While yet a child, and long before his time,
He had perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness.
.....
But eagerly he read, and read again.
.....
Yet still uppermost
Nature was at his heart, as if he felt,
Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power
In all things that from her sweet influence
Might seek to wean him. Therefore with her hues,
Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,
He clothed the nakedness of austere truth.
WORDSWORTH.
Algernon Mordaunt was the last son of an old and honourable race, which
had centuries back numbered princes in its line. His parents had had
many children, but all (save Algernon, the youngest) died in their
infancy. His mother perished in giving him birth. Constitutional
infirmity and the care of mercenary nurses contributed to render
Algernon a weakly and delicate child: hence came a taste for loneliness
and a passion for study; and from these sprung, on the one hand, the
fastidiousness and reserve which render us apparently unamiable, and, on
the other, the loftiness of spirit and the kindness of heart which are
the best and earliest gifts of literature, and more than counterbalance
our deficiencies in the “minor morals” due to society by their tendency
to increase our attention to the greater ones belonging to mankind. Mr.
Mordaunt was a man of luxurious habits and gambling propensities: wedded
to London, he left the house of his ancestors to moulder into desertion
and decay; but to this home Algernon was constantly consigned during
his vacations from school; and its solitude and cheerlessness gave to
a disposition naturally melancholy and thoughtful those colours which
subsequent events were calculated to deepen, not efface.
Truth obliges us to state, despite our partiality to Mordaunt, that,
when he left his school after a residence of six years, it was with the
bitter distinction of having been the most unpopular boy in it. Why,
nobody could exactly explain, for his severest enemies could not accuse
him of ill-nature, cowardice, or avarice, and these make the three
capital offences of a school-boy; but Algernon Mordaunt had already
acquired the knowledge of himself, and could explain the cause, though
with a bitter and swelling heart. His ill health, his long residence at
home, his unfriended and almost orphan situation, his early habits of
solitude and reserve, all these, so calculated to make the spirit shrink
within itself, made him, on his entrance at school, if not unsocial,
appear so: this was the primary reason of his unpopularity; the second
was that he perceived, for he was sensitive (and consequently acute) to
the extreme, the misfortune of his manner, and in his wish to rectify
it, it became doubly unprepossessing; to reserve, it now added
embarrassment, to coldness, gloom; and the pain he felt in addressing or
being addressed by another was naturally and necessarily reciprocal, for
the effects of sympathy are nowhere so wonderful, yet so invisible, as
in the manners.
By degrees he shunned the intercourse which had for him nothing but
distress, and his volatile acquaintances were perhaps the first to set
him the example. Often in his solitary walks he stopped afar off to gaze
upon the sports which none ever solicited him to share; and as the shout
of laughter and of happy hearts came, peal after peal, upon his ear, he
turned enviously, yet not malignantly away, with tears, which not all
his pride could curb, and muttered to himself, “And these, these hate
me!”
There are two feelings common to all high or affectionate natures,--that
of extreme susceptibility to opinion and that of extreme bitterness at
its injustice. These feelings were Mordaunt’s: but the keen edge which
one blow injures, the repetition blunts; and by little and little,
Algernon became not only accustomed, but, as he persuaded himself,
indifferent, to his want of popularity; his step grew more lofty, and
his address more collected, and that which was once diffidence gradually
hardened into pride.
His residence at the University was neither without honour nor profit.
A college life was then, as now, either the most retired or the most
social of all others; we need scarcely say which it was to Mordaunt, but
his was the age when solitude is desirable, and when the closet forms
the mind better than the world. Driven upon itself, his intellect became
inquiring and its resources profound; admitted to their inmost recesses,
he revelled among the treasures of ancient lore, and in his dreams of
the Nymph and Naiad, or his researches after truth in the deep wells of
the Stagyrite or the golden fountains of Plato, he forgot the loneliness
of his lot and exhausted the hoarded enthusiasm of his soul.
