man who reported this added, that by original constitution they were
as strong as Meux's dray-horses; and thus, after all, they may simply
illustrate the old logical _dictum_ ascribed to some medical man, that
the reason why London children of the wealthier classes are noticeable
even to a proverb for their robustness and bloom, is because none but
those who are already vigorous to excess, and who start with advantages
of health far beyond the average scale, have much chance of surviving
that most searching quarantine, which, in such [Footnote: For myself,
meantime, I am far from assenting to all the romantic abuse applied to
the sewerage and the church-yards of London, and even more violently
to the river Thames. As a tidal river, even: beyond the metropolitan
bridges, the Thames undoubtedly does much towards cleansing the
atmosphere, whatever may be the condition of its waters. And one most
erroneous postulate there is from which the _Times_ starts in all its
arguments, namely, this, that supposing the Thames to be even a vast
sewer, in short, the _cloaca maxima_ of London, there is in that
arrangement of things any special reproach applying to our mighty
English capital. On the contrary, _all_ great cities that ever were
founded have sought out, as their first and elementary condition,
the adjacency of some great cleansing river. In the long process of
development through which cities pass, commerce and other functions of
civilization come to usurp upon the earlier functions of such rivers,
and sometimes (through increasing efforts of luxurious refinement) may
come entirely to absorb them. But, in the infancy of every great
city, the chief function for which she looks to her river is that of
purification. Be thou my huge _cloaca_, says infant Babylon to the
Euphrates, says infant Nineveh to the Tigris, says infant Rome to the
Tiber. So far is that reproach from having any special application
to London. Smoke is not unwholesome; in many circumstances it is
salubrious, as a counter-agent to worse influences. Even sewerage is
chiefly insalubrious from its moisture, and not, in any degree yet
demonstrated, from its odor.] an atmosphere, they are summoned to
weather at starting. Coming, however, to the special case of Mrs.
Schreiber's household, I am bound to report that in no instance have I
known young ladies so thoroughly steeled against all the ordinary host
of petty maladies which, by way of antithesis to the capital warfare
of dangerous complaints, might be called the _guerilla_ nosology;
influenza, for instance, in milder forms, catarrh, headache, toothache,
dyspepsia in transitory shapes, etc. Always the spirits of the two girls
were exuberant; the enjoyment of life seemed to be intense, and never
did I know either of them to suffer from _ennui_. My conscious knowledge
of them commenced when I was about two years old, they being from ten to
twelve years older. Mrs. Schreiber had been amongst my mother's earliest
friends as Mrs. Harvey, and in days when my mother had opportunities
of doing her seasonable services. And as there were three special
advantages which adorned my mother, and which ranked in Mrs. Schreiber's
estimate as the highest which earth could show, namely: 1°, that she
spoke and wrote English with singular elegance; 2°, that her manners
were eminently polished; and 3°, that, even in that early stage of
my mother's life, a certain tone of religiosity, and even of ascetic
devotion, was already diffused as a luminous mist that served to exalt
the coloring of her morality. To this extent Mrs. Schreiber approved of
religion; but nothing of a sectarian cast could she have tolerated; nor
had she anything of that nature to apprehend from my mother. Viewing my
mother, therefore, as a pure model of an English matron, and feeling for
her, besides, a deeper sentiment of friendship and affection than for
anybody else on her visiting list, it was natural enough that she should
come with her wards on an annual visit to "The Farm" (a pretty, rustic
dwelling occupied by my father in the neighborhood of Manchester),
and subsequently (when _that_ arose) to Greenhay. [Footnote:
"_Greenhay_."--As this name might, under a false interpretation, seem
absurd as including incongruous elements, I ought, in justification of
my mother, who devised the name, to have mentioned that _hay_ was meant
for the old English word (derived from the old French word _haie_)
indicating a rural enclosure. Conventionally, a _hay_ or _haie_ was
understood to mean a country-house within a verdant ring-fence, narrower
than a park: which word park, in Scotch use, means any enclosure
whatever, though not twelve feet square; but in English use (witness
Captain Burt's wager about Culloden parks) means an enclosure measured
by square miles, and usually accounted to want its appropriate
furniture, unless tenanted by deer. By the way, it is a singular
illustration of a fact illustrated in one way or other every hour,
namely, of the imperfect knowledge which England possesses of England,
that, within these last eight or nine months, I saw in the _Illustrated
London News_ an article assuming that the red deer was unknown in
England. Whereas, if the writer had ever been at the English lakes
during the hunting season, he might have seen it actually hunted
over Martindale forest and its purlieus. Or, again, in Devonshire and
Cornwall, over Dartmoor, etc., and, I believe, in many other regions,
though naturally narrowing as civilization widens. The writer is equally
