"Upon his bare knees pray God him to send
A wife to last unto his life's end."
So one morning he went and took unto himself the woman nearest at
hand--one, of whom we must needs suppose that he chose her for her
virtues, for most certainly it was not for her attractions. The Colonel
swore at him for a fool; but, after a while, Jeffrey, who is a
favourite, smuggled his wife into the house; and the Colonel, whose
increasing age renders him rather more dependent on household help,
seems to endure very patiently this addition to his family, and even the
presence of a white-headed chubby little thing, which I found running
about without let or hindrance.
The room into which I first introduced you, with its rough log-walls, is
Colonel Talbot's library and hall of audience. On leaving my apartment
in the morning, I used to find groups of strange figures lounging round
the door, ragged, black-bearded, gaunt, travel-worn and toil-worn
emigrants, Irish, Scotch, and American, come to offer themselves as
settlers. These he used to call his land-pirates; and curious, and
characteristic, and dramatic beyond description, were the scenes which
used to take place between this grand bashaw of the wilderness and his
hungry, importunate clients and petitioners.
Another thing which gave a singular interest to my conversations with
Colonel Talbot was, the sort of indifference with which he regarded all
the stirring events of the last thirty years. Dynasties rose and
disappeared; kingdoms were passed from hand to hand like wine decanters;
battles were lost and won;--he neither knew, nor heard, nor cared. No
post, no newspaper brought to his forest-hut the tidings of victory and
defeat, of revolutions of empires, "or rumours of unsuccessful and
successful war."
When he first took to the bush, Napoleon was consul; when he emerged
from his solitude, the tremendous game of ambition had been played out,
and Napoleon and his deeds and his dynasty were numbered with the things
o'erpast. With the stream of events had flowed by equally unmarked the
stream of mind, thought, literature--the progress of social
improvement--the changes in public opinion. Conceive what a gulf between
us! but though I could go to him, he could not come to me--my sympathies
had the wider range of the two.
The principal foreign and domestic events of his _reign_ are the last
American war, in which he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by a
detachment of the enemy, who ransacked his house, and drove off his
horses and cattle; and a visit which he received some years ago from
three young Englishmen of rank and fortune, Lord Stanley, Mr. Stuart
Wortley, and Mr. Labouchere, who spent some weeks with him. These
events, and his voyages to England, seemed to be the epochs from which
he dated. From these occasional flights he returns like an old eagle to
his perch on the cliff, whence he looks down upon the world he has
quitted with supreme contempt and indifference, and around that on which
he has created, with much self-applause and self-gratulation.
[Footnote 12: Vide Sartor Resartus.]
[Footnote 13: Dr. Dunlop.]
[Footnote 14: Dick Talbot married Frances Jennings--la belle Jennings of
De Grammont's Memoirs, and elder sister of the celebrated Duchess of
Marlborough.]
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