Hard times were now over with me, and I had to battle with poverty no

more. My little kinsman's death made a vast difference in my worldly

prospects. I became next heir to a good estate. My uncle and his

wife were not likely to have more children. “The woman is capable of

committing any crime to disappoint you,” Sampson vowed; but, in truth,

my Lady Warrington was guilty of no such treachery. Cruelly smitten

by the stroke which fell upon them, Lady Warrington was taught by her

religious advisers to consider it as a chastisement of Heaven, and

submit to the Divine Will. “Whilst your son lived, your heart was turned

away from the better world” (her clergyman told her), “and your ladyship

thought too much of this. For your son's advantage you desired rank and

title. You asked and might have obtained an earthly coronet. Of what

avail is it now, to one who has but a few years to pass upon earth--of

what importance compared to the heavenly crown, for which you are an

assured candidate?” The accident caused no little sensation. In the

chapels of that enthusiastic sect, towards which, after her son's death,

she now more than ever inclined, many sermons were preached bearing

reference to the event. Far be it from me to question the course which

the bereaved mother pursued, or to regard with other than respect and

sympathy any unhappy soul seeking that refuge whither sin and grief

and disappointment fly for consolation. Lady Warrington even tried a

reconciliation with myself. A year after her loss, being in London, she

signified that she would see me, and I waited on her; and she gave me,

in her usual didactic way, a homily upon my position and her own.

She marvelled at the decree of Heaven, which had permitted, and

how dreadfully punished! her poor child's disobedience to her--a

disobedience by which I was to profit. (It appeared my poor little man

had disobeyed orders, and gone out with his gun, unknown to his mother.)

She hoped that, should I ever succeed to the property, though the

Warringtons were, thank Heaven, a long-lived family, except in my own

father's case, whose life had been curtailed by the excesses of a very

ill-regulated youth,--but should I ever succeed to the family estate and

honours, she hoped, she prayed, that my present course of life might be

altered; that I should part from my unworthy associates; that I should

discontinue all connexion with the horrid theatre and its licentious

frequenters; that I should turn to that quarter where only peace was

to be had; and to those sacred duties which she feared--she very much

feared that I had neglected. She filled her exhortation with Scripture

language, which I do not care to imitate. When I took my leave she gave

me a packet of sermons for Mrs. Warrington, and a little book of hymns

by Miss Dora, who has been eminent in that society of which she and

her mother became avowed professors subsequently, and who, after the

dowager's death, at Bath, three years since, married young Mr. Juffles,

a celebrated preacher. The poor lady forgave me then, but she could not

bear the sight of our boy. We lost our second child, and then my aunt

and her daughter came eagerly enough to the poor suffering mother, and

even invited us hither. But my uncle was now almost every day in our

house. He would sit for hours looking at our boy. He brought him endless

toys and sweetmeats. He begged that the child might call him Godpapa.

When we felt our own grief (which at times still, and after the lapse of

five-and-twenty years, strikes me as keenly as on the day when we

first lost our little one)--when I felt my own grief, I knew how to

commiserate his. But my wife could pity him before she knew what it

was to lose a child of her own. The mother's anxious heart had already

divined the pang which was felt by the sorrow-stricken father;

mine, more selfish, has only learned pity from experience, and I was

reconciled to my uncle by my little baby's coffin.

The poor man sent his coach to follow the humble funeral, and afterwards

took out little Miles, who prattled to him unceasingly, and forgot any

grief he might have felt in the delights of his new black clothes, and

the pleasures of the airing. How the innocent talk of the child stabbed

the mother's heart! Would we ever wish that it should heal of that

wound? I know her face so well that, to this day, I can tell when,

sometimes, she is thinking of the loss of that little one. It is not a

grief for a parting so long ago; it is a communion with a soul we love

in Heaven.

We came back to our bright lodgings in Bloomsbury soon afterwards,

and my young bear, whom I could no longer lead, and who had taken a

prodigious friendship for Charley, went to the Chartreux School, where

his friend took care that he had no more beating than was good for him,

and where (in consequence of the excellence of his private tutor, no

doubt) he took and kept a good place. And he liked the school so much,

that he says, if ever he has a son, he shall be sent to that seminary.

Now, I could no longer lead my bear, for this reason, that I had other

business to follow. Being fully reconciled to us, I do believe, for

Mr. Miles's sake, my uncle (who was such an obsequious supporter of

Government, that I wonder the Minister ever gave him anything, being

perfectly sure of his vote) used his influence in behalf of his nephew

and heir; and I had the honour to be gazetted as one of his Majesty's

Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, a post I filled, I trust,

with credit, until a quarrel with the Minister (to be mentioned in its

proper place) deprived me of that one. I took my degree also at the

Temple, and appeared in Westminster Hall in my gown and wig. And, this

year, my good friend, Mr. Foker, having business at Paris, I had the

pleasure of accompanying him thither, where I was received a bras

ouverts by my dear American preserver, Monsieur de Florac, who

introduced me to his noble family, and to even more of the polite

society of the capital than I had leisure to frequent; for I had too

much spirit to desert my kind patron Foker, whose acquaintance lay

chiefly amongst the bourgeoisie, especially with Monsieur Santerre, a

great brewer of Paris, a scoundrel who hath since distinguished himself

in blood and not beer. Mr. F. had need of my services as interpreter,

and I was too glad that he should command them, and to be able to pay

back some of the kindness which he had rendered to me. Our ladies,

meanwhile, were residing at Mr. Foker's new villa at Wimbledon, and were

pleased to say that they were amused with the “Parisian letters” which

I sent to them, through my distinguished friend Mr. Hume, then of the

Embassy, and which subsequently have been published in a neat volume.

Whilst I was tranquilly discharging my small official duties in London,

those troubles were commencing which were to end in the great separation

between our colonies and the mother country. When Mr. Grenville proposed

his stamp-duties, I said to my wife that the bill would create a mighty

discontent at home, for we were ever anxious to get as much as we could

from England, and pay back as little; but assuredly I never anticipated

the prodigious anger which the scheme created. It was with us as with

families or individuals. A pretext is given for a quarrel: the real

cause lies in long bickerings and previous animosities. Many foolish

exactions and petty tyrannies, the habitual insolence of Englishmen

towards all foreigners, all colonists, all folk who dare to think their

rivers as good as our Abana and Pharpar, the natural spirit of men

outraged by our imperious domineering spirit, set Britain and her

colonies to quarrel; and the astonishing blunders of the system adopted

in England brought the quarrel to an issue, which I, for one, am not

going to deplore. Had I been in Virginia instead of London, 'tis

very possible I should have taken the provincial side, if out of mere

opposition to that resolute mistress of Castlewood, who might have

driven me into revolt, as England did the colonies. Was the Stamp Act

the cause of the revolution?--a tax no greater than that cheerfully

paid in England. Ten years earlier, when the French were within our

territory, and we were imploring succour from home, would the colonies

have rebelled at the payment of this tax? Do not most people consider

the tax-gatherer the natural enemy? Against the British in America there

were arrayed thousands and thousands of the high-spirited and brave, but

there were thousands more who found their profit in the quarrel, or had

their private reasons for engaging in it. I protest I don't know now

whether mine were selfish or patriotic, or which side was in the right,

or whether both were not. I am sure we in England had nothing to do but

to fight the battle out; and, having lost the game, I do vow and believe

that, after the first natural soreness, the loser felt no rancour.

What made brother Hal write home from Virginia, which he seemed

exceedingly loth to quit, such flaming patriotic letters? My kind, best

brother was always led by somebody; by me when we were together (he had

such an idea of my wit and wisdom, that if I said the day was fine, he

would ponder over the observation as though it was one of the sayings of

the Seven Sages), by some other wiseacre when I was away. Who inspired

these flaming letters, this boisterous patriotism, which he sent to us

in London? “He is rebelling against Madam Esmond,” said I. “He is led by

some colonial person--by that lady, perhaps,” hinted my wife. Who “that

lady” was Hal never had told us; and, indeed, besought me never to

allude to the delicate subject in my letters to him; “for Madam wishes

to see 'em all, and I wish to say nothing about you know what until the

proper moment,” he wrote. No affection could be greater than that

which his letters showed. When he heard (from the informant whom I have

mentioned) that in the midst of my own extreme straits I had retained

no more than a hundred pounds out of his aunt's legacy, he was for

mortgaging the estate which he had just bought; and had more than one

quarrel with his mother in my behalf, and spoke his mind with a great

deal more frankness than I should ever have ventured to show. Until

her angry recriminations (when she charged him with ingratitude, after

having toiled and saved so much and so long for him), the poor fellow

did not know that our mother had cut off my supplies to advance his

interests; and by the time this news came to him his bargains were made,

and I was fortunately quite out of want.

Every scrap of paper which we ever wrote, our thrifty parent at

Castlewood taped and docketed and put away. We boys were more careless

about our letters to one another: I especially, who perhaps chose rather

to look down upon my younger brother's literary performances; but my

wife is not so supercilious, and hath kept no small number of Harry's

letters, as well as those of the angelic being whom we were presently to

call sister.

“To think whom he has chosen, and whom he might have had! Oh, 'tis

cruel!” cries my wife, when we got that notable letter in which Harry

first made us acquainted with the name of his charmer.

“She was a very pretty little maid when I left home, she may be a

perfect beauty now,” I remarked, as I read over the longest letter Harry

ever wrote on private affairs.

“But is she to compare to my Hetty?” says Mrs. Warrington.

“We agreed that Hetty and Harry were not to be happy together, my love,”

say I.

Theo gives her husband a kiss. “My dear, I wish they had tried,” she

says with a sigh. “I was afraid lest--lest Hetty should have led him,

you see; and I think she hath the better head. But, from reading this,

it appears that the new lady has taken command of poor Harry,” and she

hands me the letter:--

“My dearest George hath been prepared by previous letters to understand

how a certain lady has made a conquest of my heart, which I have given

away in exchange for something infinitely more valuable, namely, her

own. She is at my side as I write this letter, and if there is no bad

spelling, such as you often used to laugh at, 'tis because I have my

pretty dictionary at hand, which makes no faults in the longest word,

nor in anything else I know of: being of opinion that she is perfection.

“As Madam Esmond saw all your letters, I writ you not to give any hint

of a certain delicate matter--but now 'tis no secret, and is known to

all the country. Mr. George is not the only one of our family who has

made a secret marriage, and been scolded by his mother. As a dutiful

younger brother I have followed his example; and now I may tell you how

this mighty event came about.

“I had not been at home long before I saw my fate was accomplisht. I

will not tell you how beautiful Miss Fanny Mountain had grown since I

had been away in Europe. She saith, 'You never will think so,' and I

am glad, as she is the only thing in life I would grudge to my dearest

brother.

“That neither Madam Esmond nor my other mother (as Mountain is now)

should have seen our mutual attachment, is a wonder--only to be

accounted for by supposing that love makes other folks blind. Mine for

my Fanny was increased by seeing what the treatment was she had from

Madam Esmond, who indeed was very rough and haughty with her, which my

love bore with a sweetness perfectly angelic (this I will say, though

she will order me not to write any such nonsense). She was scarce better

treated than a servant of the house--indeed our negroes can talk much

more free before Madam Esmond than ever my Fanny could.

“And yet my Fanny says she doth not regret Madam's unkindness, as

without it I possibly never should have been what I am to her. Oh, dear

brother! when I remember how great your goodness hath been, how, in my

own want, you paid my debts, and rescued me out of prison; how you have

been living in poverty which never need have occurred but for my fault;

how you might have paid yourself back my just debt to you and would not,

preferring my advantage to your own comfort, indeed I am lost at the

thought of such goodness; and ought I not to be thankful to Heaven that

hath given me such a wife and such a brother?

“When I writ to you requesting you to send me my aunt's legacy money,

for which indeed I had the most profitable and urgent occasion, I had no

idea that you were yourself suffering poverty. That you, the head of our

family, should condescend to be governor to a brewer's son!--that you

should have to write for booksellers (except in so far as your own

genius might prompt you), never once entered my mind, until Mr. Foker's

letter came to us, and this would never have been shown--for Madam kept

it secret--had it not been for the difference which sprang up between

us.

“Poor Tom Diggle's estate and negroes being for sale, owing to

Tom's losses and extravagance at play, and his father's debts before

him--Madam Esmond saw here was a great opportunity of making a provision

for me, and that with six thousand pounds for the farm and stock, I

should be put in possession of as pretty a property as falls to most

younger sons in this country. It lies handy enough to Richmond, between

Kent and Hanover Court House--the mansion nothing for elegance

compared to ours at Castlewood, but the land excellent and the people

extraordinary healthy.

