Powder
The first expedition in which Mr. Esmond had the honour to be engaged,
rather resembled one of the invasions projected by the redoubted Captain
Avory or Captain Kid, than a war between crowned heads, carried on by
generals of rank and honour. On the 1st day of July, 1702, a great fleet,
of a hundred and fifty sail, set sail from Spithead, under the command of
Admiral Shovell, having on board 12,000 troops, with his grace the Duke of
Ormond as the captain-general of the expedition. One of these 12,000
heroes having never been to sea before, or, at least, only once in his
infancy, when he made the voyage to England from that unknown country
where he was born—one of those 12,000—the junior ensign of Colonel Quin’s
regiment of Fusiliers—was in a quite unheroic state of corporal
prostration a few hours after sailing; and an enemy, had he boarded the
ship, would have had easy work of him. From Portsmouth we put into
Plymouth, and took in fresh reinforcements. We were off Finisterre on the
31st of July, so Esmond’s table-book informs him; and on the 8th of August
made the rock of Lisbon. By this time the ensign was grown as bold as an
admiral, and a week afterwards had the fortune to be under fire for the
first time—and under water, too—his boat being swamped in the surf in
Toros Bay, where the troops landed. The ducking of his new coat was all
the harm the young soldier got in this expedition, for, indeed, the
Spaniards made no stand before our troops, and were not in strength to do
so.
But the campaign, if not very glorious, was very pleasant. New sights of
nature, by sea and land—a life of action, beginning now for the first
time—occupied and excited the young man. The many accidents, and the
routine of ship-board—the military duty—the new acquaintances, both of his
comrades in arms, and of the officers of the fleet—served to cheer and
occupy his mind, and waken it out of that selfish depression into which
his late unhappy fortunes had plunged him. He felt as if the ocean
separated him from his past care, and welcomed the new era of life which
was dawning for him. Wounds heal rapidly in a heart of two-and-twenty;
hopes revive daily; and courage rallies, in spite of a man. Perhaps, as
Esmond thought of his late despondency and melancholy, and how
irremediable it had seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months
back, he was almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so
cheerful.
To see with one’s own eyes men and countries, is better than reading all
the books of travel in the world: and it was with extreme delight and
exultation that the young man found himself actually on his grand tour,
and in the view of people and cities which he had read about as a boy. He
beheld war for the first time—the pride, pomp, and circumstance of it, at
least, if not much of the danger. He saw actually, and with his own eyes,
those Spanish cavaliers and ladies whom he had beheld in imagination in
that immortal story of Cervantes, which had been the delight of his
youthful leisure. ’Tis forty years since Mr. Esmond witnessed those
scenes, but they remain as fresh in his memory as on the day when first he
saw them as a young man. A cloud, as of grief, that had lowered over him,
and had wrapped the last years of his life in gloom, seemed to clear away
from Esmond during this fortunate voyage and campaign. His energies seemed
to awaken and to expand, under a cheerful sense of freedom. Was his heart
secretly glad to have escaped from that fond but ignoble bondage at home?
Was it that the inferiority to which the idea of his base birth had
compelled him, vanished with the knowledge of that secret, which though,
perforce, kept to himself, was yet enough to cheer and console him? At any
rate, young Esmond of the army was quite a different being to the sad
little dependant of the kind Castlewood household, and the melancholy
student of Trinity Walks; discontented with his fate, and with the
vocation into which that drove him, and thinking, with a secret
indignation, that the cassock and bands, and the very sacred office with
which he had once proposed to invest himself, were, in fact, but marks of
a servitude which was to continue all his life long. For, disguise it as
he might to himself, he had all along felt that to be Castlewood’s
chaplain was to be Castlewood’s inferior still, and that his life was but
to be a long, hopeless servitude. So, indeed, he was far from grudging his
old friend Tom Tusher’s good fortune (as Tom, no doubt, thought it). Had
it been a mitre and Lambeth which his friends offered him, and not a small
living and a country parsonage, he would have felt as much a slave in one
case as in the other, and was quite happy and thankful to be free.
