Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long year. I have
obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the period of memory. We
house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness;
with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find in
myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the
rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty well
in our tastes and habits--yet so, as "with a difference." We are
generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings--as it should be
among near relations. Our sympathies are rather understood, than
expressed; and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind
than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was
altered. We are both great readers in different directions. While I am
hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old Burton, or
one of his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modern
tale, or adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed with
assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teazes me. I have little concern
in the progress of events. She must have a story--well, ill, or
indifferently told--so there be life stirring in it, and plenty of
good or evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in fiction--and
almost in real life--have ceased to interest, or operate but dully
upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and opinions--heads with some
diverting twist in them--the oddities of authorship please me most. My
cousin has a native disrelish of any thing that sounds odd or bizarre.
Nothing goes down with her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the
road of common sympathy. She "holds Nature more clever." I can pardon
her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio Medici; but
she must apologise to me for certain disrespectful insinuations, which
she has been pleased to throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals
of a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one--the thrice
noble, chaste, and virtuous,--but again somewhat fantastical, and
original-brain'd, generous Margaret Newcastle.
It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I
could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine,
free-thinkers--leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies and
systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions.
That which was good and venerable to her, when a child, retains its
authority over her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with
her understanding.
We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I have
observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this--that
in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out, that I was
in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed
upon moral points; upon something proper to be done, or let alone;
whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I set out
with, I am sure always, in the long run, to be brought over to her way
of thinking.
I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand,
for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an
awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of reading in company: at which
times she will answer _yes_ or _no_ to a question, without fully
understanding its purport--which is provoking, and derogatory in the
highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her
presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life, but
will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. When the purpose
requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly;
but in matters which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been
known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably.
Her education in youth was not much attended to; and she happily
missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth by the name
of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into
a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection
or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome
pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in
this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be
diminished by it; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst
come to the worst) most incomparable old maids.
In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but in the
teazing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call out the
_will_ to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess
of participation. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon
the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to treble your
satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a visit;
but best, when she goes a journey with you.
We made an excursion together a few summers since, into Hertfordshire,
to beat up the quarters of some of our less-known relations in that
fine corn country.
The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or Mackarel End, as it
is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire;
a farm-house,--delightfully situated within a gentle walk from
Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a
great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I
have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could
throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might
share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at
that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married
my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a
Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still
flourishing in that part of the county, but the Fields are almost
extinct. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of;
and, for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the
other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery
End--kindred or strange folk--we were afraid almost to conjecture, but
determined some day to explore.
By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in
our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot of our anxious
curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though every
trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a
pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though _I_
had forgotten it, _we_ had never forgotten being there together, and
we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my
part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the
aspect of a place, which, when present, O how unlike it was to _that_,
which I had conjured up so many times instead of it!
Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in the "heart
of June," and I could say with the poet,
But them, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation!
Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered
her old acquaintance again--some altered features, of course, a little
grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy;
but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her affections--and she
traversed every out-post of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the
orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds
were alike flown)--with a breathless impatience of recognition, which
was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But
Bridget in some things is behind her years.
The only thing left was to get into the house--and that was a
difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable; for I
am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date
kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without
me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to
a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the
Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the
old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females,
were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this
adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all--more comely. She
was born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected in early
life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing
a style. But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those
slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere
of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely,
loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted
as if we had been born and bred up together; were familiar, even to
the calling each other by our Christian names. So Christians should
call one another. To have seen Bridget, and her--it was like the
meeting of the two scriptural cousins! There was a grace and dignity,
an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, in this
farmer's wife, which would have shined in a palace--or so we thought
it. We were made welcome by husband and wife equally--we, and our
friend that was with us--I had almost forgotten him--but B.F. will not
so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the
far distant shores where the Kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was made
ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our coming;
and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, never let me forget
with what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to
Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her
mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of
us, at a time when she almost knew nothing.--With what corresponding
kindness we were received by them also--how Bridget's memory, exalted
by the occasion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollections
of things and persons, to my utter astonishment, and her own--and to
the astoundment of B.F. who sat by, almost the only thing that was not
a cousin there,--old effaced images of more than half-forgotten names
and circumstances still crowding back upon her, as words written in
lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth,--when I forget
all this, then may my country cousins forget me; and Bridget no more
remember, that in the days of weakling infancy I was her tender
charge--as I have been her care in foolish manhood since--in those
pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire.