ECCENTRIC NEIGHBOURS
Mary Russell Mitford had strong likes and dislikes. Her American friend
Mr. James T. Fields, who knew her well, remarks:[13] “She loathed mere
dandies, and there were no epithets too hot for her contempt in that
direction. Old beaux she heartily despised, and speaking of one whom
she had known, I remember she quoted with a fine scorn this appropriate
passage from Dickens: ‘Ancient, dandified men, those crippled
_invalides_ from the campaign of vanity, where the only powder was
hair-powder and the only bullets fancy balls.’”
[Footnote 13: See _Yesterdays with Authors_.]
In one of her stories we come upon such a character—Mr. Thompson as she
calls him—a gentleman who had just arrived from London, and whom she
met at the house of a friend.
“Mr. Thompson was a gentleman of about—Pshaw! nothing is so impolite
as to go guessing how many years a man may have lived in this most
excellent world, especially when it is perfectly clear from his dress
and demeanour that the register of his birth is the last document
relating to himself which he would care to see produced.
“Mr. Thompson then was a gentleman of no particular age, not quite so
young as he had been, but still in very tolerable preservation, being
pretty exactly that which is understood by the phrase an Old Beau.”
And then, after describing the very artificial appearance of his
physiognomy, she goes on to say: “Altogether it was a head calculated
to convey a very favourable impression of the different artists
employed in getting it up.”
A very different personage to the Old Beau is described by Miss Mitford
in a tale entitled _An Admiral on Shore_.
Admiral Floyd, for so she calls him, had recently come with his wife to
reside in the neighbourhood, and it was when paying a call upon them in
their new home—a fine old mansion standing in beautiful grounds, known
as the White House at Hannonby—that she first made his acquaintance.
“I had been proceeding to call on our new neighbours,” writes Miss
Mitford, “when a very unaccountable noise induced me to pause at the
entrance; a moment’s observation explained the nature of the sound. The
Admiral was shooting wasps with a pocket pistol.... There under the
shade of tall elms sat the veteran, a little old withered man, very
like a pocket pistol himself, brown, succinct, grave and fiery. He wore
an old-fashioned naval uniform of blue, faced with white, which set off
his mahogany countenance, drawn into a thousand deep wrinkles.... At
his side stood a very tall, masculine, large-boned, middle-aged woman,
something like a man in petticoats, whose face, in spite of a quantity
of rouge and a small portion of modest assurance, might still be called
handsome, and could never be mistaken for belonging to other than an
Irish woman.... A younger lady was watching them at a little distance
apparently as much amused as myself. On her advancing to meet me the
pistol was put down and the Admiral joined us. We were acquainted in
a moment, and before the end of my visit he had shown me all over his
house and told me the whole history of his life and adventures.
“At twelve years old he was sent to sea, and had remained there ever
since till now, when an unlucky promotion had sent him ashore and
seemed likely to keep him there. I never saw a man so unaffectedly
displeased with his own title.
“Being, however, on land, his first object was to make his residence
as much like a man-of-war as possible, or rather as much like that
beau-ideal of a habitation, his last frigate, the _Mermaiden_, in which
he had by different prizes made above sixty thousand pounds. By that
standard his calculations were regulated. All the furniture of the
White House at Hannonby was adapted to the proportions of His Majesty’s
ship the _Mermaiden_. The great drawing-room was fitted up exactly on
the model of her cabin, and the whole of that spacious and commodious
mansion made to resemble as much as possible that wonderfully
inconvenient abode, the inside of a ship; everything crammed into the
smallest possible compass, space most unnecessarily economized and
contrivances devised for all those matters which need no contriving at
all. He victualled the house as for an East India voyage, served out
the provisions in rations, and swung the whole family in hammocks.
“It will easily be believed that these innovations in a small village
in a Midland county, where nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants
had never seen a piece of water larger than Hannonby great pond,
occasioned no small commotion. The poor Admiral had his own troubles;
at first every living thing about the place rebelled—there was a
general mutiny; the very cocks and hens, whom he had crammed up in
coops in the poultry yard, screamed aloud for liberty; and the pigs,
ducks and geese, equally prisoners, squeaked and gabbled for water; the
cows lowed in their stall; the sheep bleated in their pens; the whole
livestock of Hannonby was in durance.