But his mind, rather thoughtful than imaginative, found no idol like
“Divine Philosophy.” It delighted to plunge itself into the mazes of
metaphysical investigation; to trace the springs of the intellect; to
connect the arcana of the universe; to descend into the darkest caverns,
or to wind through the minutest mysteries of Nature, and rise, step
by step, to that arduous elevation on which Thought stands dizzy and
confused, looking beneath upon a clouded earth, and above upon an
unfathomable heaven.
Rarely wandering from his chamber, known personally to few and
intimately by none, Algernon yet left behind him at the University
the most remarkable reputation of his day. He had obtained some of the
highest of academical honours, and by that proverbial process of vulgar
minds which ever frames the magnificent from the unknown, the seclusion
in which he lived and the recondite nature of his favourite pursuits
attached to his name a still greater celebrity and interest than all the
orthodox and regular dignities he had acquired. There are few men who
do not console themselves for not being generally loved, if they can
reasonably hope that they are generally esteemed. Mordaunt had now grown
reconciled to himself and to his kind. He had opened to his interest a
world in his own breast, and it consoled him for his mortification in
the world without. But, better than this, his habits as well as studies
had strengthened the principles and confirmed the nobility of his mind.
He was not, it is true, more kind, more benevolent, more upright than
before; but those virtues now emanated from principle, not emotion:
and principle to the mind is what a free constitution is to a people;
without that principle or that free constitution, the one may be for
the moment as good, the other as happy; but we cannot tell how long the
goodness and the happiness will continue.
On leaving the University, his father sent for him to London. He stayed
there a short time, and mingled partially in its festivities; but the
pleasures of English dissipation have for a century been the same,
heartless without gayety, and dull without refinement. Nor could
Mordaunt, the most fastidious, yet warm-hearted of human beings,
reconcile either his tastes or his affections to the cold insipidities
of patrician society. His father’s habits and evident distresses
deepened his disgust to his situation; for the habits were incurable and
the distresses increasing; and nothing but a circumstance which Mordaunt
did not then understand prevented the final sale of an estate already
little better than a pompous incumbrance.
It was therefore with the half painful, half pleasurable sensation with
which we avoid contemplating a ruin we cannot prevent that Mordaunt
set out upon that Continental tour deemed then so necessary a part of
education. His father, on taking leave of him, seemed deeply affected.
“Go, my son,” said he, “may God bless you, and not punish me too
severely. I have wronged you deeply, and I cannot bear to look upon your
face.”
To these words Algernon attached a general, but they cloaked a peculiar,
meaning: in three years, he returned to England; his father had been
dead some months, and the signification of his parting address was
already deciphered,--but of this hereafter.
In his travels Mordaunt encountered an Englishman whose name I will not
yet mention: a person of great reputed wealth; a merchant, yet a man
of pleasure; a voluptuary in life, yet a saint in reputation; or, to
abstain from the antithetical analysis of a character which will not
be corporeally presented to the reader till our tale is considerably
advanced, one who drew from nature a singular combination of shrewd
but false conclusions, and a peculiar philosophy, destined hereafter to
contrast the colours and prove the practical utility of that which was
espoused by Mordaunt.
There can be no education in which the lessons of the world do not form
a share. Experience, in expanding Algernon’s powers, had ripened his
virtues. Nor had the years which had converted knowledge into wisdom
failed in imparting polish to refinement. His person had acquired a
greater grace, and his manners an easier dignity than before. His noble
and generous mind had worked its impress upon his features and his mien;
and those who could overcome the first coldness and shrinking hauteur of
his address found it required no minute examination to discover the real
expression of the eloquent eye and the kindling lip.
He had not been long returned before he found two enemies to his
tranquillity,--the one was love, the other appeared in the more
formidable guise of a claimant to his estate. Before Algernon was aware
of the nature of the latter he went to consult with his lawyer.
“If the claim be just, I shall not, of course, proceed to law,” said
Mordaunt.
“But without the estate, sir, you have nothing!”
“True,” said Algernon, calmly.
But the claim was not just, and to law he went.
