turned his horse's head, on emerging from the lane, was the residence of
his elder brother, Sir Waldron; a man noted, as the tinker had stated in
other words, for being harsh and unforgiving to those rural rakes, from
whom scarcely any village in the kingdom is free. Neither Sir Waldron
nor Reginald was married; their younger brother, Archibald, had a wife
and a large family. Reginald, in addition to his duties as the pastor
of a neighbouring parish, educated six or eight youths of the first
families in the county, and Archibald had agreed to place his only boy,
Waldron, under Reginald's care, for three or four years, in compliance
with the reverend gentleman's affectionate and frequent invitations. He
had stolen away from London, leaving business, as he said, to take
care of itself for a few days, and brought young Waldron down with him.
Reginald was absent on his arrival, at a considerable distance, relative
to certain affairs, the arrangement of which he would have postponed,
had he been made acquainted with Archibald's intended visit; but the
latter had determined, very suddenly, on the journey. On taking a mental
glance at his affairs one morning, while he was discussing a glass
of sherry and a sandwich, at Garraway's, he discovered that there was
nothing remarkably pressing, in the way of business, for some days
forward: the funds were closed; two or three holidays at the public
offices occurred in the ensuing week; he had not been out of town,
except to fetch his family from a watering-place, for years past; he
yearned to see his brothers,--and sent a ticket-porter to book places by
the Exeter mail of the same evening. Young Waldron had scarcely time to
take leave of his mother and sisters; and as to packing up his clothes,
Mrs. Hackle declared such an exploit to be impossible. “Then what the
devil is there in these, my love?” said Archibald, pointing to two
trunks, a portmanteau, a carpet-bag, a bundle, and a hat-box, which lay
before him. Mrs. Hackle replied, that they merely contained a change of
linen, _or so_, and a few immediate necessaries for himself and his son.
“Then, I suppose,” said he, “Waldron may expect the main body of his
baggage by the broad-wheeled waggon.”
Partings and meetings between relatives are seldom of any interest
except to those immediately concerned in them: we shall not, therefore,
indulge in a description of what took place at the departure of
Archibald and his son from Mrs. and the six Misses Hackle, nor of what
Reginald said to Archibald, or Archibald said to Reginald, during the
first ten minutes of their interview at Hackle Hall. We rather prefer
relating the conversation of the three brothers after they had made a
tolerable lunch on a cold pigeon-pie and two quarts of very respectable
ale.
“Well, brother Archibald,” said the reverend gentleman as soon as the
tray was removed, “and, pray, what aspect does your native place wear to
your eye, since your long absence from it?--But you were so young when
you quitted it, for a dismal, smoky, London-merchant's 'counting-house,
that I suppose all recollection of it must have escaped your memory.”
“That's the positive truth,” replied Archibald; “if I had remembered the
place and its people; if the least remnant of a sample had cleaved to
me, not even the pleasure of seeing you and Waldron, would have induced
me to have quitted the metropolis to pay it a visit.”
“You amaze me!” exclaimed Reginald; “the hospitality--”
“Oh! I've had enough of hospitality, believe me; and so had Gulliver,
in the arms of the Brobdignag monkey, who ran away with him, and poked
pounds of nauseous chewed food out of its own jaws into his; people are
sometimes offensively, cruelly hospitable. Here, now, for instance, was
I taken yesterday, by my brother, for a treat--mark me--to dine with one
Jehoshaphat Higgs--”
“Almost the sole remaining specimen,” interrupted Sir Waldron, “of
the fine, old-English, West-country yeomen;--a race, alas! now nearly
extinct I honour the man: he farms his own land; sends his sons to the
plough; his daughters to the spinning-wheel, and his wife to the
chum. He keeps up all the good old customs of the country; raises the
mistletoe on his beam at Christmas, and dances round the May-pole, with
his buxom dame, at seventy, as gay at heart, though not as light of
limb, as he did at twenty: I repeat, that I honour such men.”
“Honour them as much as you please, Waldron,” replied Archibald; “honour
them, and welcome; but, I beseech you, do not entrap me to honour
another of them,--if, indeed, there be such another blade as old
Jehoshaphat, hereabouts,--with any more visits. First, brother Reginald,
conceive the misery, if you can, of dining in a room, falsely designated
a parlour, with a sanded floor! My teeth were set on edge every time I
moved a foot.”
“Ay, but, brother, provided the table be well covered,” observed
Reginald, “one might, methinks, even put up with a clean, dry, sanded
floor.”
