There are few, perhaps, of our female readers who could have passed
through what Penelope was compelled to suffer, without sinking under
the weight of such an accumulation of distressing circumstances. The
wonder is, that she bore up so long, rather than that she sunk at last.
It is with reluctance that we withdraw the attention of our readers
from the bedside of the dependent sufferer. We can only state that the
Countess was very assiduous in her attentions to her patient, that the
best medical assistance was immediately procured, that Lord Spoonbill
was very regular in his enquiries, and that the Earl of Smatterton
desired that the young woman might not want for anything that was
useful or that might contribute to her comfort and recovery. He said so
every morning.
It is now absolutely necessary that we violate two of the unities, viz.
of time and place. We must violate the unity of time, by doing what
time itself with all its power cannot do; we must go backwards; and we
must also violate the unity of place, by transporting our readers to
the island of St Helena. Their expatriation will be but short.
About the beginning of November, in the year 18--, two of the Company’s
ships touched at this island in their passage homeward. The crews and
the passengers were not sorry to have such symptoms of home as this
accidental meeting produced. Those of the passengers who were going
to England for the last time, found in the word “last” a different
charm from any which Dr Johnson attributes to it, in the last paper of
the Rambler. It was a cheerful and animating feeling which pervaded
their bosoms, a sentiment joyous even to tears. The first enquiries
of all were for news from England, and the post-office was an object
of general attraction. There were to be seen there cheerful and
disappointed countenances, but every one was too much occupied with his
own thoughts to take any notice of others.
There came out of the office a middle-aged stout gentleman, reading
with great seriousness and emotion a letter which he held open in his
hands, and there passed him and entered into the office a younger man,
a fine tall handsome man, who would naturally have excited any one’s
attention by the mere force of his appearance; but the middle-aged
gentleman was too deeply engaged to notice him at the moment. In a few
seconds the younger of the two came out of the office, not reading
a letter, but holding one in his hand unopened; and looking upon
that one more sadly than he would have done had it been accompanied
with another. Presently he also opened his letter and read it, not
cheerfully, not sorrowfully, but anxiously and enquiringly. The
letter was finished and returned to his pocket; and he endeavoured to
look more cheerfully, but his efforts failed. He quickened his pace,
and presently he overtook the middle-aged gentleman; and, as they
were passengers in different ships, they looked at each other rather
earnestly, and the elder greeted the younger. The young man returned
the greeting readily, and, as well as he could, cheerfully. The elder
stranger said, that he was going to see the place where Bonaparte was
buried; the younger was going to the same place, but he called it the
tomb of Napoleon. The elder did not quarrel about the expression,
but took the young man’s offered arm, and they walked very sociably
together.
Very few words passed between them on their way to the place of their
destination; and when they arrived there they both seemed to feel a
little disappointment that there was not something more to gratify
their curiosity, or to excite emotion. Place, considered in itself,
has no charm. The imagination must make the mystery all for itself,
and that it may do absent as well as present. Nebuchadnezzar was not
unreasonable when he desired that his wise men should tell him his
dream, as well as the interpretation thereof: for if they really had
wisdom from heaven for one purpose, they would as likely have wisdom
for the other. So it is with place connected with the memory of the
distinguished sons of mortality. The imagination can as well form the
place to the mind’s eye as it can fill the place when seen with these
emotions and feelings, which we expect to be excited by such views.
The elder stranger turning to the younger, said, “What is your real
opinion of Napoleon Bonaparte?”
“He was certainly a great man,” was the safe and quiet answer. The
elder did not make any immediate reply to this enunciation of opinion
on the part of his young companion. The other therefore supposed, and
very naturally, that the answer which he had given was not altogether
satisfactory. He proceeded, therefore, but still cautiously:--“He was
a man of great ambition; and he was also a disappointed man.” All this
seemed but the echo of everybody’s opinion, let their view of the man’s
character otherwise be what it may. The elder stranger then spoke again:
“I do not think he was a great man. The word great is an epithet
too comprehensive to be applicable to a disappointed man. To be a
great man, it is necessary that there should be in the mind those
powers and that forethought which will guard against frustration and
disappointment. Greatness is not in place and in name, it is purely
in the mind. I will grant you that Napoleon Bonaparte had great
military powers--great legislative powers--great discernment of human
character; but he was not great over himself: he wanted power to guide
his power. And let a man have all other powers and all other talent,
if he have not the power of power and the talent of talent, he may
be a distinguished, he may be a notorious man, he may produce grand
effects; but he will not be a great man. True greatness is calm; for it
feels and guides its own power.”