In this lawsuit, however, he had one assistant in an old relation, who
had seen, indeed, but very little of him, but who compassionated his
circumstances, and above all hated his opponent. This relation was rich
and childless; and there were not wanting those who predicted that his
money would ultimately discharge the mortgages and repair the house of
the young representative of the Mordaunt honours. But the old kinsman
was obstinate, self-willed, and under the absolute dominion of patrician
pride; and it was by no means improbable that the independence of
Mordaunt’s character would soon create a disunion between them, by
clashing against the peculiarities of his relation’s temper.
It was a clear and sunny morning when Linden, tolerably recovered of his
hurt, set out upon a sober and aged pony, which after some natural pangs
of shame he had hired of his landlord, to Mordaunt Court.
Mordaunt’s house was situated in the midst of a wild and extensive park,
surrounded with woods, and interspersed with trees of the stateliest
growth, now scattered into irregular groups, now marshalled into
sweeping avenues; while, ever and anon, Linden caught glimpses of
a rapid and brawling rivulet, which in many a slight but sounding
waterfall gave a music strange and spirit-like to the thick copses and
forest glades through which it went exulting on its way. The deer lay
half concealed by the fern among which they couched, turning their
stately crests towards the stranger, but not stirring from their rest;
while from the summit of beeches which would have shamed the pavilion
of Tityrus the rooks--those monks of the feathered people--were loud in
their confused but not displeasing confabulations.
As Linden approached the house, he was struck with the melancholy air
of desolation which spread over and around it: fragments of stone,
above which clomb the rank weed, insolently proclaiming the triumph of
Nature’s meanest offspring over the wrecks of art; a moat dried up; a
railing once of massive gilding, intended to fence a lofty terrace on
the right from the incursions of the deer, but which, shattered and
decayed, now seemed to ask with the satirist,--
“To what end did our lavish ancestors
Erect of old these stately piles of ours?”
--a chapel on the left, perfectly in ruins,--all appeared strikingly
to denote that time had outstripped fortune, and that the years, which
alike hallow and destroy, had broken the consequence, in deepening the
antiquity, of the House of Mordaunt.
The building itself agreed but too well with the tokens of decay around
it; most of the windows were shut up, and the shutters of dark oak,
richly gilt, contrasted forcibly with the shattered panes and mouldered
framing of the glass. It was a house of irregular architecture.
Originally built in the fifteenth century, it had received its last
improvement, with the most lavish expense, during the reign of Anne; and
it united the Gallic magnificence of the latter period with the strength
and grandeur of the former; it was in a great part overgrown with ivy,
and, where that insidious ornament had not reached, the signs of decay,
and even ruin, were fully visible. The sun itself, bright and cheering
as it shone over Nature, making the green sod glow like emeralds, and
the rivulet flash in its beam, like one of those streams of real light,
imagined by Swedenborg in his visions of heaven, and clothing tree and
fell, brake and hillock, with the lavish hues of infant summer,--the sun
itself only made more desolate, because more conspicuous, the venerable
fabric, which the youthful traveller frequently paused more accurately
to survey, and its laughing and sportive beams playing over chink and
crevice, seemed almost as insolent and untimeous as the mirth of the
young mocking the silent grief of some gray-headed and solitary mourner.
Clarence had now reached the porch, and the sound of the shrill bell he
touched rang with a strange note through the general stillness of the
place. A single servant appeared, and ushered Clarence through a screen
hall, hung round with relics of armour, and ornamented on the side
opposite the music gallery with a solitary picture of gigantic size, and
exhibiting the full length of the gaunt person and sable steed of that
Sir Piers de Mordaunt who had so signalized himself in the field in
which Henry of Richmond changed his coronet for a crown. Through this
hall Clarence was led to a small chamber clothed with uncouth and
tattered arras, in which, seemingly immersed in papers, he found the
owner of the domain.
“Your studies,” said Linden, after the salutations of the day, “seem to
harmonize with the venerable antiquity of your home;” and he pointed to
the crabbed characters and faded ink of the papers on the table.