wrong in supposing the prevailing deer of our parks to be the _roe_
deer, which are very little known. It is the _fallow_ deer that chiefly
people our parks. Red deer were also found at Blenheim, in Oxfordshire,
when it was visited by Dr. Johnson, as may be seen in "Boswell."] As
my father always retained a town-house in Manchester (somewhere in
Fountain-street), and, though a plain, unpretending man, was literary
to the extent of having written a book, all things were so arranged that
there was no possibility of any commercial mementos ever penetrating to
the rural retreat of his family; such mementos, I mean, as, by reviving
painful recollections of that ancient Schreiber, who was or ought to be
by this time extinct, would naturally be odious and distressing. Here,
therefore, liberated from all jealousy of overlooking eyes, such as
haunted persons of their expectations at Brighton, Weymouth, Sidmouth,
or Bath, Miss Smith and Miss Watson used to surrender themselves without
restraint to their glad animal impulses of girlish gayety, like the
fawns of antelopes when suddenly transferred from tiger-haunted thickets
to the serene preserves of secluded rajahs. On these visits it was, that
I, as a young pet whom they carried about like a doll from my second to
my eighth or ninth year, learned to know them; so as to take a fraternal
interest in the succeeding periods of their lives. Their fathers I
certainly had not seen; nor had they, consciously. These two fathers
must both have died in India, before my inquiries had begun to travel
in that direction. But, as old acquaintances of my mother's, both
had visited The Farm before I was born; and about General Smith, in
particular, there had survived amongst the servants a remembrance which
seemed to us (that is to them and to myself) ludicrously awful, though,
at that time, the practice was common throughout our Indian possessions.
He had a Hindoo servant with him; and this servant every night stretched
himself along the "sill" or outer threshold of the door; so that he
might have been trodden on by the general when retiring to rest; and
from this it was but a moderate step in advance to say that he _was_
trodden on. Upon which basis many other wonders were naturally reared.
Miss Smith's father, therefore, furnished matter for a not very amiable
tradition; but Miss Smith herself was the sweetest-tempered and the
loveliest of girls, and the most thoroughly English in the style of her
beauty. Far different every way was Miss Watson. In person she was
a finished beauty of the very highest pretensions, and generally
recognized as such; that is to say, her figure was fine and queenly;
her features were exquisitely cut, as regarded their forms and the
correspondences of their parts; and usually by artists her face was said
to be Grecian. Perhaps the nostrils, mouth, and forehead, might be
so; but nothing could be less Grecian, or more eccentric in form and
position, than the eyes. They were placed obliquely, in a way that I
do not remember to have seen repeated in any other face whatever. Large
they were, and particularly long, tending to an almond-shape; equally
strange, in fact, as to color, shape, and position: but the remarkable
position of these eyes would have absorbed your gaze to the obliteration
of all other features or peculiarities in the face, were it not for one
other even more remarkable distinction affecting her complexion: this
lay in a suffusion that mantled upon her cheeks, of a color amounting
almost to carmine. Perhaps it might be no more than what Pindar meant by
the _porphyreon phos erotos_, which Gray has falsely [Footnote: Falsely,
because poxphuxeos rarely, perhaps, means in the Greek use what we mean
properly by _purple_, and _could_ not mean it in the Pindaric passage;
much oftener it denotes some shade of _crimson_, or else of _puniceus_,
or blood-red. Gibbon was never more mistaken than when he argued that
all the endless disputing about the _purpureus_ of the ancients
might have been evaded by attending to its Greek designation, namely,
_porphyry_-colored: since, said he, porphyry is always of the same
color. Not at all. Porphyry, I have heard, runs through as large a gamut
of hues as marble; but, if this should be an exaggeration, at all events
porphyry is far from being so monochromatic as Gibbon's argument would
presume. The truth is, colors were as loosely and latitudinarially
distinguished by the Greeks and Romans as degrees of affinity and
consanguinity are everywhere. _My son-in-law_, says a woman, and she
means _my stepson._ _My cousin_, she says, and she means any mode
of relationship in the wide, wide world. _Nos neveux_, says a French
writer, and means not _our nephews_, but _our grandchildren_, or more
generally _our descendants_.] translated as "the bloom of young desire,
and PURPLE light of love." It was not unpleasing, and gave a lustre
to the eyes, but it added to the eccentricity of the face; and by all
strangers it was presumed to be an artificial color, resulting from
some mode of applying a preparation more brilliant than rouge. But to us
children, so constantly admitted to her toilet, it was well known to
be entirely natural. Generally speaking, it is not likely to assist the
effect of a young woman's charms, that she presents any such variety in
her style of countenance as could naturally be called _odd_. But Miss
Watson, by the somewhat scenical effect resulting from the harmony
between her fine figure and her fine countenance, triumphed over all
that might else have been thought a blemish; and when she was presented