The bravest man I ever knew in the army, and who had been present in most
of King William’s actions, as well as in the campaigns of the great Duke
of Marlborough, could never be got to tell us of any achievement of his,
except that once Prince Eugene ordered him up a tree to reconnoitre the
enemy, which feat he could not achieve on account of the horseman’s boots
he wore; and on another day that he was very nearly taken prisoner because
of these jackboots, which prevented him from running away. The present
narrator shall imitate this laudable reserve, and doth not intend to dwell
upon his military exploits, which were in truth not very different from
those of a thousand other gentlemen. This first campaign of Mr. Esmond’s
lasted but a few days; and as a score of books have been written
concerning it, it may be dismissed very briefly here.
When our fleet came within view of Cadiz, our commander sent a boat with a
white flag and a couple of officers to the Governor of Cadiz, Don Scipio
de Brancaccio, with a letter from his grace, in which he hoped that as Don
Scipio had formerly served with the Austrians against the French in
England, ’twas to be hoped that his excellency would now declare himself
against the French king and for the Austrian in the war between King
Philip and King Charles. But his excellency, Don Scipio, prepared a reply,
in which he announced that, having served his former king with honour and
fidelity, he hoped to exhibit the same loyalty and devotion towards his
present sovereign, King Philip V; and by the time this letter was ready,
the officers who had been taken to see the town, and the Alameda, and the
theatre, where bull-fights are fought, and the convents, where the
admirable works of Don Bartholomew Murillo inspired one of them with a
great wonder and delight—such as he had never felt before—concerning this
divine art of painting; and these sights over, and a handsome refection
and chocolate being served to the English gentlemen, they were accompanied
back to their shallop with every courtesy, and were the only two officers
of the English army that saw at that time that famous city.
The general tried the power of another proclamation on the Spaniards, in
which he announced that we only came in the interest of Spain and King
Charles, and for ourselves wanted to make no conquest nor settlement in
Spain at all. But all this eloquence was lost upon the Spaniards, it would
seem: the Captain-General of Andalusia would no more listen to us than the
Governor of Cadiz; and in reply to his grace’s proclamation, the Marquis
of Villadarias fired off another, which those who knew the Spanish thought
rather the best of the two; and of this number was Harry Esmond, whose
kind Jesuit in old days had instructed him, and now had the honour of
translating for his grace these harmless documents of war. There was a
hard touch for his grace, and, indeed, for other generals in her Majesty’s
service, in the concluding sentence of the Don: “That he and his council
had the generous example of their ancestors to follow, who had never yet
sought their elevation in the blood or in the flight of their kings.
‘_Mori pro patria_’ was his device, which the duke might communicate to
the princess who governed England.”
Whether the troops were angry at this repartee or no, ’tis certain
something put them in a fury; for, not being able to get possession of
Cadiz, our people seized upon Port St. Mary’s and sacked it, burning down
the merchants’ storehouses, getting drunk with the famous wines there,
pillaging and robbing quiet houses and convents, murdering and doing
worse. And the only blood which Mr. Esmond drew in this shameful campaign,
was the knocking down an English sentinel with a half-pike, who was
offering insult to a poor trembling nun. Is she going to turn out a
beauty? or a princess? or perhaps Esmond’s mother that he had lost and
never seen? Alas no, it was but a poor wheezy old dropsical woman, with a
wart on her nose. But having been early taught a part of the Roman
religion, he never had the horror of it that some Protestants have shown,
and seem to think to be a part of ours.
After the pillage and plunder of St. Mary’s, and an assault upon a fort or
two, the troops all took shipping, and finished their expedition, at any
rate, more brilliantly than it had begun. Hearing that the French fleet
with a great treasure was in Vigo Bay, our admirals, Rooke and Hopson,
pursued the enemy thither; the troops landed and carried the forts that
protected the bay, Hopson passing the boom first on board his ship the
_Torbay_, and the rest of the ships, English and Dutch, following him.
Twenty ships were burned or taken in the port of Redondilla, and a vast
deal more plunder than was ever accounted for; but poor men before that
expedition were rich afterwards, and so often was it found and remarked
that the Vigo officers came home with pockets full of money, that the
notorious Jack Shafto, who made such a figure at the coffee-houses and
gaming-tables in London, and gave out that he had been a soldier at Vigo,
owned, when he was about to be hanged, that Bagshot Heath had been his
Vigo, and that he only spoke of La Redondilla to turn away people’s eyes
from the real place where the booty lay. Indeed, Hounslow or Vigo—which
matters much? The latter was a bad business, though Mr. Addison did sing
its praises in Latin. That honest gentleman’s muse had an eye to the main
chance; and I doubt whether she saw much inspiration in the losing side.
