but she
indignantly refused their company, and another man was sent to follow the
coach, and not to leave it till it had passed over Hounslow Heath on the
next day. And these two forming the whole of Lady Castle wood’s male
domestics, Mr. Esmond’s faithful John Lockwood came to wait on his
mistress during their absence, though he would have preferred to escort
Mrs. Lucy, his sweetheart, on her journey into the country.
We had a gloomy and silent meal; it seemed as if a darkness was over the
house, since the bright face of Beatrix had been withdrawn from it. In the
afternoon came a message from the favourite to relieve us somewhat from
this despondency. “The queen hath been much shaken,” the note said; “she
is better now, and all things will go well. Let _my Lord Castlewood_ be
ready against we send for him.”
At night there came a second billet: “There hath been a great battle in
Council; lord treasurer hath broke his staff, and hath fallen never to
rise again; no successor is appointed. Lord B—— receives a great Whig
company to-night at Golden Square. If he is trimming, others are true; the
queen hath no more fits, but is abed now, and more quiet. Be ready against
morning, when I still hope all will be well.”
The prince came home shortly after the messenger who bore this billet had
left the house. His royal highness was so much the better for the bishop’s
liquor, that to talk affairs to him now was of little service. He was
helped to the royal bed; he called Castlewood familiarly by his own name;
he quite forgot the part upon the acting of which his crown, his safety,
depended. ’Twas lucky that my Lady Castlewood’s servants were out of the
way, and only those heard him who would not betray him. He inquired after
the adorable Beatrix, with a royal hiccup in his voice; he was easily got
to bed, and in a minute or two plunged in that deep slumber and
forgetfulness with which Bacchus rewards the votaries of that god. We
wished Beatrix had been there to see him in his cups. We regretted,
perhaps, that she was gone.
One of the party at Kensington Square was fool enough to ride to Hounslow
that night, _coram latronibus_, and to the inn which the family used
ordinarily in their journeys out of London. Esmond desired my landlord not
to acquaint Madam Beatrix with his coming, and had the grim satisfaction
of passing by the door of the chamber where she lay with her maid, and of
watching her chariot set forth in the early morning. He saw her smile and
slip money into the man’s hand who was ordered to ride behind the coach as
far as Bagshot. The road being open, and the other servant armed, it
appeared she dispensed with the escort of a second domestic; and this
fellow, bidding his young mistress adieu with many bows, went and took a
pot of ale in the kitchen, and returned in company with his brother
servant, John Coachman, and his horses, back to London.
They were not a mile out of Hounslow when the two worthies stopped for
more drink, and here they were scared by seeing Colonel Esmond gallop by
them. The man said in reply to Colonel Esmond’s stern question, that his
young mistress had sent her duty; only that, no other message: she had had
a very good night, and would reach Castlewood by nightfall. The colonel
had no time for further colloquy, and galloped on swiftly to London,
having business of great importance there, as my reader very well knoweth.
The thought of Beatrix riding away from the danger soothed his mind not a
little. His horse was at Kensington Square (honest Dapple knew the way
thither well enough) before the tipsy guest of last night was awake and
sober.
The account of the previous evening was known all over the town early next
day. A violent altercation had taken place before the queen in the
Council-chamber; and all the coffee-houses had their version of the
quarrel. The news brought my lord bishop early to Kensington Square, where
he awaited the waking of his royal master above stairs, and spoke
confidently of having him proclaimed as Prince of Wales and heir to the
throne before that day was over. The bishop had entertained on the
previous afternoon certain of the most influential gentlemen of the true
British party. His royal highness had charmed all, both Scots and English,
Papists and Churchmen: “Even Quakers,” says he, “were at our meeting; and,
if the stranger took a little too much British punch and ale, he will soon
grow more accustomed to those liquors; and my Lord Castlewood,” says the
bishop, with a laugh, “must bear the cruel charge of having been for once
in his life a little tipsy. He toasted your lovely sister a dozen times,
at which we all laughed,” says the bishop, “admiring so much fraternal
affection.—Where is that charming nymph, and why doth she not adorn your
ladyship’s tea-table with her bright eyes?” Her ladyship said, drily, that
Beatrix was not at home that morning; my lord bishop was too busy with
great affairs to trouble himself much about the presence or absence of any
lady, however beautiful.
We were yet at table when Dr. A—— came from the Palace with a look of
great alarm; the shocks the queen had had the day before had acted on her
severely; he had been sent for, and had ordered her to be blooded. The
surgeon of Long Acre had come to cup the queen, and her Majesty was now
more easy and breathed more freely. What made us start at the name of Mr.
Aymé? “_Il faut être aimable pour être aimé_,” says the merry doctor;
Esmond pulled his sleeve, and bade him hush. It was to Aymé’s house, after
his fatal duel, that my dear Lord Castlewood, Frank’s father, had been
carried to die.
No second visit could be paid to the queen on that day at any rate; and
when our guest above gave his signal that he was awake, the doctor, the
bishop, and Colonel Esmond waited upon the prince’s levee, and brought him
their news, cheerful or dubious. The doctor had to go away presently, but
promised to keep the prince constantly acquainted with what was taking
place at the palace hard by. His counsel was, and the bishop’s, that as
soon as ever the queen’s malady took a favourable turn, the prince should
be introduced to her bedside; the Council summoned; the guard at
Kensington and St. James’s, of which two regiments were to be entirely
relied on, and one known not to be hostile, would declare for the prince,
as the queen would before the lords of her Council, designating him as the
heir to her throne.
With locked doors, and Colonel Esmond acting as secretary, the prince and
his lordship of Rochester passed many hours of this day composing
Proclamations and Addresses to the Country, to the Scots, to the Clergy,
to the People of London and England; announcing the arrival of the exile
descendant of three sovereigns, and his acknowledgement by his sister as
heir to the throne. Every safeguard for their liberties the Church and
People could ask was promised to them. The bishop could answer for the
adhesion of very many prelates, who besought of their flocks and brother
ecclesiastics to recognize the sacred right of the future sovereign, and
to purge the country of the sin of rebellion.
During the composition of these papers, more messengers than one came from
the Palace regarding the state of the august patient there lying. At
midday she was somewhat better; at evening the torpor again seized her,
and she wandered in her mind. At night Dr. A—— was with us again, with a
report rather more favourable: no instant danger at any rate was
apprehended. In the course of the last two years her Majesty had had many
attacks similar, but more severe.
By this time we had finished a half-dozen of Proclamations (the wording of
them so as to offend no parties, and not to give umbrage to Whigs or
Dissenters, required very great caution), and the young prince, who had
indeed shown, during a long day’s labour, both alacrity at seizing the
information given him, and ingenuity and skill in turning the phrases
which were to go out signed by his name, here exhibited a good humour and
thoughtfulness that ought to be set down to his credit.
“Were these papers to be mislaid,” says he, “or our scheme to come to
mishap, my Lord Esmond’s writing would bring him to a place where I
heartily hope never to see him; and so, by your leave, I will copy the
papers myself, though I am not very strong in spelling; and if they are
found they will implicate none but the person they most concern;” and so,
having carefully copied the Proclamations out, the prince burned those in
Colonel Esmond’s handwriting: “And now, and now, gentlemen,” says he, “let
us go to supper, and drink a glass with the ladies. My Lord Esmond, you
will sup with us to-night; you have given us of late too little of your
company.”
The prince’s meals were commonly served in the chamber which had been
Beatrix’s bedroom, adjoining that in which he slept. And the dutiful
practice of his entertainers was to wait until their royal guest bade them
take their places at table before they sat down to partake of the meal. On
this night, as you may suppose, only Frank Castlewood and his mother were
in waiting when the supper was announced to receive the prince; who had
passed the whole of the day in his own apartment, with the bishop as his
minister of state, and Colonel Esmond officiating as secretary of his
Council.
The prince’s countenance wore an expression by no means pleasant; when
looking towards the little company assembled, and waiting for him, he did
not see Beatrix’s bright face there as usual to greet him. He asked Lady
Esmond for his fair introducer of yesterday: her ladyship only cast her
eyes down, and said quietly, Beatrix could not be of the supper that
night; nor did she show the least sign of confusion, whereas Castlewood
turned red, and Esmond was no less embarrassed. I think women have an
instinct of dissimulation; they know by nature how to disguise their
emotions far better than the most consummate male courtiers can do. Is not
the better part of the life of many of them spent in hiding their
feelings, in cajoling their tyrants, in masking over with fond smiles and
artful gaiety their doubt, or their grief, or their terror?
Our guest swallowed his supper very sulky; it was not till the second
bottle his highness began to rally. When Lady Castlewood asked leave to
depart, he sent a message to Beatrix, hoping she would be present at the
next day’s dinner, and applied himself to drink, and to talk afterwards,
for which there was subject in plenty.
The next day, we heard from our informer at Kensington that the queen was
somewhat better, and had been up for an hour, though she was not well
enough yet to receive any visitor.
At dinner a single cover was laid for his royal highness; and the two
gentlemen alone waited on him. We had had a consultation in the morning
with Lady Castlewood, in which it had been determined that, should his
highness ask further questions about Beatrix, he should be answered by the
gentlemen of the house.
He was evidently disturbed and uneasy, looking towards the door
constantly, as if expecting some one. There came, however, nobody, except
honest John Lockwood, when he knocked with a dish, which those within took
from him; so the meals were always arranged, and I believe the council in
the kitchen were of opinion that my young lord had brought over a priest,
who had converted us all into Papists, and that Papists were like Jews,
eating together, and not choosing to take their meals in the sight of
Christians.
The prince tried to cover his displeasure; he was but a clumsy dissembler
at that time, and when out of humour could with difficulty keep a serene
countenance; and having made some foolish attempts at trivial talk, he
came to his point presently, and in as easy a manner as he could, saying
to Lord Castlewood, he hoped, he requested, his lordship’s mother and
sister would be of the supper that night. As the time hung heavy on him,
and he must not go abroad, would not Miss Beatrix hold him company at a
game of cards?
At this, looking up at Esmond, and taking the signal from him, Lord
Castlewood informed his royal highness(20) that his sister Beatrix was not
at Kensington; and that her family had thought it best she should quit the
town.
“Not at Kensington!” says he; “is she ill? she was well yesterday;
wherefore should she quit the town? Is it at your orders, my lord, or
Colonel Esmond’s, who seems the master of this house?”
“Not of this, sir,” says Frank very nobly, “only of our house in the
country, which he hath given to us. This is my mother’s house, and Walcote
is my father’s, and the Marquis of Esmond knows he hath but to give his
word, and I return his to him.”
“The Marquis of Esmond!—the Marquis of Esmond,” says the prince, tossing
off a glass, “meddles too much with my affairs, and presumes on the
service he hath done me. If you want to carry your suit with Beatrix, my
lord, by blocking her up in gaol, let me tell you that is not the way to
win a woman.”
“I was not aware, sir, that I had spoken of my suit to Madam Beatrix to
your royal highness.”
“Bah, bah, monsieur! we need not be a conjurer to see that. It makes
itself seen at all moments. You are jealous, my lord, and the maid of
honour cannot look at another face without yours beginning to scowl. That
which you do is unworthy, monsieur; is inhospitable—is, is _lâche_, yes
_lâche_:” (he spoke rapidly in French, his rage carrying him away with
each phrase:) “I come to your house; I risk my life; I pass it in ennui; I
repose myself on your fidelity; I have no company but your lordship’s
sermons or the conversations of that adorable young lady, and you take her
from me; and you, you rest! _Merci, monsieur!_ I shall thank you when I
have the means; I shall know to recompense a devotion a little
importunate, my lord—a little importunate. For a month past your airs of
protector have annoyed me beyond measure. You deign to offer me the crown,
and bid me take it on my knees like King John—eh! I know my history,
monsieur, and mock myself of frowning barons. I admire your mistress, and
you send her to a Bastile of the Province; I enter your house, and you
mistrust me. I will leave it, monsieur; from to-night I will leave it. I
have other friends whose loyalty will not be so ready to question mine. If
I have Garters to give away, ’tis to noblemen who are not so ready to
think evil. Bring me a coach and let me quit this place, or let the fair
Beatrix return to it. I will not have your hospitality at the expense of
the freedom of that fair creature.”
This harangue was uttered with rapid gesticulations such as the French
use, and in the language of that nation. The prince striding up and down
the room; his face flushed, and his hands trembling with anger. He was
very thin and frail from repeated illness and a life of pleasure. Either
Castlewood or Esmond could have broke him across their knee, and in half a
minute’s struggle put an end to him; and here he was insulting us both,
and scarce deigning to hide from the two, whose honour it most concerned,
the passion he felt for the young lady of our family. My Lord Castlewood
replied to the prince’s tirade very nobly and simply.
“Sir,” says he, “your royal highness is pleased to forget that others risk
their lives, and for your cause. Very few Englishmen, please God, would
dare to lay hands on your sacred person, though none would ever think of
respecting ours. Our family’s lives are at your service, and everything we
have except our honour.”
“Honour! bah, sir, who ever thought of hurting your honour?” says the
prince, with a peevish air.
“We implore your royal highness never to think of hurting it,” says Lord
Castlewood, with a low bow. The night being warm, the windows were open
both towards the gardens and the square. Colonel Esmond heard through the
closed door the voice of the watchman calling the hour, in the square on
the other side. He opened the door communicating with the prince’s room;
Martin, the servant that had rode with Beatrix to Hounslow, was just going
out of the chamber as Esmond entered it, and when the fellow was gone, and
the watchman again sang his cry of “Past ten o’clock, and a starlight
night,” Esmond spoke to the prince in a low voice, and said—“Your royal
highness hears that man?”
“_Après, monsieur?_” says the prince.
“I have but to beckon him from the window, and send him fifty yards, and
he returns with a guard of men, and I deliver up to him the body of the
person calling himself James the Third, for whose capture Parliament hath
offered a reward of 5,000_l._, as your royal highness saw on our ride from
Rochester. I have but to say the word, and, by the Heaven that made me, I
would say it if I thought the prince, for his honour’s sake, would not
desist from insulting ours. But the first gentleman of England knows his
duty too well to forget himself with the humblest, or peril his crown for
a deed that were shameful if it were done.”
“Has your lordship anything to say,” says the prince, turning to Frank
Castlewood, and quite pale with anger; “any threat or any insult, with
which you would like to end this agreeable night’s entertainment?”
“I follow the head of our house,” says Castlewood, bowing gravely. “At
what time shall it please the prince that we should wait upon him in the
morning?”
“You will wait on the Bishop of Rochester early, you will bid him bring
his coach hither; and prepare an apartment for me in his own house, or in
a place of safety. The king will reward you handsomely, never fear, for
all you have done in his behalf. I wish you a good night, and shall go to
bed, unless it pleases the Marquis of Esmond to call his colleague, the
watchman, and that I should pass the night with the Kensington guard. Fare
you well, be sure I will remember you. My Lord Castlewood, I can go to bed
to-night without need of a chamberlain.” And the prince dismissed us with
a grim bow, locking one door as he spoke, that into the supping-room, and
the other through which we passed, after us. It led into the small chamber
which Frank Castlewood or _Monsieur Baptiste_ occupied, and by which
Martin entered when Colonel Esmond but now saw him in the chamber.
At an early hour next morning the bishop arrived, and was closeted for
some time with his master in his own apartment, where the prince laid open
to his counsellor the wrongs which, according to his version, he had
received from the gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came
out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man
full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of
genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous
temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favourite; and
he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond ministry was at
an end.
“I have soothed your guest,” says he, coming out to the two gentlemen and
the widow, who had been made acquainted with somewhat of the dispute of
the night before. (By the version we gave her, the prince was only made to
exhibit anger because we doubted of his intentions in respect to Beatrix;
and to leave us, because we questioned his honour.) “But I think, all
things considered, ’tis as well he should leave this house; and then, my
Lady Castlewood,” says the bishop, “my pretty Beatrix may come back to
it.”
“She is quite as well at home at Castlewood,” Esmond’s mistress said,
“till everything is over.”
“You shall have your title, Esmond, that I promise you,” says the good
bishop, assuming the airs of a prime minister. “The prince hath expressed
himself most nobly in regard of the little difference of last night, and I
promise you he hath listened to my sermon, as well as to that of other
folks,” says the doctor archly; “he hath every great and generous quality,
with perhaps a weakness for the sex which belongs to his family, and hath
been known in scores of popular sovereigns from King David downwards.”
“My lord, my lord,” breaks out Lady Esmond, “the levity with which you
speak of such conduct towards our sex shocks me, and what you call
weakness I call deplorable sin.”
“Sin it is, my dear creature,” says the bishop, with a shrug, taking
snuff; “but consider what a sinner King Solomon was, and in spite of a
thousand of wives too.”
“Enough of this, my lord,” says Lady Castlewood, with a fine blush, and
walked out of the room very stately.
The prince entered it presently with a smile on his face, and if he felt
any offence against us on the previous night, at present exhibited none.
He offered a hand to each gentleman with great courtesy. “If all your
bishops preach so well as Dr. Atterbury,” says he, “I don’t know,
gentlemen, what may happen to me. I spoke very hastily, my lords, last
night, and ask pardon of both of you. But I must not stay any longer,”
says he, “giving umbrage to good friends, or keeping pretty girls away
from their homes. My lord bishop hath found a safe place for me, hard by
at a curate’s house, whom the bishop can trust, and whose wife is so ugly
as to be beyond all danger; we will decamp into those new quarters, and I
leave you, thanking you for a hundred kindnesses here. Where is my
hostess, that I may bid her farewell? to welcome her in a house of my own,
soon I trust, where my friends shall have no cause to quarrel with me.”
Lady Castlewood arrived presently, blushing with great grace, and tears
filling her eyes as the prince graciously saluted her. She looked so
charming and young, that the doctor, in his bantering way, could not help
speaking of her beauty to the prince; whose compliment made her blush, and
look more charming still.
Chapter XII. A Great Scheme, And Who Balked It
As characters written with a secret ink come out with the application of
fire, and disappear again and leave the paper white, so soon as it is
cool, a hundred names of men, high in repute and favouring the prince’s
cause, that were writ in our private lists, would have been visible enough
on the great roll of the conspiracy, had it ever been laid open under the
sun. What crowds would have pressed forward, and subscribed their names
and protested their loyalty, when the danger was over! What a number of
Whigs, now high in place and creatures of the all-powerful minister,
scorned Mr. Walpole then! If ever a match was gained by the manliness and
decision of a few at a moment of danger; if ever one was lost by the
treachery and imbecility of those that had the cards in their hands, and
might have played them, it was in that momentous game which was enacted in
the next three days, and of which the noblest crown in the world was the
stake.
From the conduct of my Lord Bolingbroke, those who were interested in the
scheme we had in hand, saw pretty well that he was not to be trusted.
Should the prince prevail, it was his lordship’s gracious intention to
declare for him: should the Hanoverian party bring in their sovereign, who
more ready to go on his knee, and cry “God save King George”? And he
betrayed the one prince and the other; but exactly at the wrong time. When
he should have struck for King James, he faltered and coquetted with the
Whigs; and having committed himself by the most monstrous professions of
devotion, which the Elector rightly scorned, he proved the justness of
their contempt for him by flying and taking renegado service with St.
Germains, just when he should have kept aloof: and that Court despised
him, as the manly and resolute men who established the Elector in England
had before done. He signed his own name to every accusation of insincerity
his enemies made against him; and the king and the pretender alike could
show proofs of St. John’s treachery under his own hand and seal.
Our friends kept a pretty close watch upon his motions, as on those of the
brave and hearty Whig party, that made little concealment of theirs. They
would have in the Elector, and used every means in their power to effect
their end. My Lord Marlborough was now with them. His expulsion from power
by the Tories had thrown that great captain at once on the Whig side. We
heard he was coming from Antwerp; and in fact, on the day of the queen’s
death, he once more landed on English shore. A great part of the army was
always with their illustrious leader; even the Tories in it were indignant
at the injustice of the persecution which the Whig officers were made to
undergo. The chiefs of these were in London, and at the head of them one
of the most intrepid men in the world, the Scots Duke of Argyle, whose
conduct, on the second day after that to which I have now brought down my
history, ended, as such honesty and bravery deserved to end, by
establishing the present royal race on the English throne.
Meanwhile there was no slight difference of opinion amongst the
councillors surrounding the prince, as to the plan his highness should
pursue. His female minister at Court, fancying she saw some amelioration
in the queen, was for waiting a few days, or hours it might be, until he
could be brought to her bedside, and acknowledged as her heir. Mr. Esmond
was for having him march thither, escorted by a couple of troops of Horse
Guards, and openly presenting himself to the Council. During the whole of
the night of the 29th-30th July, the colonel was engaged with gentlemen of
the military profession, whom ’tis needless here to name; suffice it to
say that several of them had exceeding high rank in the army, and one of
them in especial was a general, who, when he heard the Duke of Marlborough
was coming on the other side, waved his crutch over his head with a
huzzah, at the idea that he should march out and engage him. Of the three
secretaries of state, we knew that one was devoted to us. The Governor of
the Tower was ours: the two companies on duty at Kensington barrack were
safe; and we had intelligence, very speedy and accurate, of all that took
place at the Palace within.
At noon, on the 30th of July, a message came to the prince’s friends that
the Committee of Council was sitting at Kensington Palace, their graces of
Ormonde and Shrewsbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the three
Secretaries of State, being there assembled. In an hour afterwards,
hurried news was brought that the two great Whig dukes, Argyle and
Somerset, had broke into the Council-chamber without a summons, and taken
their seat at table. After holding a debate there, the whole party
proceeded to the chamber of the queen, who was lying in great weakness,
but still sensible, and the lords recommended his grace of Shrewsbury as
the fittest person to take the vacant place of lord treasurer; her Majesty
gave him the staff, as all know. “And now,” writ my messenger from Court,
“_now or never is the time_.”
Now or never was the time indeed. In spite of the Whig dukes, our side had
still the majority in the Council, and Esmond, to whom the message had
been brought (the personage at Court not being aware that the prince had
quitted his lodging in Kensington Square), and Esmond’s gallant young aide
de camp, Frank Castlewood, putting on sword and uniform, took a brief
leave of their dear lady, who embraced and blessed them both; and went to
her chamber to pray for the issue of the great event which was then
pending.
Castlewood sped to the barrack to give warning to the captain of the guard
there; and then went to the “King’s Arms” tavern at Kensington, where our
friends were assembled, having come by parties of twos and threes, riding
or in coaches, and were got together in the upper chamber, fifty-three of
them; their servants, who had been instructed to bring arms likewise,
being below in the garden of the tavern, where they were served with
drink. Out of this garden is a little door that leads into the road of the
Palace, and through this it was arranged that masters and servants were to
march; when that signal was given, and that Personage appeared, for whom
all were waiting. There was in our company the famous officer next in
command to the Captain-General of the Forces, his grace the Duke of
Ormonde, who was within at the Council. There were with him two more
lieutenant-generals, nine major-generals and brigadiers, seven colonels,
eleven peers of Parliament, and twenty-one members of the House of
Commons. The guard was with us within and without the Palace: the queen
was with us; the Council (save the two Whig dukes, that must have
succumbed); the day was our own, and with a beating heart Esmond walked
rapidly to the Mall of Kensington, where he had parted with the prince on
the night before. For three nights the colonel had not been to bed: the
last had been passed summoning the prince’s friends together, of whom the
great majority had no sort of inkling of the transaction pending until
they were told that he was actually on the spot, and were summoned to
strike the blow. The night before and after the altercation with the
prince, my gentleman, having suspicions of his royal highness, and fearing
lest he should be minded to give us the slip, and fly off after his
fugitive beauty, had spent, if the truth must be told, at the “Greyhound”
tavern, over against my Lady Esmond’s house in Kensington Square, with an
eye on the door, lest the prince should escape from it. The night before
that he had passed in his boots at the “Crown” at Hounslow, where he must
watch forsooth all night, in order to get one moment’s glimpse of Beatrix
in the morning. And fate had decreed that he was to have a fourth night’s
ride and wakefulness before his business was ended.
He ran to the curate’s house in Kensington Mall, and asked for Mr. Bates,
the name the prince went by. The curate’s wife said Mr. Bates had gone
abroad very early in the morning in his boots, saying he was going to the
Bishop of Rochester’s house at Chelsea. But the bishop had been at
Kensington himself two hours ago to seek for Mr. Bates, and had returned
in his coach to his own house, when he heard that the gentleman was gone
thither to seek him.
This absence was most unpropitious, for an hour’s delay might cost a
kingdom; Esmond had nothing for it but to hasten to the “King’s Arms”, and
tell the gentlemen there assembled that Mr. George (as we called the
prince there) was not at home, but that Esmond would go fetch him; and
taking a general’s coach that happened to be there, Esmond drove across
the country to Chelsea, to the bishop’s house there.
The porter said two gentlemen were with his lordship, and Esmond ran past
this sentry up to the locked door of the bishop’s study, at which he
rattled, and was admitted presently. Of the bishop’s guests one was a
brother prelate, and the other the Abbé G——.
“Where is Mr. George?” says Mr. Esmond; “now is the time.” The bishop
looked scared; “I went to his lodging,” he said, “and they told me he was
come hither. I returned as quick as coach would carry me; and he hath not
been here.”
The colonel burst out with an oath; that was all he could say to their
reverences; ran down the stairs again, and bidding the coachman, an old
friend and fellow-campaigner, drive as if he was charging the French with
his master at Wynendael—they were back at Kensington in half an hour.
Again Esmond went to the curate’s house. Mr. George had not returned. The
colonel had to go with this blank errand to the gentlemen at the “King’s
Arms”, that were grown very impatient by this time.
Out of the window of the tavern, and looking over the garden-wall, you can
see the green before Kensington Palace, the Palace gate (round which the
ministers’ coaches were standing), and the barrack building. As we were
looking out from this window in gloomy discourse, we heard presently
trumpets blowing, and some of us ran to the window of the front room,
looking into the High Street of Kensington, and saw a regiment of horse
coming.
“It’s Ormonde’s Guards,” says one.
“No, by God, it’s Argyle’s old regiment!” says my general, clapping down
his crutch.
It was, indeed, Argyle’s regiment that was brought from Westminster, and
that took the place of the regiment at Kensington on which we could rely.
“Oh, Harry!” says one of the generals there present, “you were born under
an unlucky star; I begin to think that there’s no Mr. George, nor Mr.
Dragon either. ’Tis not the peerage I care for, for our name is so ancient
and famous, that merely to be called Lord Lydiard would do me no good; but
’tis the chance you promised me of fighting Marlborough.”
As we were talking, Castlewood entered the room with a disturbed air.
“What news, Frank?” says the colonel, “is Mr. George coming at last?”
“Damn him, look here!” says Castlewood, holding out a paper. “I found it
in the book—the what you call it, _Eikum Basilikum_,—that villain Martin
put it there—he said his young mistress bade him. It was directed to me,
but it was meant for him I know, and I broke the seal and read it.”
The whole assembly of officers seemed to swim away before Esmond’s eyes as
he read the paper; all that was written on it was:—“Beatrix Esmond is sent
away to prison, to Castlewood, where she will pray for happier days.”
“Can you guess where he is?” says Castlewood.
“Yes,” says Colonel Esmond. He knew full well, Frank knew full well: our
instinct told whither that traitor had fled.
He had courage to turn to the company and say, “Gentlemen, I fear very
much that Mr. George will not be here to-day; something hath
happened—and—and—I very much fear some accident may befall him, which must
keep him out of the way. Having had your noon’s draught, you had best pay
the reckoning and go home; there can be no game where there is no one to
play it.”
Some of the gentlemen went away without a word, others called to pay their
duty to her Majesty and ask for her health. The little army disappeared
into the darkness out of which it had been called; there had been no
writings, no paper to implicate any man. Some few officers and members of
Parliament had been invited overnight to breakfast at the “King’s Arms”,
at Kensington; and they had called for their bill and gone home.
Chapter XIII. August 1st, 1714
“Does my mistress know of this?” Esmond asked of Frank, as they walked
along.
“My mother found the letter in the book, on the toilet-table. She had writ
it ere she had left home,” Frank said. “Mother met her on the stairs, with
her hand upon the door, trying to enter, and never left her after that
till she went away. He did not think of looking at it there, nor had
Martin the chance of telling him. I believe the poor devil meant no harm,
though I half killed him; he thought ’twas to Beatrix’s brother he was
bringing the letter.”
Frank never said a word of reproach to me, for having brought the villain
amongst us. As we knocked at the door I said; “When will the horses be
ready?” Frank pointed with his cane, they were turning the street that
moment.
We went up and bade adieu to our mistress; she was in a dreadful state of
agitation by this time, and that bishop was with her whose company she was
so fond of.
“Did you tell him, my lord,” says Esmond, “that Beatrix was at
Castlewood?” The bishop blushed and stammered:
“Well,” says he, “I——”
“You served the villain right,” broke out Mr. Esmond, “and he has lost a
crown by what you told him.”
My mistress turned quite white. “Henry, Henry,” says she, “do not kill
him.”
“It may not be too late,” says Esmond; “he may not have gone to
Castlewood; pray God, it is not too late.” The bishop was breaking out
with some _banales_ phrases about loyalty and the sacredness of the
sovereign’s person; but Esmond sternly bade him hold his tongue, burn all
papers, and take care of Lady Castlewood; and in five minutes he and Frank
were in the saddle, John Lockwood behind them, riding towards Castlewood
at a rapid pace.
We were just got to Alton, when who should meet us but old Lockwood, the
porter from Castlewood, John’s father, walking by the side of the Hexham
flying-coach, who slept the night at Alton. Lockwood said his young
mistress had arrived at home on Wednesday night, and this morning, Friday,
had dispatched him with a packet for my lady at Kensington, saying the
letter was of great importance.
We took the freedom to break it, while Lockwood stared with wonder, and
cried out his “Lord bless me’s”, and “Who’d a thought it’s”, at the sight
of his young lord, whom he had not seen these seven years.
The packet from Beatrix contained no news of importance at all. It was
written in a jocular strain, affecting to make light of her captivity. She
asked whether she might have leave to visit Mrs. Tusher, or to walk beyond
the court and the garden-wall. She gave news of the peacocks, and a fawn
she had there. She bade her mother send her certain gowns and smocks by
old Lockwood; she sent her duty to a certain person, if certain other
persons permitted her to take such a freedom; how that, as she was not
able to play cards with him, she hoped he would read good books, such as
Dr. Atterbury’s sermons and _Eikon Basilike_: she was going to read good
books: she thought her pretty mamma would like to know she was not crying
her eyes out.
“Who is in the house besides you, Lockwood?” says the colonel.
“There be the laundry-maid, and the kitchen-maid, Madam Beatrix’s maid,
the man from London, and that be all; and he sleepeth in my lodge away
from the maids,” says old Lockwood.
Esmond scribbled a line with a pencil on the note, giving it to the old
man, and bidding him go on to his lady. We knew why Beatrix had been so
dutiful on a sudden, and why she spoke of _Eikon Basilike_. She writ this
letter to put the prince on the scent, and the porter out of the way.
“We have a fine moonlight night for riding on,” says Esmond; “Frank, we
may reach Castlewood in time yet.” All the way along they made inquiries
at the post-houses, when a tall young gentleman in a grey suit, with a
light-brown periwig, just the colour of my lord’s, had been seen to pass.
He had set off at six that morning, and we at three in the afternoon. He
rode almost as quickly as we had done; he was seven hours ahead of us
still when we reached the last stage.
We rode over Castlewood Downs before the breaking of dawn. We passed the
very spot where the car was upset fourteen years since; and Mohun lay. The
village was not up yet, nor the forge lighted, as we rode through it,
passing by the elms, where the rooks were still roosting, and by the
church, and over the bridge. We got off our horses at the bridge and
walked up to the gate.
“If she is safe,” says Frank, trembling, and his honest eyes filling with
tears, “a silver statue to Our Lady!” He was going to rattle at the great
iron knocker on the oak gate; but Esmond stopped his kinsman’s hand. He
had his own fears, his own hopes, his own despairs and griefs, too: but he
spoke not a word of these to his companion, or showed any signs of
emotion.
He went and tapped at the little window at the porter’s lodge, gently, but
repeatedly, until the man came to the bars.
“Who’s there?” says he, looking out; it was the servant from Kensington.
“My Lord Castlewood and Colonel Esmond,” we said, from below. “Open the
gate and let us in without any noise.”
“My Lord Castlewood?” says the other; “my lord’s here, and in bed.”
“Open, d—n you,” says Castlewood, with a curse.
“I shall open to no one,” says the man, shutting the glass window as Frank
drew a pistol. He would have fired at the porter, but Esmond again held
his hand.
“There are more ways than one,” says he, “of entering such a great house
as this.” Frank grumbled that the west gate was half a mile round. “But I
know of a way that’s not a hundred yards off,” says Mr. Esmond; and
leading his kinsman close along the wall, and by the shrubs, which had now
grown thick on what had been an old moat about the house, they came to the
buttress, at the side of which the little window was, which was Father
Holt’s private door. Esmond climbed up to this easily, broke a pane that
had been mended, and touched the spring inside, and the two gentlemen
passed in that way, treading as lightly as they could; and so going
through the passage into the court, over which the dawn was now reddening,
and where the fountain plashed in the silence.
They sped instantly to the porter’s lodge, where the fellow had not
fastened his door that led into the court; and pistol in hand came upon
the terrified wretch, and bade him be silent. Then they asked him
(Esmond’s head reeled, and he almost fell as he spoke) when Lord
Castlewood had arrived? He said on the previous evening, about eight of
the clock.—“And what then?”—His lordship supped with his sister.—“Did the
man wait?” Yes, he and my lady’s maid both waited: the other servants made
the supper; and there was no wine, and they could give his lordship but
milk, at which he grumbled; and—and Madam Beatrix kept Miss Lucy always in
the room with her. And there being a bed across the court in the
chaplain’s room, she had arranged my lord was to sleep there. Madam
Beatrix had come downstairs laughing with the maids, and had locked
herself in, and my lord had stood for a while talking to her through the
door, and she laughing at him. And then he paced the court awhile, and she
came again to the upper window; and my lord implored her to come down and
walk in the room; but she would not, and laughed at him again, and shut
the window; and so my lord uttering what seemed curses, but in a foreign
language, went to the chaplain’s room to bed.
“Was this all?”—“All,” the man swore upon his honour; “all as he hoped to
be saved.—Stop, there was one thing more. My lord, on arriving, and once
or twice during supper, did kiss his sister as was natural, and she kissed
him.” At this Esmond ground his teeth with rage, and wellnigh throttled
the amazed miscreant who was speaking, whereas Castlewood, seizing hold of
his cousin’s hand, burst into a great fit of laughter.
“If it amuses thee,” says Esmond in French, “that your sister should be
exchanging of kisses with a stranger, I fear poor Beatrix will give thee
plenty of sport.”—Esmond darkly thought, how Hamilton, Ashburnham, had
before been masters of those roses that the young prince’s lips were now
feeding on. He sickened at that notion. Her cheek was desecrated, her
beauty tarnished; shame and honour stood between it and him. The love was
dead within him; had she a crown to bring him with her love, he felt that
both would degrade him.
But this wrath against Beatrix did not lessen the angry feelings of the
colonel against the man who had been the occasion if not the cause of the
evil. Frank sat down on a stone bench in the courtyard, and fairly fell
asleep, while Esmond paced up and down the court, debating what should
ensue. What mattered how much or how little had passed between the prince
and the poor faithless girl? They were arrived in time perhaps to rescue
her person, but not her mind; had she not instigated the young prince to
come to her; suborned servants, dismissed others, so that she might
communicate with him? The treacherous heart within her had surrendered,
though the place was safe; and it was to win this that he had given a
life’s struggle and devotion; this, that she was ready to give away for
the bribe of a coronet or a wink of the prince’s eye.
When he had thought his thoughts out he shook up poor Frank from his
sleep, who rose yawning, and said he had been dreaming of Clotilda. “You
must back me,” says Esmond, “in what I am going to do. I have been
thinking that yonder scoundrel may have been instructed to tell that
story, and that the whole of it may be a lie; if it be, we shall find it
out from the gentleman who is asleep yonder. See if the door leading to my
lady’s rooms” (so we called the rooms at the north-west angle of the
house), “see if the door is barred as he saith.” We tried; it was indeed
as the lackey had said, closed within.
“It may have been open and shut afterwards,” says poor Esmond; “the
foundress of our family let our ancestor in that way.”
“What will you do, Harry, if—if what that fellow saith should turn out
untrue?” The young man looked scared and frightened into his kinsman’s
face; I dare say it wore no very pleasant expression.
“Let us first go see whether the two stories agree,” says Esmond; and went
in at the passage and opened the door into what had been his own chamber
now for wellnigh five-and-twenty years. A candle was still burning, and
the prince asleep dressed on the bed—Esmond did not care for making a
noise. The prince started up in his bed, seeing two men in his chamber:
“_Qui est là?_” says he, and took a pistol from under his pillow.
“It is the Marquis of Esmond,” says the colonel, “come to welcome his
Majesty to his house of Castlewood, and to report of what hath happened in
London. Pursuant to the king’s orders, I passed the night before last,
after leaving his Majesty, in waiting upon the friends of the king. It is
a pity that his Majesty’s desire to see the country and to visit our poor
house should have caused the king to quit London without notice yesterday,
when the opportunity happened which in all human probability may not occur
again; and had the king not chosen to ride to Castlewood, the Prince of
Wales might have slept at St. James’s.”
“’Sdeath! gentlemen,” says the prince, starting off his bed, whereon he
was lying in his clothes, “the doctor was with me yesterday morning, and
after watching by my sister all night, told me I might not hope to see the
queen.”
“It would have been otherwise,” says Esmond, with another bow; “as, by
this time, the queen may be dead in spite of the doctor. The Council was
met, a new treasurer was appointed, the troops were devoted to the king’s
cause; and fifty loyal gentlemen of the greatest names of this kingdom
were assembled to accompany the Prince of Wales, who might have been the
acknowledged heir of the throne, or the possessor of it by this time, had
your Majesty not chosen to take the air. We were ready; there was only one
person that failed us, your Majesty’s gracious——”
“_Morbleu! monsieur_, you give me too much Majesty,” said the prince; who
had now risen up and seemed to be looking to one of us to help him to his
coat. But neither stirred.
“We shall take care,” says Esmond, “not much oftener to offend in that
particular.”
“What mean you, my lord?” says the prince, and muttered something about a
_guet-à-pens_, which Esmond caught up.
“The snare, sir,” said he, “was not of our laying; it is not we that
invited you. We came to avenge, and not to compass, the dishonour of our
family.”
“Dishonour! _Morbleu!_ there has been no dishonour,” says the prince,
turning scarlet, “only a little harmless playing.”
“That was meant to end seriously.”
“I swear,” the prince broke out impetuously, “upon the honour of a
gentleman, my lords——”
“That we arrived in time. No wrong hath been done, Frank,” says Colonel
Esmond, turning round to young Castlewood, who stood at the door as the
talk was going on. “See! here is a paper whereon his Majesty hath deigned
to commence some verses in honour, or dishonour, of Beatrix. Here is
_madame_ and _flamme_, _cruelle_ and _rebelle_, and _amour_ and _jour_, in
the royal writing and spelling. Had the gracious lover been happy, he had
not passed his time in sighing.” In fact, and actually as he was speaking,
Esmond cast his eyes down towards the table, and saw a paper on which my
young prince had been scrawling a madrigal, that was to finish his charmer
on the morrow.
“Sir,” says the prince, burning with rage (he had assumed his royal coat
unassisted by this time), “did I come here to receive insults?”
“To confer them, may it please your Majesty,” says the colonel, with a
very low bow, “and the gentlemen of our family are come to thank you.”
“_Malédiction!_” says the young man, tears starting into his eyes with
helpless rage and mortification. “What will you with me, gentlemen?”
“If your Majesty will please to enter the next apartment,” says Esmond,
preserving his grave tone, “I have some papers there which I would gladly
submit to you, and by your permission I will lead the way;” and, taking
the taper up, and backing before the prince with very great ceremony, Mr.
Esmond passed into the little chaplain’s room, through which we had just
entered into the house:—“Please to set a chair for his Majesty, Frank,”
says the colonel to his companion, who wondered almost as much at this
scene, and was as much puzzled by it, as the other actor in it. Then going
to the crypt over the mantelpiece, the colonel opened it, and drew thence
the papers which so long had lain there.
“Here, may it please your Majesty,” says he, “is the patent of Marquis
sent over by your royal father at St. Germains to Viscount Castlewood, my
father: here is the witnessed certificate of my father’s marriage to my
mother, and of my birth and christening; I was christened of that religion
of which your sainted sire gave all through life so shining example. These
are my titles, dear Frank, and this what I do with them: here go baptism
and marriage, and here the marquisate and the august sign-manual, with
which your predecessor was pleased to honour our race.” And as Esmond
spoke he set the papers burning in the brasier. “You will please, sir, to
remember,” he continued, “that our family hath ruined itself by fidelity
to yours: that my grandfather spent his estate, and gave his blood and his
son to die for your service; that my dear lord’s grandfather (for lord you
are now, Frank, by right and title too) died for the same cause; that my
poor kinswoman, my father’s second wife, after giving away her honour to
your wicked perjured race, sent all her wealth to the king; and got in
return that precious title that lies in ashes, and this inestimable yard
of blue ribbon. I lay this at your feet and stamp upon it: I draw this
sword, and break it and deny you; and, had you completed the wrong you
designed us, by Heaven I would have driven it through your heart, and no
more pardoned you than your father pardoned Monmouth. Frank will do the
same, won’t you, cousin?”
Frank, who had been looking on with a stupid air at the papers as they
flamed in the old brasier, took out his sword and broke it, holding his
head down:—“I go with my cousin,” says he, giving Esmond a grasp of the
hand. “Marquis or not, by ——, I stand by him any day. I beg your Majesty’s
pardon for swearing; that is—that is—I’m for the Elector of Hanover. It’s
all your Majesty’s own fault. The queen’s dead most likely by this time.
And you might have been king if you hadn’t come dangling after ’Trix”.
“Thus to lose a crown,” says the young prince, starting up, and speaking
French in his eager way; “to lose the loveliest woman in the world; to
lose the loyalty of such hearts as yours, is not this, my lords, enough of
humiliation?—Marquis, if I go on my knees will you pardon me?—No, I can’t
do that, but I can offer you reparation, that of honour, that of
gentlemen. Favour me by crossing the sword with mine: yours is broke—see,
yonder in the armoire are two;” and the prince took them out as eager as a
boy, and held them towards Esmond:—“Ah! you will? _Merci, monsieur,
merci!_”
Extremely touched by this immense mark of condescension and repentance for
wrong done, Colonel Esmond bowed down so low as almost to kiss the
gracious young hand that conferred on him such an honour, and took his
guard in silence. The swords were no sooner met, than Castlewood knocked
up Esmond’s with the blade of his own, which he had broke off short at the
shell; and the colonel falling back a step dropped his point with another
very low bow, and declared himself perfectly satisfied.
“_Eh bien, vicomte_,” says the young prince, who was a boy, and a French
boy, “_il ne nous reste qu’une chose à faire_:” he placed his sword upon
the table, and the fingers of his two hands upon his breast:—“We have one
more thing to do,” says he; “you do not divine it?” He stretched out his
arms:—“_Embrassons nous!_”
The talk was scarce over when Beatrix entered the room:—What came she to
seek there? She started and turned pale at the sight of her brother and
kinsman, drawn swords, broken sword-blades, and papers yet smouldering in
the brasier.
“Charming Beatrix,” says the prince, with a blush which became him very
well, “these lords have come a-horseback from London, where my sister lies
in a despaired state, and where her successor makes himself desired.
Pardon me for my escapade of last evening. I had been so long a prisoner,
that I seized the occasion of a promenade on horseback, and my horse
naturally bore me towards you. I found you a queen in your little court,
where you deigned to entertain me. Present my homages to your maids of
honour. I sighed as you slept, under the window of your chamber, and then
retired to seek rest in my own. It was there that these gentlemen
agreeably roused me. Yes, milords, for that is a happy day that makes a
prince acquainted, at whatever cost to his vanity, with such a noble heart
as that of the Marquis of Esmond. Mademoiselle, may we take your coach to
town? I saw it in the hangar, and this poor marquis must be dropping with
sleep.”
“Will it please the king to breakfast before he goes?” was all Beatrix
could say. The roses had shuddered out of her cheeks; her eyes were
glaring; she looked quite old. She came up to Esmond and hissed out a word
or two:—“If I did not love you before, cousin,” says she, “think how I
love you now.” If words could stab, no doubt she would have killed Esmond;
she looked at him as if she could.
But her keen words gave no wound to Mr. Esmond; his heart was too hard. As
he looked at her, he wondered that he could ever have loved her. His love
of ten years was over; it fell down dead on the spot, at the Kensington
tavern, where Frank brought him the note out of _Eikon __ Basilike_. The
prince blushed and bowed low, as she gazed at him, and quitted the
chamber. I have never seen her from that day.
Horses were fetched and put to the chariot presently. My lord rode
outside, and as for Esmond he was so tired that he was no sooner in the
carriage than he fell asleep, and never woke till night, as the coach came
into Alton.
As we drove to the “Bell Inn” comes a mitred coach with our old friend
Lockwood beside the coachman. My Lady Castlewood and the bishop were
inside; she gave a little scream when she saw us. The two coaches entered
the inn almost together; the landlord and people coming out with lights to
welcome the visitors.
We in our coach sprang out of it, as soon as ever we saw the dear lady,
and above all, the doctor in his cassock. What was the news? Was there yet
time? Was the queen alive? These questions were put hurriedly, as Boniface
stood waiting before his noble guests to bow them up the stair.
“Is she safe?” was what Lady Castlewood whispered in a flutter to Esmond.
“All’s well, thank God,” says he, as the fond lady took his hand and
kissed it, and called him her preserver and her dear. _She_ wasn’t
thinking of queens and crowns.
The bishop’s news was reassuring: at least all was not lost; the queen yet
breathed or was alive when they left London, six hours since. (“It was
Lady Castlewood who insisted on coming,” the doctor said;) Argyle had
marched up regiments from Portsmouth, and sent abroad for more; the Whigs
were on the alert, a pest on them (I am not sure but the bishop swore as
he spoke), and so too were our people. And all might be saved, if only the
prince could be at London in time. We called for horses, instantly to
return to London. We never went up poor crestfallen Boniface’s stairs, but
into our coaches again. The prince and his prime minister in one, Esmond
in the other, with only his dear mistress as a companion.
Castlewood galloped forwards on horseback to gather the prince’s friends,
and warn them of his coming. We travelled through the night. Esmond
discoursing to his mistress of the events of the last twenty-four hours;
of Castlewood’s ride and his; of the prince’s generous behaviour and their
reconciliation. The night seemed short enough; and the starlit hours
passed away serenely in that fond company.
So we came along the road; the bishop’s coach heading ours; and, with some
delays in procuring horses, we got to Hammersmith about four o’clock on
Sunday morning, the first of August, and half an hour after, it being then
bright day, we rode by my Lady Warwick’s house, and so down the street of
Kensington.
Early as the hour was, there was a bustle in the street, and many people
moving to and fro. Round the gate leading to the palace, where the guard
is, there was especially a great crowd. And the coach ahead of us stopped,
and the bishop’s man got down to know what the concourse meant?
There presently came from out of the gate: Horse Guards with their
trumpets, and a company of heralds with their tabards. The trumpets blew,
and the herald-at-arms came forward and proclaimed GEORGE, by the grace of
God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith.
And the people shouted, “God save the King!”
Among the crowd shouting and waving their hats, I caught sight of one sad
face, which I had known all my life, and seen under many disguises. It was
no other than poor Mr. Holt’s, who had slipped over to England to witness
the triumph of the good cause; and now beheld its enemies victorious,
amidst the acclamations of the English people. The poor fellow had forgot
to huzzah or to take his hat off, until his neighbours in the crowd
remarked his want of loyalty, and cursed him for a Jesuit in disguise,
when he ruefully uncovered and began to cheer. Sure he was the most
unlucky of men: he never played a game but he lost it; or engaged in a
conspiracy but ’twas certain to end in defeat. I saw him in Flanders after
this, whence he went to Rome to the head quarters of his Order; and
actually reappeared among us in America, very old, and busy, and hopeful.
I am not sure that he did not assume the hatchet and moccasins there; and,
attired in a blanket and warpaint, skulk about a missionary amongst the
Indians. He lies buried in our neighbouring province of Maryland now, with
a cross over him, and a mound of earth above him; under which that unquiet
spirit is for ever at peace.
-------------------------------------
With the sound of King George’s trumpets, all the vain hopes of the weak
and foolish young pretender were blown away; and with that music, too, I
may say, the drama of my own life was ended. That happiness, which hath
subsequently crowned it, cannot be written in words; ’tis of its nature
sacred and secret, and not to be spoken of, though the heart be ever so
full of thankfulness, save to Heaven and the One Ear alone—to one fond
being, the truest and tenderest and purest wife ever man was blessed with.
As I think of the immense happiness which was in store for me, and of the
depth and intensity of that love which, for so many years, hath blessed
me, I own to a transport of wonder and gratitude for such a boon—nay, am
thankful to have been endowed with a heart capable of feeling and knowing
the immense beauty and value of the gift which God hath bestowed upon me.
Sure, love _vincit omnia_; is immeasurably above all ambition, more
precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows
not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not
enjoyed it. In the name of my wife I write the completion of hope, and the
summit of happiness. To have such a love is the one blessing, in
comparison of which all earthly joy is of no value; and to think of her,
is to praise God.
It was at Bruxelles, whither we retreated after the failure of our
plot—our Whig friends advising us to keep out of the way—that the great
joy of my life was bestowed upon me, and that my dear mistress became my
wife. We had been so accustomed to an extreme intimacy and confidence, and
had lived so long and tenderly together, that we might have gone on to the
end without thinking of a closer tie; but circumstances brought about that
event which so prodigiously multiplied my happiness and hers (for which I
humbly thank Heaven), although a calamity befell us, which, I blush to
think, hath occurred more than once in our house. I know not what
infatuation of ambition urged the beautiful and wayward woman, whose name
hath occupied so many of these pages, and who was served by me with ten
years of such a constant fidelity and passion; but ever after that day at
Castlewood, when we rescued her, she persisted in holding all her family
as her enemies, and left us, and escaped to France, to what a fate I
disdain to tell. Nor was her son’s house a home for my dear mistress; my
poor Frank was weak, as perhaps all our race hath been, and led by women.
Those around him were imperious, and in a terror of his mother’s influence
over him, lest he should recant, and deny the creed which he had adopted
by their persuasion. The difference of their religion separated the son
and the mother: my dearest mistress felt that she was severed from her
children and alone in the world—alone but for one constant servant on
whose fidelity, praised be Heaven, she could count. ’Twas after a scene of
ignoble quarrel on the part of Frank’s wife and mother (for the poor lad
had been made to marry the whole of that German family with whom he had
connected himself), that I found my mistress one day in tears, and then
besought her to confide herself to the care and devotion of one who, by
God’s help, would never forsake her. And then the tender matron, as
beautiful in her autumn, and as pure as virgins in their spring, with
blushes of love and “eyes of meek surrender”, yielded to my respectful
importunity, and consented to share my home. Let the last words I write
thank her, and bless her who hath blessed it.
By the kindness of Mr. Addison, all danger of prosecution, and every
obstacle against our return to England, was removed; and my son Frank’s
gallantry in Scotland made his peace with the king’s Government. But we
two cared no longer to live in England; and Frank formally and joyfully
yielded over to us the possession of that estate which we now occupy, far
away from Europe and its troubles, on the beautiful banks of the Potomac,
where we have built a new Castlewood, and think with grateful hearts of
our old home. In our Transatlantic country we have a season, the calmest
and most delightful of the year, which we call the Indian summer: I often
say the autumn of our life resembles that happy and serene weather, and am
thankful for its rest and its sweet sunshine. Heaven hath blessed us with
a child, which each parent loves for her resemblance to the other. Our
diamonds are turned into ploughs and axes for our plantations; and into
negroes, the happiest and merriest, I think, in all this country: and the
only jewel by which my wife sets any store, and from which she hath never
parted, is that gold button she took from my arm on the day when she
visited me in prison, and which she wore ever after, as she told me, on
the tenderest heart in the world.
Appendix
Book I, chap, viii, p. 80, line 9: “mist” was wrongly altered in revised
edition to “midst”.
Book I, chap, xii, p. 130, line 2 from foot: “through” was wrongly altered
in revised edition to “to”.
Book II, chap, ii, p. 179, line 7 from foot: “guests,” though never
altered, should clearly be “hosts”.
Book II, chap, xv, p. 307, line 8: the following passage was omitted in
the edition of 1858:—
“I always thought that paper was Mr. Congreve’s,” cries Mr. St.
John, showing that he knew more about the subject than he
pretended to Mr. Steele, and who was the original Mr. Bickerstaffe
drew.
“Tom Boxer said so in his _Observator_. But Tom’s oracle is often
making blunders,” cries Steele.
“Mr. Boxer and my husband were friends once, and when the captain
was ill with the fever, no man could be kinder than Mr. Boxer, who
used to come to his bedside every day, and actually brought Dr.
Arbuthnot who cured him,” whispered Mrs. Steele.
“Indeed, madam! How very interesting,” says Mr. St. John.
“But when the captain’s last comedy came out, Mr. Boxer took no
notice of it—you know he is Mr. Congreve’s man, and won’t ever
give a word to the other house—and this made my husband angry.”
“Oh! Mr. Boxer is Mr. Congreve’s man!” says Mr. St. John.
“Mr. Congreve has wit enough of his own,” cries out Mr. Steele.
“No one ever heard me grudge him or any other man his share.”
Book III, chap, i, p. 326, line 19: for “Frank”, Thackeray by an
interesting reminiscence of _Pendennis_ wrote “Arthur”.
THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS
OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
A Series of Lectures
DELIVERED IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
[First edition, 1853; second edition, revised, 1853]
Lecture The First. Swift
In treating of the English humourists of the past age, it is of the men
and of their lives, rather than of their books, that I ask permission to
speak to you; and in doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to
entertain you with a merely humorous or facetious story. Harlequin without
his mask is known to present a very sober countenance, and was himself,
the story goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go and
see Harlequin(21)—a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest of
us, whose Self must always be serious to him, under whatever mask, or
disguise, or uniform he presents it to the public. And as all of you here
must needs be grave when you think of your own past and present, you will
not look to find, in the histories of those whose lives and feelings I am
going to try and describe to you, a story that is otherwise than serious,
and often very sad. If Humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel
more interest about humorous writers than about the private life of poor
Harlequin just mentioned, who possesses in common with these the power of
making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind
presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a
great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule.
The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity,
your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your
tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best
of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and
passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day
preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and feels the
truth best, we regard him, esteem him—sometimes love him. And, as his
business is to mark other people’s lives and peculiarities, we moralize
upon _his_ life when he is gone—and yesterday’s preacher becomes the text
for to-day’s sermon.
Of English parents, and of a good English family of clergymen,(22) Swift
was born in Dublin in 1667, seven months after the death of his father,
who had come to practise there as a lawyer. The boy went to school at
Kilkenny, and afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin, where he got a degree
with difficulty, and was wild, and witty, and poor. In 1688, by the
recommendation of his mother, Swift was received into the family of Sir
William Temple, who had known Mrs. Swift in Ireland. He left his patron in
1693, and the next year took orders in Dublin. But he threw up the small
Irish preferment which he got and returned to Temple, in whose family he
remained until Sir William’s death in 1699. His hopes of advancement in
England failing, Swift returned to Ireland, and took the living of
Laracor. Hither he invited Hester Johnson,(23) Temple’s natural daughter,
with whom he had contracted a tender friendship, while they were both
dependants of Temple’s. And with an occasional visit to England, Swift now
passed nine years at home.
In 1709 he came to England, and, with a brief visit to Ireland, during
which he took possession of his deanery of St. Patrick, he now passed five
years in England, taking the most distinguished part in the political
transactions which terminated with the death of Queen Anne. After her
death, his party disgraced, and his hopes of ambition over, Swift returned
to Dublin, where he remained twelve years. In this time he wrote the
famous _Drapier’s Letters_ and _Gulliver’s Travels_. He married Hester
Johnson (Stella) and buried Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) who had followed
him to Ireland from London, where she had contracted a violent passion for
him. In 1726 and 1727 Swift was in England, which he quitted for the last
time on hearing of his wife’s illness. Stella died in January, 1728, and
Swift not until 1745, having passed the last five of the seventy-eight
years of his life with an impaired intellect and keepers to watch him.(24)
You know, of course, that Swift has had many biographers; his life has
been told by the kindest and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admires
but can’t bring himself to love him; and by stout old Johnson,(25) who,
forced to admit him into the company of poets, receives the famous
Irishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition,
scans him from head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the
street. Dr. Wilde, of Dublin,(26) who has written a most interesting
volume on the closing years of Swift’s life, calls Johnson “the most
malignant of his biographers”: it is not easy for an English critic to
please Irishmen—perhaps to try and please them. And yet Johnson truly
admires Swift: Johnson does not quarrel with Swift’s change of politics,
or doubt his sincerity of religion: about the famous Stella and Vanessa
controversy the Doctor does not bear very hardly on Swift. But he could
not give the Dean that honest hand of his; the stout old man puts it into
his breast, and moves off from him.(27)
Would we have liked to live with him? That is a question which, in dealing
with these people’s works, and thinking of their lives and peculiarities,
every reader of biographies must put to himself. Would you have liked to
be a friend of the great Dean? I should like to have been Shakespeare’s
shoeblack—just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped him—to
have run on his errands, and seen that sweet serene face. I should like,
as a young man, to have lived on Fielding’s staircase in the Temple, and
after helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door with his
latchkey, to have shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talk
and crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would
not give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and
Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison’s
companionship and conversation has passed to us by fond tradition—but
Swift? If you had been his inferior in parts (and that, with a great
respect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in
mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you; if,
undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he would,
have quailed before you,(28) and not had the pluck to reply, and gone
home, and years after written a foul epigram about you—watched for you in
a sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward’s blow and a dirty
bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flattered his
vanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful
company in the world. He would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so
bright, odd, and original, that you might think he had no object in view
but the indulgence of his humour, and that he was the most reckless,
simple creature in the world. How he would have torn your enemies to
pieces for you! and made fun of the Opposition! His servility was so
boisterous that it looked like independence;(29) he would have done your
errands, but with the air of patronizing you, and after fighting your
battles masked in the street or the press, would have kept on his hat
before your wife and daughters in the drawing-room, content to take that
sort of pay for his tremendous services as a bravo.(30)
He says as much himself in one of his letters to Bolingbroke:—“All my
endeavours to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and
fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of
my parts; whether right or wrong is no great matter. And so the reputation
of wit and great learning does the office of a blue ribbon or a
coach-and-six.”(31)
Could there be a greater candour? It is an outlaw, who says, “These are my
brains; with these I’ll win titles and compete with fortune. These are my
bullets; these I’ll turn into gold”; and he hears the sound of
coaches-and-six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and
deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop’s
apron, and his grace’s blue ribbon, and my lady’s brocade petticoat in the
mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the third
of a little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of
his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre and
crosier in it, which he intends to have for _his_ share, has been delayed
on the way from St. James’s; and he waits and waits until nightfall, when
his runners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different road,
and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with a curse, and
rides away into his own country.(32)
Swift’s seems to me to be as good a name to point a moral or adorn a tale
of ambition, as any hero’s that ever lived and failed. But we must
remember that the morality was lax—that other gentlemen besides himself
took the road in his day—that public society was in a strange disordered
condition, and the State was ravaged by other condottieri. The Boyne was
being fought and won, and lost—the bells rung in William’s victory, in the
very same tone with which they would have pealed for James’s. Men were
loose upon politics, and had to shift for themselves. They, as well as old
beliefs and institutions, had lost their moorings and gone adrift in the
storm. As in the South Sea Bubble almost everybody gambled; as in the
Railway mania—not many centuries ago—almost every one took his unlucky
share; a man of that time, of the vast talents and ambition of Swift,
could scarce do otherwise than grasp at his prize, and make his spring at
his opportunity. His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subsequent
misanthropy, are ascribed by some panegyrists to a deliberate conviction
of mankind’s unworthiness, and a desire to amend them by castigating. His
youth was bitter, as that of a great genius bound down by ignoble ties,
and powerless in a mean dependence; his age was bitter,(33) like that of a
great genius that had fought the battle and nearly won it, and lost it,
and thought of it afterwards writhing in a lonely exile. A man may
attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused by his own fury, or
disappointment, or self-will. What public man—what statesman projecting a
_coup_—what king determined on an invasion of his neighbour—what satirist
meditating an onslaught on society or an individual, can’t give a pretext
for his move? There was a French general the other day who proposed to
march into this country and put it to sack and pillage, in revenge for
humanity outraged by our conduct at Copenhagen—there is always some excuse
for men of the aggressive turn. They are of their nature warlike,
predatory, eager for fight, plunder, dominion.(34)
As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck—as strong a wing as ever beat,
belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested the prey out of
his claws, and cut his wings and chained him. One can gaze, and not
without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars.
That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey’s Court, Dublin, on the 30th November,
1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the sister island the
honour and glory, but, it seems to me, he was no more an Irishman than a
man born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo.(35) Goldsmith was an
Irishman, and always an Irishman: Steele was an Irishman, and always an
Irishman: Swift’s heart was English and in England, his habits English,
his logic eminently English; his statement is elaborately simple; he shuns
tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise thrift and
economy, as he used his money; with which he could be generous and
splendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded when there was no
need to spend it. He never indulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric,
lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his opinion before you with a
grave simplicity and a perfect neatness.(36) Dreading ridicule too, as a
man of his humour—above all an Englishman of his humour—certainly would,
he is afraid to use the poetical power which he really possessed; one
often fancies in reading him that he dares not be eloquent when he might;
that he does not speak above his voice, as if were, and the tone of
society.
His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his knowledge of
polite life, his acquaintance with literature even, which he could not
have pursued very sedulously during that reckless career at Dublin, Swift
got under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telling in
after-life what quantities of books he devoured there, and how King
William taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion. It was at Shene
and at Moor Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and a dinner at the upper
servants’ table, that this great and lonely Swift passed a ten years’
apprenticeship—wore a cassock that was only not a livery—bent down a knee
as proud as Lucifer’s to supplicate my lady’s good graces, or run on his
honour’s errands.(37) It was here, as he was writing at Temple’s table, or
following his patron’s walk, that he saw and heard the men who had
governed the great world—measured himself with them, looking up from his
silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed their wits, turned them, and
tried them, and marked them. Ah, what platitudes he must have heard! what
feeble jokes! what pompous commonplaces! what small men they must have
seemed under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, uncouth, silent
Irish secretary. I wonder whether it ever struck Temple that that Irishman
was his master? I suppose that dismal conviction did not present itself
under the ambrosial wig, or Temple could never have lived with Swift.
Swift sickened, rebelled, left the service—ate humble pie and came back
again; and so for ten years went on, gathering learning, swallowing scorn,
and submitting with a stealthy rage to his fortune.
Temple’s style is the perfection of practised and easy good-breeding. If
he does not penetrate very deeply into a subject, he professes a very
gentlemanly acquaintance with it; if he makes rather a parade of Latin, it
was the custom of his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelop
his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles
and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you
never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady’s train or any
rival’s heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated
for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor
Park; and lets the King’s party, and the Prince of Orange’s party battle
it out among themselves. He reveres the Sovereign (and no man perhaps ever
testified to his loyalty by so elegant a bow); he admires the Prince of
Orange; but there is one person whose ease and comfort he loves more than
all the princes in Christendom, and that valuable member of society is
himself, Gulielmus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his retreat;
between his study-chair and his tulip-beds,(38) clipping his apricots and
pruning his essays,—the statesman, the ambassador no more; but the
philosopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at St. James’s
as at Shene; where, in place of kings and fair ladies, he pays his court
to the Ciceronian majesty; or walks a minuet with the Epic Muse; or
dallies by the south wall with the ruddy nymph of gardens.
Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious deal of veneration
from his household, and to have been coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled by
the people round about him, as delicately as any of the plants which he
loved. When he fell ill in 1693, the household was aghast at his
indisposition; mild Dorothea, his wife, the best companion of the best of
men—
Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great,
Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate.
As for Dorinda, his sister,—
Those who would grief describe, might come and trace
Its watery footsteps in Dorinda’s face.
To see her weep, joy every face forsook,
And grief flung sables on each menial look.
The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul,
That furnished life and spirit through the whole.
Isn’t that line in which grief is described as putting the menials into a
mourning livery, a fine image? One of the menials wrote it, who did not
like that Temple livery nor those twenty-pound wages. Cannot one fancy the
uncouth young servitor, with downcast eyes, books and papers in hand,
following at his Honour’s heels in the garden walk; or taking his Honour’s
orders as he stands by the great chair, where Sir William has the gout,
and his feet all blistered with moxa? When Sir William has the gout or
scolds it must be hard work at the second table;(39) the Irish secretary
owned as much afterwards: and when he came to dinner, how he must have
lashed and growled and torn the household with his gibes and scorn! What
would the steward say about the pride of them Irish schollards—and this
one had got no great credit even at his Irish college, if the truth were
known—and what a contempt his Excellency’s own gentleman must have had for
Parson Teague from Dublin. (The valets and chaplains were always at war.
It is hard to say which Swift thought the more contemptible.) And what
must have been the sadness, the sadness and terror, of the housekeeper’s
little daughter with the curling black ringlets and the sweet smiling
face, when the secretary who teaches her to read and write, and whom she
loves and reverences above all things—above mother, above mild Dorothea,
above that tremendous Sir William in his square-toes and periwig,—when
_Mr. Swift_ comes down from his master with rage in his heart, and has not
a kind word even for little Hester Johnson?
Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency’s condescension was even
more cruel than his frowns. Sir William _would_ perpetually quote Latin
and the ancient classics à propos of his gardens and his Dutch statues and
_plates-bandes_, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius, Julius
Caesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the Hesperides, Maecenas, Strabo
describing Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. A propos of beans, he would
mention Pythagoras’s precept to abstain from beans, and that this precept
probably meant that wise men should abstain from public affairs. _He_ is a
placid Epicurean; _he_ is a Pythagorean philosopher; _he_ is a wise
man—that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so? One can imagine the
downcast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which they
emit. Swift’s eyes were as azure as the heavens; Pope says nobly (as
everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good and noble), “His
eyes are as azure as the heavens, and have a charming archness in them.”
And one person in that household, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park,
saw heaven nowhere else.
But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with Swift. He was
half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins; and in a garden-seat which he
devised for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured greedily the stock
of books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness which punished
and tormented him through life. He could not bear the place or the
servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condolence, from which we have
quoted a few lines of mock melancholy, he breaks out of the funereal
procession with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his own
grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by fortune,
and even hope.
I don’t know anything more melancholy than the letter to Temple, in which,
after having broke from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches piteously
towards his cage again, and deprecates his master’s anger. He asks for
testimonials for orders. “The particulars required of me are what relate
to morals and learning—and the reasons of quitting your Honour’s
family—that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. They
are left entirely to your Honour’s mercy, though in the first I think I
cannot reproach myself for anything further than for _infirmities_. This
is all I dare at present beg from your Honour, under circumstances of life
not worth your regard: what is left me to wish (next to the health and
prosperity of your Honour and family) is that Heaven would one day allow
me the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgements at your feet. I beg my
most humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your Honour’s lady
and sister.”—Can prostration fall deeper? Could a slave bow lower?(40)
Twenty years afterwards, Bishop Kennet, describing the same man, says,
“Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had a bow from everybody but me.
When I came to the antechamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, Dr.
Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting the
Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a place
for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake, with my Lord
Treasurer, that he should obtain a salary of 200_l._ per annum as member
of the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in
to the Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had something to say
to him from my Lord Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling the
time of day, complained that it was very late. A gentleman said he was too
fast. ‘How can I help it,’ says the doctor, ‘if the courtiers give me a
watch that won’t go right?’ Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the
best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation
of Homer into English, for which he would have them all subscribe; ‘For,’
says he, ‘he shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for
him.’(41) Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the room,
beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him,—both went off just before prayers.”
There’s a little malice in the Bishop’s “just before prayers”.
This picture of the great Dean seems a true one, and is harsh, though not
altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, and to deserving men too, in the
midst of these intrigues and triumphs. His journals and a thousand
anecdotes of him relate his kind acts and rough manners. His hand was
constantly stretched out to relieve an honest man—he was cautious about
his money, but ready.—If you were in a strait would you like such a
benefactor? I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly word
from Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a
dinner.(42) He insulted a man as he served him, made women cry, guests
look foolish, bullied unlucky friends, and flung his benefactions into
poor men’s faces. No; the Dean was no Irishman—no Irishman ever gave but
with a kind word and a kind heart.
It is told, as if it were to Swift’s credit, that the Dean of St.
Patrick’s performed his family devotions every morning regularly, but with
such secrecy, that the guests in his house were never in the least aware
of the ceremony. There was no need surely why a church dignitary should
assemble his family privily in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of heathen
persecution. But I think the world was right, and the bishops who advised
Queen Anne, when they counselled her not to appoint the author of the
_Tale of a Tub_ to a bishopric, gave perfectly good advice. The man who
wrote the arguments and illustrations in that wild book, could not but be
aware what must be the sequel of the propositions which he laid down. The
boon companion of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends of
his life, and the recipients of his confidence and affection, must have
heard many an argument, and joined in many a conversation over Pope’s
port, or St. John’s burgundy, which would not bear to be repeated at other
men’s boards.
I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift’s
religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out
for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the _Beggar’s Opera_—Gay, the
wildest of the wits about town—it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised
to take orders—to invest in a cassock and bands—just as he advised him to
husband his shillings and put his thousand pounds out at interest.(43) The
Queen, and the bishops, and the world, were right in mistrusting the
religion of that man.
I am not here, of course, to speak of any man’s religious views, except in
so far as they influence his literary character, his life, his humour. The
most notorious sinners of all those fellow mortals whom it is our business
to discuss—Harry Fielding and Dick Steele, were especially loud, and I
believe really fervent, in their expressions of belief; they belaboured
freethinkers, and stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of occasions,
going out of their way to bawl their own creed, and persecute their
neighbour’s, and if they sinned and stumbled, as they constantly did with
debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behaviour, they got up on their
knees, and cried “Peccavi” with a most sonorous orthodoxy. Yes; poor Harry
Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of England
men; they abhorred Popery, atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in
general; and hiccupped “Church and State” with fervour.
But Swift? _His_ mind had had a different schooling, and possessed a very
different logical power. _He_ was not bred up in a tipsy guard-room, and
did not learn to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could conduct an
argument from beginning to end. He could see forward with a fatal
clearness. In his old age, looking at the _Tale of a Tub_, when he said,
“Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book!” I think he was
admiring not the genius, but the consequences to which the genius had
brought him—a vast genius, a magnificent genius, a genius wonderfully
bright, and dazzling, and strong,—to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon
falsehood and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into the hidden
motives, and expose the black thoughts of men,—an awful, an evil spirit.
Ah, man! you, educated in Epicurean Temple’s library, you whose friends
were Pope and St. John—what made you to swear to fatal vows, and bind
yourself to a lifelong hypocrisy before the Heaven which you adored with
such real wonder, humility, and reverence? For Swift was a reverent, was a
pious spirit—for Swift could love and could pray. Through the storms and
tempests of his furious mind, the stars of religion and love break out in
the blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and the
maddened hurricane of his life.
It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his
own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his
apostasy out to hire.(44) The paper left behind him, called _Thoughts on
Religion_, is merely a set of excuses for not professing disbelief. He
says of his sermons that he preached pamphlets: they have scarce a
Christian characteristic; they might be preached from the steps of a
synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost.
There is little or no cant—he is too great and too proud for that; and, in
so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having put
that cassock on, it poisoned him: he was strangled in his bands. He goes
through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah in
the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that
the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God,
it was! what a lonely rage and long agony—what a vulture that tore the
heart of that giant!(45) It is awful to think of the great sufferings of
this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was
so. I can’t fancy Shakespeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The
kings can have no company. But this man suffered so; and deserved so to
suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a pain.
The “saeva indignatio” of which he spoke as lacerating his heart, and
which he dares to inscribe on his tombstone—as if the wretch who lay under
that stone waiting God’s judgement had a right to be angry—breaks out from
him in a thousand pages of his writing, and tears and rends him. Against
men in office, he having been overthrown; against men in England, he
having lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile never fails
to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous _Drapier’s Letters_
patriotism? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective: they
are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and
fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so
great, but there is his enemy—the assault is wonderful for its activity
and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a bone in his hand, rushing on his
enemies and felling them: one admires not the cause so much as the
strength, the anger, the fury of the champion. As is the case with madmen,
certain subjects provoke him, and awaken his fits of wrath. Marriage is
one of these; in a hundred passages in his writings he rages against it;
rages against children; an object of constant satire, even more
contemptible in his eyes than a lord’s chaplain, is a poor curate with a
large family. The idea of this luckless paternity never fails to bring
down from him gibes and foul language. Could Dick Steele, or Goldsmith, or
Fielding, in his most reckless moment of satire, have written anything
like the Dean’s famous “modest proposal” for eating children? Not one of
these but melts at the thoughts of childhood, fondles and caresses it. Mr.
Dean has no such softness, and enters the nursery with the tread and
gaiety of an ogre.(46) “I have been assured,” says he in the _Modest
Proposal_, “by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that
a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious,
nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled;
and I make no doubt it will equally serve in a _ragoût_.” And taking up
this pretty joke, as his way is, he argues it with perfect gravity and
logic. He turns and twists this subject in a score of different ways: he
hashes it; and he serves it up cold; and he garnishes it; and relishes it
always. He describes the little animal as “dropped from its dam’” advising
that the mother should let it suck plentifully in the last month, so as to
render it plump and fat for a good table! “A child,” says his reverence,
“will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family
dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish,” and so
on; and, the subject being so delightful that he can’t leave it—he
proceeds to recommend, in place of venison for squires’ tables, “the
bodies of young lads and maidens not exceeding fourteen or under twelve.”
Amiable humourist! laughing castigator of morals! There was a process well
known and practised in the Dean’s gay days: when a lout entered the
coffee-house, the wags proceeded to what they called “roasting” him. This
is roasting a subject with a vengeance. The Dean had a native genius for
it. As the _Almanach des Gourmands_ says, _On nait rôtisseur_.
And it was not merely by the sarcastic method that Swift exposed the
unreasonableness of loving and having children. In Gulliver, the folly of
love and marriage is urged by graver arguments and advice. In the famous
Lilliputian kingdom, Swift speaks with approval of the practice of
instantly removing children from their parents and educating them by the
State; and amongst his favourite horses, a pair of foals are stated to be
the very utmost a well-regulated equine couple would permit themselves. In
fact, our great satirist was of opinion that conjugal love was
unadvisable, and illustrated the theory by his own practice and
example—God help him—which made him about the most wretched being in God’s
world.(47)
The grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition, as exemplified in
the cannibal proposal just mentioned, is our author’s constant method
through all his works of humour. Given a country of people six inches or
sixty feet high, and by the mere process of the logic, a thousand
wonderful absurdities are evolved, at so many stages of the calculation.
Turning to the first minister who waited behind him with a white staff
near as tall as the mainmast of the _Royal Sovereign_, the King of
Brobdingnag observes how contemptible a thing human grandeur is, as
represented by such a contemptible little creature as Gulliver. “The
Emperor of Lilliput’s features are strong and masculine” (what a
surprising humour there is in this description!)—“the Emperor’s features,”
Gulliver says, “are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip, an arched
nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs
well-proportioned, and his deportment majestic. He is taller _by the
breadth of my nail_ than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike
an awe into beholders.”
What a surprising humour there is in these descriptions! How noble the
satire is here! how just and honest! How perfect the image! Mr. Macaulay
has quoted the charming lines of the poet, where the king of the pygmies
is measured by the same standard. We have all read in Milton of the spear
that was like “the mast of some tall admiral”, but these images are surely
likely to come to the comic poet originally. The subject is before him. He
is turning it in a thousand ways. He is full of it. The figure suggests
itself naturally to him, and comes out of his subject, as in that
wonderful passage, when Gulliver’s box having been dropped by the eagle
into the sea, and Gulliver having been received into the ship’s cabin, he
calls upon the crew to bring the box into the cabin, and put it on the
table, the cabin being only a quarter the size of the box. It is the
_veracity_ of the blunder which is so admirable. Had a man come from such
a country as Brobdingnag he would have blundered so.
But the best stroke of humour, if there be a best in that abounding book,
is that where Gulliver, in the unpronounceable country, describes his
parting from his master the horse.(48) “I took,” he says, “a second leave
of my master, but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he
did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how
much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular. Detractors
are pleased to think it improbable that so illustrious a person should
descend to give so great a mark of distinction to a creature so inferior
as I. Neither am I ignorant how apt some travellers are to boast of
extraordinary favours they have received. But if these censurers were
better acquainted with the noble and courteous disposition of the
Houyhnhnms they would soon change their opinion.”
The surprise here, the audacity of circumstantial evidence, the astounding
gravity of the speaker, who is not ignorant how much he has been censured,
the nature of the favour conferred, and the respectful exultation at the
receipt of it, are surely complete; it is truth topsy-turvy, entirely
logical and absurd.
As for the humour and conduct of this famous fable, I suppose there is no
person who reads but must admire; as for the moral, I think it horrible,
shameful, unmanly, blasphemous; and giant and great as this Dean is, I say
we should hoot him. Some of this audience mayn’t have read the last part
of Gulliver, and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr.
Punch to persons about to marry, and say “Don’t”. When Gulliver first
lands among the Yahoos, the naked howling wretches clamber up trees and
assault him, and he describes himself as “almost stifled with the filth
which fell about him”. The reader of the fourth part of _Gulliver’s
Travels_ is like the hero himself in this instance. It is Yahoo language;
a monster gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against
mankind—tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of manliness
and shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene.
And dreadful it is to think that Swift knew the tendency of his creed—the
fatal rocks towards which his logic desperately drifted. That last part of
Gulliver is only a consequence of what has gone before; and the
worthlessness of all mankind, the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility,
the general vanity, the foolish pretension, the mock greatness, the
pompous dullness, the mean aims, the base successes—all these were present
to him; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blasphemies
against Heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to write his dreadful
allegory—of which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, desperate,
and imbecile, and his passions are so monstrous, and his boasted powers so
mean, that he is and deserves to be the slave of brutes, and ignorance is
better than his vaunted reason. What had this man done? what secret
remorse was rankling at his heart? what fever was boiling in him, that he
should see all the world bloodshot? We view the world with our own eyes,
each of us; and we make from within us the world we see. A weary heart
gets no gladness out of sunshine; a selfish man is sceptical about
friendship, as a man with no ear doesn’t care for music. A frightful
self-consciousness it must have been, which looked on mankind so darkly
through those keen eyes of Swift.