The young man listened to this, and to more than this; for the elder
one was more voluble than we have represented him. He perhaps loved
paradox; many persons do; and some love to listen to paradox, if it be
agreeably uttered, and be not too obviously a determined contradiction
of the common feelings and opinions of mankind. The young man then
replied:
“But Napoleon produced great changes in men’s minds, and great effects
on the frame of civil society, and he has left many monuments of his
wisdom.”
“True,” replied the elder one: “Napoleon, as you call him, has done
much in the world, and perhaps more than any other individual in whose
ambitious steps he seems to have trodden. But he was raised up by a
wise Providence to teach humanity that it may grasp at what is beyond
its power. Alexander was a lesson merely to warriors; Cæsar to men of
intrigue and aspiring talent; Bonaparte to men of consummate talent of
almost every description; and if the world be not pestered with a hero
till there shall rise a man of greater talents than Napoleon Bonaparte,
it may rest in peace for many centuries.”
“I never took that view of the subject,” replied the young man. “There
is however something in what you say. Still I cannot but think that
Napoleon was a great man.”
“According to your opinions of greatness, no doubt he was. But I have
told you my ideas of greatness, and according to those he was not.
Greatness requires consistency and uniformity; and it is not in a man
of disappointed ambition that we look for those characters. It seems to
be the ordinance of heaven, that all its blessings should not centre
in one individual among created beings. Where it bestows wit, it does
not always grant wisdom to direct it; where it gives power, it does not
always bestow discretion to use that power, of whatever quality it may
be, according to the best possible principles. True greatness implies
wisdom, and wisdom in man makes the most of and does the best with its
means. Now I have at this moment a letter in my pocket from England,
bringing me an account of a good, and, I think, great man. But he was
nothing more than the humble rector of a small parish in the country.
He was by no means a man of great genius; nor was he a man of great
eloquence; but he was a man of great moral power. I will venture to
affirm that, whatever were the moral capabilities of the parish over
which he presided as pastor, he would call them forth to the utmost. It
is owing to that man that I am now living, and comparatively happy. It
is owing to me, perhaps,”----
Here the voice of the speaker was interrupted by the swelling of his
bosom, and he passed his hand convulsively on his forehead and gave
way to an agony of tears and sobs, which it would have been painful to
witness in a younger person, but which was quite distressing to see
in one of such appearance and at such an age; for he seemed full fifty
years of age, and had the appearance of a man of good understanding and
gentlemanly manners. The young man took him by the hand and faintly
uttered a few words of consolation, that he might a little abate a
sorrow which he could not wholly stay.
When the violence of the emotion had a little subsided, and the
sufferer had regained the power of speech, he first asked pardon for
his weakness, and apologised for having given way to his feelings.
“For,” continued he, “I have lost a benefactor just at a moment when
I was flattering myself that I should be able to thank him for his
kindness, and to gratify him by letting him know that his kindness had
not been in vain, and that his friendly admonitions had not all been
lost. I will not so far encroach upon your patience as to tell you my
history; but I cannot forbear from indulging in the pleasure which
I mention--the conduct of this most excellent man towards me and my
family.”
“I shall have great pleasure, sir,” replied the young man, “in
listening to any particulars with which you may be pleased to favour
me. The history of the human mind is always interesting and always
instructive.”
With this encouragement the elder stranger proceeded: “This most
excellent man, of whose death I have been speaking, was a clergyman,
whose unfortunate sister I married more than twenty years ago. I
respected and honored him when I first knew him for the purity and
simplicity of his manners. He was of a respectable family, but not
wealthy: his living was nearly his whole maintenance. I could never
induce him to spend a week with us in town. He always pleaded his
parochial duties as demanding his whole attention. It was in vain for
me, or for any one else, to suggest any hint respecting preferment
or bettering his circumstances by the ordinary means of professional
advancement. During the whole of the time I resided in England after
my marriage, I saw nothing of my respected brother-in-law. We had, it
is true, several letters from him, and letters of a most interesting
description. Well would it have been for me, and well for my dear
child, and well for my beloved companion, had I regarded these
letters as something more than models of epistolary correspondence;
had I attended to those kind paternal hints which they contained.
They gave me admonition without assuming airs of superiority or the
affectations of a would-be hermit. He wrote to me in the world, and as
from the world, making allowances for all the temptations with which
I was surrounded, and speaking of them as if he had not learned their
existence or ascertained their nature merely by the means of books or
talk. I was content with admiring the good man’s virtues. I did not
seek to imitate them. I suffered one scoundrel after another to creep
into an intimacy with me, and in a very few years my patrimony was
wasted, and all my inheritance was melted away at the gaming-table.”
