“Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author, who,
for the common benefit of his fellow-authors, introduced the ingenious
way of miscellaneous writing!”—so says the great Lord Shaftesbury; and I
heartily respond to the sentiment, that mode admitting of those easy
transitions from “grave to gay, from lively to severe,” which so well
agree with my discursive humour. Having thus premised, let me proceed
with my story, which now begins to assume a graver aspect.
Love, that passion productive of so many pains and pleasures to mortals,
the most easily, perhaps, awakened, and the most difficult to control,
begins full early with some of us (idiosyncratically susceptible) to
manifest its disturbing effects: the little volcano of the heart (to
speak figuratively) throws out its transient and flickering flames long
anterior to a grand eruption. Lord Byron’s history exhibits a great and
touching example of this; his early but unrequited attachment to the
beautiful Miss Chaworth served undoubtedly, in after-life, to tinge his
character with that sombre cast which has imparted itself to the
splendid creations of his immortal genius. Like him (if I may dare
include myself in the same category), when but nine or ten summers had
passed over my head, I too had my “lady love,” who, albeit no Mary
Chaworth, was nevertheless a very pretty little blue-eyed girl, the
daughter of our village doctor. I think I now behold her, in the eye of
my remembrance, with her white muslin frock, long pink sash, and
necklace of coral beads, her flaxen curls flying wildly in the breeze,
or sporting in all conceivable lines of beauty over her alabaster neck
and forehead. Full joyous was I when an invitation came for Master Frank
Gernon and his brother Tom to drink tea at Dr. Anodyne’s. How motherly
and kind was good Mrs. Anodyne on these occasions! how truly liberal of
her pound-cake and syllabub!
Dear woman! spite of thy many failings, which all “lean to virtue’s
side,” in the sweet relations of mother, wife, sister, friend, thou art
a being to be almost worshipped. ’Tis you who hold man’s destinies in
your hands. Harden your minds without the limits of blue-stockingism, as
a counterpoise to the softness of your hearts; acquire independence of
thought and moral courage, and you will yet convert the world into a
paradise! The little bard of Twickenham has, on the whole, maligned you:
mistaken the factitious for the original; the faults of education for
the defects of nature; the belle of 1700 for the woman of all time—but
was still right when he said,
Courage with softness, modesty with pride,
Fix’d principles—with fancy ever new;
Shake all together, it produces—you.
Pretty Louisa! my first love, long since perhaps the mother of a tribe
of little rustics; or sleeping, perchance, soundly in your own village
churchyard! like a fairy vision, you sometimes visit me in my dreams,
or, when quitting for a season the stern, hard realities which environ
my manhood, I lose myself in the sweet remembrances of boyhood’s days!
Well, this was my first grand love affair; now for my next, to which I
deem it a fitting preliminary. Griffins, look to your hearts, for you
will have some tough assaults made upon that susceptible organ on the
other side of the Cape, where (owing, I am told, to the high range of
the thermometer) it becomes morbidly sensitive. Take care, too, you do
not have to sing, with a rather lachrymose twist of the facial muscles,
“Dark is my doom!” or, led on by your sensibilities within the toils of
a premature matrimonial union, you have not to inscribe over your
domicile, “_spes et fortuna valete_!”
The party at Mr. Hearty’s, or some of them, rode out every evening in
the carriage, and I generally, like a gallant griffin, took up a
position by the steps, for the purpose of handing them in—that is, the
female portion. The precise amount of pressure which a young lady of
sixteen (not stone, but years, be pleased to understand, for it makes a
material difference) must impart to a young gentleman’s hand, when he
tenders his services on occasions of this nature, in order to be in love
with him, is a very nice and curious question in “Amorics” (I take
credit for the invention of that scientific term). In estimating it,
however, so many things may affect the accuracy of a judgment, that it
is perhaps undesirable to rely on deductions therefrom, either one way
or the other, as a secure basis for ulterior proceedings. Touching the
case of the charming Olivia and myself, though there was certainly
evidence of the _high-pressure_ system, I might long have felt at a loss
to decide on the real state of her feelings, had not my hand on these
occasions been accepted with a tell-tale blush, and a sweet and
encouraging smile, that spoke volumes. Let me not be accused of vanity,
if I say, then, that the evidence of my having made an impression on the
young and susceptible heart of Olivia Jenkins was too decided to be
mistaken. I felt that I was a favourite, and I burned with all the
ardour of a griffin to declare that the “_sentiment si doux_” was
reciprocal. The wished-for occasion was not long in presenting itself.
