About the year 1822 I resided in a comfortable and roomy old house, the
exact locality of which I need not particularise, further than to say
that it was not very far from Old Brompton, in the immediate
neighbourhood, or rather continuity (as even my Connemara readers
perfectly well know), of the renowned city of London.
Though this house was roomy and comfortable, as I have said, it was not,
by any means, a handsome one. It was composed of dark red brick, with
small windows, and thick white sashes; a porch, too--none of your flimsy
trellis-work, but a solid projection of the same vermillion
masonry--surmounted by a leaded balcony, with heavy, half-rotten
balustrades, darkened the hall-door with a perennial gloom. The mansion
itself stood in a walled enclosure, which had, perhaps, from the date of
the erection itself, been devoted to shrubs and flowers. Some of the
former had grown there almost to the dignity of trees; and two dark
little yews stood at each side of the porch, like swart and inauspicious
dwarfs, guarding the entrance of an enchanted castle. Not that my
domicile in any respect deserved the comparison: it had no reputation as
a haunted house; if it ever had any ghosts, nobody remembered them. Its
history was not known to me: it may have witnessed plots, cabals, and
forgeries, bloody suicides and cruel murders. It was certainly old enough
to have become acquainted with iniquity; a small stone slab, under the
balustrade, and over the arch of the porch I mentioned, had the date
1672, and a half-effaced coat of arms, which I might have deciphered any
day, had I taken the trouble to get a ladder, but always put it off. All
I can say for the house is, that it was well stricken in years, with a
certain air of sombre comfort about it; contained a vast number of rooms
and closets; and, what was of far greater importance, was got by me a
dead bargain.
Its individuality attracted me. I grew fond of it for itself, and for its
associations, until other associations of a hateful kind first disturbed,
and then destroyed, their charm. I forgave its dull red brick, and
pinched white windows, for the sake of the beloved and cheerful faces
within: its ugliness was softened by its age; and its sombre evergreens,
and moss-grown stone flower-pots, were relieved by the brilliant hues of
a thousand gay and graceful flowers that peeped among them, or nodded
over the grass.
Within that old house lay my life's treasure! I had a darling little
girl of nine, and another little darling--a boy--just four years of age;
and dearer, unspeakably, than either--a wife--the prettiest, gayest,
best little wife in all London. When I tell you that our income was
scarcely £380 a-year, you will perceive that our establishment cannot
have been a magnificent one; yet, I do assure you, we were more
comfortable than a great many lords, and happier, I dare say, than the
whole peerage put together.
This happiness was not, however, what it ought to have been. The reader
will understand at once, and save me a world of moralising
circumlocution, when he learns, bluntly and nakedly, that, among all my
comforts and blessings, I was an infidel.
I had not been without religious training; on the contrary, more than
average pains had been bestowed upon my religious instruction from my
earliest childhood. My father, a good, plain, country clergyman, had
worked hard to make me as good as himself; and had succeeded, at least,
in training me in godly habits. He died, however, when I was but twelve
years of age; and fate had long before deprived me of the gentle care of
a mother. A boarding-school, followed by a college life, where nobody
having any very direct interest in realising in my behalf the ancient
blessing, that in fulness of time I should "die a good old man," I was
left very much to my own devices, which, in truth, were none of the best.
Among these were the study of Voltaire, Tom Paine, Hume, Shelley, and the
whole school of infidels, poetical as well as prose. This pursuit, and
the all but blasphemous vehemence with which I gave myself up to it, was,
perhaps, partly reactionary. A somewhat injudicious austerity and
precision had indissolubly associated in my childish days the ideas of
restraint and gloom with religion. I bore it a grudge; and so, when I
became thus early my own master, I set about paying off, after my own
fashion, the old score I owed it. I was besides, like every other young
infidel whom it has been my fate to meet, a conceited coxcomb. A
smattering of literature, without any real knowledge, and a great
assortment of all the cut-and-dry flippancies of the school I had
embraced, constituted my intellectual stock in trade. I was, like most of
my school of philosophy, very proud of being an unbeliever; and fancied
myself, in the complacency of my wretched ignorance, at an immeasurable
elevation above the church-going, Bible-reading herd, whom I treated with
a good-humoured superciliousness which I thought vastly indulgent.
My wife was an excellent little creature and truly pious. She had married
me in the full confidence that my levity was merely put on, and would at
once give way before the influence she hoped to exert upon my mind. Poor
little thing! she deceived herself. I allowed her, indeed, to do entirely
as she pleased; but for myself, I carried my infidelity to the length of
an absolute superstition. I made an ostentation of it. I would rather
have been in a "hell" than in a church on Sunday; and though I did not
prevent my wife's instilling her own principles into the minds of our
children, I, in turn, took especial care to deliver mine upon all
occasions in their hearing, by which means I trusted to sow the seeds of
that unprejudiced scepticism in which I prided myself, at least as early
as my good little partner dropped those of her own gentle "superstition"
into their infant minds. Had I had my own absurd and impious will in this
matter, my children should have had absolutely no religious education
whatsoever, and been left wholly unshackled to choose for themselves
among all existing systems, infidelity included, precisely as chance,
fancy, or interest might hereafter determine.
