A Poor Relation--is the most irrelevant thing in nature,--a piece of
impertinent correspondency,--an odious approximation,--a haunting
conscience,--a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our
prosperity,--an unwelcome remembrancer,--a perpetually recurring
mortification,--a drain on your purse,--a more intolerable dun upon
your pride,--a drawback upon success,--a rebuke to your rising,--a
stain in your blood,--a blot on your 'scutcheon,--a rent in your
garment,--a death's head at your banquet,--Agathocles' pot,--a
Mordecai in your gate,--a Lazarus at your door,--a lion in your
path,--a frog in your chamber,--a fly in your ointment,--a mote in
your eye,--a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends,--the
one thing not needful,--the hail in harvest,--the ounce of sour in a
pound of sweet.
He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That is Mr. ----." A
rap, between familiarity and respect; that demands, and, at the same
time, seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling
and--embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake,
and--draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about
dinner-time--when the table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing
you have company, but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your
visitor's two children are accommodated at a side table. He never
cometh upon open days, when your wife says with some complacency, "My
dear, perhaps Mr. ---- will drop in to-day." He remembereth
birthdays--and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one.
He declareth against fish, the turbot being small--yet suffereth
himself to be importuned into a slice against his first resolution. He
sticketh by the port--yet will be prevailed upon to empty the
remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a
puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or
not civil enough, to him. The guests think "they have seen him
before." Everyone speculateth upon his condition; and the most part
take him to be--a tide waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name,
to imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too familiar
by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half the
familiarity he might pass for a casual dependent; with more boldness
he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too
humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state than befits a
client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he
bringeth up no rent--yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that
your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist
table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and--resents being left out.
When the company break up he proffereth to go for a coach--and lets
the servant go. He recollects your grandfather; and will thrust in
some mean and quite unimportant anecdote of--the family. He knew
it when it was not quite so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing
it now." He reviveth past situations to institute what he
calleth--favourable comparisons. With a reflecting sort of
congratulation, he will inquire the price of your furniture: and
insults you with a special commendation of your window-curtains. He is
of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all,
there was something more comfortable about the old tea-kettle--which
you must remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience in
having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not
so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet; and did
not know, till lately, that such-and-such had been the crest of the
family. His memory is unseasonable; his compliments perverse; his talk
a trouble; his stay pertinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss
his chair into a corner, as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly
rid of two nuisances.
There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is--a female Poor
Relation. You may do something with the other; you may pass him off
tolerably well; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. "He is an
old humourist," you may say, "and affects to go threadbare. His
circumstances are better than folks would take them to be. You are
fond of having a Character at your table, and truly he is one." But in
the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman
dresses below herself from caprice. The truth must out without
shuffling, "She is plainly related to the L----s; or what does she at
their house?" She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine
times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something
between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently
predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously
sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be repressed
sometimes--_aliquando suffiaminandus erat_--but there is no raising
her. You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped--after the
gentlemen. Mr. ---- requests the honour of taking wine with her; she
hesitates between Port and Madeira, and choses the former--because he
does. She calls the servant _Sir_; and insists on not troubling him to
hold her plate. The housekeeper patronises her. The children's
governess takes upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the
piano for harpsichord.
Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a noticeable instance of the
disadvantages, to which this chimerical notion of _affinity
constituting a claim to an acquaintance_, may subject the spirit of a
gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a
lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the
malignant maternity of an old woman, who persists in calling him "her
son Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his
indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant surface, under
which it had been her seeming business and pleasure all along to sink
him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet
in real life, who wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W---- was
of my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of
promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride; but its quality
was inoffensive; it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and
serves to keep inferiors at a distance; it only sought to ward off
derogation from itself. It was the principle of self-respect carried
as far as it could go, without infringing upon that respect, which he
would have every one else equally maintain for himself. He would have
you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel have I had
with him, when we were rather older boys, and our tallness made us
more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because I would not
thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice,
when we have been out together on a holiday in the streets of this
sneering and prying metropolis. W---- went, sore with these notions,
to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life,
meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in him a
passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion to the
society. The servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to
him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under
which Latimer must have walked erect; and in which Hooker, in his
young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity.
In the depths of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor
student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, which
insult not; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances.
He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond
his domains. The healing influence of studious pursuits was upon him,
to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man; when the
waywardness of his fate broke out against him with a second and worse
malignity. The father of W---- had hitherto exercised the humble
profession of house-painter at N----, near Oxford. A supposed interest
with some of the heads of colleges had now induced him to take up his
abode in that city, with the hope of being employed upon some public
works which were talked of. From that moment I read in the countenance
of the young man, the determination which at length tore him from
academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted with our
Universities, the distance between the gownsmen and the townsmen, as
they are called--the trading part of the latter especially--is carried
to an excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament
of W----'s father was diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W----
was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his
arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that
wore the semblance of a gown--insensible to the winks and opener
remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in
standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking.
Such a state of things could not last. W---- must change the air of
Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former; and let the sturdy
moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they
can bear, censure the dereliction; he cannot estimate the struggle. I
stood with W----, the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves
of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the
High Street to the back of **** college, where W---- kept his rooms.
He seemed thoughtful, and more reconciled. I ventured to rally
him--finding him in a better mood--upon a representation of the Artist
Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to
flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his
really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity, or badge of
gratitude to his saint. W---- looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan,
"knew his mounted sign--and fled." A letter on his father's table the
next morning, announced that he had accepted a commission in a
regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the first who
perished before the walls of St. Sebastian.
I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half
seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently painful;
but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter for
tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the
account distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which I
received on this matter, are certainly not attended with anything
painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's table
(no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious
figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet
comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his
words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I
had little inclination to have done so--for my cue was to admire in
silence. A particular elbow chair was appropriated to him, which was
in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which
appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I
used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make out of him
was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows a world ago at
Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place
where all the money was coined--and I thought he was the owner of all
that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his
presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort of
melancholy grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom I
fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning; a
captive--a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often
have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an
habitual general respect which we all in common manifested towards
him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in some
argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city
of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the
dwellers on the hill, and in the valley. This marked distinction
formed an obvious division between the boys who lived above (however
brought together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal
residence was on the plain; a sufficient cause of hostility in the
code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading
Mountaineer; and would still maintain the general superiority, in
skill and hardihood, of the _Above Boys_ (his own faction) over the
_Below Boys_ (so were they called), of which party his contemporary
had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes on this
topic--the only one upon which the old gentleman was ever brought
out--and bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the recommencement
(so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to
insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation
upon some adroit by-commendation of the old Minster; in the general
preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the
dweller on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a conciliating
level, and lay down their less important differences. Once only I saw
the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remembered with anguish the
thought that came over me: "Perhaps he will never come here again." He
had been pressed to take another plate of the viand, which I have
already mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He
had refused with a resistance amounting to rigour--when my aunt, an
old Lincolnian, but who had something of this in common with my cousin
Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of
season--uttered the following memorable application--"Do take another
slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." The old
gentleman said nothing at the time--but he took occasion in the course
of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to
utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me
now as I write it--"Woman, you are superannuated." John Billet did not
survive long, after the digesting of this affront; but he survived
long enough to assure me that peace was actually restored! and, if I
remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the
place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint
(anno 1781) where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable
independence; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny,
which were found in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world,
blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never
been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was--a Poor Relation.
_Lamb._