_By the Rev. G. Croly_.
A retired barrister, living happily with his wife and children on a very
moderate patrimony, has suddenly the misery to have a large fortune left
him.--Time pressed. I set off at day break for London; plunged into the
tiresome details of legateeship; and after a fortnight's toil, infinite
weariness, and longings to breathe in any atmosphere unchoked by a
million of chimneys, to sleep where no eternal rolling of equipages
should disturb my rest, and to enjoy society without being trampled on
by dowagers fifty deep, I saw my cottage roof once more.
But where was the cheerfulness that once made it more than a palace to
me? The remittances that I had made from London were already conspiring
against my quiet. I could scarcely get a kiss from either of my girls,
they were in such merciless haste to make their dinner "toilet." My kind
and comely wife was actually not to be seen; and her apology, delivered
by a coxcomb in silver lace to the full as deep as any in (my rival)
the sugar-baker's service, was, that "his lady would have the honour
of waiting on me as soon as she was dressed." This was of course the
puppy's own version of the message; but its meaning was clear, and it
was ominous.
Dinner came at last: the table was loaded with awkward profusion; but
it was as close an imitation as we could yet contrive of our opulent
neighbour's display. No less than four footmen, discharged as splendid
superfluities from the household of a duke, waited behind our four
chairs, to make their remarks on our style of eating in contrast with
the polished performances at their late master's. But Mrs. Molasses had
exactly four. The argument was unanswerable. Silence and sullenness
reigned through the banquet; but on the retreat of the four gentlemen
who did us the honour of attending, the whole tale of evil burst forth.
What is the popularity of man? The whole family had already dropped from
the highest favouritism into the most angry disrepute. A kind of little
rebellion raged against us in the village: we were hated, scorned, and
libelled on all sides. My unlucky remittances had done the deed.
The village milliner, a cankered old carle, who had made caps and
bonnets for the vicinage during the last forty years, led the battle.
The wife and daughters of a man of East Indian wealth were not to be
clothed like meaner souls; and the sight of three London bonnets in my
pew had set the old sempstress in a blaze. The flame was easily
propagated. The builder of my chaise-cart was irritated at the
handsome barouche in which my family now moved above the heads of
mankind. The rumour that champagne had appeared at the cottage roused
the indignation of the honest vintner who had so long supplied me
with port: and professional insinuations of the modified nature of
this London luxury were employed to set the sneerers of the village
against me and mine. Our four footmen had been instantly discovered by
the eye of an opulent neighbour; and the competition was at once
laughed at as folly, and resented as an insult. Every hour saw some of
my old friends falling away from me. An unlucky cold, which seized one
of my daughters a week before my return, had cut away my twenty years'
acquaintance, the village-doctor, from my cause; for the illness of an
"heiress" was not to be cured by less than the first medical authority
of the province. The supreme Aesculapius was accordingly called in;
and his humbler brother swore, in the bitterness of his soul, that he
would never forget the affront on this side of death's door. The
inevitable increase of dignity which communicated itself to the
manners of my whole household did the rest; and if my wife held her
head high, never was pride more peevishly retorted. Like the
performers in a pillory, we seemed to have been elevated only for the
benefit of a general pelting.
These were the women's share of the mischief; but I was not long without
administering in person to our unpopularity. The report of my fortune
had, as usual, been enormously exaggerated; and every man who had a debt
to pay, or a purchase to make, conceived himself "bound to apply first
to his old and excellent friend, to whom the accommodation for a month
or two must be such a trifle." If I had listened to a tenth of those
compliments, "their old and excellent friend" would have only preceded
them to a jail. In some instances I complied, and so far only showed my
folly; for who loves his creditor? My refusal of course increased the
host of my enemies; and I was pronounced purse-proud, beggarly, and
unworthy of the notice of the "true gentlemen, who knew how to spend
their money."