But though Esmond, for his part, got no share of this fabulous booty, one
great prize which he had out of the campaign was, that excitement of
action and change of scene, which shook off a great deal of his previous
melancholy. He learnt at any rate to bear his fate cheerfully. He brought
back a browned face, a heart resolute enough, and a little pleasant store
of knowledge and observation, from that expedition, which was over with
the autumn, when the troops were back in England again; and Esmond giving
up his post of secretary to General Lumley, whose command was over, and
parting with that officer with many kind expressions of goodwill on the
general’s side, had leave to go to London, to see if he could push his
fortunes any way further, and found himself once more in his dowager
aunt’s comfortable quarters at Chelsey, and in greater favour than ever
with the old lady. He propitiated her with a present of a comb, a fan, and
a black mantle, such as the ladies of Cadiz wear, and which my lady
viscountess pronounced became her style of beauty mightily. And she was
greatly edified at hearing of that story of his rescue of the nun, and
felt very little doubt but that her King James’s relic, which he had
always dutifully worn in his desk, had kept him out of danger, and averted
the shot of the enemy. My lady made feasts for him, introduced him to more
company, and pushed his fortunes with such enthusiasm and success, that
she got a promise of a company for him through the Lady Marlborough’s
interest, who was graciously pleased to accept of a diamond worth a couple
of hundred guineas, which Mr. Esmond was enabled to present to her
ladyship through his aunt’s bounty, and who promised that she would take
charge of Esmond’s fortune. He had the honour to make his appearance at
the queen’s drawing-room occasionally, and to frequent my Lord
Marlborough’s levees. That great man received the young one with very
especial favour, so Esmond’s comrades said, and deigned to say that he had
received the best reports of Mr. Esmond, both for courage and ability,
whereon you may be sure the young gentleman made a profound bow, and
expressed himself eager to serve under the most distinguished captain in
the world.
Whilst his business was going on thus prosperously, Esmond had his share
of pleasure, too, and made his appearance along with other young gentlemen
at the coffee-houses, the theatres, and the Mall. He longed to hear of his
dear mistress and her family: many a time, in the midst of the gaieties
and pleasures of the town, his heart fondly reverted to them; and often as
the young fellows of his society were making merry at the tavern, and
calling toasts (as the fashion of that day was) over their wine, Esmond
thought of persons—of two fair women, whom he had been used to adore
almost, and emptied his glass with a sigh.
By this time the elder viscountess had grown tired again of the younger,
and whenever she spoke of my lord’s widow, ’twas in terms by no means
complimentary towards that poor lady: the younger woman not needing her
protection any longer, the elder abused her. Most of the family quarrels
that I have seen in life (saving always those arising from money disputes,
when a division of twopence-halfpenny will often drive the dearest
relatives into war and estrangement), spring out of jealousy and envy.
Jack and Tom, born of the same family and to the same fortune, live very
cordially together, not until Jack is ruined when Tom deserts him, but
until Tom makes a sudden rise in prosperity, which Jack can’t forgive. Ten
times to one ’tis the unprosperous man that is angry, not the other who is
in fault. ’Tis Mrs. Jack, who can only afford a chair that sickens at Mrs.
Tom’s new coach-and-six, cries out against her sister’s airs, and sets her
husband against his brother. ’Tis Jack who sees his brother shaking hands
with a lord (with whom Jack would like to exchange snuff-boxes himself),
that goes home and tells his wife how poor Tom is spoiled, he fears, and
no better than a sneak, parasite, and beggar on horseback. I remember how
furious the coffee-house wits were with Dick Steele when he set up his
coach, and fine house in Bloomsbury: they began to forgive him when the
bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling Dick’s
country-house. And yet Dick in the spunging-house, or Dick in the Park,
with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle,
kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele: and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly
right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of
his just claim, to be spent by Dick upon champagne and fiddlers, laced
clothes, fine furniture, and parasites, Jew and Christian, male and
female, who clung to him. As, according to the famous maxim of Monsieur de
Rochefoucault, “in our friends’ misfortunes there’s something secretly
pleasant to us”; so, on the other hand, their good fortune is
disagreeable. If ’tis hard for a man to bear his own good luck, ’tis
harder still for his friends to bear it for him; and but few of them
ordinarily can stand that trial: whereas one of the “precious uses” of
adversity is, that it is a great reconciler; that it brings back averted
kindness, disarms animosity, and causes yesterday’s enemy to fling his
hatred aside, and hold out a hand to the fallen friend of old days.