“Ay, ay, keep him to that, Reginald,” said Sir Waldron; “the table was,
indeed, well covered. I have not dined so well these three weeks. We had
a full course of downright thoroughbred old-English dishes;--Devonshire
dainties of the first water; such as that transcendant lyrist, Robert
Herrick, himself, when he dwelt in this country, doubtless, occasionally
feasted on; compared with which, your modern kickshaws, your town
messes, and hashes, and fricassees, and starved turtle, brother
Archibald, are as chaff, compared with its own grain. You shall judge,
Reginald: among other things, there was a remarkably fine-flavoured
muggot-pie;--a dish, of which, I find, by an old manuscript, in our
library, that the talented and virtuous Raleigh, was remarkably fond,
and moreover partook, three days previously to his execution.”
“In my opinion,” said Archibald, “a man who would be fool enough to
prefer muggot-pie to--”
“It's fine eating, Archibald,” quoth Sir Waldron; “would that you had
tasted it!--and Sir Walter was a great man;--fine eating, on the honour
of a gentleman.”
“What! calves' tripe baked in a pie, fine eating!” said Archibald; “if
this be the result of your dwelling in Devonshire--”
“I never was out of it but thrice in my life,” said Sir Waldron;
“and each time I had cause to repent of my folly.--But, to waive the
muggot--had we not, also, parsley-pie?--”
“Made, as its name implies, of the herb that's used for garnish!”
“Squab-pie--”
“A horrible mixture of mutton-chops, apples, onions, and fat
bacon!--Most abominable!--the stench was enough to have defeated an army
of civilized beings. In fact, the dinner given by Peregrine Pickle's
friend, the physician, in imitation of the ancients--”
“The ancients fed well,” observed Reginald; “Heliogabalus--”
“Was a nincompoop to Queen Elizabeth's cook,” added Sir Waldron, rather
warmly; “whose mistress was served with fine natural meat and drink--”
“Such as muggot, squab, and parsley-pies, I suppose,” quoth Archibald.
“The appetites of the Romans,” continued Sir Waldron, “were, in latter
times, depraved; and so is my brother Archibald's. Smollett very justly
ridicules the feasts of the ancients, in that passage of Peregrine
Pickle, where--”
“Really, brother Waldron,” interrupted Reginald, while a slight blush
tinged his cheek, “I must entreat of you to pass on to some other
subject; you know we never agree on this: if I have a failing--_if_,
said I?--I meant, that, among my numerous failings, that of being
slightly irritable, when the glorious masters of the world are
attacked, by one who cannot appreciate them, is, I am sorry to say, very
conspicuous.”
“Exceedingly so, Reginald,” replied Sir Waldron; “and if I have a virtue
in the world--I beg pardon--among my numerous virtues, that of standing
forth, manfully, for the customs of old England, and defending its
literature against any man who presumes to set up the cold, classical,
marbly stuff of the Greeks or Romans, in preference, is, certainly, I am
proud to say, most paramount.”
“_Pindarum quisquis studet emulari_, brother Waldron,” exclaimed
Reginald; but he was cut short, in his intended quotation, by Archibald,
who said, “And if I plume myself on any merit of mine,--except, from
my boyhood, always having balanced to a fraction,--it is on that of
preferring a good carpet to a sanded floor; a Hoby's boot to a hob-shoe;
a tooth by Ruspini, to fill up a gap made by time, to no tooth at all;
a calf by Sheldrake, to make my left match with my right, to an odd
pair of legs; a good dinner of fish, flesh, and fowl, at Guff's, or the
Albion, or in my own dining-room, to muggot, parsley, or squab pies, in
Devonshire; a glass of claret to poor pinch-throat cider; punch to such
filthy messes as buttered ale (hot ale with sugar, butter and rum!) or
_meaty-drinky_ (ale made thick with flour!); and the company of two
or three intelligent men over a bottle or a bowl, to all the famous
authors, from Homer downwards, Greek, Roman, and English; not one of
whose works I ever found half so useful as the Tables of Interest,
Patterson's Roads, or the London Directory.”
This speech by no means raised Archibald in the estimation of either of
his brothers. Sir Waldron thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and
began whistling “Lillibullero.” Reginald sighed, and said to the man of
business, in rather a doleful tone, “But, surely, brother, you have not
forgotten your Horace; we were class-fellows together; you cannot be
blind to the beauties of those illustrious names--”
“Chaucer, Sidney, Spencer,”--said Sir Waldron.
“Euripides, Sophocles,”--quoth Reginald.
“Ford, Decker, Marlow,” thus the baronet proceeded; “Fletcher,
Jonson,--”
“Ha, ha!” exclaimed Archibald; “a list of very good people in their day,
no doubt;--indeed, they were clever, for I know it;--but there's not
one of the names you have mentioned would make a bill five farthings the
better in Lombard Street.”