A remarkable story is told by Scott, of Delany, who interrupted Archbishop
King and Swift in a conversation which left the prelate in tears, and from
which Swift rushed away with marks of strong terror and agitation in his
countenance, upon which the archbishop said to Delany, “You have just met
the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you
must never ask a question.”
The most unhappy man on earth;—_Miserrimus_—what a character of him! And
at this time all the great wits of England had been at his feet. All
Ireland had shouted after him, and worshipped as a liberator, a saviour,
the greatest Irish patriot and citizen. Dean Drapier Bickerstaff
Gulliver—the most famous statesmen, and the greatest poets of his day, had
applauded him, and done him homage; and at this time writing over to
Bolingbroke, from Ireland, he says, “It is time for me to have done with
the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called
into the best, _and not to die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a
hole_.”
We have spoken about the men, and Swift’s behaviour to them; and now it
behoves us not to forget that there are certain other persons in the
creation who had rather intimate relations with the great Dean.(49) Two
women whom he loved and injured are known by every reader of books so
familiarly that if we had seen them, or if they had been relatives of our
own, we scarcely could have known them better. Who hasn’t in his mind an
image of Stella? Who does not love her? Fair and tender creature: pure and
affectionate heart! Boots it to you, now that you have been at rest for a
hundred and twenty years, not divided in death from the cold heart which
caused yours, whilst it beat, such faithful pangs of love and grief—boots
it to you now, that the whole world loves and deplores you? Scarce any
man, I believe, ever thought of that grave, that did not cast a flower of
pity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady, so lovely, so
loving, so unhappy! you have had countless champions; millions of manly
hearts mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up the fond
tradition of your beauty; we watch and follow your tragedy, your bright
morning love and purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyrdom.
We know your legend by heart. You are one of the saints of English story.
And if Stella’s love and innocence are charming to contemplate, I will say
that in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, in spite of mysterious
separation and union, of hope delayed and sickened heart—in the teeth of
Vanessa, and that little episodical aberration which plunged Swift into
such woful pitfalls and quagmires of amorous perplexity—in spite of the
verdicts of most women, I believe, who, as far as my experience and
conversation go, generally take Vanessa’s part in the controversy—in spite
of the tears which Swift caused Stella to shed, and the rocks and barriers
which fate and temper interposed, and which prevented the pure course of
that true love from running smoothly—the brightest part of Swift’s story,
the pure star in that dark and tempestuous life of Swift’s, is his love
for Hester Johnson. It has been my business, professionally of course, to
go through a deal of sentimental reading in my time, and to acquaint
myself with love-making, as it has been described in various languages,
and at various ages of the world; and I know of nothing more manly, more
tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these brief notes, written
in what Swift calls “his little language” in his journal to Stella.(50) He
writes to her night and morning often. He never sends away a letter to her
but he begins a new one on the same day. He can’t bear to let go her kind
little hand, as it were. He knows that she is thinking of him, and longing
for him far away in Dublin yonder. He takes her letters from under his
pillow and talks to them, familiarly, paternally, with fond epithets and
pretty caresses—as he would to the sweet and artless creature who loved
him. “Stay,” he writes one morning—it is the 14th of December, 1710—“stay,
I will answer some of your letter this morning in bed—let me see. Come and
appear, little letter! Here I am, says he, and what say you to Stella this
morning fresh and fasting? And can Stella read this writing without
hurting her dear eyes?” he goes on, after more kind prattle and fond
whispering. The dear eyes shine clearly upon him then—the good angel of
his life is with him and blessing him. Ah, it was a hard fate that wrung
from them so many tears, and stabbed pitilessly that pure and tender
bosom. A hard fate: but would she have changed it? I have heard a woman
say that she would have taken Swift’s cruelty to have had his tenderness.
He had a sort of worship for her whilst he wounded her. He speaks of her
after she is gone; of her wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of her
beauty, with a simple love and reverence that are indescribably touching;
in contemplation of her goodness his hard heart melts into pathos; his
cold rhyme kindles and glows into poetry, and he falls down on his knees,
so to speak, before the angel, whose life he had embittered, confesses his
own wretchedness and unworthiness, and adores her with cries of remorse
and love:—
When on my sickly couch I lay,
Impatient both of night and day,
And groaning in unmanly strains,
Called every power to ease my pains,
Then Stella ran to my relief,
With cheerful face and inward grief,
And though by Heaven’s severe decree
She suffers hourly more than me,
No cruel master could require
From slaves employed for daily hire,
What Stella, by her friendship warmed,
With vigour and delight performed.
Now, with a soft and silent tread,
Unheard she moves about my bed:
My sinking spirits now supplies
With cordials in her hands and eyes.
Best patron of true friends! beware;
You pay too dearly for your care
If, while your tenderness secures
My life, it must endanger yours:
For such a fool was never found
Who pulled a palace to the ground,
Only to have the ruins made
Materials for a house decayed.
One little triumph Stella had in her life—one dear little piece of
injustice was performed in her favour, for which I confess, for my part, I
can’t help thanking fate and the Dean. _That other person_ was sacrificed
to her—that—that young woman, who lived five doors from Dr. Swift’s
lodgings in Bury Street, and who flattered him, and made love to him in
such an outrageous manner—Vanessa was thrown over.
Swift did not keep Stella’s letters to him in reply to those he wrote to
her.(51) He kept Bolingbroke’s, and Pope’s, and Harley’s, and
Peterborough’s: but Stella, “very carefully,” the _Lives_ say, kept
Swift’s. Of course: that is the way of the world: and so we cannot tell
what her style was, or of what sort were the little letters which the
doctor placed there at night, and bade to appear from under his pillow of
a morning. But in Letter IV of that famous collection he describes his
lodging in Bury Street, where he has the first floor, a dining-room and
bedchamber, at eight shillings a week; and in Letter VI he says “he has
visited a lady just come to town”, whose name somehow is not mentioned;
and in Letter VIII he enters a query of Stella’s—“What do you mean ‘that
boards near me, that I dine with now and then?’ What the deuce! You know
whom I have dined with every day since I left you, better than I do.” Of
course she does. Of course Swift has not the slightest idea of what she
means. But in a few letters more it turns out that the doctor has been to
dine “gravely” with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh: then that he has been to “his
neighbour”: then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole
week with his neighbour! Stella was quite right in her previsions. She saw
from the very first hint what was going to happen; and scented Vanessa in
the air.(52) The rival is at the Dean’s feet. The pupil and teacher are
reading together, and drinking tea together, and going to prayers
together, and learning Latin together, and conjugating _amo_, _amas_,
_amavi_ together. The “little language” is over for poor Stella. By the
rule of grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn’t _amavi_ come after
_amo_ and _amas_?
The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa(53) you may peruse in Cadenus’s own poem
on the subject, and in poor Vanessa’s vehement expostulatory verses and
letters to him; she adores him, implores him, admires him, thinks him
something godlike, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet.(54)
As they are bringing him home from church, those divine feet of Dr.
Swift’s are found pretty often in Vannessa’s parlour. He likes to be
admired and adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh to be a woman of great taste
and spirit, and beauty and wit, and a fortune too. He sees her every day;
he does not tell Stella about the business: until the impetuous Vanessa
becomes too fond of him, until the doctor is quite frightened by the young
woman’s ardour, and confounded by her warmth. He wanted to marry neither
of them—that I believe was the truth; but if he had not married Stella,
Vanessa would have had him in spite of himself. When he went back to
Ireland, his Ariadne, not content to remain in her isle, pursued the
fugitive Dean. In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed, and bullied;
the news of the Dean’s marriage with Stella at last came to her, and it
killed her—she died of that passion.(55)
And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written beautifully
regarding her, “That doesn’t surprise me,” said Mrs. Stella, “for we all
know the Dean could write beautifully about a broomstick.” A woman—a true
woman! Would you have had one of them forgive the other?
In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke, of
Dublin, has a lock of Stella’s hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, on
which are written in the Dean’s hand, the words: “_Only a woman’s hair_.”
An instance, says Scott, of the Dean’s desire to veil his feelings under
the mask of cynical indifference.
See the various notions of critics! Do those words indicate indifference
or an attempt to hide feeling? Did you ever hear or read four words more
pathetic? Only a woman’s hair; only love, only fidelity, only purity,
innocence, beauty; only the tenderest heart in the world stricken and
wounded, and passed away now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love
insulted, and pitiless desertion:—only that lock of hair left; and memory
and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave of
his victim.
And yet to have had so much love, he must have given some. Treasures of
wit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, must that man have had locked up in
the caverns of his gloomy heart, and shown fitfully to one or two whom he
took in there. But it was not good to visit that place. People did not
remain there long, and suffered for having been there.(56) He shrank away
from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died near
him, and away from him. He had not heart enough to see them die. He broke
from his fastest friend, Sheridan; he slunk away from his fondest admirer,
Pope. His laugh jars on one’s ear after sevenscore years. He was always
alone—alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella’s sweet smile
came and shone upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closed
over him. An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he
seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling.
We have other great names to mention—none, I think, however, so great or
so gloomy.
Lecture The Second. Congreve And Addison
A great number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there
existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the “Union”; and I
remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who
frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the
Opposition and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating
Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of
being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman’s nominee. So Jones of
John’s, or Thomson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping
themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at
priests and kings, with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mirabeau,
fancying all the while that the great nobleman’s emissary was listening to
the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family
seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young
Cambridge men, orators of the Union, were actually caught up thence, and
carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a
young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the
dust behind the fervid wheels of the Parliamentary chariot.
Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of peers and Members of
Parliament in Anne’s and George’s time? Were they all in the army, or
hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? How was it that the young
gentlemen from the University got such a prodigious number of places? A
lad composed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinity, in which
the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the
Dutch or Prince Eugene complimented, or the reverse; and the party in
power was presently to provide for the young poet; and a commissionership,
or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an embassy, or a
clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard’s possession. A wonderful
fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby’s. What have men of letters got in
_our_ time? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or
empire—but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John
Dennis, and many others, who got public employment, and pretty little
pickings out of the public purse.(57) The wits of whose names we shall
treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the king’s
coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming
round for them.
They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing
panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public
events, battles, sieges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of
Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to
the fashion of the time in France and in England. “Aid us Mars, Bacchus,
Apollo,” cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough.
“_Accourez, chastes nymphes de Parnasse_,” says Boileau, celebrating the
Grand Monarch. “_Des sons que ma lyre enfante_, marquez-en bien la
cadence, _et vous, vents, faites silence! je vais parler de __ Louis!_”
Schoolboys’ themes and foundation exercises are the only relics left now
of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians are left quite undisturbed in
their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a
country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the
birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman? In the past
century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves
at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons
and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what
they were pleased to call their muses.
William Congreve’s(58) Pindaric Odes are still to be found in _Johnson’s
Poets_, that now unfrequented poets’ corner, in which so many forgotten
bigwigs have a niche—but though he was also voted to be one of the
greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve’s wit and humour which
first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded, that his
first play, the _Old Bachelor_, brought our author to the notice of that
great patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax, who being
desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity,
instantly made him one of the Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches,
bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe-office, and likewise a post
in the Custom-house of the value of 600_l._
A commissionership of hackney-coaches—a post in the Custom-house—a place
in the Pipe-office, and all for writing a comedy! Doesn’t it sound like a
fable, that place in the Pipe-office?(59) _Ah, l’heureux temps que celui
de ces fables!_ Men of letters there still be: but I doubt whether any
Pipe-offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago.
Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, and being known
everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society; so even the
most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase
from their sons or brothers at school, and will permit me to call William
Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary “swell” of his age. In my
copy of _Johnson’s Lives_ Congreve’s wig is the tallest, and put on with
the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. “I am the great Mr.
Congreve,” he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People
called him the great Mr. Congreve.(60) From the beginning of his career
until the end everybody admired him. Having got his education in Ireland,
at the same school and college with Swift, he came to live in the Middle
Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law; but
splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the
side-box, the tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and
victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The
great Mr. Dryden(61) declared that he was equal to Shakespeare, and
bequeathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him,
“Mr. Congreve has done me the favour to review the _Aeneis_, and compare
my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this
excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavoured to
correct.”
The “excellent young man” was but three- or four-and-twenty when the great
Dryden thus spoke of him: the greatest literary chief in England, the
veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe,
and the centre of a school of wits, who daily gathered round his chair and
tobacco-pipe at Will’s. Pope dedicated his _Iliad_ to him;(62) Swift,
Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve’s rank, and lavish compliments
upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as on one of the Representatives
of Literature—and the man who scarce praises any other living person, who
flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison—the Grub Street
Timon, old John Dennis,(63) was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve; and said,
that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him.
Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the drawing-rooms
as well as the coffee-houses; as much beloved in the side-box as on the
stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,(64)
the heroine of all his plays, the favourite of all the town of her day—and
the Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough’s daughter, had such an admiration
of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him,(65)
and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great
Congreve’s gouty feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some
money by his Pipe-office, and his Custom-house office, and his
Hackney-coach office, and nobly left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted
it,(66) but to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn’t.(67)
How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless Comic Muse who won him
such a reputation? Nell Gwynn’s servant fought the other footman for
having called his mistress a bad name; and in like manner, and with pretty
like epithets, Jeremy Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the
English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn’s man’s
fellow-servants called Nell Gwynn’s man’s mistress. The servants of the
theatre, Dryden, Congreve,(68) and others, defended themselves with the
same success, and for the same cause which set Nell’s lackey fighting. She
was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic
Muse. She came over from the Continent with Charles (who chose many more
of his female friends there) at the Restoration—a wild, dishevelled Laïs,
with eyes bright with wit and wine—a saucy court-favourite that sat at the
king’s knees, and laughed in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks
at her chariot-window, had some of the noblest and most famous people of
the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular enough, that
daring Comedy, that audacious poor Nell—she was gay and generous, kind,
frank, as such people can afford to be: and the men who lived with her and
laughed with her, took her pay and drank her wine, turned out when the
Puritans hooted her, to fight and defend her. But the jade was
indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servants knew it.
There is life and death going on in everything: truth and lies always at
battle. Pleasure is always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is always
crying Psha, and sneering. A man in life, a humourist in writing about
life, sways over to one principle or the other, and laughs with the
reverence for right and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these
from the other side. Didn’t I tell you that dancing was a serious business
to Harlequin? I have read two or three of Congreve’s plays over before
speaking of him; and my feelings were rather like those, which I daresay
most of us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust’s house and the
relics of an orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the
breast of a dancing girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of
a jester, a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs his
moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve muse is
dead, and her song choked in Time’s ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, and
wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad veins. We take the skull
up, and muse over the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope,
desire, with which that empty bowl once fermented. We think of the glances
that allured, the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that shone in
those vacant sockets; and of lips whispering love, and cheeks dimpling
with smiles, that once covered yon ghastly yellow framework. They used to
call those teeth pearls once. See! there’s the cup she drank from, the
gold chain she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her
cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she used to dance to. Instead of a
feast we find a gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few bones!
Reading in these plays now, is like shutting your ears and looking at
people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, the grimaces, the bowing,
shuffling and retreating, the _cavalier seul_ advancing upon those
ladies—those ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad galop,
after which everybody bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the
music we can’t understand that comic dance of the last century—its strange
gravity and gaiety, its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its
own quite unlike life; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too.
I’m afraid it’s a heathen mystery, symbolizing a Pagan doctrine;
protesting, as the Pompeians very likely were, assembled at their theatre
and laughing at their games—as Sallust and his friends, and their
mistresses protested—crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands,
against the new, hard, ascetic, pleasure-hating doctrine, whose gaunt
disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean,
were for breaking the fair images of Venus, and flinging the altars of
Bacchus down.
I fancy poor Congreve’s theatre is a temple of Pagan delights, and
mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries
down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons have carried their
secret signs and rites from temple to temple. When the libertine hero
carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for
having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to
gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying:
in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of
the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red
stockings, who is opportunely asleep; and when seduced by the invitations
of the rosy youth she comes forward to the footlights, and they perform on
each other’s tiptoes that _pas_ which you all know, and which is only
interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at the pasteboard
chalet (whither he returns to take another nap in case the young people
get an encore): when Harlequin, splendid in youth, strength, and agility,
arrayed in gold and a thousand colours, springs over the heads of
countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, and,
dauntless and splendid, dances danger down: when Mr. Punch, that godless
old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at it with odious triumph, outwits
his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the head, and hangs
the hangman—don’t you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the
ragged little Punch’s puppet-show—the Pagan protest? Doesn’t it seem as if
Life puts in its plea and sings its comment? Look how the lovers walk and
hold each other’s hands and whisper! Sings the chorus—“There is nothing
like love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of
your spring-time. Look! how old age tries to meddle with merry sport! Beat
him with his own crutch, the wrinkled old dotard! There is nothing like
youth, there is nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength.
Strength and valour win beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be young
and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! Would you know the _segreto per esser
felice_? Here it is, in a smiling mistress and a cup of Falernian.” As the
boy tosses the cup and sings his song—hark! what is that chaunt coming
nearer and nearer? What is that dirge which _will_ disturb us? The lights
of the festival burn dim—the cheeks turn pale—the voice quavers—and the
cup drops on the floor. Who’s there? Death and Fate are at the gate, and
they _will_ come in.
Congreve’s comic feast flares with lights, and round the table, emptying
their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and
ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants
as dissolute as their mistresses—perhaps the very worst company in the
world. There doesn’t seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the
table sits Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited on
by English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be
irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivalry
story, whose long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of
fashion, they are always splendid and triumphant—overcome all dangers,
vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands,
usurers are the foes these champions contend with. They are merciless in
old age, invariably, and an old man plays the part in the dramas, which
the wicked enchanter or the great blundering giant performs in the
chivalry tales, who threatens and grumbles and resists—a huge stupid
obstacle always overcome by the knight. It is an old man with a money-box:
Sir Belmour his son or nephew spends his money and laughs at him. It is an
old man with a young wife whom he locks up: Sir Mirabel robs him of his
wife, trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the old hunx—the old fool,
what business has he to hoard his money, or to lock up blushing eighteen?
Money is for youth, love is for youth; away with the old people. When
Millamant is sixty, having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant,
and married his friend Doricourt’s granddaughter out of the nursery—it
will be his turn; and young Belmour will make a fool of him. All this
pretty morality you have in the comedies of William Congreve, Esq. They
are full of wit. Such manners as he observes, he observes with great
humour; but ah! it’s a weary feast that banquet of wit where no love is.
It palls very soon; sad indigestions follow it and lonely blank headaches
in the morning.
I can’t pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Congreve’s
plays(69)—which are undeniably bright, witty, and daring—any more than I
could ask you to hear the dialogue of a witty bargeman and a brilliant
fishwoman exchanging compliments at Billingsgate; but some of his
verses—they were amongst the most famous lyrics of the time, and
pronounced equal to Horace by his contemporaries—may give an idea of his
power, of his grace, of his daring manner, his magnificence in compliment,
and his polished sarcasm. He writes as if he was so accustomed to conquer,
that he has a poor opinion of his victims. Nothing’s new except their
faces, says he: “every woman is the same.” He says this in his first
comedy, which he wrote languidly(70) in illness, when he was an “excellent
young man”. Richelieu at eighty could have hardly said a more excellent
thing.
When he advances to make one of his conquests it is with a splendid
gallantry, in full uniform and with the fiddles playing, like Grammont’s
French dandies attacking the breach of Lerida.
“Cease, cease to ask her name,” he writes of a young lady at the Wells at
Tunbridge, whom he salutes with a magnificent compliment—
Cease, cease to ask her name,
The crowned Muse’s noblest theme,
Whose glory by immortal fame
Shall only sounded be.
But if you long to know,
Then look round yonder dazzling row,
Who most does like an angel show
You may be sure ’tis she.
Here are lines about another beauty, who perhaps was not so well pleased
at the poet’s manner of celebrating her—
When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair,
With eyes so bright and with that awful air,
I thought my heart would durst so high aspire
As bold as his who snatched celestial fire.
But soon as e’er the beauteous idiot spoke,
Forth from her coral lips such folly broke;
Like balm the trickling nonsense heal’d my wound,
And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound.
Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the poet does not
seem to respect one much more than the other; and describes both with
exquisite satirical humour—
Fair Amoret is gone astray,
Pursue and seek her every lover;
I’ll tell the signs by which you may
The wandering shepherdess discover.
Coquet and coy at once her air,
Both studied, though both seem neglected;
Careless she is with artful care,
Affecting to be unaffected.
With skill her eyes dart every glance,
Yet change so soon you’d ne’er suspect them;
For she’d persuade they wound by chance,
Though certain aim and art direct them.
She likes herself, yet others hates
For that which in herself she prizes;
And, while she laughs at them, forgets
She is the thing which she despises.
What could Amoret have done to bring down such shafts of ridicule upon
her? Could she have resisted the irresistible Mr. Congreve? Could anybody?
Could Sabina, when she woke and heard such a bard singing under her
window. See, he writes—
See! see, she wakes—Sabina wakes!
And now the sun begins to rise:
Less glorious is the morn, that breaks
From his bright beams, than her fair eyes.
With light united day they give;
But different fates ere night fulfil:
How many by his warmth will live!
How many will her coldness kill!
Are you melted? Don’t you think him a divine man? If not touched by the
brilliant Sabina, hear the devout Selinda:—
Pious Selinda goes to prayers,
If I but ask her favour;
And yet the silly fool’s in tears,
If she believes I’ll leave her:
Would I were free from this restraint,
Or else had hopes to win her:
Would she could make of me a saint,
Or I of her a sinner!
What a conquering air there is about these! What an irresistible Mr.
Congreve it is! Sinner! of course he will be a sinner, the delightful
rascal! Win her; of course he will win her, the victorious rogue! He knows
he will: he must—with such a grace, with such a fashion, with such a
splendid embroidered suit—you see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously
turned out, passing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled periwig,
and delivering a killing ogle along with his scented billet. And Sabina?
What a comparison that is between the nymph and the sun! The sun gives
Sabina the _pas_, and does not venture to rise before her ladyship: the
morn’s _bright beams_ are less glorious than her _fair eyes_: but before
night everybody will be frozen by her glances: everybody but one lucky
rogue who shall be nameless: Louis Quatorze in all his glory is hardly
more splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of the Mall and Spring Garden.(71)
When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter rather affected
to despise his literary reputation, and in this perhaps the great Congreve
was not far wrong.(72) A touch of Steele’s tenderness is worth all his
finery—a flash of Swift’s lightning—a beam of Addison’s pure sunshine, and
his tawdry play-house taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he
was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.(73)
We have seen in Swift a humorous philosopher, whose truth frightens one,
and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have had in Congreve a
humorous observer of another school, to whom the world seems to have no
moral at all, and whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat,
drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce)
when the time comes. We come now to a humour that flows from quite a
different heart and spirit—a wit that makes us laugh and leaves us good
and happy; to one of the kindest benefactors that society has ever had,
and I believe you have divined already that I am about to mention
Addison’s honoured name.
From reading over his writings, and the biographies which we have of him,
amongst which the famous article in the _Edinburgh Review_(74) may be
cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer and moralist of the last
age, raised by the love and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the
most illustrious artists of our own; looking at that calm, fair face, and
clear countenance—those chiselled features pure and cold, I can’t but
fancy that this great man, in this respect, like him of whom we spoke in
the last lecture, was also one of the lonely ones of the world. Such men
have very few equals, and they don’t herd with those. It is in the nature
of such lords of intellect to be solitary—they are in the world but not of
it; and our minor struggles, brawls, successes, pass under them.
Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried beyond easy
endurance, his affections not much used, for his books were his family,
and his society was in public; admirably wiser, wittier, calmer, and more
instructed than almost every man with whom he met, how could Addison
suffer, desire, admire, feel much? I may expect a child to admire me for
being taller or writing more cleverly than she; but how can I ask my
superior to say that I am a wonder when he knows better than I? In
Addison’s days you could scarcely show him a literary performance, a
sermon, or a poem, or a piece of literary criticism, but he felt he could
do better. His justice must have made him indifferent. He didn’t praise,
because he measured his compeers by a higher standard than common people
have.(75) How was he who was so tall to look up to any but the loftiest
genius? He must have stooped to put himself on a level with most men. By
that profusion of graciousness and smiles, with which Goethe or Scott, for
instance, greeted almost every literary beginner, every small literary
adventurer who came to his court and went away charmed from the great
king’s audience, and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his
literary majesty had paid him—each of the two good-natured potentates of
letters brought their star and ribbon into discredit. Everybody had his
majesty’s orders. Everybody had his Majesty’s cheap portrait, on a box
surrounded with diamonds worth twopence a-piece. A very great and just and
wise man ought not to praise indiscriminately, but give his idea of the
truth. Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Pinkethman: Addison praises the
ingenious Mr. Doggett the actor, whose benefit is coming off that night:
Addison praises Don Saltero: Addison praises Milton with all his heart,
bends his knee and frankly pays homage to that imperial genius.(76) But
between those degrees of his men his praise is very scanty. I don’t think
the great Mr. Addison liked young Mr. Pope, the Papist, much; I don’t
think he abused him. But when Mr. Addison’s men abused Mr. Pope, I don’t
think Addison took his pipe out of his mouth to contradict them.(77)
Addison’s father was a clergyman of good repute in Wiltshire, and rose in
the Church.(78) His famous son never lost his clerical training and
scholastic gravity, and was called “a parson in a tye-wig”(79) in London
afterwards at a time when tye-wigs were only worn by the laity, and the
fathers of theology did not think it decent to appear except in a full
bottom. Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687,
when he was fifteen years old he went to Queen’s College, Oxford, where he
speedily began to distinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The
beautiful and fanciful poem of _The Pigmies and the Cranes_ is still read
by lovers of that sort of exercise; and verses are extant in honour of
King William, by which it appears that it was the loyal youth’s custom to
toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyaeus; and many more works are
in the collection, including one on the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which
was so good that Montague got him a pension of 300_l._ a year, on which
Addison set out on his travels.
During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued himself with the
Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers’ ends when
he travelled in Italy.(80) His patron went out of office, and his pension
was unpaid: and hearing that this great scholar, now eminent and known to
the _literati_ of Europe (the great Boileau,(81) upon perusal of Mr.
Addison’s elegant hexameters, was first made aware that England was not
altogether a barbarous nation)—hearing that the celebrated Mr. Addison, of
Oxford, proposed to travel as governor to a young gentleman on the grand
tour, the great Duke of Somerset proposed to Mr. Addison to accompany his
son, Lord Hartford.
Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his grace and his lordship, his
grace’s son, and expressed himself ready to set forth.
His grace the Duke of Somerset now announced to one of the most famous
scholars of Oxford and Europe that it was his gracious intention to allow
my Lord Hartford’s tutor one hundred guineas per annum. Mr. Addison wrote
back that his services were his grace’s, but he by no means found his
account in the recompense for them. The negotiation was broken off. They
parted with a profusion of _congees_ on one side and the other.
Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best society of
Europe. How could he do otherwise? He must have been one of the finest
gentlemen the world ever saw: at all moments of life serene and courteous,
cheerful and calm.(82) He could scarcely ever have had a degrading
thought. He might have omitted a virtue or two, or many, but could not
have had many faults committed for which he need blush or turn pale. When
warmed into confidence, his conversation appears to have been so
delightful that the greatest wits sat wrapt and charmed to listen to him.
No man bore poverty and narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerfulness. His
letters to his friends at this period of his life, when he had lost his
Government pension and given up his college chances, are full of courage
and a gay confidence and philosophy: and they are none the worse in my
eyes, and I hope not in those of his last and greatest biographer (though
Mr. Macaulay is bound to own and lament a certain weakness for wine, which
the great and good Joseph Addison notoriously possessed, in common with
countless gentlemen of his time), because some of the letters are written
when his honest hand was shaking a little in the morning after libations
to purple Lyaeus overnight. He was fond of drinking the healths of his
friends: he writes to Wyche,(83) of Hamburgh, gratefully remembering
Wyche’s “hoc”. “I have been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard
Shirley,” he writes to Bathurst. “I have lately had the honour to meet my
Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have drunk Mr. Wood’s health a
hundred times in excellent champagne,” he writes again. Swift(84)
describes him over his cups, when Joseph yielded to a temptation which
Jonathan resisted. Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the
fire of wine to warm his blood. If he was a parson, he wore a tye-wig,
recollect. A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than
Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine—why, we could
scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have liked him as we
do.(85)
At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, scholar, and
gentleman was without a profession and an income. His book of _Travels_
had failed: his _Dialogues on Medals_ had had no particular success: his
Latin verses, even though reported the best since Virgil, or Statius at
any rate, had not brought him a Government place, and Addison was living
up two shabby pair of stairs in the Haymarket (in a poverty over which old
Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when in these shabby rooms an emissary
from Government and Fortune came and found him.(86)
A poem was wanted about the Duke of Marlborough’s victory of Blenheim.
Would Mr. Addison write one? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton, took
back the reply to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, that Mr. Addison would.
When the poem had reached a certain stage, it was carried to Godolphin;
and the last lines which he read were these:
But O my muse! what numbers wilt thou find
To sing the furious troops in battle join’d?
Methinks I hear the drum’s tumultuous sound,
The victors’ shouts and dying groans confound;
The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies,
And all the thunders of the battle rise.
’Twas then great Marlborough’s mighty soul was proved,
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved,
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,
Examined all the dreadful scenes of war:
In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed,
To fainting squadrons lent the timely aid,
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.
So when an angel by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land
(Such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed),
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased the Almighty’s orders to perform,
Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm.
Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was pronounced to be of the
greatest ever produced in poetry. That angel, that good angel, flew off
with Mr. Addison, and landed him in the place of Commissioner of
Appeals—vice Mr. Locke providentially promoted. In the following year, Mr.
Addison went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the year after was made
Under-Secretary of State. O angel visits! you come “few and far between”
to literary gentlemen’s lodgings! Your wings seldom quiver at second-floor
windows now!
You laugh? You think it is in the power of few writers nowadays to call up
such an angel? Well, perhaps not; but permit us to comfort ourselves by
pointing out that there are in the poem of the _Campaign_ some as bad
lines as heart can desire: and to hint that Mr. Addison did very wisely in
not going further with my Lord Godolphin than that angelical simile. Do
allow me, just for a little harmless mischief, to read you some of the
lines which follow. Here is the interview between the Duke and the King of
the Romans after the battle:—
Austria’s young monarch, whose imperial sway
Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey,
Whose boasted ancestry so high extends
That in the pagan gods his lineage ends,
Comes from afar, in gratitude to own
The great supporter of his father’s throne.
What tides of glory to his bosom ran
Clasped in th’ embraces of the godlike man!
How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixt,
To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt!
Such easy greatness, such a graceful port,
So learned and finished for the camp or court!
How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison’s school of Charterhouse could
write as well as that now? The _Campaign_ has blunders, triumphant as it
was; and weak points like all campaigns.(87)
In the year 1718 _Cato_ came out. Swift has left a description of the
first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe were scarcely
sufficient for the author of this prodigious poem.(88) Laudations of Whig
and Tory chiefs, popular ovations, complimentary garlands from literary
men, translations in all languages, delight and homage from all—save from
John Dennis in a minority of one—Mr. Addison was called the “great Mr.
Addison” after this. The Coffee-house Senate saluted him Divus: it was
heresy to question that decree.
Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in the political
profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was appointed Secretary of
State in 1717. And letters of his are extant, bearing date some year or
two before, and written to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him
as “my dearest lord”, and asks affectionately about his studies, and
writes very prettily about nightingales, and birds’-nests, which he has
found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightingales were intended to
warble in the ear of Lord Warwick’s mamma. Addison married her ladyship in
1716; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid but dismal
union.(89)
But it is not for his reputation as the great author of _Cato_ and the
_Campaign_, or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and
high distinction as my Lady Warwick’s husband, or for his eminence as an
Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British
liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk
and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much
pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that
artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came,
the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated
only in smiling. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless—a literary
Jeffries—in Addison’s kind court only minor cases were tried: only
peccadilloes and small sins against society: only a dangerous libertinism
in tuckers and hoops;(90) or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux’ canes and
snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our
sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerously from the side-box:
or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian’s head: or a
citizen’s wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for
her husband and children: every one of the little sinners brought before
him is amusing, and he dismisses each with the pleasantest penalties and
the most charming words of admonition.
Addison wrote his papers as gaily as if he was going out for a holiday.
When Steele’s _Tatler_ first began his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland,
caught at his friend’s notion, poured in paper after paper, and
contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the
delightful gleanings of his daily observation, with a wonderful profusion,
and as it seemed an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years
old: full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain,
manuring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting
again, like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as
yet; a few Latin poems—graceful prolusions; a polite book of travels; a
dissertation on medals, not very deep; four acts of a tragedy, a great
classical exercise; and the _Campaign_, a large prize poem that won an
enormous prize. But with his friend’s discovery of the _Tatler_, Addison’s
calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to
speak. He does not go very deep: let gentlemen of a profound genius,
critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by
thinking that he _couldn’t_ go very deep. There are no traces of suffering
in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully
selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt,
until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night’s rest
or his day’s tranquillity about any woman in his life:(91) whereas poor
Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and
to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show
insight into or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one
the consequence of the other. He walks about the world watching their
pretty humours, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries; and noting them
with the most charming archness. He sees them in public, in the theatre,
or the assembly, or the puppet-show; or at the toy-shop higgling for
gloves and lace; or at the auction, battling together over a blue
porcelain dragon, or a darling monster in japan; or at church, eyeing the
width of their rivals’ hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep
down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the “Garter” in St.
James’s Street, at Ardelia’s coach, as she blazes to the Drawing-room with
her coronet and six footmen; and remembering that her father was a Turkey
merchant in the City, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her
ear-ring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box; or he
demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he
knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir
Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women. Addison was one
of the most resolute club-men of his day. He passed many hours daily in
those haunts. Besides drinking, which, alas! is past praying for; you must
know it, he owned, too, ladies that he indulged in that odious practice of
smoking. Poor fellow! He was a man’s man, remember. The only woman he
_did_ know, he didn’t write about. I take it there would not have been
much humour in that story.
He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the Grecian, or the Devil;
to pace “Change and the Mall”(92)—to mingle in that great club of the
world—sitting alone in it somehow: having goodwill and kindness for every
single man and woman in it—having need of some habit and custom binding
him to some few; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint
a little doubt about a man’s parts, and to damn him with faint praise);
and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humours of all
of us—laughs the kindest laugh—points our neighbour’s foible or
eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured, smiling confidence; and
then, turning over his shoulder, whispers _our_ foibles to our neighbour.
What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charming
little brain-cracks?(93) If the good knight did not call out to the people
sleeping in church, and say “Amen” with such a delightful pomposity: if he
did not make a speech in the assize-court _à propos de bottes_, and merely
to show his dignity to Mr. Spectator:(94) if he did not mistake Madam Doll
Tearsheet for a lady of quality in Temple Garden: if he were wiser than he
is: if he had not his humour to salt his life, and were but a mere English
gentleman and game-preserver—of what worth were he to us? We love him for
his vanities as much as his virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in
him: we are so fond of him because we laugh at him so. And out of that
laughter, and out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless
eccentricities and follies, and out of that touched brain, and out of that
honest manhood and simplicity—we get a result of happiness, goodness,
tenderness, pity, piety; such as, if my audience will think their reading
and hearing over, doctors and divines but seldom have the fortune to
inspire. And why not? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen
in black coats? Must the truth be only expounded in gown and surplice, and
out of those two vestments can nobody preach it? Commend me to this dear
preacher without orders—this parson in the tye-wig. When this man looks
from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up to the
Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted
up with a more serene rapture: a human intellect thrilling with a purer
love and adoration than Joseph Addison’s. Listen to him: from your
childhood you have known the verses: but who can hear their sacred music
without love and awe?
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth,
Repeats the story of her birth;
And all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though, in solemn silence, all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball;
What though no real voice nor sound,
Among their radiant orbs be found;
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
For ever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is divine.
It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. They shine out of a
great deep calm. When he turns to Heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man’s
mind: and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and prayer.
His sense of religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the
town: looking at the birds in the trees: at the children in the streets:
in the morning or in the moonlight: over his books in his own room: in a
happy party at a country merry-making or a town assembly, goodwill and
peace to God’s creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his
pure heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift’s life was the most
wretched, I think Addison’s was one of the most enviable. A life
prosperous and beautiful—a calm death—an immense fame and affection
afterwards for his happy and spotless name.(95)
Lecture The Third. Steele
What do we look for in studying the history of a past age? Is it to learn
the political transactions and characters of the leading public men? Is it
to make ourselves acquainted with the life and being of the time? If we
set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who
believes that he has it entire? What character of what great man is known
to you? You can but make guesses as to character more or less happy. In
common life don’t you often judge and misjudge a man’s whole conduct,
setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in
joke, or a trifle in behaviour—the cut of his hair or the tie of his
neckcloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or
at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says
something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which
alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on
quite a different motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is
so with those you know, how much more with those you don’t know? Say, for
example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of
Marlborough. I read Swift’s history of the times in which he took a part;
the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the
politics of the age—he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even
of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible
boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the
Queen’s latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the
Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough’s life by a copious archdeacon, who
has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called
the best information; and I get little or no insight into this secret
motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough’s career,
which caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and
treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him finally on
the Hanoverian side—the winning side; I get, I say, no truth, or only a
portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe’s
portrait or Swift’s portrait is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take
this as a single instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other,
and say to the Muse of History, “O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I
doubt every single statement you ever made since your ladyship was a Muse!
For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more
trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look
down. You bid me listen to a general’s oration to his soldiers: Nonsense!
He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You
pronounce a panegyric of a hero: I doubt it, and say you flatter
outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character: I doubt it,
and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me
an autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read except those,
perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class.
_These_ have no object in setting themselves right with the public or
their own consciences; these have no motive for concealment or
half-truths; these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully give,
and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I
take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the _Spectator_, and say
the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume
which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book I get the
expression of the life of the time; of the manners, of the movement, the
dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times
live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest
historian do more for me?”
As we read in these delightful volumes of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_,
the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. The
Maypole rises in the Strand again in London; the churches are thronged
with daily worshippers; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses; the
gentry are going to the Drawing-room; the ladies are thronging to the
toy-shops; the chairmen are jostling in the streets; the footmen are
running with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre
doors. In the country I see the young Squire riding to Eton with his
servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him
safe. To make that journey from the Squire’s and back, Will is a week on
horseback. The coach takes five days between London and Bath. The judges
and the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her
post-chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain
Macheath if he should appear, and her couriers ride ahead to prepare
apartments for her at the great caravanserais on the road; Boniface
receives her under the creaking sign of the “Bell” or the “Ram”, and he
and his chamberlains bow her up the great stair to the state-apartments,
whilst her carriage rumbles into the courtyard, where the Exeter “Fly” is
housed that performs the journey in eight days, God willing, having
achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its passengers for
supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe in the kitchen, where the
Captain’s man—having hung up his master’s half-pike—is at his bacon and
eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet to the townsfolk, who have
their club in the chimney-corner. The Captain is ogling the chambermaid in
the wooden gallery, or bribing her to know who is the pretty young
mistress that has come in the coach? The pack-horses are in the great
stable, and the drivers and ostlers carousing in the tap. And in Mrs.
Landlady’s bar, over a glass of strong waters, sits a gentleman of
military appearance, who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the
world does, and has a rattling grey mare in the stables which will be
saddled and away with its owner half an hour before the “Fly” sets out on
its last day’s flight. And some five miles on the road, as the Exeter
“Fly” comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will suddenly be brought to
a halt by a gentleman on a grey mare, with a black vizard on his face, who
thrusts a long pistol into the coach window, and bids the company to hand
out their purses.... It must have been no small pleasure even to sit in
the great kitchen in those days, and see the tide of humankind pass by. We
arrive at places now, but we travel no more. Addison talks jocularly of a
difference of manner and costume being quite perceivable at Staines, where
there passed a young fellow “with a very tolerable periwig”, though, to be
sure, his hat was out of fashion, and had a Ramillies cock. I would have
liked to travel in those days (being of that class of travellers who are
proverbially pretty easy _coram latronibus_) and have seen my friend with
the grey mare and the black vizard. Alas! there always came a day in the
life of that warrior when it was the fashion to accompany him as he
passed—without his black mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, accompanied
by halberdiers and attended by the sheriff,—in a carriage without springs,
and a clergyman jolting beside him to a spot close by Cumberland Gate and
the Marble Arch, where a stone still records that here Tyburn turnpike
stood. What a change in a century; in a few years! Within a few yards of
that gate the fields began: the fields of his exploits, behind the hedges
of which he lurked and robbed. A great and wealthy city has grown over
those meadows. Were a man brought to die there now, the windows would be
closed and the inhabitants keep their houses in sickening horror. A
hundred years back, people crowded to see that last act of a highwayman’s
life, and make jokes on it. Swift laughed at him, grimly advising him to
provide a Holland shirt and white cap crowned with a crimson or black
ribbon for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully—shake hands with the
hangman, and so—farewell. Gay wrote the most delightful ballads, and made
merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the writings of our present
humourists! Compare those morals and ours—those manners and ours!
We can’t tell—you would not bear to be told the whole truth regarding
those men and manners. You could no more suffer in a British drawing-room,
under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lady of Queen
Anne’s time, or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an
ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one contemplates
the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific pastimes, of the men of
pleasure of that age. We have our fine gentlemen, and our “fast men”;
permit me to give you an idea of one particularly fast nobleman of Queen
Anne’s days, whose biography has been preserved to us by the law
reporters.
In 1691, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun was tried by his
peers for the murder of William Mountford, comedian. In Howell’s _State
Trials_, the reader will find not only an edifying account of this
exceedingly fast nobleman, but of the times and manners of those days. My
lord’s friend, a Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful
Mrs. Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, determined to
carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney-coach with six horses,
and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid him in the storm. The coach with a
pair of horses (the four leaders being in waiting elsewhere) took its
station opposite my Lord Craven’s house in Drury Lane, by which door Mrs.
Bracegirdle was to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed in
company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the Captain seized her by the
hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page and attacked him sword in hand, and
Captain Hill and his noble friend endeavoured to force Madam Bracegirdle
into the coach. Mr. Page called for help: the population of Drury Lane
rose: it was impossible to effect the capture; and bidding the soldiers go
about their business, and the coach to drive off, Hill let go of his prey
sulkily, and he waited for other opportunities of revenge. The man of whom
he was most jealous was Will Mountford, the comedian; Will removed, he
thought Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his: and accordingly the Captain and his
lordship lay that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming out of a
house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk, Hill, in the
words of the Attorney-General, made a pass and run him clean through the
body.
Sixty-one of my lord’s peers finding him not guilty of murder, while but
fourteen found him guilty, this very fast nobleman was discharged: and
made his appearance seven years after in another trial for murder—when he,
my Lord Warwick, and three gentlemen of the military profession were
concerned in the fight which ended in the death of Captain Coote.
This jolly company were drinking together at Lockit’s in Charing Cross,
when angry words arose between Captain Coote and Captain French; whom my
Lord Mohun and my lord the Earl of Warwick(96) and Holland endeavoured to
pacify. My Lord Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him a
hundred pounds to buy his commission in the Guards; once when the captain
was arrested for 13_l_. by his tailor, my lord lent him five guineas,
often paid his reckoning for him, and showed him other offices of
friendship. On this evening the disputants, French and Coote, being
separated whilst they were upstairs, unluckily stopped to drink ale again
at the bar of Lockit’s. The row began afresh—Coote lunged at French over
the bar, and at last all six called for chairs, and went to Leicester
Fields, where they fell to. Their lordships engaged on the side of Captain
Coote. My Lord of Warwick was severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French
also was stabbed, but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds—one
especially, “a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, and
piercing through the diaphragma,” which did for Captain Coote. Hence the
trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun: hence the assemblage of peers, the
report of the transaction, in which these defunct fast men still live for
the observation of the curious. My Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar
by the Deputy Governor of the Tower of London, having the axe carried
before him by the gentleman gaoler, who stood with it at the bar at the
right hand of the prisoner, turning the edge from him; the prisoner, at
his approach, making three bows, one to his grace the Lord High Steward,
the other to the peers on each hand; and his grace and the peers return
the salute. And besides these great personages, august in periwigs, and
nodding to the right and left, a host of the small come up out of the past
and pass before us—the jolly captains brawling in the tavern, and laughing
and cursing over their cups—the drawer that serves, the bar-girl that
waits, the bailiff on the prowl, the chairmen trudging through the black
lampless streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords
are clashing in the garden within. “Help there! a gentleman is hurt”: the
chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentleman over the railings, and
carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to the bagnio in Long Acre, where they
knock up the surgeon—a pretty tall gentleman—but that wound under the
short ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen,
and gentleman gaoler with your axe, where be you now? The gentleman
axeman’s head is off his own shoulders; the lords and judges can wag
theirs no longer; the bailiff’s writs have ceased to run; the honest
chairmen’s pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have
walked away into Hades—all as irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or
Captain Coote. The subject of our night’s lecture saw all these
people—rode in Captain Coote’s company of the Guards very probably—wrote
and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in many a chair, after many a
bottle, in many a tavern—fled from many a bailiff.
In 1709, when the publication of the _Tatler_ began, our
great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and delightful
paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light literature in a later
day exhibited when the Waverley novels appeared, upon which the public
rushed, forsaking that feeble entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the
Anne of Swanseas, and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe herself, with her dreary
castles and exploded old ghosts, had had pretty much the monopoly. I have
looked over many of the comic books with which our ancestors amused
themselves, from the novels of Swift’s coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the
delectable author of the _New Atlantis_, to the facetious productions of
Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the _London Spy_ and
several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and
ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago
of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection
at the British Museum, you may see, besides the _Craftsman_ and _Post
Boy_, specimens, and queer specimens they are, of the higher literature of
Queen Anne’s time. Here is an abstract from a notable journal bearing
date, Wednesday, October 13th, 1708, and entitled _The British Apollo; or,
Curious Amusements for the Ingenious, by a Society of Gentlemen_. The
_British Apollo_ invited and professed to answer questions upon all
subjects of wit, morality, science, and even religion; and two out of its
four pages are filled with queries and replies much like some of the
oracular penny prints of the present time.
One of the first querists, referring to the passage that a bishop should
be the husband of one wife, argues that polygamy is justifiable in the
laity. The society of gentlemen conducting the _British Apollo_ are posed
by this casuist, and promise to give him an answer. Celinda then wishes to
know from “the gentlemen”, concerning the souls of the dead, whether they
shall have the satisfaction to know those whom they most valued in this
transitory life. The gentlemen of the _Apollo_ give but cold comfort to
poor Celinda. They are inclined to think not: for, say they, since every
inhabitant of those regions will be infinitely dearer than here are our
nearest relatives—what have we to do with a partial friendship in that
happy place? Poor Celinda! it may have been a child or a lover whom she
had lost, and was pining after, when the oracle of _British Apollo_ gave
her this dismal answer. She has solved the question for herself by this
time, and knows quite as well as the society of gentlemen.
From theology we come to physics, and Q. asks, “Why does hot water freeze
sooner than cold?” Apollo replies, “Hot water cannot be said to freeze
sooner than cold, but water once heated and cold, may be subject to freeze
by the evaporation of the spirituous parts of the water, which renders it
less able to withstand the power of frosty weather.”
The next query is rather a delicate one. “You, Mr. Apollo, who are said to
be the God of Wisdom, pray give us the reason why kissing is so much in
fashion: what benefit one receives by it, and who was the inventor, and
you will oblige Corinna.” To this queer demand the lips of Phoebus,
smiling, answer: “Pretty, innocent Corinna! Apollo owns that he was a
little surprised by your kissing question, particularly at that part of it
where you desire to know the benefit you receive by it. Ah! madam, had you
a lover, you would not come to Apollo for a solution; since there is no
dispute but the kisses of mutual lovers give infinite satisfaction. As to
its invention, ’tis certain nature was its author, and it began with the
first courtship.”
After a column more of questions, follow nearly two pages of poems, signed
by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and chiefly on the tender passion;
and the paper wound up with a letter from Leghorn, an account of the Duke
of Marlborough and Prince Eugene before Lille, and proposals for
publishing two sheets on the present state of Aethiopia, by Mr. Hill; all
of which is printed for the authors by J. Mayo, at the Printing Press
against Water Lane in Fleet Street. What a change it must have been—how
Apollo’s oracles must have been struck dumb, when the _Tatler_ appeared,
and scholars, gentlemen, men of the world, men of genius, began to speak!
Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had begun to make
acquaintance with English Court manners and English servitude, in Sir
William Temple’s family, another Irish youth was brought to learn his
humanities at the old school of Charterhouse, near Smithfield; to which
foundation he had been appointed by James Duke of Ormond, a governor of
the House, and a patron of the lad’s family. The boy was an orphan, and
described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, some of
the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be chequered by
a strange variety of good and evil fortune.
I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters and ushers of
that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy.
He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times.
Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his
lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him
to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the flogging
block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have myself inspected, but
only as an amateur, that instrument of righteous torture still existing,
and in occasional use, in a secluded private apartment of the old
Charterhouse School; and have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not
the ancient and interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele
submitted himself to the tormentors.
Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went invariably
into debt with the tart-woman; ran out of bounds, and entered into
pecuniary, or rather promissory, engagements with the neighbouring
lollipop-vendors and piemen—exhibited an early fondness and capacity for
drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to
lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements here made of Steele’s
early life; but if the child is father of the man, the father of young
Steele of Merton, who left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered the
Life Guards—the father of Captain Steele of Lucas’s Fusiliers, who got his
company through the patronage of my Lord Cutts—the father of Mr. Steele
the Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of the _Gazette_, the _Tatler_, and
_Spectator_, the expelled Member of Parliament, and the author of the
_Tender Husband_ and the _Conscious Lovers_; if man and boy resembled each
other, Dick Steele the schoolboy must have been one of the most generous,
good-for-nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb
_tupto_, I beat, _tuptomai_, I am whipped, in any school in Great Britain.
Almost every gentleman who does me the honour to hear me will remember
that the very greatest character which he has seen in the course of his
life, and the person to whom he has looked up with the greatest wonder and
reverence, was the head boy at his school. The schoolmaster himself hardly
inspires such an awe. The head boy construes as well as the schoolmaster
himself. When he begins to speak the hall is hushed, and every little boy
listens. He writes off copies of Latin verses as melodiously as Virgil. He
is good-natured, and, his own masterpieces achieved, pours out other
copies of verses for other boys with an astonishing ease and fluency; the
idle ones only trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in their
exercises, and whipped because their poems were too good. I have seen
great men in my time, but never such a great one as that head boy of my
childhood: we all thought he must be Prime Minister, and I was
disappointed on meeting him in after-life to find he was no more than six
feet high.
Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an admiration in
the years of his childhood, and retained it faithfully through his life.
Through the school and through the world, whithersoever his strange
fortune led this erring, wayward, affectionate creature, Joseph Addison
was always his head boy. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison did his best
themes. He ran on Addison’s messages: fagged for him and blacked his
shoes: to be in Joe’s company was Dick’s greatest pleasure; and he took a
sermon or a caning from his monitor with the most boundless reverence,
acquiescence, and affection.(97)
Steele found Addison a stately college Don at Oxford, and himself did not
make much figure at this place. He wrote a comedy, which, by the advice of
a friend, the humble fellow burned there; and some verses, which I dare
say are as sublime as other gentlemen’s composition at that age; but being
smitten with a sudden love for military glory, he threw up the cap and
gown for the saddle and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse Guards, in
the Duke of Ormond’s troop—the second—and, probably, with the rest of the
gentlemen of his troop, “all mounted on black horses with white feathers
in their hats, and scarlet coats richly laced,” marched by King William,
in Hyde Park, in November, 1699, and a great show of the nobility, besides
twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. “The Guards had just
got their new clothes,” the _London Post_ said: “they are extraordinary
grand, and thought to be the finest body of horse in the world.” But
Steele could hardly have seen any actual service. He who wrote about
himself, his mother, his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the
wine he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. His
old patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the Guards, from
which he was promoted to be a captain in Lucas’s Fusiliers, getting his
company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, whose secretary he was, and
to whom he dedicated his work called the _Christian Hero_. As for Dick,
whilst writing this ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink,
and in all the follies of the town; it is related that all the officers of
Lucas’s, and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at Dick.(98) And in
truth a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, and a hermit,
though he may be out at elbows, must not be in debt to the tailor. Steele
says of himself that he was always sinning and repenting. He beat his
breast and cried most piteously when he _did_ repent: but as soon as
crying had made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. In that charming
paper in the _Tatler_, in which he records his father’s death, his
mother’s griefs, his own most solemn and tender emotions, he says he is
interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, “the same as is to be sold
at Garraway’s, next week,” upon the receipt of which he sends for three
friends, and they fall to instantly, “drinking two bottles apiece, with
great benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o’clock in the
morning.”
His life was so. Jack the drawer was always interrupting it, bringing him
a bottle from the “Rose”, or inviting him over to a bout there with Sir
Plume and Mr. Diver; and Dick wiped his eyes, which were whimpering over
his papers, took down his laced hat, put on his sword and wig, kissed his
wife and children, told them a lie about pressing business, and went off
to the “Rose” to the jolly fellows.
While Mr. Addison was abroad, and after he came home in rather a dismal
way to wait upon Providence in his shabby lodging in the Haymarket, young
Captain Steele was cutting a much smarter figure than that of his
classical friend of Charterhouse Cloister and Maudlin Walk. Could not some
painter give an interview between the gallant captain of Lucas’s, with his
hat cocked, and his lace, and his face too, a trifle tarnished with drink,
and that poet, that philosopher, pale, proud, and poor, his friend and
monitor of schooldays, of all days? How Dick must have bragged about his
chances and his hopes, and the fine company he kept, and the charms of the
reigning toasts and popular actresses, and the number of bottles that he
and my lord and some other pretty fellows had cracked overnight at the
“Devil”, or the “Garter”! Cannot one fancy Joseph Addison’s calm smile and
cold grey eyes following Dick for an instant, as he struts down the Mall,
to dine with the Guard at St. James’s, before he turns, with his sober
pace and threadbare suit, to walk back to his lodgings up the two pair of
stairs? Steele’s name was down for promotion, Dick always said himself, in
the glorious, pious, and immortal William’s last table-book. Jonathan
Swift’s name had been written there by the same hand too.
Our worthy friend, the author of the _Christian Hero_, continued to make
no small figure about town by the use of his wits.(99) He was appointed
Gazetteer: he wrote, in 1703, _The Tender Husband_, his second play, in
which there is some delightful farcical writing, and of which he fondly
owned in after-life, and when Addison was no more, that there were “many
applauded strokes” from Addison’s beloved hand.(100) Is it not a pleasant
partnership to remember? Can’t one fancy Steele full of spirits and youth,
leaving his gay company to go to Addison’s lodging, where his friend sits
in the shabby sitting-room, quite serene, and cheerful, and poor? In 1704,
Steele came on the town with another comedy, and behold it was so moral
and religious, as poor Dick insisted, so dull the town thought, that the
_Lying Lover_ was damned.
Addison’s hour of success now came, and he was able to help our friend,
the _Christian Hero_, in such a way, that, if there had been any chance of
keeping that poor tipsy champion upon his legs, his fortune was safe, and
his competence assured. Steele procured the place of Commissioner of
Stamps: he wrote so richly, so gracefully often, so kindly always, with
such a pleasant wit and easy frankness, with such a gush of good spirits
and good humour, that his early papers may be compared to Addison’s own,
and are to be read, by a male reader at least, with quite an equal
pleasure.(101)
After the _Tatler_, in 1711, the famous _Spectator_ made its appearance,
and this was followed, at various intervals, by many periodicals under the
same editor—the _Guardian_—the _Englishman_—the _Lover_, whose love was
rather insipid—the _Reader_, of whom the public saw no more after his
second appearance—the _Theatre_, under the pseudonym of Sir John Edgar,
which Steele wrote, while Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians, to
which post, and to that of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court,
and to the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex, and to the honour of
knighthood, Steele had been preferred soon after the accession of George
I, whose cause honest Dick had nobly fought, through disgrace and danger,
against the most formidable enemies, against traitors and bullies, against
Bolingbroke and Swift in the last reign. With the arrival of the King,
that splendid conspiracy broke up; and a golden opportunity came to Dick
Steele, whose hand, alas, was too careless to grip it.
Steele married twice; and outlived his places, his schemes, his wife, his
income, his health, and almost everything but his kind heart. That ceased
to trouble him in 1729, when he died, worn out and almost forgotten by his
contemporaries, in Wales, where he had the remnant of a property.
Posterity has been kinder to this amiable creature; all women especially
are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first of our writers who
really seemed to admire and respect them. Congreve the Great, who alludes
to the low estimation in which women were held in Elizabeth’s time, as a
reason why the women of Shakespeare make so small a figure in the poet’s
dialogues, though he can himself pay splendid compliments to women, yet
looks on them as mere instruments of gallantry, and destined, like the
most consummate fortifications, to fall, after a certain time, before the
arts and bravery of the besieger, man. There is a letter of Swift’s,
entitled “Advice to a very Young Married Lady”, which shows the Dean’s
opinion of the female society of his day, and that if he despised man he
utterly scorned women too. No lady of our time could be treated by any
man, were he ever so much a wit or Dean, in such a tone of insolent
patronage and vulgar protection. In this performance, Swift hardly takes
pains to hide his opinion that a woman is a fool: tells her to read books,
as if reading was a novel accomplishment; and informs her that “not one
gentleman’s daughter in a thousand has been brought to read or understand
her own natural tongue”. Addison laughs at women equally; but, with the
gentleness and politeness of his nature, smiles at them and watches them,
as if they were harmless, halfwitted, amusing, pretty creatures, only made
to be men’s playthings. It was Steele who first began to pay a manly
homage to their goodness and understanding, as well as to their tenderness
and beauty.(102) In his comedies, the heroes do not rant and rave about
the divine beauties of Gloriana or Statira, as the characters were made to
do in the chivalry romances and the high-flown dramas just going out of
vogue, but Steele admires women’s virtue, acknowledges their sense, and
adores their purity and beauty, with an ardour and strength which should
win the goodwill of all women to their hearty and respectful champion. It
is this ardour, this respect, this manliness, which makes his comedies so
pleasant and their heroes such fine gentlemen. He paid the finest
compliment to a woman that perhaps ever was offered. Of one woman, whom
Congreve had also admired and celebrated, Steele says, that “to have loved
her was a liberal education”. “How often,” he says, dedicating a volume to
his wife, “how often has your tenderness removed pain from my sick head,
how often anguish from my afflicted heart! If there are such beings as
guardian angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to
be more good in inclination, or more charming in form than my wife.” His
breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle when he meets with a good and
beautiful woman, and it is with his heart as well as with his hat that he
salutes her. About children, and all that relates to home, he is not less
tender, and more than once speaks in apology of what he calls his
softness. He would have been nothing without that delightful weakness. It
is that which gives his works their worth and his style its charm. It,
like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders; and redeemed, like
that, by his sweet and compassionate nature.
We possess of poor Steele’s wild and chequered life some of the most
curious memoranda that ever were left of a man’s biography.(103) Most
men’s letters, from Cicero down to Walpole, or down to the great men of
our own time, if you will, are doctored compositions, and written with an
eye suspicious towards posterity. That dedication of Steele’s to his wife
is an artificial performance, possibly; at least, it is written with that
degree of artifice which an orator uses in arranging a statement for the
House, or a poet employs in preparing a sentiment in verse or for the
stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick Steele’e to his wife, which
that thrifty woman preserved accurately, and which could have been written
but for her and her alone. They contain details of the business,
pleasures, quarrels, reconciliations of the pair; they have all the
genuineness of conversation; they are as artless as a child’s prattle, and
as confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the
printing-office, where he is waiting for the proofsheets of his _Gazette_,
or his _Tatler_; some are written from the tavern, whence he promises to
come to his wife “within a pint of wine”, and where he has given a
rendezvous to a friend, or a money-lender: some are composed in a high
state of vinous excitement, when his head is flustered with burgundy, and
his heart abounds with amorous warmth for his darling Prue: some are under
the influence of the dismal headache and repentance next morning: some,
alas, are from the lock-up house, where the lawyers have impounded him,
and where he is waiting for bail. You trace many years of the poor
fellow’s career in these letters. In September, 1707, from which day she
began to save the letters, he married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You
have his passionate protestations to the lady; his respectful proposals to
her mamma; his private prayer to Heaven when the union so ardently desired
was completed; his fond professions of contrition and promises of
amendment, when, immediately after his marriage, there began to be just
cause for the one and need for the other.
Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their marriage, “the third
door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry Street,” and the next year he
presented his wife with a country house at Hampton. It appears she had a
chariot and pair, and sometimes four horses: he himself enjoyed a little
horse for his own riding. He paid, or promised to pay, his barber fifty
pounds a year, and always went abroad in a laced coat and a large
black-buckled periwig, that must have cost somebody fifty guineas. He was
rather a well-to-do gentleman, Captain Steele, with the proceeds of his
estates in Barbadoes (left to him by his first wife), his income as a
writer of the _Gazette_, and his office of gentleman waiter to his Royal
Highness Prince George. His second wife brought him a fortune too. But it
is melancholy to relate, that with these houses and chariots and horses
and income, the Captain was constantly in want of money, for which his
beloved bride was asking as constantly. In the course of a few pages we
begin to find the shoemaker calling for money, and some directions from
the Captain, who has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife, “the
beautifullest object in the world,” as he calls her, and evidently in
reply to applications of her own, which have gone the way of all waste
paper, and lighted Dick’s pipes, which were smoked a hundred and forty
years ago—he sends his wife now a guinea, then a half-guinea, then a
couple of guineas, then half a pound of tea; and again no money and no tea
at all, but a promise that his darling Prue shall have some in a day or
two: or a request, perhaps, that she will send over his night-gown and
shaving-plate to the temporary lodging where the nomadic captain is lying,
hidden from the bailiffs. Oh that a Christian hero and late captain in
Lucas’s should be afraid of a dirty sheriff’s officer! That the pink and
pride of chivalry should turn pale before a writ! It stands to record in
poor Dick’s own handwriting; the queer collection is preserved at the
British Museum to this present day; that the rent of the nuptial house in
Jermyn Street, sacred to unutterable tenderness and Prue, and three doors
from Bury Street, was not paid until after the landlord had put in an
execution on Captain Steele’s furniture. Addison sold the house and
furniture at Hampton, and, after deducting the sum in which his
incorrigible friend was indebted to him, handed over the residue of the
proceeds of the sale to poor Dick, who wasn’t in the least angry at
Addison’s summary proceeding, and I dare say was very glad of any sale or
execution, the result of which was to give him a little ready money.
Having a small house in Jermyn Street for which he couldn’t pay, and a
country house at Hampton on which he had borrowed money, nothing must
content Captain Dick but the taking, in 1712, a much finer, larger, and
grander house, in Bloomsbury Square; where his unhappy landlord got no
better satisfaction than his friend in St. James’s, and where it is
recorded that Dick, giving a grand entertainment, had a half-dozen
queer-looking fellows in livery to wait upon his noble guests, and
confessed that his servants were bailiffs to a man. “I fared like a
distressed prince,” the kindly prodigal writes, generously complimenting
Addison for his assistance in the _Tatler_,—“I fared like a distressed
prince, who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my
auxiliary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without
dependence on him.” Poor, needy Prince of Bloomsbury! think of him in his
palace, with his allies from Chancery Lane ominously guarding him.
All sorts of stories are told indicative of his recklessness and his good
humour. One narrated by Dr. Hoadly is exceedingly characteristic; it shows
the life of the time: and our poor friend very weak, but very kind both in
and out of his cups.
“My father” (says Dr. John Hoadly, the bishop’s son)—“when Bishop of
Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of the Whig meetings, held at
the ‘Trumpet’, in Shire Lane, when Sir Richard, in his zeal, rather
exposed himself, having the double duty of the day upon him, as well to
celebrate the immortal memory of King William, it being the 4th of
November, as to drink his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose
phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by that time. Steele
was not fit for it. Two remarkable circumstances happened. John Sly, the
hatter of facetious memory, was in the house; and John, pretty mellow,
took it into his head to come into the company on his knees, with a
tankard of ale in his hand to drink off to the _immortal memory_, and to
return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father, whispered
him—‘_Do laugh. It is humanity to laugh._’ Sir Richard, in the evening,
being too much in the same condition, was put into a chair, and sent home.
Nothing would serve him but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor’s, late
as it was. However, the chairmen carried him home, and got him upstairs,
when his great complaisance would wait on them downstairs, which he did,
and then was got quietly to bed.”(104)
There is another amusing story which, I believe, that renowned collector,
Mr. Joseph Miller, or his successors, have incorporated into their work.
Sir Richard Steele, at a time when he was much occupied with theatrical
affairs, built himself a pretty private theatre, and, before it was opened
to his friends and guests, was anxious to try whether the hall was well
adapted for hearing. Accordingly he placed himself in the most remote part
of the gallery, and begged the carpenter who had built the house to speak
up from the stage. The man at first said that he was unaccustomed to
public speaking, and did not know what to say to his honour; but the
good-natured knight called out to him to say whatever was uppermost; and,
after a moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly audible: “Sir
Richard Steele!” he said, “for three months past me and my men has been
a-working in this theatre, and we’ve never seen the colour of your
honour’s money: we will be very much obliged if you’ll pay it directly,
for until you do we won’t drive in another nail.” Sir Richard said that
his friend’s elocution was perfect, but that he didn’t like his subject
much.
The great charm of Steele’s writing is its naturalness. He wrote so
quickly and carelessly, that he was forced to make the reader his
confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He had a small share of
book-learning, but a vast acquaintance with the world. He had known men
and taverns. He had lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with gentleman
ushers of the Court, with men and women of fashion; with authors and wits,
with the inmates of the spunging-houses, and with the frequenters of all
the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He was liked in all company
because he liked it; and you like to see his enjoyment as you like to see
the glee of a box full of children at the pantomime. He was not of those
lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary; on
the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who ever wrote; and
full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon you by calling you to
share his delight and good humour. His laugh rings through the whole
house. He must have been invaluable at a tragedy, and have cried as much
as the most tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for beauty and
goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shakespeare affectionately, and
more than any man of his time; and, according to his generous expansive
nature, called upon all his company to like what he liked himself. He did
not damn with faint praise: he was in the world and of it; and his
enjoyment of life presents the strangest contrast to Swift’s savage
indignation and Addison’s lonely serenity.(105) Permit me to read to you a
passage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar humour: the
subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. We have said that upon
all the actions of man, the most trifling and the most solemn, the
humourist takes upon himself to comment. All readers of our old masters
know the terrible lines of Swift, in which he hints at his philosophy and
describes the end of mankind:—(106)
Amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stood trembling at Jove’s throne;
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said:
’Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who through frailty stepped aside,
And you who never err’d through pride;
You who in different sects were shamm’d,
And come to see each other damn’d
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove’s designs than you).
The world’s mad business now is o’er,
And I resent your freaks no more;
_I_ to such blockheads set my wit,
I damn such fools—go, go, you’re bit!’
Addison, speaking on the very same theme, but with how different a voice,
says, in his famous paper on Westminster Abbey (_Spectator_, No. 26):—“For
my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be
melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn
scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When
I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me;
when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes
out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts
with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider
the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow.” (I have owned
that I do not think Addison’s heart melted very much, or that he indulged
very inordinately in the “vanity of grieving”.) “When,” he goes on, “when
I see kings lying by those who deposed them: when I consider rival wits
placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their
contests and disputes,—I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the
little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. And, when I read
the several dates on the tombs of some that died yesterday and some 600
years ago, I consider that Great Day when we shall all of us be
contemporaries, and make our appearance together.”
Our third humourist comes to speak upon the same subject. You will have
observed in the previous extracts the characteristic humour of each
writer—the subject and the contrast—the fact of Death, and the play of
individual thought, by which each comments on it, and now hear the third
writer—death, sorrow, and the grave, being for the moment also his theme.
“The first sense of sorrow I ever knew,” Steele says in the _Tatler_, “was
upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of
age: but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed of
a real understanding why nobody would play with us. I remember I went into
the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had
my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling papa;
for, I know not how, I had some idea that he was locked up there. My
mother caught me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the
silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces,
and told me in a flood of tears, ‘Papa could not hear me, and would play
with me no more: for they were going to put him under ground, whence he
would never come to us again.’ She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble
spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of
her transport, which methought struck me with an instinct of sorrow that,
before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has
made pity the weakness of my heart ever since.”
Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds and men? “Fools, do
you know anything of this mystery?” says Swift, stamping on a grave and
carrying his scorn for mankind actually beyond it. “Miserable, purblind
wretches, how dare you to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, and how
can your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder boundless
heaven?” Addison, in a much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much
the same sentiment: and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the contests of
holy men, with the same sceptic placidity. “Look what a little vain dust
we are;” he says, smiling over the tombstones, and catching, as is his
wont, quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks in words
of inspiration almost, of “the Great Day, when we shall all of us be
contemporaries, and make our appearance together”.
The third, whose theme is Death, too, and who will speak his word of moral
as Heaven teaches him, leads you up to his father’s coffin, and shows you
his beautiful mother weeping, and himself an unconscious little boy
wondering at her side. His own natural tears flow as he takes your hand
and confidingly asks your sympathy. “See how good and innocent and
beautiful women are,” he says, “how tender little children! Let us love
these and one another, brother—God knows we have need of love and pardon.”
So it is each man looks with his own eyes, speaks with his own voice, and
prays his own prayer.
When Steele asks your sympathy for the actors in that charming scene of
Love and Grief and Death, who can refuse it? One yields to it as to the
frank advance of a child, or to the appeal of a woman. A man is seldom
more manly than when he is what you call unmanned—the source of his
emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to
cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are
tender and weak. If Steele is not our friend he is nothing. He is by no
means the most brilliant of wits nor the deepest of thinkers: but he is
our friend: we love him, as children love their love with an A, because he
is amiable. Who likes a man best because he is the cleverest or the wisest
of mankind; or a woman because she is the most virtuous, or talks French;
or plays the piano better than the rest of her sex? I own to liking Dick
Steele the man, and Dick Steele the author, much better than much better
men and much better authors.
The misfortune regarding Steele is, that most part of the company here
present must take his amiability upon hearsay, and certainly can’t make
his intimate acquaintance. Not that Steele was worse than his time; on the
contrary, a far better, truer, and higher-hearted man than most who lived
in it. But things were done in that society, and names were named, which
would make you shudder now. What would be the sensation of a polite youth
of the present day, if at a ball he saw the young object of his affections
taking a box out of her pocket and a pinch of snuff: or if at dinner, by
the charmer’s side, she deliberately put her knife into her mouth? If she
cut her mother’s throat with it, mamma would scarcely be more shocked. I
allude to these peculiarities of bygone times as an excuse for my
favourite, Steele, who was not worse, and often much more delicate than
his neighbours.
There exists a curious document descriptive of the manners of the last
age, which describes most minutely the amusements and occupations of
persons of fashion in London at the time of which we are speaking; the
time of Swift, and Addison, and Steele.
When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel Alwit, the immortal
personages of Swift’s polite conversation, came to breakfast with my Lady
Smart, at eleven o’clock in the morning, my Lord Smart was absent at the
Levée. His lordship was at home to dinner at three o’clock to receive his
guests; and we may sit down to this meal, like the Barmecide’s, and see
the fops of the last century before us. Seven of them sat down at dinner,
and were joined by a country baronet, who told them they kept Court hours.
These persons of fashion began their dinner with a sirloin of beef, fish,
a shoulder of veal, and a tongue. My Lady Smart carved the sirloin, my
Lady Answerwell helped the fish, and the gallant colonel cut the shoulder
of veal. All made a considerable inroad on the sirloin and the shoulder of
veal with the exception of Sir John, who had no appetite, having already
partaken of a beefsteak and two mugs of ale, besides a tankard of March
beer as soon as he got out of bed. They drank claret, which the master of
the house said should always be drunk after fish; and my Lord Smart
particularly recommended some excellent cider to my Lord Sparkish, which
occasioned some brilliant remarks from that nobleman. When the host called
for wine, he nodded to one or other of his guests, and said, “Tom
Neverout, my service to you.”
After the first course came almond pudding, fritters, which the colonel
took with his hands out of the dish, in order to help the brilliant Miss
Notable; chickens, black puddings, and soup; and Lady Smart, the elegant
mistress of the mansion, finding a skewer in a dish, placed it in her
plate with directions that it should be carried down to the cook and
dressed for the cook’s own dinner. Wine and small beer were drunk during
this second course; and when the colonel called for beer, he called the
butler, Friend, and asked whether the beer was good. Various jocular
remarks passed from the gentlefolks to the servants; at breakfast several
persons had a word and a joke for Mrs. Betty, my lady’s maid, who warmed
the cream and had charge of the canister (the tea cost thirty shillings a
pound in those days). When my Lady Sparkish sent her footman out to my
Lady Match to come at six o’clock and play at quadrille, her ladyship
warned the man to follow his nose, and if he fell by the way not to stay
to get up again. And when the gentlemen asked the hall-porter if his lady
was at home, that functionary replied, with manly waggishness, “She was at
home just now, but she’s not gone out yet.”
After the puddings, sweet and black, the fritters and soup, came the third
course, of which the chief dish was a hot venison pasty, which was put
before Lord Smart, and carved by that nobleman. Besides the pasty, there
was a hare, a rabbit, some pigeons, partridges, a goose, and a ham. Beer
and wine were freely imbibed during this course, the gentlemen always
pledging somebody with every glass which they drank; and by this time the
conversation between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable had grown so brisk and
lively, that the Derbyshire baronet began to think the young gentlewoman
was Tom’s sweetheart; on which Miss remarked, that she loved Tom “like
pie”. After the goose, some of the gentlemen took a dram of brandy, “which
was very good for the wholesomes,” Sir John said; and now having had a
tolerably substantial dinner, honest Lord Smart bade the butler bring up
the great tankard full of October to Sir John. The great tankard was
passed from hand to hand and mouth to mouth, but when pressed by the noble
host upon the gallant Tom Neverout, he said, “No faith, my lord, I like
your wine, and won’t put a churl upon a gentleman. Your honour’s claret is
good enough for me.” And so, the dinner over, the host said, “Hang saving,
bring us up a ha’porth of cheese.”
The cloth was now taken away, and a bottle of burgundy was set down, of
which the ladies were invited to partake before they went to their tea.
When they withdrew, the gentlemen promised to join them in an hour; fresh
bottles were brought, the “dead men”, meaning the empty bottles, removed;
and “D’you hear, John? bring clean glasses”, my Lord Smart said. On which
the gallant Colonel Alwit said, “I’ll keep my glass; for wine is the best
liquor to wash glasses in.”
After an hour the gentlemen joined the ladies, and then they all sat and
played quadrille until three o’clock in the morning, when the chairs and
the flambeaux came, and this noble company went to bed.
Such were manners six or seven score years ago. I draw no inference from
this queer picture—let all moralists here present deduce their own. Fancy
the moral condition of that society in which a lady of fashion joked with
a footman, and carved a great shoulder of veal, and provided besides a
sirloin, a goose, hare, rabbit, chickens, partridges, black-puddings, and
a ham for a dinner for eight Christians. What—what could have been the
condition of that polite world in which people openly ate goose after
almond pudding, and took their soup in the middle of dinner? Fancy a
colonel in the Guards putting his hand into a dish of _beignets
d’abricot_, and helping his neighbour, a young lady _du monde_! Fancy a
noble lord calling out to the servants, before the ladies at his table,
“Hang expense, bring us a ha’porth of cheese!” Such were the ladies of St.
James’s—such were the frequenters of White’s Chocolate-house, when Swift
used to visit it, and Steele described it as the centre of pleasure,
gallantry, and entertainment, a hundred and forty years ago!
Dennis, who ran amuck at the literary society of his day, falls foul of
poor Steele, and thus depicts him,—“Sir John Edgar, of the county of —— in
Ireland, is of a middle stature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like
the picture of somebody over a farmer’s chimney—a short chin, a short
nose, a short forehead, a broad, flat face, and a dusky countenance. Yet
with such a face and such a shape, he discovered at sixty that he took
himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more mortified at being told that
he was ugly, than he was by any reflection made upon his honour or
understanding.
“He is a gentleman born, witness himself, of very honourable family;
certainly of a very ancient one, for his ancestors flourished in Tipperary
long before the English ever set foot in Ireland. He has testimony of this
more authentic than the Heralds’ Office, or any human testimony. For God
has marked him more abundantly than he did Cain, and stamped his native
country on his face, his understanding, his writings, his actions, his
passions, and, above all, his vanity. The Hibernian brogue is still upon
all these, though long habit and length of days have worn it off his
tongue.”(107)
Although this portrait is the work of a man who was neither the friend of
Steele nor of any other man alive, yet there is a dreadful resemblance to
the original in the savage and exaggerated traits of the caricature, and
everybody who knows him must recognize Dick Steele. Dick set about almost
all the undertakings of his life with inadequate means, and, as he took
and furnished a house with the most generous intentions towards his
friends, the most tender gallantry towards his wife, and with this only
drawback, that he had not wherewithal to pay the rent when quarter-day
came,—so, in his life he proposed to himself the most magnificent schemes
of virtue, forbearance, public and private good, and the advancement of
his own and the national religion; but when he had to pay for these
articles—so difficult to purchase and so costly to maintain—poor Dick’s
money was not forthcoming: and when Virtue called with her little bill,
Dick made a shuffling excuse that he could not see her that morning,
having a headache from being tipsy overnight; or when stern Duty rapped at
the door with his account, Dick was absent and not ready to pay. He was
shirking at the tavern; or had some particular business (of somebody’s
else) at the ordinary; or he was in hiding, or worse than in hiding, in
the lock-up house. What a situation for a man!—for a philanthropist—for a
lover of right and truth—for a magnificent designer and schemer! Not to
dare to look in the face the Religion which he adored and which he had
offended; to have to shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid the
friend whom he loved and who had trusted him—to have the house which he
had intended for his wife, whom he loved passionately, and for her
ladyship’s company which he wished to entertain splendidly, in the
possession of a bailiff’s man, with a crowd of little creditors,—grocers,
butchers, and small-coal men, lingering round the door with their bills
and jeering at him. Alas! for poor Dick Steele! For nobody else, of
course. There is no man or woman in _our_ time who makes fine projects and
gives them up from idleness or want of means. When Duty calls upon _us_,
we no doubt are always at home and ready to pay that grim tax-gatherer.
When _we_ are stricken with remorse and promise reform, we keep our
promise, and are never angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. There are
no chambers in _our_ hearts, destined for family friends and affections,
and now occupied by some Sin’s emissary and bailiff in possession. There
are no little sins, shabby peccadilloes, importunate remembrances, or
disappointed holders of our promises to reform, hovering at our steps, or
knocking at our door! Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth
century, and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again, and got into jail
and out again, and sinned and repented; and loved and suffered; and lived
and died scores of years ago. Peace be with him! Let us think gently of
one who was so gentle: let us speak kindly of one whose own breast
exuberated with human kindness.