“Here was a second opportunity, Madam Esmond said, such as never might

again befall. By the sale of my commissions and her own savings I might

pay more than half of the price of the property, and get the rest of

the money on mortgage; though here, where money is scarce to procure,

it would have been difficult and dear. At this juncture, with our new

relative, Mr. Van den Bosch, bidding against us (his agent is wild that

we should have bought the property over him), my aunt's legacy most

opportunely fell in. And now I am owner of a good house and negroes in

my native country, shall be called, no doubt, to our House of Burgesses,

and hope to see my dearest brother and family under my own roof-tree.

To sit at my own fireside, to ride my own horses to my own hounds,

is better than going a-soldiering, now war is over, and there are no

French. to fight. Indeed, Madam Esmond made a condition that I should

leave the army, and live at home, when she brought me her 1750 pounds of

savings. She had lost one son, she said, who chose to write play-books,

and live in England--let the other stay with her at home.

“But, after the purchase of the estate was made, and my papers for

selling out were sent home, my mother would have had me marry a person

of her choosing, but by no means of mine. You remember Miss Betsy Pitts

at Williamsburgh? She is in no wise improved by having had her face

dreadfully scarred with small-pock, and though Madam Esmond saith the

young lady hath every virtue, I own her virtues did not suit me. Her

eyes do not look straight; she hath one leg shorter than another; and

oh, brother! didst thou never remark Fanny's ankles when we were boys?

Neater I never saw at the Opera.

“Now, when 'twas agreed that I should leave the army, a certain dear

girl (canst thou guess her name?) one day, when we were private, burst

into tears of such happiness, that I could not but feel immensely

touched by her sympathy.

“'Ah!' says she, 'do you think, sir, that the idea of the son of my

revered benefactress going to battle doth not inspire me with terror?

Ah, Mr. Henry! do you imagine I have no heart? When Mr. George was with

Braddock, do you fancy we did not pray for him? And when you were with

Mr. Wolfe--oh!'

“Here the dear creature hid her eyes in her handkerchief, and had hard

work to prevent her mama, who came in, from seeing that she was crying.

But my dear Mountain declares that, though she might have fancied, might

have prayed in secret for such a thing (she owns to that now), she

never imagined it for one moment. Nor, indeed, did my good mother, who

supposed that Sam Lintot, the apothecary's lad at Richmond, was Fanny's

flame--an absurd fellow that I near kicked into James River.

“But when the commission was sold, and the estate bought, what does

Fanny do but fall into a deep melancholy? I found her crying one day, in

her mother's room, where the two ladies had been at work trimming hats

for my negroes.

“'What! crying, miss?' says I. 'Has my mother been scolding you?'

“'No,' says the dear creature. 'Madam Esmond has been kind to-day.'

“And her tears drop down on a cockade which she is sewing on to a hat

for Sady, who is to be head-groom.

“'Then, why, miss, are those dear eyes so red?' say I.

“'Because I have the toothache,' she says, 'or because--because I am a

fool.' Here she fairly bursts out. 'Oh, Mr. Harry! oh, Mr. Warrington!

You are going to leave us, and 'tis as well. You will take your place

in your country, as becomes you. You will leave us poor women in our

solitude and dependence. You will come to visit us from time to time.

And when you are happy and honoured, and among your gay companions, you

will remember your----'

“Here she could say no more, and hid her face with one hand as I, I

confess, seized the other.

“'Dearest, sweetest Miss Mountain!' says I. 'Oh, could I think that the

parting from me has brought tears to those lovely eyes! Indeed, I fear,

I should be almost happy! Let them look upon your----'

“'Oh, sir!' cries my charmer. 'Oh, Mr. Warrington! consider who I am,

sir, and who you are! Remember the difference between us! Release my

hand, sir! What would Madam Esmond say if--if----'

“If what, I don't know, for here our mother was in the room.

“'What would Madam Esmond say?' she cries out. 'She would say that you

are an ungrateful, artful, false, little----'

“'Madam!' says I.

“'Yes, an ungrateful, artful, false, little wretch!' cries out my

mother. 'For shame, miss! What would Mr. Lintot say if he saw you making

eyes at the Captain? And for you, Harry, I will have you bring none of

your garrison manners hither. This is a Christian family, sir, and you

will please to know that my house is not intended for captains and their

misses!'

“'Misses, mother!' says I. 'Gracious powers, do you ever venture for

to call Miss Mountain by such a name? Miss Mountain, the purest of her

sex!'

“'The purest of her sex! Can I trust my own ears?' asks Madam, turning

very pale.

“'I mean that if a man would question her honour, I would fling him out

of window,' says I.

“'You mean that you--your mother's son--are actually paying honourable

attention to this young person?'

“'He would never dare to offer any other,' cries my Fanny; 'nor any

woman but you, madam, to think so!'

“'Oh, I didn't know, miss!' says mother, dropping her a fine curtsey, 'I

didn't know the honour you were doing our family! You propose to marry

with us, do you? Do I understand Captain Warrington aright, that he

intends to offer me Miss Mountain as a daughter-in-law?'

“''Tis to be seen, madam, that I have no protector, or you would not

insult me so!' cries my poor victim.

“'I should think the apothecary protection sufficient!' says our mother.

“'I don't, mother!' I bawl out, for I was very angry; 'and if Lintot

offers her any liberty, I'll brain him with his own pestle!'

“'Oh! if Lintot has withdrawn, sir, I suppose I must be silent. But I

did not know of the circumstance. He came hither, as I supposed, to pay

court to Miss: and we all thought the match equal, and I encouraged it.'

“'He came because I had the toothache!' cries my darling (and indeed she

had a dreadful bad tooth. And he took it out for her, and there is no

end to the suspicions and calumnies of women).

“'What more natural than that he should marry my housekeeper's

daughter--'twas a very suitable match!' continues Madam, taking snuff.

'But I confess,' she adds, going on, 'I was not aware that you intended

to jilt the apothecary for my son!'

“'Peace, for Heaven's sake, peace, Mr. Warrington!' cries my angel.

“'Pray, sir, before you fully make up your mind, had you not better look

round the rest of my family?' says Madam. 'Dinah is a fine tall girl,

and not very black; Cleopatra is promised to Ajax the blacksmith, to

be sure; but then we could break the marriage, you know. If with an

apothecary, why not with a blacksmith? Martha's husband has run away,

and----'

“Here, dear brother, I own I broke out a-swearing. I can't help it; but

at times, when a man is angry, it do relieve him immensely. I'm blest,

but I should have gone wild, if it hadn't been for them oaths.

“'Curses, blasphemy, ingratitude, disobedience,' says mother, leaning

now on her tortoiseshell stick, and then waving it--something like a

queen in a play. 'These are my rewards!' says she. 'O Heaven, what have

I done, that I should merit this awful punishment? and does it please

you to visit the sins of my fathers upon me? Where do my children

inherit their pride? When I was young, had I any? When my papa bade me

marry, did I refuse? Did I ever think of disobeying? No, sir. My fault

hath been, and I own it, that my love was centred upon you, perhaps to

the neglect of your elder brother.' (Indeed, brother, there was some

truth in what Madam said.) 'I turned from Esau, and I clung to Jacob.

And now I have my reward, I have my reward! I fixed my vain thoughts on

this world, and its distinctions. To see my son advanced in worldly rank

was my ambition. I toiled, and spared, that I might bring him worldly

wealth. I took unjustly from my eldest son's portion, that my younger

might profit. And oh! that I should see him seducing the daughter of my

own housekeeper under my own roof, and replying to my just anger with

oaths and blasphemies!'

“'I try to seduce no one, madam,' I cried out. 'If I utter oaths and

blasphemies, I beg your pardon; but you are enough to provoke a saint to

speak 'em. I won't have this young lady's character assailed--no, not by

own mother nor any mortal alive. No, dear Miss Mountain! If Madam Esmond

chooses to say that my designs on you are dishonourable,--let this

undeceive her!' And, as I spoke, I went down on my knees, seizing my

adorable Fanny's hand. 'And if you will accept this heart and hand,

miss,' says I, 'they are yours for ever.'

“'You, at least, I knew, sir,' says Fanny, with a noble curtsey, 'never

said a word that was disrespectful to me, or entertained any doubt of my

honour. And I trust it is only Madam Esmond, in the world, who can have

such an opinion of me. After what your ladyship hath said of me, of

course I can stay no longer in your house.'

“'Of course, madam, I never intended you should; and the sooner you

leave it the better,' cries our mother.

“'If you are driven from my mother's house, mine, miss, is at your

service,' says I, making her a low bow. 'It is nearly ready now. If you

will take it and stay in it for ever, it is yours! And as Madam Esmond

insulted your honour, at least let me do all in my power to make a

reparation!' I don't know what more I exactly said, for you may fancy I

was not a little flustered and excited by the scene. But here Mountain

came in, and my dearest Fanny, flinging herself into her mother's arms,

wept upon her shoulder; whilst Madam Esmond, sitting down in her chair,

looked at us as pale as a stone. Whilst I was telling my story to

Mountain (who, poor thing, had not the least idea, not she, that Miss

Fanny and I had the slightest inclination for one another), I could hear

our mother once or twice still saying, 'I am punished for my crime!'

“Now, what our mother meant by her crime I did not know at first, or

indeed take much heed of what she said; for you know her way, and

how, when she is angry, she always talks sermons. But Mountain told me

afterwards, when we had some talk together, as we did at the tavern,

whither the ladies presently removed with their bag and baggage--for not

only would they not stay at Madam's house after the language she used,

but my mother determined to go away likewise. She called her servants

together, and announced her intention of going home instantly to

Castlewood; and I own to you 'twas with a horrible pain I saw the family

coach roll by, with six horses, and ever so many of the servants on

mules and on horseback, as I and Fanny looked through the blinds of the

Tavern.

“After the words Madam used to my spotless Fanny, 'twas impossible that

the poor child or her mother should remain in our house: and indeed

M. said that she would go back to her relations in England: and a ship

bound homewards lying in James River, she went and bargained with the

captain about a passage, so bent was she upon quitting the country, and

so little did she think of making a match between me and my angel. But

the cabin was mercifully engaged by a North Carolina gentleman and his

family, and before the next ship sailed (which bears this letter to my

dearest George) they have agreed to stop with me. Almost all the ladies

in this neighbourhood have waited on them. When the marriage takes

place, I hope Madam Esmond will be reconciled. My Fanny's father was a

British officer; and sure, ours was no more. Some day, please Heaven,

we shall visit Europe, and the places where my wild oats were sown,

and where I committed so many extravagances from which my dear brother

rescued me.

“The ladies send you their affection and duty, and to my sister. We hear

his Excellency General Lambert is much beloved in Jamaica: and I shall

write to our dear friends there announcing my happiness. My dearest

brother will participate in it, and I am ever his grateful and

affectionate H. E. W.

“P.S.--Till Mountain told me, I had no more notion than the ded that

Madam E. had actially stopt your allowances; besides making you pay

for ever so much--near upon 1000 pounds Mountain says--for goods, etc.,

provided for the Virginian proparty. Then there was all the charges of

me out of prison, which I. O. U. with all my hart. Draw upon me, please,

dearest brother--to any amount--adressing me to care of Messrs. Horn and

Sandon, Williamsburg, privit; who remitt by present occasion a bill

for 225 pounds, payable by their London agents on demand. Please don't

acknolledge this in answering; as there's no good in bothering women

with accounts--and with the extra 5 pounds by a capp or what she likes

for my dear sister, and a toy for my nephew from Uncle Hal.”

The conclusion to which we came on the perusal of this document was,

that the ladies had superintended the style and spelling of my poor

Hal's letter, but that the postscript was added without their knowledge.

And I am afraid we argued that the Virginian Squire was under female

domination--as Hercules, Samson, and fortes multi had been before him.

CHAPTER LXXXV. Inveni Portum

When my mother heard of my acceptance of a place at home, I think she

was scarcely well pleased. She may have withdrawn her supplies, in order

to starve me into a surrender, and force me to return with my family to

Virginia, and to dependence under her. We never, up to her dying day,

had any explanation on the pecuniary dispute between us. She cut off my

allowances: I uttered not a word; but managed to live without her aid.