One evening, Olivia and some of the party remained at home, the carriage
being fully occupied without them. Off drove Mr. and Mrs. Hearty, and a
whole posse of friends and visitors, to take their usual round by
Chepauk and the Fort; kissing hands to Olivia and one or two others, who
stood on the terrace to see them depart. They were no sooner gone than I
proceeded to enjoy my accustomed saunter in the coco-nut grove, at the
back of the house. There was a delicious tranquillity in the hour which
produced a soothing effect on my feelings. The sun had just dipped his
broad orb in the ocean, and his parting beams suffused with a ruddy
warmth the truly Oriental scene around. Flocks of paroquets, screaming
with delight, were wheeling homewards their rapid flight; the creak of
the well-wheel, an Indian rural sound, came wafted from distant fields,
and the ring-doves were uttering their plaintive cooings from amidst the
shady bowers of the neighbouring garden—
The air, a chartered libertine, was still.
I walked and mused, gazing around on the animated scenes of nature,
which always delight me, when suddenly one of the most charming of all
her works, a beautiful girl, appeared before me. It was Olivia, who met
me (undesignedly of course) at a turn of the avenue. She appeared
absorbed in a book, which, on hearing my steps, she suddenly closed, and
with a blush, which caused the eloquent blood to mount responsive in my
cheeks, she exclaimed.
“Oh, Mr. Gernon, is this you? Your servant, sir! (courtesying
half-coquettishly); who would have expected to meet you here all alone,
and so solemnly musing?”
“Is there any thing more extraordinary in it, Miss Olivia,” said I,
“than to find you also alone, and enjoying your intellectual repast,
‘under the shade of melancholy boughs?’ The Chinese, I believe, think
that human hearts are united from birth by unseen silken cords, which
contracting slowly but surely, bring them together at last. What think
you, Olivia?” I continued (we grow familiar generally on the eve of a
declaration), “may not some such invisible means of attraction have
brought us together at this moment?”
Olivia looked down, her pretty little foot being busily engaged in
investigating the character of a pebble, or something of the sort, that
lay on the walk, and indistinctly replied, that she had really never
much considered such weighty and mysterious subjects, but that it might
be even so. Encouraged by this reply, yet trembling at the thought of my
own audacity (bullets whizzing past me since have not produced half the
trepidation), I placed myself near her, and gently taking the little,
soft, white hand which listlessly, but invitingly, hung by her side, I
said (I was sorely puzzled what to say),
“I—I—was delighted, dear Olivia, to find you a visitor here on my
arrival the other day.”
“Were you, Mr. Gernon,” said the lively girl, turning upon me her soft
blue eyes, in a manner which brought on a fresh attack of _delirium
tremens_; “‘delighted’ is a strong term, but Mr. Gernon, I know, is
rather fond of such, little heeding their full import.”
“Strong!” I replied, instantly falling into heroics; “it but feebly
expresses the pleasure I feel on seeing you. Oh, dearest Olivia,” I
continued, all the barriers of reserve giving way at once before the
high tide of my feelings, “it is in vain longer to dissemble” (here I
gently passed my other unoccupied arm round her slender waist); “I love
you with the fondest affection. Deign to say that I possess an interest
in your heart.”
A slight and almost imperceptible increase of pressure from the little
hand locked in mine, and a timid look from the generally lively but now
subdued and abashed girl, was the silent but expressive answer I
received. It was enough, for a griff, at least. I drew her closer to my
side—she slowly averted her head; mine followed its movement. The
vertebral column had reached its rotary limit—so that there was a sort
of surrender at discretion—and I imprinted a long and fervent kiss on
the soft and downy cheek of Olivia. Oh, blissful climax of a thousand
sweet emotions; too exquisite to endure, too precious for fate to accord
more than once in an existence—the first innocent kiss of requited
affection—how can I ever forget ye?