at court on occasion of her marriage, the king himself pronounced her,
to friends of Mrs. Schreiber, the most splendid of all the brides
that had yet given lustre to his reign. In such cases the judgments of
rustic, undisciplined tastes, though marked by narrowness, and often by
involuntary obedience to vulgar ideals (which, for instance, makes them
insensible to all the deep sanctities of beauty that sleep amongst the
Italian varieties of the Madonna face), is not without its appropriate
truth. Servants and rustics all thrilled in sympathy with the sweet
English loveliness of Miss Smith; but all alike acknowledged, with
spontaneous looks of homage, the fine presence and finished beauty
of Miss Watson. Naturally, from the splendor with which they were
surrounded, and the notoriety of their great expectations,--so much to
dazzle in one direction, and, on the other hand, something for as tender
a sentiment as pity, in the fact of both from so early an age having
been united in the calamity of orphanage,--go where they might, these
young women drew all eyes upon themselves; and from the _audible_
comparisons sometimes made between them, it might be imagined that if
ever there were a situation fitted to nourish rivalship and jealousy,
between two girls, here it might be anticipated in daily operation. But,
left to themselves, the yearnings of the female heart tend naturally
towards what is noble; and, unless where it has been tried too heavily
by artificial incitements applied to the pride, I do not believe that
women generally are disposed to any unfriendly jealousy of each other.
Why should they? Almost every woman, when strengthened in those charms
which nature has given to her by such as she can in many ways give
to herself, must feel that she has her own separate domain of empire
unaffected by the most sovereign beauty upon earth. Every man that ever
existed has probably his own peculiar talent (if only it were detected),
in which he would be found to excel all the rest of his race. And in
every female face possessing any attractions at all, no matter what
may be her general inferiority, there lurks some secret peculiarity
of expression--some mesmeric individuality--which is valid within its
narrower range--limited superiority over the supreme of beauties within
a narrow circle. It is unintelligibly but mesmerically potent, this
secret fascination attached to features oftentimes that are absolutely
plain; and as one of many cases within my own range of positive
experience, I remember in confirmation, at this moment, that in a
clergyman's family, counting three daughters, all on a visit to my
mother, the youngest, Miss F---- P----, who was strikingly and memorably
plain, never walked out on the Clifton Downs unattended, but she was
followed home by a crowd of admiring men, anxious to learn her rank
and abode; whilst the middle sister, eminently handsome, levied no such
_visible_ tribute of admiration on the public.
I mention this fact, one of a thousand similar facts, simply by way
of reminding the reader of what he must himself have often witnessed;
namely, that no woman is condemned by nature to any ignoble necessity
of repining against the power of other women; her own may be far more
confined, but within its own circle may possibly, measured against
that of the haughtiest beauty, be the profounder. However, waiving the
question thus generally put here, and as it specially affected these two
young women that virtually were sisters, any question of precedency in
power or display, when brought into collision with sisterly affection,
had not a momentary existence. Each had soon redundant proofs of her
own power to attract suitors without end; and, for the more or the less,
_that_ was felt to be a matter of accident. Never, on this earth, I am
satisfied, did that pure sisterly love breathe a more steady inspiration
than now into the hearts and through the acts of these two generous
girls; neither was there any sacrifice which either would have refused
_to_ or _for_ the other. The period, however, was now rapidly shortening
during which they would have any opportunity for testifying this
reciprocal love. Suitors were flocking around them, as rank as
cormorants in a storm. The grim old chancellor (one, if not both, of
the young ladies having been a ward in Chancery) had all his
legal jealousies awakened on their behalf. The worshipful order of
_adventurers_ and _fortune-hunters_, at that time chiefly imported from
Ireland, as in times more recent from Germany, and other moustachoed
parts of the continent, could not live under the raking fire of Mrs.
Schreiber, on the one side, with her female tact and her knowledge of
life, and of the chancellor, with his huge discretional power, on the
other. That particular chancellor, whom the chronology of the case
brought chiefly into connection with Miss Watson's interests, was (if
my childish remembrances do not greatly mislead me) the iracund Lord
Thurlow. Lovers and wooers this grim lawyer regarded as the most
impertinent order of animals in universal zoology; and of these, in Miss
Watson's case, he had a whole menagerie to tend. Penelope, according
to some school-boy remembrance of mine, had one hundred and eighteen
suitors. These young ladies had almost as many. Heavens! what a crew
of Comus to follow or to lead! And what a suitable person was
this truculent old lord on the woolsack to enact the part of
shepherd--Corydon, suppose, or Alphesibæus--to this goodly set of lambs!