“But don't you ever read, brother Archibald?” asked the reverend
gentleman, very earnestly.
“Ay,” said Sir Waldron; “don't you sometimes take down a book to amuse
yourself?”
“Oh! yes; very often,” was the reply.
“Greek or Roman?”--
“Shakespeare, Donne, Randolph,--or what book, brother Archy?”
“My ledger, or bill-book, brother Waldron,” replied Archibald. His
two brothers, on hearing this, immediately rose from their chairs, and
walked to different ends of the room. “You may talk of interest, and
pathos, and so forth,” continued Archibald, “as much as you please, but,
egad! I find more pathos in that folio of my ledger, where Crumpton,
Brothers, and Cross are debited items, to the tune of seven thousand
pounds (speaking roundly), and their assignees credited with a dividend
of seven-pence-halfpenny in the pound, than ever I did in all the works
you have mentioned. The account of Crumpton, Brothers, and Cross is
real; invoices and delivery-receipts may be produced to establish all
the items: but the tales of your poets are generally altogether, and
always in part fictitious, like the begging letters which the Mendicity
people expose. Now, I can't see, for the soul of me, why men in their
senses can ever be such asses as to invent and write tales of sorrow;
as if there wasn't enough of _bonà fide_ grief in the world already:--or
how-, to go further, people can read, and suffer themselves to be
affected by such woeful stories, when they have troubles enough of
their own to cry over; and, moreover, when they know that what they
are perusing with aching hearts, is a farrago of lies:--and, egad! the
greater the lie, it seems, the greater the merit;--lying, in this way,
is called imagination. Why, sir, if any given author of eminence, were
to tell half as many falsehoods in person as he does in print, upon
my honour and credit, if he wasn't reckoned a fool, he'd certainly
get kicked out of every house in the metropolis,--at least all those I
visit.”
“Brother, brother!” exclaimed Sir Waldron, “I cannot listen to this
folly.”
“Nor I; indeed, I cannot,” said Reginald. “But, perhaps, my brother
Archy preferreth the authors of modern days, and they delight him to the
exclusion of the fine old spirits of past ages.”
“Not so--not so, indeed,” replied Archibald; “they are all the same
to Archibald Hackle. I would rather have a good dinner than the finest
feast of reason that ever enthusiast described. I prefer a roasting
pig to Bacon; a Colchester oyster to Milton; a cut of the pope's-eye to
Pope's Homer; an apple-tart to-Crabbe; Birch's real turtle to Ovid's
Art of Love; and a roasted potato to Murphy. While others embark in
man-of-war, frigate, merchantman, heavy Dutch lugger, hoy, yacht,
bum-boat, gondola, canoe, funny, or other craft, for the wide ocean
of literature--let me enjoy myself in port. 1 would, any day, barter a
volume of Sheri_dan_ for a bottle of Dan sherry;--a second quarto for
the first pottle of strawberries, or a book by--”
“Brother Archibald, pr'ythee do not run on at this rate,” interrupted
Sir Waldron; “you, surely, are not so lost to all intellectual delights
as you pretend; you cannot be always employed at your business or your
bottle;--to say the least, you must have some time to kill.”
“Kill! kill time!--Oh, dear! no,” replied Archibald; “you know nothing
about the matter. Time travels too fast by half to please me;--I should
like to clip the old scoundrel's pinions. The complaints which 1 have
heard, occasionally, of time passing away so slowly, _ennui_, and what
not, are to me miraculous. Time seems to travel at such a deuce of a
rate, that there's no keeping pace with him. The days are too short by
half so are the nights; so are the weeks, the months, and the years. I
can scarcely get to bed before it's time to get up; and I haven't been
up but a little time, apparently, before it's time to go to bed. I can
but barely peep at the Gazette, or any matter of similar interest in the
papers, and swallow an anchovy-sandwich, and a couple of cups of coffee,
when it's time to be at the'counting-house. By the time I have read
the letters and given a few directions, it's time to be in a hundred
places;--before 1 can reach the last of, them, it's time to be
on 'Change;--I don't speak to half the people there, to whom I have
something to say, before it's time to reply to correspondents; and my
letters are scarcely written before it's post and dinner time. Farewell
business!--but then there's no time for enjoyment: dinner, wine, coffee,
supper, and punch, follow in such rapid succession,--actually treading
on each other's heels,--that there's no time to be comfortable at either
of them. It's the same in bed;--a man must sleep fast, or time will
get the start of him, and business be behind-hand an hour or two, and
everything in disorder next morning.--If I accept a bill for a couple
of months, it's due before I can well whistle: my warehouse rents
are enormous; and, upon my conscience, Lady-day and her three sisters
introduce themselves to my notice, at intervals so barely perceptible,
that the skirt of one of the old harridans' garments has scarcely
disappeared, before in flounces another. It's just as bad with the
fire-insurances, and a thousand other things,--little matters as well as
great: a man can scarcely pick his teeth before he's hungry again. The
seasons are drawn by race-horses; my family has barely settled at home
after a trip to Buxton, Brussels, or elsewhere, before summer comes
round, and Mrs. H. pines for fresh air and an excursion checque again. I
can scarcely recover the drain made on my current capital, by portioning
one daughter, before another shoots up from a child to a woman; and Jack
This or Tom T'other's father wants to know if I mean to give her the
same as her sister. It's wonderful how a man gets through so much in
the short space of life; he must be prepared for everything, when, egad!