There’s pity and love, as well as envy, in the same heart and towards the
same person. The rivalry stops when the competitor tumbles; and, as I view
it, we should look at these agreeable and disagreeable qualities of our
humanity humbly alike. They are consequent and natural, and our kindness
and meanness both manly.
So you may either read the sentence, that the elder of Esmond’s two
kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty, when that had lost somewhat of
its freshness, perhaps; and forgot most her grievances against the other,
when the subject of them was no longer prosperous and enviable; or we may
say more benevolently (but the sum comes to the same figures, worked
either way), that Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel, when
Rachel was unhappy; and, bestirring herself in behalf of the poor widow
and her children, gave them shelter and friendship. The ladies were quite
good friends as long as the weaker one needed a protector. Before Esmond
went away on his first campaign, his mistress was still on terms of
friendship (though a poor little chit, a woman that had evidently no
spirit in her, &c.) with the elder Lady Castlewood; and Mistress Beatrix
was allowed to be a beauty.
But between the first year of Queen Anne’s reign, and the second, sad
changes for the worse had taken place in the two younger ladies, at least
in the elder’s description of them. Rachel, Viscountess Castlewood, had no
more face than a dumpling, and Mrs. Beatrix was grown quite coarse, and
was losing all her beauty. Little Lord Blandford (she never would call him
Lord Blandford; his father was Lord Churchill—the king, whom he betrayed,
had made him Lord Churchill, and he was Lord Churchill still)—might be
making eyes at her; but his mother, that vixen of a Sarah Jennings, would
never hear of such a folly. Lady Marlborough had got her to be a maid of
honour at Court to the princess, but she would repent of it. The widow
Francis (she was but Mrs. Francis Esmond) was a scheming, artful,
heartless hussy. She was spoiling her brat of a boy, and she would end by
marrying her chaplain.
“What, Tusher?” cried Mr. Esmond, feeling a strange pang of rage and
astonishment.
“Yes—Tusher, my maid’s son; and who has got all the qualities of his
father, the lackey in black, and his accomplished mamma, the
waiting-woman,” cries my lady. “What, do you suppose that a sentimental
widow, who will live down in that dingy dungeon of a Castlewood, where she
spoils her boy, kills the poor with her drugs, has prayers twice a day and
sees nobody but the chaplain—what do you suppose she can do, _mon cousin_,
but let the horrid parson, with his great square toes, and hideous little
green eyes, make love to her? _Cela c’est vu, mon cousin._ When I was a
girl at Castlewood, all the chaplains fell in love with me—they’ve nothing
else to do.”
My lady went on with more talk of this kind, though, in truth, Esmond had
no idea of what she said further, so entirely did her first words occupy
his thought. Were they true? Not all, nor half, nor a tenth part of what
the garrulous old woman said, was true. Could this be so? No ear had
Esmond for anything else, though his patroness chattered on for an hour.
Some young gentlemen of the town, with whom Esmond had made acquaintance,
had promised to present him to that most charming of actresses, and lively
and agreeable of women, Mrs. Bracegirdle, about whom Harry’s old adversary
Mohun had drawn swords, a few years before my poor lord and he fell out.
The famous Mr. Congreve had stamped with his high approval, to the which
there was no gainsaying, this delightful person: and she was acting in
Dick Steele’s comedies, and finally, and for twenty-four hours after
beholding her, Mr. Esmond felt himself, or thought himself, to be as
violently enamoured of this lovely brunette, as were a thousand other
young fellows about the city. To have once seen her was to long to behold
her again; and to be offered the delightful privilege of her acquaintance,
was a pleasure the very idea of which set the young lieutenant’s heart on
fire. A man cannot live with comrades under the tents without finding out
that he too is five-and-twenty. A young fellow cannot be cast down by
grief and misfortune ever so severe but some night he begins to sleep
sound, and some day when dinner-time comes to feel hungry for a beefsteak.
Time, youth, and good health, new scenes and the excitement of action and
a campaign, had pretty well brought Esmond’s mourning to an end; and his
comrades said that Don Dismal, as they called him, was Don Dismal no more.