Lecture The Fourth. Prior, Gay, And Pope
Matthew Prior was one of those famous and lucky wits of the auspicious
reign of Queen Anne, whose name it behoves us not to pass over. Mat was a
world-philosopher of no small genius, good nature, and acumen.(108) He
loved, he drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, “in
a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night; on his left hand his Horace,
and a friend on his right,” going out of town from the Hague to pass that
evening and the ensuing Sunday, boozing at a _Spielhaus_ with his
companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down,
in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master, the
charms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. A vintner’s
son in Whitehall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the Rod, Prior
attracted some notice by writing verses at St. John’s College, Cambridge,
and, coming up to town, aided Montague(109) in an attack on the noble old
English lion John Dryden, in ridicule of whose work, _The Hind and the
Panther_, he brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, _The Town
and Country Mouse_. Aren’t you all acquainted with it? Have you not all
got it by heart? What! have you never heard of it? See what fame is made
of! The wonderful part of the satire was, that, as a natural consequence
of _The Town and Country Mouse_, Matthew Prior was made Secretary of
Embassy at the Hague! I believe it is dancing, rather than singing, which
distinguishes the young English diplomatists of the present day; and have
seen them in various parts perform that part of their duty very finely. In
Prior’s time it appears a different accomplishment led to preferment.
Could you write a copy of Alcaics? that was the question. Could you turn
out a neat epigram or two? Could you compose _The Town and Country Mouse_?
It is manifest that, by the possession of this faculty, the most difficult
treaties, the laws of foreign nations, and the interests of our own, are
easily understood. Prior rose in the diplomatic service, and said good
things that proved his sense and his spirit. When the apartments at
Versailles were shown to him, with the victories of Louis XIV painted on
the walls, and Prior was asked whether the palace of the King of England
had any such decorations, “The monuments of my master’s actions,” Mat
said, of William, whom he cordially revered, “are to be seen everywhere
except in his own house.” Bravo, Mat! Prior rose to be full ambassador at
Paris,(110) where he somehow was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate;
and in a heroic poem, addressed by him to her late lamented Majesty Queen
Anne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes and spoons, of
which Fate had deprived him. All that he wants, he says, is her Majesty’s
picture; without that he can’t be happy.
Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore:
Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power
Higher to raise the glories of thy reign,
In words sublimer and a nobler strain.
May future bards the mighty theme rehearse.
Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse,
The votive tablet I suspend.
With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet is suspended for
ever like Mahomet’s coffin. News came that the queen was dead. Stator
Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, were left there, hovering to this day,
over the votive tablet. The picture was never got any more than the spoons
and dishes—the inspiration ceased—the verses were not wanted—the
ambassador wasn’t wanted. Poor Mat was recalled from his embassy, suffered
disgrace along with his patrons, lived under a sort of cloud ever after,
and disappeared in Essex. When deprived of all his pensions and
emoluments, the hearty and generous Oxford pensioned him. They played for
gallant stakes—the bold men of those days—and lived and gave splendidly.
Johnson quotes from Spence a legend, that Prior, after spending an evening
with Harley, St. John, Pope, and Swift, would go off and smoke a pipe with
a couple of friends of his, a soldier and his wife, in Long Acre. Those
who have not read his late excellency’s poems should be warned that they
smack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Johnson
speaks slightingly of his lyrics; but with due deference to the great
Samuel, Prior’s seem to me amongst the easiest, the richest, the most
charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.(111) Horace is always in his
mind, and his song, and his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy
turns and melody, his loves, and his Epicureanism, bear a great
resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master. In reading
his works, one is struck with their modern air, as well as by their happy
similarity to the songs of the charming owner of the Sabine farm. In his
verses addressed to Halifax, he says, writing of that endless theme to
poets, the vanity of human wishes—
So when in fevered dreams we sink,
And, waking, taste what we desire,
The real draught but feeds the fire,
The dream is better than the drink.
Our hopes like towering falcons aim
At objects in an airy height:
To stand aloof and view the flight,
Is all the pleasure of the game.
Would not you fancy that a poet of our own days was singing? and, in the
verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him for his inconstancy, where he
says—
The God of us verse-men, you know, child, the Sun,
How after his journey, he sets up his rest.
If at morning o’er earth ’tis his fancy to run,
At night he declines on his Thetis’s breast.
So, when I am wearied with wandering all day,
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come:
No matter what beauties I saw in my way;
They were but my visits, but thou art my home!
Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war,
And let us like Horace and Lydia agree;
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her,
As he was a poet sublimer than me.
If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior? Love and pleasure
find singers in all days. Roses are always blowing and fading—to-day as in
that pretty time when Prior sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their
decay—
She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers
Pointing, the lovely moralist said;
See, friend, in some few leisure hours,
See yonder what a change is made!
Ah, me! the blooming pride of May,
And that of Beauty are but one:
At morn both flourisht, bright and gay,
Both fade at evening, pale and gone.
At dawn poor Stella danced and sung,
The amorous youth around her bowed,
At night her fatal knell was rung;
I saw, and kissed her in her shroud.
Such as she is who died to-day,
Such I, alas, may be to-morrow:
Go, Damon, bid the Muse display
The justice of thy Chloe’s sorrow.
Damon’s knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly on him! _Deus sit
propitius huic potatori_, as Walter de Mapes sang.(112) Perhaps Samuel
Johnson, who spoke slightingly of Prior’s verses, enjoyed them more than
he was willing to own. The old moralist had studied them as well as Mr.
Thomas Moore, and defended them, and showed that he remembered them very
well too on an occasion when their morality was called in question by that
noted puritan, James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck.(113)
In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a favourite, and
to have a good place.(114) In his set all were fond of him. His success
offended nobody. He missed a fortune once or twice. He was talked of for
Court favour, and hoped to win it; but the Court favour jilted him. Craggs
gave him some South-Sea Stock; and at one time Gay had very nearly made
his fortune. But Fortune shook her swift wings and jilted him too: and so
his friends, instead of being angry with him, and jealous of him, were
kind and fond of honest Gay. In the portraits of the literary worthies of
the early part of the last century, Gay’s face is the pleasantest perhaps
of all. It appears adorned with neither periwig nor nightcap (the full
dress and _negligée_ of learning, without which the painters of those days
scarcely ever portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder with
an honest boyish glee—an artless sweet humour. He was so kind, so gentle,
so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally woebegone at
others, such a natural good creature that the Giants loved him. The great
Swift was gentle and sportive with him,(115) as the enormous Brobdingnag
maids of honour were with little Gulliver. He could frisk and fondle round
Pope,(116) and sport, and bark, and caper without offending the most
thin-skinned of poets and men; and when he was jilted in that little Court
affair of which we have spoken, his warm-hearted patrons the Duke and
Duchess of Queensberry(117) (the “Kitty, beautiful and young”, of Prior)
pleaded his cause with indignation, and quitted the Court in a huff,
carrying off with them into their retirement their kind gentle protégé.
With these kind lordly folks, a real Duke and Duchess, as delightful as
those who harboured Don Quixote, and loved that dear old Sancho, Gay
lived, and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and his
saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and
so ended.(118) He became very melancholy and lazy, sadly plethoric, and
only occasionally diverting in his latter days. But everybody loved him,
and the remembrance of his pretty little tricks; and the raging old Dean
of St. Patrick’s, chafing in his banishment, was afraid to open the letter
which Pope wrote him, announcing the sad news of the death of Gay.(119)
Swift’s letters to him are beautiful; and having no purpose but kindness
in writing to him, no party aim to advocate, or slight or anger to wreak,
every word the Dean says to his favourite is natural, trustworthy, and
kindly. His admiration for Gay’s parts and honesty, and his laughter at
his weaknesses, were alike just and genuine. He paints his character in
wonderful pleasant traits of jocular satire. “I writ lately to Mr. Pope,”
Swift says, writing to Gay; “I wish you had a little villakin in his
neighbourhood; but you are yet too volatile, and any lady with a coach and
six horses would carry you to Japan.” “If your ramble,” says Swift, in
another letter, “was on horseback, I am glad of it, on account of your
health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between
stage-coaches and friends” coaches—for you are as arrant a Cockney as any
hosier in Cheapside. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours,
that you ought to have some great work in scheme, which may take up seven
years to finish, besides two or three under-ones that may add another
thousand pounds to your stock, and then I shall be in less pain about you.
I know you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well,
without considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings
you but half a crown a day:’ and then Swift goes off from Gay to pay some
grand compliments to her Grace the Duchess of Queensberry, in whose
sunshine Mr. Gay was basking, and in whose radiance the Dean would have
liked to warm himself too.
But we have Gay here before us, in these letters—lazy, kindly, uncommonly
idle; rather slovenly, I’m afraid; for ever eating and saying good things;
a little, round, French abbé of a man, sleek, soft-handed, and
soft-hearted.
Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men than their
works; or to deal with the latter only in as far as they seem to
illustrate the character of their writers. Mr. Gay’s _Fables_, which were
written to benefit that amiable prince, the Duke of Cumberland, the
warrior of Dettingen and Culloden, I have not, I own, been able to peruse
since a period of very early youth; and it must be confessed that they did
not effect much benefit upon the illustrious young prince, whose manners
they were intended to mollify, and whose natural ferocity our
gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. But the six
pastorals called the _Shepherd’s Week_, and the burlesque poem of _Trivia_
any man fond of lazy literature will find delightful, at the present day,
and must read from beginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what
charming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture: graceful, minikin,
fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying them. The pretty
little personages of the pastoral, with gold clocks to their stockings,
and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks and waistcoats and bodices, dance
their loves to a minuet-tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer,
or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die
of despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles; or
repose, simpering at each other, under an arbour of pea-green crockery; or
piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples in
a stream of Bergamot. Gay’s gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than that
of Philips—his rival and Pope’s—a serious and dreary idyllic Cockney; not
that Gay’s “Bumkinets and Hobnelias” are a whit more natural than the
would-be serious characters of the other posture-master; but the quality
of this true humourist was to laugh and make laugh, though always with a
secret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics and
capers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music—as you may
have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turning
over head and heels, or clattering and piroueting in a pair of wooden
shoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in his bright eyes, and a
smile that asks and wins affection and protection. Happy they who have
that sweet gift of nature! It was this which made the great folks and
Court ladies free and friendly with John Gay—which made Pope and Arbuthnot
love him—which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought of him—and
drove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies which obscured the
lonely tyrant’s brain, as he heard Gay’s voice with its simple melody and
artless ringing laughter.
What used to be said about Rubini, _qu’il avait des larmes dans la voix_,
may be said of Gay,(120) and of one other humourist of whom we shall have
to speak. In almost every ballad of his, however slight,(121) in the
_Beggar’s __ Opera_(122) and in its wearisome continuation (where the
verses are to the full as pretty as in the first piece, however), there is
a peculiar, hinted, pathetic sweetness and melody. It charms and melts
you. It’s indefinable, but it exists; and is the property of John Gay’s
and Oliver Goldsmith’s best verse, as fragrance is of a violet, or
freshness of a rose.
Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so famous that most
people here are no doubt familiar with it, but so delightful that it is
always pleasant to hear:—
“I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of
my Lord Harcourt’s, which he lent me. It overlooks a common
hayfield, where, under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers—as
constant as ever were found in romance—beneath a spreading bush.
The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet; of
the other Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about
five-and-twenty; Sarah, a brave woman of eighteen. John had for
several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with
Sarah; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to
bring the cows to her pails. Their love was the talk, but not the
scandal, of the whole neighbourhood, for all they aimed at was the
blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this
very morning that he had obtained her parents’ consent, and it was
but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps
this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking
of their wedding clothes; and John was now matching several kinds
of poppies and field-flowers, to make her a present of knots for
the day. While they were thus employed (it was on the last of
July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove
the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah,
frightened and out of breath, sunk on a hay-cock; and John (who
never separated from her) sat by her side, having raked two or
three heaps together, to secure her. Immediately, there was heard
so loud a crash, as if heaven had burst asunder. The labourers,
all solicitous for each other’s safety, called to one another:
those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to
the place where they lay: they first saw a little smoke, and
after, this faithful pair—John, with one arm about his Sarah’s
neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from
the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and
cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on
their bodies—only that Sarah’s eyebrow was a little singed, and a
small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in
one grave!”
And the proof that this description is delightful and beautiful is, that
the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he thought proper to steal it
and to send it off to a certain lady and wit, with whom he pretended to be
in love in those days—my Lord Duke of Kingston’s daughter, and married to
Mr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople.
We are now come to the greatest name on our list—the highest among the
poets, the highest among the English wits and humourists with whom we have
to rank him. If the author of the _Dunciad_ be not a humourist, if the
poet of the _Rape of the Lock_ be not a wit, who deserves to be called so?
Besides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which we
should respect him, men of letters should admire him as being the greatest
literary _artist_ that England has seen. He polished, he refined, he
thought; he took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own;
borrowing an idea or a cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a
simile from a flower, river, stream, or any object which struck him in his
walk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at an early
age;(123) and taught himself to write by copying printed books. Then he
passed into the hands of the priests, and from his first clerical master,
who came to him when he was eight years old, he went to a school at
Twyford, and another school at Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned all
that he had got from his first instructor. At twelve years old, he went
with his father into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a few months
under a fourth priest. “And this was all the teaching I ever had,” he
said, “and God knows it extended a very little way.”
When he had done with his priests he took to reading by himself, for which
he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. He
learned versification from Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of
_Alcander_, he imitated every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statius,
Homer, Virgil. In a few years he had dipped into a great number of the
English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. “This I did,” he says,
“without any design, except to amuse myself; and got the languages by
hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read
the books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me,
and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they
fell in his way. These five or six years I looked upon as the happiest in
my life.” Is not here a beautiful holiday picture? The forest and the
fairy story-book—the boy spelling Ariosto or Virgil under the trees,
battling with the Cid for the love of Chimène, or dreaming of Armida’s
garden—peace and sunshine round about—the kindest love and tenderness
waiting for him at his quiet home yonder—and Genius throbbing in his young
heart, and whispering to him, “You shall be great; you shall be famous;
you, too, shall love and sing; you will sing her so nobly that some kind
heart shall forget you are weak and ill-formed. Every poet had a love.
Fate must give one to you too,”—and day by day he walks the forest, very
likely looking out for that charmer. “They were the happiest days of his
life,” he says, when he was only dreaming of his fame: when he had gained
that mistress she was no consoler.
That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about the year 1705, when
Pope was seventeen. Letters of his are extant, addressed to a certain Lady
M——, whom the youth courted, and to whom he expressed his ardour in
language, to say no worse of it, that is entirely pert, odious, and
affected. He imitated love compositions as he had been imitating love
poems just before—it was a sham mistress he courted, and a sham passion,
expressed as became it. These unlucky letters found their way into print
years afterwards, and were sold to the congenial Mr. Curll. If any of my
hearers, as I hope they may, should take a fancy to look at Pope’s
correspondence, let them pass over that first part of it; over, perhaps,
almost all Pope’s letters to women; in which there is a tone of not
pleasant gallantry, and, amidst a profusion of compliments and
politenesses, a something which makes one distrust the little pert,
prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say about his loves, and
that little not edifying. He wrote flames and raptures and elaborate verse
and prose for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but that passion probably came to
a climax in an impertinence and was extinguished by a box on the ear, or
some such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with a fervour much
more genuine than that of his love had been. It was a feeble, puny grimace
of love, and paltering with passion. After Mr. Pope had sent off one of
his fine compositions to Lady Mary, he made a second draft from the rough
copy, and favoured some other friend with it. He was so charmed with the
letter of Gay’s, that I have just quoted, that he had copied that and
amended it, and sent it to Lady Mary as his own. A gentleman who writes
letters _à deux fins_, and after having poured out his heart to the
beloved, serves up the same dish _rechauffé_ to a friend, is not very much
in earnest about his loves, however much he may be in his piques and
vanities when his impertinence gets its due.
But, save that unlucky part of the Pope Correspondence, I do not know, in
the range of our literature, volumes more delightful.(124) You live in
them in the finest company in the world. A little stately, perhaps; a
little _apprêté_ and conscious that they are speaking to whole generations
who are listening; but in the tone of their voices—pitched, as no doubt
they are, beyond the mere conversation key—in the expression of their
thoughts, their various views and natures, there is something generous,
and cheering, and ennobling. You are in the society of men who have filled
the greatest parts in the world’s story—you are with St. John the
statesman; Peterborough the conqueror; Swift, the greatest wit of all
times; Gay, the kindliest laugher—it is a privilege to sit in that
company. Delightful and generous banquet! with a little faith and a little
fancy any one of us here may enjoy it, and conjure up those great figures
out of the past, and listen to their wit and wisdom. Mind that there is
always a certain _cachet_ about great men—they may be as mean on many
points as you or I, but they carry their great air—they speak of common
life more largely and generously than common men do—they regard the world
with a manlier countenance, and see its real features more fairly than the
timid shufflers who only dare to look up at life through blinkers, or to
have an opinion when there is a crowd to back it. He who reads these noble
records of a past age, salutes and reverences the great spirits who adorn
it. You may go home now and talk with St. John; you may take a volume from
your library and listen to Swift and Pope.
Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, Try to
frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most
wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is
that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow
spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. I know nothing in any story
more gallant and cheering, than the love and friendship which this company
of famous men bore towards one another. There never has been a society of
men more friendly, as there never was one more illustrious. Who dares
quarrel with Mr. Pope, great and famous himself, for liking the society of
men great and famous? and for liking them for the qualities which made
them so? A mere pretty fellow from White’s could not have written the
_Patriot King_, and would very likely have despised little Mr. Pope, the
decrepit Papist, whom the great St. John held to be one of the best and
greatest of men: a mere nobleman of the Court could no more have won
Barcelona, than he could have written Peterborough’s letters to Pope,(125)
which are as witty as Congreve: a mere Irish Dean could not have written
_Gulliver_; and all these men loved Pope, and Pope loved all these men. To
name his friends is to name the best men of his time. Addison had a
senate; Pope reverenced his equals. He spoke of Swift with respect and
admiration always. His admiration for Bolingbroke was so great, that when
some one said of his friend, “There is something in that great man which
looks as if he was placed here by mistake,” “Yes,” Pope answered, “and
when the comet appeared to us a month or two ago, I had sometimes an
imagination that it might possibly be come to carry him home, as a coach
comes to one’s door for visitors.” So these great spirits spoke of one
another. Show me six of the dullest middle-aged gentlemen that ever
dawdled round a club-table, so faithful and so friendly.
We have said before that the chief wits of this time, with the exception
of Congreve, were what we should now call men’s men. They spent many hours
of the four-and-twenty, a fourth part of each day nearly, in clubs and
coffee-houses, where they dined, drank, and smoked. Wit and news went by
word of mouth; a journal of 1710 contained the very smallest portion of
one or the other. The chiefs spoke, the faithful _habitués_ sat round;
strangers came to wonder and listen. Old Dryden had his head quarters at
Will’s, in Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street, at which place
Pope saw him when he was twelve years old. The company used to assemble on
the first floor—what was called the dining-room floor in those days—and
sat at various tables smoking their pipes. It is recorded that the beaux
of the day thought it a great honour to be allowed to take a pinch out of
Dryden’s snuff-box. When Addison began to reign, he with a certain crafty
propriety—a policy let us call it—which belonged to his nature, set up his
court, and appointed the officers of his royal house. His palace was
Button’s, opposite Will’s.(126) A quiet opposition, a silent assertion of
empire, distinguished this great man. Addison’s ministers were Budgell,
Tickell, Philips, Carey; his master of the horse, honest Dick Steele, who
was what Duroc was to Napoleon, or Hardy to Nelson; the man who performed
his master’s bidding, and would have cheerfully died in his quarrel.
Addison lived with these people for seven or eight hours every day. The
male society passed over their punch-bowls and tobacco-pipes about as much
time as ladies of that age spent over Spadille and Manille.
For a brief space, upon coming up to town, Pope formed part of King
Joseph’s court, and was his rather too eager and obsequious humble
servant.(127) Dick Steele, the editor of the _Tatler_, Mr. Addison’s man,
and his own man too—a person of no little figure in the world of letters,
patronized the young poet, and set him a task or two. Young Mr. Pope did
the tasks very quickly and smartly (he had been at the feet quite as a boy
of Wycherley’s decrepit reputation, and propped up for a year that doting
old wit): he was anxious to be well with the men of letters, to get a
footing and a recognition. He thought it an honour to be admitted into
their company; to have the confidence of Mr. Addison’s friend, Captain
Steele. His eminent parts obtained for him the honour of heralding
Addison’s triumph of _Cato_ with his admirable prologue, and heading the
victorious procession as it were. Not content with this act of homage and
admiration, he wanted to distinguish himself by assaulting Addison’s
enemies, and attacked John Dennis with a prose lampoon, which highly
offended his lofty patron. Mr. Steele was instructed to write to Mr.
Dennis and inform him that Mr. Pope’s pamphlet against him was written
quite without Mr. Addison’s approval.(128) Indeed, _The Narrative of Dr.
Robert Norris on the Phrenzy of J. D._ is a vulgar and mean satire, and
such a blow as the magnificent Addison could never desire to see any
partisan of his strike in any literary quarrel. Pope was closely allied
with Swift when he wrote this pamphlet. It is so dirty that it has been
printed in Swift’s works, too. It bears the foul marks of the master hand.
Swift admired and enjoyed with all his heart the prodigious genius of the
young Papist lad out of Windsor Forest, who had never seen a university in
his life, and came and conquered the Dons and the doctors with his wit. He
applauded, and loved him, too, and protected him, and taught him mischief.
I wish Addison could have loved him better. The best satire that ever has
been penned would never have been written then; and one of the best
characters the world ever knew would have been without a flaw. But he who
had so few equals could not bear one, and Pope was more than that. When
Pope, trying for himself, and soaring on his immortal young wings, found
that his, too, was a genius, which no opinion of that age could follow, he
rose and left Addison’s company, settling on his own eminence, and singing
his own song.
It was not possible that Pope should remain a retainer of Mr. Addison; nor
likely that after escaping from his vassalage and assuming an independent
crown, the sovereign whose allegiance he quitted should view him
amicably.(129) They did not do wrong to mislike each other. They but
followed the impulse of nature, and the consequence of position. When
Bernadotte became heir to a throne, the Prince Royal of Sweden was
naturally Napoleon’s enemy. “There are many passions and tempers of
mankind,” says Mr. Addison in the _Spectator_, speaking a couple of years
before their little differences between him and Mr. Pope took place,
“which naturally dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one rising
in the esteem of mankind. All those who made their entrance into the world
with the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, are apt
to think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own deserts. Those
who were once his equals envy and defame him, because they now see him the
superior; and those who were once his superiors, because they look upon
him as their equal.” Did Mr. Addison, justly perhaps thinking that, as
young Mr. Pope had not had the benefit of a university education, he
couldn’t know Greek, therefore he couldn’t translate Homer, encourage his
young friend Mr. Tickell, of Queen’s, to translate that poet, and aid him
with his own known scholarship and skill?(130) It was natural that Mr.
Addison should doubt of the learning of an amateur Grecian, should have a
high opinion of Mr. Tickell, of Queen’s, and should help that ingenious
young man. It was natural, on the other hand, that Mr. Pope and Mr. Pope’s
friends should believe that this counter-translation, suddenly advertised
and so long written, though Tickell’s college friends had never heard of
it—though, when Pope first wrote to Addison regarding his scheme, Mr.
Addison knew nothing of the similar project of Tickell, of Queen’s—it was
natural that Mr. Pope and his friends, having interests, passions, and
prejudices of their own, should believe that Tickell’s translation was but
an act of opposition against Pope, and that they should call Mr. Tickell’s
emulation Mr. Addison’s envy—if envy it were.
And were there one whose fires
True genius kindles and fair fame inspires,
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease;
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne;
View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes,
And hate, for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame as to commend,
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend;
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne’er obliged;
Like Cato give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While wits and templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise;
Who but must laugh if such a man there be,
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?
“I sent the verses to Mr. Addison,” said Pope, “and he used me very
civilly ever after.” No wonder he did. It was shame very likely more than
fear that silenced him. Johnson recounts an interview between Pope and
Addison after their quarrel, in which Pope was angry, and Addison tried to
be contemptuous and calm. Such a weapon as Pope’s must have pierced any
scorn. It flashes for ever, and quivers in Addison’s memory. His great
figure looks out on us from the past—stainless but for that—pale, calm,
and beautiful; it bleeds from that black wound. He should be drawn, like
St. Sebastian, with that arrow in his side. As he sent to Gay and asked
his pardon, as he bade his stepson come and see his death, be sure he had
forgiven Pope, when he made ready to show how a Christian could die.
Pope then formed part of the Addisonian court for a short time, and
describes himself in his letters as sitting with that coterie until two
o’clock in the morning over punch and burgundy amidst the fumes of
tobacco. To use an expression of the present day, the “pace” of those
_viveurs_ of the former age was awful. Peterborough lived into the very
jaws of death; Godolphin laboured all day and gambled at night;
Bolingbroke,(131) writing to Swift, from Dawley, in his retirement, dating
his letter at six o’clock in the morning, and rising, as he says,
refreshed, serene, and calm, calls to mind the time of his London life;
when about that hour he used to be going to bed, surfeited with pleasure,
and jaded with business; his head often full of schemes, and his heart as
often full of anxiety. It was too hard, too coarse a life for the
sensitive, sickly Pope. He was the only wit of the day, a friend writes to
me, who wasn’t fat.(132) Swift was fat; Addison was fat; Steele was fat;
Gay and Thomson were preposterously fat—all that fuddling and
punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, shortened the lives
and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age. Pope withdrew in a
great measure from this boisterous London company, and being put into an
independence by the gallant exertions of Swift(133) and his private
friends, and by the enthusiastic national admiration which justly rewarded
his great achievement of the _Iliad_, purchased that famous villa of
Twickenham which his song and life celebrated; duteously bringing his old
parents to live and die there, entertaining his friends there, and making
occasional visits to London in his little chariot, in which Atterbury
compared him to “Homer in a nutshell”.
“Mr. Dryden was not a genteel man,” Pope quaintly said to Spence, speaking
of the manner and habits of the famous old patriarch of Will’s. With
regard to Pope’s own manners, we have the best contemporary authority that
they were singularly refined and polished. With his extraordinary
sensibility, with his known tastes, with his delicate frame, with his
power and dread of ridicule, Pope could have been no other than what we
call a highly-bred person. His closest friends, with the exception of
Swift, were among the delights and ornaments of the polished society of
their age. Garth,(134) the accomplished and benevolent, whom Steele has
described so charmingly, of whom Codrington said that his character was
“all beauty”, and whom Pope himself called the best of Christians without
knowing it; Arbuthnot,(135) one of the wisest, wittiest, most
accomplished, gentlest of mankind; Bolingbroke, the Alcibiades of his age;
the generous Oxford; the magnificent, the witty, the famous, and
chivalrous Peterborough: these were the fast and faithful friends of Pope,
the most brilliant company of friends, let us repeat, that the world has
ever seen. The favourite recreation of his leisure hours was the society
of painters, whose art he practised. In his correspondence are letters
between him and Jervas, whose pupil he loved to be—Richardson, a
celebrated artist of his time, and who painted for him a portrait of his
old mother, and for whose picture he asked and thanked Richardson in one
of the most delightful letters that ever was penned,(136)—and the
wonderful Kneller, who bragged more, spelt worse, and painted better than
any artist of his day.(137)
It is affecting to note, through Pope’s correspondence, the marked way in
which his friends, the greatest, the most famous, and wittiest men of the
time—generals and statesmen, philosophers and divines—all have a kind
word, and a kind thought for the good simple old mother, whom Pope tended
so affectionately. Those men would have scarcely valued her, but that they
knew how much he loved her, and that they pleased him by thinking of her.
If his early letters to women are affected and insincere, whenever he
speaks about this one, it is with a childish tenderness and an almost
sacred simplicity. In 1713, when young Mr. Pope had, by a series of the
most astonishing victories and dazzling achievements, seized the crown of
poetry; and the town was in an uproar of admiration, or hostility, for the
young chief; when Pope was issuing his famous decrees for the translation
of the _Iliad_; when Dennis and the lower critics were hooting and
assailing him; when Addison and the gentlemen of his court were sneering
with sickening hearts at the prodigious triumphs of the young conqueror;
when Pope, in a fever of victory, and genius, and hope, and anger, was
struggling through the crowd of shouting friends and furious detractors to
his temple of Fame, his old mother writes from the country, “My deare,”
says she, “my deare, there’s Mr. Blount, of Mapel Durom, dead the same day
that Mr. Inglefield died. Your sister is well; but your brother is sick.
My service to Mrs. Blount, and all that ask of me. I hope to hear from
you, and that you are well, which is my daily prayer; and this with my
blessing.” The triumph marches by, and the car of the young conqueror, the
hero of a hundred brilliant victories—the fond mother sits in the quiet
cottage at home, and says, “I send you my daily prayers, and I bless you,
my deare”.
In our estimate of Pope’s character, let us always take into account that
constant tenderness and fidelity of affection which pervaded and
sanctified his life, and never forget that maternal benediction.(138) It
accompanied him always: his life seems purified by those artless and
heartfelt prayers. And he seems to have received and deserved the fond
attachment of the other members of his family. It is not a little touching
to read in Spence of the enthusiastic admiration with which his
half-sister regarded him, and the simple anecdote by which she illustrates
her love. “I think no man was ever so little fond of money.” Mrs. Rackett
says about her brother, “I think my brother when he was young read more
books than any man in the world”; and she falls to telling stories of his
schooldays, and the manner in which his master at Twyford ill-used him. “I
don’t think my brother knew what fear was,” she continues; and the
accounts of Pope’s friends bear out this character for courage. When he
had exasperated the dunces, and threats of violence and personal assault
were brought to him, the dauntless little champion never for one instant
allowed fear to disturb him, or condescended to take any guard in his
daily walks, except occasionally his faithful dog to bear him company. “I
had rather die at once,” said the gallant little cripple, “than live in
fear of those rascals.”
As for his death, it was what the noble Arbuthnot asked and enjoyed for
himself—a euthanasia—a beautiful end. A perfect benevolence, affection,
serenity, hallowed the departure of that high soul. Even in the very
hallucinations of his brain, and weaknesses of his delirium, there was
something almost sacred. Spence describes him in his last days, looking
up, and with a rapt gaze as if something had suddenly passed before him.
He said to me, “What’s that?” pointing into the air with a very steady
regard, and then looked down and said, with a smile of the greatest
softness, “’twas a vision!” He laughed scarcely ever, but his companions
describe his countenance as often illuminated by a peculiar sweet smile.
“When,” said Spence,(139) the kind anecdotist whom Johnson despised, “when
I was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. Pope, on every catching and
recovery of his mind, was always saying something kindly of his present or
absent friends; and that this was so surprising, as it seemed to me as if
humanity had outlasted understanding, Lord Bolingbroke said, ‘It has so,’
and then added, ‘I never in my life knew a man who had so tender a heart
for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I
have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man’s
love than——’ Here,” Spence says, “St. John sunk his head, and lost his
voice in tears.” The sob which finishes the epitaph is finer than words.
It is the cloak thrown over the father’s face in the famous Greek picture
which hides the grief and heightens it.
In Johnson’s _Life of Pope_, you will find described with rather a
malicious minuteness some of the personal habits and infirmities of the
great little Pope. His body was crooked, he was so short that it was
necessary to raise his chair in order to place him on a level with other
people at table.(140) He was sewed up in a buckram suit every morning and
required a nurse like a child. His contemporaries reviled these
misfortunes with a strange acrimony, and made his poor deformed person the
butt for many a bolt of heavy wit. The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speaking
of him, says, “If you take the first letter of Mr. Alexander Pope’s
Christian name, and the first and last letters of his surname, you have A.
P. E.” Pope catalogues, at the end of the _Dunciad_, with a rueful
precision, other pretty names, besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That
great critic pronounced Mr. Pope was a little ass, a fool, a coward, a
Papist, and therefore a hater of Scripture, and so forth. It must be
remembered that the pillory was a flourishing and popular institution in
those days. Authors stood in it in the body sometimes: and dragged their
enemies thither morally, hooted them with foul abuse, and assailed them
with garbage of the gutter. Poor Pope’s figure was an easy one for those
clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw a hunchback, and
write Pope underneath. They did. A libel was published against Pope, with
such a frontispiece. This kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only of
an ill nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks
out into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, or
discrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or tickles
the boorish wag; and many of Pope’s revilers laughed, not so much because
they were wicked, as because they knew no better.
Without the utmost sensibility, Pope could not have been the poet he was;
and through his life, however much he protested that he disregarded their
abuse, the coarse ridicule of his opponents stung and tore him. One of
Cibber’s pamphlets coming into Pope’s hands, whilst Richardson the painter
was with him, Pope turned round and said, “These things are my
diversions;” and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused the libel,
said he saw his features “writhing with anguish”. How little human nature
changes! Can’t one see that little figure? Can’t one fancy one is reading
Horace? Can’t one fancy one is speaking of to-day?
The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to cultivate the
society of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, or beauty, caused
him to shrink equally from that shabby and boisterous crew which formed
the rank and file of literature in his time: and he was as unjust to these
men as they to him. The delicate little creature sickened at habits and
company which were quite tolerable to robuster men: and in the famous feud
between Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing any peculiar wrong to
either, one can quite understand how the two parties should so hate each
other. As I fancy, it was a sort of necessity that when Pope’s triumph
passed, Mr. Addison and his men should look rather contemptuously down on
it from their balcony; so it was natural for Dennis and Tibbald, and
Welsted, and Cibber, and the worn and hungry pressmen in the crowd below,
to howl at him and assail him. And Pope was more savage to Grub Street
than Grub Street was to Pope. The thong with which he lashed them was
dreadful; he fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and poison,
he slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the _Dunciad_ and the
prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the ruthless
little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon whom he was so
unmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who established among us
the Grub Street tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men’s
want; he gloats over poor Dennis’s garret, and flannel nightcap, and red
stockings; he gives instructions how to find Curll’s authors, the
historian at the tallow-chandler’s under the blind arch in Petty France,
the two translators in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in Budge
Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. It was Pope, I fear, who
contributed, more than any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary
calling. It was not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen;
at least there were great prizes in the profession which had made Addison
a minister, and Prior an ambassador, and Steele a commissioner, and Swift
all but a bishop. The profession of letters was ruined by that libel of
the _Dunciad_. If authors were wretched and poor before, if some of them
lived in haylofts, of which their landladies kept the ladders, at least
nobody came to disturb them in their straw; if three of them had but one
coat between them, the two remained invisible in the garret, the third, at
any rate, appeared decently at the coffee-house, and paid his twopence
like a gentleman. It was Pope that dragged into light all this poverty and
meanness, and held up those wretched shifts and rags to public ridicule.
It was Pope that has made generations of the reading world (delighted with
the mischief, as who would not be that reads it?) believe that author and
wretch, author and rags, author and dirt, author and drink, gin, cowheel,
tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, squalling children and clamorous
landladies, were always associated together. The condition of authorship
began to fall from the days of the _Dunciad_: and I believe in my heart
that much of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling was
occasioned by Pope’s libels and wicked wit. Everybody read those.
Everybody was familiarized with the idea of the poor devil, the author.
The manner is so captivating that young authors practise it, and begin
their career with satire. It is so easy to write, and so pleasant to read!
to fire a shot that makes a giant wince, perhaps; and fancy one’s self his
conqueror. It is easy to shoot—but not as Pope did—the shafts of his
satire rise sublimely: no poet’s verse ever mounted higher than that
wonderful flight with which the _Dunciad_ concludes(141):—
She comes, she comes! the sable throne behold!
Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old;
Before her, Fancy’s gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away;
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As, one by one, at dread Medea’s strain
The sick’ning stars fade off the ethereal plain;
As Argus’ eyes, by Hermes’ wand oppress’d,
Closed one by one to everlasting rest;—
Thus, at her fell approach and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Faith to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of casuistry heaped o’er her head;
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause and is no more.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And, unawares, Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine,
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine.
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored,
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all.(142)
In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the very greatest
height which his sublime art has attained, and shows himself the equal of
all poets of all times. It is the brightest ardour, the loftiest assertion
of truth, the most generous wisdom, illustrated by the noblest poetic
figure, and spoken in words the aptest, grandest, and most harmonious. It
is heroic courage speaking: a splendid declaration of righteous wrath and
war. It is the gage flung down, and the silver trumpet ringing defiance to
falsehood and tyranny, deceit, dullness, superstition. It is Truth, the
champion, shining and intrepid, and fronting the great world-tyrant with
armies of slaves at his back. It is a wonderful and victorious single
combat, in that great battle, which has always been waging since society
began.
In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try to show what it
actually is, for that were vain; but what it is like, and what are the
sensations produced in the mind of him who views it. And in considering
Pope’s admirable career, I am forced into similitudes drawn from other
courage and greatness, and into comparing him with those who achieved
triumphs in actual war. I think of the works of young Pope as I do of the
actions of young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their common life you will
find frailties and meannesses, as great as the vices and follies of the
meanest men. But in the presence of the great occasion, the great soul
flashes out, and conquers transcendent. In thinking of the splendour of
Pope’s young victories, of his merit, unequalled as his renown, I hail and
salute the achieving genius, and do homage to the pen of a hero.
Lecture The Fifth. Hogarth, Smollett, And Fielding
I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their
public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a
wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion;
bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph
through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last
volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own.
There never was perhaps a greatly popular story but this simple plot was
carried through it: mere satiric wit is addressed to a class of readers
and thinkers quite different to those simple souls who laugh and weep over
the novel. I fancy very few ladies indeed, for instance, could be brought
to like _Gulliver_ heartily, and (putting the coarseness and difference of
manners out of the question) to relish the wonderful satire of _Jonathan
Wild_. In that strange apologue, the author takes for a hero the greatest
rascal, coward, traitor, tyrant, hypocrite, that his wit and experience,
both large in this matter, could enable him to devise or depict; he
accompanies this villain through all the actions of his life, with a
grinning deference and a wonderful mock respect: and doesn’t leave him,
till he is dangling at the gallows, when the satirist makes him a low bow
and wishes the scoundrel good day.
It was not by satire of this sort, or by scorn and contempt, that Hogarth
achieved his vast popularity and acquired his reputation.(143) His art is
quite simple,(144) he speaks popular parables to interest simple hearts
and to inspire them with pleasure or pity or warning and terror. Not one
of his tales but is as easy as _Goody Two Shoes_; it is the moral of Tommy
was a naughty boy and the master flogged him, and Jacky was a good boy and
had plum cake, which pervades the whole works of the homely and famous
English moralist. And if the moral is written in rather too large letters
after the fable, we must remember how simple the scholars and schoolmaster
both were, and like neither the less because they are so artless and
honest. “It was a maxim of Dr. Harrison’s,” Fielding says in _Amelia_,
speaking of the benevolent divine and philosopher who represents the good
principle in that novel—“that no man can descend below himself, in doing
any act which may contribute to protect an innocent person, _or to bring a
rogue to the gallows_.” The moralists of that age had no compunction you
see; they had not begun to be sceptical about the theory of punishment,
and thought that the hanging of a thief was a spectacle for edification.
Masters sent their apprentices, fathers took their children, to see Jack
Sheppard or Jonathan Wild hanged, and it was as undoubting subscribers to
this moral law, that Fielding wrote and Hogarth painted. Except in one
instance, where in the mad-house scene in the _Rake’s Progress_, the girl
whom he has ruined is represented as still tending and weeping over him in
his insanity, a glimpse of pity for his rogues never seems to enter honest
Hogarth’s mind. There’s not the slightest doubt in the breast of the jolly
Draco.
The famous set of pictures called “Marriage à la Mode”, and which are
exhibited at Marlborough House [1853], in London, contains the most
important and highly wrought of the Hogarth comedies. The care and method
with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable
as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to
describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a
rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the
dissipated son of a gouty old earl. Pride and pomposity appear in every
accessory surrounding the earl. He sits in gold lace and velvet—as how
should such an earl wear anything but velvet and gold lace? His coronet is
everywhere: on his footstool on which reposes one gouty toe turned out; on
the sconces and looking-glasses; on the dogs; on his lordship’s very
crutches; on his great chair of state and the great baldaquin behind him;
under which he sits pointing majestically to his pedigree, which shows
that his race is sprung from the loins of William the Conqueror, and
confronting the old alderman from the City, who has mounted his sword for
the occasion, and wears his alderman’s chain, and has brought a bag full
of money, mortgage-deeds, and thousand-pound notes, for the arrangement of
the transaction pending between them. Whilst the steward (a Methodist,
therefore a hypocrite and cheat, for Hogarth scorned a Papist and a
Dissenter) is negotiating between the old couple, their children sit
together, united but apart. My lord is admiring his countenance in the
glass, while his bride is twiddling her marriage ring on her
pocket-handkerchief; and listening with rueful countenance to Counsellor
Silvertongue, who has been drawing the settlements. The girl is pretty,
but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, has taken care to give her a
likeness to her father, as in the young viscount’s face you see a
resemblance to the earl, his noble sire. The sense of the coronet pervades
the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures
round the room are sly hints indicating the situation of the parties about
to marry. A martyr is led to the fire; Andromeda is offered to sacrifice;
Judith is going to slay Holofernes. There is the ancestor of the house (in
the picture it is the earl himself as a young man), with a comet over his
head, indicating that the career of the family is to be brilliant and
brief. In the second picture, the old lord must be dead, for madam has now
the countess’s coronet over her bed and toilet-glass, and sits listening
to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, whose portrait now actually
hangs up in her room, whilst the counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by
her side, evidently the familiar of the house, and the confidant of the
mistress. My lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he
returns jaded and tipsy from the “Rose”, to find his wife yawning in her
drawing-room, her whist-party over, and the daylight streaming in; or he
amuses himself with the very worst company abroad, whilst his wife sits at
home listening to foreign singers, or wastes her money at auctions, or,
worse still, seeks amusement at masquerades. The dismal end is known. My
lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended whilst
endeavouring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to the alderman in the
City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue’s dying speech at
Tyburn, where the counsellor has been executed for sending his lordship
out of the world. Moral:—Don’t listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors:
don’t marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money: don’t frequent
foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband: don’t have
wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run
through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn. The
people are all naughty, and Bogey carries them all off.
In the _Rake’s Progress_, a loose life is ended by a similar sad
catastrophe. It is the spendthrift coming into possession of the wealth of
the paternal miser; the prodigal surrounded by flatterers, and wasting his
substance on the very worst company; the bailiffs, the gambling-house, and
Bedlam for an end. In the famous story of Industry and Idleness, the moral
is pointed in a manner similarly clear. Fair-haired Frank Goodchild smiles
at his work, whilst naughty Tom Idle snores over his loom. Frank reads the
edifying ballads of Whittington and the London ’Prentice, whilst that
reprobate Tom Idle prefers Moll Flanders, and drinks hugely of beer. Frank
goes to church of a Sunday, and warbles hymns from the gallery; while Tom
lies on a tombstone outside playing at halfpenny-under-the-hat, with
street blackguards, and is deservedly caned by the beadle; Frank is made
overseer of the business, whilst Tom is sent to sea. Frank is taken into
partnership and marries his master’s daughter, sends out broken victuals
to the poor, and listens in his nightcap and gown with the lovely Mrs.
Goodchild by his side, to the nuptial music of the City bands and the
marrow-bones and cleavers; whilst idle Tom, returned from sea, shudders in
a garret lest the officers are coming to take him for picking pockets. The
Worshipful Francis Goodchild, Esq., becomes Sheriff of London, and
partakes of the most splendid dinners which money can purchase or alderman
devour; whilst poor Tom is taken up in a night-cellar, with that one-eyed
and disreputable accomplice who first taught him to play chuck-farthing on
a Sunday. What happens next? Tom is brought up before the justice of his
country, in the person of Mr. Alderman Goodchild, who weeps as he
recognizes his old brother ’prentice, as Tom’s one-eyed friend peaches on
him, and the clerk makes out the poor rogue’s ticket for Newgate. Then the
end comes. Tom goes to Tyburn in a cart with a coffin in it; whilst the
Right Honourable Francis Goodchild, Lord Mayor of London, proceeds to his
Mansion House, in his gilt coach with four footmen and a sword-bearer,
whilst the Companies of London march in the august procession, whilst the
trainbands of the City fire their pieces and get drunk in his honour; and
O crowning delight and glory of all, whilst his Majesty the King looks out
from his royal balcony, with his ribbon on his breast, and his Queen and
his star by his side, at the corner house of St. Paul’s Churchyard, where
the toy-shop is now.
How the times have changed! The new Post Office now not disadvantageously
occupies that spot where the scaffolding is in the picture, where the
tipsy trainband-man is lurching against the post, with his wig over one
eye, and the ’prentice-boy is trying to kiss the pretty girl in the
gallery. Passed away ’prentice-boy and pretty girl! Passed away tipsy
trainband-man with wig and bandolier! On the spot where Tom Idle (for whom
I have an unaffected pity) made his exit from this wicked world, and where
you see the hangman smoking his pipe as he reclines on the gibbet and
views the hills of Harrow or Hampstead beyond—a splendid marble arch, a
vast and modern city—clean, airy, painted drab, populous with
nursery-maids and children, the abodes of wealth and comfort—the elegant,
the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia rises, the most respectable district
in the habitable globe!
In that last plate of the London Apprentices, in which the apotheosis of
the Right Honourable Francis Goodchild is drawn, a ragged fellow is
represented in the corner of the simple kindly piece, offering for sale a
broadside, purporting to contain an account of the appearance of the ghost
of Tom Idle, executed at Tyburn. Could Tom’s ghost have made its
appearance in 1847, and not in 1747, what changes would have been remarked
by that astonished escaped criminal! Over that road which the hangman used
to travel constantly, and the Oxford stage twice a week, go ten thousand
carriages every day: over yonder road, by which Dick Turpin fled to
Windsor, and Squire Western journeyed into town, when he came to take up
his quarters at the Hercules Pillars on the outskirts of London, what a
rush of civilization and order flows now! What armies of gentlemen with
umbrellas march to banks, and chambers, and counting-houses! What
regiments of nursery-maids and pretty infantry; what peaceful processions
of policemen, what light broughams and what gay carriages, what swarms of
busy apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, pass daily and
hourly! Tom Idle’s times are quite changed: many of the institutions gone
into disuse which were admired in his day. There’s more pity and kindness
and a better chance for poor Tom’s successors now than at that simpler
period when Fielding hanged him and Hogarth drew him.
To the student of history, these admirable works must be invaluable, as
they give us the most complete and truthful picture of the manners, and
even the thoughts, of the past century. We look, and see pass before us
the England of a hundred years ago—the peer in his drawing-room, the lady
of fashion in her apartment, foreign singers surrounding her, and the
chamber filled with gewgaws in the mode of that day; the church, with its
quaint florid architecture and singing congregation; the parson with his
great wig, and the beadle with his cane: all these are represented before
us, and we are sure of the truth of the portrait. We see how the Lord
Mayor dines in state; how the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio;
how the poor girl beats hemp in Bridewell; how the thief divides his booty
and drinks his punch at the night-cellar, and how he finishes his career
at the gibbet. We may depend upon the perfect accuracy of these strange
and varied portraits of the bygone generation: we see one of Walpole’s
Members of Parliament chaired after his election, and the lieges
celebrating the event, and drinking confusion to the Pretender: we see the
grenadiers and trainbands of the City marching out to meet the enemy; and
have before us, with sword and firelock, and white Hanoverian horse
embroidered on the cap, the very figures of the men who ran away with
Johnny Cope, and who conquered at Culloden.
Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Hogarth’s opinion about his
talents for the sublime. Although Swift could not see the difference
between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, posterity has not shared the Dean’s
contempt for Handel; the world has discovered a difference between
tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause and admiration to
Hogarth, too, but not exactly as a painter of scriptural subjects, or as a
rival of Correggio. It does not take away from one’s liking for the man,
or from the moral of his story, or the humour of it—from one’s admiration
for the prodigious merit of his performances, to remember that he
persisted to the last in believing that the world was in a conspiracy
against him with respect to his talents as an historical painter, and that
a set of miscreants, as he called them, were employed to run his genius
down. They say it was Liston’s firm belief, that he was a great and
neglected tragic actor; they say that every one of us believes in his
heart, or would like to have others believe, that he is something which he
is not. One of the most notorious of the “miscreants”, Hogarth says, was
Wilkes, who assailed him in the _North Briton_; the other was Churchill,
who put the _North Briton_ attack into heroic verse, and published his
_Epistle to Hogarth_. Hogarth replied by that caricature of Wilkes, in
which the patriot still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and
squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which he is represented as a
bear with a staff, on which, “Lie the first”, “Lie the second”, “Lie the
tenth”, are engraved in unmistakable letters. There is very little mistake
about honest Hogarth’s satire: if he has to paint a man with his throat
cut, he draws him with his head almost off; and he tried to do the same
for his enemies in this little controversy. “Having an old plate by me,”
says he, “with some parts ready, such as the background, and a dog, I
began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some
account, and so patched up a print of Master Churchill, in the character
of a bear; the pleasure and pecuniary advantage which I derived from these
two engravings, together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored
me to as much health as I can expect at my time of life.”
And so he concludes his queer little book of _Anecdotes_: “I have gone
through the circumstances of a life which till lately passed pretty much
to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no respect injurious to any other
man. This I may safely assert, that I have done my best to make those
about me tolerably happy, and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an
intentional injury. What may follow, God knows.”
A queer account still exists of a holiday jaunt taken by Hogarth and four
friends of his, who set out, like the redoubted Mr. Pickwick and his
companions, but just a hundred years before those heroes; and made an
excursion to Gravesend, Rochester, Sheerness; and adjacent places.(145)
One of the gentlemen noted down the proceedings of the journey, for which
Hogarth and a brother artist made drawings. The book is chiefly curious at
this moment from showing the citizen life of those days, and the rough,
jolly style of merriment, not of the five companions merely, but of
thousands of jolly fellows of their time. Hogarth and his friends,
quitting the “Bedford Arms”, Covent Garden, with a song, took water to
Billingsgate, exchanging compliments with the bargemen as they went down
the river. At Billingsgate, Hogarth made a “caracatura” of a facetious
porter, called the Duke of Puddledock, who agreeably entertained the party
with the humours of the place. Hence they took a Gravesend boat for
themselves; had straw to lie upon, and a tilt over their heads, they say,
and went down the river at night, sleeping and singing jolly choruses.
They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their faces and hands,
and had their wigs powdered. Then they sallied forth for Rochester on
foot, and drank by the way three pots of ale. At one o’clock they went to
dinner with excellent port, and a quantity more beer, and afterwards
Hogarth and Scott played at hopscotch in the town hall. It would appear
that they slept most of them in one room, and the chronicler of the party
describes them all as waking at seven o’clock, and telling each other
their dreams. You have rough sketches by Hogarth of the incidents of this
holiday excursion. The sturdy little painter is seen sprawling over a
plank to a boat at Gravesend; the whole company are represented in one
design, in a fisherman’s room, where they had all passed the night. One
gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself; another is being shaved by the
fisherman; a third, with a handkerchief over his bald pate, is taking his
breakfast; and Hogarth is sketching the whole scene.
They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, drank to their
friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good flip, all singing merrily.
It is a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high-jinks. These were the
manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time very likely, of men not very
refined, but honest and merry. It is a brave London citizen, with John
Bull habits, prejudices, and pleasures.(146)
Of SMOLLETT’S associates and manner of life the author of the admirable
_Humphry Clinker_ has given us an interesting account, in that most
amusing of novels.(147)
I have no doubt that the above picture is as faithful a one as any from
the pencil of his kindred humourist, Hogarth.
We have before us, and painted by his own hand, Tobias Smollett, the
manly, kindly, honest, and irascible; worn and battered, but still brave
and full of heart, after a long struggle against a hard fortune. His brain
had been busied with a hundred different schemes; he had been reviewer and
historian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought
endless literary battles; and braved and wielded for years the cudgels of
controversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those days, and a niggard
pay. He was oppressed by illness, age, narrow fortune; but his spirit was
still resolute, and his courage steady; the battle over, he could do
justice to the enemy with whom he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a
not unfriendly grasp to the hand that had mauled him. He is like one of
those Scotch cadets, of whom history gives us so many examples, and whom,
with a national fidelity, the great Scotch novelist has painted so
charmingly. Of gentle birth(148) and narrow means, going out from his
northern home to win his fortune in the world, and to fight his way, armed
with courage, hunger, and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oak-tree,
with green leaves yet springing from it. On his ancient coat-of-arms there
is a lion and a horn; this shield of his was battered and dinted in a
hundred fights and brawls,(149) through which the stout Scotchman bore it
courageously. You see somehow that he is a gentleman, through all his
battling and struggling, his poverty, his hard-fought successes, and his
defeats. His novels are recollections of his own adventures; his
characters drawn, as I should think, from personages with whom he became
acquainted in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have had;
queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow College—in the country
apothecary’s shop; in the gun-room of the man-of-war where he served as
surgeon, and in the hard life on shore, where the sturdy adventurer
struggled for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the
keenest perceptive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful
relish and delightful broad humour. I think Uncle Bowling, in _Roderick
Random_, is as good a character as Squire Western himself; and Mr. Morgan,
the Welsh apothecary, is as pleasant as Dr. Caius. What man who has made
his inestimable acquaintance—what novel-reader who loves Don Quixote and
Major Dalgetty—will refuse his most cordial acknowledgements to the
admirable Lieutenant Lismahago? The novel of _Humphry Clinker_ is, I do
think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the
goodly art of novel-writing began. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble
must keep Englishmen on the grin for ages yet to come; and in their
letters and the story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of
sparkling laughter, as inexhaustible as Bladud’s well.
-------------------------------------
Fielding, too, has described, though with a greater hand, the characters
and scenes which he knew and saw. He had more than ordinary opportunities
for becoming acquainted with life. His family and education, first—his
fortunes and misfortunes afterwards, brought him into the society of every
rank and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books: he is wild
Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth, less wild, I am glad to think, than
his predecessor, at least heartily conscious of demerit, and anxious to
amend.
When Fielding first came upon the town in 1727, the recollection of the
great wits was still fresh in the coffee-houses and assemblies, and the
judges there declared that young Harry Fielding had more spirits and wit
than Congreve or any of his brilliant successors. His figure was tall and
stalwart; his face handsome, manly, and noble-looking; to the very last
days of his life he retained a grandeur of air, and, although worn down by
disease, his aspect and presence imposed respect upon the people round
about him.
A dispute took place between Mr. Fielding and the captain(150) of the ship
in which he was making his last voyage, and Fielding relates how the man
finally went down on his knees and begged his passenger’s pardon. He was
living up to the last days of his life, and his spirit never gave in. His
vital power must have been immensely strong. Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu(151) prettily characterizes Fielding and this capacity for
happiness which he possessed, in a little notice of his death, when she
compares him to Steele, who was as improvident and as happy as he was, and
says that both should have gone on living for ever. One can fancy the
eagerness and gusto with which a man of Fielding’s frame, with his vast
health and robust appetite, his ardent spirits, his joyful humour, and his
keen and hearty relish for life, must have seized and drunk that cup of
pleasure which the town offered to him. Can any of my hearers remember the
youthful feats of a college breakfast—the meats devoured and the cups
quaffed in that Homeric feast? I can call to mind some of the heroes of
those youthful banquets, and fancy young Fielding from Leyden rushing upon
the feast, with his great laugh and immense healthy young appetite, eager
and vigorous to enjoy. The young man’s wit and manners made him friends
everywhere: he lived with the grand Man’s society of those days; he was
courted by peers and men of wealth and fashion. As he had a paternal
allowance from his father, General Fielding, which, to use Henry’s own
phrase, any man might pay who would; as he liked good wine, good clothes,
and good company, which are all expensive articles to purchase, Harry
Fielding began to run into debt, and borrow money in that easy manner in
which Captain Booth borrows money in the novel: was in nowise particular
in accepting a few pieces from the purses of his rich friends, and bore
down upon more than one of them, as Walpole tells us only too truly, for a
dinner or a guinea. To supply himself with the latter, he began to write
theatrical pieces, having already, no doubt, a considerable acquaintance
amongst the Oldfields and Bracegirdles behind the scenes. He laughed at
these pieces and scorned them. When the audience upon one occasion began
to hiss a scene which he was too lazy to correct, and regarding which,
when Garrick remonstrated with him, he said that the public was too stupid
to find out the badness of his work;—when the audience began to hiss,
Fielding said, with characteristic coolness—“They have found it out, have
they?” He did not prepare his novels in this way, and with a very
different care and interest laid the foundations and built up the edifices
of his future fame.
Time and shower have very little damaged those. The fashion and ornaments
are, perhaps, of the architecture of that age; but the buildings remain
strong and lofty, and of admirable proportions—masterpieces of genius and
monuments of workmanlike skill.
I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. Why hide his
faults? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases? Why not show
him, like him as he is, not robed in a marble toga, and draped and
polished in a heroic attitude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains
on his tarnished laced coat, and on his manly face the marks of good
fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care, and wine. Stained as you see
him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most
precious and splendid human qualities and endowments. He has an admirable
natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the
happiest satirical gift of laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully
wise and detective; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like
a policeman’s lantern. He is one of the manliest and kindliest of human
beings: in the midst of all his imperfections, he respects female
innocence and infantine tenderness, as you would suppose such a
great-hearted, courageous soul would respect and care for them. He could
not be so brave, generous, truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely
merciful, pitiful, and tender. He will give any man his purse—he can’t
help kindness and profusion. He may have low tastes, but not a mean mind;
he admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, stoops to no
flattery, bears no rancour, disdains all disloyal arts, does his public
duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work.(152)
If that theory be—and I have no doubt it is—the right and safe one, that
human nature is always pleased with the spectacle of innocence rescued by
fidelity, purity, and courage; I suppose that of the heroes of Fielding’s
three novels, we should like honest Joseph Andrews the best, and Captain
Booth the second, and Tom Jones the third.(153)
Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady Booby’s cast-off livery, is, I think,
to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his fustian suit, or Captain Booth
in regimentals. He has, like those heroes, large calves, broad shoulders,
a high courage, and a handsome face. The accounts of Joseph’s bravery and
good qualities; his voice, too musical to halloo to the dogs; his bravery
in riding races for the gentlemen of the county, and his constancy in
refusing bribes and temptation, have something affecting in their
_naiveté_ and freshness, and prepossess one in favour of that handsome
young hero. The rustic bloom of Fanny, and the delightful simplicity of
Parson Adams are described with a friendliness which wins the reader of
their story; we part with them with more regret than from Booth and Jones.
Fielding, no doubt, began to write this novel in ridicule of _Pamela_, for
which work one can understand the hearty contempt and antipathy which such
an athletic and boisterous genius as Fielding’s must have entertained. He
couldn’t do otherwise than laugh at the puny Cockney bookseller, pouring
out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a
moll-coddle and a milksop. _His_ genius had been nursed on sack-posset,
and not on dishes of tea. _His_ muse had sung the loudest in tavern
choruses, had seen the daylight streaming in over thousands of emptied
bowls, and reeled home to chambers on the shoulders of the watchman.
Richardson’s goddess was attended by old maids and dowagers, and fed on
muffins and bohea. “Milksop!” roars Harry Fielding, clattering at the
timid shop-shutters. “Wretch! Monster! Mohock!” shrieks the sentimental
author of _Pamela_;(154) and all the ladies of his court cackle out an
affrighted chorus. Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the
author, whom he disliked and utterly scorned and laughed at; but he is
himself of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he begins to like
the characters which he invents, can’t help making them manly and pleasant
as well as ridiculous, and before he has done with them all loves them
heartily every one.
Richardson’s sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is quite as natural as
the other’s laughter and contempt at the sentimentalist. I have not
learned that these likings and dislikings have ceased in the present day:
and every author must lay his account not only to misrepresentation but to
honest enmity among critics, and to being hated and abused for good as
well as for bad reasons. Richardson disliked Fielding’s works quite
honestly: Walpole quite honestly spoke of them as vulgar and stupid. Their
squeamish stomachs sickened at the rough fare and the rough guests
assembled at Fielding’s jolly revel. Indeed the cloth might have been
cleaner: and the dinner and the company were scarce such as suited a
dandy. The kind and wise old Johnson would not sit down with him.(155) But
a greater scholar than Johnson could afford to admire that astonishing
genius of Harry Fielding: and we all know the lofty panegyric which Gibbon
wrote of him, and which remains a towering monument to the great
novelist’s memory. “Our immortal Fielding,” Gibbon writes, “was of the
younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the
Counts of Hapsburgh. The successors of Charles V may disdain their
brethren of England: but the romance of _Tom Jones_, that exquisite
picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the
Imperial Eagle of Austria.”
There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. To have your
name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it written on the dome of St.
Peter’s. Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it.
As a picture of manners, the novel of _Tom Jones_ is indeed exquisite: as
a work of construction quite a wonder: the by-play of wisdom; the power of
observation; the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts; the varied
character of the great Comic Epic keep the reader in a perpetual
admiration and curiosity.(156) But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we
have a right to put in a protest, and quarrel with the esteem the author
evidently has for that character. Charles Lamb says finely of Jones, that
a single hearty laugh from him “clears the air”—but then it is in a
certain state of the atmosphere. It might clear the air when such
personages as Blifil or Lady Bellaston poison it. But I fear very much
that (except until the very last scene of the story), when Mr. Jones
enters Sophia’s drawing-room, the pure air there is rather tainted with
the young gentleman’s tobacco-pipe and punch. I can’t say that I think Mr.
Jones a virtuous character; I can’t say but that I think Fielding’s
evident liking and admiration for Mr. Jones, shows that the great
humourist’s moral sense was blunted by his life, and that here in Art and
Ethics, there is a great error. If it is right to have a hero whom we may
admire, let us at least take care that he is admirable: if, as is the plan
of some authors (a plan decidedly against their interests, be it said), it
is propounded that there exists in life no such being, and therefore that
in novels, the picture of life, there should appear no such character;
then Mr. Thomas Jones becomes an admissible person, and we examine his
defects and good qualities, as we do those of Parson Thwackum, or Miss
Seagrim. But a hero with a flawed reputation; a hero spunging for a
guinea; a hero who can’t pay his landlady, and is obliged to let his
honour out to hire, is absurd, and his claim to heroic rank untenable. I
protest against Mr. Thomas Jones holding such rank at all. I protest even
against his being considered a more than ordinary young fellow,
ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, and fond of wine and pleasure. He would
not rob a church, but that is all; and a pretty long argument may be
debated, as to which of these old types, the spendthrift, the hypocrite,
Jones and Blifil, Charles and Joseph Surface,—is the worst member of
society and the most deserving of censure. The prodigal Captain Booth is a
better man than his predecessor Mr. Jones, in so far as he thinks much
more humbly of himself than Jones did: goes down on his knees, and owns
his weaknesses, and cries out, “Not for my sake, but for the sake of my
pure and sweet and beautiful wife Amelia, I pray you, O critical reader,
to forgive me.” That stern moralist regards him from the bench (the
judge’s practice out of court is not here the question), and says,
“Captain Booth, it is perfectly true that your life has been disreputable,
and that on many occasions you have shown yourself to be no better than a
scamp—you have been tippling at the tavern, when the kindest and sweetest
lady in the world has cooked your little supper of boiled mutton and
awaited you all the night; you have spoilt the little dish of boiled
mutton thereby, and caused pangs and pains to Amelia’s tender heart.(157)
You have got into debt without the means of paying it. You have gambled
the money with which you ought to have paid your rent. You have spent in
drink or in worse amusements the sums which your poor wife has raised upon
her little home treasures, her own ornaments, and the toys of her
children. But, you rascal! you own humbly that you are no better than you
should be; you never for one moment pretend that you are anything but a
miserable weak-minded rogue. You do in your heart adore that angelic
woman, your wife, and for her sake, sirrah, you shall have your discharge.
Lucky for you and for others like you, that in spite of your failings and
imperfections, pure hearts pity and love you. For your wife’s sake you are
permitted to go hence without a remand; and I beg you, by the way, to
carry to that angelical lady the expression of the cordial respect and
admiration of this court.” Amelia pleads for her husband Will Booth:
Amelia pleads for her reckless kindly old father, Harry Fielding. To have
invented that character, is not only a triumph of art but it is a good
action. They say it was in his own home that Fielding knew her and loved
her: and from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in
English fiction—Fiction! why fiction? why not history? I know Amelia just
as well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I believe in Colonel Bath almost as
much as in Colonel Gardiner or the Duke of Cumberland. I admire the author
of _Amelia_, and thank the kind master who introduced me to that sweet and
delightful companion and friend. _Amelia_ perhaps is not a better story
than _Tom Jones_, but it has the better ethics; the prodigal repents at
least, before forgiveness,—whereas that odious broad-backed Mr. Jones
carries off his beauty with scarce an interval of remorse for his manifold
errors and shortcomings; and is not half punished enough before the great
prize of fortune and love falls to his share. I am angry with Jones. Too
much of the plum-cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous,
swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without a proper
sense of decorum; the fond, foolish, palpitating little creature,—“Indeed,
Mr. Jones,” she says,—“it rests with you to appoint the day.” I suppose
Sophia is drawn from life as well as Amelia; and many a young fellow, no
better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has carried by a _coup de main_ the heart of
many a kind girl who was a great deal too good for him.
What a wonderful art! What an admirable gift of nature, was it by which
the author of these tales was endowed, and which enabled him to fix our
interest, to waken our sympathy, to seize upon our credulity, so that we
believe in his people—speculate gravely upon their faults or their
excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore Jones’s fondness for drink
and play, Booth’s fondness for play and drink, and the unfortunate
position of the wives of both gentlemen—love and admire those ladies with
all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted
with them this morning in their actual drawing-rooms, or should meet them
this afternoon in the Park! What a genius! what a vigour! what a
bright-eyed intelligence and observation! what a wholesome hatred for
meanness and knavery! what a vast sympathy! what a cheerfulness! what a
manly relish of life! what a love of human kind! what a poet is
here!—watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitudes of truths
has that man left behind him! What generations he has taught to laugh
wisely and fairly! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the
exercise of thoughtful humour and the manly play of wit! What a courage he
had!(158) What a dauntless and constant cheerfulness of intellect, that
burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never
deserted its last wreck! It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery
which the man suffered; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he
endured; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melancholy, his
view of truth never warped, and his generous human kindness never
surrendered.(159)
In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Fielding’s last voyage
to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the ship fell down on his knees
and asked the sick man’s pardon—“I did not suffer,” Fielding says, in his
hearty, manly way, his eyes lighting up as it were with their old fire—“I
did not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in that
posture, but immediately forgave him.” Indeed, I think, with his noble
spirit and unconquerable generosity, Fielding reminds one of those brave
men of whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks and disasters—of
the officer on the African shore, when disease has destroyed the crew, and
he himself is seized by fever, who throws the lead with a death-stricken
hand, takes the soundings, carries the ship out of the river or off the
dangerous coast, and dies in the manly endeavour—of the wounded captain,
when the vessel founders, who never loses his heart, who eyes the danger
steadily, and has a cheery word for all, until the inevitable fate
overwhelms him, and the gallant ship goes down. Such a brave and gentle
heart, such an intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recognize in the
manly, the English Harry Fielding.
Lecture The Sixth. Sterne And Goldsmith
Roger Sterne, Sterne’s father, was the second son of a numerous race,
descendants of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, in the reign of James
II; and children of Simon Sterne and Mary Jaques, his wife, heiress of
Elvington, near York.(160) Roger was a lieutenant in Handyside’s regiment,
and engaged in Flanders in Queen Anne’s wars. He married the daughter of a
noted sutler—“N.B., he was in debt to him,” his son writes, pursuing the
paternal biography—and marched through the world with this companion
following the regiment and bringing many children to poor Roger Sterne.
The captain was an irascible but kind and simple little man, Sterne says,
and informs us that his sire was run through the body at Gibraltar, by a
brother officer, in a duel, which arose out of a dispute about a goose.
Roger never entirely recovered from the effects of this rencontre, but
died presently at Jamaica, whither he had followed the drum.
Laurence, his second child, was born at Clonmel, in Ireland, in 1713, and
travelled for the first ten years of his life, on his father’s march, from
barrack to transport, from Ireland to England.(161)
One relative of his mother’s took her and her family under shelter for ten
months at Mullingar: another collateral descendant of the Archbishop’s
housed them for a year at his castle near Carrickfergus. Larry Sterne was
put to school at Halifax in England, finally was adopted by his kinsman of
Elvington, and parted company with his father, the Captain, who marched on
his path of life till he met the fatal goose, which closed his career. The
most picturesque and delightful parts of Laurence Sterne’s writings, we
owe to his recollections of the military life. Trim’s montero cap, and Le
Fevre’s sword, and dear Uncle Toby’s roquelaure, are doubtless
reminiscences of the boy, who had lived with the followers of William and
Marlborough, and had beat time with his little feet to the fifes of
Ramillies in Dublin barrack-yard, or played with the torn flags and
halberds of Malplaquet on the parade-ground at Clonmel.
Laurence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen years old. His
wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the respect of his master here:
for when the usher whipped Laurence for writing his name on the newly
whitewashed schoolroom ceiling, the pedagogue in chief rebuked the
under-strapper, and said that the name should never be effaced, for Sterne
was a boy of genius, and would come to preferment.
His cousin, the Squire of Elvington, sent Sterne to Jesus College,
Cambridge, where he remained five years, and taking orders, got, through
his uncle’s interest, the living of Sutton and the prebendary of York.
Through his wife’s connexions, he got the living of Stillington. He
married her in 1741; having ardently courted the young lady for some years
previously. It was not until the young lady fancied herself dying, that
she made Sterne acquainted with the extent of her liking for him. One
evening when he was sitting with her, with an almost broken heart to see
her so ill (the Rev. Mr. Sterne’s heart was a good deal broken in the
course of his life), she said—“My dear Laurey, I never can be yours, for I
verily believe I have not long to live, but I have left you every shilling
of my fortune,” a generosity which overpowered Sterne: she recovered: and
so they were married, and grew heartily tired of each other before many
years were over. “Nescio quid est materia cum me,” Sterne writes to one of
his friends (in dog-Latin, and very sad dog-Latin too), “sed sum fatigatus
et aegrotus de mea uxore plus quam unquam,” which means, I am sorry to
say, “I don’t know what is the matter with me: but I am more tired and
sick of my wife than ever.”(162)
This to be sure was five-and-twenty years after Laurey had been overcome
by her generosity and she by Laurey’s love. Then he wrote to her of the
delights of marriage, saying—“We will be as merry and as innocent as our
first parents in Paradise, before the arch-fiend entered that
indescribable scene. The kindest affections will have room to expand in
our retirement—let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the
desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. has seen a polyanthus
blow in December?—Some friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting
wind—no planetary influence shall reach us, but that which presides and
cherishes the sweetest flowers. The gloomy family of care and distrust
shall be banished from our dwelling, guarded by thy kind and tutelar
deity—we will sing our choral songs of gratitude and rejoice to the end of
our pilgrimage. Adieu, my L. Return to one who languishes for thy
society!—As I take up my pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows,
and tears are trickling down on my paper as I trace the word L.”
And it is about this woman, with whom he finds no fault, but that she
bores him, that our philanthropist writes, “Sum fatigatus et
aegrotus”—_Sum mortaliter in amore_ with somebody else! That fine flower
of love, that polyanthus over which Sterne snivelled so many tears, could
not last for a quarter of a century!
Or rather it could not be expected that a gentleman with such a fountain
at command, should keep it to _arroser_ one homely old lady, when a score
of younger and prettier people might be refreshed from the same gushing
source.(163)
It was in December, 1767, that the Rev. Laurence Sterne, the famous
Shandean, the charming Yorick, the delight of the fashionable world, the
delicious divine, for whose sermons the whole polite world was
subscribing,(164) the occupier of Rabelais’s easy chair, only fresh
stuffed and more elegant than when in possession of the cynical old curate
of Meudon(165)—the more than rival of the Dean of St. Patrick’s, wrote the
above-quoted respectable letter to his friend in London: and it was in
April of the same year, that he was pouring out his fond heart to Mrs.
Elizabeth Draper, wife of “Daniel Draper, Esq., Counsellor of Bombay, and,
in 1775, chief of the factory of Surat—a gentleman very much respected in
that quarter of the globe”.
“I got thy letter last night, Eliza,” Sterne writes, “on my return from
Lord Bathurst’s, where I dined” (the letter has this merit in it that it
contains a pleasant reminiscence of better men than Sterne, and introduces
us to a portrait of a kind old gentleman)—“I got thy letter last night,
Eliza, on my return from Lord Bathurst’s; and where I was heard—as I
talked of thee an hour without intermission—with so much pleasure and
attention, that the good old lord toasted your health three different
times; and now he is in his 85th year, says he hopes to live long enough
to be introduced as a friend to my fair Indian disciple, and to see her
eclipse all other Nabobesses as much in wealth, as she does already in
exterior, and what is far better” (for Sterne is nothing without his
morality)—“and what is far better, in interior merit. This nobleman is an
old friend of mine. You know he was always the protector of men of wit and
genius, and has had those of the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope,
Swift, Prior, &c., always at his table. The manner in which his notice
began of me was as singular as it was polite. He came up to me one day as
I was at the Princess of Wales’s court, and said, ‘I want to know you, Mr.
Sterne, but it is fit you also should know who it is that wishes this
pleasure. You have heard of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and
Swifts have sung and spoken so much? I have lived my life with geniuses of
that cast; but have survived them; and, despairing ever to find their
equals, it is some years since I have shut up my books and closed my
accounts; but you have kindled a desire in me of opening them once more
before I die: which I now do: so go home and dine with me.’ This nobleman,
I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the wit and promptness of a man of
thirty; a disposition to be pleased, and a power to please others, beyond
whatever I knew: added to which a man of learning, courtesy, and feeling.”
“He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, with uncommon satisfaction—for there was
only a third person, _and of sensibility_, with us: and a most sentimental
afternoon till nine o’clock have we passed!(166) But thou, Eliza! wert the
star that conducted and enlivened the discourse! And when I talked not of
thee, still didst thou fill my mind, and warm every thought I uttered, for
I am not ashamed to acknowledge I greatly miss thee. Best of all good
girls!—the sufferings I have sustained all night in consequence of thine,
Eliza, are beyond the power of words.... And so thou hast fixed thy
Bramin’s portrait over thy writing desk, and will consult it in all doubts
and difficulties?—Grateful and good girl! Yorick smiles contentedly over
all thou dost: his picture does not do justice to his own complacency. I
am glad your shipmates are friendly beings” (Eliza was at Deal, going back
to the Counsellor at Bombay, and indeed it was high time she should be
off). “You could least dispense with what is contrary to your own nature,
which is soft and gentle, Eliza; it would civilize savages—though pity
were it thou shouldst be tainted with the office. Write to me, my child,
thy delicious letters. Let them speak the easy carelessness of a heart
that opens itself anyhow, every how. Such, Eliza, I write to thee!” (The
artless rogue, of course he did!) “And so I should ever love thee, most
artlessly, most affectionately, if Providence permitted thy residence in
the same section of the globe: for I am all that honour and affection can
make me ‘THY BRAMIN’.”
The Bramin continues addressing Mrs. Draper until the departure of the
_Earl of Chatham_, Indiaman, from Deal, on the 2nd of April, 1767. He is
amiably anxious about the fresh paint for Eliza’s cabin; he is uncommonly
solicitous about her companions on board: “I fear the best of your
shipmates are only genteel by comparison with the contrasted crew with
which thou beholdest them. So was—you know who—from the same fallacy which
was put upon your judgement when—but I will not mortify you!”
“You know who” was, of course, Daniel Draper, Esq., of Bombay—a gentleman
very much respected in that quarter of the globe, and about whose probable
health our worthy Bramin writes with delightful candour.
“I honour you, Eliza, for keeping secret some things which, if explained,
had been a panegyric on yourself. There is a dignity in venerable
affliction which will not allow it to appeal to the world for pity or
redress. Well have you supported that character, my amiable, my
philosophic friend! And indeed, I begin to think you have as many virtues
as my Uncle Toby’s widow. Talking of widows—pray, Eliza, if ever you are
such, do not think of giving yourself to some wealthy Nabob, because I
design to marry you myself. My wife cannot live long, and I know not the
woman I should like so well for her substitute as yourself. ’Tis true I am
ninety-five in constitution, and you but twenty-five; but what I want in
youth, I will make up in wit and good humour. Not Swift so loved his
Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Saccharissa. Tell me, in
answer to this, that you approve and honour the proposal.”
Approve and honour the proposal! The coward was writing gay letters to his
friends this while, with sneering allusions to this poor foolish
_Bramine_. Her ship was not out of the Downs, and the charming Sterne was
at the “Mount” Coffee-house, with a sheet of gilt-edged paper before him,
offering that precious treasure his heart to Lady P——, asking whether it
gave her pleasure to see him unhappy? whether it added to her triumph that
her eyes and lips had turned a man into a fool?—quoting the Lord’s Prayer,
with a horrible baseness of blasphemy, as a proof that he had desired not
to be led into temptation, and swearing himself the most tender and
sincere fool in the world. It was from his home at Coxwould that he wrote
the Latin letter, which, I suppose, he was ashamed to put into English. I
find in my copy of the _Letters_, that there is a note of I can’t call it
admiration, at Letter 112, which seems to announce that there was a No. 3
to whom the wretched worn-out old scamp was paying his addresses;(167) and
the year after, having come back to his lodgings in Bond Street, with his
_Sentimental Journey_ to launch upon the town, eager as ever for praise
and pleasure; as vain, as wicked, as witty, as false as he had ever been,
death at length seized the feeble wretch, and, on the 18th of March, 1768,
that “bale of cadaverous goods”, as he calls his body, was consigned to
Pluto.(168) In his last letter there is one sign of grace—the real
affection with which he entreats a friend to be a guardian to his daughter
Lydia.(169) All his letters to her are artless, kind, affectionate, and
_not_ sentimental; as a hundred pages in his writings are beautiful, and
full, not of surprising humour merely, but of genuine love and kindness. A
perilous trade, indeed, is that of a man who has to bring his tears and
laughter, his recollections, his personal griefs and joys, his private
thoughts and feelings to market, to write them on paper, and sell them for
money. Does he exaggerate his grief, so as to get his reader’s pity for a
false sensibility? feign indignation, so as to establish a character for
virtue? elaborate repartees, so that he may pass for a wit? steal from
other authors, and put down the theft to the credit side of his own
reputation for ingenuity and learning? feign originality? affect
benevolence or misanthropy? appeal to the gallery gods with claptraps and
vulgar baits to catch applause?