There was again, at these words, a pause of passionate and deep
feeling, but it passed away, and the emotion subsided, and the narrator
went on to say:
“Then, sir, I became a widower. My beloved partner left me an only
child, a daughter, for whom I resolved to live, or, more properly
speaking, for whose sake I endeavoured to preserve and support life,
which without this stimulus would have been a burden too heavy to be
borne. I took my poor little innocent child to this venerable and
amiable clergyman. I found even then nothing like reproach. The good
man pitied me, and he pitied my child. His pity touched me more sorely
and more deeply than any reproaches which human language could have
uttered. I felt my heart melt within me. I dared not say a word of
exculpation. I stood self-condemned. I proposed to leave my native
land, and to seek elsewhere the means of maintenance for myself and my
child. He offered to take my little girl and be a father to her: and
he has been so.
She, poor innocent, hardly knows that she has any other father. I am to
her but as a name; but I do long most ardently once more to see her. I
think years have not so altered her that I shall not recognize her. I
have pleased myself during my long exile of sixteen years with forming
to myself an image of my dear child growing up to woman’s estate; and
the miniature likeness of her dear mother assists my imagination now
in forming an idea of my daughter. She is now expecting my return; and
the last letter which I received of my most excellent brother-in-law,
informed me that the poor girl had bestowed her affections, and would
with my approbation bestow her hand, on a worthy and respectable man.
I left all these matters to my relative in England. I was sure that
he would act towards my child as a parent, and as a wiser and more
truly kind parent than I have been. I was happy till this hour in the
thought that I was hastening home to England to return my thanks to my
benefactor, to see my dear child, and receive her at his hands--and now
alas this happy, this blessed, prospect is blighted by the melancholy
intelligence of this good man’s death, and would to heaven that this
were the worst--but the most painful intelligence is yet to be added.
I am informed from the best authority that my poor dear child has been
simple enough to be captivated by a young man of high rank, who is
too vain to love any one but himself, and too proud to marry beneath
his own rank. I am, therefore, likely to be greeted with sorrows and
perplexities on my very return to England.”
The elder stranger sighed calmly; and as it were resignedly, when he
had finished speaking. The younger one looked thoughtful and sighed
also. A pause of some minutes’ silence followed, and the young man said:
“You must hope better things, sir; a long absence from home should
indeed always prepare us for something of change and calamity; we must
look for those fluctuations of humanity: but still we may be permitted
to hope, and to enjoy pleasing thoughts as long as possible.”
“Yes, sir, your remarks are very true, but they are not so easily
applied. Hope does not come and go at the command of reason, and
the spirits do not rise and fall according to the dictates of the
understanding, or by any force of ratiocination. I ought to apologise
for troubling you, a stranger, with my sorrows; they cannot be
interesting to you; but it is not easy when the heart is full to
prevent it from overflowing.”
“No apology, sir, is necessary: or, if it were, I might adopt the
language of your apology, and use it as a preface to my tale of sorrow
and disappointment awaiting me also at my return to my native land. I
have also cause for grief.”
“Indeed, one so young as you appear to be! But yours, young man, are
the sorrows, perhaps, of a youthful lover. Yours are not so deeply
rooted as mine.”
These words led to an explanation which told the two strangers that
their concerns were more nearly allied than they had been aware. Our
readers of course need not be informed that the elder of the two was
Mr Primrose, and the younger Mr Robert Darnley. They were happy,
however, in the midst of their sorrows, to have become thus acquainted
at a distance from home. They only regretted that the distance between
their respective situations in India had formed an insuperable barrier
against an acquaintance and intimacy there. The fact is that, so long
as Dr Greendale considered the return of Mr Primrose as a matter of
uncertainty, he had been very cautious of exciting his daughter’s
expectations. He had ventured to consider his own approbation quite
sufficient to allow of the correspondence between his niece and Mr
Robert Darnley, and had in his letters to Mr Primrose simply mentioned
the fact without stating particulars, thinking that it would be time
enough hereafter, should the mutual affection of the young persons for
each other continue and strengthen. Mr Primrose had, in reply to that
information, left Dr Greendale quite at liberty to make such disposal
of Penelope as he might think proper; for the father was well aware
that the uncle was, both by discretion and affection, well qualified
for the guardianship of his child.
The vessels in which the two gentlemen sailed soon weighed anchor and
put to sea again. So the friends were parted for a time; nor did they
hold any farther communication on the course of their voyage, for they
had not left St Helena many days before the ship parted company in a
gale of wind. That vessel in which Mr Primrose sailed first arrived in
England, as we have already intimated.