“So they ought,” answered Mordaunt, with a faint smile; “for they are
called from their quiet archives in order to support my struggle for
that home. But I fear the struggle is in vain, and that the quibbles of
law will transfer into other hands a possession I am foolish enough to
value the more from my inability to maintain it.”
Something of this Clarence had before learned from the communicative
gossip of his landlady; and less desirous to satisfy his curiosity than
to lead the conversation from a topic which he felt must be so unwelcome
to Mordaunt, he expressed a wish to see the state apartments of the
house. With something of shame at the neglect they had necessarily
experienced, and something of pride at the splendour which no neglect
could efface, Mordaunt yielded to the request, and led the way up a
staircase of black oak, the walls and ceiling of which were covered with
frescoes of Italian art, to a suite of apartments in which time and dust
seemed the only tenants. Lingeringly did Clarence gaze upon the rich
velvet, the costly mirrors, the motley paintings of a hundred ancestors,
and the antique cabinets, containing, among the most hoarded relics of
the Mordaunt race, curiosities which the hereditary enthusiasm of a line
of cavaliers had treasured as the most sacred of heirlooms, and which,
even to the philosophical mind of Mordaunt, possessed a value he did not
seek too minutely to analyze. Here was the goblet from which the first
prince of Tudor had drunk after the field of Bosworth. Here the ring
with which the chivalrous Francis the First had rewarded a signal feat
of that famous Robert de Mordaunt, who, as a poor but adventurous
cadet of the house, had brought to the “first gentleman of France”
the assistance of his sword. Here was the glove which Sir Walter had
received from the royal hand of Elizabeth, and worn in the lists upon
a crest which the lance of no antagonist in that knightly court could
abase. And here, more sacred than all, because connected with the memory
of misfortune, was a small box of silver which the last king of a fated
line had placed in the hands of the gray-headed descendant of that Sir
Walter after the battle of the Boyne, saying, “Keep this, Sir Everard
Mordaunt, for the sake of one who has purchased the luxury of gratitude
at the price of a throne!”
As Clarence glanced from these relics to the figure of Mordaunt, who
stood at a little distance leaning against the window, with arms folded
on his breast and with eyes abstractedly wandering over the noble woods
and extended park, which spread below, he could not but feel that if
birth had indeed the power of setting its seal upon the form, it was
never more conspicuous than in the broad front and lofty air of the last
descendant of the race by whose memorials he was surrounded. Touched by
the fallen fortunes of Mordaunt, and interested by the uncertainty which
the chances of law threw over his future fate, Clarence could not resist
exclaiming, with some warmth and abruptness,--
“And by what subterfuge or cavil does the present claimant of these
estates hope to dislodge their rightful possessor?”
“Why,” answered Mordaunt, “it is a long story in detail, but briefly
told in epitome. My father was a man whose habits greatly exceeded
his fortune, and a few months after his death, Mr. Vavasour, a distant
relation, produced a paper, by which it appeared that my father had,
for a certain sum of ready money, disposed of his estates to this Mr.
Vavasour, upon condition that they should not be claimed nor the treaty
divulged till after his death; the reason for this proviso seems to
have been the shame my father felt for his exchange, and his fear of the
censures of that world to which he was always devoted.”
“But how unjust to you!” said Clarence.
“Not so much so as it seems,” said Mordaunt, deprecatingly; “for I was
then but a sickly boy, and according to the physicians, and I sincerely
believe according also to my poor father’s belief, almost certain of a
premature death. In that case Vavasour would have been the nearest heir;
and this expectancy, by the by, joined to the mortgages on the property,
made the sum given ridiculously disproportioned to the value of the
estate. I must confess that the news came upon me like a thunderbolt.
I should have yielded up possession immediately, but was informed by my
lawyers that my father had no legal right to dispose of the property;
the discussion of that right forms the ground of the present lawsuit.
But,” continued Mordaunt, proudly, yet mournfully, “I am prepared for
the worst; if, indeed, I should call that the worst which can affect
neither intellect nor health nor character nor conscience.”