How much of the paint and emphasis is necessary for the fair business of
the stage, and how much of the rant and rouge is put on for the vanity of
the actor? His audience trusts him: can he trust himself? How much was
deliberate calculation and imposture—how much was false sensibility—and
how much true feeling? Where did the lie begin, and did he know where? and
where did the truth end in the art and scheme of this man of genius, this
actor, this quack? Some time since, I was in the company of a French
actor, who began after dinner, and at his own request, to sing French
songs of the sort called _des chansons grivoises_, and which he performed
admirably, and to the dissatisfaction of most persons present. Having
finished these, he commenced a sentimental ballad—it was so charmingly
sung that it touched all persons present, and especially the singer
himself, whose voice trembled, whose eyes filled with emotion, and who was
snivelling and weeping quite genuine tears by the time his own ditty was
over. I suppose Sterne had this artistical sensibility; he used to blubber
perpetually in his study, and finding his tears infectious, and that they
brought him a great popularity, he exercised the lucrative gift of
weeping; he utilized it, and cried on every occasion. I own that I don’t
value or respect much the cheap dribble of those fountains. He fatigues me
with his perpetual disquiet and his uneasy appeals to my risible or
sentimental faculties. He is always looking in my face, watching his
effect, uncertain whether I think him an impostor or not; posture-making,
coaxing, and imploring me. “See what sensibility I have—own now that I’m
very clever—do cry now, you can’t resist this.” The humour of Swift and
Rabelais, whom he pretended to succeed, poured from them as naturally as
song does from a bird; they lose no manly dignity with it, but laugh their
hearty great laugh out of their broad chests as nature bade them. But this
man—who can make you laugh, who can make you cry, too—never lets his
reader alone, or will permit his audience repose: when you are quiet, he
fancies he must rouse you, and turns over head and heels, or sidles up and
whispers a nasty story. The man is a great jester, not a great humourist.
He goes to work systematically and of cold blood; paints his face, puts on
his ruff and motley clothes, and lays down his carpet and tumbles on it.
For instance, take the _Sentimental Journey_, and see in the writer the
deliberate propensity to make points and seek applause. He gets to
Dessein’s Hotel, he wants a carriage to travel to Paris, he goes to the
inn-yard, and begins what the actors call “business” at once. There is
that little carriage the _désobligeant_. “Four months had elapsed since it
had finished its career of Europe in the corner of Monsieur Dessein’s
courtyard, and having sallied out thence but a vamped-up business at
first, though it had been twice taken to pieces on Mount Sennis, it had
not profited much by its adventures, but by none so little as the standing
so many months unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessein’s coachyard.
Much, indeed, was not to be said for it—but something might—and when a few
words will rescue misery out of her distress, I hate the man who can be a
churl of them.”
_Le tour est fait!_ Paillasse has tumbled! Paillasse has jumped over the
_désobligeant_, cleared it, hood and all, and bows to the noble company.
Does anybody believe that this is a real Sentiment? that this luxury of
generosity, this gallant rescue of Misery—out of an old cab, is genuine
feeling? It is as genuine as the virtuous oratory of Joseph Surface when
he begins, “The man who,” &c. &c., and wishes to pass off for a saint with
his credulous, good-humoured dupes.
Our friend purchases the carriage—after turning that notorious old monk to
good account, and effecting (like a soft and good-natured Paillasse as he
was, and very free with his money when he had it), an exchange of
snuff-boxes with the old Franciscan, jogs out of Calais; sets down in
immense figures on the credit side of his account the sous he gives away
to the Montreuil beggars; and, at Nampont, gets out of the chaise and
whimpers over that famous dead donkey, for which any sentimentalist may
cry who will. It is agreeably and skilfully done—that dead jackass; like
M. de Soubise’s cook, on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up
quite tender and with a very piquante sauce. But tears, and fine feelings,
and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and horses and
feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse with a dead donkey
inside! Psha! Mountebank! I’ll not give thee one penny more for that
trick, donkey and all!
This donkey had appeared once before with signal effect. In 1765, three
years before the publication of the _Sentimental Journey_, the seventh and
eighth volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ were given to the world, and the
famous Lyons donkey makes his entry in those volumes (pp. 315, 316):—
“’Twas by a poor ass, with a couple of large panniers at his back, who had
just turned in to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and cabbage-leaves, and
stood dubious, with his two forefeet at the inside of the threshold, and
with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well
whether he was to go in or no.
“Now ’tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike;
there is a patient endurance of suffering wrote so unaffectedly in his
looks and carriage which pleads so mightily for him, that it always
disarms me, and to that degree that I do not like to speak unkindly to
him: on the contrary, meet him where I will, whether in town or country,
in cart or under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage, I have ever
something civil to say to him on my part; and, as one word begets another
(if he has as little to do as I), I generally fall into conversation with
him; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing responses
from the etchings of his countenance; and where those carry me not deep
enough, in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural
for an ass to think—as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it is
the only creature of all the classes of beings below me with whom I can do
this.... With an ass I can commune for ever.
“ ‘Come, Honesty,’ said I, seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him
and the gate, ‘art thou for coming in or going out?’
“The ass twisted his head round to look up the street.
“ ‘Well!’ replied I, ‘we’ll wait a minute for thy driver.’
“He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite
way.
“ ‘I understand thee perfectly,’ answered I: ‘if thou takest a wrong step
in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. Well! a minute is but a
minute; and if it saves a fellow creature a drubbing, it shall not be set
down as ill spent.’
“He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and, in
the little peevish contentions between hunger and unsavouriness, had
dropped it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and had picked it up
again. ‘God help thee, Jack!’ said I, ‘thou hast a bitter breakfast
on’t—and many a bitter day’s labour, and many a bitter blow, I fear, for
its wages! ’Tis all, all bitterness to thee—whatever life is to others!
And now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter. I dare say,
as soot’ (for he had cast aside the stem), ‘and thou hast not a friend
perhaps in all this world that will give thee a macaroon.’ In saying this,
I pulled out a paper of ’em, which I had just bought, and gave him
one;—and, at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me that
there was more of pleasantry in the conceit of seeing _how_ an ass would
eat a macaroon than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in
the act.
“When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to come in. The poor
beast was heavy loaded—his legs seemed to tremble under him—he hung rather
backward, and, as I pulled at his halter, it broke in my hand. He looked
up pensive in my face: ‘Don’t thrash me with it: but if you will you may.’
‘If I do,’ said I, ‘I’ll be d——.’ ”
A critic who refuses to see in this charming description wit, humour,
pathos, a kind nature speaking, and a real sentiment, must be hard indeed
to move and to please. A page or two farther we come to a description not
less beautiful—a landscape and figures, deliciously painted by one who had
the keenest enjoyment and the most tremulous sensibility:—
“’Twas in the road between Nismes and Lunel, where is the best Muscatto
wine in all France: the sun was set, they had done their work; the nymphs
had tied up their hair afresh, and the swains were preparing for a
carousal. My mule made a dead point. ‘’Tis the pipe and tambourine,’ said
I—‘I never will argue a point with one of your family as long as I live;’
so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch and
t’other into that, ‘I’ll take a dance,’ said I, ‘so stay you here.’
“A sunburnt daughter of labour rose up from the group to meet me as I
advanced towards them; her hair, which was of a dark chestnut approaching
to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single tress.
“ ‘We want a cavalier,’ said she, holding out both her hands, as if to
offer them. ‘And a cavalier you shall have,’ said I, taking hold of both
of them. ‘We could not have done without you,’ said she, letting go one
hand, with self-taught politeness, and leading me up with the other.
“A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, and to which he
had added a tambourine of his own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude, as
he sat upon the bank. ‘Tie me up this tress instantly,’ said Nannette,
putting a piece of string into my hand. It taught me to forget I was a
stranger. The whole knot fell down—we had been seven years acquainted. The
youth struck the note upon the tambourine, his pipe followed, and off we
bounded.
“The sister of the youth—who had stolen her voice from Heaven—sang
alternately with her brother. ’Twas a Gascoigne roundelay. ‘_Viva la joia,
fidon la tristessa!_’—the nymphs joined in unison, and their swains an
octave below them.
“_Viva la joia_ was in Nannette’s lips, _viva la joia_ in her eyes. A
transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us. She looked
amiable. Why could I not live and end my days thus? ‘Just Disposer of our
joys and sorrows!’ cried I, ‘why could not a man sit down in the lap of
content here, and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven
with this nut-brown maid?’ Capriciously did she bend her head on one side,
and dance up insidious. ‘Then ’tis time to dance off,’ quoth I.”
And with this pretty dance and chorus, the volume artfully concludes. Even
here one can’t give the whole description. There is not a page in Sterne’s
writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption—a
hint, as of an impure presence.(170)
Some of that dreary _double entendre_ may be attributed to freer times and
manners than ours, but not all. The foul Satyr’s eyes leer out of the
leaves constantly: the last words the famous author wrote were bad and
wicked—the last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and
pardon. I think of these past writers and of one who lives amongst us now,
and am grateful for the innocent laughter and the sweet and unsullied page
which the author of _David Copperfield_ gives to my children.
-------------------------------------
Jeté sur cette boule,
Laid, chétif et souffrant;
Étouffé dans la foule,
Faute d’être assez grand;
Une plainte touchante
De ma bouche sortit;
Le bon Dieu me dit: Chante,
Chante, pauvre petit!
Chanter, ou je m’abuse,
Est ma tâche ici-bas.
Tous ceux qu’ainsi j’amuse,
Ne m’aimeront-ils pas?
In those charming lines of Béranger, one may fancy described the career,
the sufferings, the genius, the gentle nature of GOLDSMITH, and the esteem
in which we hold him. Who, of the millions whom he has amused, doesn’t
love him? To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is
for a man!(171) A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and
affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been passed in
happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out
of doors, and achieve name and fortune—and after years of dire struggle,
and neglect and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native
place, as it had longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes
a book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home—he
paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and
Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wander he must, but he carries away
a home-relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is
truant; in repose it longs for change: as on the journey it looks back for
friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air-castle for
to-morrow, or in writing yesterday’s elegy; and he would fly away this
hour, but that a cage and necessity keep him. What is the charm of his
verse, of his style, and humour? His sweet regrets, his delicate
compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he
owns? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the
day’s battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the
kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon—save the
harp on which he plays to you; and with which he delights great and
humble, young and old, the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round
the fire, or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he
stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story
of the _Vicar of Wakefield_,(172) he has found entry into every castle and
every hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however busy or hard, but once or
twice in our lives has passed an evening with him, and undergone the charm
of his delightful music.
Goldsmith’s father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, whom we all of
us know.(173) Swift was yet alive, when the little Oliver was born at
Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two
years after the child’s birth, Charles Goldsmith removed his family to
Lissoy, in the county Westmeath, that sweet “Auburn” which every person
who hears me has seen in fancy. Here the kind parson(174) brought up his
eight children; and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied all the
world loved him. He had a crowd of poor dependants besides those hungry
children. He kept an open table; round which sat flatterers and poor
friends, who laughed at the honest rector’s many jokes, and ate the
produce of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have seen an Irish house
in the present day can fancy that one of Lissoy. The old beggar still has
his allotted corner by the kitchen turf; the maimed old soldier still gets
his potatoes and buttermilk; the poor cottier still asks his honour’s
charity, and prays God bless his Reverence for the sixpence; the ragged
pensioner still takes his place by right and sufferance. There’s still a
crowd in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlour-table, profusion,
confusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to London to make his
fortune, he has a half-dozen of Irish dependants who take a percentage of
his earnings. The good Charles Goldsmith(175) left but little provision
for his hungry race when death summoned him; and one of his daughters
being engaged to a squire of rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith
impoverished the rest of his family to provide the girl with a dowry.
The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and ravaged the
roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor little Oliver’s
face, when the child was eight years old, and left him scarred and
disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father’s village taught him
his letters, and pronounced him a dunce: Paddy Byrne, the
hedge-schoolmaster, took him in hand; and from Paddy Byrne, he was
transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When a child was sent to school in
those days, the classic phrase was that he was placed under Mr.
So-and-so’s _ferule_. Poor little ancestors! It is hard to think how
ruthlessly you were birched; and how much of needless whipping and tears
our small forefathers had to undergo! A relative—kind Uncle Contarine,
took the main charge of little Noll; who went through his school-days
righteously doing as little work as he could: robbing orchards, playing at
ball, and making his pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it to
him. Everybody knows the story of that famous “Mistake of a Night”, when
the young schoolboy, provided with a guinea and a nag, rode up to the
“best house” in Ardagh, called for the landlord’s company over a bottle of
wine at supper, and for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning; and
found, when he asked for the bill, that the best house was Squire
Featherstone’s, and not the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not know
every story about Goldsmith? That is a delightful and fantastic picture of
the child dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old
fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness—and called him Aesop, and little
Noll made his repartee of “Heralds proclaim aloud this saying—See Aesop
dancing and his monkey playing”. One can fancy a queer pitiful look of
humour and appeal upon that little scarred face—the funny little dancing
figure, the funny little brogue. In his life, and his writings, which are
the honest expression of it, he is constantly bewailing that homely face
and person; anon, he surveys them in the glass ruefully; and presently
assumes the most comical dignity. He likes to deck out his little person
in splendour and fine colours. He presented himself to be examined for
ordination in a pair of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he did
not like to go into the Church, because he was fond of coloured clothes.
When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by crook a black
velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he could, and kept his hat
over a patch on the old coat: in better days he bloomed out in
plum-colour, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those splendours
the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, have never been paid to
this day; perhaps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled
the little account in Hades.(176)
They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dublin, on which the
name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it?
Not the young sizar’s, who made but a poor figure in that place of
learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure:(177) he learned
his way early to the pawnbroker’s shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for
the street-singers, who paid him a crown for a poem: and his pleasure was
to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his
tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear so much
to heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property,
and disappeared from college and family. He said he intended to go to
America, but when his money was spent, the young prodigal came home
ruefully, and the good folks there killed their calf—it was but a lean
one—and welcomed him back.
After college, he hung about his mother’s house, and lived for some years
the life of a buckeen—passed a month with this relation and that, a year
with one patron, a great deal of time at the public-house.(178) Tired of
this life, it was resolved that he should go to London, and study at the
Temple; but he got no farther on the road to London and the woolsack than
Dublin, where he gambled away the fifty pounds given to him for his
outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home.
Then he determined to be a doctor, and Uncle Contarine helped him to a
couple of years at Edinburgh. Then from Edinburgh he felt that he ought to
hear the famous professors of Leyden and Paris, and wrote most amusing
pompous letters to his uncle about the great Farheim, Du Petit, and
Duhamel du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed to follow. If Uncle
Contarine believed those letters—if Oliver’s mother believed that story
which the youth related of his going to Cork, with the purpose of
embarking for America, of his having paid his passage-money, and having
sent his kit on board; of the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver’s
valuable luggage in a nameless ship, never to return; if Uncle Contarine
and the mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a
very simple pair; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them.
When the lad, after failing in his clerical examination, after failing in
his plan for studying the law, took leave of these projects and of his
parents, and set out for Edinburgh, he saw mother, and uncle, and lazy
Ballymahon, and green native turf, and sparkling river for the last time.
He was never to look on old Ireland more, and only in fancy revisit her.
But me not destined such delights to share,
My prime of life in wandering spent and care,
Impelled, with step unceasing, to pursue
Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view;
That like the circle bounding earth and skies
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies:
My fortune leads to traverse realms unknown,
And find no spot of all the world my own.
I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which enabled Fielding,
in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, always to retain a cheerful
spirit and to keep his manly benevolence and love of truth intact, as if
these treasures had been confided to him for the public benefit, and he
was accountable to posterity for their honourable employ; and a constancy
equally happy and admirable I think was shown by Goldsmith, whose sweet
and friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the midst of a life’s storm,
and rain, and bitter weather.(179) The poor fellow was never so friendless
but he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could
give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had but his
flute left, he could give that, and make the children happy in the dreary
London court. He could give the coals in that queer coal-scuttle we read
of to his poor neighbour: he could give away his blankets in college to
the poor widow, and warm himself as he best might in the feathers: he
could pawn his coat to save his landlord from gaol: when he was a
school-usher, he spent his earnings in treats for the boys, and the
good-natured schoolmaster’s wife said justly that she ought to keep Mr.
Goldsmith’s money as well as the young gentlemen’s. When he met his pupils
in later life, nothing would satisfy the Doctor but he must treat them
still. “Have you seen the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds?” he asked
of one of his old pupils. “Not seen it? not bought it? Sure, Jack, if your
picture had been published, I’d not have been without it half an hour.”
His purse and his heart were everybody’s, and his friends’ as much as his
own. When he was at the height of his reputation, and the Earl of
Northumberland, going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be
of any service to Dr. Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother, and
not himself, to the great man. “My patrons,” he gallantly said, “are the
booksellers, and I want no others.”(180) Hard patrons they were, and hard
work he did; but he did not complain much: if in his early writings some
bitter words escaped him, some allusions to neglect and poverty, he
withdrew these expressions when his works were republished, and better
days seemed to open for him; and he did not care to complain that printer
or publisher had overlooked his merit, or left him poor. The Court face
was turned from honest Oliver, the Court patronized Beattie; the fashion
did not shine on him—fashion adored Sterne.(181)
Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy of his day. A
little—not ill humour, but plaintiveness—a little betrayal of wounded
pride which he showed render him not the less amiable. The author of the
_Vicar of Wakefield_ had a right to protest when Newbery kept back the MS.
for two years; had a right to be a little peevish with Sterne; a little
angry when Colman’s actors declined their parts in his delightful comedy,
when the manager refused to have a scene painted for it, and pronounced
its damnation before hearing. He had not the great public with him; but he
had the noble Johnson, and the admirable Reynolds, and the great Gibbon,
and the great Burke, and the great Fox—friends and admirers illustrious
indeed, as famous as those who, fifty years before, sat round Pope’s
table.
Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith’s buoyant temper kept no account of
all the pains which he endured during the early period of his literary
career. Should any man of letters in our day have to bear up against such,
Heaven grant he may come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure
kind heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. The
insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of—slander,
contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest
motives and actions: he had his share of these, and one’s anger is roused
at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child
assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle and weak, and full
of love, should have had to suffer so. And he had worse than insult to
undergo—to own to fault, and deprecate the anger of ruffians. There is a
letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which poor
Goldsmith is forced to confess that certain books sent by Griffiths are in
the hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith had been forced to borrow money.
“He was wild, sir,” Johnson said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with
his great, wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart, “Dr.
Goldsmith was wild, sir; but he is so no more.” Ah! if we pity the good
and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal very gently with him
from whom misery extorts not only tears, but shame; let us think humbly
and charitably of the human nature that suffers so sadly and falls so low.
Whose turn may it be tomorrow? What weak heart, confident before trial,
may not succumb under temptation invincible? Cover the good man who has
been vanquished—cover his face and pass on.
For the last half-dozen years of his life, Goldsmith was far removed from
the pressure of any ignoble necessity: and in the receipt, indeed, of a
pretty large income from the booksellers, his patrons. Had he lived but a
few years more, his public fame would have been as great as his private
reputation, and he might have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which
his country has ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius who has
touched on almost every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he
did not adorn. Except in rare instances, a man is known in our profession,
and esteemed as a skilful workman, years before the lucky hit which
trebles his usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength
of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers and friends
the most illustrious literary men of his time,(182) fame and prosperity
might have been in store for Goldsmith, had fate so willed it; and, at
forty-six, had not sudden disease carried him off. I say prosperity rather
than competence, for it is probable that no sum could have put order into
his affairs or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It
must be remembered that he owed 2,000_l._ when he died. “Was ever poet,”
Johnson asked, “so trusted before?” As has been the case with many another
good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance wasted
by crowds of hungry beggars, and lazy dependants. If they came at a lucky
time (and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and
watched his pay-day), he gave them of his money: if they begged on
empty-purse days he gave them his promissory bills: or he treated them to
a tavern where he had credit; or he obliged them with an order upon honest
Mr. Filby for coats, for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until
the shears of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load
of debt and labour, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, running
from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing looks were perhaps the
hardest of all pains for him to bear, devising fevered plans for the
morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts of new literary schemes,
flying from all these into seclusion, and out of seclusion into
pleasure—at last, at five-and-forty, death seized him and closed his
career.(183) I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which
were his, and passed up the staircase, which Johnson, and Burke, and
Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith—the
stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that
the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak
door.(184) Ah, it was a different lot from that for which the poor fellow
sighed, when he wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of
all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn—
Here as I take my solitary rounds,
Amidst thy tangled walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,
Swells at my heart, and turns the past to pain.
In all my wanderings round this world of care
In all my griefs—and God has given my share,
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life’s taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose;
I still had hopes—for pride attends us still—
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt and all I saw;
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue.
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew—
I still had hopes—my long vexations past,
Here to return, and die at home at last.
O blest retirement, friend to life’s decline!
Retreats from care that never must be mine—
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease;
Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly!
For him no wretches born to work and weep
Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep;
No surly porter stands in guilty state
To spurn imploring famine from his gate:
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue’s friend;
Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay,
Whilst resignation gently slopes the way;
And all his prospects brightening at the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.
In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with what touching
truth, with what exquisite beauty of comparison—as indeed in hundreds more
pages of the writings of this honest soul—the whole character of the man
is told—his humble confession of faults and weakness; his pleasant little
vanity, and desire that his village should admire him; his simple scheme
of good in which everybody was to be happy—no beggar was to be refused his
dinner—nobody in fact was to work much, and he to be the harmless chief of
the Utopia, and the monarch of the Irish Yvetôt. He would have told again,
and without fear of their failing, those famous jokes(185) which had hung
fire in London; he would have talked of his great friends of the Club—of
my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, my Lord Nugent—sure he knew them
intimately, and was hand and glove with some of the best men in town—and
he would have spoken of Johnson and of Burke, from Cork, and of Sir Joshua
who had painted him—and he would have told wonderful sly stories of
Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Madame Cornelys’; and he
would have toasted, with a sigh, the Jessamy Bride—the lovely Mary
Horneck.
The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the prettiest
recollections of Goldsmith’s life. She and her beautiful sister, who
married Bunbury, the graceful and humorous amateur artist of those days,
when Gilray had but just begun to try his powers, were among the kindest
and dearest of Goldsmith’s many friends, cheered and pitied him, travelled
abroad with him; made him welcome at their home, and gave him many a
pleasant holiday. He bought his finest clothes to figure at their country
house at Barton—he wrote them droll verses. They loved him, laughed at
him, played him tricks and made him happy. He asked for a loan from
Garrick, and Garrick kindly supplied him, to enable him to go to
Barton—but there were to be no more holidays, and only one brief struggle
more for poor Goldsmith—a lock of his hair was taken from the coffin and
given to the Jessamy Bride. She lived quite into our time. Hazlitt saw her
an old lady, but beautiful still, in Northcote’s painting-room, who told
the eager critic how proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired her.
The younger Colman has left a touching reminiscence of him (vol. i. 63,
64).
“I was only five years old,” he says, “when Goldsmith took me on his knee
one evening whilst he was drinking coffee with my father, and began to
play with me, which amiable act I returned, with the ingratitude of a
peevish brat, by giving him a very smart slap on the face: it must have
been a tingler, for it left the marks of my spiteful paw on his cheek.
This infantile outrage was followed by summary justice, and I was locked
up by my indignant father in an adjoining room to undergo solitary
imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably,
which was no bad step towards my liberation, since those who were not
inclined to pity me might be likely to set me free for the purpose of
abating a nuisance.
“At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy, and
that generous friend was no other than the man I had so wantonly molested
by assault and battery—it was the tender-hearted Doctor himself, with a
lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was
still partially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and sobbed
as he fondled and soothed, till I began to brighten. Goldsmith seized the
propitious moment of returning good humour, when he put down the candle
and began to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened to be in the
room, and a shilling under each. The shillings he told me were England,
France, and Spain. ‘Hey presto cockalorum!’ cried the Doctor, and lo, on
uncovering the shillings, which had been dispersed each beneath a separate
hat, they were all found congregated under one. I was no politician at
five years old, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden
revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown;
but, as also I was no conjurer, it amazed me beyond measure.... From that
time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father, ‘I plucked his gown to
share the good man’s smile’; a game at romps constantly ensued, and we
were always cordial friends and merry playfellows. Our unequal
companionship varied somewhat as to sports as I grew older; but it did not
last long: my senior playmate died in his forty-fifth year, when I had
attained my eleventh.... In all the numerous accounts of his virtues and
foibles, his genius and absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance
of the world, his ‘compassion for another’s woe’ was always predominant;
and my trivial story of his humouring a froward child weighs but as a
feather in the recorded scale of his benevolence.”
Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like—but merciful, gentle,
generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to
render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his
grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of
the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph—and of the wonderful and
unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the
love he gave it. His humour delighting us still: his song fresh and
beautiful as when first he charmed with it: his words in all our mouths:
his very weaknesses beloved and familiar—his benevolent spirit seems still
to smile upon us: to do gentle kindnesses: to succour with sweet charity:
to soothe, caress, and forgive: to plead with the fortunate for the
unhappy and the poor.
His name is the last in the list of those men of humour who have formed
the themes of the discourses which you have heard so kindly.
-------------------------------------
Long before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or dreamed of the
possibility of the good fortune which has brought me so many friends, I
was at issue with some of my literary brethren upon a point—which they
held from tradition I think rather than experience—that our profession was
neglected in this country; and that men of letters were ill-received and
held in slight esteem. It would hardly be grateful of me now to alter my
old opinion that we do meet with goodwill and kindness, with generous
helping hands in the time of our necessity, with cordial and friendly
recognition. What claim had any one of these of whom I have been speaking,
but genius? What return of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to
all?
What punishment befell those who were unfortunate among them, but that
which follows reckless habits and careless lives? For these faults a wit
must suffer like the dullest prodigal that ever ran in debt. He must pay
the tailor if he wears the coat; his children must go in rags if he spends
his money at the tavern; he can’t come to London and be made Lord
Chancellor if he stops on the road and gambles away his last shilling at
Dublin. And he must pay the social penalty of these follies too, and
expect that the world will shun the man of bad habits, that women will
avoid the man of loose life, that prudent folks will close their doors as
a precaution, and before a demand should be made on their pockets by the
needy prodigal. With what difficulty had any one of these men to contend,
save that eternal and mechanical one of want of means and lack of capital,
and of which thousands of young lawyers, young doctors, young soldiers and
sailors, of inventors, manufacturers, shopkeepers, have to complain?
Hearts as brave and resolute as ever beat in the breast of any wit or
poet, sicken and break daily in the vain endeavour and unavailing struggle
against life’s difficulty. Don’t we see daily ruined inventors,
grey-haired midshipmen, balked heroes, blighted curates, barristers pining
a hungry life out in chambers, the attorneys never mounting to their
garrets, whilst scores of them are rapping at the door of the successful
quack below? If these suffer, who is the author, that he should be exempt?
Let us bear our ills with the same constancy with which others endure
them, accept our manly part in life, hold our own, and ask no more. I can
conceive of no kings or laws causing or curing Goldsmith’s improvidence,
or Fielding’s fatal love of pleasure, or Dick Steele’s mania for running
races with the constable. You never can outrun that sure-footed
officer—not by any swiftness or by dodges devised by any genius, however
great; and he carries off the Tatler to the spunging-house, or taps the
Citizen of the World on the shoulder as he would any other mortal.
Does society look down on a man because he is an author? I suppose if
people want a buffoon they tolerate him only in so far as he is amusing;
it can hardly be expected that they should respect him as an equal. Is
there to be a guard of honour provided for the author of the last new
novel or poem? how long is he to reign, and keep other potentates out of
possession? He retires, grumbles, and prints a lamentation that literature
is despised. If Captain A. is left out of Lady B.’s parties he does not
state that the army is despised: if Lord C. no longer asks Counsellor D.
to dinner, Counsellor D. does not announce that the Bar is insulted. He is
not fair to society if he enters it with this suspicion hankering about
him; if he is doubtful about his reception, how hold up his head honestly,
and look frankly in the face that world about which he is full of
suspicion? Is he place-hunting, and thinking in his mind that he ought to
be made an Ambassador, like Prior, or a Secretary of State, like Addison?
his pretence of equality falls to the ground at once: he is scheming for a
patron, not shaking the hand of a friend, when he meets the world. Treat
such a man as he deserves; laugh at his buffoonery, and give him a dinner
and a _bon jour_; laugh at his self-sufficiency and absurd assumptions of
superiority, and his equally ludicrous airs of martyrdom: laugh at his
flattery and his scheming, and buy it, if it’s worth the having. Let the
wag have his dinner and the hireling his pay, if you want him, and make a
profound bow to the _grand homme incompris_, and the boisterous martyr,
and show him the door. The great world, the great aggregate experience,
has its good sense, as it has its good humour. It detects a pretender, as
it trusts a loyal heart. It is kind in the main: how should it be
otherwise than kind, when it is so wise and clear-headed? To any literary
man who says, “It despises my profession,” I say, with all my might—no,
no, no. It may pass over your individual case—how many a brave fellow has
failed in the race, and perished unknown in the struggle!—but it treats
you as you merit in the main. If you serve it, it is not unthankful; if
you please it, it is pleased; if you cringe to it, it detects you, and
scorns you if you are mean; it returns your cheerfulness with its good
humour; it deals not ungenerously with your weaknesses; it recognizes most
kindly your merits; it gives you a fair place and fair play. To any one of
those men of whom we have spoken was it in the main ungrateful? A king
might refuse Goldsmith a pension, as a publisher might keep his
masterpiece and the delight of all the world in his desk for two years;
but it was mistake, and not ill will. Noble and illustrious names of
Swift, and Pope, and Addison! dear and honoured memories of Goldsmith and
Fielding! kind friends, teachers, benefactors! who shall say that our
country, which continues to bring you such an unceasing tribute of
applause, admiration, love, sympathy, does not do honour to the literary
calling in the honour which it bestows upon _you!_
THE GEORGES
The Poems
[_Punch_, October 11, 1845]
As the statues of these beloved Monarchs are to be put up in the
Parliament palace—we have been favoured by a young lady (connected with
the Court) with copies of the inscriptions which are to be engraven under
the images of those Stars of Brunswick.
GEORGE I—STAR OF BRUNSWICK
He preferred Hanover to England,
He preferred two hideous Mistresses
To a beautiful and innocent Wife.
He hated Arts and despised Literature;
But He liked train-oil in his salads,
And gave an enlightened patronage to bad oysters.
And he had Walpole as a Minister:
Consistent in his Preference for every kind of Corruption.
GEORGE II
In most things I did as my father had done,
I was false to my wife and I hated my son:
My spending was small and my avarice much,
My kingdom was English, my heart was High Dutch:
At Dettingen fight I was known not to blench
I butchered the Scotch, and I bearded the French:
I neither had morals, nor manners, nor wit;
I wasn’t much missed when I died in a fit.
Here set up my statue, and make it complete—With
Pitt on his knees at my dirty old feet.
GEORGE III
Give me a royal niche—it is my due,
The virtuousest king the realm e’er knew.
I, through a decent reputable life,
Was constant to plain food and a plain wife.
Ireland I risked, and lost America;
But dined on legs of mutton every day.
My brain, perhaps, might be a feeble part;
But yet I think I had an English heart.
When all the kings were prostrate, I alone
Stood face to face against Napoleon;
Nor ever could the ruthless Frenchman forge
A fetter for Old England and Old George:
I let loose flaming Nelson on his fleets;
I met his troops with Wellesley’s bayonets.
Triumphant waved my flag on land and sea:
Where was the king in Europe like to me?
Monarchs exiled found shelter on my shores;
My bounty rescued kings and emperors.
But what boots victory by land or sea?
What boots that kings found refuge at my knee?
I was a conqueror, but yet not proud;
And careless, even though Napoleon bow’d.
The rescued kings came kiss my garments’ hem:
The rescued kings I never heeded them.
My guns roar’d triumph, but I never heard:
All England thrilled with joy, I never stirred.
What care had I of pomp, or fame, or power,—
A crazy old blind man in Windsor Tower?
GEORGIUS ULTIMUS
He left an example for age and for youth
To avoid.
He never acted well by Man or Woman,
And was as false to his Mistress as to his Wife.
He deserted his Friends and his Principles.
He was so ignorant that he could scarcely Spell;
But he had some Skill in Cutting out Coats,
And an undeniable Taste for Cookery.
He built the Palaces of Brighton and of Buckingham,
And for these Qualities and Proofs of Genius,
An admiring Aristocracy
Christened him the “First Gentleman in Europe”.
Friends, respect the King whose Statue is here,
And the generous Aristocracy who admired him.
Sketches Of Manners, Morals, Court And Town Life
[_Cornhill Magazine_, 1860; first edition in book form, 1861]
George The First
A very few years since, I knew familiarly a lady, who had been asked in
marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been patted on the head by George I.
This lady had knocked at Johnson’s door; had been intimate with Fox, the
beautiful Georgina of Devonshire, and that brilliant Whig society of the
reign of George III; had known the Duchess of Queensberry, the patroness
of Gay and Prior, the admired young beauty of the Court of Queen Anne. I
often thought as I took my kind old friend’s hand, how with it I held on
to the old society of wits and men of the world. I could travel back for
sevenscore years of time—have glimpses of Brummell, Selwyn, Chesterfield
and the men of pleasure; of Walpole and Conway; of Johnson, Reynolds,
Goldsmith; of North, Chatham, Newcastle; of the fair maids of honour of
George II’s Court; of the German retainers of George I’s; where Addison
was secretary of state; where Dick Steele held a place; whither the great
Marlborough came with his fiery spouse; when Pope, and Swift, and
Bolingbroke yet lived and wrote. Of a society so vast, busy, brilliant, it
is impossible in four brief chapters to give a complete notion; but we may
peep here and there into that bygone world of the Georges, see what they
and their Courts were like; glance at the people round about them; look at
past manners, fashions, pleasures, and contrast them with our own. I have
to say thus much by way of preface, because the subject of these lectures
has been misunderstood, and I have been taken to task for not having given
grave historical treatises, which it never was my intention to attempt.
Not about battles, about politics, about statesmen and measures of state,
did I ever think to lecture you: but to sketch the manners and life of the
old world; to amuse for a few hours with talk about the old society; and,
with the result of many a day’s and night’s pleasant reading, to try and
wile away a few winter evenings for my hearers.
-------------------------------------
Among the German princes who sat under Luther at Wittenberg, was Duke
Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William of Lüneburg, was the
progenitor of the illustrious Hanoverian house at present reigning in
Great Britain. Duke William held his Court at Celle, a little town of ten
thousand people that lies on the railway line between Hamburg and Hanover,
in the midst of great plains of sand, upon the river Aller. When Duke
William had it, it was a very humble wood-built place, with a great brick
church, which he sedulously frequented, and in which he and others of his
house lie buried. He was a very religious lord, and called William the
Pious by his small circle of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate
deprived him both of sight and reason. Sometimes, in his latter days, the
good duke had glimpses of mental light, when he would bid his musicians
play the psalm-tunes which he loved. One thinks of a descendant of his,
two hundred years afterwards, blind, old, and lost of wits, singing Handel
in Windsor Tower.
William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters and seven sons,
who, as the property left among them was small, drew lots to determine
which one of them should marry, and continue the stout race of the
Guelphs. The lot fell on Duke George, the sixth brother. The others
remained single, or contracted left-handed marriages after the princely
fashion of those days. It is a queer picture—that of the old prince dying
in his little wood-built capital, and his seven sons tossing up which
should inherit and transmit the crown of Brentford. Duke George, the lucky
prizeman, made the tour of Europe, during which he visited the Court of
Queen Elizabeth; and in the year 1617, came back and settled at Zell, with
a wife out of Darmstadt. His remaining brothers all kept their house at
Zell, for economy’s sake. And presently, in due course, they all died—all
the honest dukes; Ernest, and Christian, and Augustus, and Magnus, and
George, and John—and they are buried in the brick church of Brentford
yonder, by the sandy banks of the Aller.
Dr. Vehse gives a pleasant glimpse of the way of life of our dukes in
Zell. “When the trumpeter on the tower has blown,” Duke Christian
orders—viz. at nine o’clock in the morning, and four in the evening, every
one must be present at meals, and those who are not must go without. None
of the servants, unless it be a knave who has been ordered to ride out,
shall eat or drink in the kitchen or cellar; or, without special leave,
fodder his horses at the prince’s cost. When the meal is served in the
Court-room, a page shall go round and bid every one be quiet and orderly,
forbidding all cursing, swearing, and rudeness; all throwing about of
bread, bones, or roast, or pocketing of the same. Every morning, at seven,
the squires shall have their morning soup, along with which, and dinner,
they shall be served with their under-drink—every morning, except Friday
morning, when there was sermon, and no drink. Every evening they shall
have their beer, and at night their sleep-drink. The butler is especially
warned not to allow noble or simple to go into the cellar: wine shall only
be served at the prince’s or councillor’s table; and every Monday, the
honest old Duke Christian ordains the accounts shall be ready, and the
expenses in the kitchen, the wine and beer cellar, the bakehouse and
stable, made out.
Duke George, the marrying duke, did not stop at home to partake of the
beer and wine, and the sermons. He went about fighting wherever there was
profit to be had. He served as general in the army of the circle of Lower
Saxony, the Protestant army; then he went over to the emperor, and fought
in his armies in Germany and Italy; and when Gustavus Adolphus appeared in
Germany, George took service as a Swedish general, and seized the Abbey of
Hildesheim, as his share of the plunder. Here, in the year 1641, Duke
George died, leaving four sons behind him, from the youngest of whom
descend our royal Georges.
Under these children of Duke George, the old God-fearing, simple ways of
Zell appear to have gone out of mode. The second brother was constantly
visiting Venice, and leading a jolly, wicked life there. It was the most
jovial of all places at the end of the seventeenth century; and military
men, after a campaign, rushed thither, as the warriors of the Allies
rushed to Paris in 1814, to gamble, and rejoice, and partake of all sorts
of godless delights. This prince, then, loving Venice and its pleasures,
brought Italian singers and dancers back with him to quiet old Zell; and,
worse still, demeaned himself by marrying a French lady of birth quite
inferior to his own—Eleanor d’Olbreuse, from whom our queen is descended.
Eleanor had a pretty daughter, who inherited a great fortune, which
inflamed her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, with a desire to marry her;
and so, with her beauty and her riches, she came to a sad end.
It is too long to tell how the four sons of Duke George divided his
territories amongst them, and how, finally, they came into possession of
the son of the youngest of the four. In this generation the Protestant
faith was very nearly extinguished in the family: and then where should we
in England have gone for a king? The third brother also took delight in
Italy, where the priests converted him and his Protestant chaplain too.
Mass was said in Hanover once more; and Italian soprani piped their Latin
rhymes in place of the hymns which William the Pious and Dr. Luther sang.
Louis XIV gave this and other converts a splendid pension. Crowds of
Frenchmen and brilliant French fashions came into his Court. It is
incalculable how much that royal bigwig cost Germany. Every prince
imitated the French king, and had his Versailles, his Wilhelmshöhe or
Ludwigslust; his court and its splendours; his gardens laid out with
statues; his fountains, and waterworks, and Tritons; his actors, and
dancers, and singers, and fiddlers; his harem, with its inhabitants; his
diamonds and duchies for these latter; his enormous festivities, his
gaming-tables, tournaments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week long,
for which the people paid with their money, when the poor wretches had it;
with their bodies and very blood when they had none; being sold in
thousands by their lords and masters, who gaily dealt in soldiers, staked
a regiment upon the red at the gambling-table; swapped a battalion against
a dancing-girl’s diamond necklace; and, as it were, pocketed their people.
As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel in the early
part of the last century, the landscape is awful—wretched wastes, beggarly
and plundered; half-burned cottages and trembling peasants gathering
piteous harvests; gangs of such tramping along with bayonets behind them,
and corporals with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks.
By these passes my lord’s gilt carriage floundering through the ruts, as
he swears at the postilions, and toils on to the Residenz. Hard by, but
away from the noise and brawling of the citizens and buyers, is
Wilhelmslust or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or Versailles—it scarcely
matters which—near to the city, shut out by woods from the beggared
country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, monstrous marble palace, where the
prince is, and the Court, and the trim gardens, and huge fountains, and
the forest where the ragged peasants are beating the game in (it is death
to them to touch a feather); and the jolly hunt sweeps by with its uniform
of crimson and gold; and the prince gallops ahead puffing his royal horn;
and his lords and mistresses ride after him; and the stag is pulled down;
and the grand huntsman gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of bugles;
and ’tis time the Court go home to dinner; and our noble traveller, it may
be the Baron of Pöllnitz, or the Count de Königsmarck, or the excellent
Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession gleaming through the trim
avenues of the wood, and hastens to the inn, and sends his noble name to
the marshal of the Court. Then our nobleman arrays himself in green and
gold, or pink and silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced by
the chamberlain, and makes his bow to the jolly prince, and the gracious
princess; and is presented to the chief lords and ladies, and then comes
supper and a bank at faro, where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by
daylight. If it is a German Court, you may add not a little drunkenness to
this picture of high life; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can
see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery
is lying outside; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly
following precarious husbandry; ploughing stony fields with starved
cattle; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly
on his throne; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost; his mistress
Aurora von Königsmarck is the loveliest, the wittiest creature; his
diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and his feasts
as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the Great, he is more
than mortal. Lift up your glances respectfully, and mark him eyeing Madame
de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he
passes through the great gallery where Villars and Vendôme, and Berwick,
and Bossuet, and Massillon are waiting. Can Court be more splendid; nobles
and knights more gallant and superb; ladies more lovely? A grander
monarch, or a more miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject,
you cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, if we wish to
estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory and the chivalry?
Yes! Remember the grace and beauty, the splendour and lofty politeness;
the gallant courtesy of Fontenoy, where the French line bids the gentlemen
of the English guard to fire first; the noble constancy of the old king
and Villars his general, who fits out the last army with the last
crown-piece from the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or
conquer for France at Denain. But round all that royal splendour lies a
nation enslaved and ruined: there are people robbed of their
rights—communities laid waste—faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and
wellnigh destroyed—nay, in the very centre of royalty itself, what
horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame! It is but to a silly harlot
that some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the
world, are bowing down; it is the price of a miserable province that the
king ties in diamonds round his mistress’s white neck. In the first half
of the last century, I say, this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a
waste as well as Picardy or Artois; and Versailles is only larger and not
worse than Herrenhausen.
[Illustration]
Two Portraits
It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate match which
bestowed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon us Britons. Nine years
after Charles Stuart lost his head, his niece Sophia, one of many children
of another luckless dethroned sovereign, the Elector Palatine, married
Ernest Augustus of Brunswick, and brought the reversion to the crown of
the three kingdoms in her scanty trousseau. One of the handsomest, the
most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, accomplished of women was Sophia,(186)
daughter of poor Frederick, the winter king of Bohemia. The other
daughters of lovely, unhappy Elizabeth Stuart went off into the Catholic
Church; this one, luckily for her family, remained, I cannot say faithful
to the Reformed Religion, but at least she adopted no other. An agent of
the French king’s, Gourville, a convert himself, strove to bring her and
her husband to a sense of the truth; and tells us that he one day asked
madame the Duchess of Hanover, of what religion her daughter was, then a
pretty girl of thirteen years old. The duchess replied that the princess
_was of no religion as yet_. They were waiting to know of what religion
her husband would be, Protestant or Catholic, before instructing her! And
the Duke of Hanover having heard all Gourville’s proposal, said that a
change would be advantageous to his house, but that he himself was too old
to change.
This shrewd woman had such keen eyes that she knew how to shut them upon
occasion, and was blind to many faults which it appeared that her husband
the Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke of Hanover committed. He loved to take his
pleasure like other sovereigns—was a merry prince, fond of dinner and the
bottle; liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had done before him; and we
read how he jovially sold 6,700 of his Hanoverians to the seigniory of
Venice. They went bravely off to the Morea, under command of Ernest’s son,
Prince Max, and only 1,400 of them ever came home again. The German
princes sold a good deal of this kind of stock. You may remember how
George III’s Government purchased Hessians, and the use we made of them
during the War of Independence.
The ducats Duke Ernest got for his soldiers he spent in a series of the
most brilliant entertainments. Nevertheless, the jovial prince was
economical, and kept a steady eye upon his own interests. He achieved the
electoral dignity for himself: he married his eldest son George to his
beautiful cousin of Zell; and sending his sons out in command of armies to
fight—now on this side, now on that—he lived on, taking his pleasure, and
scheming his schemes, a merry, wise prince enough, not, I fear, a moral
prince, of which kind we shall have but very few specimens in the course
of these lectures.
Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom were scapegraces,
and rebelled against the parental system of primogeniture and non-division
of property which the Elector ordained. “Gustchen,” the Electress writes
about her second son:—“Poor Gus is thrust out, and his father will give
him no more keep. I laugh in the day, and cry all night about it; for I am
a fool with my children.” Three of the six died fighting against Turks,
Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, revolted, fled to Rome, leaving
an agent behind him, whose head was taken off. The daughter, of whose
early education we have made mention, was married to the Elector of
Brandenburg, and so her religion settled finally on the Protestant side.
A niece of the Electress Sophia—who had been made to change her religion,
and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother of the French king; a woman whose
honest heart was always with her friends and dear old Deutschland, though
her fat little body was confined at Paris or Marly, or Versailles—has left
us, in her enormous correspondence (part of which has been printed in
German and French), recollections of the Electress, and of George her son.
Elizabeth Charlotte was at Osnaburg when George was born (1660). She
narrowly escaped a whipping for being in the way on that auspicious day.
She seems not to have liked little George, nor George grown up; and
represents him as odiously hard, cold, and silent. Silent he may have
been: not a jolly prince like his father before him, but a prudent, quiet,
selfish potentate, going his own way, managing his own affairs, and
understanding his own interests remarkably well.
In his father’s lifetime, and at the head of the Hanover forces of 8,000
or 10,000 men, George served the Emperor, on the Danube against Turks, at
the siege of Vienna, in Italy, and on the Rhine. When he succeeded to the
Electorate, he handled its affairs with great prudence and dexterity. He
was very much liked by his people of Hanover. He did not show his feelings
much, but he cried heartily on leaving them; as they used for joy when he
came back. He showed an uncommon prudence and coolness of behaviour when
he came into his kingdom; exhibiting no elation; reasonably doubtful
whether he should not be turned out some day; looking upon himself only as
a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. James’s and
Hampton Court; plundering, it is true, somewhat, and dividing amongst his
German followers; but what could be expected of a sovereign who at home
could sell his subjects at so many ducats per head, and made no scruple in
so disposing of them? I fancy a considerable shrewdness, prudence, and
even moderation in his ways. The German Protestant was a cheaper, and
better, and kinder king than the Catholic Stuart in whose chair he sat,
and so far loyal to England, that he let England govern herself.
Having these lectures in view I made it my business to visit that ugly
cradle in which our Georges were nursed. The old town of Hanover must look
still pretty much as in the time when George Louis left it. The gardens
and pavilions of Herrenhausen are scarce changed since the day when the
stout old Electress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding but
by a few weeks to the tomb James II’s daughter, whose death made way for
the Brunswick Stuarts in England.
The two first royal Georges, and their father, Ernest Augustus, had quite
royal notions regarding marriage; and Louis XIV and Charles II scarce
distinguished themselves more at Versailles or St. James’s, than these
German sultans in their little city on the banks of the Leine. You may see
at Herrenhausen the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced and
performed masques, and sang before the Elector and his sons. There are the
very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering through the branches,
still grinning and piping their ditties of no tone, as in the days when
painted nymphs hung garlands round them; appeared under their leafy
arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns; descended from
“machines” in the guise of Diana or Minerva; and delivered immense
allegorical compliments to the princes returned home from the campaign.
That was a curious state of morals and politics in Europe; a queer
consequence of the triumph of the monarchical principle. Feudalism was
beaten down. The nobility, in its quarrels with the crown, had pretty well
succumbed, and the monarch was all in all. He became almost divine: the
proudest and most ancient gentry of the land did menial service for him.
Who should carry Louis XIV’s candle when he went to bed? What prince of
the blood should hold the king’s shirt when his Most Christian Majesty
changed that garment?—the French memoirs of the seventeenth century are
full of such details and squabbles. The tradition is not yet extinct in
Europe. Any of you who were present, as myriads were, at that splendid
pageant, the opening of our Crystal Palace in London, must have seen two
noble lords, great officers of the household, with ancient pedigrees, with
embroidered coats, and stars on their breasts and wands in their hands,
walking backwards for near the space of a mile, while the royal procession
made its progress. Shall we wonder—shall we be angry—shall we laugh at
these old-world ceremonies? View them as you will, according to your mood;
and with scorn or with respect, or with anger and sorrow, as your temper
leads you. Up goes Gesler’s hat upon the pole. Salute that symbol of
sovereignty with heartfelt awe; or with a sulky shrug of acquiescence, or
with a grinning obeisance; or with a stout rebellious No—clap your own
beaver down on your pate, and refuse to doff it, to that spangled velvet
and flaunting feather. I make no comment upon the spectators’ behaviour;
all I say is, that Gesler’s cap is still up in the market-place of Europe,
and not a few folks are still kneeling to it.
Put clumsy, High Dutch statues in place of the marbles of Versailles:
fancy Herrenhausen waterworks in place of those of Marly: spread the
tables with _Schweinskopf_, _Specksuppe_, _Leberkuchen_, and the like
delicacies, in place of the French _cuisine_; and fancy Frau von
Kielmansegge dancing with Count Kammerjunker Quirini, or singing French
songs with the most awful German accent: imagine a coarse Versailles, and
we have a Hanover before us. “I am now got into the region of beauty,”
writes Mary Wortley, from Hanover in 1716; “all the women have literally
rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and necks, jet eyebrows, to which may
generally be added coal-black hair. These perfections never leave them to
the day of their death, and have a very fine effect by candlelight; but I
could wish they were handsome with a little variety. They resemble one
another as Mrs. Salmon’s Court of Great Britain, and are in as much danger
of melting away by too nearly approaching the fire.” The sly Mary Wortley
saw this painted seraglio of the first George at Hanover, the year after
his accession to the British throne. There were great doings and feasts
there. Here Lady Mary saw George II too. “I can tell you, without flattery
or partiality,” she says, “that our young prince has all the
accomplishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air of
sprightliness and understanding, and a something so very engaging in his
behaviour that needs not the advantage of his rank to appear charming.” I
find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon Frederick Prince of Wales, George
II’s son; and upon George III, of course, and upon George IV in an eminent
degree. It was the rule to be dazzled by princes, and people’s eyes winked
quite honestly at that royal radiance.
The Electoral Court of Hanover was numerous—pretty well paid, as times
went; above all, paid with a regularity which few other European Courts
could boast of. Perhaps you will be amused to know how the Electoral Court
was composed. There were the princes of the house in the first class; in
the second, the single field-marshal of the army (the contingent was
18,000, Pöllnitz says, and the Elector had other 14,000 troops in his
pay). Then follow, in due order, the authorities civil and military, the
working privy councillors, the generals of cavalry and infantry, in the
third class; the high chamberlain, high marshals of the Court, high
masters of the horse, the major-generals of cavalry and infantry, in the
fourth class; down to the majors, the Hofjunkers or pages, the secretaries
or assessors, of the tenth class, of whom all were noble.
We find the master of the horse had 1,090 thalers of pay; the high
chamberlain, 2,000—a thaler being about three shillings of our money.
There were two chamberlains, and one for the princess; five gentlemen of
the chamber, and five gentlemen ushers; eleven pages and personages to
educate these young noblemen—such as a governor, a preceptor, a
_Fechtmeister_, or fencing-master, and a dancing ditto, this latter with a
handsome salary of 400 thalers. There were three body and Court
physicians, with 800 and 500 thalers; a Court barber, 600 thalers; a Court
organist; two _Musikanten_; four French fiddlers; twelve trumpeters, and a
bugler; so that there was plenty of music, profane and pious, in Hanover.
There were ten chamber waiters, and twenty-four lackeys in livery; a
_maitre-d’hôtel_, and attendants of the kitchen; a French cook; a body
cook; ten cooks; six cooks’ assistants; two _Braten_ masters, or masters
of the roast—(one fancies enormous spits turning slowly, and the honest
masters of the roast beladling the dripping); a pastry baker; a pie baker;
and finally, three scullions, at the modest remuneration of eleven
thalers. In the sugar-chamber there were four pastry-cooks (for the
ladies, no doubt); seven officers in the wine and beer cellars; four bread
bakers; and five men in the plate-room. There were 600 horses in the
Serene stables—no less than twenty teams of princely carriage horses,
eight to a team; sixteen coachmen; fourteen postilions; nineteen ostlers;
thirteen helps, besides smiths, carriage-masters, horse-doctors, and other
attendants of the stable. The female attendants were not so numerous: I
grieve to find but a dozen or fourteen of them about the Electoral
premises, and only two washerwomen for all the Court. These functionaries
had not so much to do as in the present age. I own to finding a pleasure
in these small-beer chronicles. I like to people the old world, with its
everyday figures and inhabitants—not so much with heroes fighting immense
battles and inspiring repulsed battalions to engage; or statesmen locked
up in darkling cabinets and meditating ponderous laws or dire
conspiracies—as with people occupied with their every-day work or
pleasure: my lord and lady hunting in the forest, or dancing in the Court,
or bowing to their serene highnesses as they pass in to dinner; John Cook
and his procession bringing the meal from the kitchen; the jolly butlers
bearing in the flagons from the cellar; the stout coachman driving the
ponderous gilt wagon, with eight cream-coloured horses in housings of
scarlet velvet and morocco leather; a postilion on the leaders, and a pair
or a half-dozen of running footmen scudding along by the side of the
vehicle, with conical caps, long silver-headed maces, which they poised as
they ran, and splendid jackets laced all over with silver and gold. I
fancy the citizens’ wives and their daughters looking out from the
balconies; and the burghers over their beer and mumm, rising up, cap in
hand, as the cavalcade passes through the town with torchbearers,
trumpeters blowing their lusty cheeks out, and squadrons of jack-booted
life-guardsmen, girt with shining cuirasses, and bestriding thundering
chargers, escorting his highness’s coach from Hanover to Herrenhausen: or
halting, mayhap, at Madame Platen’s country house of Monplaisir, which
lies half-way between the summer palace and the Residenz.
In the good old times of which I am treating, whilst common men were
driven off by herds, and sold to fight the emperor’s enemies on the
Danube, or to bayonet King Louis’s troops of common men on the Rhine,
noblemen passed from Court to Court, seeking service with one prince or
the other, and naturally taking command of the ignoble vulgar of soldiery
which battled and died almost without hope of promotion. Noble adventurers
travelled from Court to Court in search of employment; not merely noble
males, but noble females too; and if these latter were beauties, and
obtained the favourable notice of princes, they stopped in the Courts,
became the favourites of their serene or royal highnesses; and received
great sums of money and splendid diamonds; and were promoted to be
duchesses, marchionesses, and the like; and did not fall much in public
esteem for the manner in which they won their advancement. In this way
Mdlle. de Querouailles, a beautiful French lady, came to London on a
special mission of Louis XIV, and was adopted by our grateful country and
sovereign, and figured as Duchess of Portsmouth. In this way the beautiful
Aurora of Königsmarck travelling about found favour in the eyes of
Augustus of Saxony, and became the mother of Marshal Saxe, who gave us a
beating at Fontenoy; and in this manner the lovely sisters Elizabeth and
Melusina of Meissenbach (who had actually been driven out of Paris,
whither they had travelled on a like errand, by the wise jealousy of the
female favourite there in possession) journeyed to Hanover, and became
favourites of the serene house there reigning.
That beautiful Aurora von Königsmarck and her brother are wonderful as
types of bygone manners, and strange illustrations of the morals of old
days. The Königsmarcks were descended from an ancient noble family of
Brandenburgh, a branch of which passed into Sweden, where it enriched
itself and produced several mighty men of valour.
The founder of the race was Hans Christof, a famous warrior and plunderer
of the Thirty Years’ War. One of Hans’s sons, Otto, appeared as ambassador
at the Court of Louis XIV, and had to make a Swedish speech at his
reception before the Most Christian King. Otto was a famous dandy and
warrior, but he forgot the speech, and what do you think he did? Far from
being disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish Catechism to His
Most Christian Majesty and his Court, not one of whom understood his lingo
with the exception of his own suite, who had to keep their gravity as best
they might.
Otto’s nephew, Aurora’s elder brother, Carl Johann of Königsmarck, a
favourite of Charles II, a beauty, a dandy, a warrior, a rascal of more
than ordinary mark, escaped but deserved being hanged in England, for the
murder of Tom Thynne of Longleat. He had a little brother in London with
him at this time,—as great a beauty, as great a dandy, as great a villain
as his elder. This lad, Philip of Königsmarck, also was implicated in the
affair; and perhaps it is a pity he ever brought his pretty neck out of
it. He went over to Hanover, and was soon appointed colonel of a regiment
of H. E. Highness’s dragoons. In early life he had been page in the Court
of Celle; and it was said that he and the pretty Princess Sophia Dorothea,
who by this time was married to her cousin George the Electoral prince,
had been in love with each other as children. Their loves were now to be
renewed, not innocently, and to come to a fearful end.
A biography of the wife of George I, by Dr. Doran, has lately appeared,
and I confess I am astounded at the verdict which that writer has
delivered, and at his acquittal of this most unfortunate lady. That she
had a cold selfish libertine of a husband no one can doubt; but that the
bad husband had a bad wife is equally clear. She was married to her cousin
for money or convenience, as all princesses were married. She was most
beautiful, lively, witty, accomplished: his brutality outraged her: his
silence and coldness chilled her: his cruelty insulted her. No wonder she
did not love him. How could love be a part of the compact in such a
marriage as that? With this unlucky heart to dispose of, the poor creature
bestowed it on Philip of Königsmarck, than whom a greater scamp does not
walk the history of the seventeenth century. A hundred and eighty years
after the fellow was thrust into his unknown grave, a Swedish professor
lights upon a box of letters in the University Library at Upsala, written
by Philip and Dorothea to each other, and telling their miserable story.
The bewitching Königsmarck had conquered two female hearts in Hanover.
Besides the Electoral prince’s lovely young wife Sophia Dorothea, Philip
had inspired a passion in a hideous old Court lady, the Countess of
Platen. The princess seems to have pursued him with the fidelity of many
years. Heaps of letters followed him on his campaigns, and were answered
by the daring adventurer. The princess wanted to fly with him; to quit her
odious husband at any rate. She besought her parents to receive her back;
had a notion of taking refuge in France and going over to the Catholic
religion; had absolutely packed her jewels for flight, and very likely
arranged its details with her lover, in that last long night’s interview,
after which Philip of Königsmarck was seen no more.
Königsmarck, inflamed with drink—there is scarcely any vice of which,
according to his own showing, this gentleman was not a practitioner—had
boasted at a supper at Dresden of his intimacy with the two Hanoverian
ladies, not only with the princess, but with another lady powerful in
Hanover. The Countess Platen, the old favourite of the Elector, hated the
young Electoral princess. The young lady had a lively wit, and constantly
made fun of the old one. The princess’s jokes were conveyed to the old
Platen just as our idle words are carried about at this present day: and
so they both hated each other.
The characters in the tragedy, of which the curtain was now about to fall,
are about as dark a set as eye ever rested on. There is the jolly prince,
shrewd, selfish, scheming, loving his cups and his ease (I think his good
humour makes the tragedy but darker); his princess, who speaks little but
observes all; his old, painted Jezebel of a mistress; his son, the
Electoral prince, shrewd too, quiet, selfish, not ill-humoured, and
generally silent, except when goaded into fury by the intolerable tongue
of his lovely wife; there is poor Sophia Dorothea, with her coquetry and
her wrongs, and her passionate attachment to her scamp of a lover, and her
wild imprudences, and her mad artifices, and her insane fidelity, and her
furious jealousy regarding her husband (though she loathed and cheated
him), and her prodigious falsehoods; and the confidante, of course, into
whose hands the letters are slipped; and there is Lothario, finally, than
whom, as I have said, one can’t imagine a more handsome, wicked, worthless
reprobate.
[Illustration]
A Deed Of Darkness
How that perverse fidelity of passion pursues the villain! How madly true
the woman is, and how astoundingly she lies! She has bewitched two or
three persons who have taken her up, and they won’t believe in her wrong.
Like Mary of Scotland, she finds adherents ready to conspire for her even
in history, and people who have to deal with her are charmed, and
fascinated, and bedevilled. How devotedly Miss Strickland has stood by
Mary’s innocence! Are there not scores of ladies in this audience who
persist in it too? Innocent! I remember as a boy how a great party
persisted in declaring Caroline of Brunswick was a martyred angel. So was
Helen of Greece innocent. She never ran away with Paris, the dangerous
young Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her, and there never was any
siege of Troy at all. So was Bluebeard’s wife innocent. She never peeped
into the closet where the other wives were with their heads off. She never
dropped the key, or stained it with blood; and her brothers were quite
right in finishing Bluebeard, the cowardly brute! Yes, Caroline of
Brunswick was innocent: and Madame Laffarge never poisoned her husband;
and Mary of Scotland never blew up hers; and poor Sophia Dorothea was
never unfaithful; and Eve never took the apple—it was a cowardly
fabrication of the serpent’s.
George Louis has been held up to execration as a murderous Bluebeard,
whereas the Electoral prince had no share in the transaction in which
Philip of Königsmarck was scuffled out of this mortal scene. The prince
was absent when the catastrophe came. The princess had had a hundred
warnings; mild hints from her husband’s parents; grim remonstrances from
himself—but took no more heed of this advice than such besotted poor
wretches do. On the night of Sunday, the 1st of July, 1694, Königsmarck
paid a long visit to the princess, and left her to get ready for flight.
Her husband was away at Berlin; her carriages and horses were prepared and
ready for the elopement. Meanwhile, the spies of Countess Platen had
brought the news to their mistress. She went to Ernest Augustus, and
procured from the Elector an order for the arrest of the Swede. On the way
by which he was to come, four guards were commissioned to take him. He
strove to cut his way through the four men, and wounded more than one of
them. They fell upon him; cut him down; and, as he was lying wounded on
the ground, the countess, his enemy, whom he had betrayed and insulted,
came out and beheld him prostrate. He cursed her with his dying lips, and
the furious woman stamped upon his mouth with her heel. He was dispatched
presently; his body burnt the next day; and all traces of the man
disappeared. The guards who killed him were enjoined silence under severe
penalties. The princess was reported to be ill in her apartments, from
which she was taken in October of the same year, being then
eight-and-twenty years old, and consigned to the castle of Ahlden, where
she remained a prisoner for no less than thirty-two years. A separation
had been pronounced previously between her and her husband. She was called
henceforth the “Princess of Ahlden”, and her silent husband no more
uttered her name.
Four years after the Königsmarck catastrophe, Ernest Augustus, the first
Elector of Hanover, died, and George Louis, his son, reigned in his stead.
Sixteen years he reigned in Hanover, after which he became, as we know,
King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. The
wicked old Countess Platen died in the year 1706. She had lost her sight,
but nevertheless the legend says that she constantly saw Königsmarck’s
ghost by her wicked old bed. And so there was an end of her.
In the year 1700, the little Duke of Gloucester, the last of poor Queen
Anne’s children, died, and the folks of Hanover straightway became of
prodigious importance in England. The Electress Sophia was declared the
next in succession to the English throne. George Louis was created Duke of
Cambridge; grand deputations were sent over from our country to
Deutschland; but Queen Anne, whose weak heart hankered after her relatives
at St. Germains, never could be got to allow her cousin, the Elector Duke
of Cambridge, to come and pay his respects to her Majesty, and take his
seat in her House of Peers. Had the queen lasted a month longer; had the
English Tories been as bold and resolute as they were clever and crafty;
had the prince whom the nation loved and pitied been equal to his fortune,
George Louis had never talked German in St. James’s Chapel Royal.
When the crown did come to George Louis he was in no hurry about putting
it on. He waited at home for awhile; took an affecting farewell of his
dear Hanover and Herrenhausen; and set out in the most leisurely manner to
ascend “the throne of his ancestors”, as he called it in his first speech
to Parliament. He brought with him a compact body of Germans, whose
society he loved, and whom he kept round the royal person. He had his
faithful German chamberlains; his German secretaries; his negroes,
captives of his bow and spear in Turkish wars; his two ugly, elderly
German favourites, Mesdames of Kielmansegge and Schulenberg, whom he
created respectively Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. The
duchess was tall, and lean of stature, and hence was irreverently
nicknamed the Maypole. The countess was a large-sized noblewoman, and this
elevated personage was denominated the Elephant. Both of these ladies
loved Hanover and its delights; clung round the linden-trees of the great
Herrenhausen avenue, and at first would not quit the place. Schulenberg,
in fact, could not come on account of her debts; but finding the Maypole
would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and slipped out of
Hanover unwieldy as she was. On this the Maypole straightway put herself
in motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking
of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected; the
courtiers who came in his train; the English nobles who came to welcome
him, and on many of whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back—I protest it
is a wonderful satirical picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich
pier, say, and crying hurrah for King George; and yet I can scarcely keep
my countenance, and help laughing at the enormous absurdity of this
advent!
Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop of Canterbury
prostrating himself to the head of his Church, with Kielmansegge and
Schulenberg with their raddled cheeks grinning behind the Defender of the
Faith. Here is my Lord Duke of Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest
warrior of all times; he who betrayed King William—betrayed King James
II—betrayed Queen Anne—betrayed England to the French, the Elector to the
Pretender, the Pretender to the Elector; and here are my Lords Oxford and
Bolingbroke, the latter of whom has just tripped up the heels of the
former; and if a month’s more time had been allowed him, would have had
King James at Westminster. The great Whig gentlemen made their bows and
congees with proper decorum and ceremony; but yonder keen old schemer
knows the value of their loyalty. “Loyalty,” he must think, “as applied to
me—it is absurd! There are fifty nearer heirs to the throne than I am. I
am but an accident, and you fine Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake,
not for mine. You Tories hate me; you archbishop, smirking on your knees,
and prating about Heaven, you know I don’t care a fig for your Thirty-nine
Articles, and can’t understand a word of your stupid sermons. You, my
Lords Bolingbroke and Oxford—you know you were conspiring against me a
month ago; and you, my Lord Duke of Marlborough—you would sell me or any
man else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, my good Melusina, come,
my honest Sophia, let us go into my private room, and have some oysters
and some Rhine wine, and some pipes afterwards: let us make the best of
our situation; let us take what we can get, and leave these bawling,
brawling, lying English to shout, and fight, and cheat, in their own way!”
If Swift had not been committed to the statesmen of the losing side, what
a fine satirical picture we might have had of that general _sauve qui
peut_ amongst the Tory party! How mum the Tories became; how the House of
Lords and House of Commons chopped round; and how decorously the
majorities welcomed King George!
Bolingbroke, making his last speech in the House of Lords, pointed out the
shame of peerage, where several lords concurred to condemn in one general
vote all that they had approved in former Parliaments by many particular
resolutions. And so their conduct was shameful. St. John had the best of
the argument, but the worst of the vote. Bad times were come for him. He
talked philosophy, and professed innocence. He courted retirement, and was
ready to meet persecution; but, hearing that honest Mat Prior, who had
been recalled from Paris, was about to peach regarding the past
transactions, the philosopher bolted, and took that magnificent head of
his out of the ugly reach of the axe. Oxford, the lazy and good-humoured,
had more courage, and awaited the storm at home. He and Mat Prior both had
lodgings in the Tower, and both brought their heads safe out of that
dangerous menagerie. When Atterbury was carried off to the same den a few
years afterwards, and it was asked, what next should be done with him?
“Done with him? Fling him to the lions,” Cadogan said, Marlborough’s
lieutenant. But the British lion of those days did not care much for
drinking the blood of peaceful peers and poets, or crunching the bones of
bishops. Only four men were executed in London for the rebellion of 1715;
and twenty-two in Lancashire. Above a thousand taken in arms, submitted to
the king’s mercy, and petitioned to be transported to his Majesty’s
colonies in America. I have heard that their descendants took the loyalist
side in the disputes which arose sixty years after. It is pleasant to find
that a friend of ours, worthy Dick Steele, was for letting off the rebels
with their lives.
As one thinks of what might have been, how amusing the speculation is! We
know how the doomed Scottish gentlemen came out at Lord Mar’s summons,
mounted the white cockade, that has been a flower of sad poetry ever
since, and rallied round the ill-omened Stuart standard at Braemar. Mar,
with 8,000 men, and but 1,500 opposed to him, might have driven the enemy
over the Tweed, and taken possession of the whole of Scotland; but that
the Pretender’s duke did not venture to move when the day was his own.
Edinburgh Castle might have been in King James’s hands; but that the men
who were to escalade it stayed to drink his health at the tavern, and
arrived two hours too late at the rendezvous under the castle wall. There
was sympathy enough in the town—the projected attack seems to have been
known there—Lord Mahon quotes Sinclair’s account of a gentleman not
concerned, who told Sinclair, that he was in a house that evening where
eighteen of them were drinking, as the facetious landlady said, “powdering
their hair,” for the attack of the castle. Suppose they had not stopped to
powder their hair? Edinburgh Castle, and town, and all Scotland were King
James’s. The north of England rises, and marches over Barnet Heath upon
London. Wyndham is up in Somersetshire; Packington in Worcestershire; and
Vivian in Cornwall. The Elector of Hanover, and his hideous mistresses,
pack up the plate, and perhaps the crown jewels in London, and are off
_via_ Harwich and Helvoetsluys, for dear old Deutschland. The king—God
save him!—lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause; shouting multitudes,
roaring cannon, the Duke of Marlborough weeping tears of joy, and all the
bishops kneeling in the mud. In a few years, mass is said in St. Paul’s;
matins and vespers are sung in York Minster; and Dr. Swift is turned out
of his stall and deanery house at St. Patrick’s, to give place to Father
Dominic, from Salamanca. All these changes were possible then, and once
thirty years afterwards—all this we might have had, but for the _pulveris
exigui jactu_, that little toss of powder for the hair which the Scotch
conspirators stopped to take at the tavern.
You understand the distinction I would draw between history—of which I do
not aspire to be an expounder—and manners and life such as these sketches
would describe. The rebellion breaks out in the north; its story is before
you in a hundred volumes, in none more fairly than in the excellent
narrative of Lord Mahon, The clans are up in Scotland; Derwentwater,
Nithsdale and Forster are in arms in Northumberland—these are matters of
history, for which you are referred to the due chroniclers. The Guards are
set to watch the streets, and prevent the people wearing white roses. I
read presently of a couple of soldiers almost flogged to death for wearing
oak boughs in their hats on the 29th of May—another badge of the beloved
Stuarts. It is with these we have to do, rather than the marches and
battles of the armies to which the poor fellows belonged—with statesmen,
and how they looked, and how they lived, rather than with measures of
state, which belong to history alone. For example, at the close of the old
queen’s reign, it is known the Duke of Marlborough left the kingdom—after
what menaces, after what prayers, lies, bribes offered, taken, refused,
accepted; after what dark doubling and tacking, let history, if she can or
dare, say. The queen dead; who so eager to return as my lord duke? Who
shouts God save the king! so lustily as the great conqueror of Blenheim
and Malplaquet? (By the way, he will send over some more money for the
Pretender yet, on the sly.) Who lays his hand on his blue ribbon, and
lifts his eyes more gracefully to heaven than this hero? He makes a
quasi-triumphal entrance into London, by Temple Bar, in his enormous gilt
coach—and the enormous gilt coach breaks down somewhere by Chancery Lane,
and his highness is obliged to get another. There it is we have him. We
are with the mob in the crowd, not with the great folks in the procession.
We are not the Historic Muse, but her ladyship’s attendant,
tale-bearer—valet de chambre—for whom no man is a hero; and, as yonder one
steps from his carriage to the next handy conveyance, we take the number
of the hack; we look all over at his stars, ribbons, embroidery; we think
within ourselves, O you unfathomable schemer! O you warrior invincible! O
you beautiful smiling Judas! What master would you not kiss or betray?
What traitor’s head, blackening on the spikes on yonder gate, ever hatched
a tithe of the treason which has worked under your periwig?
We have brought our Georges to London city, and if we would behold its
aspect, may see it in Hogarth’s lively perspective of Cheapside, or read
of it in a hundred contemporary books which paint the manners of that age.
Our dear old _Spectator_ looks smiling upon the streets, with their
innumerable signs, and describes them with his charming humour. “Our
streets are filled with ‘Blue Boars’, ‘Black Swans’, and ‘Red Lions’, not
to mention ‘Flying Pigs’ and ‘Hogs in Armour’, with other creatures more
extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa.” A few of these quaint
old figures still remain in London town. You may still see there, and over
its old hostel in Ludgate Hill, the “Belle Sauvage” to whom the
_Spectator_ so pleasantly alludes in that paper; and who was, probably, no
other than the sweet American Pocahontas, who rescued from death the
daring Captain Smith. There is the “Lion’s Head’” down whose jaws the
_Spectator’s_ own letters were passed; and over a great banker’s in Fleet
Street, the effigy of the wallet, which the founder of the firm bore when
he came into London a country boy. People this street, so ornamented with
crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with
Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in
her sack, tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship’s great
Prayer-book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing their hundred cries (I
remember forty years ago, as a boy in London city, a score of cheery,
familiar cries that are silent now). Fancy the beaux thronging to the
chocolate-houses, tapping their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their
periwigs appearing over the red curtains. Fancy Saccharissa beckoning and
smiling from the upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers brawling and
bustling at the door—gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with
blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse
Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered
on the front in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red
coats, as bluff Harry left them, with their ruffs and velvet flat caps.
Perhaps the king’s Majesty himself is going to St. James’s as we pass. If
he is going to Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his
guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his Majesty only uses
a chair, with six footmen walking before, and six yeomen of the guard at
the sides of the sedan. The officers in waiting follow the king in
coaches. It must be rather slow work.
Our _Spectator_ and _Tatler_ are full of delightful glimpses of the town
life of those days. In the company of that charming guide, we may go to
the opera, the comedy, the puppet show, the auction, even the cockpit: we
can take boat at Temple Stairs, and accompany Sir Roger de Coverley and
Mr. Spectator to Spring Garden—it will be called Vauxhall a few years
since, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you not like to step back
into the past, and be introduced to Mr. Addison?—not the Right Honourable
Joseph Addison, Esq., George I’s Secretary of State, but to the delightful
painter of contemporary manners; the man who, when in good humour himself,
was the pleasantest companion in all England. I should like to go into
Lockit’s with him, and drink a bowl along with Sir R. Steele (who has just
been knighted by King George, and who does not happen to have any money to
pay his share of the reckoning). I should not care to follow Mr. Addison
to his secretary’s office in Whitehall. There we get into politics. Our
business is pleasure, and the town, and the coffee-house, and the theatre,
and the Mall. Delightful _Spectator!_ kind friend of leisure hours! happy
companion! true Christian gentleman! How much greater, better, you are
than the king Mr. Secretary kneels to!
You can have foreign testimony about old-world London, if you like; and my
before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron de Pöllnitz, will conduct us to
it. “A man of sense,” says he, “or a fine gentleman, is never at a loss
for company in London, and this is the way the latter passes his time. He
rises late, puts on a frock, and, leaving his sword at home, takes his
cane, and goes where he pleases. The Park is commonly the place where he
walks, because ’tis the Exchange for men of quality. ’Tis the same thing
as the Tuileries at Paris, only the Park has a certain beauty of
simplicity which cannot be described. The grand walk is called the Mall;
is full of people at every hour of the day, but especially at morning and
evening, when their Majesties often walk with the royal family, who are
attended only by a half-dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit all persons
to walk at the same time with them. The ladies and gentlemen always appear
in rich dresses, for the English, who, twenty years ago, did not wear gold
lace but in their army, are now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the
French. I speak of persons of quality; for the citizen still contents
himself with a suit of fine cloth, a good hat and wig, and fine linen.
Everybody is well clothed here, and even the beggars don’t make so ragged
an appearance as they do elsewhere.” After our friend, the man of quality,
has had his morning or undress walk in the Mall, he goes home to dress,
and then saunters to some coffee-house or chocolate-house frequented by
the persons he would see. “For ’tis a rule with the English to go once a
day at least to houses of this sort, where they talk of business and news,
read the papers, and often look at one another without opening their lips.
And ’tis very well they are so mute: for were they all as talkative as
people of other nations, the coffee-houses would be intolerable, and there
would be no hearing what one man said where they are so many. The
chocolate-house in St. James’s Street, where I go every morning to pass
away the time, is always so full that a man can scarce turn about in it.”
Delightful as London city was, King George I liked to be out of it as much
as ever he could; and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It
was with them as with Blücher 100 years afterwards, when the bold old
Reiter looked down from St. Paul’s, and sighed out, “_Was für Plunder!_”
The German women plundered; the German secretaries plundered; the German
cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German
negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old
monarch’s maxim. He was not a lofty monarch, certainly: he was not a
patron of the fine arts: but he was not a hypocrite, he was not
revengeful, he was not extravagant. Though a despot in Hanover, he was a
moderate ruler in England. His aim was to leave it to itself as much as
possible, and to live out of it as much as he could. His heart was in
Hanover. When taken ill on his last journey, as he was passing through
Holland, he thrust his livid head out of the coach-window, and gasped out,
“Osnaburg, Osnaburg!” He was more than fifty years of age when he came
amongst us: we took him because we wanted him, because he served our turn;
we laughed at his uncouth German ways, and sneered at him. He took our
loyalty for what it was worth; laid hands on what money he could; kept us
assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. I, for one, would have been on his
side in those days. Cynical, and selfish, as he was, he was better than a
king out of St. Germains with the French king’s orders in his pocket, and
a swarm of Jesuits in his train.
The Fates are supposed to interest themselves about royal personages; and
so this one had omens and prophecies specially regarding him. He was said
to be much disturbed at a prophecy that he should die very soon after his
wife; and sure enough, pallid Death, having seized upon the luckless
princess in her castle of Ahlden, presently pounced upon H.M. King George
I, in his travelling chariot, on the Hanover road. What postilion can
outride that pale horseman? It is said, George promised one of his
left-handed widows to come to her after death, if leave were granted to
him to revisit the glimpses of the moon; and soon after his demise, a
great raven actually flying or hopping in at the Duchess of Kendal’s
window at Twickenham, she chose to imagine the king’s spirit inhabited
these plumes, and took special care of her sable visitor. Affecting
metempsychosis—funereal royal bird! How pathetic is the idea of the
duchess weeping over it! When this chaste addition to our English
aristocracy died, all her jewels, her plate, her plunder went over to her
relations in Hanover. I wonder whether her heirs took the bird, and
whether it is still flapping its wings over Herrenhausen?
The days are over in England of that strange religion of king-worship,
when priests flattered princes in the Temple of God; when servility was
held to be ennobling duty; when beauty and youth tried eagerly for royal
favour; and woman’s shame was held to be no dishonour. Mended morals and
mended manners in Courts and people, are among the priceless consequences
of the freedom which George I came to rescue and secure. He kept his
compact with his English subjects; and if he escaped no more than other
men and monarchs from the vices of his age, at least we may thank him for
preserving and transmitting the liberties of ours. In our free air, royal
and humble homes have alike been purified; and Truth, the birthright of
high and low among us, which quite fearlessly judges our greatest
personages, can only speak of them now in words of respect and regard.