there's no time for anything.”
“Can this really be the fact?” inquired Reginald, incredulously.
“I give you my word and honour it is.”
“But,” said Sir Waldron, “you have actually complained to me, this
morning, how the past week has 'dragged its slow length along' with
you.”
“To be sure it has,” replied Archibald; “because I'm here--where I've
nothing to do--and nothing to eat.”
“Nothing to eat, Archibald Hackle!” exclaimed Sir Waldron, drawing
himself up with an expression of offended dignity; “Hackle Hall, sir, is
almost an open house, even to the wayfarer;--you are one of its sons. I
trust I have supported the honour of our ancestors while it has been
in my keeping;--if you think otherwise, brother Archibald, and can shew
that I have not deported myself as becometh the head of the family,
although you are my younger brother, I lie open to your most severe
censure.”
“My dear fellow,” said Archibald, in a familiar manner, that Sir Waldron
deemed altogether unsuitable to the circumstances of the moment,
“my dear fellow, I don't care a pepper-pod about the honour of our
ancestors.”
“Not for the honour of our ancestors, brother Archibald!” exclaimed
Reginald, raising his eye-brows, and laying considerable emphasis on
every word, so as to make himself clearly understood.
“Ay, sir!” said Sir Waldron sternly; “not for the honour of our house,
eh?”
“Not a pepper-pod!” replied Archibald, coolly. “I have other things to
trouble me:--I care more about the house of Van Bummel and Crootz of
Amsterdam honouring its bills; except, indeed, that this house is
your property, Waldron;--but I suppose, of course, it's insured;--you
couldn't be such a fool as not to insure it;--and therefore, perhaps,
the sooner it's burned down the better, if it wasn't for the loss to
the company; for, to speak the truth, it's one of the ugliest edifices
I ever had the honour of beholding. I dare say it was well enough a few
centuries back; but it has been so patched, and with so little attention
to orders that it looks as bad as a beggar's coat. It's a compound of
the tastes of every half century for these four hundred years past, and
harmonizes remarkably well, brothers, with the range of our ancestors'
portraits in the gallery:--there they are, bow-legs and bandy-legs, fat
old fellows in flowing wigs, who remind one of porters at a masquerade,
and brawny ruffians in armour, whose looks would half hang them, without
other evidence, in any court in the kingdom:--Round-heads, cavaliers,
churchmen, and knights of the shire;--mitres and helmets, cocked hats
and cones, with women to match, for each generation;--tag-rag and
bob-tail, pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy,--in all styles, costumes, forms
and fashions!”
“Those portraits, sir,” exclaimed Sir Waldron, “are
invaluable--invaluable, sir!”
“They wouldn't fetch a pound a-piece, one with another, by auction,”
replied Archibald: “the collection is just like the house itself; to
which each generation seems to have added its quota, more in accordance
with the fashion of the day, than the character of the building. What
remains of the original masonry reminds me of an old iron chest; and the
affair altogether, with its turrets and chimneys sticking up, of various
sizes and forms, resembles nothing in the world (except its gallery
of portraits) but an old cruet-stand, furnished with odd bottles. The
squat, round, flat-headed west turret, with the flag-staff without a
flag, overhanging one side of it, resembles a tenpenny mustard-pot; the
little trumpery dome that stands up at the east, a pepper-castor; the
tall chimney, almost in the centre, the neck of a slender vinegar-cruet;
the--”
“'Sdeath! brother Reginald,” interrupted Sir Waldron; “are we to bear
this?”
“No--really, I think Archibald is going to lengths which are not
decidedly to his credit,” said Reginald.