Let raptured fancy on that moment dwell,
When my fond vows in trembling accents fell;
When love acknowledged woke the trembling sigh,
Swelled my fond breast and filled the melting eye.
Yes, surely, “love is heaven, and heaven is love,” as has been said and
sung any time for the last three thousand years; and Mahomed showed
himself deeply read in the human heart, when he made the chief delight
of his paradise to consist in it; not, I suspect, as is generally
imagined, the passion in its purely gross acceptation, but that
elevating and refining sentiment which beautifully attunes all our
noblest emotions; which, when it swells the heart, causes it to
overflow, like a mantling fountain, to refresh and fertilize all around.
No, I shall never forget the thrill of delight with which I committed
that daring act of petty larceny.
“Yes,” I continued, “dearest Olivia, I have long loved you. I loved you
from the first, and would fain indulge a faint hope” (this was
hypocritical, for I was quite sure of it) “that I am not wholly
indifferent to you.”
The deepest blush overspread Olivia’s neck and face; she was summoning
all her maidenly resolution for an avowal: “Dear Mr. Gernon,” she said,
“believe me,—”
“Stope him! stope him, Gernon,” roared a stentorian voice at this
moment; “cut the deevil off fra’ the tree!”
It was that confounded Patagonian Scotch cadet, in full cry after a
squirrel, which, poor little creature, in an agony of fear, was making
for a tree near to which we stood. “As you were,” never brought a
recruit quicker into his prior position, than did this unseasonable
interruption restore me to mine. Olivia hastily resumed her studies and
her walk, whilst I, to prevent suspicion, and consequent banter, joined
in the chevy to intercept the squirrel, secretly anathematizing Sandy
McGrigor, whom I wished, with all my heart, in the bowels of Ben Lomond.
Reader, you may be curious to know whether Olivia Jenkins became in due
time Mrs. Gernon. Ah, no! Ours was one of those juvenile passions
destined to be nipped in the bud; one of those painted baubles, swelled
by the breath of young desire, which float for a brief space on the
summer breeze, then burst and disappear: or a perennial plant, whose
beautiful maturity passes rapidly to decay.
Our destinies pointed different ways. Too much calculation was fatal to
her happiness; too little has been, perhaps, as detrimental to mine.
Years on years rolled on, chequered by many strange vicissitudes, when,
in other scenes and under widely different circumstances, we met again:
the flush of youth had long departed from her cheeks—the once laughing
eyes were brilliant no more—and
The widow’s sombre cap concealed
Her once luxuriant hair.
“Do you remember,” said I, adverting to old times, “our meeting in the
coco-nut grove at Madras?”
“Ah!” she replied, with a sigh, “I do indeed; but say no more of it; a
recurrence to the sunshiny days of my youth always makes me sad: let us
speak of something else—the recent, the present, the future.”
* * * * *
There was one little thing dey do call de mosquito,
He bitee de blackmans, he no let him sleep-o-
Sing ting ring, ting ting ring ting, ting ring ting taro.