So when a party was made to dine at the “Rose”, and go to the playhouse
afterward, Esmond was as pleased as another to take his share of the
bottle and the play.
How was it that the old aunt’s news, or it might be scandal, about Tom
Tusher, caused such a strange and sudden excitement in Tom’s old
playfellow? Hadn’t he sworn a thousand times in his own mind that the lady
of Castlewood, who had treated him with such kindness once, and then had
left him so cruelly, was, and was to remain henceforth, indifferent to him
for ever? Had his pride and his sense of justice not long since helped him
to cure the pain of that desertion—was it even a pain to him now? Why, but
last night as he walked across the fields and meadows to Chelsey from Pall
Mall, had he not composed two or three stanzas of a song, celebrating
Bracegirdle’s brown eyes, and declaring them a thousand times more
beautiful than the brightest blue ones that ever languished under the
lashes of an insipid fair beauty! But Tom Tusher! Tom Tusher, the
waiting-woman’s son, raising up his little eyes to his mistress! Tom
Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood’s widow! Rage and contempt filled
Mr. Harry’s heart at the very notion; the honour of the family, of which
he was the chief, made it his duty to prevent so monstrous an alliance,
and to chastise the upstart who could dare to think of such an insult to
their house. ’Tis true Mr. Esmond often boasted of republican principles,
and could remember many fine speeches he had made at college and
elsewhere, with _worth_ and not _birth_ for a text: but Tom Tusher to take
the place of the noble Castlewood—faugh! ’twas as monstrous as King
Hamlet’s widow taking off her weeds for Claudius. Esmond laughed at all
widows, all wives, all women; and were the banns about to be published, as
no doubt they were, that very next Sunday at Walcote Church, Esmond swore
that he would be present to shout No! in the face of the congregation, and
to take a private revenge upon the ears of the bridegroom.
Instead of going to dinner then at the “Rose” that night, Mr. Esmond bade
his servant pack a portmanteau and get horses, and was at Farnham,
half-way on the road to Walcote, thirty miles off, before his comrades had
got to their supper after the play. He bade his man give no hint to my
lady dowager’s household of the expedition on which he was going: and as
Chelsey was distant from London, the roads bad, and infested by footpads,
and Esmond often in the habit, when engaged in a party of pleasure, of
lying at a friend’s lodging in town, there was no need that his old aunt
should be disturbed at his absence—indeed, nothing more delighted the old
lady than to fancy that _mon cousin_, the incorrigible young sinner, was
abroad boxing the watch, or scouring St. Giles’s. When she was not at her
books of devotion, she thought Etheridge and Sedley very good reading. She
had a hundred pretty stories about Rochester, Harry Jermyn, and Hamilton;
and if Esmond would but have run away with the wife even of a citizen,
’tis my belief she would have pawned her diamonds (the best of them went
to our Lady of Chaillot) to pay his damages.
My lord’s little house of Walcote, which he inhabited before he took his
title and occupied the house of Castlewood—lies about a mile from
Winchester, and his widow had returned to Walcote after my lord’s death as
a place always dear to her, and where her earliest and happiest days had
been spent, cheerfuller than Castlewood, which was too large for her
straitened means, and giving her, too, the protection of the ex-dean, her
father. The young viscount had a year’s schooling at the famous college
there, with Mr. Tusher as his governor. So much news of them Mr. Esmond
had had during the past year from the old viscountess, his own father’s
widow; from the young one there had never been a word.
Twice or thrice in his benefactor’s lifetime, Esmond had been to Walcote;
and now, taking but a couple of hours’ rest only at the inn on the road,
he was up again long before daybreak, and made such good speed that he was
at Walcote by two o’clock of the day. He rid to the inn of the village,
where he alighted and sent a man thence to Mr. Tusher, with a message that
a gentleman from London would speak with him on urgent business. The
messenger came back to say the doctor was in town, most likely at prayers
in the cathedral. My lady viscountess was there too; she always went to
cathedral prayers every day.
The horses belonged to the post-house at Winchester. Esmond mounted again,
and rode on to the “George”; whence he walked, leaving his grumbling
domestic at last happy with a dinner, straight to the cathedral. The organ
was playing: the winter’s day was already growing grey: as he passed under
the street-arch into the cathedral-yard, and made his way into the ancient
solemn edifice.