Clarence was silent, and Mordaunt after a brief pause once more resumed
his guidance. Their tour ended in a large library filled with books, and
this Mordaunt informed his guest was his chosen sitting-room.
An old carved table was covered with works which for the most part
possessed for the young mind of Clarence, more accustomed to imagine
than reflect, but a very feeble attraction; on looking over them, he,
however, found, half hid by a huge folio of Hobbes, and another of
Locke, a volume of Milton’s poems; this paved the way to a conversation
in which both had an equal interest, for both were enthusiastic in the
character and genius of that wonderful man, for whom “the divine and
solemn countenance of Freedom” was dearer than the light of day, and
whose solitary spell, accomplishing what the whole family of earth
once vainly began upon the plain of Shinar, has built of materials more
imperishable than “slime and brick” “a city and a tower whose summit has
reached to heaven.”
It was with mutual satisfaction that Mordaunt and his guest continued
their commune till the hour of dinner was announced to them by a bell,
which, formerly intended as an alarum, now served the peaceful purpose
of a more agreeable summons.
The same servant who had admitted Clarence ushered them through the
great hall into the dining-room, and was their solitary attendant during
their repast.
The temper of Mordaunt was essentially grave and earnest, and his
conversation almost invariably took the tone of his mind; this made
their conference turn upon less minute and commonplace topics than one
between such new acquaintances, especially of different ages, usually
does.
“You will positively go to London to-morrow, then?” said Mordaunt, as
the servant, removing the appurtenances of dinner, left them alone.
“Positively,” answered Clarence. “I go there to carve my own fortunes,
and, to say truth, I am impatient to begin.” Mordaunt looked earnestly
at the frank face of the speaker, and wondered that one so young, so
well-educated, and, from his air and manner, evidently of gentle blood,
should appear so utterly thrown upon his own resources.
“I wish you success,” said he, after a pause; “and it is a noble part
of the organization of this world that, by increasing those riches which
are beyond fortune, we do in general take the surest method of obtaining
those which are in its reach.”
Clarence looked inquiringly at Mordaunt, who, perceiving it, continued,
“I see that I should explain myself further. I will do so by using the
thoughts of a mind not the least beautiful and accomplished which this
country has produced. ‘Of all which belongs to us,’ said Bolingbroke,
‘the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others.
Whatever is best is safest; lies out of the reach of human power; can
neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work
of Nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which contemplates
and admires the world whereof it makes the noblest part. These are
inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in one we shall enjoy the
other.’”
“Beautiful, indeed!” exclaimed Clarence, with the enthusiasm of a young
and pure heart, to which every loftier sentiment is always beautiful.
“And true as beautiful!” said Mordaunt. “Nor is this all, for the mind
can even dispense with that world ‘of which it forms a part’ if we can
create within it a world still more inaccessible to chance. But (and I
now return to and explain my former observation) the means by which we
can effect this peculiar world can be rendered equally subservient to
our advancement and prosperity in that which we share in common with
our race; for the riches which by the aid of wisdom we heap up in the
storehouses of the mind are, though not the only, the most customary
coin by which external prosperity is bought. So that the philosophy
which can alone give independence to ourselves becomes; under the name
of honesty, the best policy in commerce with our kind.”
In conversation of this nature, which the sincerity and lofty enthusiasm
of Mordaunt rendered interesting to Clarence, despite the distaste
to the serious so ordinary to youth, the hours passed on, till the
increasing evening warned Linden to depart.
“Adieu!” said he to Mordaunt. “I know not when we shall meet again,
but if we ever do, I will make it my boast, whether in prosperity or
misfortune, not to have forgotten the pleasure I have this day enjoyed!”
Returning his guest’s farewell with a warmth unusual to his manner,
Mordaunt followed him to the door and saw him depart.
Fate ordained that they should pursue in very different paths their
several destinies; nor did it afford them an opportunity of meeting
again, till years and events had severely tried the virtue of one and
materially altered the prospects of the other.
The next morning Clarence Linden was on his road to London.