So then runs the negro’s song; and unless all is illusion and delusion,
as the Berkleyans hold, the “whitemans,” as I can vouch from actual
experience, are equally entitled to have their misfortunes as
pathetically recorded. I believe, however, it would be as difficult to
say anything entirely original about musquitoes as to discover a new
pleasure, or the long sought desideratum of perpetual motion;
nevertheless, my subject being India, it would not be _en régle_ to pass
them over altogether in silence; suffice it therefore to say, the first
nights of my stay at Mr. Hearty’s I was by a cruel oversight put into a
bed without the usual appendage—a set of gauze curtains. The door of my
apartment, which was on the ground floor, opened on the garden, and a
well, a pool, and a dense mass of foliage, formed a splendid
musquito-preserve, within a few yards of it. A couple of oil-lights, in
wall-shades, burnt in the room; the doors were open, the night close and
oppressive. It was truly “the genial hour for burning,” though not
exactly in Moore’s sense of the passage; and then such a
concerto!—“Quack! quack! quack!” said the _mezzo-soprano_ voices of the
little frogs—“croak! croak! croak!” responded in deep bass the huge
Lablaches of the pool—“click! click!” went the lizards—“ghur! ghur!” the
musk-rat, as he ricketed round the room, emitting his offensive odour;
whilst
Countless fire-flies, gems of light,
Bright jewels of the tropic night,
spangled the trees in all directions. The idea of Aladdin’s garden, to
which his _soi-disant_ uncle introduced him, was presenting itself to my
mind, when the nip of a musquito recalled me from the fanciful to the
consideration of painful realities. The sultry heat of an Indian night
in the rains is sometimes terrific: not a breath moving; but, to make up
for it, a universal stir of reptile and insect life, with a croak, hum,
hiss, and buzz, perfectly astounding. What a prize for the musquitoes
was I—a fine, fresh, ruddy griffin, full of wholesome blood, the result
of sea-breezes and healthy chylification! and, in good sooth, they did
fall foul of me with the appetite of gluttons. Sleep! bless your dear,
simple heart, the thing was about as possible as for St. Lawrence to
have reposed on his gridiron. I tingled from top to toe with an
exquisite tingling. In vain I scratched—in vain I tossed—in vain I
rolled myself up like a corpse in a winding-sheet. Nought would do; so
out I jumped, half phrenzied, and dipping my hand in the oil glasses of
the lamps, I rubbed their unctuous contents over my body, to deaden the
intolerable itching—an effect which in some degree it produced. Thus I
spent the long hours of the sultry night; towards morning, the
musquitoes being gorged, tortured into insensibility, and nature fairly
worn out, I procured a little rest.
At breakfast I made my appearance on two consecutive mornings a
ludicrous figure, the object at once of pity and amusement: eyes bunged
up, lips swelled, and cheeks puffed out, like bully _Ajax_ in _Homer
Travestie_, all of which, to a young man of decent exterior, and who, in
those days, rather valued himself on his appearance, was exceedingly
annoying. Mrs. Hearty, though with a look in which the comic and the
tragic struggled for the mastery, now took compassion on me, expressed
great regret for the oversight, and furnished my bed with a set of
musquito-curtains. “Whine away, you rascals,” said I then to the
musquitoes, exultingly; “blow your penny trumpets, you everlasting
vagabonds! you have had your last meal on me, rest assured.” What
glorious sleep I had after that!
After a fortnight’s stay at Madras, and a vain search for Ramee Sawmee
Dabash, who, having some linen of mine to get washed, and a small
balance of money to account for, thought it “too much trouble” to make
his appearance, I bid adieu to my hospitable friends, reembarked on
board the _Rottenbeam Castle_, and set sail for Bengal. Our society,
officers and passengers, met again with renewed pleasure, temporary
separation being a great enlivener of the kindly feelings, which, like
everything else, require tact and management to keep them in a state of
vigour. Each, during his sojourn on shore, appeared to have renovated
his stock of ideas, and to have picked up something congenial to his
peculiar humour. The colonel had met with several old friends, and
matters to be told, “wondrous and strange,” and quite out of the common,
followed as a natural consequence. Grinnerson had had some “rare larks
and sprees” ashore, and been “coming the old soldier” over some young
hands at the Navy Tavern. Miss Dobbikins criticised rather severely (as
her Bath experiences gave her every right to do) the _tournure_ of the
Madras belles, whom she had seen at balls and _conversazione_. Capt.
Marpeet, who had been at sundry drills and reviews, favoured us with
elaborate discussions on the military performances of the _Mulls_,[4]
which he considered very inferior to those of the _Qui hyes_, by whom,
to borrow his own nervous and expressive phraseology, “they were beaten
by chalks.” Even the usually taciturn Grundy became eloquent, when he
spoke of the _luxuries_ of the tents, and his sufferings from the
musquitoes; and as for myself, being of an artistical turn, I enlarged
principally on the interesting character of Oriental scenery, but
omitting, of course, some of the peculiar attractions of the “coco-nut
grove.”