I never heard that she repented of her injustice, or acknowledged it,

except from Harry's private communication to me. In after days, when we

met, by a great gentleness in her behaviour, and an uncommon respect

and affection shown to my wife, Madam Esmond may have intended I should

understand her tacit admission that she had been wrong; but she made no

apology, nor did I ask one. Harry being provided for (whose welfare I

could not grudge), all my mother's savings and economical schemes went

to my advantage, who was her heir. Time was when a few guineas would

have been more useful to me than hundreds which might come to me when

I had no need; but when Madam Esmond and I met, the period of necessity

was long passed away; I had no need to scheme ignoble savings, or to

grudge the doctor his fee: I had plenty, and she could but bring me

more. No doubt she suffered in her own mind to think that my children

had been hungry, and she had offered them no food; and that strangers

had relieved the necessity from which her proud heart had caused her to

turn aside. Proud? Was she prouder than I? A soft word of explanation

between us might have brought about a reconciliation years before it

came but I would never speak, nor did she. When I commit a wrong, and

know it subsequently, I love to ask pardon; but 'tis as a satisfaction

to my own pride, and to myself I am apologising for having been wanting

to myself. And hence, I think (out of regard to that personage of ego),

I scarce ever could degrade myself to do a meanness. How do men feel

whose whole lives (and many men's lives are) are lies, schemes, and

subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone?

Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every

wink is an hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow wear a mask in his own privacy,

and to his own conscience? If I choose to pass over an injury, I fear

'tis not from a Christian and forgiving spirit: 'tis because I can

afford to remit the debt, and disdain to ask a settlement of it. One

or two sweet souls I have known in my life (and perhaps tried) to whom

forgiveness is no trouble--a plant that grows naturally, as it were, in

the soil. I know how to remit, I say, not forgive. I wonder are we proud

men proud of being proud?

So I showed not the least sign of submission towards my parent in

Virginia yonder, and we continued for years to live in estrangement,

with occasionally a brief word or two (such as the announcement of the

birth of a child, or what not) passing between my wife and her. After

our first troubles in America about the Stamp Act, troubles fell on me

in London likewise. Though I have been on the Tory side in our quarrel

(as indeed upon the losing side in most controversies), having no doubt

that the Imperial Government had a full right to levy taxes in the

colonies, yet at the time of the dispute I must publish a pert letter to

a member of the House of Burgesses in Virginia, in which the question

of the habitual insolence of the mother country to the colonies was so

freely handled, and sentiments were uttered so disagreeable to persons

in power, that I was deprived of my place as hackney-coach licenser, to

the terror and horror of my uncle, who never could be brought to love

people in disgrace. He had grown to have an extreme affection for

my wife as well as my little boy; but towards myself, personally,

entertained a kind of pitying contempt which always infinitely amused

me. He had a natural scorn and dislike for poverty, and a corresponding

love for success and good fortune. Any opinion departing at all from the

regular track shocked and frightened him, and all truth-telling made him

turn pale. He must have had originally some warmth of heart and genuine

love of kindred: for, spite of the dreadful shocks I gave him, he

continued to see Theo and the child (and me too, giving me a

mournful recognition when we met); and though broken-hearted by my

free-spokenness, he did not refuse to speak to me as he had done at the

time of our first differences, but looked upon me as a melancholy lost

creature, who was past all worldly help or hope. Never mind, I must cast

about for some new scheme of life; and the repayment of Harry's debt to

me at this juncture enabled me to live at least for some months even, or

years to come. O strange fatuity of youth! I often say. How was it that

we dared to be so poor and so little cast down?

At this time his Majesty's royal uncle of Cumberland fell down

and perished in a fit; and, strange to say, his death occasioned a

remarkable change in my fortune. My poor Sir Miles Warrington never

missed any court ceremony to which he could introduce himself. He was

at all the drawing-rooms, christenings, balls, funerals of the court.

If ever a prince or princess was ailing, his coach was at their door:

Leicester Fields, Carlton House, Gunnersbury, were all the same to him,

and nothing must satisfy him now but going to the stout duke's funeral.

He caught a great cold and an inflammation of the throat from standing

bareheaded at this funeral in the rain; and one morning, before almost

I had heard of his illness, a lawyer waits upon me at my lodgings in

Bloomsbury, and salutes me by the name of Sir George Warrington.

Party and fear of the future were over now. We laid the poor gentleman

by the side of his little son, in the family churchyard where so many

of his race repose. Little Miles and I were the chief mourners. An

obsequious tenantry bowed and curtseyed before us, and did their utmost

to conciliate my honour and my worship. The dowager and her daughter

withdrew to Bath presently; and I and my family took possession of the

house, of which I have been master for thirty years. Be not too eager,

O my son! Have but a little patience, and I too shall sleep under yonder

yew-trees, and the people will be tossing up their caps for Sir Miles.

The records of a prosperous country life are easily and briefly told.

The steward's books show what rents were paid and forgiven, what crops

were raised, and in what rotation. What visitors came to us, and

how long they stayed: what pensioners my wife had, and how they were

doctored and relieved, and how they died: what year I was sheriff, and

how often the hounds met near us; all these are narrated in our house

journals, which any of my heirs may read who choose to take the

trouble. We could not afford the fine mansion in Hill Street, which

my predecessor had occupied; but we took a smaller house, in which,

however, we spent more money. We made not half the show (with liveries,

equipages, and plate) for which my uncle had been famous; but our beer

was stronger, and my wife's charities were perhaps more costly than

those of the Dowager Lady Warrington. No doubt she thought there was no

harm in spoiling the Philistines; for she made us pay unconscionably for

the goods she left behind her in our country-house, and I submitted to

most of her extortions with unutterable good-humour. What a value she

imagined the potted plants in her greenhouses bore! What a price she

set upon that horrible old spinet she left in her drawing-room! and the

framed pieces of worsted-work, performed by the accomplished Dora and

the lovely Flora, had they been masterpieces of Titian or Vandyck, to

be sure my lady dowager could hardly have valued them at a higher price.

But though we paid so generously, though we were, I may say without

boast, far kinder to our poor than ever she had been, for a while we had

the very worst reputation in the county, where all sorts of stories

had been told to my discredit. I thought I might perhaps succeed to my

uncle's seat in Parliament, as well as to his landed property; but I

found, I knew not how, that I was voted to be a person of very dangerous

opinions. I would not bribe: I would not coerce my own tenants to vote

for me in the election of '68. A gentleman came down from Whitehall

with a pocket-book full of bank-notes; and I found that I had no chance

against my competitor.

Bon Dieu! Now that we were at ease in respect of worldly means,--now

that obedient tenants bowed and curtseyed as we went to church; that we

drove to visit our friends, or to the neighbouring towns, in the great

family coach with the four fat horses; did we not often regret poverty,

and the dear little cottage at Lambeth, where Want was ever prowling

at the door? Did I not long to be bear-leading again, and vow that

translating for booksellers was not such very hard drudgery? When we

went to London, we made sentimental pilgrimages to all our old haunts.

I dare say my wife embraced all her landladies. You may be sure we asked

all the friends of those old times to share the comforts of our new home

with us. The Reverend Mr. Hagan and his lady visited us more than once.

His appearance in the pulpit at B------(where he preached very finely,

as we thought) caused an awful scandal there. Sampson came too, another

unlucky Levite, and was welcome as long as he would stay among us. Mr.

Johnson talked of coming, but he put us off once or twice. I suppose our

house was dull. I know that I myself would be silent for days, and fear

that my moodiness must often have tried the sweetest-tempered woman

in the world who lived with me. I did not care for field sports. The

killing one partridge was so like killing another, that I wondered how

men could pass days after days in the pursuit of that kind of slaughter.

Their fox-hunting stories would begin at four o'clock, when the

tablecloth was removed, and last till supper-time. I sate silent, and

listened: day after day I fell asleep: no wonder I was not popular with

my company.

What admission is this I am making? Here was the storm over, the rocks

avoided, the ship in port and the sailor not overcontented? Was Susan

I had been sighing for during the voyage, not the beauty I expected to

find her? In the first place, Susan and all the family can look in her

William's logbook, and so, madam, I am not going to put my secrets

down there. No, Susan, I never had secrets from thee. I never cared for

another woman. I have seen more beautiful, but none that suited me as

well as your ladyship. I have met Mrs. Carter and Miss Mulso, and Mrs.

Thrale and Madam Kaufmann, and the angelical Gunnings, and her Grace of

Devonshire, and a host of beauties who were not angelic, by any means:

and I was not dazzled by them. Nay, young folks, I may have led your

mother a weary life, and been a very Bluebeard over her, but then I

had no other heads in the closet. Only, the first pleasure of taking

possession of our kingdom over, I own I began to be quickly tired of the

crown. When the captain wears it his Majesty will be a very different

Prince. He can ride a-hunting five days in the week, and find the sport

amusing. I believe he would hear the same sermon at church fifty times,

and not yawn more than I do at the first delivery. But sweet Joan,

beloved Baucis! being thy faithful husband and true lover always,

thy Darby is rather ashamed of having been testy so often! and, being

arrived at the consummation of happiness, Philemon asks pardon for

falling asleep so frequently after dinner. There came a period of my

life, when having reached the summit of felicity I was quite tired of

the prospect I had there: I yawned in Eden, and said, “Is this all?

What, no lions to bite? no rain to fall? no thorns to prick you in the

rose-bush when you sit down?--only Eve, for ever sweet and tender, and

figs for breakfast, dinner, supper, from week's end to week's end!”

Shall I make my confessions? Hearken! Well, then, if I must make a clean

breast of it.

* * * * * *

Here three pages are torn out of Sir George Warrington's MS. book, for

which the editor is sincerely sorry.

I know the theory and practice of the Roman Church; but, being bred of

another persuasion (and sceptical and heterodox regarding that), I can't

help doubting the other, too, and wondering whether Catholics, in

their confessions, confess all? Do we Protestants ever do so; and has

education rendered those other fellow-men so different from us? At

least, amongst us, we are not accustomed to suppose Catholic priests or

laymen more frank and open than ourselves. Which brings me back to my

question,--does any man confess all? Does yonder dear creature know all

my life, who has been the partner of it for thirty years; who, whenever

I have told her a sorrow, has been ready with the best of her gentle

power to soothe it; who has watched when I did not speak, and when I was

silent has been silent herself, or with the charming hypocrisy of woman

has worn smiles and an easy appearance so as to make me imagine she

felt no care, or would not even ask to disturb her lord's secret when he

seemed to indicate a desire to keep it private? Oh, the dear hypocrite!

Have I not watched her hiding the boys' peccadilloes from papa's anger?

Have I not known her cheat out of her housekeeping to pay off their

little extravagances; and talk to me with an artless face, as if she did

not know that our revered captain had had dealings with the gentlemen

of Duke's Place, and our learned collegian, at the end of his terms, had

very pressing reasons for sporting his oak (as the phrase is) against

some of the University tradesmen? Why, from the very earliest days, thou

wise woman, thou wert for ever concealing something from me,--this

one stealing jam from the cupboard; that one getting into disgrace at

school; that naughty rebel (put on the caps, young folks, according to

the fit) flinging an inkstand at mamma in a rage, whilst I was told

the gown and the carpet were spoiled by accident. We all hide from one

another. We have all secrets. We are all alone. We sin by ourselves,

and, let us trust, repent too. Yonder dear woman would give her foot to

spare mine a twinge of the gout; but, when I have the fit, the pain is

in my slipper. At the end of the novel or the play, the hero and heroine

marry or die, and so there is an end of them as far as the poet is

concerned, who huzzas for his young couple till the postchaise turns the

corner; or fetches the hearse and plumes, and shovels them underground.