“I would take leave to tell him,” continued Sir Waldron, “if he were not
under my roof, and in the honourable house of his ancestors, that the
expressions he has used are derogatory to his elder brother's dignity. I
have always endeavoured to support the name of Hackle, in the county,
in its proper rank: I am proud to say, there is not a blot in my
escutcheon; I think I may almost vie with my brother Reginald, in
moral deportment; I watch myself with the most scrupulous exactitude;
I consider the name as a special trust confided to me for life, and
I strive to maintain it pure and unsullied for the next possessor: I
mortify myself out of respect to the house of which I am--I trust, not
unworthily,--the head. Hospitality in Hackle Hall, is not a mere word--”
“No, indeed,” said Archibald; “here is plenty to eat and drink, but
nothing eatable or drinkable. In matters appertaining to the table, you
are a century and a half behind us in town. I can no more live upon your
dishes than I could wear my grandfather's breeches, or old Sir Geoffry's
greaves for gaiters. You keep up a custom of dining at two o'clock,--and
I don't care a farthing for dinner till five, at the very earliest
moment The post of honour in the parlour, at breakfast-time, is
occupied by a huge, blear-eyed, irascible, old stag-hound, instead of
an agreeable woman; and there he lies, dreaming of following the stag,
where she ought to be sitting, all smiles and sweetness, asking a man if
he'd take half a cup more. But night is worse than all; it's so awfully
silent, that I can't sleep!--In fact, brother Waldron, although you
have done all in your power to make me comfortable,--to speak the plain
truth,--when the novelty of the thing wore off when there was nothing
more left to laugh at,--in other words, within twenty-four hours after
my arrival, I began to sigh for a lunch at the'counting-house, sent
in hot from the Cock in Threadneedle Street, and a draught of London
porter, again. I feel as though I was in a strange country; I can't
understand two-thirds of what the people say. With the assistance of my
man,--whom I brought down, not out of ostentation, but because I can't
shave myself and entertain a mortal fear of a country barber,--'I have
to-day discovered, that meat, in the dialect of these parts, means
bread, butter, and almost everything eatable but meat; and meat they
call flesh!--He had a quarrel with a farmer's son, last night, who
threatened to 'scat him down upon the planchin;' and shortly afterwards
tripped up his heels: so that, thank heaven! if any one, while I remain
here, threatens to scat me down upon the planchm, I shall know,
that nothing but my legs can save me from being transferred from a
perpendicular to a horizontal position. He tells me, too, that you
make broth of hot water poured upon chopped leeks and bits of
mutton-suet,--and that, in this country, broth is plural;--that they
ask you to have _a few_, instead of some; and tempt you to take some,
by vowing, that they--that is, the broth--_are_ cruel good.--Item,
that when they blowed dust in your eyes, the bumpkins exclaim, 'How the
pellam blaeth!' and that, upon one fellow being asked what he meant by
'pellam,' he replied, 'Muck adrouth.' 'And what's muck adrouth?' said
the stranger. 'Why, pellam, to be zure,' replied the bumpkin; and this
was all that could be elicited from him, in explanation. If I happen to
mention anything metropolitan, which, in their sublime stupidity,
they either do not comprehend or believe, they say, with roguish and
provoking gravity, 'Ahem! quo' Dick Bates!' and then, if I manifest a
little display of venial irritability at their ignorance, they tell me,
that I'm 'all of a ruck, like Zekiel Hodder's boot!'--Now, who the deuce
Dick Bates or Zekiel Hodder may be, I can't learn. I was offered my
choice of three apples, yesterday, and the man who held them, instead of
asking me which I would have, this, that, or the other, said something
like what I am about to attempt:--'Well, 'zquire, which 'ull'ee
ha',--thic, thac, or thuc? Some of the old people, positively, banish
'she' and 'I' from their discourse, using 'her' for the former, like
the Welsh, and the kingly plural, for the latter; always, nevertheless,
substituting the accusative for the nominative case; as, for
instance:--your housekeeper, Sir Waldron, speaking of the housemaid,
said to me, to-day, 'Us ha' told her, scaures and scaures o' times, to
take up hot water to'ee, at eight o'clock; but her never heeds, not
her, then, vor-sooth! her thinks zo much o' gallivanting wi' the
men-volks!--her's no good, bless'ee! not a ha'p'orth!' That old
housekeeper of yours,--by-the-by,--Waldron, is a grievous nuisance to
me; she comes and talks to me daily by the hour. I can't endure the
woman.”
“My servant annoy you, brother Archibald!--I'm sorry you did not mention
this before.”
“It seems strange to me,” said Reginald, “that Archibald did not give
her an admonition, when she first grew troublesome, and so get rid of
her.”