It is not to be supposed that such a state of things did not afford her
great uneasiness. Nevertheless, we were so very fond of one another,
and in our humble way enjoyed so many blessings, that we were as
entirely happy as any pair can be without the holy influence of
religious sympathy.
But the even flow of prosperity which had for so long gladdened my little
household was not destined to last for ever. It was ordained that I
should experience the bitter truth of more than one of the wise man's
proverbs, and first, especially, of that which declares that "he that
hateth suretyship is sure." I found myself involved (as how many have
been before) by a "d--d good-natured friend," for more than two hundred
pounds. This agreeable intelligence was conveyed to me in an attorney's
letter, which, to obviate unpleasant measures, considerately advised my
paying the entire amount within just one week of the date of his pleasant
epistle. Had I been called upon within that time to produce the Pitt
diamond, or to make title to the Buckingham estates, the demand would
have been just as easily complied with.
I have no wish to bore my reader further with this little worry--a very
serious one to me, however--and it will be enough to mention, that the
kindness of a friend extricated me from the clutches of the law by a
timely advance, which, however, I was bound to replace within two years.
To enable me to fulfill this engagement, my wife and I, after repeated
consultations, resolved upon the course which resulted in the odd and
unpleasant consequences which form the subject of this narrative.
We resolved to advertise for a lodger, with or without board, &c.; and by
resolutely submitting, for a single year, to the economy we had
prescribed for ourselves, as well as to the annoyance of a stranger's
intrusion, we calculated that at the end of that term we should have
liquidated our debt.
Accordingly, without losing time, we composed an advertisement in the
most tempting phraseology we could devise, consistently with that
economic laconism which the cost per line in the columns of the _Times_
newspaper imposes upon the rhetoric of the advertising public.
Somehow we were unlucky; for although we repeated our public notification
three times in the course of a fortnight, we had but two applications.
The one was from a clergyman in ill health--a man of great ability and
zealous piety, whom we both knew by reputation, and who has since been
called to his rest. My good little wife was very anxious that we should
close with his offer, which was very considerably under what we had fixed
upon; and I have no doubt that she was influenced by the hope that his
talents and zeal might exert a happy influence upon my stubborn and
unbelieving heart. For my part, his religious character displeased me. I
did not wish my children's heads to be filled with mythic dogmas--for so
I judged the doctrines of our holy faith--and instinctively wished him
away. I therefore declined his offer; and I have often since thought not
quite so graciously as I ought to have done. The other offer--if so it
can be called--was so very inadequate that we could not entertain it.
I was now beginning to grow seriously uneasy--our little project, so far
from bringing in the gains on which we had calculated, had put me
considerably out of pocket; for, independently of the cost of the
advertisement I have mentioned, there were sundry little expenses
involved in preparing for the meet reception of our expected inmate,
which, under ordinary circumstances, we should not have dreamed of.
Matters were in this posture, when an occurrence took place which
immediately revived my flagging hopes.
As we had no superfluity of servants, our children were early obliged to
acquire habits of independence; and my little girl, then just nine years
of age, was frequently consigned with no other care than that of her own
good sense, to the companionship of a little band of playmates, pretty
similarly circumstanced, with whom it was her wont to play. Having one
fine summer afternoon gone out as usual with these little companions, she
did not return quite so soon as we had expected her; when she did so, she
was out of breath, and excited.
"Oh, papa," she said, "I have seen such a nice old, kind gentleman, and
he told me to tell you that he has a particular friend who wants a
lodging in a quiet place, and that he thinks your house would suit him
exactly, and ever so much more; and, look here, he gave me this."
She opened her hand, and shewed me a sovereign.
"Well, this does look promisingly," I said, my wife and I having first
exchanged a smiling glance.
"And what kind of gentleman was he, dear?" inquired she. "Was he well
dressed--whom was he like?"
"He was not like any one that I know," she answered; "but he had very
nice new clothes on, and he was one of the fattest men I ever saw; and
I am sure he is sick, for he looks very pale, and he had a crutch
beside him."
"Dear me, how strange!" exclaimed my wife; though, in truth there was
nothing very wonderful in the matter. "Go on, child," I said; "let us
hear it all out."
"Well, papa, he had such an immense yellow waistcoat!--I never did see
such a waistcoat," she resumed; "and he was sitting or leaning, I can't
say which, against the bank of the green lane; I suppose to rest himself,
for he seems very weak, poor gentleman!"
"And how did you happen to speak to him?" asked my wife.
"When we were passing by, none of us saw him at all but I suppose he
heard them talking to me, and saying my name; for he said,
'Fanny--little Fanny--so, that's your name--come here child, I have a
question to ask you.'"
"And so you went to him?" I said.
"Yes," she continued, "he beckoned to me, and I did go over to him, but
not very near, for I was greatly afraid of him at first."
"Afraid! dear, and why afraid?" asked I.
"I was afraid, because he looked very old, very frightful, and as if he
would hurt me."
"What was there so old and frightful about him?" I asked.