But when Mr. Random and Mr. Thomas Jones are married, is all over? Are

there no quarrels at home? Are there no Lady Bellastons abroad? are

there no constables to be outrun? no temptations to conquer us, or be

conquered by us? The Sirens sang after Ulysses long after his marriage,

and the suitors whispered in Penelope's ear, and he and she had many a

weary day of doubt and care, and so have we all. As regards money I was

put out of trouble by the inheritance I made: but does not Atra Cura

sit behind baronets as well as equites? My friends in London used to

congratulate me on my happiness. Who would not like to be master of a

good house and a good estate? But can Gumbo shut the hall-door upon blue

devils, or lay them always in a red sea of claret? Does a man sleep

the better who has four-and-twenty hours to doze in? Do his intellects

brighten after a sermon from the dull old vicar; a ten minutes' cackle

and flattery from the village apothecary; or the conversation of Sir

John and Sir Thomas with their ladies, who come ten moonlight muddy

miles to eat a haunch, and play a rubber? 'Tis all very well to

have tradesmen bowing to your carriage-door, room made for you at

quarter-sessions, and my lady wife taken down the second or the third to

dinner: but these pleasures fade--nay, have their inconveniences. In our

part of the country, for seven years after we came to Warrington Manor,

our two what they called best neighbours were my Lord Tutbury and Sir

John Mudbrook. We are of an older date than the Mudbrooks; consequently,

my Lady Tutbury always fell to my lot, when we dined together, who

was deaf and fell asleep after dinner; or if I had Lady Mudbrook, she

chattered with a folly so incessant and intense, that even my wife could

hardly keep her complacency (consummate hypocrite as her ladyship is),

knowing the rage with which I was fuming at the other's clatter. I come

to London. I show my tongue to Dr. Heberden. I pour out my catalogue of

complaints. “Psha, my dear Sir George!” says the unfeeling physician.

“Headaches, languor, bad sleep, bad temper--” (“Not bad temper: Sir

George has the sweetest temper in the world, only he is sometimes a

little melancholy,” says my wife.) “--Bad sleep, bad temper,” continues

the implacable doctor. “My dear lady, his inheritance has been his ruin,

and a little poverty and a great deal of occupation would do him all the

good in life.”

No, my brother Harry ought to have been the squire, with remainder to

my son Miles, of course. Harry's letters were full of gaiety and good

spirits. His estate prospered: his negroes multiplied; his crops were

large; he was a member of our House of Burgesses; he adored his wife;

could he but have a child his happiness would be complete. Had Hal

been master of Warrington Manor-house, in my place, he would have been

beloved through the whole country; he would have been steward at all the

races, the gayest of all the jolly huntsmen, the bien venu at all the

mansions round about, where people scarce cared to perform the ceremony

of welcome at sight of my glum face. As for my wife, all the world liked

her, and agreed in pitying her. I don't know how the report got abroad,

but 'twas generally agreed that I treated her with awful cruelty, and

that for jealousy I was a perfect Bluebeard. Ah me! And so it is true

that I have had many dark hours; that I pass days in long silence; that

the conversation of fools and whipper-snappers makes me rebellious and

peevish, and that, when I feel contempt, I sometimes don't know how to

conceal it, or I should say did not. I hope as I grow older I grow more

charitable. Because I do not love bawling and galloping after a fox,

like the captain yonder, I am not his superior; but, in this respect,

humbly own that he is mine. He has perceptions which are denied me;

enjoyments which I cannot understand. Because I am blind the world is

not dark. I try now and listen with respect when Squire Codgers talks

of the day's run. I do my best to laugh when Captain Rattleton tells his

garrison stories. I step up to the harpsichord with old Miss Humby (our

neighbour from Beccles) and try and listen as she warbles her ancient

ditties. I play whist laboriously. Am I not trying to do the duties of

life? and I have a right to be garrulous and egotistical, because I have

been reading Montaigne all the morning.

I was not surprised, knowing by what influences my brother was led, to

find his name in the list of Virginia burgesses who declared that the

sole right of imposing taxes on the inhabitants of this colony is now,

and ever hath been, legally and constitutionally vested in the House

of Burgesses, and called upon the other colonies to pray for the Royal

interposition in favour of the violated rights of America. And it was

now, after we had been some three years settled in our English home,

that a correspondence between us and Madam Esmond began to take place.

It was my wife who (upon some pretext such as women always know how to

find) re-established the relations between us. Mr. Miles must need have

the small-pox, from which he miraculously recovered without losing

any portion of his beauty; and on his recovery the mother writes her

prettiest little wheedling letter to the grandmother of the fortunate

babe. She coaxes her with all sorts of modest phrases and humble

offerings of respect and goodwill. She narrates anecdotes of the

precocious genius of the lad (what hath subsequently happened, I wonder,

to stop the growth of that gallant young officer's brains?), and she

must have sent over to his grandmother a lock of the darling boy's hair,

for the old lady, in her reply, acknowledged the receipt of some such

present. I wonder, as it came from England, they allowed it to pass our

custom-house at Williamsburg. In return for these peace-offerings and

smuggled tokens of submission, comes a tolerably gracious letter from my

Lady of Castlewood. She inveighs against the dangerous spirit pervading

the colony: she laments to think that her unhappy son is consorting with

people who, she fears, will be no better than rebels and traitors. She

does not wonder, considering who his friends and advisers are. How can

a wife taken from an almost menial situation be expected to sympathise

with persons of rank and dignity who have the honour of the Crown at

heart? If evil times were coming for the monarchy (for the folks in

America appeared to be disinclined to pay taxes, and required that

everything should be done for them without cost), she remembered how

to monarchs in misfortune, the Esmonds--her father the Marquis

especially--had ever been faithful. She knew not what opinions (though

she might judge from my newfangled Lord Chatham) were in fashion in

England. She prayed, at least, she might hear that one of her sons was

not on the side of rebellion. When we came, in after days, to look over

old family papers in Virginia, we found “Letters from my daughter Lady

Warrington,” neatly tied up with a ribbon. My Lady Theo insisted I

should not open them; and the truth, I believe, is, that they were so

full of praises of her husband that she thought my vanity would suffer

from reading them.

When Madam began to write, she gave us brief notices of Harry and his

wife. “The two women,” she wrote, “still govern everything with my poor

boy at Fannystown (as he chooses to call his house). They must save

money there, for I hear but a shabby account of their manner of

entertaining. The Mount Vernon gentleman continues to be his great

friend, and he votes in the House of Burgesses very much as his

guide advises him. Why he should be so sparing of his money I cannot

understand: I heard, of five negroes who went with his equipages to my

Lord Bottetourt's, only two had shoes to their feet. I had reasons to

save, having sons for whom I wished to provide, but he hath no children,

wherein he certainly is spared from much grief, though, no doubt, Heaven

in its wisdom means our good by the trials which, through our children,

it causes us to endure. His mother-in-law,” she added in one of her

letters, “has been ailing. Ever since his marriage, my poor Henry has

been the creature of these two artful women, and they rule him entirely.

Nothing, my dear daughter, is more contrary to common sense and to

Holy Scripture than this. Are we not told, Wives, be obedient to your

husbands? Had Mr. Warrington lived, I should have endeavoured to follow

up that sacred precept, holding that nothing so becomes a woman as

humility and obedience.”

Presently we had a letter sealed with black, and announcing the death

of our dear good Mountain, for whom I had a hearty regret and affection,

remembering her sincere love for us as children. Harry deplored the

event in his honest way, and with tears which actually blotted his

paper. And Madam Esmond, alluding to the circumstance, said: “My late

housekeeper, Mrs. Mountain, as soon as she found her illness was fatal,

sent to me requesting a last interview on her deathbed, intending,

doubtless, to pray my forgiveness for her treachery towards me. I sent

her word that I could forgive her as a Christian, and heartily hope

(though I confess I doubt it) that she had a due sense of her crime

towards me. But our meeting, I considered, was of no use, and could

only occasion unpleasantness between us. If she repented, though at the

eleventh hour, it was not too late, and I sincerely trusted that she

was now doing so. And, would you believe her lamentable and hardened

condition? she sent me word through Dinah, my woman, whom I dispatched

to her with medicines for her soul's and her body's health, that she

had nothing to repent of as far as regarded her conduct to me, and

she wanted to be left alone! Poor Dinah distributed the medicine to my

negroes, and our people took it eagerly--whilst Mrs. Mountain, left to

herself, succumbed to the fever. Oh, the perversity of human kind! This

poor creature was too proud to take my remedies, and is now beyond the

reach of cure and physicians. You tell me your little Miles is subject

to fits of cholic. My remedy, and I will beg you to let me know if

effectual, is,” etc. etc.--and here followed the prescription, which

thou didst not take, O my son, my heir, and my pride! because thy fond

mother had her mother's favourite powder, on which in his infantine

troubles our firstborn was dutifully nurtured. Did words not exactly

consonant with truth pass between the ladies in their correspondence? I

fear my Lady Theo was not altogether candid: else how to account for a

phrase in one of Madam Esmond's letters, who said: “I am glad to hear

the powders have done the dear child good. They are, if not on a first,

on a second or third application, almost infallible, and have been

the blessed means of relieving many persons round me, both infants and

adults, white and coloured. I send my grandson an Indian bow and arrows.

Shall these old eyes never behold him at Castlewood, I wonder, and is

Sir George so busy with his books and his politics that he can't afford

a few months to his mother in Virginia? I am much alone now. My son's

chamber is just as he left it: the same books are in the presses: his

little hanger and fowling-piece over the bed, and my father's picture

over the mantelpiece. I never allow anything to be altered in his room

or his brother's. I fancy the children playing near me sometimes, and

that I can see my dear father's head as he dozes in his chair. Mine is

growing almost as white as my father's. Am I never to behold my children

ere I go hence? The Lord's will be done.”

CHAPTER LXXXVI. At Home

Such an appeal as this of our mother would have softened hearts much

less obdurate than ours; and we talked of a speedy visit to Virginia,

and of hiring all the Young Rachel's cabin accommodation. But our child

must fall ill, for whom the voyage would be dangerous, and from whom the

mother of course could not part; and the Young Rachel made her voyage

without us that year. Another year there was another difficulty, in my

worship's first attack of the gout (which occupied me a good deal, and

afterwards certainly cleared my wits and enlivened my spirits); and now

came another much sadder cause for delay in the sad news we received

from Jamaica. Some two years after our establishment at the Manor,

our dear General returned from his government, a little richer in the

world's goods than when he went away, but having undergone a loss for

which no wealth could console him, and after which, indeed, he did

not care to remain in the West Indies. My Theo's poor mother--the most

tender and affectionate friend (save one) I have ever had--died abroad

of the fever. Her last regret was that she should not be allowed to live

to see our children and ourselves in prosperity.

“She sees us, though we do not see her; and she thanks you, George, for

having been good to her children,” her husband said.

He, we thought, would not be long ere he joined her. His love for her

had been the happiness and business of his whole life. To be away from

her seemed living no more. It was pitiable to watch the good man as

he sate with us. My wife, in her air and in many tones and gestures,

constantly recalled her mother to the bereaved widower's heart. What

cheer we could give him in his calamity we offered; but, especially,

little Hetty was now, under Heaven, his chief support and consolation.

She had refused more than one advantageous match in the Island, the

General told us; and on her return to England, my Lord Wrotham's heir

laid himself at her feet. But she loved best to stay with her father,

Hetty said. As long as he was not tired of her she cared for no husband.

“Nay,” said we, when this last great match was proposed, “let the

General stay six months with us at the Manor here, and you can have him

at Oakhurst for the other six.”

But Hetty declared her father never could bear Oakhurst again now that

her mother was gone; and she would marry no man for his coronet and

money--not she! The General, when we talked this matter over, said

gravely that the child had no desire for marrying, owing possibly to

some disappointment in early life, of which she never spoke; and we,

respecting her feelings, were for our parts equally silent. My brother

Lambert had by this time a college living near to Winchester, and a wife

of course to adorn his parsonage. We professed but a moderate degree of

liking for this lady, though we made her welcome when she came to us.

Her idea regarding our poor Hetty's determined celibacy was different

to that which I had. This Mrs. Jack was a chatterbox of a woman, in

the habit of speaking her mind very freely, and of priding herself

excessively on her skill in giving pain to her friends.

“My dear Sir George,” she was pleased to say, “I have often and often

told our dear Theo that I wouldn't have a pretty sister in my house to

make tea for Jack when I was upstairs, and always to be at hand when I

was wanted in the kitchen or nursery, and always to be dressed neat and

in her best when I was very likely making pies or puddings or looking to

the children. I have every confidence in Jack, of course. I should like

to see him look at another woman, indeed! And so I have in Jemima but

they don't come together in my house when I'm upstairs--that I promise

you! And so I told my sister Warrington.”

“Am I to understand,” says the General, “that you have done my Lady

Warrington the favour to warn her against her sister, my daughter Miss

Hester?”

“Yes, pa, of course I have. A duty is a duty, and a woman is a woman,

and a man's a man, as I know very well. Don't tell me! He is a man.

Every man is a man, with all his sanctified airs!”

“You yourself have a married sister, with whom you were staying when my

son Jack first had the happiness of making your acquaintance?” remarks

the General.