There are stains in the portrait of the first George, and traits in it
which none of us need admire; but, among the nobler features are justice,
courage, moderation—and these we may recognize ere we turn the picture to
the wall.
George The Second
On the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, two horsemen might have been
perceived galloping along the road from Chelsea to Richmond. The foremost,
cased in the jackboots of the period, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking,
and very corpulent cavalier; but, by the manner in which he urged his
horse, you might see that he was a bold as well as a skilful rider.
Indeed, no man loved sport better; and in the hunting-fields of Norfolk,
no squire rode more boldly after the fox, or cheered Ringwood and
Sweettips more lustily, than he who now thundered over the Richmond road.
He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and asked to see the owner of the
mansion. The mistress of the house and her ladies, to whom our friend was
admitted, said he could not be introduced to the master, however pressing
the business might be. The master was asleep after his dinner; he always
slept after his dinner: and woe be to the person who interrupted him!
Nevertheless, our stout friend of the jackboots put the affrighted ladies
aside, opened the forbidden door of the bedroom, wherein upon the bed lay
a little gentleman; and here the eager messenger knelt down in his
jackboots.
He on the bed started up, and with many oaths and a strong German accent
asked who was there, and who dared to disturb him?
“I am Sir Robert Walpole,” said the messenger. The awakened sleeper hated
Sir Robert Walpole. “I have the honour to announce to your Majesty that
your royal father, King George I, died at Osnaburg, on Saturday last, the
10th inst.”
“_Dat is one big lie!_” roared out his sacred Majesty King George II: but
Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from that day until
three-and-thirty years after, George, the second of the name, ruled over
England.
How the king made away with his father’s will under the astonished nose of
the Archbishop of Canterbury; how he was a choleric little sovereign; how
he shook his fist in the face of his father’s courtiers; how he kicked his
coat and wig about in his rages, and called everybody thief, liar, rascal,
with whom he differed: you will read in all the history books; and how he
speedily and shrewdly reconciled himself with the bold minister, whom he
had hated during his father’s life, and by whom he was served during
fifteen years of his own with admirable prudence, fidelity, and success.
But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pretender back again.
But for his obstinate love of peace, we should have had wars, which the
nation was not strong enough nor united enough to endure. But for his
resolute counsels and good-humoured resistance we might have had German
despots attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us: we should have had
revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of a quarter of a
century of peace, freedom, and material prosperity, such as the country
never enjoyed, until that corrupter of Parliaments, that dissolute tipsy
cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen,
patriot, and statesman governed it. In religion he was little better than
a heathen; cracked ribald jokes at bigwigs and bishops, and laughed at
High Church and Low. In private life the old pagan revelled in the lowest
pleasures: he passed his Sundays tippling at Richmond; and his holidays
bawling after dogs, or boozing at Houghton with boors over beef and punch.
He cared for letters no more than his master did: he judged human nature
so meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that he was right, and that
men could be corrupted by means so base. But, with his hireling House of
Commons, he defended liberty for us; with his incredulity he kept
Church-craft down. There were parsons at Oxford as double-dealing and
dangerous as any priests out of Rome, and he routed them both. He gave
Englishmen no conquests, but he gave them peace, and ease, and freedom;
the three per cents nearly at par; and wheat at five-and six-and-twenty
shillings a quarter.
[Illustration]
Ave Caesar
It was lucky for us that our first Georges were not more high-minded men;
especially fortunate that they loved Hanover so much as to leave England
to have her own way. Our chief troubles began when we got a king who
gloried in the name of Briton, and, being born in the country, proposed to
rule it. He was no more fit to govern England than his grandfather and
great-grandfather, who did not try. It was righting itself during their
occupation. The dangerous, noble old spirit of cavalier loyalty was dying
out; the stately old English High Church was emptying itself: the
questions dropping, which, on one side and the other;—the side of loyalty,
prerogative, church, and king;—the side of right, truth, civil and
religious freedom,—had set generations of brave men in arms. By the time
when George III came to the throne, the combat between loyalty and liberty
was come to an end; and Charles Edward, old, tipsy, and childless, was
dying in Italy.
Those who are curious about European Court history of the last age know
the memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, and what a Court was that of
Berlin, where George II’s cousins ruled sovereign. Frederick the Great’s
father knocked down his sons, daughters, officers of state; he kidnapped
big men all Europe over to make grenadiers of; his feasts, his parades,
his wine parties, his tobacco parties, are all described. Jonathan Wild
the Great in language, pleasures, and behaviour, is scarcely more delicate
than this German sovereign. Louis XV, his life, and reign, and doings, are
told in a thousand French memoirs. Our George II, at least, was not a
worse king than his neighbours. He claimed and took the royal exemption
from doing right which sovereigns assumed. A dull little man of low tastes
he appears to us in England; yet Hervey tells us that this choleric prince
was a great sentimentalist, and that his letters—of which he wrote
prodigious quantities—were quite dangerous in their powers of fascination.
He kept his sentimentalities for his Germans and his queen. With us
English, he never chose to be familiar. He has been accused of avarice,
yet he did not give much money, and did not leave much behind him. He did
not love the fine arts, but he did not pretend to love them. He was no
more a hypocrite about religion than his father. He judged men by a low
standard; yet, with such men as were near him, was he wrong in judging as
he did? He readily detected lying and flattery, and liars and flatterers
were perforce his companions. Had he been more of a dupe he might have
been more amiable. A dismal experience made him cynical. No boon was it to
him to be clear-sighted, and see only selfishness and flattery round about
him. What could Walpole tell him about his Lords and Commons, but that
they were all venal? Did not his clergy, his courtiers, bring him the same
story? Dealing with men and women in his rude, sceptical way, he comes to
doubt about honour, male and female, about patriotism, about religion. “He
is wild, but he fights like a man,” George I, the taciturn, said of his
son and successor. Courage George II certainly had. The Electoral Prince,
at the head of his father’s contingent, had approved himself a good and
brave soldier under Eugene and Marlborough. At Oudenarde he specially
distinguished himself. At Malplaquet the other claimant to the English
throne won but little honour. There was always a question about James’s
courage. Neither then in Flanders, nor afterwards in his own ancient
kingdom of Scotland, did the luckless Pretender show much resolution. But
dapper little George had a famous tough spirit of his own, and fought like
a Trojan. He called out his brother of Prussia, with sword and pistol; and
I wish, for the interest of romancers in general, that that famous duel
could have taken place. The two sovereigns hated each other with all their
might; their seconds were appointed; the place of meeting was settled; and
the duel was only prevented by strong representations made to the two, of
the European laughter which would have been caused by such a transaction.
Whenever we hear of dapper George at war, it is certain that he demeaned
himself like a little man of valour. At Dettingen his horse ran away with
him, and with difficulty was stopped from carrying him into the enemy’s
lines. The king, dismounting from the fiery quadruped, said bravely: “Now
I know I shall not run away;” and placed himself at the head of the foot,
drew his sword, brandishing it at the whole of the French army, and
calling out to his own men to come on, in bad English, but with the most
famous pluck and spirit. In ’45, when the Pretender was at Derby, and many
people began to look pale, the king never lost his courage—not he. “Pooh!
don’t talk to me that stuff!” he said, like a gallant little prince as he
was, and never for one moment allowed his equanimity, or his business, or
his pleasures, or his travels, to be disturbed. On public festivals he
always appeared in the hat and coat he wore on the famous day of
Oudenarde; and the people laughed, but kindly, at the odd old garment, for
bravery never goes out of fashion.
In private life the prince showed himself a worthy descendant of his
father. In this respect, so much has been said about the first George’s
manners, that we need not enter into a description of the son’s German
harem. In 1705 he married a princess remarkable for beauty, for
cleverness, for learning, for good temper—one of the truest and fondest
wives ever prince was blessed with, and who loved him and was faithful to
him, and he, in his coarse fashion, loved her to the last. It must be told
to the honour of Caroline of Anspach, that, at the time when German
princes thought no more of changing their religion than you of altering
your cap, she refused to give up Protestantism for the other creed,
although an Archduke, afterwards to be an Emperor, was offered to her for
a bridegroom. Her Protestant relations in Berlin were angry at her
rebellious spirit; it was they who tried to convert her (it is droll to
think that Frederick the Great, who had no religion at all, was known for
a long time in England as the Protestant hero), and these good Protestants
set upon Caroline a certain Father Urban, a very skilful Jesuit, and
famous winner of souls. But she routed the Jesuit; and she refused Charles
VI; and she married the little Electoral Prince of Hanover, whom she
tended with love, and with every manner of sacrifice, with artful
kindness, with tender flattery, with entire self-devotion, thenceforward
until her life’s end.
When George I made his first visit to Hanover, his son was appointed
regent during the royal absence. But this honour was never again conferred
on the Prince of Wales; he and his father fell out presently. On the
occasion of the christening of his second son, a royal row took place, and
the prince, shaking his fist in the Duke of Newcastle’s face, called him a
rogue, and provoked his august father. He and his wife were turned out of
St. James’s, and their princely children taken from them, by order of the
royal head of the family. Father and mother wept piteously at parting from
their little ones. The young ones sent some cherries, with their love, to
papa and mamma; the parents watered the fruit with tears. They had no
tears thirty-five years afterwards, when Prince Frederick died—their
eldest son, their heir, their enemy.
The king called his daughter-in-law “_cette diablesse madame la
princesse_”. The frequenters of the latter’s Court were forbidden to
appear at the king’s: their royal highnesses going to Bath, we read how
the courtiers followed them thither, and paid that homage in Somersetshire
which was forbidden in London. That phrase of “_cette diablesse madame la
princesse_” explains one cause of the wrath of her royal papa. She was a
very clever woman: she had a keen sense of humour: she had a dreadful
tongue: she turned into ridicule the antiquated sultan and his hideous
harem. She wrote savage letters about him home to members of her family.
So, driven out from the royal presence, the prince and princess set up for
themselves in Leicester Fields, “where,” says Walpole, “the most promising
of the young gentlemen of the next party, and the prettiest and liveliest
of the young ladies, formed the new Court.” Besides Leicester House, they
had their lodge at Richmond, frequented by some of the pleasantest company
of those days. There were the Herveys, and Chesterfield, and little Mr.
Pope from Twickenham, and with him, sometimes, the savage Dean of St.
Patrick’s, and quite a bevy of young ladies, whose pretty faces smile on
us out of history. There was Lepell, famous in ballad song; and the saucy,
charming Mary Bellenden, who would have none of the Prince of Wales’s fine
compliments, who folded her arms across her breast, and bade H.R.H. keep
off; and knocked his purse of guineas into his face, and told him she was
tired of seeing him count them. He was not an august monarch, this
Augustus. Walpole tells how, one night at the royal card-table, the
playful princesses pulled a chair away from under Lady Deloraine, who, in
revenge, pulled the king’s from under him, so that his Majesty fell on the
carpet. In whatever posture one sees this royal George, he is ludicrous
somehow; even at Dettingen, where he fought so bravely, his figure is
absurd—calling out in his broken English, and lunging with his rapier,
like a fencing-master. In contemporary caricatures, George’s son, “the
Hero of Culloden,” is also made an object of considerable fun, as witness
the following picture of him defeated by the French (1757) at Hastenbeck:
[Illustration]
I refrain to quote from Walpole regarding George—for those charming
volumes are in the hands of all who love the gossip of the last century.
Nothing can be more cheery than Horace’s letters. Fiddles sing all through
them: wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages,
glitter and sparkle there: never was such a brilliant, jigging, smirking
Vanity Fair as that through which he leads us. Hervey, the next great
authority, is a darker spirit. About him there is something frightful: a
few years since his heirs opened the lid of the Ickworth box; it was as if
a Pompeii was opened to us—the last century dug up, with its temples and
its games, its chariots, its public places—lupanaria. Wandering through
that city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless
intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and
struggling—rouged, and lying, and fawning—I have wanted some one to be
friends with. I have said to friends conversant with that history, Show me
some good person about that Court; find me, among those selfish courtiers,
those dissolute, gay people, some one being that I can love and regard.
There is that strutting little sultan, George II; there is that
hunchbacked, beetle-browed Lord Chesterfield; there is John Hervey, with
his deadly smile, and ghastly, painted face—I hate them. There is Hoadly,
cringing from one bishopric to another: yonder comes little Mr. Pope, from
Twickenham, with his friend, the Irish dean, in his new cassock, bowing
too, but with rage flashing from under his bushy eyebrows, and scorn and
hate quivering in his smile. Can you be fond of these? Of Pope I might: at
least I might love his genius, his wit, his greatness, his
sensibility—with a certain conviction that at some fancied slight, some
sneer which he imagined, he would turn upon me and stab me. Can you trust
the queen? She is not of our order: their very position makes kings and
queens lonely. One inscrutable attachment that inscrutable woman has. To
that she is faithful, through all trial, neglect, pain, and time. Save her
husband, she really cares for no created being. She is good enough to her
children, and even fond enough of them: but she would chop them all up
into little pieces to please him. In her intercourse with all around her,
she was perfectly kind, gracious, and natural; but friends may die,
daughters may depart, she will be as perfectly kind and gracious to the
next set. If the king wants her, she will smile upon him, be she ever so
sad; and walk with him, be she ever so weary; and laugh at his brutal
jokes, be she in ever so much pain of body or heart. Caroline’s devotion
to her husband is a prodigy to read of. What charm had the little man?
What was there in those wonderful letters of thirty pages long, which he
wrote to her when he was absent, and to his mistresses at Hanover, when he
was in London with his wife? Why did Caroline, the most lovely and
accomplished princess of Germany, take a little red-faced staring
princeling for a husband, and refuse an emperor? Why, to her last hour,
did she love him so? She killed herself because she loved him so. She had
the gout, and would plunge her feet in cold water in order to walk with
him. With the film of death over her eyes, writhing in intolerable pain,
she yet had a livid smile and a gentle word for her master. You have read
the wonderful history of that death-bed? How she bade him marry again, and
the reply the old king blubbered out, “_Non, non: j’aurai des
maitresses_.” There never was such a ghastly farce. I watch the
astonishing scene—I stand by that awful bedside, wondering at the ways in
which God has ordained the lives, loves, rewards, successes, passions,
actions, ends of his creatures—and can’t but laugh, in the presence of
death, and with the saddest heart. In that often-quoted passage from Lord
Hervey, in which the queen’s death-bed is described, the grotesque horror
of the details surpasses all satire: the dreadful humour of the scene is
more terrible than Swift’s blackest pages, or Fielding’s fiercest irony.
The man who wrote the story had something diabolical about him: the
terrible verses which Pope wrote respecting Hervey, in one of his own
moods of almost fiendish malignity, I fear are true. I am frightened as I
look back into the past, and fancy I behold that ghastly, beautiful face;
as I think of the queen writhing on her death-bed, and crying out,
“Pray!—pray!”—of the royal old sinner by her side, who kisses her dead
lips with frantic grief, and leaves her to sin more;—of the bevy of
courtly clergymen, and the archbishop, whose prayers she rejects, and who
are obliged for propriety’s sake to shuffle off the anxious inquiries of
the public, and vow that her Majesty quitted this life “in a heavenly
frame of mind”. What a life!—to what ends devoted! What a vanity of
vanities! It is a theme for another pulpit than the lecturer’s. For a
pulpit?—I think the part which pulpits play in the deaths of kings is the
most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies, the blinking of
disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the simulated grief, the
falsehood and sycophancies—all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State
churches: these monstrous threnodies have been sung from time immemorial
over kings and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State parson
must bring out his commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical
black-hangings. Dead king or live king, the clergyman must flatter
him—announce his piety whilst living, and when dead, perform the obsequies
of “our most religious and gracious king”.
I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious king’s
favourite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5,000_l._ (She betted him
5,000_l._ that he would not be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.)
Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration?
As I peep into George II’s St. James’s, I see crowds of cassocks rustling
up the back-stairs of the ladies of the Court; stealthy clergy slipping
purses into their laps; that godless old king yawning under his canopy in
his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing. Discoursing
about what?—about righteousness and judgement? Whilst the chaplain is
preaching, the king is chattering in German almost as loud as the
preacher; so loud that the clergyman—it may be one Dr. Young, he who wrote
_Night Thoughts_, and discoursed on the splendours of the stars, the
glories of heaven, and utter vanities of this world—actually burst out
crying in his pulpit because the Defender of the Faith and dispenser of
bishoprics would not listen to him! No wonder that the clergy were corrupt
and indifferent amidst this indifference and corruption. No wonder that
sceptics multiplied and morals degenerated, so far as they depended on the
influence of such a king. No wonder that Whitfield cried out in the
wilderness, that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to pray on the
hillside. I look with reverence on those men at that time. Which is the
sublimer spectacle—the good John Wesley, surrounded by his congregation of
miners at the pit’s mouth, or the queen’s chaplains mumbling through their
morning office in their ante-room, under the picture of the great Venus,
with the door opened into the adjoining chamber, where the queen is
dressing, talking scandal to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady
Suffolk, who is kneeling with the basin at her mistress’s side? I say I am
scared as I look round at this society—at this king, at these courtiers,
at these politicians, at these bishops—at this flaunting vice and levity.
Whereabouts in this Court is the honest man? Where is the pure person one
may like? The air stifles one with its sickly perfumes. There are some
old-world follies and some absurd ceremonials about our Court of the
present day, which I laugh at, but as an Englishman, contrasting it with
the past, shall I not acknowledge the change of to-day? As the mistress of
St. James’s passes me now, I salute the sovereign, wise, moderate,
exemplary of life; the good mother; the good wife; the accomplished lady;
the enlightened friend of art; the tender sympathizer in her people’s
glories and sorrows.
Of all the Court of George and Caroline, I find no one but Lady Suffolk
with whom it seems pleasant and kindly to hold converse. Even the
misogynist Croker, who edited her letters, loves her, and has that regard
for her with which her sweet graciousness seems to have inspired almost
all men and some women who came near her. I have noted many little traits
which go to prove the charms of her character (it is not merely because
she is charming, but because she is characteristic, that I allude to her).
She writes delightfully sober letters. Addressing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge (he
was, you know, a poet, penniless and in disgrace), she says: “The place
you are in, has strangely filled your head with physicians and cures; but,
take my word for it, many a fine lady has gone there to drink the waters
without being sick; and many a man has complained of the loss of his
heart, who had it in his own possession. I desire you will keep yours; for
I shall not be very fond of a friend without one, and I have a great mind
you should be in the number of mine.”
When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that indomitable youth
addressed some flaming love-, or rather gallantry-, letters to Mrs.
Howard—curious relics they are of the romantic manner of wooing sometimes
in use in those days. It is not passion; it is not love; it is gallantry:
a mixture of earnest and acting; high-flown compliments, profound bows,
vows, sighs, and ogles, in the manner of the Clelie romances, and
Millamont and Doricourt in the comedy. There was a vast elaboration of
ceremonies and etiquette, of raptures—a regulated form for kneeling and
wooing which has quite passed out of our downright manners. Henrietta
Howard accepted the noble old earl’s philandering; answered the queer
love-letters with due acknowledgement; made a profound curtsey to
Peterborough’s profound bow; and got John Gay to help her in the
composition of her letters in reply to her old knight. He wrote her
charming verses, in which there was truth as well as grace. “O wonderful
creature!” he writes:—
O wonderful creature, a woman of reason!
Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season!
When so easy to guess who this angel should be,
Who would think Mrs. Howard ne’er dreamt it was she?
The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleasant, and
painted a portrait of what must certainly have been a delightful lady:—
I know a thing that’s most uncommon—
Envy, be silent and attend!—
I know a reasonable woman,
Handsome, yet witty, and a friend:
Not warp’d by passion, aw’d by rumour,
Not grave through pride, or gay through folly:
An equal mixture of good humour
And exquisite soft melancholy.
Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir?
Yes, she has one, I must aver—
When all the world conspires to praise her,
The woman’s deaf, and does not hear!
Even the women concurred in praising and loving her. The Duchess of
Queensberry bears testimony to her amiable qualities, and writes to her:
“I tell you so and so, because you love children, and to have children
love you.” The beautiful, jolly Mary Bellenden, represented by
contemporaries as “the most perfect creature ever known”, writes very
pleasantly to her “dear Howard”, her “dear Swiss”, from the country,
whither Mary had retired after her marriage, and when she gave up being a
maid of honour. “How do you do, Mrs. Howard?” Mary breaks out. “How do you
do, Mrs. Howard? that is all I have to say. This afternoon I am taken with
a fit of writing; but as to matter, I have nothing better to entertain
you, than news of my farm. I therefore give you the following list of the
stock of eatables that I am fatting for my private tooth. It is well known
to the whole county of Kent, that I have four fat calves, two fat hogs,
fit for killing, twelve promising black pigs, two young chickens, three
fine geese, with thirteen eggs under each (several being duck-eggs, else
the others do not come to maturity); all this, with rabbits, and pigeons,
and carp in plenty, beef and mutton at reasonable rates. Now, Howard, if
you have a mind to stick a knife into anything I have named, say so!”
A jolly set must they have been, those maids of honour. Pope introduces us
to a whole bevy of them, in a pleasant letter. “I went,” he says, “by
water to Hampton Court, and met the Prince, with all his ladies, on
horseback, coming from hunting. Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took me
into protection, contrary to the laws against harbouring Papists, and gave
me a dinner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of conversation
with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life of a maid of honour was of
all things the most miserable, and wished that all women who envied it had
a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham of a morning, ride over hedges and
ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever,
and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark on the forehead from
an uneasy hat—all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for
hunters. As soon as they wipe off the heat of the day, they must simper an
hour and catch cold in the princess’s apartment; from thence to dinner
with what appetite they may; and after that till midnight, work, walk, or
think which way they please. No lone house in Wales, with a mountain and
rookery, is more contemplative than this Court. Miss Lepell walked with me
three or four hours by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality
but the king, who gave audience to the vice-chamberlain all alone under
the garden wall.”
I fancy it was a merrier England, that of our ancestors, than the island
which we inhabit. People high and low amused themselves very much more. I
have calculated the manner in which statesmen and persons of condition
passed their time—and what with drinking, and dining, and supping, and
cards, wonder how they got through their business at all. They played all
sorts of games, which, with the exception of cricket and tennis, have
quite gone out of our manners now. In the old prints of St. James’s Park,
you still see the marks along the walk, to note the balls when the Court
played at Mall. Fancy Birdcage Walk now so laid out, and Lord John and
Lord Palmerston knocking balls up and down the avenue! Most of those jolly
sports belong to the past, and the good old games of England are only to
be found in old novels, in old ballads, or the columns of dingy old
newspapers, which say how a main of cocks is to be fought at Winchester
between the Winchester men and the Hampton men; or how the Cornwall men
and the Devon men are going to hold a great wrestling match at Totnes, and
so on.
A hundred and twenty years ago there were not only country towns in
England, but people who inhabited them. We were very much more gregarious;
we were amused by very simple pleasures. Every town had its fair, every
village its wake. The old poets have sung a hundred jolly ditties about
great cudgel-playings, famous grinning through horse-collars, great
maypole meetings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run races clad in
very light attire; and the kind gentry and good parsons thought no shame
in looking on. Dancing bears went about the country with pipe and tabor.
Certain well-known tunes were sung all over the land for hundreds of
years, and high and low rejoiced in that simple music. Gentlemen who
wished to entertain their female friends constantly sent for a band. When
Beau Fielding, a mighty fine gentleman, was courting the lady whom he
married, he treated her and her companion at his lodgings to a supper from
the tavern, and after supper they sent out for a fiddler—three of them.
Fancy the three, in a great wainscoted room, in Covent Garden or Soho,
lighted by two or three candles in silver sconces, some grapes and a
bottle of Florence wine on the table, and the honest fiddler playing old
tunes in quaint old minor keys, as the Beau takes out one lady after the
other, and solemnly dances with her!
The very great folks, young noblemen, with their governors, and the like,
went abroad and made the great tour; the home satirists jeered at the
Frenchified and Italian ways which they brought back; but the greater
number of people never left the country. The jolly squire often had never
been twenty miles from home. Those who did go went to the baths, to
Harrogate, or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full of
these places of pleasure. Gay writes to us about the fiddlers at
Tunbridge; of the ladies having merry little private balls amongst
themselves; and the gentlemen entertaining them by turns with tea and
music. One of the young beauties whom he met did not care for tea: “We
have a young lady here,” he says, “that is very particular in her desires.
I have known some young ladies, who, if ever they prayed, would ask for
some equipage or title, a husband or matadores: but this lady, who is but
seventeen, and has 30,000_l._ to her fortune, places all her wishes on a
pot of good ale. When her friends, for the sake of her shape and
complexion, would dissuade her from it, she answers, with the truest
sincerity, that by the loss of shape and complexion she could only lose a
husband, whereas ale is her passion.”
Every country town had its assembly-room—mouldy old tenements, which we
may still see in deserted inn-yards, in decayed provincial cities, out of
which the great wen of London has sucked all the life. York, at assize
time, and throughout the winter, harboured a large society of northern
gentry. Shrewsbury was celebrated for its festivities. At Newmarket, I
read of “a vast deal of good company, besides rogues and blacklegs”; at
Norwich, of two assemblies, with a prodigious crowd in the hall, the
rooms, and the gallery. In Cheshire (it is a maid of honour of Queen
Caroline who writes, and who is longing to be back at Hampton Court, and
the fun there) I peep into a country house, and see a very merry party:
“We meet in the work-room before nine, eat and break a joke or two till
twelve, then we repair to our own chambers and make ourselves ready, for
it cannot be called dressing. At noon the great bell fetches us into a
parlour, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, poisoned darts, several pair
of old boots and shoes worn by men of might, with the stirrups of King
Charles I, taken from him at Edgehill,”—and there they have their dinner,
after which comes dancing and supper.
As for Bath, all history went and bathed and drank there. George II and
his queen, Prince Frederick and his Court, scarce a character one can
mention of the early last century, but was seen in that famous Pump-room
where Beau Nash presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton
and Pope:
This picture, placed these busts between,
Gives satire all its strength:
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length.
I should like to have seen the Folly. It was a splendid, embroidered,
be-ruffled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent Folly, and knew how to
make itself respected. I should like to have seen that noble old madcap
Peterborough in his boots (he actually had the audacity to walk about Bath
in boots!), with his blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm,
and a chicken in his hand, which he had been cheapening for his dinner.
Chesterfield came there many a time and gambled for hundreds, and grinned
through his gout. Mary Wortley was there, young and beautiful; and Mary
Wortley, old, hideous, and snuffy. Miss Chudleigh came there, slipping
away from one husband, and on the look-out for another. Walpole passed
many a day there; sickly, supercilious, absurdly dandified, and affected;
with a brilliant wit, a delightful sensibility; and for his friends, a
most tender, generous, and faithful heart. And if you and I had been alive
then, and strolling down Milsom Street—hush! we should have taken our hats
off, as an awful, long, lean, gaunt figure, swathed in flannels, passed by
in its chair, and a livid face looked out from the window—great fierce
eyes staring from under a bushy, powdered wig, a terrible frown, a
terrible Roman nose—and we whisper to one another, “There he is! There’s
the great commoner! There is Mr. Pitt!” As we walk away, the abbey bells
are set a-ringing; and we meet our testy friend Toby Smollett, on the arm
of James Quin the actor, who tells us that the bells ring for Mr. Bullock,
an eminent cowkeeper from Tottenham, who has just arrived to drink the
waters; and Toby shakes his cane at the door of Colonel Ringworm—the
Creole gentleman’s lodgings next his own—where the colonel’s two negroes
are practising on the French horn.
When we try to recall social England, we must fancy it playing at cards
for many hours every day. The custom is wellnigh gone out among us now,
but fifty years ago was general, fifty years before that almost universal,
in the country. “Gaming has become so much the fashion,” writes Seymour,
the author of the _Court Gamester_, “that he who in company should be
ignorant of the games in vogue, would be reckoned low-bred, and hardly fit
for conversation.” There were cards everywhere. It was considered ill-bred
to read in company. “Books were not fit articles for drawing-rooms,” old
ladies used to say. People were jealous, as it were, and angry with them.
You will find in Hervey that George II was always furious at the sight of
books; and his queen, who loved reading, had to practise it in secret in
her closet. But cards were the resource of all the world. Every night, for
hours, kings and queens of England sat down and handled their majesties of
spades and diamonds. In European Courts, I believe the practice still
remains, not for gambling, but for pastime. Our ancestors generally
adopted it. “Books! prithee, don’t talk to me about books,” said old Sarah
Marlborough. “The only books I know are men and cards.” “Dear old Sir
Roger de Coverley sent all his tenants a string of hogs’ puddings and a
pack of cards at Christmas,” says the _Spectator_, wishing to depict a
kind landlord. One of the good old lady writers in whose letters I have
been dipping cries out, “Sure, cards have kept us women from a great deal
of scandal!” Wise old Johnson regretted that he had not learnt to play.
“It is very useful in life,” he says; “it generates kindness, and
consolidates society.” David Hume never went to bed without his whist. We
have Walpole, in one of his letters, in a transport of gratitude for the
cards. “I shall build an order to Pam,” says he, in his pleasant dandified
way, “for the escape of my charming Duchess of Grafton.” The duchess had
been playing cards at Rome, when she ought to have been at a cardinal’s
concert, where the floor fell in, and all the monsignors were precipitated
into the cellar. Even the Nonconformist clergy looked not unkindly on the
practice. “I do not think,” says one of them, “that honest Martin Luther
committed sin by playing at backgammon for an hour or two after dinner, in
order by unbending his mind to promote digestion.” As for the High Church
parsons, they all played, bishops and all. On Twelfth Day the Court used
to play in state. “This being Twelfth Day, his Majesty, the Prince of
Wales, and the Knights Companions of the Garter, Thistle, and Bath,
appeared in the collars of their respective orders. Their Majesties, the
Prince of Wales, and three eldest Princesses, went to the Chapel Royal,
preceded by the heralds. The Duke of Manchester carried the sword of
state. The king and prince made offering at the altar of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh, according to the annual custom. At night their
Majesties played at hazard with the nobility, for the benefit of the
groom-porter; and ’twas said the king won 600 guineas; the queen, 360;
Princess Amelia, twenty; Princess Caroline, ten; the Duke of Grafton and
the Earl of Portmore, several thousands.”
Let us glance at the same chronicle, which is of the year 1731, and see
how others of our forefathers were engaged.
“Cork, 15th January.—This day, one Tim Croneen was, for the murder and
robbery of Mr. St. Leger and his wife, sentenced to be hanged two minutes,
then his head to be cut off, and his body divided in four quarters, to be
placed in four crossways. He was servant to Mr. St. Leger, and committed
the murder with the privity of the servant-maid, who was sentenced to be
burned; also of the gardener, whom he knocked on the head, to deprive him
of his share of the booty.”
“January 3.—A postboy was shot by an Irish gentleman on the road near
Stone, in Staffordshire, who died in two days, for which the gentleman was
imprisoned.”
“A poor man was found hanging in a gentleman’s stables at Bungay, in
Norfolk, by a person who cut him down, and running for assistance, left
his penknife behind him. The poor man recovering, cut his throat with the
knife; and a river being nigh, jumped into it; but company coming, he was
dragged out alive, and was like to remain so.”
“The Honourable Thomas Finch, brother to the Earl of Nottingham, is
appointed ambassador at the Hague, in the room of the Earl of
Chesterfield, who is on his return home.”
“William Cowper, Esq., and the Rev. Mr. John Cowper, chaplain in ordinary
to her Majesty, and rector of Great Berkhampstead, in the county of
Hertford, are appointed clerks of the commissioners of bankruptcy.”
“Charles Creagh, Esq., and —— Macnamara, Esq., between whom an old grudge
of three years had subsisted, which had occasioned their being bound over
about fifty times for breaking the peace, meeting in company with Mr.
Eyres, of Galloway, they discharged their pistols, and all three were
killed on the spot—to the great joy of their peaceful neighbours, say the
Irish papers.”
“Wheat is 26_s._ to 28_s._, and barley 20_s._ to 22_s._ a quarter; three
per cents, 92; best loaf sugar, 9-1/4_d._; Bohea, 12_s._ to 14_s._; Pekoe,
18_s._, and Hyson, 35_s._ per pound.”
“At Exon was celebrated with great magnificence the birthday of the son of
Sir W. Courtney, Bart., at which more than 1,000 persons were present. A
bullock was roasted whole; a butt of wine and several tuns of beer and
cider were given to the populace. At the same time Sir William delivered
to his son, then of age, Powdram Castle, and a great estate.”
“Charlesworth and Cox, two solicitors, convicted of forgery, stood on the
pillory at the Royal Exchange. The first was severely handled by the
populace, but the other was very much favoured, and protected by six or
seven fellows who got on the pillory to protect him from the insults of
the mob.”
“A boy killed by falling upon iron spikes, from a lamppost, which he
climbed to see Mother Needham stand in the pillory.”
“Mary Lynn was burned to ashes at the stake for being concerned in the
murder of her mistress.”
“Alexander Russell, the foot soldier, who was capitally convicted for a
street robbery in January sessions, was reprieved for transportation; but
having an estate fallen to him, obtained a free pardon.”
“The Lord John Russell married to the Lady Diana Spencer, at Marlborough
House. He has a fortune of 30,000_l._ down, and is to have 100,000_l._ at
the death of the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, his grandmother.”
“March 1 being the anniversary of the queen’s birthday, when her Majesty
entered the forty-ninth year of her age, there was a splendid appearance
of nobility at St. James’s. Her Majesty was magnificently dressed, and
wore a flowered muslin head-edging, as did also her Royal Highness. The
Lord Portmore was said to have had the richest dress, though an Italian
Count had twenty-four diamonds instead of buttons.”
New clothes on the birthday were the fashion for all loyal people. Swift
mentions the custom several times. Walpole is constantly speaking of it;
laughing at the practice, but having the very finest clothes from Paris,
nevertheless. If the king and queen were unpopular, there were very few
new clothes at the Drawing-room. In a paper in the _True Patriot_, No. 3,
written to attack the Pretender, the Scotch, French, and Popery, Fielding
supposes the Scotch and the Pretender in possession of London, and himself
about to be hanged for loyalty,—when, just as the rope is round his neck,
he says: “My little girl entered my bedchamber, and put an end to my dream
by pulling open my eyes, and telling me that the tailor had just brought
home my clothes for his Majesty’s birthday.” In his _Temple Beau_, the
beau is dunned for a birthday suit of velvet, 40_l._ Be sure that Mr.
Harry Fielding was dunned too.
The public days, no doubt, were splendid, but the private Court life must
have been awfully wearisome. “I will not trouble you,” writes Hervey to
Lady Sundon, “with any account of our occupations at Hampton Court. No
mill-horse ever went in a more constant track, or a more unchanging
circle; so that by the assistance of an almanac for the day of the week,
and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself fully,
without any other intelligence but your memory, of every transaction
within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levées, and audiences
fill the morning. At night the king plays at commerce and backgammon, and
the queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly
gauntlet, the queen pulling her hood, and the Princess Royal rapping her
knuckles. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and
sleeps as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham
strolls from one room to another (as Dryden says), like some discontented
ghost that oft appears, and is forbid to speak; and stirs himself about as
people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn
brisker. At last the king gets up; the pool finishes; and everybody has
their dismission. Their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord
Lifford; my Lord Grantham, to Lady Frances and Mr. Clark: some to supper,
some to bed; and thus the evening and the morning make the day.”
The king’s fondness for Hanover occasioned all sorts of rough jokes among
his English subjects, to whom _Sauerkraut_ and sausages have ever been
ridiculous objects. When our present Prince Consort came among us, the
people bawled out songs in the streets indicative of the absurdity of
Germany in general. The sausage-shops produced enormous sausages which we
might suppose were the daily food and delight of German princes. I
remember the caricatures at the marriage of Prince Leopold with the
Princess Charlotte. The bridegroom was drawn in rags. George III’s wife
was called by the people a beggarly German duchess; the British idea being
that all princes were beggarly except British princes. King George paid us
back. He thought there were no manners out of Germany. Sarah Marlborough
once coming to visit the princess, whilst her Royal Highness was whipping
one of the roaring royal children, “Ah!” says George, who was standing by,
“you have no good manners in England, because you are not properly brought
up when you are young.” He insisted that no English cooks could roast, no
English coachman could drive: he actually questioned the superiority of
our nobility, our horses, and our roast beef!
Whilst he was away from his beloved Hanover, everything remained there
exactly as in the prince’s presence. There were 800 horses in the stables,
there was all the apparatus of chamberlains, Court-marshals, and
equerries; and Court assemblies were held every Saturday, where all the
nobility of Hanover assembled at what I can’t but think a fine and
touching ceremony. A large armchair was placed in the assembly-room, and
on it the king’s portrait. The nobility advanced, and made a bow to the
armchair, and to the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and
spoke under their voices before the august picture, just as they would
have done had the King Churfürst been present himself.
He was always going back to Hanover. In the year 1729, he went for two
whole years, during which Caroline reigned for him in England, and he was
not in the least missed by his British subjects. He went again in ’35 and
’36; and between the years 1740 and 1755 was no less than eight times on
the Continent, which amusement he was obliged to give up at the outbreak
of the Seven Years’ War. Here every day’s amusement was the same. “Our
life is as uniform as that of a monastery,” writes a courtier whom Vehse
quotes. “Every morning at eleven, and every evening at six, we drive in
the heat to Herrenhausen, through an enormous linden avenue; and twice a
day cover our coats and coaches with dust. In the king’s society there
never is the least change. At table, and at cards, he sees always the same
faces, and at the end of the game retires into his chamber. Twice a week
there is a French theatre; the other days there is play in the gallery. In
this way, were the king always to stop in Hanover, one could make a ten
years’ calendar of his proceedings; and settle beforehand what his time of
business, meals, and pleasure would be.”
The old pagan kept his promise to his dying wife. Lady Yarmouth was now in
full favour, and treated with profound respect by the Hanover society,
though it appears rather neglected in England when she came among us. In
1740, a couple of the king’s daughters went to see him at Hanover; Anna,
the Princess of Orange (about whom, and whose husband and marriage-day,
Walpole and Hervey have left us the most ludicrous descriptions), and
Maria of Hesse-Cassel, with their respective lords. This made the Hanover
Court very brilliant. In honour of his high guests, the king gave several
fêtes; among others, a magnificent masked ball, in the green theatre at
Herrenhausen—the garden theatre, with linden and box for screen, and grass
for a carpet, where the Platens had danced to George and his father the
late sultan. The stage and a great part of the garden were illuminated
with coloured lamps. Almost the whole Court appeared in white dominos,
“like,” says the describer of the scene, “like spirits in the Elysian
fields. At night, supper was served in the gallery with three great
tables, and the king was very merry. After supper dancing was resumed, and
I did not get home till five o’clock by full daylight to Hanover. Some
days afterwards we had in the opera-house at Hanover, a great assembly.
The king appeared in a Turkish dress; his turban was ornamented with a
magnificent agraffe of diamonds; the Lady Yarmouth was dressed as a
sultana; nobody was more beautiful than the Princess of Hesse.” So, while
poor Caroline was resting in her coffin, dapper little George, with his
red face and his white eyebrows and goggle-eyes, at sixty years of age, is
dancing a pretty dance with Madame Walmoden, and capering about dressed up
like a Turk! For twenty years more, that little old Bajazet went on in
this Turkish fashion, until the fit came which choked the old man, when he
ordered the side of his coffin to be taken out, as well as that of poor
Caroline’s who had preceded him, so that his sinful old bones and ashes
might mingle with those of the faithful creature. O strutting Turkey-cock
of Herrenhausen! O naughty little Mahomet! in what Turkish paradise are
you now, and where be your painted houris? So Countess Yarmouth appeared
as a sultana, and his Majesty in a Turkish dress wore an agraffe of
diamonds, and was very merry, was he? Friends! he was your fathers’ king
as well as mine—let us drop a respectful tear over his grave.
He said of his wife that he never knew a woman who was worthy to buckle
her shoe: he would sit alone weeping before her portrait, and when he had
dried his eyes, he would go off to his Walmoden and talk of her. On the
25th day of October, 1760, he being then in the seventy-seventh year of
his age, and the thirty-fourth of his reign, his page went to take him his
royal chocolate, and behold! the most religious and gracious king was
lying dead on the floor. They went and fetched Walmoden; but Walmoden
could not wake him. The sacred Majesty was but a lifeless corpse. The king
was dead; God save the king! But, of course, poets and clergymen
decorously bewailed the late one. Here are some artless verses, in which
an English divine deplored the famous departed hero, and over which you
may cry or you may laugh, exactly as your humour suits:—
While at his feet expiring Faction lay,
No contest left but who should best obey;
Saw in his offspring all himself renewed;
The same fair path of glory still pursued;
Saw to young George Augusta’s care impart
Whate’er could raise and humanize the heart;
Blend all his grandsire’s virtues with his own,
And form their mingled radiance for the throne—
No farther blessing could on earth be given—
The next degree of happiness was—heaven!
If he had been good, if he had been just, if he had been pure in life, and
wise in council, could the poet have said much more? It was a parson who
came and wept over this grave, with Walmoden sitting on it, and claimed
heaven for the poor old man slumbering below. Here was one who had neither
dignity, learning, morals, nor wit—who tainted a great society by a bad
example; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and sensual; and
Mr. Porteus, afterwards my Lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was not
good enough for him, and that his only place was heaven! Bravo, Mr.
Porteus! The divine who wept these tears over George II’s memory wore
George III’s lawn. I don’t know whether people still admire his poetry or
his sermons.
George The Third
We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere
catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy
our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has
to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and
separation; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution; to
grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napoleon; to gasp
and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with its
courtly splendours, has to pass away; generations of statesmen to rise and
disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and
Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson’s and Wellington’s glory; the old poets
who unite us to Queen Anne’s time to sink into their graves; Johnson to
die, and Scott and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his
dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take
possession of the astonished theatre. Steam has to be invented; kings to
be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored. Napoleon to be but an episode,
and George III is to be alive through all these varied changes, to
accompany his people through all these revolutions of thought, government,
society; to survive out of the old world into ours.
When I first saw England, she was in mourning for the young Princess
Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from India as a child, and our
ship touched at an island on the way home, where my black servant took me
a long walk over rocks and hills until we reached a garden, where we saw a
man walking. “That is he,” said the black man: “that is Bonaparte! He eats
three sheep every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on!”
There were people in the British dominions besides that poor Calcutta
serving-man, with an equal horror of the Corsican ogre.
With the same childish attendant, I remember peeping through the colonnade
at Carlton House, and seeing the abode of the great Prince Regent. I can
see yet the Guards pacing before the gates of the place. The place? What
place? The palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is
but a name now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as the Royal
chariots drove in and out? The chariots, with the kings inside, have
driven to the realms of Pluto; the tall Guards have marched into darkness,
and the echoes of their drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace once
stood, a hundred little children are paddling up and down the steps to St.
James’s Park. A score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the
Athenaeum Club; as many grizzly warriors are garrisoning the United
Service Club opposite. Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of London
now—the mart of news, of politics, of scandal, of rumour—the English
forum, so to speak, where men discuss the last dispatch from the Crimea,
the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. And, now and
then, to a few antiquarians, whose thoughts are with the past rather than
with the present, it is a memorial of old times and old people, and Pall
Mall is our Palmyra. Look! About this spot, Tom of Ten Thousand was killed
by Königsmarck’s gang. In that great red house Gainsborough lived, and
Culloden Cumberland, George III’s uncle. Yonder is Sarah Marlborough’s
palace, just as it stood when that termagant occupied it. At 25, Walter
Scott used to live; at the house, now No. 79, and occupied by the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor
Gwynn, comedian.
How often has Queen Caroline’s chair issued from under yonder arch! All
the men of the Georges have passed up and down the street. It has seen
Walpole’s chariot and Chatham’s sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on their
way to Brookes’s; and stately William Pitt stalking on the arm of Dundas;
and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling out of Raggett’s; and Byron limping
into Wattier’s; and Swift striding out of Bury Street; and Mr. Addison and
Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor; and the Prince
of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement; and Johnson
counting the posts along the streets, after dawdling before Dodsley’s
window; and Horry Walpole hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just
bought out at Christie’s; and George Selwyn sauntering into White’s.
In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of correspondence
by no means so brilliant and witty as Walpole’s, or so bitter and bright
as Hervey’s, but as interesting, and even more descriptive of the time,
because the letters are the work of many hands. You hear more voices
speaking, as it were, and more natural than Horace’s dandified treble, and
Sporus’s malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters—as one looks
at Reynolds’s noble pictures illustrative of those magnificent times and
voluptuous people—one almost hears the voice of the dead past; the
laughter and the chorus; the toast called over the brimming cups; the
shout at the racecourse or the gaming-table; the merry joke frankly spoken
to the laughing fine lady. How fine those ladies were, those ladies who
heard and spoke such coarse jokes; how grand those gentlemen!
I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentleman, has almost
vanished off the face of the earth, and is disappearing like the beaver or
the Red Indian. We can’t have fine gentlemen any more, because we can’t
have the society in which they lived. The people will not obey: the
parasites will not be as obsequious as formerly: children do not go down
on their knees to beg their parents’ blessing: chaplains do not say grace
and retire before the pudding: servants do not say “your honour” and “your
worship” at every moment: tradesmen do not stand hat in hand as the
gentleman passes: authors do not wait for hours in gentlemen’s ante-rooms
with a fulsome dedication, for which they hope to get five guineas from
his lordship. In the days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary
Pitt’s under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him; but Mr.
Pitt, in his turn, went down on his gouty knees to George II; and when
George III spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatham burst into tears of
reverential joy and gratitude; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and
so great the distinctions of rank. Fancy Lord John Russell or Lord
Palmerston on their knees whilst the sovereign was reading a dispatch, or
beginning to cry because Prince Albert said something civil!
At the accession of George III, the patricians were yet at the height of
their good fortune. Society recognized their superiority, which they
themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They inherited not only titles
and estates, and seats in the House of Peers, but seats in the House of
Commons. There were a multitude of Government places, and not merely
these, but bribes of actual 500_l._ notes, which Members of the House took
not much shame in assuming. Fox went into Parliament at 20: Pitt was just
of age: his father not much older. It was the good time for Patricians.
Small blame to them if they took and enjoyed, and over-enjoyed, the prizes
of politics, the pleasures of social life.
In these letters to Selwyn, we are made acquainted with a whole society of
these defunct fine gentlemen: and can watch with a curious interest a
life, which the novel-writers of that time, I think, have scarce touched
upon. To Smollett, to Fielding even, a lord was a lord: a gorgeous being
with a blue ribbon, a coroneted chair, and an immense star on his bosom,
to whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of humbler birth than
either of the above two, owned that he was ignorant regarding the manners
of the aristocracy, and besought Mrs. Donnellan, a lady who had lived in
the great world, to examine a volume of _Sir Charles Grandison_, and point
out any errors which she might see in this particular. Mrs. Donnellan
found so many faults, that Richardson changed colour; shut up the book;
and muttered that it were best to throw it in the fire. Here, in Selwyn,
we have the real original men and women of fashion of the early time of
George III. We can follow them to the new club at Almack’s: we can travel
over Europe with them: we can accompany them not only to the public
places, but to their country-houses and private society. Here is a whole
company of them; wits and prodigals; some persevering in their bad ways;
some repentant, but relapsing; beautiful ladies, parasites, humble
chaplains, led captains. Those fair creatures whom we love in Reynolds’s
portraits, and who still look out on us from his canvases with their sweet
calm faces and gracious smiles—those fine gentlemen who did us the honour
to govern us; who inherited their boroughs; took their ease in their
patent places; and slipped Lord North’s bribes so elegantly under their
ruffles—we make acquaintance with a hundred of these fine folks, hear
their talk and laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, intrigues, debts,
duels, divorces; can fancy them alive if we read the book long enough. We
can attend at Duke Hamilton’s wedding, and behold him marry his bride with
the curtain-ring: we can peep into her poor sister’s death-bed: we can see
Charles Fox cursing over the cards, or March bawling out the odds at
Newmarket: we can imagine Burgoyne tripping off from St. James’s Street to
conquer the Americans, and slinking back into the club somewhat
crestfallen after his beating: we can see the young king dressing himself
for the Drawing-room and asking ten thousand questions regarding all the
gentlemen: we can have high life or low, the struggle at the Opera to
behold the Violetta or the Zamperini—the Macaronis and fine ladies in
their chairs trooping to the masquerade or Madame Cornelys’s—the crowd at
Drury Lane to look at the body of Miss Ray, whom Parson Hackman has just
pistolled—or we can peep into Newgate, where poor Mr. Rice the forger is
waiting his fate and his supper. “You need not be particular about the
sauce for his fowl,” says one turnkey to another: “for you know he is to
be hanged in the morning.” “Yes,” replies the second janitor, “but the
chaplain sups with him, and he is a terrible fellow for melted butter.”
Selwyn has a chaplain and parasite, one Dr. Warner, than whom Plautus, or
Ben Jonson, or Hogarth, never painted a better character. In letter after
letter he adds fresh strokes to the portrait of himself, and completes a
portrait not a little curious to look at now that the man has passed away;
all the foul pleasures and gambols in which he revelled, played out; all
the rouged faces into which he leered, worms and skulls; all the fine
gentlemen whose shoebuckles he kissed, laid in their coffins. This worthy
clergyman takes care to tell us that he does not believe in his religion,
though, thank Heaven, he is not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on
Mr. Selwyn’s errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that
gentleman’s proveditor. He waits upon the Duke of Queensberry—old Q.—and
exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He comes home “after a hard
day’s christening”, as he says, and writes to his patron before sitting
down to whist and partridges for supper. He revels in the thoughts of
ox-cheek and burgundy—he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his
master’s shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning smack and gusto,
and likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best claret in old
Q.’s cellar. He has Rabelais and Horace at his greasy fingers’ ends. He is
inexpressibly mean, curiously jolly; kindly and good-natured in secret—a
tender-hearted knave, not a venomous lickspittle. Jesse says, that at his
chapel in Long Acre, “he attained a considerable popularity by the
pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery.” Was infidelity
endemic, and corruption in the air? Around a young king, himself of the
most exemplary life and undoubted piety, lived a Court society as
dissolute as our country ever knew. George II’s bad morals bore their
fruit in George III’s early years; as I believe that a knowledge of that
good man’s example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and God-fearing
life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the country and purify
the whole nation.
After Warner, the most interesting of Selwyn’s correspondents is the Earl
of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable nobleman at present Viceroy in
Ireland. The grandfather, too, was Irish Viceroy, having previously been
treasurer of the king’s household; and, in 1778, the principal
commissioner for treating, consulting, and agreeing upon the means of
quieting the divisions subsisting in his Majesty’s colonies, plantations,
and possessions in North America. You may read his lordship’s manifestos
in the _Royal New York Gazette_. He returned to England, having by no
means quieted the colonies; and speedily afterwards the _Royal New York
Gazette_ somehow ceased to be published.
This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of the English
fine gentlemen who were wellnigh ruined by the awful debauchery and
extravagance which prevailed in the great English society of those days.
Its dissoluteness was awful: it had swarmed over Europe after the Peace;
it had danced, and raced, and gambled in all the Courts. It had made its
bow at Versailles; it had run its horses on the plain of Sablons, near
Paris, and created the Anglomania there: it had exported vast quantities
of pictures and marbles from Rome and Florence: it had ruined itself by
building great galleries and palaces for the reception of the statues and
pictures: it had brought over singing-women and dancing-women from all the
operas of Europe, on whom my lords lavished their thousands, whilst they
left their honest wives and honest children languishing in the lonely,
deserted splendours of the castle and park at home.
Besides the great London society of those days, there was another
unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, tearing about in the
pursuit of pleasure; dancing, gambling, drinking, singing; meeting the
real society in the public places (at Ranelaghs, Vauxhalls, and Ridottos,
about which our old novelists talk so constantly), and outvying the real
leaders of fashion, in luxury, and splendour, and beauty. For instance,
when the famous Miss Gunning visited Paris as Lady Coventry, where she
expected that her beauty would meet with the applause which had followed
her and her sister through England, it appears she was put to flight by an
English lady still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain
Mrs. Pitt took a box at the opera opposite the countess; and was so much
handsomer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this was the
real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry quitted Paris in a huff. The
poor thing died presently of consumption, accelerated, it was said, by the
red and white paint with which she plastered those luckless charms of
hers. (We must represent to ourselves all fashionable female Europe, at
that time, as plastered with white, and raddled with red.) She left two
daughters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was curiously fond of
little children), and who are described very drolly and pathetically in
these letters, in their little nursery, where passionate little Lady
Fanny, if she had not good cards, flung hers into Lady Mary’s face; and
where they sat conspiring how they should receive a new mother-in-law whom
their papa presently brought home. They got on very well with their
mother-in-law, who was very kind to them; and they grew up, and they were
married, and they were both divorced afterwards—poor little souls! Poor
painted mother, poor society, ghastly in its pleasures, its loves, its
revelries!
As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about him: because,
though he was a wild and weak commissioner at one time, though he hurt his
estate, though he gambled and lost ten thousand pounds at a sitting—“five
times more,” says the unlucky gentleman, “than I ever lost before;” though
he swore he never would touch a card again; and yet, strange to say, went
back to the table and lost still more: yet he repented of his errors,
sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, and
returned to the good wife and the good children whom he had always loved
with the best part of his heart. He had married at one-and-twenty. He
found himself, in the midst of a dissolute society, at the head of a great
fortune. Forced into luxury, and obliged to be a great lord and a great
idler, he yielded to some temptations, and paid for them a bitter penalty
of manly remorse; from some others he fled wisely, and ended by conquering
them nobly. But he always had the good wife and children in his mind, and
they saved him. “I am very glad you did not come to me the morning I left
London,” he writes to G. Selwyn, as he is embarking for America. “I can
only say, I never knew till that moment of parting, what grief was.” There
is no parting now, where they are. The faithful wife, the kind, generous
gentleman, have left a noble race behind them: an inheritor of his name
and titles, who is beloved as widely as he is known; a man most kind,
accomplished, gentle, friendly, and pure; and female descendants occupying
high stations and embellishing great names; some renowned for beauty, and
all for spotless lives, and pious matronly virtues.
Another of Selwyn’s correspondents is the Earl of March, afterwards Duke
of Queensberry, whose life lasted into this century; and who certainly as
earl or duke, young man or greybeard, was not an ornament to any possible
society. The legends about old Q. are awful. In _Selwyn_, in _Wraxall_,
and contemporary chronicles, the observer of human nature may follow him,
drinking, gambling, intriguing to the end of his career; when the
wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan died, as wicked and unrepentant
as he had been at the hottest season of youth and passion. There is a
house in Piccadilly, where they used to show a certain low window at which
old Q. sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the
women as they passed by.
There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, sleepy George
Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present credit. “Your friendship,”
writes Carlisle to him, “is so different from anything I have ever met
with or seen in the world, that when I recollect the extraordinary proofs
of your kindness, it seems to me like a dream.” “I have lost my oldest
friend, and acquaintance, G. Selwyn,” writes Walpole to Miss Berry: “I
really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thousand good
qualities.” I am glad, for my part, that such a lover of cakes and ale
should have had a thousand good qualities—that he should have been
friendly, generous, warm-hearted, trustworthy. “I rise at six,” writes
Carlisle to him, from Spa (a great resort of fashionable people in our
ancestors’ days), “play at cricket till dinner, and dance in the evening,
till I can scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for you! You
get up at nine; play with Raton your dog till twelve, in your
dressing-gown; then creep down to White’s; are five hours at table; sleep
till supper-time; and then make two wretches carry you in a sedan-chair,
with three pints of claret in you, three miles for a shilling.”
Occasionally, instead of sleeping at White’s, George went down and snoozed
in the House of Commons by the side of Lord North. He represented
Gloucester for many years, and had a borough of his own, Ludgershall, for
which, when he was too lazy to contest Gloucester, he sat himself. “I have
given directions for the election of Ludgershall to be of Lord Melbourne
and myself,” he writes to the Premier, whose friend he was, and who was
himself as sleepy, as witty, and as good-natured as George.
If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and
fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal,
we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and recollect that
we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for
work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a
large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a
great fortune, do but be splendid and idle? In these letters of Lord
Carlisle’s from which I have been quoting, there is many a just complaint
made by the kind-hearted young nobleman of the state which he is obliged
to keep; the magnificence in which he must live; the idleness to which his
position as a peer of England bound him. Better for him had he been a
lawyer at his desk, or a clerk in his office;—a thousand times better
chance for happiness, education, employment, security from temptation. A
few years since the profession of arms was the only one which our nobles
could follow. The Church, the Bar, medicine, literature, the arts,
commerce, were below them. It is to the middle class we must look for the
safety of England: the working educated men, away from Lord North’s
bribery in the senate; the good clergy not corrupted into parasites by
hopes of preferment; the tradesmen rising into manly opulence; the
painters pursuing their gentle calling; the men of letters in their quiet
studies; these are the men whom we love and like to read of in the last
age. How small the grandees and the men of pleasure look beside them! how
contemptible the story of the George III Court squabbles are beside the
recorded talk of dear old Johnson! What is the grandest entertainment at
Windsor, compared to a night at the club over its modest cups, with Percy
and Langton, and Goldsmith, and poor Bozzy at the table? I declare I
think, of all the polite men of that age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest
gentleman. And they were good, as well as witty and wise, those dear old
friends of the past. Their minds were not debauched by excess, or
effeminate with luxury. They toiled their noble day’s labour: they rested,
and took their kindly pleasure: they cheered their holiday meetings with
generous wit and hearty interchange of thought: they were no prudes, but
no blush need follow their conversation: they were merry, but no riot came
out of their cups. Ah! I would have liked a night at the “Turk’s Head”,
even though bad news had arrived from the colonies, and Doctor Johnson was
growling against the rebels; to have sat with him and Goldy; and to have
heard Burke, the finest talker in the world; and to have had Garrick
flashing in with a story from his theatre!—I like, I say, to think of that
society; and not merely how pleasant and how wise, but how _good_ they
were. I think it was on going home one night from the club that Edmund
Burke—his noble soul full of great thoughts, be sure, for they never left
him; his heart full of gentleness—was accosted by a poor wandering woman,
to whom he spoke words of kindness; and moved by the tears of this
Magdalen, perhaps having caused them by the good words he spoke to her, he
took her home to the house of his wife and children, and never left her
until he had found the means of restoring her to honesty and labour. O you
fine gentlemen! you Marches, and Selwyns, and Chesterfields, how small you
look by the side of these great men! Good-natured Carlisle plays at
cricket all day, and dances in the evening “till he can scarcely crawl”,
gaily contrasting his superior virtue with George Selwyn’s “carried to bed
by two wretches at midnight with three pints of claret in him”. Do you
remember the verses—the sacred verses—which Johnson wrote on the death of
his humble friend, Levett?
Well tried through many a varying year,
See Levett to the grave descend;
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
In misery’s darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless anguish poured the groan,
And lonely want retired to die.
No summons mocked by chill delay,
No petty gain disdained by pride,
The modest wants of every day
The toil of every day supplied.
His virtues walked their narrow round,
Nor made a pause, nor left a void:
And sure the Eternal Master found
His single talent well employed.
Whose name looks the brightest now, that of Queensberry the wealthy duke,
or Selwyn the wit, or Levett the poor physician?
I hold old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Boswell some errors for
embalming him for us?) to be the great supporter of the British Monarchy
and Church during the last age—better than whole benches of bishops,
better than Pitts, Norths, and the great Burke himself. Johnson had the
ear of the nation: his immense authority reconciled it to loyalty, and
shamed it out of irreligion. When George III talked with him, and the
people heard the great author’s good opinion of the sovereign, whole
generations rallied to the king. Johnson was revered as a sort of oracle;
and the oracle declared for Church and King. What a humanity the old man
had! He was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures: a fierce foe to all
sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. “What, boys, are you for a
frolic?” he cries, when Topham Beauclerc comes and wakes him up at
midnight: “I’m with you,” And away he goes, tumbles on his homely old
clothes, and trundles through Covent Garden with the young fellows. When
he used to frequent Garrick’s theatre, and had “the liberty of the
scenes”, he says, “all the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curtsy as
they passed to the stage.” That would make a pretty picture: it is a
pretty picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gaiety, tenderly surveyed by
wisdom’s merciful, pure eyes.
George III and his queen lived in a very unpretending but elegant-looking
house, on the site of the hideous pile under which his granddaughter at
present reposes. The king’s mother inhabited Carlton House, which
contemporary prints represent with a perfect paradise of a garden, with
trim lawns, green arcades, and vistas of classic statues. She admired
these in company with my Lord Bute, who had a fine classic taste, and
sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea in the pleasant green arbours
along with that polite nobleman. Bute was hated with a rage of which there
have been few examples in English history. He was the butt for everybody’s
abuse; for Wilkes’s devilish mischief; for Churchill’s slashing satire;
for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, in a
thousand bonfires; that hated him because he was a favourite and a
Scotchman, calling him “Mortimer”, “Lothario”, I know not what names, and
accusing his royal mistress of all sorts of crimes—the grave, lean,
demure, elderly woman, who, I dare say, was quite as good as her
neighbours. Chatham lent the aid of his great malice to influence the
popular sentiment against her. He assailed, in the House of Lords, “the
secret influence, more mighty than the Throne itself, which betrayed and
clogged every administration.” The most furious pamphlets echoed the cry.
“Impeach the king’s mother,” was scribbled over every wall at the Court
end of the town, Walpole tells us. What had she done? What had Frederick,
Prince of Wales, George’s father, done, that he was so loathed by George
II and never mentioned by George III? Let us not seek for stones to batter
that forgotten grave, but acquiesce in the contemporary epitaph over him:—
Here lies Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead.
Had it been his father,
I had much rather.
Had it been his brother,
Still better than another.
Had it been his sister,
No one would have missed her.
Had it been the whole generation,
Still better for the nation.
But since ’tis only Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead,
There’s no more to be said.
The widow with eight children round her, prudently reconciled herself with
the king, and won the old man’s confidence and goodwill. A shrewd, hard,
domineering, narrow-minded woman, she educated her children according to
her lights, and spoke of the eldest as a dull, good boy: she kept him very
close: she held the tightest rein over him: she had curious prejudices and
bigotries. His uncle, the burly Cumberland, taking down a sabre once, and
drawing it to amuse the child—the boy started back and turned pale. The
prince felt a generous shock: “What must they have told him about me?” he
asked.
His mother’s bigotry and hatred he inherited with the courageous obstinacy
of his own race; but he was a firm believer where his fathers had been
freethinkers, and a true and fond supporter of the Church, of which he was
the titular defender. Like other dull men, the king was all his life
suspicious of superior people. He did not like Fox; he did not like
Reynolds; he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke; he was testy at the idea
of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He loved
mediocrities; Benjamin West was his favourite painter; Beattie was his
poet. The king lamented, not without pathos, in his after-life, that his
education had been neglected. He was a dull lad brought up by
narrow-minded people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have done
little probably to expand that small intellect, though they might have
improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions some generosity.
But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt that a letter,
written by the little Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,—a letter
containing the most feeble commonplaces about the horrors of war, and the
most trivial remarks on the blessings of peace, struck the young monarch
greatly, and decided him upon selecting the young princess as the sharer
of his throne, I pass over the stories of his juvenile loves—of Hannah
Lightfoot, the Quaker, to whom they say he was actually married (though I
don’t know who has ever seen the register)—of lovely black-haired Sarah
Lennox, about whose beauty Walpole has written in raptures, and who used
to lie in wait for the young prince, and make hay at him on the lawn of
Holland House. He sighed and he longed, but he rode away from her. Her
picture still hangs in Holland House, a magnificent masterpiece of
Reynolds, a canvas worthy of Titian. She looks from the castle window,
holding a bird in her hand, at black-eyed young Charles Fox, her nephew.
The royal bird flew away from lovely Sarah. She had to figure as
bridesmaid at her little Mecklenburg rival’s wedding, and died in our own
time a quiet old lady, who had become the mother of the heroic Napiers.
They say the little princess who had written the fine letter about the
horrors of war—a beautiful letter without a single blot, for which she was
to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old spelling-book story—was at
play one day with some of her young companions in the gardens of Strelitz,
and that the young ladies’ conversation was, strange to say, about
husbands. “Who will take such a poor little princess as me?” Charlotte
said to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very moment the postman’s
horn sounded, and Ida said, “Princess! there is the sweetheart.” As she
said, so it actually turned out. The postman brought letters from the
splendid young King of all England, who said, “Princess! because you have
written such a beautiful letter, which does credit to your head and heart,
come and be Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the true wife
of your most obedient servant, George!” So she jumped for joy; and went
upstairs and packed all her little trunks; and set off straightway for her
kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a harpsichord on board for her to play
upon, and around her a beautiful fleet, all covered with flags and
streamers, and the distinguished Madame Auerbach complimented her with an
ode, a translation of which may be read in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ to
the present day:—
Her gallant navy through the main,
Now cleaves its liquid way.
There to their queen a chosen train
Of nymphs due reverence pay.
Europa, when conveyed by Jove
To Crete’s distinguished shore,
Greater attention scarce could prove,
Or be respected more.
They met, and they were married, and for years they led the happiest,
simplest lives sure ever led by married couple. It is said the king winced
when he first saw his homely little bride; but, however that may be, he
was a true and faithful husband to her, as she was a faithful and loving
wife. They had the simplest pleasures—the very mildest and simplest—little
country dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and where the honest
king would stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune; after
which delicious excitement they would go to bed without any supper (the
Court people grumbling sadly at that absence of supper), and get up quite
early the next morning, and perhaps the next night have another dance; or
the queen would play on the spinet—she played pretty well, Haydn said—or
the king would read to her a paper out of the _Spectator_, or perhaps one
of Ogden’s sermons. O Arcadia! what a life it must have been! There used
to be Sunday drawing-rooms at Court; but the young king stopped these, as
he stopped all that godless gambling whereof we have made mention. Not
that George was averse to any innocent pleasures, or pleasures which he
thought innocent. He was a patron of the arts, after his fashion; kind and
gracious to the artists whom he favoured, and respectful to their calling.
He wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva for literary and
scientific characters; the knights were to take rank after the knights of
the Bath, and to sport a straw-coloured ribbon and a star of sixteen
points. But there was such a row amongst the _literati_ as to the persons
who should be appointed, that the plan was given up, and Minerva and her
star never came down amongst us.
He objected to painting St. Paul’s, as Popish practice; accordingly, the
most clumsy heathen sculptures decorate that edifice at present. It is
fortunate that the paintings, too, were spared, for painting and drawing
were wofully unsound at the close of the last century; and it is far
better for our eyes to contemplate whitewash (when we turn them away from
the clergyman) than to look at Opie’s pitchy canvases, or Fuseli’s livid
monsters.
And yet there is one day in the year—a day when old George loved with all
his heart to attend it—when I think St. Paul’s presents the noblest sight
in the whole world: when five thousand charity children, with cheeks like
nosegays, and sweet, fresh voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart
thrill with praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in
the world—coronations, Parisian splendours, Crystal Palace openings,
Pope’s chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and
quavering choirs of fat soprani—but think in all Christendom there is no
such sight as Charity Children’s Day. _Non Angli, sed angeli_. As one
looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents: as the first note strikes:
indeed one may almost fancy that cherubs are singing.
Of church music the king was always very fond, showing skill in it both as
a critic and a performer. Many stories, mirthful and affecting, are told
of his behaviour at the concerts which he ordered. When he was blind and
ill he chose the music for the Ancient Concerts once, and the music and
words which he selected were from _Samson Agonistes_, and all had
reference to his blindness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would
beat time with his music-roll as they sang the anthem in the Chapel Royal.
If the page below was talkative or inattentive, down would come the
music-roll on young scapegrace’s powdered head. The theatre was always his
delight. His bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame to
appear where that good man was seen. He is said not to have cared for
Shakespeare or tragedy much; farces and pantomimes were his joy; and
especially when clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would
laugh so outrageously that the lovely princess by his side would have to
say, “My gracious monarch, do compose yourself.” But he continued to
laugh, and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor wits were left
him.
There is something to me exceedingly touching in that simple early life of
the king’s. As long as his mother lived—a dozen years after his marriage
with the little spinet-player—he was a great, shy, awkward boy, under the
tutelage of that hard parent. She must have been a clever, domineering,
cruel woman. She kept her household lonely and in gloom, mistrusting
almost all people who came about her children. Seeing the young Duke of
Gloucester silent and unhappy once, she sharply asked him the cause of his
silence. “I am thinking,” said the poor child. “Thinking, sir! and of
what?” “I am thinking if ever I have a son I will not make him so unhappy
as you make me.” The other sons were all wild, except George. Dutifully
every evening George and Charlotte paid their visit to the king’s mother
at Carlton House. She had a throat complaint, of which she died; but to
the last persisted in driving about the streets to show she was alive. The
night before her death the resolute woman talked with her son and
daughter-in-law as usual, went to bed, and was found dead there in the
morning. “George, be a king!” were the words which she was for ever
croaking in the ears of her son: and a king the simple, stubborn,
affectionate, bigoted man tried to be.
He did his best; he worked according to his lights; what virtue he knew,
he tried to practise; what knowledge he could master, he strove to
acquire. He was for ever drawing maps, for example, and learned geography
with no small care and industry. He knew all about the family histories
and genealogies of his gentry, and pretty histories he must have known. He
knew the whole _Army __ List_; and all the facings, and the exact number
of the buttons, and all the tags and laces, and the cut of all the cocked
hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. He knew the _personnel_ of the
Universities; what doctors were inclined to Socinianism, and who were
sound Churchmen; he knew the etiquettes of his own and his grandfather’s
Courts to a nicety, and the smallest particulars regarding the routine of
ministers, secretaries, embassies, audiences; the humblest page in the
ante-room, or the meanest helper in the stables or kitchen. These parts of
the royal business he was capable of learning, and he learned. But, as one
thinks of an office, almost divine, performed by any mortal man—of any
single being pretending to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to
order the implicit obedience of brother millions, to compel them into war
at his offence or quarrel; to command, “In this way you shall trade, in
this way you shall think; these neighbours shall be your allies whom you
shall help, these others your enemies whom you shall slay at my orders; in
this way you shall worship God;”—who can wonder that, when such a man as
George took such an office on himself, punishment and humiliation should
fall upon people and chief?
Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle of the king
with his aristocracy remains yet to be told by the historian who shall
view the reign of George more justly than the trumpery panegyrists who
wrote immediately after his decease. It was he, with the people to back
him, who made the war with America; it was he and the people who refused
justice to the Roman Catholics; and on both questions he beat the
patricians. He bribed: he bullied: he darkly dissembled on occasion: he
exercised a slippery perseverance, and a vindictive resolution, which one
almost admires as one thinks his character over. His courage was never to
be beat. It trampled North under foot: it bent the stiff neck of the
younger Pitt: even his illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As
soon as his brain was clear, it resumed the scheme, only laid aside when
his reason left him: as soon as his hands were out of the
strait-waistcoat, they took up the pen and the plan which had engaged him
up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by persons believing
themselves in the right that nine-tenths of the tyranny of this world has
been perpetrated. Arguing on that convenient premiss, the Dey of Algiers
would cut off twenty heads of a morning; Father Dominic would burn a score
of Jews in the presence of the most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of
Toledo and Salamanca sing Amen. Protestants were roasted, Jesuits hung and
quartered at Smithfield, and witches burned at Salem, and all by worthy
people, who believed they had the best authority for their actions.
And so, with respect to old George, even Americans, whom he hated and who
conquered him, may give him credit for having quite honest reasons for
oppressing them. Appended to Lord Brougham’s biographical sketch of Lord
North are some autograph notes of the king, which let us most curiously
into the state of his mind. “The times certainly require,” says he, “the
concurrence of all who wish to prevent anarchy. I have no wish but the
prosperity of my own dominions, therefore I must look upon all who would
not heartily assist me as bad men, as well as bad subjects.” That is the
way he reasoned. “I wish nothing but good, therefore every man who does
not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.” Remember that he believed
himself anointed by a Divine commission; remember that he was a man of
slow parts and imperfect education; that the same awful will of Heaven
which placed a crown upon his head, which made him tender to his family,
pure in his life, courageous and honest, made him dull of comprehension,
obstinate of will, and at many times deprived him of reason. He was the
father of his people; his rebellious children must be flogged into
obedience. He was the defender of the Protestant faith; he would rather
lay that stout head upon the block than that Catholics should have a share
in the government of England. And you do not suppose that there are not
honest bigots enough in all countries to back kings in this kind of
statesmanship? Without doubt the American war was popular in England. In
1775 the address in favour of coercing the colonies was carried by 304 to
105 in the Commons, by 104 to 29 in the House of Lords. Popular?—so was
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes popular in France: so was the
massacre of St. Bartholomew: so was the Inquisition exceedingly popular in
Spain.
Wars and revolutions are, however, the politician’s province. The great
events of this long reign, the statesmen and orators who illustrated it, I
do not pretend to make the subjects of an hour’s light talk.(187) Let us
return to our humbler duty of Court gossip. Yonder sits our little queen,
surrounded by many stout sons and fair daughters whom she bore to her
faithful George. The history of the daughters, as little Miss Burney has
painted them to us, is delightful. They were handsome—she calls them
beautiful; they were most kind, loving, and ladylike; they were gracious
to every person, high and low, who served them. They had many little
accomplishments of their own. This one drew: that one played the piano:
they all worked most prodigiously, and fitted up whole suites of
rooms—pretty, smiling Penelopes,—with their busy little needles. As we
picture to ourselves the society of eighty years ago, we must imagine
hundreds of thousands of groups of women in great high caps, tight bodies,
and full skirts, needling away, whilst one of the number, or perhaps a
favoured gentleman in a pigtail, reads out a novel to the company. Peep
into the cottage at Olney, for example, and see there Mrs. Unwin and Lady
Hesketh, those high-bred ladies, those sweet, pious women, and William
Cowper, that delicate wit, that trembling pietist, that refined gentleman,
absolutely reading out _Jonathan Wild_ to the ladies! What a change in our
manners, in our amusements, since then!
[Illustration]
Lord North, Mr. Fox
[Illustration]
Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke
King George’s household was a model of an English gentleman’s household.
It was early; it was kindly; it was charitable; it was frugal; it was
orderly; it must have been stupid to a degree which I shudder now to
contemplate. No wonder all the princes ran away from the lap of that
dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated intervals.
Day after day was the same. At the same hour at night the king kissed his
daughters’ jolly cheeks; the princesses kissed their mother’s hand; and
Madame Thielke brought the royal nightcap. At the same hour the equerries
and women in waiting had their little dinner, and cackled over their tea.
The king had his backgammon or his evening concert; the equerries yawned
themselves to death in the ante-room; or the king and his family walked on
Windsor slopes, the king holding his darling little princess Amelia by the
hand; and the people crowded round quite good-naturedly; and the Eton boys
thrust their chubby cheeks under the crowd’s elbows; and the concert over,
the king never failed to take his enormous cocked-hat off, and salute his
band, and say, “Thank you, gentlemen.”
[Illustration]
A Little Rebel
A quieter household, a more prosaic life than this of Kew or Windsor,
cannot be imagined. Rain or shine, the king rode every day for hours;
poked his red face into hundreds of cottages round about, and showed that
shovel hat and Windsor uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to old women
making apple dumplings; to all sorts of people, gentle and simple, about
whom countless stories are told. Nothing can be more undignified than
these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a subject incog., the latter
is sure to be very much the better for the caliph’s magnificence. Old
George showed no such royal splendour. He used to give a guinea sometimes:
sometimes feel in his pockets and find he had no money: often ask a man a
hundred questions: about the number of his family, about his oats and
beans, about the rent he paid for his house, and ride on. On one occasion
he played the part of King Alfred, and turned a piece of meat with a
string at a cottager’s house. When the old woman came home, she found a
paper with an enclosure of money, and a note written by the royal pencil:
“Five guineas to buy a jack.” It was not splendid, but it was kind and
worthy of Farmer George. One day, when the king and queen were walking
together, they met a little boy—they were always fond of children, the
good folks—and patted the little white head. “Whose little boy are you?”
asks the Windsor uniform. “I am the king’s beefeater’s little boy,”
replied the child. On which the king said, “Then kneel down, and kiss the
queen’s hand.” But the innocent offspring of the beefeater declined this
treat. “No,” said he, “I won’t kneel, for if I do, I shall spoil my new
breeches.” The thrifty king ought to have hugged him and knighted him on
the spot. George’s admirers wrote pages and pages of such stories about
him. One morning, before anybody else was up, the king walked about
Gloucester town; pushed over Molly the housemaid who was scrubbing the
doorsteps with her pail; ran upstairs and woke all the equerries in their
bedrooms; and then trotted down to the bridge, where, by this time, a
dozen of louts were assembled. “What! is this Gloucester New Bridge?”
asked our gracious monarch; and the people answered him, “Yes, your
Majesty.” “Why, then, my boys,” said he, “let us have a huzzay!” After
giving them which intellectual gratification, he went home to breakfast.
Our fathers read these simple tales with fond pleasure; laughed at these
very small jokes; liked the old man who poked his nose into every cottage;
who lived on plain wholesome roast and boiled; who despised your French
kickshaws; who was a true hearty old English gentleman. You may have seen
Gilray’s famous print of him—in the old wig, in the stout old hideous
Windsor uniform—as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little Gulliver,
whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other he has an opera-glass,
through which he surveys the pygmy? Our fathers chose to set up George as
the type of a great king; and the little Gulliver was the great Napoleon.
We prided ourselves on our prejudices; we blustered and bragged with
absurd vainglory; we dealt to our enemy a monstrous injustice of contempt
and scorn; we fought him with all weapons, mean as well as heroic. There
was no lie we would not believe; no charge of crime which our furious
prejudice would not credit. I thought at one time of making a collection
of the lies which the French had written against us, and we had published
against them during the war: it would be a strange memorial of popular
falsehood.
Their majesties were very sociable potentates: and the Court Chronicler
tells of numerous visits which they paid to their subjects, gentle and
simple: with whom they dined; at whose great country-houses they stopped;
or at whose poorer lodgings they affably partook of tea and
bread-and-butter. Some of the great folks spent enormous sums in
entertaining their sovereigns. As marks of special favour, the king and
queen sometimes stood as sponsors for the children of the nobility. We
find Lady Salisbury was so honoured in the year 1786; and in the year
1802, Lady Chesterfield. The _Court News_ relates how her ladyship
received their Majesties on a state bed “dressed with white satin and a
profusion of lace: the counterpane of white satin embroidered with gold,
and the bed of crimson satin lined with white”. The child was first
brought by the nurse to the Marchioness of Bath, who presided as chief
nurse. Then the marchioness handed baby to the queen. Then the queen
handed the little darling to the Bishop of Norwich, the officiating
clergyman; and, the ceremony over, a cup of caudle was presented by the
earl to his Majesty on one knee, on a large gold waiter, placed on a
crimson velvet cushion. Misfortunes would occur in these interesting
genuflectory ceremonies of royal worship. Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, a
very fat, puffy man, in a most gorgeous Court suit, had to kneel,
Cumberland says, and was so fat and so tight that he could not get up
again. “Kneel, sir, kneel!” cried my lord in waiting to a country mayor
who had to read an address, but who went on with his compliment standing.