“The most unmanageable of these complainers were, of course, the
servants; with the men, after a little while, he got on tolerably,
sternness and grog (the wind and sun of the fable) conquered them.
His staunchest opponents were of the other sex, the whole tribe of
housemaids and kitchenmaids abhorred him to a woman, and plagued and
thwarted him every hour of the day. He, on his part, returned their
aversion with interest; talked of female stupidity, female awkwardness
and female dirt, and threatened to compound an household of the crew
of the _Mermaiden_ that should shame all the twirlers of mops and
brandishers of brooms in the county.
“Especially he used to vaunt the abilities of a certain Bill Jones as
the best laundress, sempstress, cook and housemaid in the navy; him
he was determined to procure to keep his refractory household in some
order; accordingly he wrote to desire his presence, and Bill, unable to
resist the summons of his old commander, arrived accordingly....
“The dreaded major-domo turned out to be a smart young sailor of
four or five-and-twenty, with an arch smile, a bright, merry eye and
a most knowing nod, by no means insensible to female objurgation or
indifferent to female charms. The women of the house, particularly
the pretty ones, soon perceived their power, and as the Admirable
Crichton of His Majesty’s ship the _Mermaiden_ had amongst his other
accomplishments the address completely to govern his master, all was
soon in the smoothest track possible.... Under his wise direction and
discreet patronage a peace was patched up between the Admiral and his
rebellious handmaids.
“Soothed, guided and humoured by his trusty adherent, and influenced
perhaps by the force of example and the effect of the land breeze which
he had never breathed so long before, our worthy veteran soon began to
show symptoms of a man of this world. He took to gardening and farming,
for which Bill Jones had also a taste, set free his prisoners in the
_basse-cour_ to the unutterable glorification and crowing of cock and
hen and gabbling of goose and turkey, and enlarged his own walk from
pacing backwards and forwards in the dining-room, followed by his old
shipmates, a Newfoundland dog and a tame goat, into a stroll round his
own grounds, to the great delight of those faithful attendants.
“... Amongst the country people he soon became popular. They liked the
testy little gentleman, who dispensed his beer and grog so bountifully,
and talked to them so freely. He would have his own way to be sure,
but then he paid for it; besides, he entered into their tastes and
amusements, promoted May-games, revels and other country sports,
patronized dancing dogs and monkeys and bespoke plays in barns. Above
all he had an exceeding partiality for vagrants, strollers, gipsies and
such like persons, listened to their tales with a delightful simplicity
of belief, pitied them, relieved them, fought their battles at the
bench and the vestry, and got into two or three scrapes with constables
and magistrates by the activity of his protection.
“Only one counterfeit sailor with a sham wooden leg he found out at a
question and, by aid of Bill Jones, ducked in the horse-pond for an
impostor, till the unlucky wretch, a thorough landlubber, was nearly
drowned, an adventure which turned out the luckiest of his life, he
having carried his case to an attorney, who forced the Admiral to pay
fifty pounds for the exploit.
“Our good veteran was equally popular amongst the gentry of the
neighbourhood. His own hospitality was irresistible, and his frankness
and simplicity, mixed with a sort of petulant vivacity, combined to
make him a most welcome relief to the dullness of a country dinner
party. He enjoyed society extremely, and even had a spare bed erected
for company, moved thereto by an accident which befell the fat rector
of Kinton, who, having unfortunately consented to sleep at Hannonby
one wet night, had alarmed the whole house, and nearly broken his
own neck by a fall from his hammock.... His reading was none of the
most extensive: _Robinson Crusoe_, the _Naval Chronicle_, Southey’s
admirable _Life of Nelson_ and Smollett’s novels formed the greater
part of his library, and for other books he cared little.
“For the rest he was a most kind and excellent person, although a
little testy and not a little absolute, and a capital disciplinarian,
although addicted to the reverse sins of making other people tipsy
whilst he kept himself sober, and of sending forth oaths in volleys
whilst he suffered none other to swear. He had besides a few prejudices
incident to his condition—loved his country to the point of hating all
the rest of the world, especially the French, and regarded his own
profession with a pride which made him intolerant of every other. To
the army he had an intense and growing hatred, much augmented since
victory upon victory had deprived him of the comfortable feeling of
scorn. The battle of Waterloo fairly posed him. ‘To be sure to have
drubbed the French was a fine thing—a very fine thing—no denying that!
but why not have fought out the quarrel by sea?’”
[Illustration]