“Yes, of course I have a married sister; every one knows that and I have

been as good as a mother to her children, that I have!”

“And am I to gather from your conversation that your attractions proved

a powerful temptation for your sister's husband?”

“Law, General! I don't know how you can go for to say I ever said any

such a thing!” cries Mrs. Jack, red and voluble.

“Don't you perceive, my dear madam, that it is you who have insinuated

as much, not only regarding yourself, but regarding my own two

daughters?”

“Never, never, never, as I'm a Christian woman! And it's most cruel of

you to say so, sir. And I do say a sister is best out of the house, that

I do! And as Theo's time is coming, I warn her, that's all.”

“Have you discovered, my good madam, whether my poor Hetty has stolen

any of the spoons? When I came to breakfast this morning, my daughter

was alone, and there must have been a score of pieces of silver on the

table.”

“Law, sir! who ever said a word about spoons? Did I ever accuse the poor

dear? If I did, may I drop down dead at this moment on this hearth-rug!

And I ain't used to be spoke to in this way. And me and Jack have both

remarked it; and I've done my duty, that I have.” And here Mrs. Jack

flounces out of the room, in tears.

“And has the woman had the impudence to tell you this, my child?”

asks the General, when Theo (who is a little delicate) comes to the

tea-table.

“She has told me every day since she has been here. She comes into my

dressing-room to tell me. She comes to my nursery, and says, 'Ah, I

wouldn't have a sister prowling about my nursery, that I wouldn't.' Ah,

how pleasant it is to have amiable and well-bred relatives, say I.”

“Thy poor mother has been spared this woman,” groans the General.

“Our mother would have made her better, papa,” says Theo, kissing him.

“Yes, dear.” And I see that both of them are at their prayers.

But this must be owned, that to love one's relatives is not always an

easy task; to live with one's neighbours is sometimes not amusing. From

Jack Lambert's demeanour next day, I could see that his wife had given

him her version of the conversation. Jack was sulky, but not dignified.

He was angry, but his anger did not prevent his appetite. He preached a

sermon for us which was entirely stupid. And little Miles, once more in

sables, sate at his grandfather's side, his little hand placed in that

of the kind old man.

Would he stay and keep house for us during our Virginian trip? The

housekeeper should be put under the full domination of Hetty. The

butler's keys should be handed over to him; for Gumbo, not I thought

with an over good grace, was to come with us to Virginia: having,

it must be premised, united himself with Mrs. Molly in the bonds of

matrimony, and peopled a cottage in my park with sundry tawny Gumbos.

Under the care of our good General and his daughter we left our house,

then; we travelled to London, and thence to Bristol, and our obsequious

agent there had the opportunity of declaring that he should offer up

prayers for our prosperity, and of vowing that children so beautiful as

ours (we had an infant by this time to accompany Miles) were never seen

on any ship before. We made a voyage without accident. How strange the

feeling was as we landed from our boat at Richmond! A coach and a host

of negroes were there in waiting to receive us; and hard by a gentleman

on horseback, with negroes in our livery, too, who sprang from his horse

and rushed up to embrace us. Not a little charmed were both of us to see

our dearest Hal. He rode with us to our mother's door. Yonder she stood

on the steps to welcome us; and Theo knelt down to ask her blessing.

Harry rode in the coach with us as far as our mother's house; but would

not, as he said, spoil sport by entering with us. “She sees me,” he

owned, “and we are pretty good friends; but Fanny and she are best

apart; and there is no love lost between 'em, I can promise you. Come

over to me at the Tavern, George, when thou art free. And to-morrow I

shall have the honour to present her sister to Theo. 'Twas only from

happening to be in town yesterday that I heard the ship was signalled,

and waited to see you. I have sent a negro boy home to my wife, and

she'll be here to pay her respects to my Lady Warrington.” And Harry,

after this brief greeting, jumped out of the carriage, and left us to

meet our mother alone.

Since I parted from her I had seen a great deal of fine company, and

Theo and I had paid our respects to the King and Queen at St. James's;

but we had seen no more stately person than this who welcomed us, and

raising my wife from her knee, embraced her and led her into the house.

'Twas a plain, wood-built place, with a gallery round, as our Virginian

houses are; but if it had been a palace, with a little empress inside,

our reception could not have been more courteous. There was old Nathan,

still the major-domo, a score of kind black faces of blacks, grinning

welcome. Some whose names I remembered as children were grown out of

remembrance, to be sure, to be buxom lads and lasses; and some I had

left with black pates were grizzling now with snowy polls: and some who

were born since my time were peering at doorways with their great eyes

and little naked feet. It was, “I'm little Sip, Master George!” and “I'm

Dinah, Sir George!” and “I'm Master Miles's boy!” says a little chap in

a new livery and boots of nature's blacking. Ere the day was over the

whole household had found a pretext for passing before us, and grinning

and bowing and making us welcome. I don't know how many repasts were

served to us. In the evening my Lady Warrington had to receive all

the gentry of the little town, which she did with perfect grace and

good-humour, and I had to shake hands with a few old acquaintances--old

enemies I was going to say; but I had come into a fortune and was no

longer a naughty prodigal. Why, a drove of fatted calves was killed

in my honour! My poor Hal was of the entertainment, but gloomy and

crestfallen. His mother spoke to him, but it was as a queen to a

rebellious prince, her son who was not yet forgiven. We two slipped away

from the company, and went up to the rooms assigned to me: but there, as

we began a free conversation, our mother, taper in hand, appeared with

her pale face. Did I want anything? Was everything quite as I wished

it? She had peeped in at the dearest children, who were sleeping like

cherubs. How she did caress them, and delight over them! How she was

charmed with Miles's dominating airs, and the little Theo's smiles and

dimples! “Supper is just coming on the table, Sir George. If you like

our cookery better than the tavern, Henry, I beg you to stay.” What a

different welcome there was in the words and tone addressed to each of

us! Hal hung down his head, and followed to the lower room. A clergyman

begged a blessing on the meal. He touched with not a little art and

eloquence upon our arrival at home, upon our safe passage across the

stormy waters, upon the love and forgiveness which awaited us in the

mansions of the Heavenly Parent when the storms of life were over.

Here was a new clergyman, quite unlike some whom I remembered about us

in earlier days, and I praised him, but Madam Esmond shook her head. She

was afraid his principles were very dangerous: she was afraid others had

adopted those dangerous principles. Had I not seen the paper signed by

the burgesses and merchants at Williamsburg the year before--the Lees,

Randolphs, Bassets, Washingtons, and the like, and oh, my dear, that

I should have to say it, our name, that is, your brother's (by what

influence I do not like to say), and this unhappy Mr. Belman's who

begged a blessing last night?

If there had been quarrels in our little colonial society when I left

home, what were these to the feuds I found raging on my return? We had

sent the Stamp Act to America, and been forced to repeal it. Then we

must try a new set of duties on glass, paper, and what not, and repeal

that Act too, with the exception of a duty on tea. From Boston to

Charleston the tea was confiscated. Even my mother, loyal as she was,

gave up her favourite drink; and my poor wife would have had to forgo

hers, but we had brought a quantity for our private drinking on board

ship, which had paid four times as much duty at home. Not that I for my

part would have hesitated about paying duty. The home Government must

have some means of revenue, or its pretensions to authority were idle.

They say the colonies were tried and tyrannised over; I say the home

Government was tried and tyrannised over. ['Tis but an affair of

argument and history, now; we tried the question, and were beat; and

the matter is settled as completely as the conquest of Britain by the

Normans.) And all along, from conviction I trust, I own to have

taken the British side of the quarrel. In that brief and unfortunate

experience of war which I had had in my early life, the universal cry of

the army and well-affected persons was, that Mr. Braddock's expedition

had failed, and defeat and disaster had fallen upon us in consequence

of the remissness, the selfishness, and the rapacity of many of the very

people for whose defence against the French arms had been taken up. The

colonists were for having all done for them, and for doing nothing, They

made extortionate bargains with the champions who came to defend them;

they failed in contracts; they furnished niggardly supplies; they

multiplied delays until the hour for beneficial action was past, and

until the catastrophe came which never need have occurred but for their

ill-will. What shouts of joy were there, and what ovations for the great

British Minister who had devised and effected the conquest of Canada!

Monsieur de Vaudreuil said justly that that conquest was the signal for

the defection of the North American colonies from their allegiance to

Great Britain; and my Lord Chatham, having done his best to achieve

the first part of the scheme, contributed more than any man in England

towards the completion of it. The colonies were insurgent, and he

applauded their rebellion. What scores of thousands of waverers must he

have encouraged into resistance! It was a general who says to an army

in revolt, “God save the king! My men, you have a right to mutiny!” No

wonder they set up his statue in this town, and his picture in t'other;

whilst here and there they hanged Ministers and Governors in effigy.

To our Virginian town of Williamsburg, some wiseacres must subscribe

to bring over a portrait of my lord, in the habit of a Roman orator

speaking in the Forum, to be sure, and pointing to the palace of

Whitehall, and the special window out of which Charles I. was beheaded!

Here was a neat allegory, and a pretty compliment to a British

statesman! I hear, however, that my lord's head was painted from a bust,

and so was taken off without his knowledge.

Now my country is England, not America or Virginia; and I take, or

rather took, the English side of the dispute. My sympathies had always

been with home, where I was now a squire and a citizen: but had my lot

been to plant tobacco, and live on the banks of James River or Potomac,

no doubt my opinions had been altered. When, for instance, I visited

my brother at his new house and plantation, I found him and his wife as

staunch Americans as we were British. We had some words upon the matter

in dispute,--who had not in those troublesome times?--but our argument

was carried on without rancour; even my new sister could not bring us to

that, though she did her best when we were together, and in the curtain

lectures which I have no doubt she inflicted on her spouse, like a

notable housewife as she was. But we trusted in each other so entirely

that even Harry's duty towards his wife would not make him quarrel with

his brother. He loved me from old times, when my word was law with him;

he still protested that he and every Virginian gentleman of his side

was loyal to the Crown. War was not declared as yet, and gentlemen of

different opinions were courteous enough to one another. Nay, at

our public dinners and festivals, the health of the King was still

ostentatiously drunk; and the assembly of every colony, though preparing

for Congress, though resisting all attempts at taxation on the part of

the home authorities, was loud in its expressions of regard for the King

our Father, and pathetic in its appeals to that paternal sovereign

to put away evil counsellors from him, and listen to the voice of

moderation and reason. Up to the last, our Virginian gentry were a

grave, orderly, aristocratic folk, with the strongest sense of their own

dignity and station. In later days, and nearer home, we have heard of

fraternisation and equality. Amongst the great folks of our Old World I

have never seen a gentleman standing more on his dignity and maintaining

it better than Mr. Washington: no--not the King against whom he took

arms. In the eyes of all the gentry of the French court, who gaily

joined in the crusade against us, and so took their revenge for Canada,

the great American chief always appeared as anax andron, and they

allowed that his better could not be seen in Versailles itself. Though

they were quarrelling with the Governor, the gentlemen of the House of

Burgesses still maintained amicable relations with him, and exchanged

dignified courtesies. When my Lord Bottetourt arrived, and held his

court at Williamsburg in no small splendour and state, all the gentry

waited upon him, Madam Esmond included. And at his death, Lord Dunmore,

who succeeded him, and brought a fine family with him, was treated with

the utmost respect by our gentry privately, though publicly the House of

Assembly and the Governor were at war.