“Kneel, sir, kneel!” cries my lord, in dreadful alarm. “I can’t!” says the
mayor, turning round; “don’t you see I have got a wooden leg?” In the
capital _Burney Diary and Letters_, the home and Court life of good old
King George and good old Queen Charlotte are presented at portentous
length. The king rose every morning at six: and had two hours to himself.
He thought it effeminate to have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before
eight, the queen and the royal family were always ready for him, and they
proceeded to the king’s chapel in the castle. There were no fires in the
passages: the chapel was scarcely alight; princesses, governesses,
equerries grumbled and caught cold: but cold or hot, it was their duty to
go: and, wet or dry, light or dark, the stout old George was always in his
place to say Amen to the chaplain.
The queen’s character is represented in _Burney_ at full length. She was a
sensible, most decorous woman; a very grand lady on state occasions,
simple enough in ordinary life; well read as times went, and giving shrewd
opinions about books; stingy, but not unjust; not generally unkind to her
dependants, but invincible in her notions of etiquette, and quite angry if
her people suffered ill-health in her service. She gave Miss Burney a
shabby pittance, and led the poor young woman a life which well-nigh
killed her. She never thought but that she was doing Burney the greatest
favour, in taking her from freedom, fame, and competence, and killing her
off with languor in that dreary Court. It was not dreary to her. Had she
been servant instead of mistress, her spirit would never have broken down:
she never would have put a pin out of place, or been a moment from her
duty. _She_ was not weak, and she could not pardon those who were. She was
perfectly correct in life, and she hated poor sinners with a rancour such
as virtue sometimes has. She must have had awful private trials of her
own: not merely with her children, but with her husband, in those long
days about which nobody will ever know anything now; when he was not quite
insane; when his incessant tongue was babbling folly, rage, persecution;
and she had to smile and be respectful and attentive under this
intolerable ennui. The queen bore all her duties stoutly, as she expected
others to bear them. At a state christening, the lady who held the infant
was tired and looked unwell, and the Princess of Wales asked permission
for her to sit down. “Let her stand,” said the queen, flicking the snuff
off her sleeve. _She_ would have stood, the resolute old woman, if she had
had to hold the child till his beard was grown. “I am seventy years of
age,” the queen said, facing a mob of ruffians who stopped her sedan: “I
have been fifty years Queen of England, and I never was insulted before.”
Fearless, rigid, unforgiving little queen! I don’t wonder that her sons
revolted from her.
Of all the figures in that large family group which surrounds George and
his queen, the prettiest, I think, is the father’s darling, the Princess
Amelia, pathetic for her beauty, her sweetness, her early death, and for
the extreme passionate tenderness with which her father loved her. This
was his favourite amongst all the children: of his sons, he loved the Duke
of York best. Burney tells a sad story of the poor old man at Weymouth,
and how eager he was to have this darling son with him. The king’s house
was not big enough to hold the prince; and his father had a portable house
erected close to his own, and at huge pains, so that his dear Frederick
should be near him. He clung on his arm all the time of his visit: talked
to no one else; had talked of no one else for some time before. The
prince, so long expected, stayed but a single night. He had business in
London the next day, he said. The dullness of the old king’s Court
stupefied York and the other big sons of George III. They scared equerries
and ladies, frightened the modest little circle, with their coarse spirits
and loud talk. Of little comfort, indeed, were the king’s sons to the
king.
But the pretty Amelia was his darling; and the little maiden, prattling
and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look
on. There is a family picture in _Burney_, which a man must be very
hard-hearted not to like. She describes an after-dinner walk of the royal
family at Windsor:—“It was really a mighty pretty procession,” she says.
“The little princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat
covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan,
walked on alone and first, highly delighted with the parade, and turning
from side to side to see everybody as she passed; for all the terracers
stand up against the walls, to make a clear passage for the royal family
the moment they come in sight. Then followed the king and queen, no less
delighted with the joy of their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning
on Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, the Princess Augusta holding by the Duchess
of Ancaster, the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady Charlotte Bertie,
followed. Office here takes place of rank,” says Burney,—to explain how it
was that Lady E. Waldegrave, as lady of the bed-chamber, walked before a
duchess;—“General Budé, and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as
equerry, brought up the rear of the procession.” One sees it; the band
playing its old music, the sun shining on the happy, loyal crowd; and
lighting the ancient battlements, the rich elms, and purple landscape, and
bright greensward; the royal standard drooping from the great tower
yonder; as old George passes, followed by his race, preceded by the
charming infant, who caresses the crowd with her innocent smiles.
“On sight of Mrs. Delany, the king instantly stopped to speak to her; the
queen, of course, and the little princess, and all the rest, stood still.
They talked a good while with the sweet old lady, during which time the
king once or twice addressed himself to me. I caught the queen’s eye, and
saw in it a little surprise, but by no means any displeasure, to see me of
the party. The little princess went up to Mrs. Delany, of whom she is very
fond, and behaved like a little angel to her. She then, with a look of
inquiry and recollection, came behind Mrs. Delany to look at me. ‘I am
afraid,’ said I, in a whisper, and stooping down, ‘your Royal Highness
does not remember me?’ Her answer was an arch little smile, and a nearer
approach, with her lips pouted out to kiss me.”
The princess wrote verses herself, and there are some pretty plaintive
lines attributed to her, which are more touching than better poetry:—
Unthinking, idle, wild, and young,
I laughed, and danced, and talked, and sung:
And, proud of health, of freedom vain,
Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain:
Concluding, in those hours of glee,
That all the world was made for me.
But when the hour of trial came,
When sickness shook this trembling frame,
When folly’s gay pursuits were o’er,
And I could sing and dance no more,
It then occurred, how sad ’twould be
Were this world only made for me.
The poor soul quitted it—and ere yet she was dead the agonized father was
in such a state, that the officers round about him were obliged to set
watchers over him, and from November, 1810, George III ceased to reign.
All the world knows the story of his malady: all history presents no
sadder figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason,
wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary
Parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly Courts. I have seen
his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartment of his
daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse-Hombourg—amidst books and Windsor
furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor
old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over
his breast—the star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. He was
not only sightless: he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all
sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken
from him. Some slight lucid moments he had; in one of which, the queen,
desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and
accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt
down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the
nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to
avert his heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to
submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled.
What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest
are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears. The thought of
such a misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and
men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable
Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory. “O brothers,” I said to
those who heard me first in America—“O brothers! speaking the same dear
mother tongue—O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand
together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle! Low
he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower
than the poorest: dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his
throne; buffeted by rude hands; with his children in revolt; the darling
of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs over her
breathless lips and cries, ‘Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little!’ ”
Vex not his ghost—oh! let him pass—he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer!
Hush, Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a
mournful march! Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his
grief, his awful tragedy!
George The Fourth
In Twiss’s amusing _Life of Eldon_, we read how, on the death of the Duke
of York, the old chancellor became possessed of a lock of the defunct
prince’s hair; and so careful was he respecting the authenticity of the
relic, that Bessy Eldon his wife sat in the room with the young man from
Hamlet’s, who distributed the ringlet into separate lockets, which each of
the Eldon family afterwards wore. You know how, when George IV came to
Edinburgh, a better man than he went on board the royal yacht to welcome
the king to his kingdom of Scotland, seized a goblet from which his
majesty had just drunk, vowed it should remain for ever as an heirloom in
his family, clapped the precious glass in his pocket, and sat down on it
and broke it when he got home. Suppose the good sheriff’s prize unbroken
now at Abbotsford, should we not smile with something like pity as we
beheld it? Suppose one of those lockets of the No-Popery prince’s hair
offered for sale at Christie’s, _quot libras e duce summo invenies?_ how
many pounds would you find for the illustrious duke? Madame Tussaud has
got King George’s coronation robes; is there any man now alive who would
kiss the hem of that trumpery? He sleeps since thirty years: do not any of
you, who remember him, wonder that you once respected and huzza’d and
admired him?
To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter of small difficulty.
There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it:
with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk perform a
recognizable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of
volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him here
at a ball, there at a public dinner, there at races and so forth, you find
you have nothing—nothing but a coat and wig and a mask smiling below
it—nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. One
knows what they were like: what they would do in given circumstances: that
on occasion they fought and demeaned themselves like tough good soldiers.
They had friends whom they liked according to their natures; enemies whom
they hated fiercely; passions, and actions, and individualities of their
own. The sailor king who came after George was a man: the Duke of York was
a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this George, what
was he? I look through all his life, and recognize but a bow and a grin. I
try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a
coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a
pocket-handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt’s best nutty
brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock,
under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothing. I know of no
sentiment that he ever distinctly uttered. Documents are published under
his name, but people wrote them—private letters, but people spelt them. He
put a great “George P.” or “George R.” at the bottom of the page and
fancied he had written the paper: some bookseller’s clerk, some poor
author, some _man_ did the work; saw to the spelling, cleaned up the
slovenly sentences, and gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of
consistency. He must have had an individuality: the dancing-master whom he
emulated, nay, surpassed—the wig-maker who curled his toupee for him—the
tailor who cut his coats, had that. But, about George, one can get at
nothing actual. That outside, I am certain, is pad and tailor’s work;
there may be something behind, but what? We cannot get at the character;
no doubt never shall. Will men of the future have nothing better to do
than to unswathe and interpret that royal old mummy? I own I once used to
think it would be good sport to pursue him, fasten on him, and pull him
down. But now I am ashamed to mount and lay good dogs on, to summon a full
field, and then to hunt the poor game.
On the 12th August, 1762, the forty-seventh anniversary of the accession
of the House of Brunswick to the English throne, all the bells in London
pealed in gratulation, and announced that an heir to George III was born.
Five days afterwards the king was pleased to pass letters patent under the
great seal, creating H.R.H. the Prince of Great Britain, Electoral Prince
of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Duke of Cornwall and Rothsay, Earl of Carrick,
Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland, Prince
of Wales and Earl of Chester.
All the people at his birth thronged to see this lovely child; and behind
a gilt china-screen railing in St. James’s Palace, in a cradle surmounted
by the three princely ostrich feathers, the royal infant was laid to
delight the eyes of the lieges. Among the earliest instances of homage
paid to him, I read that “a curious Indian bow and arrows were sent to the
prince from his father’s faithful subjects in New York”. He was fond of
playing with these toys: an old statesman, orator, and wit of his
grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s time, never tired of his business,
still eager in his old age to be well at Court, used to play with the
little prince, and pretend to fall down dead when the prince shot at him
with his toy bow and arrows—and get up and fall down dead over and over
again—to the increased delight of the child. So that he was flattered from
his cradle upwards; and before his little feet could walk, statesmen and
courtiers were busy kissing them.
There is a pretty picture of the royal infant—a beautiful buxom
child—asleep in his mother’s lap; who turns round and holds a finger to
her lip, as if she would bid the courtiers around respect the baby’s
slumbers. From that day until his decease, sixty-eight years after, I
suppose there were more pictures taken of that personage than of any other
human being who ever was born and died—in every kind of uniform and every
possible Court dress—in long fair hair, with powder, with and without a
pigtail—in every conceivable cocked-hat—in dragoon uniform—in Windsor
uniform—in a field-marshal’s clothes—in a Scotch kilt and tartans, with
dirk and claymore (a stupendous figure)—in a frogged frock-coat with a fur
collar and tight breeches and silk stockings—in wigs of every colour,
fair, brown, and black—in his famous coronation robes finally, with which
performance he was so much in love that he distributed copies of the
picture to all the Courts and British embassies in Europe, and to
numberless clubs, town-halls, and private friends. I remember as a young
man how almost every dining-room had his portrait.
[Illustration]
There is plenty of biographical tattle about the prince’s boyhood. It is
told with what astonishing rapidity he learned all languages, ancient and
modern; how he rode beautifully, sang charmingly, and played elegantly on
the violoncello. That he was beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a
high spirit: and once, when he had had a difference with his father, burst
into the royal closet and called out, “Wilkes and liberty for ever!” He
was so clever, that he confounded his very governors in learning; and one
of them, Lord Bruce, having made a false quantity in quoting Greek, the
admirable young prince instantly corrected him. Lord Bruce could not
remain a governor after this humiliation; resigned his office, and, to
soothe his feelings, was actually promoted to be an earl! It is the most
wonderful reason for promoting a man that ever I heard. Lord Bruce was
made an earl for a blunder in prosody; and Nelson was made a baron for the
victory of the Nile.
Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and millions which in the
course of his brilliant existence this single prince consumed. Besides his
income of 50,000_l._, 70,000_l._, 100,000_l._, 120,000_l._ a year, we read
of three applications to Parliament: debts to the amount of 160,000_l._,
of 650,000_l._; besides mysterious foreign loans, whereof he pocketed the
proceeds. What did he do for all this money? Why was he to have it? If he
had been a manufacturing town, or a populous rural district, or an army of
five thousand men, he would not have cost more. He, one solitary stout
man, who did not toil, nor spin, nor fight,—what had any mortal done that
he should be pampered so?
In 1784, when he was twenty-one years of age, Carlton Palace was given to
him, and furnished by the nation with as much luxury as could be devised.
His pockets were filled with money: he said it was not enough; he flung it
out of window: he spent 10,000_l._ a year for the coats on his back. The
nation gave him more money, and more, and more. The sum is past counting.
He was a prince, most lovely to look on, and christened Prince Florizel on
his first appearance in the world. That he was the handsomest prince in
the whole world was agreed by men, and alas! by many women.
I suppose he must have been very graceful. There are so many testimonies
to the charm of his manner, that we must allow him great elegance and
powers of fascination. He, and the King of France’s brother, the Count
d’Artois, a charming young prince who danced deliciously on the
tight-rope—a poor old tottering exiled king, who asked hospitality of King
George’s successor, and lived awhile in the palace of Mary Stuart—divided
in their youth the title of first gentleman of Europe. We in England of
course gave the prize to _our_ gentleman. Until George’s death the
propriety of that award was scarce questioned or the doubters voted rebels
and traitors. Only the other day I was reading in the reprint of the
delightful _Noctes_ of Christopher North. The health of THE KING is drunk
in large capitals by the loyal Scotsman. You would fancy him a hero, a
sage, a statesman, a pattern for kings and men. It was Walter Scott who
had that accident with the broken glass I spoke of anon. He was the king’s
Scottish champion, rallied all Scotland to him, made loyalty the fashion,
and laid about him fiercely with his claymore upon all the prince’s
enemies. The Brunswicks had no such defenders as those two Jacobite
commoners, old Sam Johnson the Lichfield chapman’s son, and Walter Scott,
the Edinburgh lawyer’s.
Nature and circumstance had done their utmost to prepare the prince for
being spoiled: the dreadful dullness of papa’s Court, its stupid
amusements, its dreary occupations, the maddening humdrum, the stifling
sobriety of its routine, would have made a scapegrace of a much less
lively prince. All the big princes bolted from that castle of ennui where
old King George sat, posting up his books and droning over his Handel; and
old Queen Charlotte over her snuff and her tambour-frame. Most of the
sturdy, gallant sons settled down after sowing their wild oats, and became
sober subjects of their father and brother—not ill liked by the nation,
which pardons youthful irregularities readily enough, for the sake of
pluck, and unaffectedness, and good humour.
The boy is father of the man. Our prince signalized his entrance into the
world by a feat worthy of his future life. He invented a new shoebuckle.
It was an inch long and five inches broad. “It covered almost the whole
instep, reaching down to the ground on either side of the foot.” A sweet
invention! lovely and useful as the prince on whose foot it sparkled. At
his first appearance at a Court ball, we read that “his coat was pink
silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat white silk, embroidered with
various-coloured foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste. And
his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in
number, with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a new
military style”. What a Florizel! Do these details seem trivial? They are
the grave incidents of his life. His biographers say that when he
commenced housekeeping in that splendid new palace of his, the Prince of
Wales had some windy projects of encouraging literature, science, and the
arts; of having assemblies of literary characters; and societies for the
encouragement of geography, astronomy, and botany. Astronomy, geography,
and botany! Fiddlesticks! French ballet-dancers, French cooks,
horse-jockeys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters,
china, jewel, and gimcrack merchants—these were his real companions. At
first he made a pretence of having Burke and Pitt and Sheridan for his
friends. But how could such men be serious before such an empty scapegrace
as this lad? Fox might talk dice with him, and Sheridan wine; but what
else had these men of genius in common with their tawdry young host of
Carlton House? That ribble the leader of such men as Fox and Burke! That
man’s opinions about the constitution, the India Bill, justice to the
Catholics—about any question graver than the button for a waistcoat or the
sauce for a partridge—worth anything! The friendship between the prince
and the Whig chiefs was impossible. They were hypocrites in pretending to
respect him, and if he broke the hollow compact between them, who shall
blame him? His natural companions were dandies and parasites. He could
talk to a tailor or a cook; but, as the equal of great statesmen, to set
up a creature, lazy, weak, indolent, besotted, of monstrous vanity, and
levity incurable—it is absurd. They thought to use him, and did for
awhile; but they must have known how timid he was; how entirely heartless
and treacherous, and have expected his desertion. His next set of friends
were mere table companions, of whom he grew tired too; then we hear of him
with a very few select toadies, mere boys from school or the Guards, whose
sprightliness tickled the fancy of the worn-out voluptuary. What matters
what friends he had? He dropped all his friends; he never could have real
friends. An heir to the throne has flatterers, adventurers who hang about
him, ambitious men who use him; but friendship is denied him.
And women, I suppose, are as false and selfish in their dealings with such
a character as men. Shall we take the Leporello part, flourish a catalogue
of the conquests of this royal Don Juan, and tell the names of the
favourites to whom, one after the other, George Prince flung his
pocket-handkerchief? What purpose would it answer to say how Perdita was
pursued, won, deserted, and by whom succeeded? What good in knowing that
he did actually marry Mrs. FitzHerbert according to the rites of the Roman
Catholic Church; that her marriage settlements have been seen in London;
that the names of the witnesses to her marriage are known. This sort of
vice that we are now come to presents no new or fleeting trait of manners.
Debauchees, dissolute, heartless, fickle, cowardly, have been ever since
the world began. This one had more temptations than most, and so much may
be said in extenuation for him.
It was an unlucky thing for this doomed one, and tending to lead him yet
farther on the road to the deuce, that, besides being lovely, so that
women were fascinated by him; and heir apparent, so that all the world
flattered him; he should have a beautiful voice, which led him directly in
the way of drink: and thus all the pleasant devils were coaxing on poor
Florizel; desire, and idleness, and vanity, and drunkenness, all clashing
their merry cymbals and bidding him come on.
We first hear of his warbling sentimental ditties under the walls of Kew
Palace by the moonlight banks of Thames, with Lord Viscount Leporello
keeping watch lest the music should be disturbed.
Singing after dinner and supper was the universal fashion of the day. You
may fancy all England sounding with choruses, some ribald, some harmless,
but all occasioning the consumption of a prodigious deal of fermented
liquor.
The jolly Muse her wings to try no frolic flights need take,
But round the bowl would dip and fly, like swallows round a lake,
sang Morris in one of his gallant Anacreontics, to which the prince many a
time joined in chorus, and of which the burden is,—
And that I think’s a reason fair to drink and fill again.
This delightful boon companion of the prince’s found “a reason fair” to
forgo filling and drinking, saw the error of his ways, gave up the bowl
and chorus, and died retired and religious. The prince’s table no doubt
was a very tempting one. The wits came and did their utmost to amuse him.
It is wonderful how the spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an
aroma, when a great man is at the head of the table. Scott, the loyal
cavalier, the king’s true liegeman, the very best _raconteur_ of his time,
poured out with an endless generosity his store of old-world learning,
kindness, and humour. Grattan contributed to it his wondrous eloquence,
fancy, feeling. Tom Moore perched upon it for awhile, and piped his most
exquisite little love-tunes on it, flying away in a twitter of indignation
afterwards, and attacking the prince with bill and claw. In such society,
no wonder the sitting was long, and the butler tired of drawing corks.
Remember what the usages of the time were, and that William Pitt, coming
to the House of Commons after having drunk a bottle of port wine at his
own house, would go into Bellamy’s with Dundas, and help finish a couple
more.
You peruse volumes after volumes about our prince, and find some
half-dozen stock stories—indeed not many more—common to all the histories.
He was good-natured; an indolent, voluptuous prince, not unkindly. One
story, the most favourable to him of all, perhaps, is that as Prince
Regent he was eager to hear all that could be said in behalf of prisoners
condemned to death, and anxious, if possible, to remit the capital
sentence. He was kind to his servants. There is a story common to all the
biographies, of Molly the housemaid, who, when his household was to be
broken up, owing to some reforms which he tried absurdly to practise, was
discovered crying as she dusted the chairs because she was to leave a
master who had a kind word for all his servants. Another tale is that of a
groom of the prince’s being discovered in corn and oat peculations, and
dismissed by the personage at the head of the stables; the prince had word
of John’s disgrace, remonstrated with him very kindly, generously
reinstated him, and bade him promise to sin no more—a promise which John
kept. Another story is very fondly told of the prince as a young man
hearing of an officer’s family in distress, and how he straightway
borrowed six or eight hundred pounds, put his long fair hair under his
hat, and so disguised carried the money to the starving family. He sent
money, too, to Sheridan on his death-bed, and would have sent more had not
death ended the career of that man of genius. Besides these, there are a
few pretty speeches, kind and graceful, to persons with whom he was
brought in contact. But he turned upon twenty friends. He was fond and
familiar with them one day, and he passed them on the next without
recognition. He used them, liked them, loved them perhaps in his way, and
then separated from them. On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita,
and on Tuesday he met her and did not know her. On Wednesday he was very
affectionate with that wretched Brummell, and on Thursday forgot him;
cheated him even out of a snuff-box which he owed the poor dandy; saw him
years afterwards in his downfall and poverty, when the bankrupt Beau sent
him another snuff-box with some of the snuff he used to love, as a piteous
token of remembrance and submission, and the king took the snuff, and
ordered his horses and drove on, and had not the grace to notice his old
companion, favourite, rival, enemy, superior. In _Wraxall_ there is some
gossip about him. When the charming, beautiful, generous Duchess of
Devonshire died—the lovely lady whom he used to call his dearest duchess
once, and pretend to admire as all English society admired her—he said,
“Then we have lost the best-bred woman in England.” “Then we have lost the
kindest heart in England,” said noble Charles Fox. On another occasion,
when three noblemen were to receive the Garter, says _Wraxall_, “a great
personage observed that never did three men receive the order in so
characteristic a manner. The Duke of A. advanced to the sovereign with a
phlegmatic, cold, awkward air like a clown; Lord B. came forward fawning
and smiling like a courtier; Lord C. presented himself easy,
unembarrassed, like a gentleman!” These are the stories one has to recall
about the prince and king—kindness to a housemaid, generosity to a groom,
criticism on a bow. There _are_ no better stories about him: they are mean
and trivial, and they characterize him. The great war of empires and
giants goes on. Day by day victories are won and lost by the brave. Torn,
smoky flags and battered eagles are wrenched from the heroic enemy and
laid at his feet; and he sits there on his throne and smiles, and gives
the guerdon of valour to the conqueror. He! Elliston the actor, when the
_Coronation_ was performed, in which he took the principal part, used to
fancy himself the king, burst into tears, and hiccup a blessing on the
people. I believe it is certain about George IV, that he had heard so much
of the war, knighted so many people, and worn such a prodigious quantity
of marshal’s uniforms, cocked-hats, cock’s feathers, scarlet and bullion
in general, that he actually fancied he had been present in some
campaigns, and, under the name of General Brock, led a tremendous charge
of the German legion at Waterloo.
He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how a great society could have
tolerated him? Would we bear him now? In this quarter of a century, what a
silent revolution has been working! how it has separated us from old times
and manners! How it has changed men themselves! I can see old gentlemen
now among us, of perfect good breeding, of quiet lives, with venerable
grey heads, fondling their grandchildren; and look at them, and wonder at
what they were once. That gentleman of the grand old school, when he was
in the 10th Hussars, and dined at the prince’s table, would fall under it
night after night. Night after night, that gentleman sat at Brookes’s or
Raggett’s over the dice. If, in the petulance of play or drink, that
gentleman spoke a sharp word to his neighbour, he and the other would
infallibly go out and try to shoot each other the next morning. That
gentleman would drive his friend Richmond the black boxer down to Moulsey,
and hold his coat, and shout and swear, and hurrah with delight, whilst
the black man was beating Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would take a
manly pleasure in pulling his own coat off, and thrashing a bargeman in a
street row. That gentleman has been in a watchhouse. That gentleman, so
exquisitely polite with ladies in a drawing-room, so loftily courteous, if
he talked now as he used among men in his youth, would swear so as to make
your hair stand on end. I met lately a very old German gentleman, who had
served in our army at the beginning of the century. Since then he has
lived on his own estate, but rarely meeting with an Englishman, whose
language—the language of fifty years ago that is—he possesses perfectly.
When this highly bred old man began to speak English to me, almost every
other word he uttered was an oath: as they used it (they swore dreadfully
in Flanders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, or at Carlton
House over the supper and cards. Read Byron’s letters. So accustomed is
the young man to oaths that he employs them even in writing to his
friends, and swears by the post. Read his account of the doings of young
men at Cambridge, of the ribald professors, one of whom “could pour out
Greek like a drunken helot”, and whose excesses surpassed even those of
the young men. Read Matthews’s description of the boyish lordling’s
housekeeping at Newstead, the skull-cup passed round, the monks’ dresses
from the masquerade warehouse, in which the young scapegraces used to sit
until daylight, chanting appropriate songs round their wine. “We come to
breakfast at two or three o’clock,” Matthews says. “There are gloves and
foils for those who like to amuse themselves, or we fire pistols at a mark
in the hall, or we worry the wolf.” A jolly life truly! The noble young
owner of the mansion writes about such affairs himself in letters to his
friend, Mr. John Jackson, pugilist, in London.
All the prince’s time tells a similar strange story of manners and
pleasure. In _Wraxall_ we find the prime minister himself, the redoubted
William Pitt, engaged in high jinks with personages of no less importance
than Lord Thurlow the lord chancellor, and Mr. Dundas the treasurer of the
navy. _Wraxall_ relates how these three statesmen, returning after dinner
from Addiscombe, found a turnpike open and galloped through it without
paying the toll. The turnpike man, fancying they were highwaymen, fired a
blunderbuss after them, but missed them; and the poet sang,—
How as Pitt wandered darkling o’er the plain,
His reason drown’d in Jenkinson’s champagne,
A rustic’s hand, but righteous fate withstood,
Had shed a premier’s for a robber’s blood.
Here we have the treasurer of the navy, the lord high chancellor, and the
prime minister, all engaged in a most undoubted lark. In Eldon’s
_Memoirs_, about the very same time, I read that the Bar loved wine, as
well as the woolsack. Not John Scott himself; he was a good boy always;
and though he loved port wine, loved his business and his duty and his
fees a great deal better.
He has a Northern Circuit story of those days, about a party at the house
of a certain Lawyer Fawcett, who gave a dinner every year to the counsel.
“On one occasion,” related Lord Eldon, “I heard Lee say, ‘I cannot leave
Fawcett’s wine. Mind, Davenport, you will go home immediately after
dinner, to read the brief in that cause that we have to conduct
to-morrow.’
“ ‘Not I,’ said Davenport. ‘Leave my dinner and my wine to read a brief!
No, no, Lee; that won’t do.’
“ ‘Then,’ said Lee, ‘what is to be done? who else is employed?’
“_Davenport._—‘Oh! young Scott.’
“Lee.—‘Oh! he must go. Mr. Scott, you must go home immediately, and make
yourself acquainted with that cause, before our consultation this
evening.’ ”
“This was very hard upon me; but I did go, and there was an attorney from
Cumberland, and one from Northumberland, and I do not know how many other
persons. Pretty late, in came Jack Lee, as drunk as he could be.
“ ‘I cannot consult to-night; I must go to bed,’ he exclaimed, and away he
went. Then came Sir Thomas Davenport.
“ ‘We cannot have a consultation to-night, Mr. Wordsworth’ (Wordsworth, I
think, was the name; it was a Cumberland name), shouted Davenport. ‘Don’t
you see how drunk Mr. Scott is? it is impossible to consult.’ Poor me! who
had scarce had any dinner, and lost all my wine—I was so drunk that I
could not consult! Well, a verdict was given against us, and it was all
owing to Lawyer Fawcett’s dinner. We moved for a new trial; and I must
say, for the honour of the Bar, that those two gentlemen, Jack Lee and Sir
Thomas Davenport, paid all the expenses between them of the first trial.
It is the only instance I ever knew, but they did. We moved for a new
trial (on the ground, I suppose, of the counsel not being in their
senses), and it was granted. When it came on, the following year, the
judge rose and said,—
“ ‘Gentlemen, did any of you dine with Lawyer Fawcett yesterday? for, if
you did, I will not hear this cause till next year.’
“There was great laughter. We gained the cause that time.”
On another occasion, at Lancaster, where poor Bozzy must needs be going
the Northern Circuit, “we found him,” says Mr. Scott, “lying upon the
pavement inebriated. We subscribed a guinea at supper for him, and a
half-crown for his clerk”—(no doubt there was a large Bar, and that
Scott’s joke did not cost him much),—“and sent him, when he waked next
morning, a brief, with instructions to move for what we denominated the
writ of _quare adhaesit pavimento?_ with observations duly calculated to
induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the
necessity of granting it, to the judge before whom he was to move.”
Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys for books, that might enable
him to distinguish himself—but in vain. He moved, however, for the writ,
making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge
was perfectly astonished, and the audience amazed. The judge said, “I
never heard of such a writ—what can it be that adheres _pavimento_? Are
any of you gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?”
The Bar laughed. At last one of them said,—
“My lord, Mr. Boswell last night _adhaesit pavimento_. There was no moving
him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming
about himself and the pavement.”
The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the Bishop of Lincoln
was moving from the deanery of St. Paul’s, he says he asked a learned
friend of his, by name Will Hay, how he should move some especially fine
claret, about which he was anxious.
“Pray, my lord bishop,” says Hay, “how much of the wine have you?”
The bishop said six dozen.
“If that is all,” Hay answered, “you have but to ask me six times to
dinner, and I will carry it all away myself.”
There were giants in those days; but this joke about wine is not so
fearful as one perpetrated by Orator Thelwall, in the heat of the French
Revolution, ten years later, over a frothing pot of porter. He blew the
head off, and said, “This is the way I would serve all kings.”
Now we come to yet higher personages, and find their doings recorded in
the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney’s _Memoirs_. She represents
a prince of the blood in quite a royal condition. The loudness, the
bigness, boisterousness, creaking boots and rattling oaths, of the young
princes, appeared to have frightened the prim household of Windsor, and
set all the tea-cups twittering on the tray. On the night of a ball and
birthday, when one of the pretty, kind princesses was to come out, it was
agreed that her brother, Prince William Henry, should dance the opening
minuet with her, and he came to visit the household at their dinner.
“At dinner, Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnificently; Miss
Goldsworthy, Mrs. Stanforth, Messrs. Du Luc and Stanhope, dined with us;
and while we were still eating fruit, the Duke of Clarence entered.
“He was just risen from the king’s table, and waiting for his equipage to
go home and prepare for the ball. To give you an idea of the energy of his
royal highness’s language, I ought to set apart an objection to writing,
or rather intimating, certain forcible words, and beg leave to show you in
genuine colours a royal sailor.
“We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two gentlemen placed
themselves behind their chairs, while the footmen left the room. But he
ordered us all to sit down, and called the men back to hand about some
wine. He was in exceeding high spirits, and in the utmost good humour. He
placed himself at the head of the table, next Mrs. Schwellenberg, and
looked remarkably well, gay, and full of sport and mischief; yet clever
withal, as well as comical.
“ ‘Well, this is the first day I have ever dined with the king at St.
James’s on his birthday. Pray, have you all drunk his majesty’s health?’
“ ‘No, your royal highness; your royal highness might make dem do dat,’
said Mrs. Schwellenberg.
“ ‘Oh, by ——, I will! Here, you’ (to the footman). ‘bring champagne; I’ll
drink the king’s health again, if I die for it. Yes, I have done it pretty
well already; so has the king, I promise you! I believe his majesty was
never taken such good care of before; we have kept his spirits up, I
promise you; we have enabled him to go through his fatigues; and I should
have done more still, but for the ball and Mary;—I have promised to dance
with Mary. I must keep sober for Mary.’ ”
Indefatigable Miss Burney continues for a dozen pages reporting H.R.H.’s
conversation, and indicating, with a humour not unworthy of the clever
little author of _Evelina_, the increasing state of excitement of the
young sailor prince, who drank more and more champagne, stopped old Mrs.
Schwellenberg’s remonstrances by giving the old lady a kiss, and telling
her to hold her potato-trap, and who did not “keep sober for Mary”. Mary
had to find another partner that night, for the royal William Henry could
not keep his legs.
Will you have a picture of the amusements of another royal prince? It is
the Duke of York, the blundering general, the beloved commander-in-chief
of the army, the brother with whom George IV had had many a midnight
carouse, and who continued his habits of pleasure almost till death seized
his stout body.
In Pückler Muskau’s _Letters_, that German prince describes a bout with
H.R.H., who in his best time was such a powerful toper that “six bottles
of claret after dinner scarce made a perceptible change in his
countenance”.
“I remember,” says Pückler, “that one evening,—indeed, it was past
midnight,—he took some of his guests, among whom were the Austrian
ambassador, Count Meervelt, Count Beroldingen, and myself, into his
beautiful armoury. We tried to swing several Turkish sabres, but none of
us had a very firm grasp; whence it happened that the duke and Meervelt
both scratched themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword so as to
draw blood. Meervelt then wished to try if the sword cut as well as a
Damascus, and attempted to cut through one of the wax candles that stood
on the table. The experiment answered so ill, that both the candles,
candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and were extinguished. While we
were groping in the dark and trying to find the door, the duke’s aide de
camp stammered out in great agitation, ‘By G——, sir, I remember the sword
is poisoned.!’
“You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at this
intelligence! Happily, on further examination, it appeared that claret,
and not poison, was at the bottom of the colonel’s exclamation.”
And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in which Clarence
and York, and the very highest personage of the realm, the great Prince
Regent, all play parts. The feast took place at the Pavilion at Brighton,
and was described to me by a gentleman who was present at the scene. In
Gilray’s caricatures, and amongst Fox’s jolly associates, there figures a
great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Norfolk in his time,
and celebrated for his table exploits. He had quarrelled with the prince,
like the rest of the Whigs; but a sort of reconciliation had taken place;
and now, being a very old man, the prince invited him to dine and sleep at
the Pavilion, and the old duke drove over from his castle of Arundel with
his famous equipage of grey horses, still remembered in Sussex.
The Prince of Wales had concocted with his royal brothers a notable scheme
for making the old man drunk. Every person at table was enjoined to drink
wine with the duke—a challenge which the old toper did not refuse. He soon
began to see that there was a conspiracy against him; he drank glass for
glass; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the First Gentleman of
Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of the royal brothers filled a
great glass for the duke. He stood up and tossed off the drink. “Now,”
says he, “I will have my carriage, and go home.” The prince urged upon him
his previous promise to sleep under the roof where he had been so
generously entertained. “No,” he said, he had had enough of such
hospitality. A trap had been set for him; he would leave the place at once
and never enter its doors more.
The carriage was called, and came; but, in the half-hour’s interval, the
liquor had proved too potent for the old man; his host’s generous purpose
was answered, and the duke’s old grey head lay stupefied on the table.
Nevertheless, when his post-chaise was announced, he staggered to it as
well as he could, and stumbling in, bade the postilions drive to Arundel.
They drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn; the
poor old man fancied he was going home. When he awoke that morning he was
in bed at the prince’s hideous house at Brighton. You may see the place
now for sixpence: they have fiddlers there every day; and sometimes
buffoons and mountebanks hire the Riding House and do their tricks and
tumbling there. The trees are still there, and the gravel walks round
which the poor old sinner was trotted. I can fancy the flushed faces of
the royal princes as they support themselves at the portico pillars, and
look on at old Norfolk’s disgrace; but I can’t fancy how the man who
perpetrated it continued to be called a gentleman.
From drinking, the pleased Muse now turns to gambling, of which in his
youth our prince was a great practitioner. He was a famous pigeon for the
play-men; they lived upon him. Egalité Orleans, it was believed, punished
him severely. A noble lord, whom we shall call the Marquis of Steyne, is
said to have mulcted him in immense sums. He frequented the clubs, where
play was then almost universal; and, as it was known his debts of honour
were sacred, whilst he was gambling Jews waited outside to purchase his
notes of hand. His transactions on the turf were unlucky as well as
discreditable: though I believe he, and his jockey, and his horse Escape,
were all innocent in that affair which created so much scandal.
Arthur’s, Almack’s, Bootle’s, and White’s were the chief clubs of the
young men of fashion. There was play at all, and decayed noblemen and
broken-down senators fleeced the unwary there. In Selwyn’s _Letters_ we
find Carlisle, Devonshire, Coventry, Queensberry, all undergoing the
probation. Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late
times—lost 200,000_l._ at play. Gibbon tells of his playing for twenty-two
hours at a sitting, and losing 500_l._ an hour. That indomitable punter
said that the greatest pleasure in life, after winning, was losing. What
hours, what nights, what health did he waste over the devil’s books! I was
going to say what peace of mind; but he took his losses very
philosophically. After an awful night’s play, and the enjoyment of the
greatest pleasure but _one_ in life, he was found on a sofa tranquilly
reading an Eclogue of Virgil.
Play survived long after the wild prince and Fox had given up the
dice-box. The dandies continued it. Byron, Brummell—how many names could I
mention of men of the world who have suffered by it! In 1837 occurred a
famous trial which pretty nigh put an end to gambling in England. A peer
of the realm was found cheating at whist, and repeatedly seen to practise
the trick called _sauter la coupe_. His friends at the clubs saw him
cheat, and went on playing with him. One greenhorn, who had discovered his
foul play, asked an old hand what he should do. “Do!” said the Mammon of
Unrighteousness, “_back him, you fool_.” The best efforts were made to
screen him. People wrote him anonymous letters and warned him; but he
would cheat, and they were obliged to find him out. Since that day, when
my lord’s shame was made public, the gaming-table has lost all its
splendour. Shabby Jews and blacklegs prowl about racecourses and tavern
parlours, and now and then inveigle silly yokels with greasy packs of
cards in railroad ears; but Play is a deposed goddess, her worshippers
bankrupt, and her table in rags.
So is another famous British institution gone to decay—the Ring: the noble
practice of British boxing, which in my youth was still almost
flourishing.
The prince, in his early days, was a great patron of this national sport,
as his grand-uncle Culloden Cumberland had been before him; but, being
present at a fight at Brighton, where one of the combatants was killed,
the prince pensioned the boxer’s widow, and declared he never would attend
another battle. “But, nevertheless,”—I read in the noble language of
Pierce Egan (whose smaller work on Pugilism I have the honour to
possess),—“he thought it a manly and decided English feature, which ought
not to be destroyed. His majesty had a drawing of the sporting characters
in the Fives Court placed in his boudoir, to remind him of his former
attachment and support of true courage; and when any fight of note
occurred after he was king, accounts of it were read to him by his
desire.” That gives one a fine image of a king taking his recreation;—at
ease in a royal dressing-gown;—too majestic to read himself, ordering the
prime minister to read him accounts of battles: how Cribb punched
Molyneux’s eye, or Jack Randall thrashed the Game Chicken.
Where my prince _did_ actually distinguish himself was in driving. He
drove once in four hours and a half from Brighton to Carlton
House—fifty-six miles. All the young men of that day were fond of that
sport. But the fashion of rapid driving deserted England; and, I believe,
trotted over to America. Where are the amusements of our youth? I hear of
no gambling now but amongst obscure ruffians; of no boxing but amongst the
lowest rabble. One solitary four-in-hand still drove round the parks in
London last year; but that charioteer must soon disappear. He was very
old; he was attired after the fashion of the year 1825. He must drive to
the banks of Styx ere long,—where the ferry-boat waits to carry him over
to the defunct revellers, who boxed and gambled and drank and drove with
King George.
The bravery of the Brunswicks, that all the family must have it, that
George possessed it, are points which all English writers have agreed to
admit; and yet I cannot see how George IV should have been endowed with
this quality. Swaddled in feather-beds all his life, lazy, obese,
perpetually eating and drinking, his education was quite unlike that of
his tough old progenitors. His grandsires had confronted hardship and war,
and ridden up and fired their pistols undaunted into the face of death.
His father had conquered luxury, and overcome indolence. Here was one who
never resisted any temptation; never had a desire but he coddled and
pampered it; if ever he had any nerve, frittered it away among cooks, and
tailors, and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera dancers. What
muscle would not grow flaccid in such a life—a life that was never strung
up to any action—an endless Capua without any campaign—all fiddling, and
flowers, and feasting, and flattery, and folly? When George III was
pressed by the Catholic question and the India Bill, he said he would
retire to Hanover rather than yield upon either point; and he would have
done what he said. But, before yielding, he was determined to fight his
ministers and Parliament; and he did, and he beat them. The time came when
George IV was pressed too upon the Catholic claims: the cautious Peel had
slipped over to that side; the grim old Wellington had joined it; and Peel
tells us, in his _Memoirs_, what was the conduct of the king. He at first
refused to submit; whereupon Peel and the duke offered their resignations,
which their gracious master accepted. He did these two gentlemen the
honour, Peel says, to kiss them both when they went away. (Fancy old
Arthur’s grim countenance and eagle beak as the monarch kisses it!) When
they were gone he sent after them, surrendered, and wrote to them a letter
begging them to remain in office, and allowing them to have their way.
Then his Majesty had a meeting with Eldon, which is related at curious
length in the latter’s _Memoirs_. He told Eldon what was not true about
his interview with the new Catholic converts; utterly misled the old
ex-chancellor; cried, whimpered, fell on his neck, and kissed him too. We
know old Eldon’s own tears were pumped very freely. Did these two
fountains gush together? I can’t fancy a behaviour more unmanly, imbecile,
pitiable. This a Defender of the Faith! This a chief in the crisis of a
great nation! This an inheritor of the courage of the Georges! Many of my
hearers no doubt have journeyed to the pretty old town of Brunswick, in
company with that most worthy, prudent, and polite gentleman, the Earl of
Malmesbury, and fetched away Princess Caroline for her longing husband,
the Prince of Wales, Old Queen Charlotte would have had her eldest son
marry a niece of her own, that famous Louisa of Strelitz, afterwards Queen
of Prussia, and who shares with Marie Antoinette in the last age the sad
pre-eminence of beauty and misfortune. But George III had a niece at
Brunswick: she was a richer princess than her Serene Highness of
Strelitz:—in fine, the Princess Caroline was selected to marry the heir to
the English throne. We follow my Lord Malmesbury in quest of her; we are
introduced to her illustrious father and royal mother; we witness the
balls and fêtes of the old Court; we are presented to the princess
herself, with her fair hair, her blue eyes, and her impertinent
shoulders—a lively, bouncing, romping princess, who takes the advice of
her courtly English mentor most generously and kindly. We can be present
at her very toilette, if we like, regarding which, and for very good
reasons, the British courtier implores her to be particular. What a
strange Court! What a queer privacy of morals and manners do we look into!
Shall we regard it as preachers and moralists, and cry, Woe, against the
open vice and selfishness and corruption; or look at it as we do at the
king in the pantomime, with his pantomime wife, and pantomime courtiers,
whose big heads he knocks together, whom he pokes with his pantomime
sceptre, whom he orders to prison under the guard of his pantomime
beefeaters, as he sits down to dine on his pantomime pudding? It is grave,
it is sad, it is theme most curious for moral and political speculation;
it is monstrous, grotesque, laughable, with its prodigious littlenesses,
etiquettes, ceremonials, sham moralities; it is as serious as a sermon,
and as absurd and outrageous as Punch’s puppet-show.
Malmesbury tells us of the private life of the duke, Princess Caroline’s
father, who was to die, like his warlike son, in arms against the French;
presents us to his courtiers, his favourite; his duchess, George III’s
sister, a grim old princess, who took the British envoy aside, and told
him wicked old stories of wicked old dead people and times; who came to
England afterwards when her nephew was regent, and lived in a shabby
furnished lodging, old, and dingy, and deserted, and grotesque, but
somehow royal. And we go with him to the duke to demand the princess’s
hand in form, and we hear the Brunswick guns fire their adieux of salute,
as H.R.H. the Princess of Wales departs in the frost and snow; and we
visit the domains of the Prince Bishop of Osnaburg—the Duke of York of our
early time; and we dodge about from the French revolutionists, whose
ragged legions are pouring over Holland and Germany, and gaily trampling
down the old world to the tune of _Ça ira_; and we take shipping at Slade,
and we land at Greenwich, where the princess’s ladies and the prince’s
ladies are in waiting to receive her royal highness.
[Illustration]
What a history follows! Arrived in London, the bridegroom hastened eagerly
to receive his bride. When she was first presented to him, Lord Malmesbury
says she very properly attempted to kneel. He raised her gracefully
enough, embraced her, and turning round to me, said,—
“Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.”
I said, “Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?”
Upon which, much out of humour, he said, with an oath, “No; I will go to
the queen.”
What could be expected from a wedding which had such a beginning—from such
a bridegroom and such a bride? I am not going to carry you through the
scandal of that story, or follow the poor princess through all her
vagaries; her balls and her dances, her travels to Jerusalem and Naples,
her jigs, and her junketings, and her tears. As I read her trial in
history, I vote she is not guilty. I don’t say it is an impartial verdict;
but as one reads her story the heart bleeds for the kindly, generous,
outraged creature. If wrong there be, let it lie at his door who wickedly
thrust her from it. Spite of her follies, the great, hearty people of
England loved, and protected, and pitied her. “God bless you! we will
bring your husband back to you,” said a mechanic one day, as she told Lady
Charlotte Bury with tears streaming down her cheeks. They could not bring
that husband back; they could not cleanse that selfish heart. Was hers the
only one he had wounded? Steeped in selfishness, impotent for faithful
attachment and manly enduring love,—had it not survived remorse, was it
not accustomed to desertion?
Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story;—how the prince
reeled into chapel to be married; how he hiccupped out his vows of
fidelity—you know how he kept them; how he pursued the woman whom he had
married; to what a state he brought her; with what blows he struck her;
with what malignity he pursued her; what his treatment of his daughter
was; and what his own life. _He_ the first gentleman of Europe! There is
no stronger satire on the proud English society of that day, than that
they admired George.
No, thank God, we can tell of better gentlemen; and whilst our eyes turn
away, shocked, from this monstrous image of pride, vanity, weakness, they
may see in that England over which the last George pretended to reign,
some who merit indeed the title of gentlemen, some who make our hearts
beat when we hear their names, and whose memory we fondly salute when that
of yonder imperial manikin is tumbled into oblivion. I will take men of my
own profession of letters. I will take Walter Scott, who loved the king,
and who was his sword and buckler, and championed him like that brave
Highlander in his own story, who fights round his craven chief. What a
good gentleman! What a friendly soul, what a generous hand, what an
amiable life was that of the noble Sir Walter! I will take another man of
letters, whose life I admire even more,—an English worthy, doing his duty
for fifty noble years of labour, day by day storing up learning, day by
day working for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means,
bravely faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from
his path for popular praise or princes’ favour;—I mean _Robert Southey_.
We have left his old political landmarks miles and miles behind; we
protest against his dogmatism; nay, we begin to forget it and his
politics: but I hope his life will not be forgotten, for it is sublime in
its simplicity, its energy, its honour, its affection. In the combat
between Time and Thalaba, I suspect the former destroyer has conquered.
Kehama’s curse frightens very few readers now; but Southey’s private
letters are worth piles of epics, and are sure to last among us, as long
as kind hearts like to sympathize with goodness and purity, and love and
upright life. “If your feelings are like mine,” he writes to his wife, “I
will not go to Lisbon without you, or I will stay at home, and not part
from you. For though not unhappy when away, still without you I am not
happy. For your sake, as well as my own and little Edith’s, I will not
consent to any separation; the growth of a year’s love between her and me,
if it please God she should live, is a thing too delightful in itself, and
too valuable in its consequences, to be given up for any light
inconvenience on your part or mine.... On these things we will talk at
leisure; only, dear, dear Edith, _we must not part!_”
This was a poor literary gentleman. The First Gentleman in Europe had a
wife and daughter too. Did he love them so? Was he faithful to them? Did
he sacrifice ease for them, or show them the sacred examples of religion
and honour? Heaven gave the Great English Prodigal no such good fortune.
Peel proposed to make a baronet of Southey; and to this advancement the
king agreed. The poet nobly rejected the offered promotion.
“I have,” he wrote, “a pension of 200_l._ a year, conferred upon me by the
good offices of my old friend C. Wynn, and I have the laureateship. The
salary of the latter was immediately appropriated, as far as it went, to a
life insurance for 3,000_l._, which, with an earlier insurance, is the
sole provision I have made for my family. All beyond must be derived from
my own industry. Writing for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that I have
gained; for, having also something better in view, and never, therefore,
having courted popularity, nor written for the mere sake of gain, it has
not been possible for me to lay by anything. Last year, for the first time
in my life, I was provided with a year’s expenditure beforehand. This
exposition may show how unbecoming and unwise it would be to accept the
rank which, so greatly to my honour, you have solicited for me.”
How noble his poverty is, compared to the wealth of his master! His
acceptance even of a pension was made the object of his opponents’ satire:
but think of the merit and modesty of this state pensioner; and that other
enormous drawer of public money, who receives 100,000_l._ a year, and
comes to Parliament with a request for 650,000_l._ more!
Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood; and I think,
since Heaven made gentlemen, there is no record of a better one than that.
Of brighter deeds, I grant you, we may read performed by others; but where
of a nobler, kinder, more beautiful life of duty, of a gentler, truer
heart? Beyond dazzle of success and blaze of genius, I fancy shining a
hundred and a hundred times higher, the sublime purity of Collingwood’s
gentle glory. His heroism stirs British hearts when we recall it. His
love, and goodness, and piety make one thrill with happy emotion. As one
reads of him and his great comrade going into the victory with which their
names are immortally connected, how the old English word comes up, and
that old English feeling of what I should like to call Christian honour!
What gentlemen they were, what great hearts they had! “We can, my dear
Coll,” writes Nelson to him, “have no little jealousies; we have only one
great object in view,—that of meeting the enemy, and getting a glorious
peace for our country.” At Trafalgar, when the _Royal Sovereign_ was
pressing alone into the midst of the combined fleets, Lord Nelson said to
Captain Blackwood: “See how that noble fellow Collingwood takes his ship
into action! How I envy him!” The very same throb and impulse of heroic
generosity was beating in Collingwood’s honest bosom. As he led into the
fight, he said: “What would Nelson give to be here!”
After the action of the 1st of June, he writes:—“We cruised for a few
days, like disappointed people looking for what they could not find,
_until the morning of little Sarah’s birthday_, between eight and nine
o’clock, when the French fleet, of twenty-five sail of the line, was
discovered to windward. We chased them, and they bore down within about
five miles of us. The night was spent in watching and preparation for the
succeeding day; and many a blessing did I send forth to my Sarah, lest I
should never bless her more. At dawn, we made our approach on the enemy,
then drew up, dressed our ranks, and it was about eight when the admiral
made the signal for each ship to engage her opponent, and bring her to
close action; and then down we went under a crowd of sail, and in a manner
that would have animated the coldest heart, and struck terror into the
most intrepid enemy. The ship we were to engage was two ahead of the
French admiral, so we had to go through his fire and that of two ships
next to him, and received all their broadsides two or three times, before
we fired a gun. It was then near ten o’clock. I observed to the admiral,
that about that time our wives were going to church, but that I thought
the peal we should ring about the Frenchman’s ears would outdo their
parish bells.”
There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading the simple
phrases of such a hero. Here is victory and courage, but love sublimer and
superior. Here is a Christian soldier spending the night before battle in
watching and preparing for the succeeding day, thinking of his dearest
home, and sending many blessings forth to his Sarah, “lest he should never
bless her more.” Who would not say Amen to his supplication? It was a
benediction to his country—the prayer of that intrepid loving heart.
We have spoken of a good soldier and good men of letters as specimens of
English gentlemen of the age just past: may we not also—many of my elder
hearers, I am sure, have read, and fondly remember his delightful
story—speak of a good divine, and mention Reginald Heber as one of the
best of English gentlemen? The charming poet, the happy possessor of all
sorts of gifts and accomplishments, birth, wit, fame, high character,
competence—he was the beloved parish priest in his own home of Hoderel,
“counselling his people in their troubles, advising them in their
difficulties, comforting them in distress, kneeling often at their
sick-beds at the hazard of his own life; exhorting, encouraging where
there was need; where there was strife the peacemaker; where there was
want the free giver.”
When the Indian bishopric was offered to him he refused at first; but
after communing with himself (and committing his case to the quarter
whither such pious men are wont to carry their doubts), he withdrew his
refusal, and prepared himself for his mission and to leave his beloved
parish. “Little children, love one another, and forgive one another,” were
the last sacred words he said to his weeping people. He parted with them,
knowing, perhaps, he should see them no more. Like those other good men of
whom we have just spoken, love and duty were his life’s aim. Happy he,
happy they who were so gloriously faithful to both! He writes to his wife
those charming lines on his journey:—
If thou, my love, wert by my side, my babies at my knee,
How gladly would our pinnace glide o’er Gunga’s mimic sea!
I miss thee at the dawning grey, when, on our deck reclined,
In careless ease my limbs I lay and woo the cooler wind.
I miss thee when by Gunga’s stream my twilight steps I guide;
But most beneath the lamp’s pale beam I miss thee by my side.
I spread my books, my pencil try, the lingering noon to cheer;
But miss thy kind approving eye, thy meek attentive ear.
But when of morn and eve the star beholds me on my knee,
I feel, though thou art distant far, thy prayers ascend for me.
Then on! then on! where duty leads my course be onward still,—
O’er broad Hindostan’s sultry meads, o’er bleak Almorah’s hill.
That course nor Delhi’s kingly gates, nor wild Malwah detain,
For sweet the bliss us both awaits by yonder western main.
Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, across the dark blue
sea:
But ne’er were hearts so blithe and gay as there shall meet in
thee!
Is it not Collingwood and Sarah, and Southey and Edith? His affection is
part of his life. What were life without it? Without love, I can fancy no
gentleman.
How touching is a remark Heber makes in his _Travels through India_, that
on inquiring of the natives at a town, which of the governors of India
stood highest in the opinion of the people, he found that, though Lord
Wellesley and Warren Hastings were honoured as the two greatest men who
had ever ruled this part of the world, the people spoke with chief
affection of Judge Cleaveland, who had died, aged twenty-nine, in 1784.
The people have built a monument over him, and still hold a religious
feast in his memory. So does his own country still tend with a heart’s
regard the memory of the gentle Heber.
And Cleaveland died in 1784, and is still loved by the heathen, is he?
Why, that year 1784 was remarkable in the life of our friend the First
Gentleman of Europe. Do you not know that he was twenty-one in that year,
and opened Carlton House with a grand ball to the nobility and gentry, and
doubtless wore that lovely pink coat which we have described. I was eager
to read about the ball, and looked to the old magazines for information.
The entertainment took place on the 10th February. In the _European
Magazine_ of March, 1784, I came straightway upon it:—
“The alterations at Carlton House being finished, we lay before our
readers a description of the state apartments as they appeared on the 10th
instant, when H.R.H. gave a grand ball to the principal nobility and
gentry.... The entrance to the state room fills the mind with an
inexpressible idea of greatness and splendour.
“The state chair is of a gold frame, covered with crimson damask; on each
corner of the feet is a lion’s head, expressive of fortitude and strength;
the feet of the chair have serpents twining round them, to denote wisdom.
Facing the throne, appears the helmet of Minerva; and over the windows,
glory is represented by St. George with a superb gloria.
“But the saloon may be styled the _chef-d’œuvre_, and in every ornament
discovers great invention. It is hung with a figured lemon satin. The
window-curtains, sofas, and chairs are of the same colour. The ceiling is
ornamented with emblematical paintings, representing the Graces and Muses,
together with Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Paris. Two ormolu chandeliers
are placed here. It is impossible by expression to do justice to the
extraordinary workmanship, as well as design, of the ornaments. They each
consist of a palm, branching out in five directions for the reception of
lights. A beautiful figure of a rural nymph is represented entwining the
stems of the tree with wreaths of flowers. In the centre of the room is a
rich chandelier. To see this apartment _dans son plus beau jour_, it
should be viewed in the glass over the chimney-piece. The range of
apartments from the saloon to the ballroom, when the doors are open,
formed one of the grandest spectacles that ever was beheld.”
In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for the very same month and year—March,
1784—is an account of another festival, in which another great gentleman
of English extraction is represented as taking a principal share:—
“According to order, H.E. the Commander-in-Chief was admitted to a public
audience of Congress; and, being seated, the president, after a pause,
informed him that the United States assembled were ready to receive his
communications. Whereupon he arose, and spoke as follows:—
“ ‘Mr. President,—The great events on which my resignation depended having
at length taken place, I present myself before Congress to surrender into
their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of
retiring from the service of my country.
“ ‘Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, I resign
the appointment I accepted with diffidence; which, however, was superseded
by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme
power of the nation, and the patronage of Heaven. I close this last act of
my official life, by commending the interests of our dearest country to
the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of
them to His holy keeping. Having finished the work assigned me, I retire
from the great theatre of action; and, bidding an affectionate farewell to
this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my
commission and take my leave of the employments of my public life.’ To
which the President replied:—
“ ‘Sir, having defended the standard of liberty in the New World, having
taught a lesson useful to those who inflict and those who feel oppression,
you retire with the blessings of your fellow citizens; though the glory of
your virtues will not terminate with your military command, but will
descend to remotest ages.’ ”
Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed:—the opening feast of
Prince George in London, or the resignation of Washington? Which is the
noble character for after-ages to admire;—yon fribble dancing in lace and
spangles, or yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a life of spotless
honour, a purity unreproached, a courage indomitable, and a consummate
victory? Which of these is the true gentleman? What is it to be a
gentleman? Is it to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to keep your
honour virgin; to have the esteem of your fellow citizens, and the love of
your fireside; to bear good fortune meekly; to suffer evil with constancy;
and through evil or good to maintain truth always? Show me the happy man
whose life exhibits these qualities, and him we will salute as gentleman,
whatever his rank may be; show me the prince who possesses them, and he
may be sure of our love and loyalty. The heart of Britain still beats
kindly for George III,—not because he was wise and just, but because he
was pure in life, honest in intent, and because according to his lights he
worshipped Heaven. I think we acknowledge in the inheritrix of his
sceptre, a wiser rule, and a life as honourable and pure; and I am sure
the future painter of our manners will pay a willing allegiance to that
good life, and be loyal to the memory of that unsullied virtue.
FOOTNOTES
1 The influence of Scott on Thackeray is undoubted and freely
confessed. But I cannot fall in with “certain persons of
distinction” in making _Esmond_ very specially indebted to
_Woodstock_. _Woodstock_ is a very great book in itself and amazing
when one knows its circumstances: but it is, even for Scott, very
specially and exclusively _objective_. _Esmond_ is subjective also
in the highest degree.
2 This form, which he used elsewhere than in the _Biographia
Literaria_, is better than _esemplastic_ which he employed there.
3 The justice or accuracy of his individual presentments and even of
his general view of the time is quite another matter. We may touch
on part of it presently. But the real point is that the whole is of
a piece at least _in potentia_: that it gives a world that might
have existed.
4 The lectures on the _Humourists_ were, of course, delivered before
_Esmond_ was published; but, in another sense, they are only
aftercrops or by-products. The notes, sometimes very interesting,
are James Hannay’s.
5 As might perhaps have been expected from its original appearance,
not piecemeal but in the regular three-volume form, _Esmond_ was not
very much altered by its author in later issues. There was, indeed,
a “revised” edition in 1858, in which a considerable number of minor
changes, nearly all for the better, were made. These have been
carefully considered, but in practically every case there was really
nothing to do but to follow them silently. For it would be absurd,
in the present edition, to chronicle solemnly the rectification of
mere misprints like “H_o_xton” for “H_e_xton”, or the change from
“was never” to “never was”. In some points of orthography
“Chelse_a_” and “Chelse_y_”, for instance, Thackeray never reached
full consistency, and he has sometimes been caught in the
intricacies of the Castlewood relations and nomenclature, &c. So,
too, Walcote, which is near _Wells_ at first, moves to the
neighbourhood of _Winchester_ later; and there are other
characteristic oversights. But, on the whole, there is little need
of comment, and none of variants, save in a very few instances,
where the “revised” edition seems to have been altered for the
worse.
On the other hand, in recent editions of Thackeray, published by his
representatives, considerable alterations to _The English
Humourists_, &c., in text and notes have been introduced, dates
being changed in accordance with later researches, quotations (in
which Thackeray was pretty lax) adjusted to their originals, and so
forth. As the chief authorities consulted in making these
alterations were the late Sir Leslie Stephen, Mr. Austin Dobson, and
Mr. Sidney Lee, there need not be much question as to their
accuracy: and it perhaps shows undue hardihood in the present editor
not to adopt them. But it seems to him that Thackeray’s books are
not so much text-books of history, literary and other, where
accuracy is the first point, as literature, where it is not. Such
corrections could be most properly introduced in the notes of a
fuller commentated edition: less so, it may seem, in an almost
unannotated text. In particular, Thackeray’s _mis_quotations (they
are not seldom distinct improvements) sometimes directly form the
basis of his own remarks, which become less apposite if the
citations are corrected.
As the text of this volume has few original illustrations some
miscellaneous sketches are added to it.
6 Lionel Tipton, created Baron Bergamot, ann. 1686, Gentleman Usher of
the Back Stairs, and afterwards appointed Warden of the Butteries
and Groom of the King’s Posset (on the decease of George, second
Viscount Castlewood), accompanied his Majesty to St. Germains, where
he died without issue. No Groom of the Posset was appointed by the
Prince of Orange, nor hath there been such an officer in any
succeeding reign.
7 To have this rank of marquis restored in the family had always been
my lady viscountess’s ambition; and her old maiden aunt, Barbara
Topham, the goldsmith’s daughter, dying about this time, and leaving
all her property to Lady Castlewood, I have heard that her ladyship
sent almost the whole of the money to King James, a proceeding which
so irritated my Lord Castlewood that he actually went to the parish
church, and was only appeased by the marquis’s title which his
exiled majesty sent to him in return for the 15,000_l._ his faithful
subject lent him.
8 Ὄ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται, ἐξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ᾽
ἔμμεναι; οἱ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπὲρ μόρον ἄλγε᾽
ἔχουσιν.
9 My mistress before I went this campaign sent me John Lockwood out of
Walcote, who hath ever since remained with me.—H. E.
10 This passage in the memoirs of Esmond is written on a leaf inserted
into the MS. book, and dated 1744, probably after he had heard of
the duchess’s death.
11 Our grandfather’s hatred of the Duke of Marlborough appears all
through his account of these campaigns. He always persisted that the
duke was the greatest traitor and soldier history ever told of: and
declared that he took bribes on all hands during the war. My lord
marquis (for so we may call him here, though he never went by any
other name than Colonel Esmond) was in the habit of telling many
stories which he did not set down in his memoirs, and which he had
from his friend the Jesuit, who was not always correctly informed,
and who persisted that Marlborough was looking for a bribe of two
millions of crowns before the campaign of Ramillies.
And our grandmother used to tell us children, that on his first
presentation to my lord duke, the duke turned his back upon my
grandfather; and said to the duchess, who told my lady dowager at
Chelsea, who afterwards told Colonel Esmond—“Tom Esmond’s bastard
has been to my levee: he has the hang-dog look of his rogue of a
father”—an expression which my grandfather never forgave. He was as
constant in his dislikes as in his attachments; and exceedingly
partial to Webb, whose side he took against the more celebrated
general. We have General Webb’s portrait now at Castlewood, Va.
12 ’Tis not thus _woman loves_: Col. E. hath owned to this folly for a
_score of women_ besides.—R.
13 And, indeed, so was his to them, a thousand, thousand times more
charming, for where was his equal?—R.
14 See Appendix, p. 464.
15 What indeed? Ps. xci. 2. 3, 7.—R. E.
16 The managers were the bishop, who cannot be hurt by having his name
mentioned, a very active and loyal Nonconformist divine, a lady in
the highest favour at Court, with whom Beatrix Esmond had
communication, and two noblemen of the greatest rank, and a Member
of the House of Commons, who was implicated in more transactions
than one in behalf of the Stuart family.
17 There can be very little doubt that the doctor, mentioned by my dear
father, was the famous Dr. Arbuthnot.—R. E. W.
18 My dear father saith quite truly, that his manner towards our sex
was uniformly courteous. From my infancy upwards, he treated me with
an extreme gentleness, as though I was a little lady. I can scarce
remember (though I tried him often) ever hearing a rough word from
him, nor was he less grave and kind in his manner to the humblest
negresses on his estate. He was familiar with no one except my
mother, and it was delightful to witness up to the very last days
the confidence between them. He was obeyed eagerly by all under him;
and my mother and all her household lived in a constant emulation to
please him, and quite a terror lest in any way they should offend
him. He was the humblest man, with all this; the least exacting, the
most easily contented; and Mr. Benson, our minister at Castlewood,
who attended him at the last, ever said—“I know not what Colonel
Esmond’s doctrine was, but his life and death were those of a devout
Christian.”—R. E. W.
19 This remark shows how unjustly and contemptuously even the best of
men will sometimes judge of our sex. Lady Esmond had no intention of
triumphing over her daughter; but from a sense of duty alone pointed
out her deplorable wrong.—R. E.
20 In London we addressed the prince as royal highness invariably;
though the women persisted in giving him the title of king.
21 The anecdote is frequently told of our performer, Rich.
22 He was from a younger branch of the Swifts of Yorkshire. His
grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, Vicar of Goodrich, in
Herefordshire, suffered for his loyalty in Charles I’s time. That
gentleman married Elizabeth Dryden, a member of the family of the
poet. Sir Walter Scott gives, with his characteristic minuteness in
such points, the exact relationship between these famous men. Swift
was “the son of Dryden’s second cousin”. Swift, too, was the enemy
of Dryden’s reputation. Witness the _Battle of the Books_:—“The
difference was greatest among the horse” says he of the moderns,
“where every private trooper pretended to the command, from Tasso
and Milton to Dryden and Withers.” And in _Poetry, a Rhapsody_, he
advises the poetaster to—
Read all the Prefaces of Dryden,
For these our critics much confide in,
Though merely writ, at first, for filling,
To raise the volume’s price a shilling.
“Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet,” was the phrase of Dryden
to his kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such
matters.
23 “Miss Hetty” she was called in the family—where her face, and her
dress, and Sir William’s treatment of her, all made the real fact
about her birth plain enough. Sir William left her a thousand
pounds.
24 Sometimes, during his mental affliction, he continued walking about
the house for many consecutive hours; sometimes he remained in a
kind of torpor. At times, he would seem to struggle to bring into
distinct consciousness, and shape into expression, the intellect
that lay smothering under gloomy obstruction in him. A pier-glass
falling by accident, nearly fell on him. He said, he wished it had!
He once repeated, slowly, several times, “I am what I am.” The last
thing he wrote was an epigram on the building of a magazine for arms
and stores, which was pointed out to him as he went abroad during
his mental disease:—
Behold a proof of Irish sense:
Here Irish wit is seen;
When nothing’s left that’s worth defence,
They build a magazine!
25 Besides these famous books of Scott’s and Johnson’s, there is a
copious _Life_ by Thomas Sheridan (Dr. Johnson’s “Sherry”), father
of Richard Brinsley, and son of that good-natured, clever, Irish
Doctor, Thomas Sheridan, Swift’s intimate, who lost his chaplaincy
by so unluckily choosing for a text on the king’s birthday,
“Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof!” Not to mention less
important works, there is also the _Remarks on the Life and Writings
of Dr. Jonathan Swift_, by that polite and dignified writer, the
Earl of Orrery. His lordship is said to have striven for literary
renown, chiefly that he might make up for the slight passed on him
by his father, who left his library away from him. It is to be
feared that the ink he used to wash out that stain only made it look
bigger. He had, however, known Swift, and corresponded with people
who knew him. His work (which appeared in 1751) provoked a good deal
of controversy, calling out, among other brochures, the interesting
_Observations on Lord Orrery’s Remarks_, &c., of Dr. Delany.
26 Dr. Wilde’s book was written on the occasion of the remains of Swift
and Stella being brought to the light of day—a thing which happened
in 1835, when certain works going on in St. Patrick’s Cathedral,
Dublin, afforded an opportunity of their being examined. One hears
with surprise of these skulls “going the rounds” of houses, and
being made the objects of _dilettante_ curiosity. The larynx of
Swift was actually carried off! Phrenologists had a low opinion of
his intellect, from the observations they took.
Dr. Wilde traces the symptoms of ill-health in Swift, as detailed in
his writings from time to time. He observes, likewise, that the
skull gave evidence of “diseased action” of the brain during
life—such as would be produced by an increasing tendency to
“cerebral congestion”.
27 “He [Dr. Johnson] seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice
against Swift; for I once took the liberty to ask him if Swift had
personally offended him, and he told me he had not.”—BOSWELL’S _Tour
to the Hebrides_.
28 Few men, to be sure, dared this experiment, but yet their success
was encouraging. One gentleman made a point of asking the Dean,
whether his uncle Godwin had not given him his education. Swift, who
hated _that_ subject cordially, and, indeed, cared little for his
kindred, said, sternly, “Yes; he gave me the education of a dog.”
“Then, sir,” cried the other, striking his fist on the table, “you
have not the gratitude of a dog!”
Other occasions there were when a bold face gave the Dean pause,
even after his Irish almost-royal position was established. But he
brought himself into greater danger on a certain occasion, and the
amusing circumstances may be once more repeated here. He had
unsparingly lashed the notable Dublin lawyer, Mr. Serjeant
Bettesworth—
So, at the bar, the booby Bettesworth,
Though half a crown out-pays his sweat’s worth,
Who knows in law nor text nor margent,
Calls Singleton his brother-serjeant!
The Serjeant, it is said, swore to have his life. He presented
himself at the deanery. The Dean asked his name. “Sir, I am Serjeant
Bett-es-worth.”
“_In what regiment, pray?_” asked Swift.
A guard of volunteers formed themselves to defend the Dean at this
time.
29 “But, my Hamilton, I will never hide the freedom of my sentiments
from you. I am much inclined to believe that the temper of my friend
Swift might occasion his English friends to wish him happily and
properly promoted at a distance. His spirit, for I would give it the
proper name, was ever untractable. The motions of his genius were
often irregular. He assumed more the air of a patron than of a
friend. He affected rather to dictate than advise.”—ORRERY.
30 “An anecdote which, though only told by Mrs. Pilkington, is well
attested, bears, that the last time he was in London he went to dine
with the Earl of Burlington, who was but newly married. The earl, it
is supposed, being willing to have a little diversion, did not
introduce him to his lady nor mention his name. After dinner said
the Dean, ‘Lady Burlington, I hear you can sing; sing me a song.’
The lady looked on this unceremonious manner of asking a favour with
distaste, and positively refused. He said, ‘She should sing, or he
would make her. Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of your
poor English hedge-parsons; sing when I bid you.’ As the earl did
nothing but laugh at this freedom, the lady was so vexed that she
burst into tears and retired. His first compliment to her when he
saw her again was, ‘Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured
now as when I saw you last?’ To which she answered with great good
humour, ‘No, Mr. Dean; I’ll sing for you if you please.’ From which
time he conceived a great esteem for her.”—SCOTT’S _Life_. “He had
not the least tincture of vanity in his conversation. He was,
perhaps, as he said himself, too proud to be vain. When he was
polite, it was in a manner entirely his own. In his friendships he
was constant and undisguised. He was the same in his
enmities.”—ORRERY.
31 “I make no figure but at Court, where I affect to turn from a lord
to the meanest of my acquaintances.”—_Journal to Stella._
“I am plagued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me their
books and poems, the vilest I ever saw; but I have given their names
to my man, never to let them see me.”—_Journal to Stella._
The following curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier:—
“Did I ever tell you that the lord treasurer hears ill with the left
ear just as I do?... I dare not tell him that I am so, sir; _for
fear he should think that I counterfeited to make my
court!_”—_Journal to Stella._
32 The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the
other; and the Whig attacks made the ministry Swift served very
sore. Bolingbroke laid hold of several of the Opposition
pamphleteers, and bewails their “factitiousness” in the following
letter:—
“BOLINGBROKE TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.
“Whitehall, July 23rd, 1712.
“It is a melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are
too weak to punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who
presume to blacken the brightest characters, and to give even
scurrilous language to those who are in the first degrees of honour.
This, my lord, among others, is a symptom of the decayed condition
of our Government, and serves to show how fatally we mistake
licentiousness for liberty. All I could do was to take up Hart, the
printer, to send him to Newgate, and to bind him over upon bail to
be prosecuted; this I have done; and if I can arrive at legal proof
against the author Ridpath, he shall have the same treatment.”
Swift was not behind his illustrious friend in this virtuous
indignation. In the history of the four last years of the queen, the
Dean speaks in the most edifying manner of the licentiousness of the
press and the abusive language of the other party:
“It must be acknowledged that the bad practices of printers have
been such as to deserve the severest animadversion from the
public.... The adverse party, full of rage and leisure since their
fall, and unanimous in their cause, employ a set of writers by
subscription, who are well versed in all the topics of defamation,
and have a style and genius levelled to the generality of their
readers.... However, the mischiefs of the press were too exorbitant
to be cured by such a remedy as a tax upon small papers, and a bill
for a much more effectual regulation of it was brought into the
House of Commons, but so late in the session that there was no time
to pass it, for there always appeared an unwillingness to cramp
overmuch the liberty of the press.”
But to a clause in the proposed bill, that the names of authors
should be set to every printed book, pamphlet, or paper, his
reverence objects altogether, for, says he, “beside the objection to
this clause from the practice of pious men, who, in publishing
excellent writings for the service of religion, have chosen, _out of
an humble Christian spirit, to conceal their names_, it is certain
that all persons of true genius or knowledge have an invincible
modesty and suspicion of themselves upon first sending their
thoughts into the world.”
This “invincible modesty” was no doubt the sole reason which induced
the Dean to keep the secret of the _Drapier’s Letters_ and a hundred
humble Christian works of which he was the author. As for the
Opposition, the Doctor was for dealing severely with them: he writes
to Stella:—
Journal. Letter XIX
“London, March 25th, 1710-11.
“... We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him
pickled in a trough this fortnight for twopence a piece; and the
fellow that showed would point to his body and say, ‘See, gentlemen,
this is the wound that was given him by his grace the Duke of
Ormond;’ and, ‘This is the wound,’ &c.; and then the show was over,
and another set of rabble came in. ’Tis hard that our laws would not
suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not tried; and
in the eye of the law every man is innocent till then.”
Journal. Letter XXVII
“London, July 25th, 1711.
“I was this afternoon with Mr. Secretary at his office, and helped
to hinder a man of his pardon, who is condemned for a rape. The
under-secretary was willing to save him; but I told the secretary he
could not pardon him without a favourable report from the judge;
besides he was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue, and deserved
hanging for something else, and so he shall swing.”
33 It was his constant practice to keep his birthday as a day of
mourning.
34 “These devils of Grub Street rogues, that write the _Flying Post_
and _Medley_ in one paper, will not be quiet. They are always
mauling Lord Treasurer, Lord Bolingbroke, and me. We have the dog
under prosecution, but Bolingbroke is not active enough; but I hope
to swinge him. He is a Scotch rogue, one Ridpath. They get out upon
bail, and write on. We take them again, and get fresh bail; so it
goes round.”—_Journal to Stella._
35 Swift was by no means inclined to forget such considerations; and
his English birth makes its mark, strikingly enough, every now and
then in his writings. Thus in a letter to Pope (SCOTT’S _Swift_,
vol. xix, p. 97), he says:—
“We have had your volume of letters.... Some of those who highly
value you, and a few who knew you personally, are grieved to find
you make no distinction between the English gentry of this kingdom,
and the savage old Irish (who are only the vulgar, and some
gentlemen who live in the Irish parts of the kingdom); but the
English colonies, who are three parts in four, are much more
civilized than many counties in England, and speak better English,
and are much better bred.”
And again, in the fourth Drapier’s Letter, we have the following:—
“A short paper, printed at Bristol, and reprinted here, reports Mr.
Wood to say ‘that he wonders at the impudence and insolence of the
Irish, in refusing his coin.’ When, by the way, it is the true
English people of Ireland who refuse it, although we take it for
granted that the Irish will do so too whenever they are
asked.”—SCOTT’S _Swift_, vol. iv, p. 143.
He goes further, in a good-humoured satirical paper, _On Barbarous
Denominations in Ireland_, where (after abusing, as he was wont, the
Scotch cadence, as well as expression), he advances to the “_Irish
brogue_”, and speaking of the “censure” which it brings down, says:—
“And what is yet worse, it is too well known that the bad
consequence of this opinion affects those among us who are not the
least liable to such reproaches farther than the misfortune of being
born in Ireland, although of English parents, and whose education
has been chiefly in that kingdom.”—Ibid. vol. vii, p. 149.
But, indeed, if we are to make _anything_ of Race at all, we must
call that man an Englishman whose father comes from an old Yorkshire
family, and his mother from an old Leicestershire one!
36 “The style of his conversation was very much of a piece with that of
his writings, concise and clear and strong. Being one day at a
sheriff’s feast, who amongst other toasts called out to him, ‘Mr.
Dean. The trade of Ireland!’ he answered quick: ‘Sir, I drink no
memories!’
“Happening to be in company with a petulant young man who prided
himself on saying pert things ... and who cried out, ‘You must know,
Mr. Dean, that I set up for a wit?’ ‘Do you so?’ says the Dean.
‘Take my advice, and sit down again!’
“At another time, being in company, where a lady whisking her long
train [long trains were then in fashion] swept down a fine fiddle
and broke it; Swift cried out—
Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!”
—DR. DELANY, _Observations upon Lord Orrery’s __“__Remarks, &c. of
Swift__”_. London, 1754.
37 “Don’t you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir William Temple
would look cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used
to suspect a hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirits since
then, faith; he spoiled a fine gentleman.”—_Journal to Stella._
38 “The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and
fortunate in their expression, when they placed a man’s happiness in
the tranquillity of his mind and indolence of body; for while we are
composed of both, I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill
we feel. As men of several languages say the same things in very
different words, so in several ages, countries, constitutions of
laws and religion, the same thing seems to be meant by very
different expressions; what is called by the Stoics apathy, or
dispassion; by the sceptics, indisturbance; by the Molinists,
quietism; by common men, peace of conscience,—seems all to mean but
great tranquillity of mind.... For this reason Epicurus passed his
life wholly in his garden: there he studied, there he exercised,
there he taught his philosophy; and, indeed, no other sort of abode
seems to contribute so much to both the tranquillity of mind and
indolence of body, which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of
the air, the pleasantness of smell, the verdure of plants, the
cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking,
but, above all, the exemption from cares and solicitude, seem
equally to favour and improve both contemplation and health, the
enjoyment of sense and imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease
both of the body and mind.... Where Paradise was has been much
debated, and little agreed; but what sort of place is meant by it
may perhaps easier be conjectured. It seems to have been a Persian
word, since Xenophon and other Greek authors mention it as what was
much in use and delight among the kings of those eastern countries.
Strabo describing Jericho: ‘Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtae sunt
etiam ahae stirpes hortenses, locus ferax palmis abundans, spatio
stadiorum centum, totus irriguus: ibi est Regis Balsami
paradisus.’ ”—_Essay on Gardens._
In the same famous essay Temple speaks of a friend, whose conduct
and prudence he characteristically admires.
“I thought it very prudent in a gentleman of my friends in
Staffordshire, who is a great lover of his garden, to pretend no
higher, though his soil be good enough, than to the perfection of
plums; and in these (by bestowing south walls upon them) he has very
well succeeded, which he could never have done in attempts upon
peaches and grapes; and _a good plum is certainly better than an ill
peach_.”
39 SWIFT’S THOUGHTS ON HANGING.
(_Directions to Servants._)
“To grow old in the office of a footman is the highest of all
indignities; therefore, when you find years coming on without hopes
of place at Court, a command in the army, a succession to the
stewardship, an employment in the revenue (which two last you cannot
obtain without reading and writing), or running away with your
master’s niece or daughter, I directly advise you to go upon the
road, which is the only post of honour left you: there you will meet
many of your old comrades, and live a short life and a merry one,
and making a figure at your exit, wherein I will give you some
instructions.
“The last advice I give you relates to your behaviour when you are
going to be hanged; which, either for robbing your master, for
housebreaking, or going upon the highway, or in a drunken quarrel by
killing the first man you meet, may very probably be your lot, and
is owing to one of these three qualities: either a love of good
fellowship, a generosity of mind, or too much vivacity of spirits.
Your good behaviour on this article will concern your whole
community; deny the fact with all solemnity of imprecations: a
hundred of your brethren, if they can be admitted, will attend about
the bar, and be ready upon demand to give you a character before the
Court; let nothing prevail on you to confess, but the promise of a
pardon for discovering your comrades: but I suppose all this to be
in vain; for if you escape now, your fate will be the same another
day. Get a speech to be written by the best author of Newgate: some
of your kind wenches will provide you with a holland shirt and white
cap, crowned with a crimson or black ribbon: take leave cheerfully
of all your friends in Newgate: mount the cart with courage; fall on
your knees; lift up your eyes; hold a book in your hands, although
you cannot read a word; deny the fact at the gallows; kiss and
forgive the hangman; and so farewell; you shall be buried in pomp at
the charge of the fraternity: the surgeon shall not touch a limb of
you; and your fame shall continue until a successor of equal renown
succeeds in your place....”
40 “He continued in Sir William Temple’s house till the death of that
great man.”—_Anecdotes of the Family of Swift_, by the DEAN.
“It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to
himself.”—Preface to _Temple’s Works_.
On all _public_ occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same
tone. But the reader will better understand how acutely he
remembered the indignities he suffered in his household, from the
subjoined extracts from the _Journal to Stella_:—
“I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d—— ailed
him on Sunday: I made him a very proper speech; told him I observed
he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me
the cause, but would be glad to see he was in better; and one thing
I warned him of—never to appear cold to me, for I would not be
treated like a schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my
life already” [_meaning Sir William Temple_] &c. &c.—_Journal to
Stella._
“I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William
Temple because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty; and
here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment.”—_Ibid._
“The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often
thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being
Secretary of State.”—_Ibid._
“Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now
quite well. I was playing at _one-and-thirty_ with him and his
family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence a piece to begin
with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple.”—_Ibid._
“I thought I saw Jack Temple [_nephew to Sir William_] and his wife
pass by me to-day in their coach; but I took no notice of them. I am
glad I have wholly shaken off that family.”—_S. to S. Sept., 1710._
41 “Swift must be allowed,” says Dr. Johnson, “for a time, to have
dictated the political opinions of the English nation.”
A conversation on the Dean’s pamphlets excited one of the Doctor’s
liveliest sallies. “One, in particular, praised his _Conduct of the
Allies_.—Johnson: ‘Sir, his _Conduct of the Allies_ is a performance
of very little ability.... Why, sir, Tom Davies might have written
the _Conduct of the Allies_!’ ”—BOSWELL’S _Life of Johnson_.
42 “Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time,
it was his custom to try their tempers and disposition by some
abrupt question that bore the appearance of rudeness. If this were
well taken, and answered with good humour, he afterwards made amends
by his civilities. But if he saw any marks of resentment, from
alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all further
intercourse with the party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote
of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After supper, the Dean
having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained into a glass,
and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it.
‘For,’ said he, ‘I always keep some poor parson to drink the foul
wine for me.’ Mr. Pilkington, entering into his humour, thanked him,
and told him ‘he did not know the difference, but was glad to get a
glass at any rate.’ ‘Why then,’ said the Dean, ‘you shan’t, for I’ll
drink it myself. Why, —— take you, you are wiser than a paltry
curate whom I asked to dine with me a few days ago; for upon my
making the same speech to him, he said, he did not understand such
usage, and so walked off without his dinner. By the same token, I
told the gentleman who recommended him to me, that the fellow was a
blockhead, and I had done with him.’ ”—SHERIDAN’S _Life of Swift_.
43 FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CASHELL.
“Cashell, May 31st, 1735
“DEAR SIR,—
“I have been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, that I am
resolved to have no more, especially where I am likely to be
overmatched; and as I have some reason to hope what is past will be
forgotten, I confess I did endeavour in my last to put the best
colour I could think of upon a very bad cause. My friends judge
right of my idleness; but, in reality, it has hitherto proceeded
from a hurry and confusion, arising from a thousand unlucky
unforeseen accidents rather than mere sloth. I have but one
troublesome affair now upon my hands, which, by the help of the
prime serjeant, I hope soon to get rid of; and then you shall see me
a true Irish bishop. Sir James Ware has made a very useful
collection of the memorable actions of my predecessors. He tells me,
they were born in such a town of England or Ireland; were
consecrated such a year; and, if not translated, were buried in the
Cathedral church, either on the north or south side. Whence I
conclude, that a good bishop has nothing more to do than to eat,
drink, grow fat, rich, and die; which laudable example I propose for
the remainder of my life to follow; for to tell you the truth, I
have for these four or five years past met with so much treachery,
baseness, and ingratitude among mankind, that I can hardly think it
incumbent on any man to endeavour to do good to so perverse a
generation.
“I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health.
Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can
take to recover your flesh; and I do not know, except in one stage,
where you can choose a road so suited to your circumstances, as from
Dublin hither. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at
every ten or twelve miles’ end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long
miles, bad road, and no inns at all: but I have an expedient for
you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a
neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not poor; his wife is allowed
to be the best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the
fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the
parson has a little cellar of his own, of which he keeps the key,
where he always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in
bottles well corked, upon their side; and he cleans, and pulls out
the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with
a coach; if you be tired, you shall stay all night; if not, after
dinner we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine; and by
going through fields and by-ways, which the parson will show us, we
shall escape all the rocky and stony roads that lie between this
place and that, which are certainly very bad. I hope you will be so
kind as to let me know a post or two before you set out, the very
day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may have all things prepared for
you. It may be, if you ask him, Cope will come: he will do nothing
for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall add
no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth,
your most faithful and obedient servant,
“THEO. CASHELL.”
44 “Mr. Swift lived with him [Sir William Temple] some time, but
resolving to settle himself in some way of living, was inclined to
take orders. However, although his fortune was very small, he had a
scruple of entering into the Church merely for support.”—_Anecdotes
of the Family of Swift_, by the DEAN.
45 “Dr. Swift had a natural severity of face, which even his smiles
could never soften, or his utmost gaiety render placid and serene;
but when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is
scarce possible to imagine looks or features that carried in them
more terror and austerity.”—ORRERY.
46 “London, April 10th, 1713.
“Lady Masham’s eldest boy is very ill: I doubt he will not live; and
she stays at Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is so
excessively fond, it makes me mad. She should never leave the queen,
but leave everything, to stick to what is so much the interest of
the public, as well as her own....”—_Journal._
47 “My health is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and an
aching heart.”—_In May, 1719._
48 Perhaps the most melancholy satire in the whole of the dreadful
book, is the description of the very old people in the Voyage to
Laputa. At Lugnag, Gulliver hears of some persons who never die,
called the Struldbrugs, and expressing a wish to become acquainted
with men who must have so much learning and experience, his
colloquist describes the Struldbrugs to him.
“He said, They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years
old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected,
increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from
their own confession: for otherwise there not being above two or
three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a
general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is
reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only
all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more,
which arose from the prospect of never dying. They were not only
opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but
incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which
never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires
are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their
envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort
and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find
themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever
they see a funeral, they lament, and repent that others are gone to
a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to
arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned
and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very
imperfect. And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer
to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections.
The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to
dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity
and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in
others.
“If a Struldbrug happened to marry one of his own kind, the marriage
is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as
the younger of the two comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it
to be a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without
any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world,
should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.
“As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are
looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their
estates, only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and
the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that
period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or
profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither are they
allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not
even for the decision of meers and bounds.
“At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no
distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get
without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still
continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget
the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of
those who are their nearest friends and relatives. For the same
reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their
memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence
to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only
entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.
“The language of this country being always on the flux, the
Struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither
are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation
(further than by a few general words) with their neighbours, the
mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like
foreigners in their own country.
“This was the account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I can
remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the
youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me
several times by some of my friends; but although they were told
‘that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world’, they had
not the least curiosity to ask me a single question; only desired I
would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance; which is a
modest way of begging, to avoid the law that strictly forbids it,
because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a
very scanty allowance.
“They are despised and hated by all sorts of people; when one of
them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded
very particularly; so that you may know their age by consulting the
register, which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years
past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances.
But the usual way of computing how old they are, is, by asking them
what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting
history; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin
his reign after they were fourscore years old.
“They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women
more horrible than the men; besides the usual deformities in extreme
old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to
their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half
a dozen, I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there
was not above a century or two between them.”—_Gulliver’s Travels._
49 The name of Varina has been thrown into the shade by those of the
famous Stella and Vanessa; but she had a story of her own to tell
about the blue eyes of young Jonathan. One may say that the book of
Swift’s life opens at places kept by these blighted flowers! Varina
must have a paragraph.
She was a Miss Jane Waryng, sister to a college chum of his. In
1696, when Swift was nineteen years old, we find him writing a
love-letter to her, beginning, “Impatience is the most inseparable
quality of a lover.” But absence made a great difference in his
feelings; so, four years afterwards, the tone is changed. He writes
again, a very curious letter, offering to marry her, and putting the
offer in such a way that nobody could possibly accept it.
After dwelling on his poverty, &c., he says, conditionally, “I shall
be blessed to have you in my arms, without regarding whether your
person be beautiful, or your fortune large. Cleanliness in the
first, and competency in the second, is all I ask for!”
The editors do not tell us what became of Varina in life. One would
be glad to know that she met with some worthy partner, and lived
long enough to see her little boys laughing over Lilliput, without
any _arrière pensée_ of a sad character about the great Dean!
50 A sentimental Champollion might find a good deal of matter for his
art, in expounding the symbols of the “Little Language”. Usually,
Stella is “M.D.,” but sometimes her companion, Mrs. Dingley, is
included in it. Swift is “Presto”; also P.D.F.R. We have “Goodnight,
M.D.; Night, M.D.; Little M.D.; Stellakins; Pretty Stella; Dear,
roguish, impudent, pretty M.D.!” Every now and then he breaks into
rhyme, as—
I wish you both a merry new year,
Roast beef, minced-pies, and good strong beer, And me a share of
your good cheer.
That I was there, as you were here,
And you are a little saucy dear.
51 The following passages are from a paper begun by Swift on the
evening of the day of her death, Jan. 28, 1727-8:
“She was sickly from her childhood, until about the age of fifteen;
but then she grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of
the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in
London—only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and
every feature of her face in perfection.
“... Properly speaking”—he goes on with a calmness which, under the
circumstances, is terrible—“she has been dying six months!...”
“Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who
more improved them by reading and conversation.... All of us who had
the happiness of her friendship agreed unanimously, that in an
afternoon’s or evening’s conversation she never failed before we
parted of delivering the best thing that was said in the company.
Some of us have written down several of her sayings, or what the
French call _bons mots_, wherein she excelled beyond belief.”
The specimens on record, however, in the Dean’s paper called _Bons
Mots de Stella_, scarcely bear out this last part of the panegyric.
But the following prove her wit:
“A gentleman, who had been very silly and pert in her company, at
last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead.
A bishop sitting by comforted him—that he should be easy, because
‘the child was gone to heaven’. ‘No, my lord,’ said she; ‘that is it
which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child
there.’
“When she was extremely ill, her physician said, ‘Madam, you are
near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavour to get you up
again.’ She answered, ‘Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath
before I get up to the top.’
“A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness
and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came
to be so dirty. He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by
saying, ‘the doctor’s nails grew dirty by scratching himself.’
“A quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked; it had a broad brim,
and a label of paper about its neck. ‘What is that?’—said she—‘my
apothecary’s son!’ The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of
the question, set us all a-laughing.”—_Swift’s Works_, SCOTT’S ed.,
vol. ix, 295-6.
52 “I am so hot and lazy after my morning’s walk, that I loitered at
Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s, where my best gown and periwig was, and _out of
mere listlessness dine there, very often_; so I did
to-day.”—_Journal to Stella._ Mrs. Vanhomrigh, Vanessa’s mother, was
the widow of a Dutch merchant who held lucrative appointments in
King William’s time. The family settled in London in 1709, and had a
house in Bury Street, St. James’s—a street made notable by such
residents us Swift and Steele; and, in our own time, Moore and
Crabbe.
53 “Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus
is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress;
impatient to be admired; very romantic in her turn of mind;
superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex; full of pertness,
gaiety, and pride; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but
far from being either beautiful or genteel;... happy in the thoughts
of being reported Swift’s concubine, but still aiming and intending
to be his wife.”—LORD ORRERY.
54 “You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You
had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your
inclinations so much; or as often as you remember there was such a
one in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will
not be made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe what I
have suffered since I saw you last: I am sure I could have borne the
rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours.
Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more;, but those
resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long; for there is
something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this
world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak
kindly to me; for I am sure you’d not condemn any one to suffer what
I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is,
because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you; for when I begin
to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your
looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so
much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with
pity. I say as little as ever I can; did you but know what I
thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me; and believe I
cannot help telling you this and live.”—VANESSA. (M. 1714.)
55 “If we consider Swift’s behaviour, so far only as it relates to
women, we shall find that he looked upon them rather as busts than
as whole figures.”—ORRERY.
“You must have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of
very virtuous women, who attended him from morning to
night.”—ORRERY.
A correspondent of Sir Walter Scott’s furnished him with the
materials on which to found the following interesting passage about
Vanessa—after she had retired to cherish her passion in retreat:—
“Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is
built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its
external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own
account), showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of
Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s gardener, and used to work with his father in the
garden while a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well; and
his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her
person, especially as to her _embonpoint_. He said she went seldom
abroad, and saw little company; her constant amusement was reading,
or walking in the garden.... She avoided company, and was always
melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed
happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels.
The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she
always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his
arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called ‘Vanessa’s
bower’. Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot....
There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening
of which commanded a view of the Liffey.... In this sequestered
spot, according to the old gardener’s account, the Dean and Vanessa
used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table
before them.”—SCOTT’S _Swift_, vol. i, pp. 246-7. “... But Miss
Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself,
determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union
with the object of her affections—to the hope of which she had clung
amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable
bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must
have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her
secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to
be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when
she writes to him—then in Ireland—‘If you are very happy, it is
ill-natured of you not to tell me so, _except ’tis what is
inconsistent with mine_.’ Her silence and patience under this state
of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly
owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state
of her rival’s health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce
speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa’s impatience
prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs.
Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion.
Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean; and
full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given
another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh’s inquiries
implied, she sent to him her rival’s letter of interrogatories, and,
without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of
Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in
one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from
temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered
the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was
peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the
unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask
whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on
the table, and, instantly leaving the house, remounted his horse,
and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only
found her own letter to Stella. It was her death warrant. She sunk
at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished,
hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the
unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How
long she survived the last interview is uncertain, but the time does
not seem to have exceeded a few weeks.”—SCOTT.
56 “M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne
compagnie. Il n’a pas, à la verité, la gaîté du premier, mais il a
toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon goût qui manquent à
notre curé de Meudon. Ses vers sont d’un goût singulier, et presque
inimitable; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en
prose; mais pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage dans
son pays.”—VOLTAIRE, _Lettres sur les Anglais_, Let. 22.
57 The following is a _conspectus_ of them:—
ADDISON.—Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State;
Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records
in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Principal Secretaries of
State, successively.
STEELE.—Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal
Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of
Comedians; Commissioner of “Forfeited Estates in Scotland”.
PRIOR.—Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague; Gentleman of the
Bedchamber to King William; Secretary to the Embassy in France;
Under Secretary of State; Ambassador to France.
TICKELL.—Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lords Justices
of Ireland.
CONGREVE.—Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches; Commissioner
for Wine Licences; place in the Pipe-office; post in the
Custom-house; Secretary of Jamaica.
GAY.—Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to
Hanover.)
JOHN DENNIS.—A place in the Custom-house. “En Angleterre ... les
lettres sont plus en honneur qu’ici.”—
VOLTAIRE, _Lettres sur les Anglais_, Let. 20.
58 He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard
Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire—a very
ancient family.
59 “PIPE.—_Pipe_, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the
_great roll_.
“PIPE-_Office_ is an office in which a person called the _Clerk of
the Pipe_ makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the
Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of
the Exchequer.
“Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c.”—REES,
_Cyclopaed._ Art. PIPE.
“PIPE-_Office_.—Spelman thinks so called because the papers were
kept in a large _pipe_ or cask.
“These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty’s
Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the _pipe_ ... because
the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers
small _pipes_ or quills.”—BACON, _The Office of Alienations_.
[We are indebted to Richardson’s _Dictionary_ for this fragment of
erudition. But a modern man of letters can know little on these
points—by experience.]
60 “It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in
the least, nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to
him, except to a better. His place in the Custom-house, and his
office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in
upwards of twelve hundred a year.”—_Biog. Brit._, Art. CONGREVE.
61 Dryden addressed his “twelfth epistle” to “My dear friend Mr.
Congreve,” on his comedy called _The Double Dealer_, in which he
says—
Great Jonson did by strength of judgement please;
Yet, doubling Fletcher’s force, he wants his case.
In differing talents both adorn’d their age:
One for the study, t’other for the stage.
But both to Congreve justly shall submit,
One match’d in judgement, both o’ermatched in wit.
In him all beauties of this age we see, &c. &c.
The _Double Dealer_, however, was not so palpable a hit as the _Old
Bachelor_, but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having
fallen foul of it, our “swell” applied the scourge to that
presumptuous body, in the _Epistle Dedicatory_ to the “Right
Honourable Charles Montague.”
“I was conscious,” said he, “where a true critic might have put me
upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, ... but I have not
heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer.” He goes on—
“But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the
false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the
ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I
would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the
fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women
vicious and affected. How can I help it? It is the business of a
comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.... I should
be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those
ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy,
than _to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood_.”
62 “Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me
leave behind me a memorial of my friendship, with one of the most
valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country—one who
has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking
it is to do justice to Homer—and one who, I am sure, seriously
rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore,
having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate
it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together in
this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of—A. POPE.”—_Postscript
to Translation of the Iliad of Homer._ Mar. 25, 1720.
63 “When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said, he
had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular
friendship for our author, and generally took him under his
protection in his high authoritative manner.”—THOS. DAVIES,
_Dramatic Miscellanies_.
64 “Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and
lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his
acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted
that house. The Duchess showed us a diamond necklace (which Lady Di.
used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was
purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it
have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle.”—DR. YOUNG
(_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
65 “A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to
bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to
it.”—THOS. DAVIES, _Dramatic Miscellanies_.
66 The sum Congreve left her was 200_l._, as is said in the _Dramatic
Miscellanies_ of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this
charming actress and beautiful woman.
She had a “lively aspect”, says Tom, on the authority of Cibber, and
“such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as
inspired everybody with desire”. “Scarce an audience saw her that
were not half of them her lovers.”
Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. “In
_Tamerlane_, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla....;
Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica,
in his _Love for Love_; in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the _Mourning
Bride_; and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the _Way of
the World_. Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe,
not very distant from the real character of Congreve.”—_Dramatic
Miscellanies_, vol. iii, 1784.
She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public
favourite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.
67 Johnson calls his legacy the “accumulation of attentive parsimony,
which,” he continues, “though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and
useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family
from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his
relation, reduced to difficulties and distress.”—_Lives of the
Poets._
68 He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called “Amendments of Mr.
Collier’s False and Imperfect Citations,” &c. A specimen or two are
subjoined:—
“The greater part of these examples which he has produced, are only
demonstrations of his own impurity: they only savour of his
utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath.
“Where the expression is unblameable in its own pure and genuine
signification, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit; he
possesses the innocent phrase, and makes it bellow forth his own
blasphemies.
“If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is
because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures.... I will
only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I
think he shall deserve it.
“The corruption of a rotten divine is the generation of a sour
critic.”
“Congreve,” says Dr. Johnson, “a very young man, elated with
success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and
security.... The dispute was protracted through two years; but at
last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of
his labours in the reformation of the theatre.”—_Life of Congreve._
69 The scene of Valentine’s pretended madness in _Love for Love_ is a
splendid specimen of Congreve’s daring manner:—
_Scandal._—And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon
him?
_Jeremy._—Yes, Sir; he says he’ll favour it, and mistake her for
_Angelica_.
_Scandal._—It may make us sport.
_Foresight._—Mercy on us!
_Valentine._—Husht—interrupt me not—I’ll whisper predictions to
thee, and thou shalt prophesie;—I am truth, and can teach thy tongue
a new trick,—I have told thee what’s passed—now I’ll tell what’s to
come:—Dost thou know what will happen to-morrow? Answer me not—for I
will tell thee. To-morrow knaves will thrive thro’ craft, and fools
thro’ fortune; and honesty will go as it did, frost-nipt in a summer
suit. Ask me questions concerning tomorrow.
_Scandal._—Ask him, _Mr. Foresight_.
_Foresight._—Pray what will be done at Court?
_Valentine._—_Scandal_ will tell you;—I am truth, I never come
there.
_Foresight._—In the city?
_Valentine._—Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual
hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if
religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go
methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and
the horn’d herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will
drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the
family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the
cropt prentice that sweeps his master’s shop in the morning, may,
ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things,
that you will see very strange; which are, wanton wives with their
legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks.
But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look
suspiciously. Are you a husband?
_Foresight._—I am married.
_Valentine._—Poor creature! Is your wife of Covent Garden _Parish_?
_Foresight._—No; St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.
_Valentine._—Alas, poor man! his eyes are sunk, and his hands
shrivelled; his legs dwindled, and his back bow’d. Pray, pray, for a
metamorphosis—change thy shape, and shake off age; get the _Medea’s_
kettle and be boiled anew; come forth with lab’ring callous hands,
and chine of steel, and _Atlas’_ shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the
calves of twenty chairmen, and make the pedestals to stand erect
upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ha, ha, ha! That a man should
have a stomach to a wedding supper, when the pidgeons ought rather
to be laid to his feet! ha, ha, ha!
_Foresight._—His frenzy is very high now, _Mr. Scandal_.
_Scandal._—I believe it is a spring-tide.
_Foresight._—Very likely—truly; you understand these matters. _Mr.
Scandal_, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things
he has uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical.
_Valentine._—Oh! why would _Angelica_ be absent from my eyes so
long?
_Jeremy._—She’s here, Sir.
_Mrs. Foresight._—Now, Sister!
_Mrs. Frail._—O Lord! what must I say?
_Scandal._—Humour him, Madam, by all means.
_Valentine._—Where is she? Oh! I see her; she comes, like Riches,
Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and
abandoned wretch. Oh—welcome, welcome!
_Mrs. Frail._—How d’ye, Sir? Can I serve you?
_Valentine._—Hark’ee—I have a secret to tell you. _Endymion_ and the
moon shall meet us on _Mount Latmos_, and we’ll be married in the
dead of night. But say not a word. _Hymen_ shall put his torch into
a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret; and Juno shall give her
peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and Argus’s
hundred eyes be shut—ha! Nobody shall know, but _Jeremy._
_Mrs. Frail._—No, no; we’ll keep it secret; it shall be done
presently.
_Valentine._—The sooner the better. _Jeremy_, come
hither—closer—that none may overhear us. _Jeremy_, I can tell you
news; _Angelica_ is turned nun, and I am turning friar, and yet
we’ll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and
beads, that I may play my part; for she’ll meet me two hours hence
in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we
won’t see one another’s faces ’till we have done something to be
ashamed of, and then we’ll blush once for all....
_Enter_ TATTLE.
_Tattle._—Do you know me, _Valentine_?
_Valentine._—You!—who are you? No, I hope not.
_Tattle._—I am _Jack Tattle_, your friend.
_Valentine._—My friend! What to do? I am no married man, and thou
canst not lye with my wife; I am very poor, and thou canst not
borrow money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend?
_Tattle._—Hah! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a
secret.
_Angelica._—Do you know me, _Valentine_?
_Valentine._—Oh, very well.
_Angelica._—Who am I?
_Valentine._—You’re a woman, one to whom Heaven gave beauty when it
grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a
pond; and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white—a sheet of
spotless paper—when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled
and blotted by every goose’s quill. I know you; for I loved a woman,
and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing: I found out
what a woman was good for.
_Tattle._—Ay! pr’ythee, what’s that?
_Valentine._—Why, to keep a secret.
_Tattle._—O Lord!
_Valentine._—Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she
should tell, yet she is not to be believed.
_Tattle._—Hah! Good again, faith.
_Valentine._—I would have musick. Sing me the song that I
like.—CONGREVE, _Love for Love_.
There is a _Mrs. Nickleby_, of the year 1700, in Congreve’s comedy
of _The Double Dealer_, in whose character the author introduces
some wonderful traits of roguish satire. She is practised on by the
gallants of the play, and no more knows how to resist them than any
of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve.
_Lady Plyant._—Oh, reflect upon the honour of your conduct! Offering
to pervert me [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady
for her daughter’s hand, not for her own]—perverting me from the
road of virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one
trip—not one _faux pas_. Oh, consider it; what would you have to
answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty! Alas! humanity is
feeble, Heaven knows! Very feeble, and unable to support itself.
_Mellefont._—Where am I? Is it day? and am I awake? Madam—
_Lady Plyant._—O Lord, ask me the question! I’ll swear I’ll deny
it—therefore don’t ask me; nay, you shan’t ask me, I swear I’ll deny
it. O Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face; I warrant
I am as red as a turkey-cock; O fie, cousin Mellefont!
_Mellefont._—Nay, madam, hear me; I mean——
_Lady Plyant._—Hear you? No, no; I’ll deny you first, and hear you
afterwards. For one does not know how one’s mind may change upon
hearing—hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are
fallible. I won’t trust my honour, I assure you; my honour is
infallible and uncomatable.
_Mellefont._—For heaven’s sake, madam——
_Lady Plyant._—Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of
Heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be, you don’t
think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don’t think it a sin;
but still, my honour, if it were no sin ——. But, then, to marry my
daughter for the convenience of frequent opportunities—I’ll never
consent to that: as sure as can be, I’ll break the match.
_Mellefont._—Death and amazement! Madam, upon my knees——
_Lady Plyant._—Nay, nay, rise up; come, you shall see my good
nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion.
’Tis not your fault; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it,
if I have charms? And how can you help it, if you are made a
captive? I swear it is pity it should be a fault; but, my honour.
Well, but your honour, too—but the sin! Well, but the necessity. O
Lord, here’s somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you must
consider of your crime; and strive as much as can be against
it—strive, be sure; but don’t be melancholick—don’t despair; but
never think that I’ll grant you anything. O Lord, no: but be sure
you lay all thoughts aside of the marriage, for though I know you
don’t love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me; yet it
will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say? Jealous! No, I can’t
be jealous; for I must not love you; therefore don’t hope; but don’t
despair neither. They’re coming; I _must_ fly.—_The Double Dealer_,
act II, scene v, page 156.
70 “There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to
have done everything by chance. _The Old Bachelor_ was written for
amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently
composed with great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant
ambition of wit.”—JOHNSON, _Lives of the Poets_.
71 “Among those by whom it (‘Will’s’) was frequented, Southerne and
Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden’s friendship....
But Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon
Dryden’s friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the
celebrated _Old Bachelor_ being put into the poet’s hands to be
revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the
stage, returned it to the author with the high and just
commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever
seen.”—SCOTT’S _Dryden_, vol. i, p. 370.
72 It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that
Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life.
The anecdote in the text, relating to his saying that he wished “to
be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of
plainness and simplicity”, is common to all writers on the subject
of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Voltaire’s
_Letters concerning the English Nation_, published in London, 1733,
as also in Goldsmith’s _Memoir of Voltaire_. But it is worthy of
remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in
the edition of Voltaire’s _Œuvres Complètes_ in the _Panthéon
Littéraire_, Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.)
“Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porté le plus loin la gloire du
théâtre comique est feu M. Congreve. Il n’a fait que peu de pièces,
mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre.... Vous y voyez
partout le langage des honnêtes gens avec des actions de fripon; ce
qui prouve qu’il connaissait bien son monde, et qu’il vivait dans ce
qu’on appelle la bonne compagnie.”—VOLTAIRE, _Lettres sur les
Anglais_, Let. 19.
73 On the death of Queen Mary, he published a Pastoral—“The Mourning
Muse of Alexis.” Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the
orthodox way. The Queen is called PASTORA.
“I mourn PASTORA dead, let Albion mourn,
And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,”
says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that—
With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound,
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground,—
(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that
period.... It continues—)
Lord of these woods and wide extended plains,
Stretch’d on the ground and close to earth his face,
Scalding with tears the already faded grass.
To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come?
And must Pastora moulder in the tomb?
Ah Death! more fierce and unrelenting far,
Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are;
With lambs and sheep their hunger is appeased,
But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized.
This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a
shepherdess; that figure of the “Great Shepherd”, lying speechless
on his stomach, in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods
nor air can exhibit, are to be remembered in poetry surely, and this
style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congreve!
In the “Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas” (the young Lord Blandford,
the great Duke of Marlborough’s only son), Amaryllis represents
Sarah Duchess!
The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come
into work here again. At the sight of her grief—
Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forgo,
And dumb distress and new compassion show,
Nature herself attentive silence kept,
_And motion seemed suspended while she wept_!
And Pope dedicated the _Iliad_ to the author of these lines—and
Dryden wrote to him in his great hand:
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought,
But Genius must be born and never can be taught.
This is your portion, this your native store;
Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,
To SHAKESPEARE gave as much, she could not give him more.
Maintain your Post: that’s all the fame you need,
For ’tis impossible you should proceed;
Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning th’ ungrateful stage:
Unprofitably kept at Heaven’s expence,
I live a Rent-charge upon Providence:
But you whom every Muse and Grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains, and oh defend
Against your Judgement your departed Friend!
Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue;
But shade those Lawrels which descend to You:
And take for Tribute what these Lines express;
You merit more, nor could my Love do less.
This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day.
In Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time,
when gentlemen meet they fall into each other’s arms, with “Jack,
Jack, I must buss thee”; or, “’Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee,
lad”. And in a similar manner the poets saluted their brethren.
Literary gentlemen do not kiss now; I wonder if they love each other
better.
Steele calls Congreve “Great Sir” and “Great Author”; says
“Well-dressed barbarians knew his awful name”, and addresses him as
if he were a prince; and speaks of _Pastora_ as one of the most
famous tragic compositions.
74 “To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like
affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has
been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey....
After full inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been
convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can justly be
claimed by any of our infirm and erring race.”—MACAULAY.
“Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is
reasonable to believe that Addison’s profession and practice were at
no great variance; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most
of his life was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and
his activity made him formidable, the character given him by his
friends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom
interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem but the
kindness; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove
against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the
reverence.”—JOHNSON.
75 “Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something
more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man;
but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he
seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of
silence.”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
76 “Milton’s chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence
lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the
modern, who rival him in every other part of poetry; but in the
greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all the poets, both
modern and ancient, Homer alone excepted. It is impossible for the
imagination of man to disturb itself with greater ideas than those
which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth
books.”—_Spectator_, No. 279.
“If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts
of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for
one.”—Ibid., No. 417.
These famous papers appeared in each Saturday’s _Spectator_, from
January 19 to May 3, 1712. Besides his services to Milton, we may
place those he did to Sacred Music.
77 “Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy
afterwards.”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
“ ‘Leave him as soon as you can,’ said Addison to me, speaking of
Pope; ‘he will certainly play you some devilish trick else: he has
an appetite to satire.’ ”—LADY WORTLEY MONTAGU (_Spence’s
Anecdotes_).
78 Lancelot Addison, his father, was the son of another Lancelot
Addison, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield
and Archdeacon of Coventry.
79 “The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his
company, declared that he was ‘a parson in a tye-wig’, can detract
little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers, and
was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of
Mandeville.”—JOHNSON, _Lives of the Poets_.
“Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison: he had a quarrel with
him, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to
say of him—‘One day or other you’ll see that man a bishop—I’m sure
he looks that way; and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his
heart.’ ”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
“Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as
between two and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till
between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative
whilst here, and often thoughtful: sometimes so lost in thought,
that I have come into his room and stayed five minutes there before
he has known anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper
with him; kept very little company beside; and had no amour that I
know of; and I think I should have known it, if he had had
any.”—ABBÉ PHILIPPEAUX of Blois (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
80 “His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down
to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and
profound.”—MACAULAY.
81 “Our country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first
conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing
the present he made him of the _Musae Anglicanae_.”—TICKELL (Preface
to _Addison’s Works_).
82 “It was my fate to be much with the wits; my father was acquainted
with all of them. _Addison was the best company in the world._ I
never knew anybody that had so much wit as Congreve.”—LADY WORTLEY
MONTAGU (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
83 Mr. Addison To Mr. Wyche.
“DEAR SIR,
“My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so
the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman
that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in
my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done
could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have
escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a
little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I
write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense
I have of ye many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only
tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met
with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so
long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse
when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay
at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction
that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking
your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long lived
as Methusaleh, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc
in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling
behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can’t
forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to ye owners of them,
and desiring you to believe me always,
“Dear Sir,
“To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty’s Resident at Hambourg,
“May, 1703.”
—From the _Life of Addison_, by Miss Aikin, vol. i, p. 146.
84 It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and
Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory, from first to last. The
value of Swift’s testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his
vision or warped his judgement, can be doubted by nobody.
“Sept. 10, 1710.—I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and
Steele.
“11.—Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat
with him part of this evening.
“18.—To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison’s retirement
near Chelsea.... I will get what good offices I can from Mr.
Addison.
“27.—To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland’s, with Steele
and Addison, too.
“29.—I dined with Mr. Addison,” &c.—_Journal to Stella._
Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his _Travels_ “To Dr.
Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and
the greatest genius of his age.”—SCOTT. From the information of Mr.
Theophilus Swift.
“Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent
person; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit
to set him right in his notions of persons and things.”—_Letters._
“I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you
now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I
have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself.”—Swift
to Addison (1717), SCOTT’S _Swift_, vol. xix, p. 274.
Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly
communications. Time renewed them; and Tickell enjoyed Swift’s
friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so
honourably connected.
85 “Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at
Button’s; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes
far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found
it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it.”—POPE
(_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
86 “When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of
appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had
been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was,
therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his
mind.”—JOHNSON, _Lives of the Poets_.
87 “Mr. Addison wrote very fluently; but he was sometimes very slow and
scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several
friends; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted
at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself; and too much
concerned about his character as a poet; or (as he worded it) too
solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very
little matter after all!”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
88 “As to poetical affairs,” says Pope, in 1713, “I am content at
present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder
of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the
foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party
play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly
in the world be applied to him on this occasion:—
“Envy itself is dumb—in wonder lost;
And factions strive who shall applaud him most.
“The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of
the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the
author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause
proceeding more from the hands than the head.... I believe you have
heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord
Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and
presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgement (as he expressed
it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual
dictator”—POPE’S “Letter to SIR W. TRUMBULL”.
_Cato_ ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote
the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue.
It is worth noticing how many things in _Cato_ keep their ground as
habitual quotations, e.g.:—
“ ... big with the fate
Of Cato and of Rome.”
“’Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.”
“Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.”
“I think the Romans call it Stoicism.”
“My voice is still for war.”
“When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.”
Not to mention:—
“The woman who deliberates is lost,”
And the eternal:—
“Plato, thou reasonest well,”
which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play!
89 “The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on
which a Turkish princess is espoused—to whom the Sultan is reported
to pronounce, ‘Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.’ The
marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition
to his happiness; it neither found them, nor made them, equal....
Rowe’s ballad of _The Despairing Shepherd_ is said to have been
written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable
pair.”—DR. JOHNSON.
“I received the news of Mr. Addison’s being declared Secretary of
State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost
offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and I really
believe that he would have done well to have declined it now. Such a
post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in
prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the
day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both.”—LADY WORTLEY
MONTAGU to POPE. _Works_, Lord Wharncliffe’s ed., vol. ii, p. 111.
The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who
inherited, on her mother’s death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby,
which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced
age. She was of weak intellect.
Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship,
for his Collection contains “Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr.
Addison’s going to Ireland”, in which her ladyship is called
“Chloe”, and Joseph Addison, “Lycidas”; besides the ballad mentioned
by the doctor, and which is entitled “Colin’s Complaint”. But not
even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the
reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a
specimen:—
What though I have skill to complain—
Though the Muses my temples have crowned;
What though, when they hear my sweet strain,
The Muses sit weeping around.
Ah, Colin! thy hopes are in vain;
Thy pipe and thy laurel resign;
Thy false one inclines to a swain
Whose music is sweeter than thine.
90 One of the most humourous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the
_Spectator_ tells us, particularly pleased his friend SIR ROGER:
“MR. SPECTATOR—
“You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of
the country; it is now high time that you should give the country
their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex
are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to
heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most
enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, sir,
since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the
SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a
little too soon, for the modesty of their headdresses; for as the
humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into
another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely
banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts.
What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary
to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time
that they shorten the superstructure.
“The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are
very airy and very proper for the season; but this I look upon to be
only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not
had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain
the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would
fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require
more cooling than their mothers before them?
“I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has
of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made
use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman’s
honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle
within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of
circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is
sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow,
who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge’s way of making love
in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops.
“Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious
tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some
will have it that it portends the downfall of the _French_ king, and
observe, that the farthingale appeared in _England_ a little before
the ruin of the _Spanish_ monarchy. Others are of opinion that it
foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same
prognostication as the toil of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt
to think that it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world
rather than going out of it,” &c. &c.—_Spectator_, No. 127.
91 “Mr. Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and
must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to
make his own.”—POPE’S _Letters_.
92 “I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure
till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of
a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with other
particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right
understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so
natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory
discourses to my following writings; and shall give some account in
them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief
trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my
share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own
history.... There runs a story in the family, that when my mother
was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she
was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a
lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father’s being
a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as
to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my
future life, though that was the interpretation which the
neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very
first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked,
seemed to favour my mother’s dream; for, as she has often told me, I
threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make
use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it.
“As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it
remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my
nonage I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always
the favourite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that _my parts
were solid and would wear well_. I had not been long at the
university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence;
for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public
exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an
hundred words; and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke
three sentences together in my whole life....
“I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently
seen in most public places, though there are not more than half a
dozen of my select friends that know me.... There is no place of
general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes
I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will’s,
and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made
in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at
Child’s, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the _Postman_,
overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on
Tuesday night at St. James’s Coffee-house; and sometimes join the
little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to
hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the
Grecian, the ‘Cocoa-Tree’, and in the theatres both of Drury Lane
and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the
Exchange for above these two years; and sometimes pass for a Jew in
the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan’s. In short, wherever I
see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my
lips but in my own club.
“Thus I live in the world rather as a ‘_Spectator_’ of mankind than
as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a
speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever
meddling in any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the
theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the
economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who
are engaged in them—as standers-by discover blots which are apt to
escape those who are in the game.... In short, I have acted, in all
the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I
intend to preserve in this paper.”—_Spectator_, No. 1.
93 “So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had
recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the
open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us,
the sure mark of a fool.”—MACAULAY.
94 “The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but, notwithstanding all
the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room
for the old knight at the head of them; who for his reputation in
the country took occasion to whisper in the judge’s ear that _he was
glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in his circuit_.
I was listening to the proceedings of the Court with much attention,
and infinitely pleased with that great appearance and solemnity
which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our
laws; when, after about an hour’s sitting, I observed to my great
surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was
getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I found he had
acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much
business and great intrepidity.
“Upon his first rising; the Court was hushed, and a general whisper
ran among the country people that Sir Roger _was up_. The speech he
made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my
readers with an account of it, and I believe was not so much
designed by the knight himself to inform the Court, as to give him a
figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the
country.”—_Spectator_, No. 122.
95 “Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his
death-bed, to ask him whether the Christian religion was true.”—DR.
YOUNG (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
“I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I
consider as an act, the former as an habit of the mind. Mirth is
short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are
often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject
to the greatest depression of melancholy: on the contrary,
cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite
gladness, prevents it from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth
is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds,
and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight
in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual
serenity.”—ADDISON, _Spectator_, p. 381.
96 The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father
of the young earl, who was brought to his stepfather’s bed to see
“how a Christian could die”. He was amongst the wildest of the
nobility of that day; and in the curious collection of Chap-Books at
the British Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote of the freaks
of the gay lord. He was popular in London, as such daring spirits
have been in our time. The anecdotists speak very kindly of his
practical jokes. Mohun was scarcely out of prison for his second
homicide, when he went on Lord Macclesfield’s embassy to the Elector
of Hanover, when Queen Anne sent the garter to H. E. Highness. The
chronicler of the expedition speaks of his lordship as an amiable
young man, who had been in bad company, but was quite repentant and
reformed. He and Macartney afterwards murdered the Duke of Hamilton
between them, in which act Lord Mohun died. This amiable baron’s
name was Charles, and not Henry, as a recent novelist has christened
him.
97 “Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show
it, in all companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then,
used to play a little upon them; but he always took it well.”—POPE
(_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
“Sir Richard Steele was the best-natured creature in the world: even
in his worst state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to
please and be pleased.”—DR. YOUNG (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
98 The gaiety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene
between two brilliant sisters, from his comedy, _The Funeral, or
Grief à la Mode_. Dick wrote this, he said, from “a necessity of
enlivening his character”, which, it seemed, the _Christian Hero_
had a tendency to make too decorous, grave, and respectable in the
eyes of readers of that pious piece.
[_Scene draws, and discovers_ LADY CHARLOTTE, _reading at a
table,_—LADY HARRIET, _playing at a glass, to and fro, and viewing
herself._]
_L. Ha._—Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me [_looking at
herself as she speaks_] as you sit staring at a book which I know
you can’t attend.—Good Dr. Lucas may have writ there what he
pleases, but there’s no putting Francis, Lord Hardy, now Earl of
Brumpton, out of your head, or making him absent from your eyes. Do
but look on me, now, and deny it if you can.
_L. Ch._—You are the maddest girl [_smiling_].
_L. Ha._—Look ye, I knew you could not say it and forbear laughing
[_looking over Charlotte_].—Oh! I see his name as plain as you
do—F—r—a—n Fran,—c—i—s, cis, Francis, ’tis in every line of the
book.
_L. Ch._ [_rising_]—It’s in vain, I see, to mind anything in such
impertinent company—but granting ’twere as you say, as to my Lord
Hardy—’tis more excusable to admire another than oneself.
_L. Ha._—No, I think not,—yes, I grant you, than really to be vain
of one’s person, but I don’t admire myself—Pish! I don’t believe my
eyes to have that softness. [_Looking in the glass._] They an’t so
piercing: no, ’tis only stuff, the men will be talking.—Some people
are such admirers of teeth—Lord, what signifies teeth! [_Showing her
teeth._] A very black-a-moor has as white a set of teeth as I.—No,
sister, I don’t admire myself, but I’ve a spirit of contradiction in
me: I don’t know I’m in love with myself, only to rival the men.
_L. Ch._—Aye, but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev’n of that rival of
his, your dear self.
_L. Ha._—Oh, what have I done to you, that you should name that
insolent intruder? A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I
am, as a poetical lover of mine sighed and sung of both sexes,
The public envy and the public care,
I shan’t be so easily catched—I thank him—I want but to be sure, I
should heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider
whether he should depart this life or not.
_L. Ch._—Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your
humour does not at all become you.
_L. Ha_.—Vanity! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere
than you wise folks; all your life’s an art.—Speak you real.—Look
you there.—[_Hauling her to the glass._] Are you not struck with a
secret pleasure when you view that bloom in your look, that harmony
in your shape, that promptitude in your mien?
_L. Ch._—Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a
little taken with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to
correct it.
_L. Ha._—Pshaw! Pshaw! Talk this musty tale to old Mrs. Fardingale,
’tis tiresome for me to think at that rate.
_L. Ch._—They that think it too soon to understand themselves will
very soon find it too late.—But tell me honestly, don’t you like
Campley?
_L. Ha._—The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did
not think of getting me so easily.—Oh, I hate a heart I can’t break
when I please.—What makes the value of dear china, but that ’tis so
brittle?—were it not for that, you might as well have stone mugs in
your closet.’—_The Funeral_, Oct. 2nd.
“We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele’s];
there being scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom
his _Tatlers_ had not made better by his recommendation of
them.”—CIBBER.
99 “There is not now in his sight that excellent man, whom Heaven made
his friend and superior, to be at a certain place in pain for what
he should say or do. I will go on in his further encouragement. The
best woman that ever man had cannot now lament and pine at his
neglect of himself.”—STEELE [of himself]. _The Theatre_, No. 12,
Feb., 1719-20.
_ 100 The Funeral_ supplies an admirable stroke of humour,—one which
Sydney Smith has used as an illustration of the faculty in his
Lectures.
The undertaker is talking to his employés about their duty.
_Sable._—Ha, you!—A little more upon the dismal [_forming their
countenances_]; this fellow has a good mortal look,—place him near
the corpse: that wainscot-face must be o’ top of the stairs; that
fellow’s almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some
strange misery) at the end of the hall. So—But I’ll fix you all
myself. Let’s have no laughing now on any provocation. Look
yonder,—that hale, well-looking puppy! You ungrateful scoundrel, did
not I pity you, take you out of a great man’s service, and show you
the pleasure of receiving wages? _Did not I give you ten, then
fifteen, and twenty shillings a week to be sorrowful?—and the more I
give you I think the gladder you are!_
101 “From my own Apartment, Nov. 16.
“There are several persons who have many pleasures and
entertainments in their possession, which they do not enjoy; it is,
therefore, a kind and good office to acquaint them with their own
happiness, and turn their attention to such instances of their good
fortune as they are apt to overlook. Persons in the married state
often want such a monitor; and pine away their days by looking upon
the same condition in anguish and murmuring, which carries with it,
in the opinion of others, a complication of all the pleasures of
life, and a retreat from its inquietudes.
“I am led into this thought by a visit I made to an old friend who
was formerly my schoolfellow. He came to town last week, with his
family, for the winter; and yesterday morning sent me word his wife
expected me to dinner. I am, as it were, at home at that house, and
every member of it knows me for their well-wisher. I cannot, indeed,
express the pleasure it is to be met by the children with so much
joy as I am when I go thither. The boys and girls strive who shall
come first, when they think it is I that am knocking at the door;
and that child which loses the race to me runs back again to tell
the father it is Mr. Bickerstaff. This day I was led in by a pretty
girl that we all thought must have forgot me; for the family has
been out of town these two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty
subject with us, and took up our discourse at the first entrance;
after which, they began to rally me upon a thousand little stories
they heard in the country, about my marriage to one of my
neighbours’ daughters; upon which, the gentleman, my friend, said,
‘Nay; if Mr. Bickerstaff marries a child of any of his old
companions, I hope mine shall have the preference: there is Mrs.
Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow as the best
of them. But I know him too well; he is so enamoured with the very
memory of those who flourished in our youth, that he will not so
much as look upon the modern beauties. I remember, old gentleman,
how often you went home in a day to refresh your countenance and
dress when Teraminta reigned in your heart. As we came up in the
coach, I repeated to my wife some of your verses on her.’ With such
reflections on little passages which happened long ago, we passed
our time during a cheerful and elegant meal. After dinner his lady
left the room, as did also the children. As soon as we were alone,
he took me by the hand: ‘Well, my good friend,’ says he, ‘I am
heartily glad to see thee; I was afraid you would never have seen
all the company that dined with you to-day again. Do not you think
the good woman of the house a little altered since you followed her
from the playhouse to find out who she was for me?’ I perceived a
tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, which moved me not a little.
But, to turn the discourse, I said, ‘She is not, indeed, that
creature she was when she returned me the letter I carried from you,
and told me, “She hoped, as I was a gentleman, I would be employed
no more to trouble her, who had never offended me; but would be so
much the gentleman’s friend as to dissuade him from a pursuit which
he could never succeed in.” You may remember I thought her in
earnest, and you were forced to employ your cousin Will, who made
his sister get acquainted with her for you. You cannot expect her to
be for ever fifteen.’ ‘Fifteen!’ replied my good friend. ‘Ah! you
little understand—you, that have lived a bachelor—how great, how
exquisite a pleasure there is in being really beloved! It is
impossible that the most beauteous face in nature should raise in me
such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent woman. That
fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by her watching with me
in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, which had like
to have carried me off last winter. I tell you, sincerely, I have so
many obligations to her that I cannot, with any sort of moderation,
think of her present state of health. But, as to what you say of
fifteen, she gives me every day pleasure beyond what I ever knew in
the possession of her beauty when I was in the vigour of youth.
Every moment of her life brings me fresh instances of her
complacency to my inclinations, and her prudence in regard to my
fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw
it; there is no decay in any feature which I cannot trace from the
very instant it was occasioned by some anxious concern for my
welfare and interests. Thus, at the same time, methinks, the love I
conceived towards her for what she was, is heightened by my
gratitude for what she is. The love of a wife is as much above the
idle passion commonly called by that name, as the loud laughter of
buffoons is inferior to the elegant mirth of gentlemen. Oh, she is
an inestimable jewel! In her examination of her household affairs,
she shows a certain fearfulness to find a fault, which makes her
servants obey her like children; and the meanest we have has an
ingenuous shame for an offence not always to be seen in children in
other families. I speak freely to you, my old friend; ever since her
sickness, things that gave me the quickest joy before turn now to a
certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know the
poor things by their steps, and am considering what they must do
should they lose their mother in their tender years. The pleasure I
used to take in telling my boy stories of battles, and asking my
girl questions about the disposal of her baby, and the gossipping of
it, is turned into inward reflection and melancholy.’
“He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good lady
entered, and, with an inexpressible sweetness in her countenance,
told us ‘she had been searching her closet for something very good,
to treat such an old friend as I was’. Her husband’s eyes sparkled
with pleasure at the cheerfulness of her countenance; and I saw all
his fears vanish in an instant. The lady observing something in our
looks which showed we had been more serious than ordinary, and
seeing her husband receive her with great concern under a forced
cheerfulness, immediately guessed at what we had been talking of;
and applying herself to me, said, with a smile, ‘Mr. Bickerstaff, do
not believe a word of what he tells you: I shall still live to have
you for my second, as I have often promised you, unless he takes
more care of himself than he has done since his coming to town. You
must know he tells me, that he finds London is a much more healthy
place than the country; for he sees several of his old acquaintances
and schoolfellows are here—_young fellows with fair, full-bottomed
periwigs_. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out
_open-breasted_.’ My friend, who is always extremely delighted with
her agreeable humour, made her sit down with us. She did it with
that easiness which is peculiar to women of sense; and to keep up
the good humour she had brought in with her, turned her raillery
upon me. ‘Mr. Bickerstaff, you remember you followed me one night
from the playhouse; suppose you should carry me thither to-morrow
night, and lead me in the front box.’ This put us into a long field
of discourse about the beauties who were the mothers to the present,
and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her, ‘I was glad
she had transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question
but her eldest daughter was within half a year of being a toast.’
“We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the
young lady, when, on a sudden, we were alarmed with the noise of a
drum, and immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of
war. His mother, between laughing and chiding, would have put him
out of the room; but I would not part with him so. I found, upon
conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth,
that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all
the learning on the other side of eight years old. I perceived him a
very great historian in _Aesop’s Fables_; but he frankly declared to
me his mind, ‘that he did not delight in that learning, because he
did not believe they were true;’ for which reason I found he had
very much turned his studies, for about a twelvemonth past, into the
lives of Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, the _Seven
Champions_, and other historians of that age. I could not but
observe the satisfaction the father took in the forwardness of his
son, and that these diversions might turn to some profit. I found
the boy had made remarks which might be of service to him during the
course of his whole life. He would tell you the mismanagement of
John Hickerthrift, find fault with the passionate temper in Bevis of
Southampton, and loved St. George for being the champion of England;
and by this means had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the
notions of discretion, virtue, and honour. I was extolling his
accomplishments, when his mother told me, ‘that the little girl who
led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he.
Betty,’ said she, ‘deals chiefly in fairies and sprites; and
sometimes in a winter night will terrify the maids with her
accounts, until they are afraid to go up to bed.’
“I sat with them until it was very late, sometimes in merry,
sometimes in serious discourse, with this particular pleasure, which
gives the only true relish to all conversation, a sense that every
one of us liked each other. I went home, considering the different
conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor; and I must
confess it struck me with a secret concern, to reflect, that
whenever I go off I shall leave no traces behind me. In this pensive
mood I return to my family; that is to say, to my maid, my dog, my
cat, who only can be the better or worse for what happens to
me.”—_The Tatler._
102 “As to the pursuits after affection and esteem, the fair sex are
happy in this particular, that with them the one is much more nearly
related to the other than in men. The love of a woman is inseparable
from some esteem of her; and as she is naturally the object of
affection, the woman who has your esteem has also some degree of
your love. A man that dotes on a woman for her beauty, will whisper
his friend, ‘that creature has a great deal of wit when you are well
acquainted with her.’ And if you examine the bottom of your esteem
for a woman, you will find you have a greater opinion of her beauty
than anybody else. As to us men, I design to pass most of my time
with the facetious Harry Bickerstaff; but William Bickerstaff, the
most prudent man of our family, shall be my executor.”—_Tatler_, No.
206.
103 The Correspondence of Steele passed after his death into the
possession of his daughter Elizabeth, by his second wife, Miss
Scurlock, of Carmarthenshire. She married the Hon. John, afterwards
third Lord Trevor. At her death, part of the letters passed to Mr.
Thomas, a grandson of a natural daughter of Steele’s; and part to
Lady Trevor’s next of kin, Mr. Scurlock. They were published by the
learned Nichols—from whose later edition of them, in 1809, our
specimens are quoted.
Here we have him, in his courtship—which was not a very long one.
TO MRS. SCURLOCK
“Aug. 30, 1707.
“MADAM,—
“I beg pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to write
from a coffee-house, where I am attending about business. There is a
dirty crowd of busy faces all around me, talking of money; while all
my ambition, all my wealth, is love! Love which animates my heart,
sweetens my humour, enlarges my soul; and affects every action of my
life. It is to my lovely charmer I owe, that many noble ideas are
continually affixed to my words and actions; it is the natural
effect of that generous passion to create in the admirer some
similitude of the object admired. Thus, my dear, am I every day to
improve from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one, to that
Heaven which made thee such; and join with me to implore its
influence on our tender innocent hours, and beseech the Author of
love to bless the rites He has ordained—and mingle with our
happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a resignation
to His will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavour
to please Him and each other.
“I am for ever your faithful servant,
“RICH. STEELE.”
Some few hours afterwards, apparently, Mistress Scurlock received
the next one—obviously written later in the day!
“Saturday night (Aug. 30, 1707).
“DEAR, LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK,—
“I have been in very good company, where your health, under the
character of _the woman I loved best_, has been often drunk; so that
I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than _I
die for you_.
“RICH. STEELE.”
TO MRS. SCURLOCK.
“Sept. 1, 1707.
“MADAM,—
“It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend
business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I must
lock myself up, or other people will do it for me.
“A gentleman asked me this morning, ‘What news from Lisbon?’ and I
answered, ‘She is exquisitely handsome.’ Another desired to know
‘when I had last been at Hampton Court?’ I replied, ‘It will be on
Tuesday come se’nnight.’ Pr’ythee allow me at least to kiss your
hand before that day, that my mind may be in some composure. O Love!
“A thousand torments dwell about thee,
Yet who could live, to live without thee?
“Methinks I could write a volume to you; but all the language on
earth would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested
passion,
“I am ever yours,
“RICH. STEELE.”
Two days after this, he is found expounding his circumstances and
prospects to the young lady’s mamma. He dates from “Lord
Sunderland’s office, Whitehall”; and states his clear income at
1,025_l._ per annum. “I promise myself,” says he, “the pleasure of
an industrious and virtuous life, in studying to do things agreeable
to you.”
They were married according to the most probable conjectures about
the 7th inst. There are traces of a tiff about the middle of the
next month; she being prudish and fidgety, as he was impassioned and
reckless. General progress, however, may be seen from the following
notes. The “house in Bury Street, St. James’s”, was now taken.
TO MRS. STEELE.
“Oct. 16, 1707.
“DEAREST BEING ON EARTH,—
“Pardon me if you do not see me till eleven o’clock, having met a
schoolfellow from India, by whom I am to be informed on things this
night which expressly concern your obedient husband,
“RICH. STEELE.”
TO MRS. STEELE.
“Eight o’clock, Fountain Tavern,
“Oct. 22, 1707.
“MY DEAR,—
“I beg of you not to be uneasy; for I have done a great deal of
business to-day very successfully, and wait an hour or two about my
_Gazette_.”
“Dec. 22, 1707.
“MY DEAR, DEAR WIFE,—
“I write to let you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged
to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account
(when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and
obedient husband.”
“Devil Tavern, Temple Bar.
“Jan. 3, 1707-8.
“DEAR PRUE,—
“I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and inclose two
guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner.
I languish for your welfare, and will never be a moment careless
more.
“Your faithful husband,” &c.
“Jan. 14, 1707-8.
“DEAR WIFE,—
“Mr. Edgecombe, Ned Ask, and Mr. Lumley, have desired me to sit an
hour with them at the George, in Pall Mall, for which I desire your
patience till twelve o’clock, and that you will go to bed,” &c.
“Gray’s Inn, Feb. 3, 1708.
“DEAR PRUE,—
“If the man who has my shoemaker’s bill calls, let him be answered
that I shall call on him as I come home. I stay here in order to get
Jonson to discount a bill for me, and shall dine with him for that
end. He is expected at home every minute.
“Your most humble, obedient servant,” &c.
“Tennis Court Coffee-house,
“May 5, 1708.
“DEAR WIFE,—
“I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to you; in the
meantime shall lie this night at a baker’s, one Leg, over against
the ‘Devil’ Tavern, at Charing Cross. I shall be able to confront
the fools who wish me uneasy, and shall have the satisfaction to see
thee cheerful and at ease.
“If the printer’s boy be at home, send him hither; and let Mrs. Todd
send by the boy my night-gown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall
hear from me early in the morning,” &c.
Dozens of similar letters follow, with occasional guineas, little
parcels of tea, or walnuts, &c. In 1709 the _Tatler_ made its
appearance. The following curious note dates April 7, 1710:—
“I inclose to you [‘Dear Prue’] a receipt for the saucepan and
spoon, and a note of 23_l_. of Lewis’s, which will make up the
50_l._ I promised for your ensuing occasion.
“I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to the
pleasure I have in your person and society. I only beg of you to add
to your other charms a fearfulness to see a man that loves you in
pain and uneasiness, to make me as happy as it is possible to be in
this life. Rising a little in a morning, and being disposed to a
cheerfulness ... would not be amiss.”
In another, he is found excusing his coming home, being “invited to
supper to Mr. Boyle’s”. “Dear Prue,” he says on this occasion, “do
not send after me, for I shall be ridiculous.”
104 Of this famous Bishop, Steele wrote,—
Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits,
All faults he pardons, though he none commits.
105 Here we have some of his later letters:—
TO LADY STEELE.
“Hampton Court, March 16, 1716-17.
“DEAR PRUE,
“If you have written anything to me which I should have received
last night, I beg your pardon that I cannot answer till the next
post.... Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in
tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a
feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and
spirit. He is also a very great scholar: he can read his primer; and
I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about
the pictures. We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He
begins to be very ragged; and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip
him with new clothes and frocks, or what Mrs. Evans and I shall
think for his service.”
TO LADY STEELE.
[Undated.]
“You tell me you want a little flattery from me. I assure you I know
no one who deserves so much commendation as yourself, and to whom
saying the best things would be so little like flattery. The thing
speaks for itself, considering you as a very handsome woman that
loves retirement—one who does not want wit, and yet is extremely
sincere; and so I could go through all the vices which attend the
good qualities of other people, of which you are exempt. But,
indeed, though you have every perfection, you have an extravagant
fault, which almost frustrates the good in you to me; and that is,
that you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my
request, and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride
I have that you are mine....
“Your most affectionate, obsequious husband,
“RICH. STEELE.
“A quarter of Molly’s schooling is paid. The children are perfectly
well.”
TO LADY STEELE.
“March 26, 1717.
“MY DEAREST PRUE,
“I have received yours, wherein you give me the sensible affliction
of telling me enow of the continual pain in your head.... When I lay
in your place, and on your pillow, I assure you I fell into tears
last night, to think that my charming little insolent might be then
awake and in pain; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep.
“For this tender passion towards you, I must be contented that your
_Prueship_ will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher.”
At the time when the above later letters were written, Lady Steele
was in Wales, looking after her estate there. Steele, about this
time, was much occupied with a project for conveying fish alive, by
which, as he constantly assures his wife, he firmly believed he
should make his fortune. It did not succeed, however.
Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried
in Westminster Abbey.
106 Lord Chesterfield sends these verses to Voltaire in a characteristic
letter.
107 Steele replied to Dennis in an _Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet,
called __“__The Character of Sir John Edgar__”_. What Steele had to
say against the cross-grained old Critic discovers a great deal of
humour:
“Thou never didst let the sun into thy garret, for fear he should
bring a bailiff along with him....
“Your years are about sixty-five, an ugly, vinegar face, that if you
had any command you would be obeyed out of fear, from your
ill-nature pictured there; not from any other motive. Your height is
about some five feet five inches. You see I can give your exact
measure as well as if I had taken your dimension with a good cudgel,
which I promise you to do as soon as ever I have the good fortune to
meet you....
“Your doughty paunch stands before you like a firkin of butter, and
your duck-legs seem to be cast for carrying burdens.
“Thy works are libels upon others, and satires upon thyself; and
while they bark at men of sense, call him knave and fool that wrote
them. Thou hast a great antipathy to thy own species; and hatest the
sight of a fool but in thy glass.”
Steele had been kind to Dennis, and once got arrested on account of
a pecuniary service which he did him. When John heard of the
fact—“’Sdeath!” cries John; “why did not he keep out of the way as I
did?”
The _Answer_ concludes by mentioning that Cibber had offered Ten
Pounds for the discovery of the authorship of Dennis’s pamphlet; on
which, says Steele,—
“I am only sorry he has offered so much, because the _twentieth
part_ would have over-valued his whole carcass. But I know the
fellow that he keeps to give answers to his creditors will betray
him; for he gave me his word to bring officers on the top of the
house that should make a hole through the ceiling of his garret, and
so bring him to the punishment he deserves. Some people think this
expedient out of the way, and that he would make his escape upon
hearing the least noise. I say so too; but it takes him up half an
hour every night to fortify himself with his old hair trunk, two or
three joint-stools, and some other lumber, which he ties together
with cords so fast that it takes him up the same time in the morning
to release himself.”
108 Gay calls him—“Dear Prior ... beloved by every muse”.—_Mr. Pope’s
Welcome from Greece._
Swift and Prior were very intimate, and he is frequently mentioned
in the _Journal to Stella_. “Mr. Prior,” says Swift, “walks to make
himself fat, and I to keep myself down.... We often walk round the
park together.”
In Swift’s works there is a curious tract called _Remarks on the
Characters of the Court of Queen Anne_ [Scott’s edition, vol. xii].
The _Remarks_ are not by the Dean: but at the end of each is an
addition in italics from his hand, and these are always
characteristic. Thus, to the Duke of Marlborough, he adds,
“_Detestably Covetous_,” &c. Prior is thus noticed—
“MATTHEW PRIOR, ESQ., Commissioner of Trade.
“On the Queen’s accession to the throne, he was continued in his
office; is very well at Court with the ministry, and is an entire
creature of my Lord Jersey’s, whom he supports by his advice; is one
of the best poets in England, but very facetious in conversation. A
thin, hollow-looked man, turned of 40 years old. _This is near the
truth._”
Yet counting as far as to fifty his years,
His virtues and vices were as other men’s are,
High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears,
In a life party-coloured—half pleasure, half care.
Not to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave,
He strove to make interest and freedom agree,
In public employments industrious and grave,
And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he!
Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot,
Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust;
And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about,
He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust.
PRIOR’S _Poems_. [“For my own monument.”]
109 “They joined to produce a parody, entitled _The Town and Country
Mouse_, part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old
friends Smart and Johnson, by repeating to them. The piece is
therefore founded upon the twice-told jest of the _Rehearsal_....
There is nothing new or original in the idea.... In this piece,
Prior, though the younger man, seems to have had by far the largest
share.”—SCOTT’S _Dryden_, vol. i, p. 330.
110 “He was to have been in the same commission with the Duke of
Shrewsbury, but that that nobleman,” says Johnson, “refused to be
associated with one so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act
without a title till the duke’s return next year to England, and
then he assumed the style and dignity of ambassador.”
He had been thinking of slights of this sort when he wrote his
Epitaph:—
Nobles and heralds by your leave,
Here lies what once was Matthew Prior,
The son of Adam and of Eve;
Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?
But, in this case, the old prejudice got the better of the old joke.
111 His epigrams have the genuine sparkle:
THE REMEDY WORSE THAN THE DISEASE.
I sent for Radcliff; was so ill,
That other doctors gave me over:
He felt my pulse, prescribed a pill,
And I was likely to recover.
But when the wit began to wheeze,
And wine had warmed the politician,
Cured yesterday of my disease,
I died last night of my physician.
——
Yes, every poet is a fool;
By demonstration Ned can show it;
Happy could Ned’s inverted rule
Prove every fool to be a poet.
——
On his death-bed poor Lubin lies,
His spouse is in despair;
With frequent sobs and mutual sighs,
They both express their care.
A different cause, says Parson Sly,
The same effect may give;
Poor Lubin fears that he shall die,
His wife that he may live.
112 PRIOR TO SIR THOMAS HANMER.
“Aug. 4, 1709.
“DEAR SIR,
“Friendship may live, I grant you, without being fed and cherished
by correspondence; but with that additional benefit I am of opinion
it will look more cheerful and thrive better: for in this case, as
in love, though a man is sure of his own constancy, yet his
happiness depends a good deal upon the sentiments of another, and
while you and Chloe are alive, ’tis not enough that I love you both,
except I am sure you both love me again; and as one of her scrawls
fortifies my mind more against affliction than all Epictetus, with
Simplicius’s comments into the bargain, so your single letter gave
me more real pleasure than all the works of Plato.... I must return
my answer to your very kind question concerning my health. The Bath
waters have done a good deal towards the recovery of it, and the
great specific, _Cape Caballum_, will, I think, confirm it. Upon
this head I must tell you that my mare Betty grows blind, and may
one day, by breaking my neck, perfect my cure: if at Rixham fair any
pretty nagg that is between thirteen and fourteen hands presented
himself, and you would be pleased to purchase him for me, one of
your servants might ride him to Euston, and I might receive him
there. This, sir, is just as such a thing happens. If you hear, too,
of a Welch widow, with a good jointure, that has her _goings_ and is
not very skittish, pray, be pleased to cast your eye on her for me,
too. You see, sir, the great trust I repose in your skill and
honour, when I dare put two such commissions in your hand....”—_The
Hanmer Correspondence_, p. 120.
FROM MR. PRIOR.
“Paris, 1st-12th May, 1714.
“MY DEAR LORD AND FRIEND,
“Matthew never had so great occasion to write a word to Henry as
now: it is noised here that I am soon to return. The question that I
wish I could answer to the many that ask, and to our friend Colbert
de Torcy (to whom I made your compliments in the manner you
commanded) is, What is done for me: and to what I am recalled? It
may look like a bagatelle, what is to become of a philosopher like
me? but it is not such: what is to become of a person who had the
honour to be chosen, and sent hither as intrusted, in the midst of a
war, with what the Queen designed should make the peace; returning
with the Lord Bolingbroke, one of the greatest men in England, and
one of the finest heads in Europe (as they say here, if true or not,
_n’importe_); having been left by him in the greatest character
(that of Her Majesty’s Plenipotentiary), exercising that power
conjointly with the Duke of Shrewsbury, and solely after his
departure; having here received more distinguished honour than any
minister, except an Ambassador, ever did, and some which were never
given to any, but who had that character; having had all the success
that could be expected, having (God be thanked!) spared no pains, at
a time when at home the peace is voted safe and honourable—at a time
when the Earl of Oxford is Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke First
Secretary of State? This unfortunate person, I say, neglected,
forgot, unnamed to anything that may speak the Queen satisfied with
his services, or his friends concerned as to his fortune.
“Mr. de Torcy put me quite out of countenance, the other day, by a
pity that wounded me deeper than ever did the cruelty of the late
Lord Godolphin. He said he would write to Robin and Harry about me.
God forbid, my lord, that I should need any foreign intercession, or
owe the least to any Frenchman living, besides the decency of
behaviour and the returns of common civility: some say I am to go to
Baden, others that I am to be added to the Commissioners for
settling the commerce. In all cases I am ready, but in the meantime,
_dic aliquid de tribus capellis_. Neither of these two are, I
presume, honours or rewards, neither of them (let me say to my dear
Lord Bolingbroke, and let him not be angry with me), are what Drift
may aspire to, and what Mr. Whitworth, who was his fellow clerk, has
or may possess. I am far from desiring to lessen the great merit of
the gentleman I named, for I heartily esteem and love him; but in
this trade of ours, my lord, in which you are the general, as in
that of the soldiery, there is a certain right acquired by time and
long service. You would do anything for your Queen’s service, but
you would not be contented to descend, and be degraded to a charge,
no way proportioned to that of Secretary of State, any more than Mr.
Ross, though he would charge a party with a halbard in his hand,
would be content all his life after to be Serjeant. Was my Lord
Dartmouth, from Secretary, returned again to be Commissioner of
Trade, or from Secretary of War, would Frank Gwyn think himself
kindly used to be returned again to be Commissioner? In short, my
lord, you have put me above myself, and if I am to return to myself,
I shall return to something very discontented and uneasy. I am sure,
my lord, you will make the best use you can of this hint for my
good. If I am to have anything, it will certainly be for her
Majesty’s service, and the credit of my friends in the Ministry,
that it be done before I am recalled from home, lest the world may
think either that I have merited to be disgraced, or that ye dare
not stand by me. If nothing is to be done, _fiat voluntas Dei_. I
have writ to Lord Treasurer upon this subject, and having implored
your kind intercession, I promise you it is the last remonstrance of
this kind that I will ever make. Adieu, my lord; all honour, health,
and pleasure to you.
“Yours ever,
“MATT.”
“PS.—Lady Jersey is just gone from me. We drank your healths
together in usquebaugh after our tea: we are the greatest friends
alive. Once more adieu. There is no such thing as the _Book of
Travels_ you mentioned; if there be, let friend Tilson send us more
particular account of them, for neither I nor Jacob Tonson can find
them. Pray send Barton back to me, I hope with some comfortable
tidings.”—_Bolingbroke’s Letters._
113 “I asked whether Prior’s poems were to be printed entire; Johnson
said they were. I mentioned Lord Hales’s censure of Prior in his
preface to a collection of sacred poems, by various hands, published
by him at Edinburgh a great many years ago, where he mentions ‘these
impure tales, which will be the eternal opprobium of their ingenious
author’. JOHNSON: ‘Sir, Lord Hales has forgot. There is nothing in
Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hales thinks there is,
he must be more combustible than other people.’ I instanced the tale
of _Paulo Purganti and his Wife_. JOHNSON: ‘Sir, there is nothing
there but that his wife wanted to be kissed, when poor Paulo was out
of pocket. No, sir, Prior is a lady’s book. No lady is ashamed to
have it standing in her library.’ ”—BOSWELL’S _Life of Johnson_.
114 Gay was of an old Devonshire family, but his pecuniary prospects not
being great, was placed in his youth in the house of a silk-mercer
in London. He was born in 1688—Pope’s year, and in 1712 the Duchess
of Monmouth made him her secretary. Next year he published his
_Rural Sports_, which he dedicated to Pope, and so made an
acquaintance, which became a memorable friendship.
“Gay,” says Pope, “was quite a natural man,—wholly without art or
design, and spoke just what he thought and as he thought it. He
dangled for twenty years about a Court, and at last was offered to
be made usher to the young princess. Secretary Craggs made Gay a
present of stock in the South-Sea year; and he was once worth
20,000_l._, but lost it all again. He got about 500_l._ by the first
_Beggar’s Opera_, and 1,100_l._ or 1,200_l._ by the second. He was
negligent and a bad manager. Latterly, the Duke of Queensberry took
his money into his keeping, and let him only have what was necessary
out of it, and, as he lived with them, he could not have occasion
for much. He died worth upwards of 3,000_l._”—POPE (_Spence’s
Anecdotes_).
115 “Mr. Gay is, in all regards, as honest and sincere a man as ever I
knew.”—SWIFT, _to Lady Betty Germaine_, Jan. 1733.
116 Of manners gentle, of affections mild;
In wit a man; simplicity, a child;
With native humour temp’ring virtuous rage,
Form’d to delight at once and lash the age;
Above temptation in a low estate,
And uncorrupted e’en among the great:
A safe companion, and an easy friend,
Unblamed through life, lamented in the end.
These are thy honours; not that here thy bust
Is mix’d with heroes, or with kings thy dust;
But that the worthy and the good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosoms, “_Here_ lies Gay.”
POPE’S _Epitaph on Gay_.
A hare who, in a civil way,
Complied with everything, like Gay.
_Fables_, “The Hare and Many Friends.”
117 “I can give you no account of Gay,” says Pope, curiously, “since he
was raffled for, and won back by his Duchess.”—_Works_, Roscoe’s
ed., vol. ix, p. 392.
Here is the letter Pope wrote to him when the death of Queen Anne
brought back Lord Clarendon from Hanover, and lost him the
secretaryship of that nobleman, of which he had had but a short
tenure.
Gay’s Court prospects were never happy from this time.—His
dedication of the _Shepherd’s Week_ to Bolingbroke, Swift used to
call the “original sin”, which had hurt him with the house of
Hanover.
“Sept. 23, 1714.
“DEAR MR. GAY,
“Welcome to your native soil! welcome to your friends! thrice
welcome to me! whether returned in glory, blest with Court interest,
the love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agreeable
hopes; or melancholy with dejection, contemplative of the changes of
fortune, and doubtful for the future; whether returned a triumphant
Whig or a depending Tory, equally all hail! equally beloved and
welcome to me! If happy, I am to partake of your elevation; if
unhappy, you have still a warm corner in my heart, and a retreat at
Benfield in the worst of times at your service. If you are a Tory,
or thought so by any man, I know it can proceed from nothing but
your gratitude to a few people who endeavoured to serve you, and
whose politics were never your concern. If you are a Whig, as I
rather hope, and as I think your principles and mine (as brother
poets) had ever a bias to the side of liberty, I know you will be an
honest man and an inoffensive one. Upon the whole, I know you are
incapable of being so much of either party as to be good for
nothing. Therefore, once more, whatever you are or in whatever state
you are, all hail!
“One or two of your own friends complained they had nothing from you
since the Queen’s death; I told them no man living loved Mr. Gay
better than I, yet I had not once written to him in all his voyage.
This I thought a convincing proof, but truly one may be a friend to
another without telling him so every month. But they had reasons,
too, themselves to allege in your excuse, as men who really value
one another will never want such as make their friends and
themselves easy. The late universal concern in public affairs threw
us all into a hurry of spirits: even I, who am more a philosopher
than to expect anything from any reign, was borne away with the
current, and full of the expectation of the successor. During your
journeys, I knew not whither to aim a letter after you; that was a
sort of shooting flying: add to this the demand Homer had upon me,
to write fifty verses a day, besides learned notes, all of which are
at a conclusion for this year. Rejoice with me, O my friend! that my
labour is over; come and make merry with me in much feasting. We
will feed among the lilies (by the lilies I mean the ladies). Are
not the Rosalindas of Britain as charming as the Blousalindas of the
Hague? or have the two great Pastoral poets of our own nation
renounced love at the same time? for Philips, unnatural Philips,
hath deserted it, yea, and in a rustic manner kicked his Rosalind.
Dr. Parnell and I have been inseparable ever since you went. We are
now at the Bath, where (if you are not, as I heartily hope, better
engaged) your company would be the greatest pleasure to us in the
world. Talk not of expenses: Homer shall support his children. I beg
a line from you, directed to the Post-house in Bath. Poor Parnell is
in an ill state of health.
“Pardon me if I add a word of advice in the poetical way. Write
something on the King, or Prince, or Princess. On whatsoever foot
you may be with the court, this can do no harm. I shall never know
where to end, and am confounded in the many things I have to say to
you, though they all amount but to this, that I am, entirely, as
ever,
“Your,” &c.
Gay took the advice “in the poetical way”, and published _An Epistle
to a Lady, occasioned by the arrival of her Royal Highness the
Princess of Wales_. But, though this brought him access to Court,
and the attendance of the Prince and Princess at his farce of the
_What d’ye, call it?_ it did not bring him a place. On the accession
of George II, he was offered the situation of Gentleman Usher to the
Princess Louisa (her Highness being then two years old); but “by
this offer”, says Johnson, “he thought himself insulted.”
118 Gay was a great eater.—As the French philosopher used to prove his
existence by _cogito, ergo sum_, the greatest proof of Gay’s
existence is, _edit, ergo est_—CONGREVE, _in a Letter to Pope_
(_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
119 Swift indorsed the letter—“On my dear friend Mr. Gay’s death;
received Dec. 15, but not read till the 20th, by an impulse
foreboding some misfortune.”