Yet, though I was to be thus abandoned by my fox-hunting friends, I was
by no means to feel myself the inhabitant of a solitary world. If the
sudden discovery of kindred could cheer me under my calamities, no man
might have passed a gayer life. For a long succession of years I had not
seen a single relative. Not that they altogether disdained even the
humble hospitalities of my cottage, or the humble help of my purse; on
the contrary, they liked both exceedingly, and would have exhibited
their affection in enjoying them as often as I pleased.
But I had early adopted a resolution, which I recommend to all men. I
made use of no disguise on the subject of our mutual tendencies. I knew
them to be selfish, beggarly in the midst of wealth, and artificial in
the fulness of protestation. I disdained to play the farce of civility
with them. I neither kissed nor quarrelled with them; but I quietly shut
my door, and at last allowed no foot of their generation inside it. They
hated me mortally in consequence, and I knew it. I despised them, and
I conclude they knew that too. But I was resolved that they should not
despise me; and I secured that point by not suffering them to feel that
they had made me their dupe. The nabob's will had not soothed their
tempers; and I was honoured with their most smiling animosity.
But now, as if they were hidden in the ground like weeds only waiting
for the shower, a new and boundless crop of relationship sprang up.
Within the first fortnight after my return, I was overwhelmed with
congratulations from east, west, north, and south; and every postscript
pointed with a request for my interest with boards and public offices of
all kinds; with India presidents, treasury secretaries, and colonial
patrons, for the provision of sons, nephews, and cousins, to the third
and fourth generation.
My positive declarations that I had no influence with ministers were
received with resolute scepticism. I was charged with old obligations
conferred on my grandfathers and grandmothers; and, finally, had the
certain knowledge that my gentlest denials were looked upon as a
compound of selfishness and hypocrisy. Before a month was out, I had
extended my sources of hostility to three-fourths of the kingdom, and
contrived to plant in every corner some individual who looked on himself
as bound to say the worst he could of his heartless, purse-proud, and
abjured kinsman.
I should have sturdily borne up against all this while I could keep the
warfare out of my own county. But what man can abide a daily skirmish
round his house? I began to think of retreating while I was yet able to
show my head; for, in truth, I was sick of this perpetual belligerency.
I loved to see happy human faces. I loved the meeting of those old and
humble friends to whose faces, rugged as they were, I was accustomed.
I liked to stop and hear the odd news of the village, and the still
odder versions of London news that transpired through the lips of our
established politicians. I liked an occasional visit to our little club,
where the exciseman, of fifty years standing was our oracle in politics;
the attorney, of about the same duration, gave us opinions on the drama,
philosophy, and poetry, all equally unindebted to Aristotle; and my mild
and excellent father-in-law, the curate, shook his silver locks in
gentle laughter at the discussion. I loved a supper in my snug parlour
with the choice half dozen; a song from my girls, and a bottle after
they were gone to dream of bow-knots and bargains for the next day.
But my delights were now all crushed. Another Midas, all I touched had
turned to gold; and I believe in my soul that, with his gold, I got
credit for his asses' ears.
However, I had long felt that contempt for popular opinion which every
man feels who knows of what miserable materials it is made--how much
of it is mere absurdity--how much malice--how much more the frothy
foolery and maudlin gossip of the empty of this empty generation.
"What was it to me if the grown children of our idle community, the
male babblers, and the female cutters-up of character, voted me, in
their commonplace souls, the blackest of black sheep? I was still
strong in the solid respect of a few worth them all."
Let no man smile when I say that, on reckoning up this Theban band of
sound judgment and inestimable fidelity, I found my muster reduced to
three, and those three of so unromantic a class as the grey-headed
exciseman, the equally grey-headed solicitor, and the curate.
But let it be remembered that a man must take his friends as fortune
wills; that he who can even imagine that he has three is under rare
circumstances; and that, as to the romance, time, which mellows and
mollifies so many things, may so far extract the professional _virus_
out of excisemen and solicitor, as to leave them both not incapable of
entering into the ranks of humanity.
* * * * *
SPIRIT of DISCOVERY.
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