Their quarrels are a matter of history, and concern me personally only

so far as this, that our burgesses being convened for the 1st of March

in the year after my arrival in Virginia, it was agreed that we should

all pay a visit to our capital, and our duty to the Governor. Since

Harry's unfortunate marriage Madam Esmond had not performed this duty,

though always previously accustomed to pay it; but now that her eldest

son was arrived in the colony, my mother opined that we must certainly

wait upon his Excellency the Governor, nor were we sorry, perhaps,

to get away from our little Richmond to enjoy the gaieties of the

provincial capital. Madam engaged, and at a great price, the best house

to be had at Richmond for herself and her family. Now I was rich, her

generosity was curious. I had more than once to interpose (her old

servants likewise wondering at her new way of life), and beg her not to

be so lavish. But she gently said, in former days she had occasion to

save, which now existed no more. Harry had enough, sure, with such a

wife as he had taken out of the housekeeper's room. If she chose to be a

little extravagant now, why should she hesitate? She had not her dearest

daughter and grandchildren with her every day (she fell in love with all

three of them, and spoiled them as much as they were capable of being

spoiled). Besides, in former days I could not accuse her of too much

extravagance, and this I think was almost the only allusion she made to

the pecuniary differences between us. So she had her people dressed in

their best, and her best wines, plate, and furniture from Castlewood by

sea at no small charge, and her dress in which she had been married in

George II.'s reign, and we all flattered ourselves that our coach made

the greatest figure of any except his Excellency's, and we engaged

Signor Formicalo, his Excellency's major-domo, to superintend the series

of feasts that were given in my honour; and more fleshpots were set

a-stewing in our kitchens in one month, our servants said, than had been

known in the family since the young gentlemen went away. So great was

Theo's influence over my mother, that she actually persuaded her, that

year, to receive our sister Fanny, Hal's wife, who would have stayed

upon the plantation rather than face Madam Esmond. But, trusting to

Theo's promise of amnesty, Fanny (to whose house we had paid more than

one visit) came up to town, and made her curtsey to Madam Esmond, and

was forgiven. And rather than be forgiven in that way, I own, for my

part, that I would prefer perdition or utter persecution.

“You know these, my dear?” says Madam Esmond, pointing to her fine

silver sconces. “Fanny hath often cleaned them when she was with me

at Castlewood. And this dress, too, Fanny knows, I dare say? Her poor

mother had the care of it. I always had the greatest confidence in her.”

Here there is wrath flashing from Fanny's eyes, which our mother, who

has forgiven her, does not perceive--not she!

“Oh, she was a treasure to me!” Madam resumes. “I never should have

nursed my boys through their illnesses but for your mother's admirable

care of them. Colonel Lee, permit me to present you to my daughter,

my Lady Warrington. Her ladyship is a neighbour of your relatives the

Bunburys at home. Here comes his Excellency. Welcome, my lord!”

And our princess performs before his lordship one of those curtseys of

which she was not a little proud; and I fancy I see some of the company

venturing to smile.

“By George! madam,” says Mr. Lee, “since Count Borulawski, I have not

seen a bow so elegant as your ladyship's.”

“And pray, sir, who was Count Borulawski?” asks Madam.

“He was a nobleman high in favour with his Polish Majesty,” replies Mr.

Lee. “May I ask you, madam, to present me to your distinguished son?”

“This is Sir George Warrington,” says my mother, pointing to me.

“Pardon me, madam. I meant Captain Warrington, who was by Mr. Wolfe's

side when he died. I had been contented to share his fate, so I had been

near him.”

And the ardent Lee swaggers up to Harry, and takes his hand with

respect, and pays him a compliment or two, which makes me, at least,

pardon him for his late impertinence; for my dearest Hal walks gloomily

through his mother's rooms in his old uniform of the famous corps which

he has quitted.

We had had many meetings, which the stern mother could not interrupt,

and in which that instinctive love which bound us to one another, and

which nothing could destroy, had opportunity to speak. Entirely unlike

each other in our pursuits, our tastes, our opinions--his life being one

of eager exercise, active sport, and all the amusements of the field,

while mine is to dawdle over books and spend my time in languid

self-contemplation--we have, nevertheless, had such a sympathy as almost

passes the love of women. My poor Hal confessed as much to me, for

his part, in his artless manner, when we went away without wives or

womankind, except a few negroes left in the place, and passed a week at

Castlewood together.

The ladies did not love each other. I know enough of my Lady Theo,

to see after a very few glances whether or not she takes a liking to

another of her amiable sex. All my powers of persuasion or command fail

to change the stubborn creature's opinion. Had she ever said a word

against Mrs. This or Miss That? Not she! Has she been otherwise than

civil? No, assuredly! My Lady Theo is polite to a beggar-woman, treats

her kitchenmaids like duchesses, and murmurs a compliment to the dentist

for his elegant manner of pulling her tooth out. She would black my

boots, or clean the grate, if I ordained it (always looking like a

duchess the while); but as soon as I say to her, “My dear creature, be

fond of this lady, or t'other!” all obedience ceases; she executes the

most refined curtseys; smiles and kisses even to order; but performs

that mysterious undefinable freemasonic signal, which passes between

women, by which each knows that the other hates her. So, with regard

to Fanny, we had met at her house, and at others. I remembered her

affectionately from old days, I fully credited poor Hal's violent

protests and tearful oaths, that, by George, it was our mother's

persecution which made him marry her. He couldn't stand by and see a

poor thing tortured as she was, without coming to her rescue; no,

by heavens, he couldn't! I say I believed all this; and had for my

sister-in-law a genuine compassion, as well as an early regard; and yet

I had no love to give her; and, in reply to Hal's passionate outbreaks

in praise of her beauty and worth, and eager queries to me whether I

did not think her a perfect paragon? I could only answer with faint

compliments or vague approval, feeling all the while that I was

disappointing my poor ardent fellow, and cursing inwardly that revolt

against flattery and falsehood into which I sometimes frantically rush.

Why should I not say, “Yes dear Hal, thy wife is a paragon; her singing

is delightful, her hair and shape are beautiful;” as I might have said

by a little common stretch of politeness? Why could I not cajole this

or that stupid neighbour or relative, as I have heard Theo do a thousand

times, finding all sorts of lively prattle to amuse them, whilst I sit

before them dumb and gloomy? I say it was a sin not to have more words

to say in praise of Fanny. We ought to have praised her, we ought to

have liked her. My Lady Warrington certainly ought to have liked her,

for she can play the hypocrite, and I cannot. And there was this young

creature--pretty, graceful, shaped like a nymph, with beautiful black

eyes--and we cared for them no more than for two gooseberries!

At Warrington my wife and I, when we pretended to compare notes,

elaborately complimented each other on our new sister's beauty. What

lovely eyes!--Oh yes! What a sweet little dimple on her chin!--Ah oui!

What wonderful little feet!--Perfectly Chinese! where should we in

London get slippers small enough for her? And, these compliments

exhausted, we knew that we did not like Fanny the value of one

penny-piece; we knew that we disliked her; we knew that we ha... Well,

what hypocrites women are! We heard from many quarters how eagerly my

brother had taken up the new anti-English opinion, and what a champion

he was of so-called American rights and freedom. “It is her doing, my

dear,” says I to my wife. “If I had said so much, I am sure you

would have scolded me,” says my Lady Warrington, laughing: and I did

straightway begin to scold her, and say it was most cruel of her to

suspect our new sister; and what earthly right had we to do so? But

I say again, I know Madam Theo so well, that when once she has got a

prejudice against a person in her little head, not all the king's horses

nor all the king's men will get it out again. I vow nothing would induce

her to believe that Harry was not henpecked--nothing.

Well, we went to Castlewood together without the women, and stayed at

the dreary, dear old place, where we had been so happy, and I, at least,

so gloomy. It was winter, and duck-time, and Harry went away to the

river, and shot dozens and scores and bushels of canvasbacks, whilst I

remained in my grandfather's library amongst the old mouldering books

which I loved in my childhood--which I see in a dim vision still resting

on a little boy's lap, as he sits by an old white-headed gentleman's

knee. I read my books; I slept in my own bed and room--religiously kept,

as my mother told me, and left as on the day when I went to Europe.

Hal's cheery voice would wake me, as of old. Like all men who love to

go a-field, he was an early riser: he would come and wake me, and sit

on the foot of the bed and perfume the air with his morning pipe, as

the house negroes laid great logs on the fire. It was a happy time! Old

Nathan had told me of cunning crypts where ancestral rum and claret

were deposited. We had had cares, struggles, battles, bitter griefs, and

disappointments; we were boys again as we sat there together. I am a boy

now even as I think of the time.

That unlucky tea-tax, which alone of the taxes lately imposed upon the

colonies, the home Government was determined to retain, was met with

defiance throughout America. 'Tis true we paid a shilling in the pound

at home, and asked only threepence from Boston or Charleston; but as a

question of principle, the impost was refused by the provinces, which

indeed ever showed a most spirited determination to pay as little as

they could help. In Charleston the tea-ships were unloaded, and the

cargoes stored in cellars. From New York and Philadelphia, the vessels

were turned back to London. In Boston (where there was an armed force,

whom the inhabitants were perpetually mobbing), certain patriots,

painted and disguised as Indians, boarded the ships, and flung the

obnoxious cargoes into the water. The wrath of our white Father was

kindled against this city of Mohocks in masquerade. The notable Boston

Port Bill was brought forward in the British House of Commons; the port

was closed, and the Custom House removed to Salem. The Massachusetts

Charter was annulled; and,--in just apprehension that riots might ensue,

in dealing with the perpetrators of which the colonial courts might be

led to act partially,--Parliament decreed that persons indicted for

acts of violence and armed resistance, might be sent home, or to

another colony, for trial. If such acts set all America in a flame, they

certainly drove all wellwisbers of our country into a fury. I might have

sentenced Master Miles Warrington, at five years old, to a whipping, and

he would have cried, taken down his little small-clothes and submitted:

but suppose I offered (and he richly deserving it) to chastise Captain

Miles of the Prince's Dragoons? He would whirl my paternal cane out of

my hand, box my hair-powder out of my ears. Lord a-mercy! I tremble at

the very idea of the controversy? He would assert his independence in

a word; and if, I say, I think the home Parliament had a right to levy

taxes in the colonies, I own that we took means most captious, most

insolent, most irritating, and, above all, most impotent, to assert our

claim.

My Lord Dunmore, our Governor of Virginia, upon Lord Bottetourt's death,

received me into some intimacy soon after my arrival in the colony,

being willing to live on good terms with all our gentry. My mother's

severe loyalty was no secret to him; indeed, she waved the king's banner

in all companies, and talked so loudly and resolutely, that Randolph and

Patrick Henry himself were struck dumb before her. It was Madam Esmond's

celebrated reputation for loyalty (his Excellency laughingly told me)

which induced him to receive her eldest son to grace.

“I have had the worst character of you from home,” his lordship said.

“Little birds whisper to me, Sir George, that you are a man of the

most dangerous principles. You are a friend of Mr. Wilkes and Alderman

Beckford. I am not sure you have not been at Medmenham Abbey. You have

lived with players, poets, and all sorts of wild people. I have been

warned against you, sir, and I find you----”

“Not so black as I have been painted,” I interrupted his lordship, with

a smile.

“Faith,” says my lord, “if I tell Sir George Warrington that he seems to

me a very harmless, quiet gentleman, and that 'tis a great relief to me

to talk to him amidst these loud politicians; these lawyers with their

perpetual noise about Greece and Rome; these Virginian squires who are

for ever professing their loyalty and respect, whilst they are shaking

their fists in my face--I hope nobody overhears us,” says my lord, with

an arch smile, “and nobody will carry my opinions home.”

His lordship's ill opinion having been removed by a better knowledge of

me, our acquaintance daily grew more intimate; and, especially between

the ladies of his family and my own, a close friendship arose--between

them and my wife at least. Hal's wife, received kindly at the little

provincial court, as all ladies were, made herself by no means popular

there by the hot and eager political tone which she adopted. She

assailed all the Government measures with indiscriminating acrimony.

Were they lenient? She said the perfidious British Government was only

preparing a snare, and biding its time until it could forge heavier

chains for unhappy America. Were they angry? Why did not every American

citizen rise, assert his rights as a freeman, and serve every British

governor, officer, soldier, as they had treated the East India Company's

tea? My mother, on the other hand, was pleased to express her opinions

with equal frankness, and, indeed, to press her advice upon his

Excellency with a volubility which may have fatigued that representative

of the Sovereign. Call out the militia; send for fresh troops from New

York, from home, from anywhere; lock up the Capitol! (this advice

was followed, it must be owned) and send every one of the ringleaders

amongst those wicked burgesses to prison! was Madam Esmond's daily

counsel to the Governor by word and letter. And if not only the

burgesses, but the burgesses' wives could have been led off to

punishment and captivity, I think this Brutus of a woman would scarce

have appealed against the sentence.

CHAPTER LXXXVII. The Last of God Save the King

What perverse law of Fate is it that ever places me in a minority?

Should a law be proposed to hand over this realm to the Pretender of

Rome, or the Grand Turk, and submit it to the new sovereign's religion,

it might pass, as I should certainly be voting against it. At home in

Virginia, I found myself disagreeing with everybody as usual. By the

Patriots I was voted (as indeed I professed myself to be) a Tory; by the

Tories I was presently declared to be a dangerous Republican. The time

was utterly out of joint. O cursed spite! Ere I had been a year in

Virginia, how I wished myself back by the banks of the Waveney! But the

aspect of affairs was so troublous, that I could not leave my mother,

a lone lady, to face possible war and disaster, nor would she quit the

country at such a juncture, nor should a man of spirit leave it. At his

Excellency's table, and over his Excellency's plentiful claret, that

point was agreed on by numbers of the well-affected, that vow was vowed

over countless brimming bumpers. No: it was statue signum, signifer!

We Cavaliers would all rally round it; and at these times, our Governor

talked like the bravest of the brave.

Now, I will say, of all my Virginian acquaintance, Madam Esmond was the

most consistent. Our gentlefolks had come in numbers to Williamsburg;

and a great number of them proposed to treat her Excellency, the

Governor's lady, to a ball, when the news reached us of the Boston Port

Bill. Straightway the House of Burgesses adopts an indignant protest

against this measure of the British Parliament, and decrees a solemn day

of fast and humiliation throughout the country, and of solemn prayer to

Heaven to avert the calamity of Civil War. Meanwhile, the invitation to

my Lady Dunmore having been already given and accepted, the gentlemen

agreed that their ball should take place on the appointed evening, and

then sackcloth and ashes should be assumed some days afterwards.

“A ball!” says Madam Esmond. “I go to a ball which is given by a set of

rebels who are going publicly to insult his Majesty a week afterwards!

I will die sooner!” And she wrote to the gentlemen who were stewards for

the occasion to say, that viewing the dangerous state of the country,

she, for her part, could not think of attending a ball.

What was her surprise then, the next time she went abroad in her chair,

to be cheered by a hundred persons, white and black, and shouts of

“Huzzah, Madam!” “Heaven bless your ladyship!” They evidently thought

her patriotism had caused her determination not to go to the ball.

Madam, that there should be no mistake, puts her head out of the chair,

and cries out “God save the King” as loud as she can. The people cried

“God save the King,” too. Everybody cried “God save the King” in those

days. On the night of that entertainment, my poor Harry, as a Burgess

of the House, and one of the givers of the feast, donned his uniform red

coat of Wolfe's (which he so soon was to exchange for another colour),

and went off with Madam Fanny to the ball. My Lady Warrington and her

humble servant, as being strangers in the country, and English people as

it were, were permitted by Madam to attend the assembly from which she

of course absented herself. I had the honour to dance a country-dance

with the lady of Mount Vernon, whom I found a most lively, pretty, and

amiable partner; but am bound to say that my wife's praises of her were

received with a very grim acceptance by my mother, when Lady Warrington

came to recount the events of the evening. Could not Sir George

Warrington have danced with my Lady Dunmore or her daughters, or with

anybody but Mrs. Washington; to be sure the Colonel thought so well of

himself and his wife, that no doubt he considered her the grandest lady

in the room; and she who remembered him a road-surveyor at a guinea a

day! Well, indeed! there was no measuring the pride of these provincial

upstarts, and as for this gentleman, my Lord Dunmore's partiality for

him had evidently turned his head. I do not know about Mr. Washington's

pride, I know that my good mother never could be got to love him or

anything that was his.

She was no better pleased with him for going to the ball, than with his

conduct three days afterwards, when the day of fast and humiliation

was appointed, and when he attended the service which our new clergyman

performed. She invited Mr. Belman to dinner that day, and sundry

colonial authorities. The clergyman excused himself. Madam Esmond tossed

up her head, and said he might do as he liked. She made a parade of a

dinner; she lighted her house up at night, when all the rest of the city

was in darkness and gloom; she begged Mr. Hardy, one of his Excellency's

aides-de-camp, to sing “God save the King,” to which the people in

the street outside listened, thinking that it might be a part of some

religious service which Madam was celebrating; but then she called

for “Britons, strike home!” which the simple young gentleman just from

Europe began to perform, when a great yell arose in the street, and

a large stone, flung from some rebellious hand, plumped into the

punch-bowl before me, and scattered it and its contents about our

dining-room.

My mother went to the window nothing daunted. I can see her rigid little

figure now, as she stands with a tossed-up head, outstretched frilled

arms, and the twinkling stars for a background, and sings in chorus,

“Britons, strike home! strike home!” The crowd in front of the palings

shout and roar, “Silence! for shame! go back!” but she will not go back,

not she. “Fling more stones, if you dare!” says the brave little lady;

and more might have come, but some gentlemen issuing out of the Raley

Tavern interpose with the crowd. “You mustn't insult a lady,” says a

voice I think I know. “Huzza, Colonel! Hurrah, Captain! God bless

your honour!” say the people in the street. And thus the enemies are

pacified.

My mother, protesting that the whole disturbance was over, would have

had Mr. Hardy sing another song, but he gave a sickly grin, and said,

“he really did not like to sing to such accompaniments,” and the

concert for that evening was ended; though I am bound to say that some

scoundrels returned at night, frightened my poor wife almost out of

wits, and broke every single window in the front of our tenement.

“Britons, strike home!” was a little too much; Madam should have

contented herself with “God save the King.” Militia was drilled,

bullets were cast, supplies of ammunition got ready, cunning plans for

disappointing the royal ordinances devised and carried out; but, to be

sure, “God save the King” was the cry everywhere, and in reply to my

objections to the gentlemen-patriots, “Why, you are scheming for a

separation; you are bringing down upon you the inevitable wrath of the

greatest power in the world!”--the answer to me always was, “We mean no

separation at all; we yield to no men in loyalty; we glory in the name

of Britons,” and so forth, and so forth. The powder-barrels were heaped

in the cellar, the train was laid, but Mr. Fawkes was persistent in his

dutiful petitions to King and Parliament and meant no harm, not he!

'Tis true when I spoke of the power of our country, I imagined she

would exert it; that she would not expect to overcome three millions

of fellow-Britons on their own soil with a few battalions, a half-dozen

generals from Bond Street, and a few thousand bravos hired out of

Germany. As if we wanted to insult the thirteen colonies as well as to

subdue them, we must set upon them these hordes of Hessians, and the

murderers out of the Indian wigwams. Was our great quarrel not to be

fought without tali auxilio and istis defensoribus? Ah! 'tis easy, now

we are worsted, to look over the map of the great empire wrested from

us, and show how we ought not to have lost it. Long Island ought to

have exterminated Washington's army; he ought never to have come out of

Valley Forge except as a prisoner. The South was ours after the battle

of Camden, but for the inconceivable meddling of the Commander-in-Chief

at New York, who paralysed the exertions of the only capable British

General who appeared during the war, and sent him into that miserable

cul-de-sac at York Town, whence he could only issue defeated and a

prisoner. Oh, for a week more! a day more, an hour more of darkness

or light! In reading over our American campaigns from their unhappy

commencement to their inglorious end, now that we are able to see the

enemy's movements and conditions as well as our own, I fancy we can see

how an advance, a march, might have put enemies into our power who had

no means to withstand it, and changed the entire issue of the struggle.

But it was ordained by Heaven, and for the good, as we can now have no

doubt, of both empires, that the great Western Republic should separate

from us: and the gallant soldiers who fought on her side, their

indomitable and heroic Chief above all, had the glory of facing and

overcoming, not only veteran soldiers amply provided and inured to war,

but wretchedness, cold, hunger, dissensions, treason within their own

camp, where all must have gone to rack, but for the pure unquenchable

flame of patriotism that was for ever burning in the bosom of the

heroic leader. What a constancy, what a magnanimity, what a surprising

persistence against fortune! Washington before the enemy was no better

nor braver than hundreds that fought with him or against him (who has

not heard the repeated sneers against “Fabius” in which his factious

captains were accustomed to indulge?), but Washington the Chief of a

nation in arms, doing battle with distracted parties; calm in the midst

of conspiracy; serene against the open foe before him and the darker

enemies at his back; Washington inspiring order and spirit into troops

hungry and in rags; stung by ingratitude, but betraying no anger, and

ever ready to forgive; in defeat invincible, magnanimous in conquest,

and never so sublime as on that day when he laid down his victorious

sword and sought his noble retirement:--here indeed is a character to

admire and revere; a life without a stain, a fame without a flaw. Quando

invenies parem? In that more extensive work, which I have planned and

partly written on the subject of this great war, I hope I have done

justice to the character of its greatest leader. [And I trust that in

the opinions I have recorded regarding him, I have shown that I also

can be just and magnanimous towards those who view me personally with

no favour. For my brother Hal being at Mount Vernon, and always eager to

bring me and his beloved Chief on good terms, showed his Excellency some

of the early sheets of my History. General Washington (who read but

few books, and had not the slightest pretensions to literary taste)

remarked, “If you will have my opinion, my dear General, I think Sir

George's projected work, from the specimen I have of it, is certain

to offend both parties.”--G. E. W.]. And this from the sheer force

of respect which his eminent virtues extorted. With the young Mr.

Washington of my own early days I had not the honour to enjoy much

sympathy: though my brother, whose character is much more frank and

affectionate than mine, was always his fast friend in early times, when

they were equals, as in latter days when the General, as I do own and

think, was all mankind's superior.

I have mentioned that contrariety in my disposition, and, perhaps, in my

brother's, which somehow placed us on wrong sides in the quarrel which

ensued, and which from this time forth raged for five years, until the

mother country was fain to acknowledge her defeat. Harry should have

been the Tory, and I the Whig. Theoretically my opinions were very

much more liberal than those of my brother, who, especially after

his marriage, became what our Indian nabobs call a Bahadoor--a person

ceremonious, stately, and exacting respect. When my Lord Dunmore, for

instance, talked about liberating the negroes, so as to induce them to

join the King's standard, Hal was for hanging the Governor and the Black

Guards (as he called them) whom his Excellency had crimped. “If you,

gentlemen are fighting for freedom,” says I, “sure the negroes may

fight, too.” On which Harry roars out, shaking his fist, “Infernal

villains, if I meet any of 'em, they shall die by this hand!” And

my mother agreed that this idea of a negro insurrection was the most

abominable and parricidal notion which had ever sprung up in her unhappy

country. She at least was more consistent than brother Hal. She would

have black and white obedient to the powers that be: whereas Hal only

could admit that freedom was the right of the latter colour.

As a proof of her argument, Madam Esmond and Harry too would point to

an instance in our own family in the person of Mr. Gumbo. Having got his

freedom from me, as a reward for his admirable love and fidelity to me

when times were hard, Gumbo, on his return to Virginia, was scarce a

welcome guest in his old quarters, amongst my mother's servants. He was

free, and they were not: he was, as it were, a centre of insurrection.

He gave himself no small airs of protection and consequence amongst

them; bragging of his friends in Europe (“at home,” as he called it),

and his doings there; and for a while bringing the household round about

him to listen to him and admire him, like the monkey who had seen the

world. Now, Sady, Hal's boy, who went to America of his own desire,

was not free. Hence jealousies between him and Mr. Gum; and battles,

in which they both practised the noble art of boxing and butting, which

they had learned at Marybone Gardens and Hockley-in-the-Hole. Nor was

Sady the only jealous person: almost all my mother's servants hated

Signor Gumbo for the airs which he gave himself; and I am sorry to

say, that our faithful Molly, his wife, was as jealous as his old

fellow-servants. The blacks could not pardon her for having demeaned

herself so far as to marry one of their kind. She met with no respect,

could exercise no authority, came to her mistress with ceaseless

complaints of the idleness, knavery, lies, stealing of the black people;

and finally with a story of jealousy against a certain Dinah, or Diana,

who, I heartily trust, was as innocent as her namesake the moonlight

visitant of Endymion. Now, on the article of morality Madam Esmond was

a very Draconess; and a person accused was a person guilty. She made

charges against Mr. Gumbo to which he replied with asperity. Forgetting

that he was a free gentleman, my mother now ordered Gumbo to be whipped,

on which Molly flew at her ladyship, all her wrath at her husband's

infidelity vanishing at the idea of the indignity put upon him; there

was a rebellion in our house at Castlewood. A quarrel took place between

me and my mother, as I took my man's side. Hal and Fanny sided with her,

on the contrary; and in so far the difference did good, as it brought

about some little intimacy between Madam and her younger children.

This little difference was speedily healed; but it was clear that

the Standard of Insurrection must be removed out of our house; and we

determined that Mr. Gumbo and his lady should return to Europe.

My wife and I would willingly have gone with them, God wot, for our

boy sickened and lost his strength, and caught the fever in our swampy

country; but at this time she was expecting to lie in (of our son

Henry), and she knew, too, that I had promised to stay in Virginia. It

was agreed that we should send the two back; but when I offered Theo to

go, she said her place was with her husband;--her father and Hetty at

home would take care of our children; and she scarce would allow me to

see a tear in her eyes whilst she was making her preparations for the

departure of her little ones. Dost thou remember the time, madam, and

the silence round the worktables, as the piles of little shirts are made

ready for the voyage? and the stealthy visits to the children's chambers

whilst they are asleep and yet with you? and the terrible time of

parting, as our barge with the servants and children rows to the ship,

and you stand on the shore? Had the Prince of Wales been going on that

voyage, he could not have been better provided. Where, sirrah, is the

Tompion watch your grandmother gave you? and how did you survive the

boxes of cakes which the good lady stowed away in your cabin?

The ship which took out my poor Theo's children, returned with the

Reverend Mr. Hagan and my Lady Maria on board, who meekly chose to

resign her rank, and was known in the colony (which was not to be a

colony very long) only as Mrs. Hagan. At the time when I was in favour

with my Lord Dunmore, a living falling vacant in Westmoreland county, he

gave it to our kinsman, who arrived in Virginia time enough to christen

our boy Henry, and to preach some sermons on the then gloomy state of

affairs, which Madam Esmond pronounced to be prodigious fine. I think my

Lady Maria won Madam's heart by insisting on going out of the room after

her. “My father, your brother, was an earl, 'tis true,” says she, “but

you know your ladyship is a marquis's daughter, and I never can think of

taking precedence of you!” So fond did Madam become of her niece, that

she even allowed Hagan to read plays--my own humble compositions amongst

others--and was fairly forced to own that there was merit in the tragedy

of Pocahontas, which our parson delivered with uncommon energy and fire.

Hal and his wife came but rarely to Castlewood and Richmond when the

chaplain and his lady were with us. Fanny was very curt and rude with

Maria, used to giggle and laugh strangely in her company, and repeatedly

remind her of her age, to our mother's astonishment, who would

often ask, was there any cause of quarrel between her niece and her

daughter-in-law? I kept my own counsel on these occasions, and was often

not a little touched by the meekness with which the elder lady bore her

persecutions. Fanny loved to torture her in her husband's presence

(who, poor fellow, was also in happy ignorance about his wife's early

history), and the other bore her agony, wincing as little as might be. I

sometimes would remonstrate with Madam Harry, and ask her was she a Red

Indian, that she tortured her victims so? “Have not I had torture

enough in my time?” says the young lady, and looked as though she was

determined to pay back the injuries inflicted on her.

“Nay,” says I, “you were bred in our wigwam, and I don't remember

anything but kindness!”

“Kindness!” cries she. “No slave was ever treated as I was. The blows

which wound most, often are those which never are aimed. The people who

hate us are not those we have injured.”

I thought of little Fanny in our early days, silent, smiling, willing to

run and do all our biddings for us, and I grieved for my poor brother,

who had taken this sly creature into his bosom.

CHAPTER LXXXVIII. Yankee Doodle comes to Town

One of the uses to which we put America in the days of our British

dominion was to make it a refuge for our sinners. Besides convicts and

assigned servants whom we transported to our colonies, we discharged

on their shores scapegraces and younger sons, for whom dissipation,

despair, and bailiffs made the old country uninhabitable. And as Mr.

Cook, in his voyages, made his newly discovered islanders presents of

English animals (and other specimens of European civilisation), we used

to take care to send samples of our black sheep over to the colonies,

there to browse as best they might, and propagate their precious breed.

I myself was perhaps a little guilty in this matter, in busying

myself to find a living in America for the worthy Hagan, husband of my

kinswoman,--at least was guilty in so far as this, that as we could get

him no employment in England, we were glad to ship him to Virginia, and

give him a colonial pulpit-cushion to thump. He demeaned himself there

as a brave honest gentleman, to be sure; he did his duty thoroughly by

his congregation, and his king too; and in so far did credit to my

small patronage. Madam Theo used to urge this when I confided to her my

scruples of conscience on this subject, and show, as her custom was and

is, that my conduct in this, as in all other matters, was dictated by

the highest principle of morality and honour. But would I have given

Hagan our living at home, and selected him and his wife to minister

to our parish? I fear not. I never had a doubt of our cousin's sincere

repentance; but I think I was secretly glad when she went to work it out

in the wilderness. And I say this, acknowledging my pride and my error.

Twice, when I wanted them most, this kind Maria aided me with her

sympathy and friendship. She bore her own distresses courageously, and

soothed those of others with admirable affection and devotion. And yet

I, and some of mine (not Theo), would look down upon her. Oh, for shame,

for shame on our pride!

My poor Lady Maria was not the only one of our family who was to be

sent out of the way to American wildernesses. Having borrowed, stolen,

cheated at home, until he could cheat, borrow, and steal no more, the

Honourable William Esmond, Esquire, was accommodated with a place at New

York; and his noble brother and royal master heartily desired that they

might see him no more. When the troubles began, we heard of the fellow

and his doings in his new habitation. Lies and mischief were his

avant-couriers wherever he travelled. My Lord Dunmore informed me that

Mr. Will declared publicly, that our estate of Castlewood was only ours

during his brother's pleasure; that his father, out of consideration for

Madam Esmond, his lordship's half-sister, had given her the place for

life, and that he, William, was in negotiation with his brother, the

present Lord Castlewood, for the purchase of the reversion of the

estate! We had the deed of gift in our strongroom at Castlewood, and it

was furthermore registered in due form at Williamsburg; so that we were

easy on that score. But the intention was everything; and Hal and

I promised, as soon as ever we met Mr. William, to get from him a

confirmation of this pretty story. What Madam Esmond's feelings and

expressions were when she heard it, I need scarcely here particularise.

“What! my father, the Marquis of Esmond, was a liar, and I am a cheat,

am I?” cries my mother. “He will take my son's property at my death,

will he?” And she was for writing, not only to Lord Castlewood in

England, but to his Majesty himself at St. James's, and was only

prevented by my assurance that Mr. Will's lies were notorious amongst

all his acquaintance, and that we could not expect, in our own case,

that he should be so inconsistent as to tell the truth. We heard of him

presently as one of the loudest amongst the Loyalists in New York, as

Captain, and presently Major of a corps of volunteers who were sending

their addresses to the well-disposed in all the other colonies, and

announcing their perfect readiness to die for the mother country.

We could not lie in a house without a whole window, and closing the

shutters of that unlucky mansion we had hired at Williamsburg, Madam

Esmond left our little capital, and my family returned to Richmond,

which also was deserted by the members of the (dissolved) Assembly.

Captain Hal and his wife returned pretty early to their plantation; and

I, not a little annoyed at the course which events were taking, divided

my time pretty much between my own family and that of our Governor, who

professed himself very eager to have my advice and company. There were

the strongest political differences, but as yet no actual personal

quarrel. Even after the dissolution of our House of Assembly (the

members of which adjourned to a tavern, and there held that famous

meeting where, I believe, the idea of a congress of all the colonies was

first proposed), the gentlemen who were strongest in opposition remained

good friends with his Excellency, partook of his hospitality, and joined

him in excursions of pleasure. The session over, the gentry went home

and had meetings in their respective counties; and the Assemblies in

most of the other provinces having been also abruptly dissolved, it was

agreed everywhere that a general congress should be held. Philadelphia,

as the largest and most important city on our continent, was selected as

the place of meeting; and those celebrated conferences began, which were

but the angry preface of war. We were still at God save the King; we

were still presenting our humble petitions to the throne; but when I

went to visit my brother Harry at Fanny's Mount (his new plantation

lay not far from ours, but with Rappahannock between us, and towards

Mattaponey River), he rode out on business one morning, and I in the

afternoon happened to ride too, and was told by one of the grooms that

master was gone towards Willis's Ordinary; in which direction, thinking

no harm, I followed. And upon a clear place not far from Willis's, as I

advance out of the wood, I come on Captain Hal on horseback, with three-

or four-and-thirty countrymen round about him, armed with every sort of

weapon, pike, scythe, fowling-piece, and musket; and the Captain, with

two or three likely young fellows as officers under him, putting the men

through their exercise. As I rode up a queer expression comes over Hal's

face. “Present arms!” says he (and the army tries to perform the salute

as well they could). “Captain Cade, this is my brother, Sir George

Warrington.”

“As a relation of yours, Colonel,” says the individual addressed

as captain, “the gentleman is welcome,” and he holds out a hand

accordingly.

“And--and a true friend to Virginia,” says Hal, with a reddening face.

“Yes, please God! gentlemen,” say I, on which the regiment gives a

hearty huzzay for the Colonel and his brother. The drill over, the

officers, and the men too, were for adjourning to Willis's and taking

some refreshment, but Colonel Hal said he could not drink with them that

afternoon, and we trotted homewards together.

“So, Hal, the cat's out of the bag!” I said.

He gave me a hard look. “I guess there's wilder cats in it. It must come

to this, George. I say, you mustn't tell Madam,” he adds.

“Good God!” I cried, “do you mean that with fellows such as those I

saw yonder, you and your friends are going to make fight against the

greatest nation and the best army in the world?”

“I guess we shall get an awful whipping,” says Hal, “and that's the

fact. But then, George,” he added, with his sweet kind smile, “we are

young, and a whipping or two may do us good. Won't it do us good, Dolly,

you old slut?” and he gives a playful touch with his whip to an old dog

of all trades, that was running by him.

I did not try to urge upon him (I had done so in vain many times

previously) our British side of the question, the side which appears to

me to be the best. He was accustomed to put off my reasons by saying,

“All mighty well, brother, you speak as an Englishman, and have cast in

your lot with your country, as I have with mine.” To this argument I own

there is no answer, and all that remains for the disputants is to fight

the matter out, when the strongest is in the right. Which had the right

in the wars of the last century? The king or the parliament? The side

that was uppermost was the right, and on the whole much more humane

in their victory than the Cavaliers would have been had they won. Nay,

suppose we Tories had won the day in America; how frightful and bloody

that triumph would have been! What ropes and scaffolds one imagines,

what noble heads laid low! A strange feeling this, I own; I was on the

Loyalist side, and yet wanted the Whigs to win. My brother Hal, on the

other hand, who distinguished himself greatly with his regiment, never

allowed a word of disrespect against the enemy whom he opposed. “The

officers of the British army,” he used to say, “are gentlemen: at least,

I have not heard that they are very much changed since my time. There

may be scoundrels and ruffians amongst the enemy's troops; I dare say

we could find some such amongst our own. Our business is to beat his

Majesty's forces, not call them names;--any rascal can do that.”

And from a name which Mr. Lee gave my brother, and many of his rough

horsemen did not understand, Harry was often called “Chevaleer Baird” in

the Continental army. He was a knight, indeed, without fear and without

reproach.

As for the argument, “What could such people as those you were drilling

do against the British army?” Hal had as confident answer.

“They can beat them,” says he, “Mr. George, that's what they can do.”

“Great heavens!” I cry, “do you mean with your company of Wolfe's you

would hesitate to attack five hundred such?”

“With my company of the 67th, I would go anywhere. And, agreed with you,

that at this present moment I know more of soldiering than they;--but

place me on that open ground where you found us, armed as you please,

and half a dozen of my friends, with rifles, in the woods round

about me; which would get the better? You know best, Mr. Braddock's

aide-de-camp!”

There was no arguing with such a determination as this. “Thou knowest my

way of thinking, Hal,” I said; “and having surprised you at your work, I

must tell my lord what I have seen.”

“Tell him, of course. You have seen our county militia exercising. You

will see as much in every colony from here to the Saint Lawrence or

Georgia. As I am an old soldier, they have elected me colonel. What more

natural? Come, brother, let us trot on; dinner will be ready, and Mrs.

Fan does not like me to keep it waiting.” And so we made for his house,

which was open like all the houses of our Virginian gentlemen, and where

not only every friend and neighbour, but every stranger and traveller,

was sure to find a welcome.

“So, Mrs. Fan,” I said, “I have found out what game my brother has been

playing.”

“I trust the Colonel will have plenty of sport ere long,” says she, with

a toss of her head.

My wife thought Harry had been hunting, and I did not care to undeceive

her, though what I had seen and he had told me, made me naturally very

anxious.

CHAPTER LXXXIX. A Colonel without a Regiment