“It was by Swift’s interest that Gay was made known to Lord
Bolingbroke, and obtained his patronage.”—SCOTT’S _Swift_, vol. i,
p. 156.
Pope wrote on the occasion of Gay’s death, to Swift, thus:—
“[Dec. 5, 1732.]
“One of the dearest and longest ties I have ever had is broken all
on a sudden by the unfortunate death of poor Mr. Gay. An
inflammatory fever carried him out of this life in three days.... He
asked of you a few hours before when in acute torment by the
inflammation in his bowels and breast.... His sisters, we suppose,
will be his heirs, who are two widows.... Good God! how often are we
to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a
part of ourselves, and the best part. God keep those we have left!
few are worth praying for, and one’s self the least of all.”
120 “Gay, like Goldsmith, had a musical talent. ‘He could play on the
flute,’ says Malone, ‘and was, therefore, enabled to adapt so
happily some of the airs in the _Beggar’s Opera_.’ ”—_Notes to_
SPENCE.
121 ’Twas when the seas were roaring
With hollow blasts of wind,
A damsel lay deploring
All on a rock reclined.
Wide o’er the foaming billows
She cast a wistful look;
Her head was crown’d with willows
That trembled o’er the brook.
Twelve months are gone and over,
And nine long tedious days;
Why didst thou, venturous lover—
Why didst thou trust the seas?
Cease, cease, thou cruel Ocean,
And let my lover rest;
Ah! what’s thy troubled motion
To that within my breast?
The merchant robb’d of pleasure,
Sees tempests in despair;
But what’s the loss of treasure
To losing of my dear?
Should you some coast be laid on,
Where gold and diamonds grow,
You’d find a richer maiden,
But none that loves you so.
How can they say that Nature
Has nothing made in vain;
Why, then, beneath the water
Should hideous rocks remain?
No eyes the rocks discover
That lurk beneath the deep,
To wreck the wandering lover,
And leave the maid to weep?
All melancholy lying,
Thus wail’d she for her dear;
Repay’d each blast with sighing,
Each billow with a tear;
When o’er the white wave stooping,
His floating corpse she spy’d;
Then, like a lily drooping,
She bow’d her head, and died.
_A Ballad_, from the “_What d’ye call it?_”
“What can be prettier than Gay’s ballad, or, rather, Swift’s,
Arbuthnot’s, Pope’s, and Gay’s, in the _What d’ye call it?_ ‘’Twas
when the seas were roaring’? I have been well informed, that they
all contributed.”—Cowper to Unwin, 1783.
122 “Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty
sort of thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try
at such a thing for some time, but afterwards thought it would be
better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise
to the _Beggar’s Opera_. He began on it, and when he first mentioned
it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried
it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us; and we now and then
gave a correction, or a word or two of advice; but it was wholly of
his own writing. When it was done, neither of us thought it would
succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said,
‘It would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly.’ We were
all at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event,
till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle,
who sat in the next box to us, say, ‘It will do—it must do!—I see it
in the eyes of them!’ This was a good while before the first Act was
over, and so gave us ease soon; for the Duke [besides his own good
taste] has a more particular research than any one now living in
discovering the taste of the public. He was quite right in this as
usual; the good nature of the audience appeared stronger and
stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause.”—POPE
(_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
123 “Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were Mr. Pope’s great favourites, in
the order they are named, in his first reading, till he was about
twelve years old.”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
“Mr. Pope’s father (who was an honest merchant, and dealt in
Hollands, wholesale) was no poet, but he used to set him to make
English verses when very young. He was pretty difficult in being
pleased; and used often to send him back to new turn them. ‘These
are not good rhimes;’ for that was my husband’s word for
verses.”—POPE’S MOTHER (_Spence_).
“I wrote things, I’m ashamed to say how soon. Part of an Epic Poem
when about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes, and some of the
neighbouring islands; and the poem opened under water with a
description of the Court of Neptune.”—POPE (ibid.).
“His perpetual application (after he set to study of himself)
reduced him in four years’ time to so bad a state of health, that,
after trying physicians for a good while in vain, he resolved to
give way to his distemper; and sat down calmly in a full expectation
of death in a short time. Under this thought, he wrote letters to
take a last farewell of some of his more particular friends, and,
among the rest, one to the Abbé Southcote. The Abbé was extremely
concerned, both for his very ill state of health and the resolution
he said he had taken. He thought there might yet be hope, and went
immediately to Dr. Radcliffe, with whom he was well acquainted, told
him Mr. Pope’s case, got full directions from him, and carried them
down to Pope in Windsor Forest. The chief thing the Doctor ordered
him was to apply less, and to ride every day. The following his
advice soon restored him to his health.”—POPE (ibid.).
124 MR. POPE TO THE REV. MR. BROOME, PULHAM, NORFOLK.
“Aug. 29, 1730.
“DEAR SIR,—
“I intended to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of
Mr. Fenton, before yours came, but stayed to have informed myself
and you of the circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a
gradual decay, though so early in life, and was declining for five
or six months. It was not, as I apprehended, the gout in his
stomach, but, I believe, rather a complication first of gross
humours, as he was naturally corpulent, not discharging themselves,
as he used no sort of exercise. No man better bore the approaches of
his dissolution (as I am told), or with less ostentation yielded up
his being. The great modesty which you know was natural to him, and
the great contempt he had for all sorts of vanity and parade, never
appeared more than in his last moments: he had a conscious
satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, in feeling himself honest,
true, and unpretending to more than his own. So he died as he lived,
with that secret, yet sufficient contentment.
“As to any papers left behind him, I dare say they can be but few;
for this reason, he never wrote out of vanity, or thought much of
the applause of men. I know an instance when he did his utmost to
conceal his own merit that way; and if we join to this his natural
love of ease, I fancy we must expect little of this sort: at least,
I have heard of none, except some few further remarks on Waller
(which his cautious integrity made him leave an order to be given to
Mr. Tonson), and perhaps, though it is many years since I saw it, a
translation of the first book of _Oppian_. He had begun a tragedy of
_Dion_, but made small progress in it.
“As to his other affairs, he died poor but honest, leaving no debts
or legacies, except of a few pounds to Mr. Trumbull and my lady, in
token of respect, gratefulness, and mutual esteem.
“I shall, with pleasure, take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet,
deserving, unpretending, Christian, unphilosophical character in his
epitaph. There truth may be spoken in a few words; as for flourish,
and oratory, and poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively
writers, such as love writing for writing sake, and would rather
show their own fine parts than report the valuable ones of any other
man. So the elegy I renounce.
“I condole with you from my heart on the loss of so worthy a man,
and a friend to us both....
“Adieu; let us love his memory, and profit by his example. Am very
sincerely, dear sir,
“Your affectionate and real servant.”
TO THE EARL OF BURLINGTON.
“August, 1714.
“MY LORD,
“If your mare could speak she would give you an account of what
extraordinary company she had on the road, which, since she cannot
do, I will.”
“It was the enterprising Mr. Lintot, the redoubtable rival of Mr.
Tonson, who, mounted on a stonehorse, overtook me in Windsor Forest.
He said he heard I designed for Oxford, the seat of the Muses, and
would, as my bookseller, by all means accompany me thither.
“I asked him where he got his horse? He answered he got it of his
publisher; ‘for that rogue, my printer,’ said he, ‘disappointed me.
I hoped to put him in good humour by a treat at the tavern of a
brown fricassée of rabbits, which cost ten shillings, with two
quarts of wine, besides my conversation. I thought myself cocksure
of his horse, which he readily promised me, but said that Mr. Tonson
had just such another design of going to Cambridge, expecting there
the copy of a new kind of Horace from Dr. ——; and if Mr. Tonson
went, he was pre-engaged to attend him, being to have the printing
of the said copy. So, in short, I borrowed this stonehorse of my
publisher, which he had of Mr. Oldmixon for a debt. He lent me, too,
the pretty boy you see after me. He was a smutty dog yesterday, and
cost me more than two hours to wash the ink off his face; but the
devil is a fair-conditioned devil, and very forward in his
catechism. If you have any more bags he shall carry them.’
“I thought Mr. Lintot’s civility not to be neglected, so gave the
boy a small bag containing three shirts and an Elzevir Virgil, and,
mounting in an instant, proceeded on the road, with my man before,
my courteous stationer beside, and the aforesaid devil behind.
“Mr. Lintot began in this manner: ‘Now, damn them! What if they
should put it into the newspaper how you and I went together to
Oxford? What would I care? If I should go down into Sussex they
would say I was gone to the Speaker; but what of that? If my son
were but big enough to go on with the business, by G-d, I would keep
as good company as old Jacob.’
“Hereupon, I inquired of his son. ‘The lad,’ says he, ‘has fine
parts, but is somewhat sickly, much as you are. I spare for nothing
in his education at Westminster. Pray, don’t you think Westminster
to be the best school in England? Most of the late Ministry came out
of it; so did many of this Ministry. I hope the boy will make his
fortune.’
“ ‘Don’t you design to let him pass a year at Oxford?’ ‘To what
purpose?’ said he. ‘The Universities do but make pedants, and I
intend to breed him a man of business.’
“As Mr. Lintot was talking I observed he sat uneasy on his saddle,
for which I expressed some solicitude. ‘Nothing,’ says he. ‘I can
bear it well enough; but, since we have the day before us, methinks
it would be very pleasant for you to rest awhile under the woods.’
When we were alighted, ‘See, here, what a mighty pretty Horace I
have in my pocket! What, if you amused yourself in turning an ode
till we mount again? Lord! if you pleased. What a clever miscellany
might you make at leisure hours!’ ‘Perhaps I may,’ said I, ‘if we
ride on; the motion is an aid to my fancy; a round trot very much
awakens my spirits; then jog on apace, and I’ll think as hard as I
can.’
“Silence ensued for a full hour; after which Mr. Lintot lugged the
reins, stopped short, and broke out, ‘Well, sir, how far have you
gone?’ I answered, seven miles. ‘Z—ds, sir,’ said Lintot, ‘I thought
you had done seven stanzas. Oldisworth, in a ramble round Wimbledon
Hill, would translate a whole ode in half this time. I’ll say that
for Oldisworth [though I lost by his Timothy’s] he translates an ode
of Horace the quickest of any man in England. I remember Dr. King
would write verses in a tavern, three hours after he could not
speak: and there is Sir Richard, in that rumbling old chariot of
his, between Fleet Ditch and St. Giles’s pound shall make you half a
Job.’
“ ‘Pray, Mr. Lintot,’ said I, ‘now you talk of translators, what is
your method of managing them?’ ‘Sir,’ replied he, ‘these are the
saddest pack of rogues in the world: in a hungry fit, they’ll swear
they understand all the languages in the universe. I have known one
of them take down a Greek book upon my counter, and cry, “Ah, this
is Hebrew,” and must read it from the latter end. By G-d, I can
never be sure in these fellows, for I neither understand Greek,
Latin, French, nor Italian myself. But this is my way; I agree with
them for ten shillings per sheet, with a proviso that I will have
their doings corrected with whom I please; so by one or the other
they are led at last to the true sense of an author; my judgement
giving the negative to all my translators.’ ‘Then how are you sure
these correctors may not impose upon you?’ ‘Why, I get any civil
gentleman (especially any Scotchman) that comes into my shop, to
read the original to me in English; by this I know whether my first
translator be deficient, and whether my corrector merits his money
or not.
“ ‘I’ll tell you what happened to me last month. I bargained with
S—— for a new version of _Lucretius_, to publish against Tonson’s,
agreeing to pay the author so many shillings at his producing so
many lines. He made a great progress in a very short time, and I
gave it to the corrector to compare with the Latin; but he went
directly to Creech’s translation, and found it the same, word for
word, all but the first page. Now, what d’ye think I did? I arrested
the translator for a cheat; nay, and I stopped the corrector’s pay,
too, upon the proof that he had made use of Creech instead of the
original.’
“ ‘Pray tell me next how you deal with the critics?’ ‘Sir,’ said he,
‘nothing more easy. I can silence the most formidable of them; the
rich ones for a sheet a-piece of the blotted manuscript, which cost
me nothing; they’ll go about with it to their acquaintance, and
pretend they had it from the author, who submitted it to their
correction: this has given some of them such an air, that in time
they come to be consulted with and dedicated to as the tip-top
critics of the town.—As for the poor critics, I’ll give you one
instance of my management, by which you may guess the rest: a lean
man, that looked like a very good scholar, came to me, t’other day;
he turned over your Homer, shook his head, shrugged up his
shoulders, and pish’d at every line of it. “One would wonder,” says
he, “at the strange presumption of some men; Homer is no such easy
task as every stripling, every versifier—” He was going on, when my
wife called to dinner; “Sir,” said I, “will you please to eat a
piece of beef with me?” “Mr. Lintot,” said he, “I am very sorry you
should be at the expense of this great book, I am really concerned
on your account.” “Sir, I am much obliged to you: if you can dine
upon a piece of beef together with a slice of pudding—?” “Mr.
Lintot, I do not say but Mr. Pope, if he would condescend to advise
with men of learning—” “Sir, the pudding is upon the table, if you
please to go in.” My critic complies; he comes to a taste of your
poetry, and tells me in the same breath, that the book is
commendable, and the pudding excellent.’
“ ‘Now, sir,’ continued Mr. Lintot, ‘in return for the frankness I
have shown, pray tell me, is it the opinion of your friends at Court
that my Lord Lansdowne will be brought to the bar or not?’ I told
him I heard he would not, and I hoped it, my lord being one I had
particular obligations to.—‘That may be,’ replied Mr. Lintot; ‘but
by G— if he is not, I shall lose the printing of a very good trial.’
“These, my lord, are a few traits with which you discern the genius
of Mr. Lintot, which I have chosen for the subject of a letter. I
dropped him as soon as I got to Oxford, and paid a visit to my Lord
Carleton, at Middleton....
“I am,” &c.
DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.
“Sept. 29, 1725.
“I am now returning to the noble scene of Dublin—into the _grand
monde_—for fear of burying my parts; to signalize myself among
curates and vicars, and correct all corruptions crept in relating to
the weight of bread-and-butter through those dominions where I
govern. I have employed my time (besides ditching) in finishing,
correcting, amending, and transcribing my _Travels_ [_Gulliver’s_],
in four parts complete, newly augmented, and intended for the press
when the world shall deserve them, or rather, when a printer shall
be found brave enough to venture his ears. I like the scheme of our
meeting after distresses and dissensions; but the chief end I
propose to myself in all my labours is to vex the world rather than
divert it; and if I could compass that design without hurting my own
person and fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you
have ever seen, without reading. I am exceedingly pleased that you
have done with translations; Lord Treasurer Oxford often lamented
that a rascally world should lay you under a necessity of
misemploying your genius for so long a time; but since you will now
be so much better employed, when you think of the world, give it one
lash the more at my request. I have ever hated all societies,
professions, and communities; and all my love is towards
individuals—for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love
Councillor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one: it is so with physicians
(I will not speak of my own trade), soldiers, English, Scotch,
French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal
called man—although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so on.
“... I have got materials towards a treatise proving the falsity of
that definition _animal rationale_, and to show it should be only
_rationis capax_.... The matter is so clear that it will admit of no
dispute—nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in
the point....
“Dr. Lewis sent me an account of Dr. Arbuthnot’s illness, which is a
very sensible affliction to me, who, by living so long out of the
world, have lost that hardness of heart contracted by years and
general conversation. I am daily losing friends, and neither seeking
nor getting others. Oh, if the world had but a dozen of Arbuthnots
in it, I would burn my _Travels_!”
MR. POPE TO DR. SWIFT.
“October 15, 1725.
“I am wonderfully pleased with the suddenness of your kind answer.
It makes me hope you are coming towards us, and that you incline
more and more to your old friends.... Here is one [Lord Bolingbroke]
who was once a powerful planet, but has now (after long experience
of all that comes of shining) learned to be content with returning
to his first point without the thought or ambition of shining at
all. Here is another [Edward, Earl of Oxford], who thinks one of the
greatest glories of his father was to have distinguished and loved
you, and who loves you hereditarily. Here is Arbuthnot, recovered
from the jaws of death, and more pleased with the hope of seeing you
again than of reviewing a world, every part of which he has long
despised but what is made up of a few men like yourself....
“Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs—and
generally by Tories too. Because he had humour, he was supposed to
have dealt with Dr. Swift, in like manner as when any one had
learning formerly, he was thought to have dealt with the devil....
“Lord Bolingbroke had not the least harm by his fall; I wish he had
received no more by his other fall. But Lord Bolingbroke is the most
improved mind since you saw him, that ever was improved without
shifting into a new body, or being _paullo minus ab angelis_. I have
often imagined to myself, that if ever all of us meet again, after
so many varieties and changes, after so much of the old world and of
the old man in each of us has been altered, that scarce a single
thought of the one, any more than a single action of the other,
remains just the same; I have fancied, I say, that we should meet
like the righteous in the millennium, quite at peace, divested of
all our former passions, smiling at our past follies, and content to
enjoy the kingdom of the just in tranquillity.
——
“I designed to have left the following page for Dr. Arbuthnot to
fill, but he is so touched with the period in yours to me,
concerning him, that he intends to answer it by a whole letter.”
125 Of the Earl of Peterborough, Walpole says:—“He was one of those men
of careless wit, and negligent grace, who scatter a thousand _bons
mots_ and idle verses, which we painful compilers gather and hoard,
till the authors stare to find themselves authors. Such was this
lord, of an advantageous figure, and enterprising spirit; as gallant
as Amadis and as brave; but a little more expeditious in his
journeys; for he is said to have seen more kings and more postilions
than any man in Europe.... He was a man, as his friend said, who
would neither live nor die like any other mortal.”
FROM THE EARL OF PETERBOROUGH TO POPE.
“You must receive my letter with a just impartiality, and give
grains of allowance for a gloomy or rainy day; I sink grievously
with the weather-glass, and am quite spiritless when oppressed with
the thoughts of a birthday or a return.
“Dutiful affection was bringing me to town, but undutiful laziness,
and being much out of order keep me in the country: however, if
alive, I must make my appearance at the birthday....
“You seem to think it vexatious that I shall allow you but one woman
at a time either to praise or love. If I dispute with you on this
point, I doubt, every jury will give a verdict against me. So, sir,
with a Mahometan indulgence, I allow you pluralities, the favourite
privileges of our Church.
“I find you don’t mend upon correction; again I tell you you must
not think of women in a reasonable way; you know we always make
goddesses of those we adore upon earth; and do not all the good men
tell us we must lay aside reason in what relates to the Deity?
“... I should have been glad of anything of Swift’s. Pray when you
write to him next, tell him I expect him with impatience, in a place
as odd and as out of the way as himself.
“Yours.”
Peterborough married Mrs. Anastasia Robinson, the celebrated singer.
126 “Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick’s family, who,
under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south
side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it
was that the wits of that time used to assemble. It is said that
when Addison had suffered any vexation from the Countess, he
withdrew the company from Button’s house.
“From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat
late and drank too much wine.”—DR. JOHNSON.
Will’s coffee-house was on the west side of Bow Street, and “corner
of Russell Street”. See _Handbook of London_.
127 “My acquaintance with Mr. Addison commenced in 1712: I liked him
then as well as I liked any man, and was very fond of his
conversation. It was very soon after that Mr. Addison advised me
‘not to be content with the applause of half the nation’. He used to
talk much and often to me, of moderation in parties: and used to
blame his dear friend Steele for being too much of a party man. He
encouraged me in my design of translating the _Iliad_, which was
begun that year, and finished in 1718.”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
128 “Addison, who was no stranger to the world, probably saw the
selfishness of Pope’s friendship; and, resolving that he should have
the consequences of his officiousness to himself, informed Dennis by
Steele that he was sorry for the insult.”—JOHNSON (_Life of
Addison_).
129 “While I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr.
Addison, to let him know ‘that I was not unacquainted with this
behaviour of his; that if I was to speak of him severely in return
for it, it should not be in such a dirty way; that I should rather
tell him himself fairly of his faults, and allow his good qualities;
and that it should be something in the following manner.’ I then
subjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my satire
on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after; and never did me any
injustice, that I know of, from that time to his death, which was
about three years after.”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
130 “That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany seems to us
highly improbable; that Addison should have been guilty of a villany
seems to us highly improbable; but that these two men should have
conspired together to commit a villany, seems, to us, improbable in
a tenfold degree.”—MACAULAY.
131 LORD BOLINGBROKE TO THE THREE YAHOOS OF TWICKENHAM.
“July 23, 1726.
“JONATHAN, ALEXANDER, JOHN, MOST EXCELLENT TRIUMVIRS OF PARNASSUS,—
“Though you are probably very indifferent where I am, or what I am
doing, yet I resolve to believe the contrary. I persuade myself that
you have sent at least fifteen times within this fortnight to Dawley
farm, and that you are extremely mortified at my long silence. To
relieve you, therefore, from this great anxiety of mind, I can do no
less than write a few lines to you; and I please myself beforehand
with the vast pleasure which this epistle must needs give you. That
I may add to this pleasure, and give further proofs of my beneficent
temper, I will likewise inform you, that I shall be in your
neighbourhood again, by the end of next week: by which time I hope
that Jonathan’s imagination of business will be succeeded by some
imagination more becoming a professor of that divine science, _la
bagatelle_. Adieu. Jonathan, Alexander, John, mirth be with you!”
132 Prior must be excepted from this observation. “He was lank and
lean.”
133 Swift exerted himself very much in promoting the _Iliad_
subscription; and also introduced Pope to Harley and
Bolingbroke.—Pope realized by the _Iliad_ upwards of 5,000_l._,
which he laid out partly in annuities, and partly in the purchase of
his famous villa. Johnson remarks that “it would be hard to find a
man so well entitled to notice by his wit, that ever delighted so
much in talking of his money”.
134 Garth, whom Dryden calls “generous as his Muse”, was a Yorkshireman.
He graduated at Cambridge, and was made M.D. in 1691. He soon
distinguished himself in his profession, by his poem of the
_Dispensary_, and in society, and pronounced Dryden’s funeral
oration. He was a strict Whig, a notable member of the Kit-Kat and a
friendly, convivial, able man. He was knighted by George I, with the
Duke of Marlborough’s sword. He died in 1718.
135 “Arbuthnot was the son of an episcopal clergyman in Scotland, and
belonged to an ancient and distinguished Scotch family. He was
educated at Aberdeen; and, coming up to London—according to a Scotch
practice often enough alluded to—to make his fortune—first made
himself known by ‘an examination of Dr. Woodward’s account of the
Deluge’. He became physician, successively to Prince George of
Denmark and to Queen Anne. He is usually allowed to have been the
most learned, as well as one of the most witty and humorous members
of the Scriblerus Club. The opinion entertained of him by the
humourists of the day is abundantly evidenced in their
correspondence. When he found himself in his last illness, he wrote
thus, from his retreat at Hampstead, to Swift:
“Hampstead, Oct. 4, 1734.
“MY DEAR AND WORTHY FRIEND,—
“You have no reason to put me among the rest of your forgetful
friends, for I wrote two long letters to you, to which I never
received one word of answer. The first was about your health; the
last I sent a great while ago, by one De la Mar. I can assure you
with great truth that none of your friends or acquaintance has a
more warm heart towards you than myself. I am going out of this
troublesome world, and you, among the rest of my friends, shall have
my last prayers and good wishes.
“... I came out to this place so reduced by a dropsy and an asthma,
that I could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move. I most earnestly
desired and begged of God that he would take me. Contrary to my
expectation, upon venturing to ride (which I had forborne for some
years), I recovered my strength to a pretty considerable degree,
slept, and had my stomach again.... What I did, I can assure you was
not for life, but ease; for I am at present in the case of a man
that was almost in harbour, and then blown back to sea—who has a
reasonable hope of going to a good place, and an absolute certainty
of leaving a very bad one. Not that I have any particular disgust at
the world; for I have as great comfort in my own family and from the
kindness of my friends as any man; but the world, in the main,
displeases me, and I have too true a presentiment of calamities that
are to befall my country. However, if I should have the happiness to
see you before I die, you will find that I enjoy the comforts of
life with my usual cheerfulness. I cannot imagine why you are
frightened from a journey to England: the reasons you assign are not
sufficient—the journey I am sure would do you good. In general, I
recommend riding, of which I have always had a good opinion, and can
now confirm it from my own experience.
“My family give you their love and service. The great loss I
sustained in one of them gave me my first shock, and the trouble I
have with the rest to bring them to a right temper to bear the loss
of a father who loves them, and whom they love, is really a most
sensible affliction to me. I am afraid, my dear friend, we shall
never see one another more in this world. I shall, to the last
moment, preserve my love and esteem for you, being well assured you
will never leave the paths of virtue and honour; for all that is in
this world is not worth the least deviation from the way. It will be
great pleasure to me to hear from you sometimes; for none are with
more sincerity than I am, my dear friend, your most faithful friend
and humble servant.”
“Arbuthnot,” Johnson says, “was a man of great comprehension,
skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with
ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a
bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of
wit; a wit who in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble
ardour of religious zeal.”
Dugald Stewart has testified to Arbuthnot’s ability in a department
of which he was particularly qualified to judge: “Let me add, that,
in the list of philosophical reformers, the authors of _Martinus
Scriblerus_ ought not to be overlooked. Their happy ridicule of the
scholastic logic and metaphysics is universally known; but few are
aware of the acuteness and sagacity displayed in their allusions to
some of the most vulnerable passages in Locke’s Essay. In this part
of the work it is commonly understood that Arbuthnot had the
principal share.”—See Preliminary Dissertation to _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, note to p. 242, and also note B. B. B., p. 285.
136 TO MR. RICHARDSON.
“Twickenham, June 10, 1733.
“As I know you and I mutually desire to see one another, I hope that
this day our wishes would have met, and brought you hither. And this
for the very reason, which possibly might hinder you coming, that my
poor mother is dead. I thank God, her death was as easy as her life
was innocent; and as it cost her not a groan, or even a sigh, there
is yet upon her countenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay,
almost of pleasure, that it is even amiable to behold it. It would
afford the finest image of a saint expired that ever painter drew;
and it would be the greatest obligation which even that obliging art
could ever bestow on a friend, if you could come and sketch it for
me. I am sure, if there be no very precedent obstacle, you will
leave any common business to do this; and I hope to see you this
evening, or to-morrow morning as early, before this winter flower is
faded. I will defer her interment till to-morrow night. I know you
love me, or I could not have written this—I could not (at this time)
have written at all. Adieu! May you die as happy!
“Yours,” &c.
137 “Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, a
Guinea trader, came in. ‘Nephew,’ said Sir Godfrey, ‘you have the
honour of seeing the two greatest men in the world.’—‘I don’t know
how great you may be,’ said the Guinea man, ‘but I don’t like your
looks: I have often bought a man, much better than both of you
together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.’ ”—DR. WARBURTON
(_Spence’s Anecdotes_).
138 Swift’s mention of him as one
—— whose filial piety excels,
Whatever Grecian story tells,
is well known. And a sneer of Walpole’s may be put to a better use
than he ever intended it for, à propos of this subject.—He
charitably sneers, in one of his letters, at Spence’s “fondling an
old mother—in imitation of Pope!”
139 Joseph Spence was the son of a clergyman, near Winchester. He was a
short time at Eton, and afterwards became a Fellow of New College,
Oxford, a clergyman, and professor of poetry. He was a friend of
Thomson’s, whose reputation he aided. He published an _Essay on the
Odyssey_ in 1726, which introduced him to Pope. Everybody liked him.
His _Anecdotes_ were placed, while still in MS., at the service of
Johnson and also of Malone. They were published by Mr. Singer in
1820.
140 He speaks of Arbuthnot’s having helped him through “that long
disease, my life”. But not only was he so feeble as is implied in
his use of the “buckram”, but “it now appears”, says Mr. Peter
Cunningham, “from his unpublished letters, that, like Lord Hervey,
he had recourse to ass’s-milk for the preservation of his health.”
It is to his lordship’s use of that simple beverage that he alludes
when he says—
Let Sporus tremble!—A. What, that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white-curd of ass’s-milk?
141 “He (Johnson) repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the
concluding lines of the _Dunciad_.”—BOSWELL.
142 “Mr. Langton informed me that he once related to Johnson (on the
authority of Spence), that Pope himself admired these lines so much
that when he repeated them his voice faltered. ‘And well it might,
sir,’ said Johnson, ‘for they are noble lines.’ ”
J. BOSWELL, junior.
143 Coleridge speaks of the “beautiful female faces” in Hogarth’s
pictures, “in whom,” he says, “the satirist never extinguished that
love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet.”—_The Friend._
144 “I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who, being asked which
book he esteemed most in his library, answered, ‘Shakespeare’: being
asked which he esteemed next best, replied ‘Hogarth’. His graphic
representations are indeed books: they have the teeming, fruitful,
suggestive meaning of _words_. Other pictures we look at—his prints
we read....
“The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture
would almost unvulgarize every subject which he might choose....
“I say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have
necessarily something in them to make us like them; some are
indifferent to us, some in their nature repulsive, and only made
interesting by the wonderful skill and truth to nature in the
painter; but I contend that there is in most of them that sprinkling
of the better nature, which, like holy water, chases away and
disperses the contagion of the bad. They have this in them, besides,
that they bring us acquainted with the every-day human face,—they
give us skill to detect those gradations of sense and virtue (which
escape the careless or fastidious observer) in the circumstances of
the world about us; and prevent that disgust at common life, that
_taedium quotidianarum formarum_, which an unrestricted passion for
ideal forms and beauties is in danger of producing. In this, as in
many other things, they are analogous to the best novels of Smollett
and Fielding.”—CHARLES LAMB.
“It has been observed that Hogarth’s pictures are exceedingly unlike
any other representations of the same kind of subjects—that they
form a class, and have a character, peculiar to themselves. It may
be worth while to consider in what this general distinction
consists.
“In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, _historical_
pictures; and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of _Tom
Jones_ ought to be regarded as an epic prose-poem, because it
contained a regular development of fable, manners, character, and
passion, the compositions of Hogarth, will, in like manner, be found
to have a higher claim to the title of epic pictures than many which
have of late arrogated that denomination to themselves. When we say
that Hogarth treated his subjects historically, we mean that his
works represent the manners and humours of mankind in action, and
their characters by varied expression. Everything in his pictures
has life and motion in it. Not only does the business of the scene
never stand still, but every feature and muscle is put into full
play; the exact feeling of the moment is brought out, and carried to
its utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the
canvas for ever. The expression is always taken _en passant_, in a
state of progress or change, and, as it were, at the salient
point.... His figures are not like the background on which they are
painted: even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their
own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history,
Hogarth’s heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits.
He gives the extremes of character and expression, but he gives them
with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what
distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind,
that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still
life.... His faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never
(we believe in any single instance) go beyond it.”—HAZLITT.
145 He made this excursion in 1732, his companions being John Thornhill
(son of Sir James), Scott the landscape-painter, Tothall, and
Forrest.
146 “Dr. Johnson made four lines once, on the death of poor Hogarth,
which were equally true and pleasing: I know not why Garrick’s were
preferred to them:—
The hand of him here torpid lies,
That drew th’ essential forms of grace;
Here, closed in death, th’ attentive eyes,
That saw the manners in the face.
“Mr. Hogarth, among the variety of kindnesses shown to me when I was
too young to have a proper sense of them, was used to be very
earnest that I should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible the
friendship, of Dr. Johnson; whose conversation was, to the talk of
other men, like Titian’s painting compared to Hudson’s, he said:
‘but don’t you tell people now that I say so’ (continued he) ‘for
the connoisseurs and I are at war, you know; and because I hate
_them_, they think I hate _Titian_—and let them!’ ... Of Dr.
Johnson, when my father and he were talking about him one day, ‘That
man’ (says Hogarth) ‘is not contented with believing the Bible; but
he fairly resolves, I think, to believe nothing _but_ the Bible.
Johnson’ (added he), ‘though so wise a fellow, is more like King
David than King Solomon, for he says in his haste, _All men are
liars_.’ ”—MRS. PIOZZI.
Hogarth died on the 26th of October, 1764. The day before his death,
he was removed from his villa at Chiswick to Leicester Fields, “in a
very weak condition, yet remarkably cheerful.” He had just received
an agreeable letter from Franklin. He lies buried at Chiswick.
147 TO SIR WATKIN PHILLIPS, BART., OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXON.
“DEAR PHILLIPS,—In my last, I mentioned my having spent an evening
with a society of authors, who seemed to be jealous and afraid of
one another. My uncle was not at all surprised to hear me say I was
disappointed in their conversation. ‘A man may be very entertaining
and instructive upon paper,’ said he, ‘and exceedingly dull in
common discourse. I have observed, that those who shine most in
private company are but secondary stars in the constellation of
genius. A small stock of ideas is more easily managed, and sooner
displayed, than a great quantity crowded together. There is very
seldom anything extraordinary in the appearance and address of a
good writer; whereas a dull author generally distinguishes himself
by some oddity or extravagance. For this reason I fancy that an
assembly of grubs must be very diverting.’
“My curiosity being excited by this hint, I consulted my friend Dick
Ivy, who undertook to gratify it the very next day, which was Sunday
last. He carried me to dine with S——, whom you and I have long known
by his writings. He lives in the skirts of the town; and every
Sunday his house is open to all unfortunate brothers of the quill,
whom he treats with beef, pudding, and potatoes, port, punch, and
Calvert’s entire butt beer. He has fixed upon the first day of the
week for the exercise of his hospitality, because some of his guests
could not enjoy it on any other, for reasons that I need not
explain. I was civilly received in a plain, yet decent habitation,
which opened backwards into a very pleasant garden, kept in
excellent order; and, indeed, I saw none of the outward signs of
authorship either in the house or the landlord, who is one of those
few writers of the age that stand upon their own foundation, without
patronage, and above dependence. If there was nothing characteristic
in the entertainer, the company made ample amends for his want of
singularity.
“At two in the afternoon, I found myself one of ten messmates seated
at table; and I question if the whole kingdom could produce such
another assemblage of originals. Among their peculiarities, I do not
mention those of dress, which may be purely accidental. What struck
me were oddities originally produced by affectation, and afterwards
confirmed by habit. One of them wore spectacles at dinner, and
another his hat flapped; though (as Ivy told me) the first was noted
for having a seaman’s eye, when a bailiff was in the wind; and the
other was never known to labour under any weakness or defect of
vision, except about five years ago, when he was complimented with a
couple of black eyes by a player, with whom he had quarrelled in his
drink. A third wore a laced stocking, and made use of crutches,
because, once in his life, he had been laid up with a broken leg,
though no man could leap over a stick with more agility. A fourth
had contracted such an antipathy to the country, that he insisted
upon sitting with his back towards the window that looked into the
garden; and when a dish of cauliflower was set upon the table, he
snuffed up volatile salts to keep him from fainting; yet this
delicate person was the son of a cottager, born under a hedge, and
had many years run wild among asses on a common. A fifth affected
distraction: when spoke to, he always answered from the purpose.
Sometimes he suddenly started up, and rapped out a dreadful oath;
sometimes he burst out a-laughing; then he folded his arms, and
sighed; and then he hissed like fifty serpents.
“At first, I really thought he was mad; and, as he sat near me,
began to be under some apprehensions for my own safety; when our
landlord, perceiving me alarmed, assured me aloud that I had nothing
to fear. ‘The gentleman,’ said he, ‘is trying to act a part for
which he is by no means qualified: if he had all the inclination in
the world, it is not in his power to be mad; his spirits are too
flat to be kindled into phrenzy.’ ‘’Tis no bad p-p-puff,
how-owever,’ observed a person in a tarnished laced coat:
‘aff-ffected m-madness w-will p-pass for w-wit w-with nine-nineteen
out of t-twenty.’ ‘And affected stuttering for humour,’ replied our
landlord; ‘though, God knows! there is no affinity betwixt them.’ It
seems this wag, after having made some abortive attempts in plain
speaking, had recourse to this defect, by means of which he
frequently extorted the laugh of the company, without the least
expense of genius; and that imperfection, which he had at first
counterfeited, was now become so habitual, that he could not lay it
aside.
“A certain winking genius, who wore yellow gloves at dinner, had, on
his first introduction, taken such offence at S——, because he looked
and talked, and ate and drank, like any other man, that he spoke
contemptuously of his understanding ever after, and never would
repeat his visit, until he had exhibited the following proof of his
caprice. Wat Wyvil, the poet, having made some unsuccessful advances
towards an intimacy with S——, at last gave him to understand, by a
third person, that he had written a poem in his praise, and a satire
against his person: that if he would admit him to his house, the
first should be immediately sent to press; but that if he persisted
in declining his friendship, he would publish the satire without
delay. S—— replied, that he looked upon Wyvil’s panegyric as, in
effect, a species of infamy, and would resent it accordingly with a
good cudgel; but if he published the satire, he might deserve his
compassion, and had nothing to fear from his revenge. Wyvil having
considered the alternative, resolved to mortify S—— by printing the
panegyric, for which he received a sound drubbing. Then he swore the
peace against the aggressor, who, in order to avoid a prosecution at
law, admitted him to his good graces. It was the singularity in
S——’s conduct on this occasion, that reconciled him to the
yellow-gloved philosopher, who owned he had some genius; and from
that period cultivated his acquaintance.
“Curious to know upon what subjects the several talents of my fellow
guests were employed, I applied to my communicative friend Dick Ivy,
who gave me to understand that most of them were, or had been,
understrappers, or journeymen, to more creditable authors, for whom
they translated, collated, and compiled, in the business of
bookmaking; and that all of them had, at different times, laboured
in the service of our landlord, though they had now set up for
themselves in various departments of literature. Not only their
talents, but also their nations and dialects, were so various, that
our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. We had
the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged off
by the most discordant vociferation; for as they all spoke together,
no man had any chance to be heard, unless he could bawl louder than
his fellows. It must be owned, however, there was nothing pedantic
in their discourse; they carefully avoided all learned
disquisitions, and endeavoured to be facetious; nor did their
endeavours always miscarry; some droll repartee passed, and much
laughter was excited; and if any individual lost his temper so far
as to transgress the bounds of decorum, he was effectually checked
by the master of the feast, who exerted a sort of paternal authority
over this irritable tribe.
“The most learned philosopher of the whole collection, who had been
expelled the university for atheism, has made great progress in a
refutation of Lord Bolingbroke’s metaphysical works, which is said
to be equally ingenious and orthodox: but in the meantime, he has
been presented to the grand jury as a public nuisance for having
blasphemed in an alehouse on the Lord’s Day. The Scotchman gives
lectures on the pronunciation of the English language, which he is
now publishing by subscription.
“The Irishman is a political writer, and goes by the name of My Lord
Potatoe. He wrote a pamphlet in vindication of a minister, hoping
his zeal would be rewarded with some place or pension; but finding
himself neglected in that quarter, he whispered about that the
pamphlet was written by the minister himself, and he published an
answer to his own production. In this he addressed the author under
the title of ‘your lordship’, with such solemnity, that the public
swallowed the deceit, and bought up the whole impression. The wise
politicians of the metropolis declared they were both masterly
performances, and chuckled over the flimsy reveries of an ignorant
garreteer, as the profound speculations of a veteran statesman,
acquainted with all the secrets of the cabinet. The imposture was
detected in the sequel, and our Hibernian pamphleteer retains no
part of his assumed importance but the bare title of ‘my lord’, and
the upper part of the table at the potatoe-ordinary in Shoe Lane.
“Opposite to me sat a Piedmontese, who had obliged the public with a
humorous satire, entitled _The Balance of the English Poets_; a
performance which evinced the great modesty and taste of the author,
and, in particular, his intimacy with the elegances of the English
language. The sage, who laboured under the ἀγροφοβία, or ‘horror of
green fields’, had just finished a treatise on practical
agriculture, though, in fact, he had never seen corn growing in his
life, and was so ignorant of grain, that our entertainer, in the
face of the whole company, made him own that a plate of hominy was
the best rice-pudding he had ever eat.
“The stutterer had almost finished his travels through Europe and
part of Asia, without ever budging beyond the liberties of the
King’s Bench, except in term-time, with a tipstaff for his
companion: and as for little Tim Cropdale, the most facetious member
of the whole society, he had happily wound up the catastrophe of a
virgin tragedy, from the exhibition of which no promised himself a
large fund of profit and reputation. Tim had made shift to live many
years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a volume; but
that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors, who
publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease, and
spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all in
the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only
enchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality.
“After dinner, we adjourned into the garden, where I observed Mr.
S—— give a short separate audience to every individual in a small
remote filbert-walk, from whence most of them dropped off one after
another, without further ceremony.”
Smollett’s house was in Lawrence Lane, Chelsea, and is now
destroyed. See _Handbook of London_, p. 115.
“The person of Smollett was eminently handsome, his features
prepossessing, and, by the joint testimony of all his surviving
friends, his conversation, in the highest degree, instructive and
amusing. Of his disposition, those who have read his works (and who
has not?) may form a very accurate estimate; for in each of them he
has presented, and sometimes, under various points of view, the
leading features of his own character without disguising the most
unfavourable of them.... When unseduced by his satirical
propensities, he was kind, generous, and humane to others; bold,
upright, and independent in his own character; stooped to no patron,
sued for no favour, but honestly and honourably maintained himself
on his literary labours.... He was a doating father, and an
affectionate husband; and the warm zeal with which his memory was
cherished by his surviving friends, showed clearly the reliance
which they placed upon his regard.”—SIR WALTER SCOTT.
148 Smollett of Bonhill, in Dumbartonshire. _Arms_, az. “a bend, or,
between a lion rampant, ppr., holding in his paw a banner, arg. and
a bugle-horn, also ppr. _Crest_, an oak-tree, ppr. _Motto,
Viresco._”
Smollett’s father, Archibald, was the fourth son of Sir James
Smollett of Bonhill, a Scotch judge and Member of Parliament, and
one of the commissioners for framing the Union with England.
Archibald married, without the old gentleman’s consent, and died
early, leaving his children dependent on their grandfather. Tobias,
the second son, was born in 1721, in the old house of Dalquharn in
the valley of Leven; and all his life loved and admired that valley
and Loch Lomond beyond all the valleys and lakes in Europe. He
learned the “rudiments” at Dumbarton Grammar-school, and studied at
Glasgow.
But when he was only eighteen, his grandfather died, and left him
without provision (figuring as the old judge in _Roderick Random_ in
consequence, according to Sir Walter). Tobias, armed with the
_Regicide_, a tragedy—a provision precisely similar to that with
which Dr. Johnson had started, just before—came up to London. The
_Regicide_ came to no good, though at first patronized by Lord
Lyttelton (“one of those little fellows who are sometimes called
great men,” Smollett says); and Smollett embarked as “surgeon’s
mate” on board a line-of-battle ship, and served in the Carthagena
expedition, in 1741. He left the service in the West Indies, and,
after residing some time in Jamaica, returned to England in 1746.
He was now unsuccessful as a physician, to begin with; published the
satires, _Advice_ and _Reproof_—without any luck; and (1747) married
the “beautiful and accomplished Miss Lascelles”.
In 1748 he brought out his _Roderick Random_, which at once made a
“hit”. The subsequent events of his life may be presented,
chronologically, in a bird’s-eye view:—
1750. Made a tour to Paris, where he chiefly wrote _Peregrine
Pickle_.
1751. Published _Peregrine Pickle_.
1753. Published _Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom_.
1755. Published version of _Don Quixote_.
1756. Began the _Critical Review_.
1758. Published his _History of England_.
1763-1766. Travelling in France and Italy; published his _Travels_.
1769. Published _Adventures of an Atom_.
1770. Set out for Italy; died at Leghorn 21st of Oct., 1771, in the
fifty-first year of his age.
149 A good specimen of the old “slashing” style of writing is presented
by the paragraph on Admiral Knowles, which subjected Smollett to
prosecution and imprisonment. The admiral’s defence on the occasion
of the failure of the Rochfort expedition came to be examined before
the tribunal of the _Critical Review_.
“He is,” said our author, “an admiral without conduct, an engineer
without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without
veracity!”
Three months imprisonment in the King’s Bench avenged this stinging
paragraph.
But the _Critical_ was to Smollett a perpetual fountain of “hot
water”. Among less important controversies may be mentioned that
with Grainger, the translator of _Tibullus_. Grainger replied in a
pamphlet; and in the next number of the _Review_ we find him
threatened with “castigation”, as an “owl that has broken from his
mew”!
In Dr. Moore’s biography of him is a pleasant anecdote. After
publishing the _Don Quixote_, he returned to Scotland to pay a visit
to his mother:—
“On Smollett’s arrival, he was introduced to his mother with the
connivance of Mrs. Telfer (her daughter), as a gentleman from the
West Indies, who was intimately acquainted with her son. The better
to support his assumed character, he endeavoured to preserve a
serious countenance, approaching to a frown; but while his mother’s
eyes were riveted on his countenance, he could not refrain from
smiling: she immediately sprung from her chair, and throwing her
arms round his neck, exclaimed, ‘Ah, my son! my son! I have found
you at last!’
“She afterwards told him, that if he had kept his austere looks and
continued to _gloom_, he might have escaped detection some time
longer, but ‘your old roguish smile’, added she, ‘betrayed you at
once.’ ”
“Shortly after the publication of _The Adventures of an Atom_,
disease again attacked Smollett with redoubled violence. Attempts
being vainly made to obtain for him the office of Consul in some
part of the Mediterranean, he was compelled to seek a warmer
climate, without better means of provision than his own precarious
finances could afford. The kindness of his distinguished friend and
countryman, Dr. Armstrong (then abroad), procured for Dr. and Mrs.
Smollett a house at Monte Nero, a village situated on the side of a
mountain overlooking the sea, in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, a
romantic and salutary abode, where he prepared for the press, the
last, and like music ‘sweetest in the close’, the most pleasing of
his compositions, _The Expedition of Humphry Clinker_. This
delightful work was published in 1771.”—SIR WALTER SCOTT.
150 The dispute with the captain arose from the wish of that functionary
to intrude on his right to his cabin, for which he had paid thirty
pounds. After recounting the circumstances of the apology, he
characteristically adds:—
“And here, that I may not be thought the sly trumpeter of my own
praises, I do utterly disclaim all praise on the occasion. Neither
did the greatness of my mind dictate, nor the force of my
Christianity exact this forgiveness. To speak truth, I forgave him
from a motive which would make men much more forgiving, if they were
much wiser than they are; because it was convenient for me so to
do.”
151 Lady Mary was his second cousin—their respective grandfathers being
sons of George Fielding, Earl of Desmond, son of William, Earl of
Denbigh.
In a letter dated just a week before his death, she says:—
“H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife
in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own
figure excepted; and I am persuaded, several of the incidents he
mentions are real matters of fact. I wonder he does not perceive Tom
Jones and Mr. Booth are sorry scoundrels.... Fielding has really a
fund of true humour, and was to be pitied at his first entrance into
the world, having no choice, as he said himself, but to be a hackney
writer or a hackney coachman. His genius deserved a better fate; but
I cannot help blaming that continued indiscretion, to give it the
softest name, that has run through his life, and I am afraid still
remains.... Since I was born no original has appeared excepting
Congreve, and Fielding, who would, I believe, have approached nearer
to his excellences, if not forced by his necessities to publish
without correction, and throw many productions into the world he
would have thrown into the fire, if meat could have been got without
money, or money without scribbling.... I am sorry not to see any
more of Peregrine Pickle’s performances; I wish you would tell me
his name,”—_Letters and Works_ (Lord Wharncliffe’s ed.), vol. iii,
pp. 93, 94.
152 He sailed for Lisbon, from Gravesend, on Sunday morning, June 30th,
1754; and began the _Journal of a Voyage_ during the passage. He
died at Lisbon, in the beginning of October of the same year. He
lies buried there, in the English Protestant church-yard, near the
Estrella Church, with this inscription over him:—
“HENRICUS FIELDING,
LUGET BRITANNIA GREMIO NON DATUM
FOVERE NATUM.”
153 Fielding himself is said by Dr. Warton to have preferred _Joseph
Andrews_ to his other writings.
154 “Richardson,” says worthy Mrs. Barbauld, in her Memoir of him,
prefixed to his Correspondence, “was exceedingly hurt at this
(_Joseph Andrews_), the more so as they had been on good terms, and
he was very intimate with Fielding’s two sisters. He never appears
cordially to have forgiven it (perhaps it was not in human nature he
should), and he always speaks in his letters with a great deal of
asperity of _Tom Jones_, more indeed than was quite graceful in a
rival author. No doubt he himself thought his indignation was solely
excited by the loose morality of the work and of its author, but he
could tolerate Cibber.”
155 It must always be borne in mind, that besides that the Doctor
couldn’t be expected to like Fielding’s wild life (to say nothing of
the fact, that they were of opposite sides in politics), Richardson
was one of his earliest and kindest friends. Yet Johnson too (as
Boswell tells us) read _Amelia_ through without “stopping”.
156 “Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners
morals appear to change—actually change with some, but appear to
change with all but the abandoned. A young man of the present day
who should act as Tom Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady
Bellaston, &c., would not be a Tom Jones; and a Tom Jones of the
present day, without perhaps being in the ground a better man, would
have perished rather than submit to be kept by a harridan of
fortune. Therefore, this novel is, and indeed, pretends to be, no
example of conduct. But, notwithstanding all this, I do loathe the
cant which can recommend _Pamela_ and _Clarissa Harlowe_ as strictly
moral, although they poison the imagination of the young with
continued doses of _tinct. lyttae_, while _Tom Jones_ is prohibited
as loose. I do not speak of young women; but a young man whose heart
or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited by this
novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful, sunshiny,
breezy spirit, that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with
the close, hot, day dreamy continuity of Richardson.”—COLERIDGE,
_Literary Remains_, vol. ii, p. 374.
157 “Nor was she (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) a stranger to that beloved
first wife, whose picture he drew in his _Amelia_, when, as she
said, even the glowing language he knew how to employ, did not do
more than justice to the amiable qualities of the original, or to
her beauty, although this had suffered a little from the accident
related in the novel—a frightful overturn, which destroyed the
gristle of her nose. He loved her passionately, and she returned his
affection....
“His biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing that after the
death of this charming woman, he married her maid. And yet the act
was not so discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid
had few personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly
attached to her mistress, and almost brokenhearted for her loss. In
the first agonies of his own grief, which approached to frenzy, he
found no relief but from weeping along with her; nor solace when a
degree calmer, but in talking to her of the angel they mutually
regretted. This made her his habitual confidential associate, and in
process of time he began to think he could not give his children a
tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful housekeeper
and nurse. At least, this was what he told his friends; and it is
certain that her conduct as his wife confirmed it, and fully
justified his good opinion.”—_Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu._ Edited by Lord Wharncliffe. _Introductory Anecdotes_, vol.
i, pp. 80, 81.
Fielding’s first wife was Miss Craddock, a young lady from
Salisbury, with a fortune of 1,500_l._, whom he married in 1736.
About the same time he succeeded, himself, to an estate of 200_l._
per annum, and on the joint amount he lived for some time as a
splendid country gentleman in Dorsetshire. Three years brought him
to the end of his fortune; when he returned to London, and became a
student of law.
158 In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for 1786, an anecdote is related of
Harry Fielding, “in whom,” says the correspondent, “good nature and
philanthropy in their extreme degree were known to be the prominent
features.” It seems that “some parochial taxes” for his house in
Beaufort Buildings had long been demanded by the collector. “At
last, Harry went off to Johnson, and obtained by a process of
literary mortgage the needful sum. He was returning with it, when he
met an old college chum whom he had not seen for many years. He
asked the chum to dinner with him at a neighbouring tavern; and
learning that he was in difficulties, emptied the contents of his
pocket into his. On returning home he was informed that the
collector had been twice for the money. ‘Friendship has called for
the money and had it,’ said Fielding; ‘let the collector call
again.’ ”
It is elsewhere told of him, that being in company with the Earl of
Denbigh, his kinsman, and the conversation turning upon their
relationship, the Earl asked him how it was that he spelled his name
“Fielding”, and not “Feilding”, like the head of the house? “I
cannot tell, my lord,” said he, “except it be that my branch of the
family were the first that knew how to spell.”
159 In 1749, he was made Justice of the Peace for Westminster and
Middlesex, an office then paid by fees, and very laborious, without
being particularly reputable. It may be seen from his own words, in
the Introduction to the _Voyage_, what kind of work devolved upon
him, and in what a state he was, during these last years; and still
more clearly, how he comported himself through all.
“Whilst I was preparing for my journey, and when I was almost
fatigued to death with several long examinations, relating to five
different murders, all committed within the space of a week, by
different gangs of street-robbers, I received a message from his
grace the Duke of Newcastle, by Mr. Carrington, the King’s
messenger, to attend his grace the next morning in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, upon some business of importance: but I excused myself from
complying with the message, as, besides being lame, I was very ill
with the great fatigues I had lately undergone, added to my
distemper.
“His grace, however, sent Mr. Carrington the very next morning, with
another summons; with which, though in the utmost distress, I
immediately complied; but the duke happening, unfortunately for me,
to be then particularly engaged, after I had waited some time, sent
a gentleman to discourse with me on the best plan which could be
invented for these murders and robberies, which were every day
committed in the streets; upon which I promised to transmit my
opinion in writing to his grace, who, as the gentleman informed me,
intended to lay it before the Privy Council.
“Though this visit cost me a severe cold, I, notwithstanding, set
myself down to work, and in about four days sent the duke as regular
a plan as I could form, with all the reasons and arguments I could
bring to support it, drawn out on several sheets of paper; and soon
received a message from the Duke, by Mr. Carrington, acquainting me
that my plan was highly approved of, and that all the terms of it
would be complied with.
“The principal and most material of these terms was the immediately
depositing 600_l._ in my hands; at which small charge I undertook to
demolish the then reigning gangs, and to put the civil policy into
such order, that no such gangs should ever be able for the future,
to form themselves into bodies, or at least to remain any time
formidable to the public.
“I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the
repeated advice of my physical acquaintances, and the ardent desire
of my warmest friends, though my distemper was now turned to a deep
jaundice; in which case the Bath waters are generally reputed to be
almost infallible. But I had the most eager desire to demolish this
gang of villains and cut-throats....
“After some weeks the money was paid at the Treasury, and within a
few days, after 200_l._ of it had come into my hands, the whole gang
of cut-throats was entirely dispersed....”
Further on, he says—
“I will confess that my private affairs at the beginning of the
winter had but a gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public
or the poor of those sums which men, who are always ready to plunder
both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking;
on the contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of
porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath not been
universally practised), and by refusing to take a shilling from a
man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had
reduced an income of about 500_l._, a year of the dirtiest money
upon earth, to little more than 300_l._, a considerable portion of
which remained with my clerk.”
160 He came of a Suffolk family—one of whom settled in Nottinghamshire.
The famous “starling” was actually the family crest.
161 “It was in this parish” (of Animo, in Wicklow), “during our stay,
that I had that wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race,
whilst the mill was going, and of being taken up unhurt; the story
is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of Ireland,
where hundreds of the common people flocked to see me.”—STERNE.
162 “My wife returns to Toulouse, and proposes to pass the summer at
Bagnères—I, on the contrary, go and visit my wife, the church, in
Yorkshire. We all live the longer, at least the happier, for having
things our own way; this is my conjugal maxim. I own ’tis not the
best of maxims, but I maintain ’tis not the worst.”—STERNE’S
_Letters_, 20th January, 1764.
163 In a collection of _Seven Letters by Sterne and His Friends_,
(printed for private circulation), in 1844, is a letter of M.
Tollot, who was in France with Sterne and his family in 1764. Here
is a paragraph:—
“Nous arrivâmes le lendemain à Montpellier, où nous trouvâmes notre
ami Mr. Sterne, sa femme, sa fille, Mr. Huet, et quelques autres
Anglaises; j’eus, je vous l’avoue, beaucoup de plaisir en revoyant
le bon et agréable Tristram.... Il avait été assez longtemps à
Toulouse, où il se serait amusé sans sa femme, qui le poursuivit
partout, et qui voulait être de tout. Ces dispositions dans cette
bonne dame, lui ont fait passer d’assez mauvais momens; il supporte
tous ces désagrémens avec une patience d’ánge.”
About four months after this very characteristic letter, Sterne
wrote to the same gentleman to whom Tollot had written; and from his
letter we may extract a companion paragraph:—
“... All which being premised, I have been for eight weeks smitten
with the tenderest passion that ever tender wight underwent. I wish,
dear cousin, thou couldst conceive (perhaps thou canst without my
wishing it) how deliciously I canter’d away with it the first month,
two up, two down, always upon my _hanches_, along the streets from
my hotel to hers, at first once—then twice, then three times a day,
till at length I was within an ace of setting up my hobby-horse in
her stable for good and all. I might as well, considering how the
enemies of the Lord have blasphemed thereupon. The last three weeks
we were every hour upon the doleful ditty of parting—and thou mayest
conceive, dear cousin, how it altered my gait and air—for I went and
came like any louden’d carl, and did nothing but _jouer des
sentimens_ with her from sun-rising even to the setting of the same;
and now she is gone to the south of France; and to finish the
_comédie_, I fell ill and broke a vessel in my lungs, and half bled
to death. _Voilà mon histoire!_”
Whether husband or wife had most of the _patience d’ánge_ may be
uncertain; but there can be no doubt which needed it most!
164 “_Tristram Shandy_ is still a greater object of admiration, the man
as well as the book; one is invited to dinner, when he dines, a
fortnight before. As to the volumes yet published, there is much
good fun in them, and humour sometimes hit and sometimes missed.
Have you read his _Sermons_, with his own comick figure, from a
painting by Reynolds, at the head of them? They are in the style I
think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and
a sensible heart; but you see him often tottering on the verge of
laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the
audience.”—GRAY’S _Letters_, June 22nd, 1760.
“It having been observed that there was little hospitality in
London—Johnson: ‘Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the
power of pleasing, will be very generally invited in London. The
man, Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for three
months.’ Goldsmith: ‘And a very dull fellow.’ Johnson: ‘Why, no,
sir.’ ”—BOSWELL’S _Life of Johnson_.
“Her [Miss Monckton’s] vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to
talk together with all imaginable ease. A singular instance happened
one evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne’s writings were
very pathetic. Johnson bluntly denied it. ‘I am sure,’ said she,
‘they have affected me.’ ‘Why,’ said Johnson, smiling, and rolling
himself about—‘that is, because, dearest, you’re a dunce.’ When she
some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth
and politeness, ‘Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not
have said it.’ ”—BOSWELL’s _Life of Johnson_.
165 A passage or two from Sterne’s _Sermons_ may not be without interest
here. Is not the following, levelled against the cruelties of the
Church of Rome, stamped with the autograph of the author of the
_Sentimental Journey_?—
“To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons
of the Inquisition—behold _religion_ with mercy and justice chained
down under her feet,—there, sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal,
propped up with racks, and instruments of torment.—Hark!—what a
piteous groan!—See the melancholy wretch who uttered it, just
brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock-trial, and endure the
utmost pain that a studied system of _religious cruelty_ has been
able to invent. Behold this helpless victim delivered up to his
tormentors. _His body so wasted with sorrow and long confinement,
you’ll see every nerve and muscle as it suffers._ Observe the last
movement of that horrid engine.—What convulsions it has thrown him
into! Consider the nature of the posture in which he now lies
stretched.—What exquisite torture he endures by it.—’Tis all nature
can bear.—Good GOD! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his
trembling lips, willing to take its leave, but not suffered to
depart. Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell,—dragg’d out
of it again to meet the flames—and the insults in his last agonies,
which this principle—this principle, that there can be religion
without morality—has prepared for him.”—_Sermon 27th_.
The next extract is preached on a text to be found in Judges xix,
ver. 1, 2, 3, concerning a “certain Levite”:—
“Such a one the Levite wanted to share his solitude and fill up that
uncomfortable blank in the heart in such a situation; for,
notwithstanding all we meet with in books, in many of which, no
doubt, there are a good many handsome things said upon the secrets
of retirement, &c.... yet still, ‘_it is not good for man to be
alone_’: nor can all which the cold-hearted pedant stuns our ears
with upon the subject, ever give one answer of satisfaction to the
mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature
will have her yearnings for society and friendship;—a good heart
wants some object to be kind to—and the best parts of our blood, and
the purest of our spirits, suffer most under the destitution.
“Let the torpid monk seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed
him! For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way; _let me
be wise and religious, but let me be_ MAN; wherever Thy Providence
places me, or whatever be the road I take to Thee, give me some
companion in my journey, be it only to remark to, ‘How our shadows
lengthen as our sun goes down’;—to whom I may say, ‘How fresh is the
face of Nature! how sweet the flowers of the field! how delicious
are these fruits!’ ”—_Sermon 18th._
The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous
“Captive”. The second shows that the same reflection was suggested
to the Rev. Laurence, by a text in Judges, as by the
_fille-de-chambre_.
Sterne’s _Sermons_ were published as those of “Mr. Yorick”.
166 “I am glad that you are in love—’twill cure you at least of the
spleen, which has a bad effect on both man and woman—I myself must
even have some Dulcinea in my head; it harmonizes the soul; and in
these cases I first endeavour to make the lady believe so, or
rather, I begin first to make myself believe that I am in love—but I
carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally—_l’amour_
(say they) _n’est rien sans sentiment_. Now, notwithstanding they
make such a pother about the _word_, they have no precise idea
annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called
love.”—STERNE’S _Letters_, May 23rd, 1765.
“PS.—My _Sentimental Journey_ will please Mrs. J—— and my Lydia [his
daughter, afterwards Mrs. Medalle]—I can answer for those two. It is
a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have been
in for some time past. I told you my design in it was to teach us to
love the world and our fellow creatures better than we do—so it runs
most upon those gentler passions and affections which aid so much to
it.”—_Letters_ [1767].
167 TO MRS. H——.
“Coxwould, Nov. 15th, 1767.
“Now be a good, dear woman, my H——, and execute those commissions
well, and when I see you I will give you a kiss—there’s for you! But
I have something else for you which I am fabricating at a great
rate, and that is my _Sentimental Journey_, which shall make you cry
as much as it has affected me, or I will give up the business of
sentimental writing ...
“I am yours, &c. &c.,
“T. SHANDY.”
TO THE EARL OF ——.
“Coxwould, Nov. 28th, 1767.
“MY LORD—’Tis with the greatest pleasure I take my pen to thank your
lordship for your letter of inquiry about Yorick—he was worn out,
both his spirits and body, with the _Sentimental Journey_; ’tis
true, then, an author must feel himself, or his reader will not—but
I have torn my whole frame into pieces by my feelings—I believe the
brain stands as much in need of recruiting as the body; therefore I
shall set out for town the twentieth of next month, after having
recruited myself a week at York. I might indeed solace myself with
my wife (who is come from France), but, in fact, I have long been a
sentimental being, whatever your lordship may think to the
contrary.”
168 “It is known that Sterne died in hired lodgings, and I have been
told that his attendants robbed him even of his gold sleeve-buttons
while he was expiring.”—DR. FERRIAR.
“He died at No. 41 (now a cheesemonger’s) on the west side of Old
Bond Street.—_Handbook of London._”
169 “In February, 1768, Laurence Sterne, his frame exhausted by long
debilitating illness, expired at his lodgings in Bond Street,
London. There was something in the manner of his death singularly
resembling the particulars detailed by Mrs. Quickly, as attending
that of Falstaff, the compeer of Yorick for infinite jest, however
unlike in other particulars. As he lay on his bed totally exhausted,
he complained that his feet were cold, and requested the female
attendant to chafe them. She did so, and it seemed to relieve him.
He complained that the cold came up higher; and whilst the assistant
was in the act of chafing his ankles and legs, he expired without a
groan. It was also remarkable that his death took place much in the
manner which he himself had wished; and that the last offices were
rendered him, not in his own house, or by the hand of kindred
affection, but in an inn, and by strangers.
“We are well acquainted with Sterne’s features and personal
appearance, to which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and
thin, with a hectic and consumptive appearance.”—SIR WALTER SCOTT.
170 “With regard to Sterne, and the charge of licentiousness which
presses so seriously upon his character as a writer, I would remark
that there is a sort of knowingness, the wit of which depends,
firstly, on the modesty it gives pain to; or, secondly, on the
innocence and innocent ignorance over which it triumphs; or thirdly,
on a certain oscillation in the individual’s own mind between the
remaining good and the encroaching evil of his nature—a sort of
dallying with the devil—a fluxionary art of combining courage and
cowardice, as when a man snuffs a candle with his fingers for the
first time, or better still, perhaps, like that trembling daring
with which a child touches a hot tea-urn, because it has been
forbidden; so that the mind has its own white and black angel; the
same or similar amusement as may be supposed to take place between
an old debauchee and a prude—the feeling resentment, on the one
hand, from a prudential anxiety to preserve appearances and have a
character; and, on the other, an inward sympathy with the enemy. We
have only to suppose society innocent, and then nine-tenths of this
sort of wit would be like a stone that falls in snow, making no
sound, because exciting no resistance; the remainder rests on its
being an offence against the good manners of human nature itself.
“This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless be combined with wit,
drollery, fancy, and even humour; and we have only to regret the
misalliance; but that the latter are quite distinct from the former,
may be made evident by abstracting in our imagination the morality
of the characters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which are
all antagonists to this spurious sort of wit, from the rest of
_Tristram Shandy_, and by supposing, instead of them, the presence
of two or three callous debauchees. The result will be pure disgust.
Sterne cannot be too severely censured for thus using the best
dispositions of our nature as the panders and condiments for the
basest.”—COLERIDGE, _Literary Remains_, vol. i, pp. 141, 142.
171 “He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never
forgets what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of
feeling distinguishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence
to the generosity of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last
guinea....
“The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the
pleasing truth with which the principal characters are designed,
make the _Vicar of Wakefield_ one of the most delicious morsels of
fictitious composition on which the human mind was ever employed.
“... We read the _Vicar of Wakefield_ in youth and in age—we return
to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who
contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature.”—SIR WALTER
SCOTT.
172 “Now Herder came,” says Goethe in his Autobiography, relating his
first acquaintance with Goldsmith’s masterpiece, “and together with
his great knowledge brought many other aids, and the later
publications besides. Among these he announced to us the _Vicar of
Wakefield_ as an excellent work, with the German translation of
which he would make us acquainted by reading it aloud to us
himself....
“A Protestant country clergyman is perhaps the most beautiful
subject for a modern idyl; he appears like Melchizedeck, as priest
and king in one person. To the most innocent situation which can be
imagined on earth, to that of a husbandman, he is, for the most
part, united by similarity of occupation as well as by equality in
family relationships; he is a father, a master of a family, an
agriculturist, and thus perfectly a member of the community. On this
pure, beautiful, earthly foundation rests his higher calling; to him
is it given to guide men through life, to take care of their
spiritual education, to bless them at all the leading epochs of
their existence, to instruct, to strengthen, to console them, and if
consolation is not sufficient for the present, to call up and
guarantee the hope of a happier future. Imagine such a man with pure
human sentiments, strong enough not to deviate from them under any
circumstances, and by this already elevated above the multitude of
whom one cannot expect purity and firmness; give him the learning
necessary for his office, as well as a cheerful, equable activity,
which is even passionate, as it neglects no moment to do good—and
you will have him well endowed. But at the same time add the
necessary limitation, so that he must not only pause in a small
circle, but may also, perchance, pass over to a smaller; grant him
good nature, placability, resolution, and everything else
praiseworthy that springs from a decided character, and over all
this a cheerful spirit of compliance, and a smiling toleration of
his own failings and those of others,—then you will have put
together pretty well the image of our excellent Wakefield.
“The delineation of this character on his course of life through
joys and sorrows, the ever-increasing interest of the story, by the
combination of the entirely natural with the strange and the
singular, make this novel one of the best which has ever been
written; besides this, it has the great advantage that it is quite
moral, nay, in a pure sense, Christian—represents the reward of a
goodwill and perseverance in the right, strengthens an unconditional
confidence in God, and attests the final triumph of good over evil;
and all this without a trace of cant or pedantry. The author was
preserved from both of these by an elocution of mind that shows
itself throughout in the form of irony, by which this little work
must appear to us as wise as it is amiable. The author, Dr.
Goldsmith, has, without question, a great insight into the moral
world, into its strength and its infirmities; but at the same time
he can thankfully acknowledge that he is an Englishman, and reckon
highly the advantages which his country and his nation afford him.
The family, with the delineation of which he occupies himself,
stands upon one of the last steps of citizen comfort, and yet comes
in contact with the highest; its narrow circle, which becomes still
more contracted, touches upon the great world through the natural
and civil course of things; this little skiff floats on the agitated
waves of English life, and in weal or woe it has to expect injury or
help from the vast fleet which sails around it.
“I may suppose that my readers know this work, and have it in
memory; whoever hears it named for the first time here, as well as
he who is induced to read it again, will thank me.”—GOETHE, _Truth
and Poetry; from my own Life_ (English translation, vol. i, pp.
378-9).
“He seems from infancy to have been compounded of two natures, one
bright, the other blundering; or to have had fairy gifts laid in his
cradle by the ‘good people’ who haunted his birthplace, the old
goblin mansion, on the banks of the Inny.
“He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may so term it,
throughout his career. His fairy gifts are of no avail at school,
academy, or college: they unfit him for close study and practical
science, and render him heedless of everything that does not address
itself to his poetical imagination, and genial and festive feelings;
they dispose him to break away from restraint, to stroll about
hedges, green lanes, and haunted streams, to revel with jovial
companions, or to rove the country like a gipsy in quest of odd
adventures....
“Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the
poor, they never could betray him into companionship with the
depraved. His relish for humour, and for the study of character, as
we have before observed, brought him often into convivial company of
a vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgarity and
their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole store
familiar features of life which form the staple of his most popular
writings.”—WASHINGTON IRVING.
173 “The family of Goldsmith, Goldsmyth, or, as it was occasionally
written, Gouldsmith, is of considerable standing in Ireland, and
seems always to have held a respectable station in society. Its
origin is English, supposed to be derived from that which was long
settled at Crayford in Kent.”—PRIOR’S _Life of Goldsmith_.
Oliver’s father, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were
clergymen; and two of them married clergymen’s daughters.
174 At church with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorn’d the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevail’d with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff remain’d to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,
With steady zeal each honest rustic ran;
E’en children follow’d with endearing wile,
And pluck’d his gown to share the good man’s smile.
His ready smile a parent’s warmth exprest,
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts his awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
_The Deserted Village._
175 “In May this year (1768), he lost his brother, the Rev. Henry
Goldsmith, for whom he had been unable to obtain preferment in the
Church....
“....To the curacy of Kilkenny West, the moderate stipend of which,
forty pounds a year, is sufficiently celebrated by his brother’s
lines. It has been stated that Mr. Goldsmith added a school, which,
after having been held at more than one place in the vicinity, was
finally fixed at Lissoy. Here his talents and industry gave it
celebrity, and under his care the sons of many of the neighbouring
gentry received their education. A fever breaking out among the boys
about 1765, they dispersed for a time, but reassembling at Athlone,
he continued his scholastic labours there until the time of his
death, which happened, like that of his brother, about the
forty-fifth year of his age. He was a man of an excellent heart and
an amiable disposition.”—PRIOR’S _Goldsmith_.
Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart, untravell’d, fondly turns to thee:
Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.
_The Traveller_.
176 “When Goldsmith died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William
Filby (amounting in all to 79_l_.) was for clothes supplied to this
nephew Hodson.”—FORSTER’S _Goldsmith_, p. 520.
As this nephew Hodson ended his days (see the same page) “a
prosperous Irish gentleman”, it is not unreasonable to wish that he
had cleared off Mr. Filby’s bill.
177 “Poor fellow! He hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a
goose, but when he saw it on the table.”—CUMBERLAND’S _Memoirs_.
178 “These youthful follies, like the fermentation of liquors, often
disturb the mind only in order to its future refinement: a life
spent in phlegmatic apathy resembles those liquors which never
ferment and are consequently always muddy.”—GOLDSMITH, _Memoir of
Voltaire_.
“He (Johnson) said Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late. There
appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young.”—BOSWELL.
179 “An ‘inspired idiot’, Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him [Johnson]
... Yet, on the whole, there is no evil in the ‘gooseberry-fool’,
but rather much good; of a finer, if of a weaker sort than
Johnson’s; and all the more genuine that he himself could never
become _conscious_ of it, though unhappily never cease attempting to
become so: the author of the genuine _Vicar of Wakefield_, nill he
will he, must needs fly towards such a mass of genuine
manhood.”—CARLYLE’S _Essays_ (2nd ed.), vol. iv, p. 91.
180 “At present, the few poets of England no longer depend on the great
for subsistence; they have now no other patrons but the public, and
the public, collectively considered, is a good and a generous
master. It is indeed too frequently mistaken as to the merits of
every candidate for favour; but to make amends, it is never mistaken
long. A performance indeed may be forced for a time into reputation,
but, destitute of real merit, it soon sinks; time, the touchstone of
what is truly valuable, will soon discover the fraud, and an author
should never arrogate to himself any share of success till his works
have been read at least ten years with satisfaction.
“A man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly
sensible of their value. Every polite member of the community, by
buying what he writes, contributes to reward him. The ridicule,
therefore, of living in a garret might have been wit in the last
age, but continues such no longer, because no longer true. A writer
of real merit now may easily be rich, if his heart be set only on
fortune: and for those who have no merit, it is but fit that such
should remain in merited obscurity.”—GOLDSMITH, _Citizen of the
World_, Let. 84.
181 Goldsmith attacked Sterne, obviously enough, censuring his
indecency, and slighting his wit, and ridiculing his manner, in the
53rd letter in the _Citizen of the World_.
“As in common conversation,” says he, “the best way to make the
audience laugh is by first laughing yourself; so in writing, the
properest manner is to show an attempt at humour, which will pass
upon most for humour in reality. To effect this, readers must be
treated with the most perfect familiarity; in one page the author is
to make them a low bow, and in the next to pull them by the nose; he
must talk in riddles, and then send them to bed in order to dream
for the solution,” &c.
Sterne’s humorous _mot_ on the subject of the gravest part of the
charges, then, as now, made against him, may perhaps be quoted here,
from the excellent, the respectable Sir Walter Scott. “Soon after
_Tristram_ had appeared, Sterne asked a Yorkshire lady of fortune
and condition, whether she had read his book, ‘I have not, Mr.
Sterne,’ was the answer; ‘and to be plain with you, I am informed it
is not proper for female perusal.’ ‘My dear good lady,’ replied the
author, ‘do not be gulled by such stories; the book is like your
young heir there’ (pointing to a child of three years old, who was
rolling on the carpet in his white tunics): ‘he shows at times a
good deal that is usually concealed, but it is all in perfect
innocence.’ ”
182 “Goldsmith told us that he was now busy in writing a Natural
History; and that he might have full leisure for it, he had taken
lodgings at a farmer’s house, near to the six-mile stone in the
Edgeware Road, and had carried down his books in two returned
post-chaises. He said he believed the farmer’s family thought him an
odd character, similar to that in which the _Spectator_ appeared to
his landlady and her children; he was _The Gentleman_. Mr. Mickle,
the translator of the _Lusiad_, and I, went to visit him at this
place a few days afterwards. He was not at home; but having a
curiosity to see his apartment, we went in, and found curious scraps
of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall with a blacklead
pencil.”—BOSWELL.
183 “When Goldsmith was dying, Dr. Turton said to him, ‘Your pulse is in
greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever which
you have; is your mind at ease?’ Goldsmith answered it was not.”—DR.
JOHNSON (_in Boswell_).
“Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor Goldsmith is gone much
farther. He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear
of distress. He had raised money and squandered it, by every
artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. But let not his
failings be remembered; he was a very great man.”—DR. JOHNSON to
Boswell, July 5th, 1774.
184 “When Burke was told [of Goldsmith’s death] he burst into tears.
Reynolds was in his painting-room when the messenger went to him;
but at once he laid his pencil aside, which in times of great family
distress he had not been known to do, left his painting-room, and
did not re-enter it that day....
“The staircase of Brick Court is said to have been filled with
mourners, the reverse of domestic; women without a home, without
domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had come to
weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom he
had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic
mourners, too. His coffin was reopened at the request of Miss
Horneck and her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for
them!) that a lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn’s
possession when she died, after nearly seventy years.”—FORSTER’S
_Goldsmith_.
185 “Goldsmith’s incessant desire of being conspicuous in company was
the occasion of his sometimes appearing to such disadvantage, as one
should hardly have supposed possible in a man of his genius. When
his literary reputation had risen deservedly high, and his society
was much courted, he became very jealous of the extraordinary
attention which was everywhere paid to Johnson. One evening, in a
circle of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson as
entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority. ‘Sir,’ said
he, ‘you are for making a monarchy of what should be a republic.’
“He was still more mortified, when, talking in a company with fluent
vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all
present, a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling
himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, ‘Stay,
stay—Toctor Shonson is going to zay zomething.’ This was no doubt
very provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who
frequently mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation.
“It may also be observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be
treated with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be
consequential and important. An instance of this occurred in a small
particular. Johnson had a way of contracting the names of his
friends, as Beauclerk, Beau; Boswell, Bozzy.... I remember one day,
when Tom Davies was telling that Dr. Johnson said—‘We are all in
labour for a name to _Goldy’s_ play,’ Goldsmith seemed displeased
that such a liberty should be taken with his name, and said, ‘I have
often desired him not to call me _Goldy_.’ ”
This is one of several of Boswell’s depreciatory mentions of
Goldsmith—which may well irritate biographers and admirers—and also
those who take that more kindly and more profound view of Boswell’s
own character, which was opened up by Mr. Carlyle’s famous article
on his book. No wonder that Mr. Irving calls Boswell an “incarnation
of toadyism”. And the worst of it is, that Johnson himself has
suffered from this habit of the Laird of Auchenleck’s. People are
apt to forget under what Boswellian stimulus the great Doctor
uttered many hasty things:—things no more indicative of the nature
of the depths of his character than the phosphoric gleaming of the
sea, when struck at night, is indicative of radical corruption of
nature! In truth, it is clear enough on the whole that both Johnson
and Goldsmith _appreciated_ each other, and that they mutually knew
it. They were, as it were, tripped up and flung against each other,
occasionally, by the blundering and silly gambolling of people in
company.
Something must be allowed for Boswell’s “rivalry for Johnson’s good
graces” with Oliver (as Sir Walter Scott has remarked), for Oliver
was intimate with the Doctor before his biographer was,—and as we
all remember, marched off with him to “take tea with Mrs. Williams”
before Boswell had advanced to that honourable degree of intimacy.
But, in truth, Boswell—though he perhaps showed more talent in his
delineation of the Doctor than is generally ascribed to him—had not
faculty to take a fair view of _two_ great men at a time. Besides,
as Mr. Forster justly remarks, “he was impatient of Goldsmith from
the first hour of their acquaintance.”—_Life and Adventures_, p.
292.
186 The above portraits are from contemporary prints of this princess,
before her marriage, and in her old age.
187 Here [below in the text] are the figures, as drawn by young Gilray,
of Lord North, Mr. Fox, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Burke.
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