How he must have admired the hero of the "Odyssey," who in one way or
other accounted for all the wooers that "sorned" upon his house, and
had a receipt for their bodies from the grave-digger of Ithaca! But even
this wily descendant of Sisyphus would have found it no such easy matter
to deal with the English suitors, who were not the feeble voluptuaries
of the Ionian Islands, that suffered themselves to be butchered as
unresistingly as sheep in the shambles--actually standing at one end of
a banqueting-room to be shot at with bows and arrows, not having pluck
enough to make a rush--but were _game_ men; all young, strong, rich, and
in most cases technically "noble;" all, besides, contending for one or
other of two prizes a thousand times better fitted to inspire romantic
ardor than the poor, withered Penelope. One, by the way, amongst these
suitors (I speak of those who addressed Miss Watson), merits a
separate commemoration, as having drawn from Sheridan his very happiest
_impromptu_--and an _impromptu_ that was really such--(the rarest of
all things from Sheridan). This was Lord Belgrave, eldest son of Lord
Grosvenorthen an earl, but at some period, long subsequent to this,
raised to the Marquisate of Westminster, a title naturally suggesting
in itself a connection with the vast Grosvenor property, sweeping across
the whole area of that most aristocratic region in the metropolis now
called _Belgravia_, which was then a name unknown; and this Hesperian
region had as yet no architectural value, and consequently no
ground-rent value, simply because the world of fashion and distinction
had as yet not expanded itself in that direction. In those days the
territorial importance of this great house rested exclusively upon its
connection with the county of Chester. In this connection it was that
the young Viscount Belgrave had been introduced, by his family interest,
into the House of Commons; he had delivered his maiden speech with some
effect; and had been heard favorably on various subsequent occasions;
on one of which it was that, to the extreme surprise of the house, he
terminated his speech with a passage from Demosthenes--not presented in
English, but in sounding Attic Greek. Latin is a privileged dialect in
parliament. But Greek! It would not have been at all more startling
to the usages of the house, had his lordship quoted Persic or Telinga.
Still, though felt as something verging on the ridiculous, there was an
indulgent feeling to a young man fresh from academic bowers, which would
not have protected a mature man of the world. Everybody bit his lips,
and as yet did _not_ laugh. But the final issue stood on the edge of a
razor. A gas, an inflammable atmosphere, was trembling sympathetically
through the whole excited audience; all depended on a match being
applied to this gas whilst yet in the very act of escaping. Deepest
silence still prevailed; and, had any commonplace member risen to
address the house in an ordinary business key, all would have blown
over. Unhappily for Lord Belgrave, in that critical moment up rose
the one solitary man, to wit, Sheridan, whose look, whose voice, whose
traditional character, formed a prologue to what was coming. Here let
the reader understand that, throughout the "Iliad," all speeches or
commands, questions or answers, are introduced by Homer under some
peculiar formula. For instance, replies are usually introduced thus:
"_But him answering thus addressed the sovereign Agamemnon;_"
or; in sonorous Greek:
"Ton d' apameibomenos prosephé kreion Agamemnon;"
or, again, according to the circumstances:
"But him sternly surveying saluted the swift-footed Achilles;"
"Ton d'ar', upodra idon, prosephé podas okus Achilleus."
This being premised, and that every one of the audience, though
pretending to no Greek, yet, from his school-boy remembrances, was as
well acquainted with these _formulæ_ as with the scriptural formula
of _Verily, verily, I say unto you, &c._, Sheridan, without needing to
break its force by explanations, solemnly opened thus:
"Ton d' apameibomenos prosephé Sheridanios heros."_
Simply to have commenced his answer in Greek would have sufficiently met
the comic expectation then thrilling the house; but, when it happened
that this Greek (so suitable to the occasion) was also the one sole
morsel of Greek that everybody in that assembly understood, the effect,
as may be supposed, was overwhelming, and wrapt the whole house in what
might be called a fiery explosion of laughter. Meantime, as prizes in
the matrimonial lottery, and prizes in all senses, both young ladies
were soon carried off. Miss Smith, whose expectations I never happened
to hear estimated, married a great West India proprietor; and Miss
Watson, who (according to the popular report) would succeed to six
thousand a year on her twenty-first birthday, married Lord Carbery.
Miss Watson inherited also from her father something which would not
generally be rated very highly, namely, a chancery lawsuit, with the
East India Company for defendant. However, if the company is a potent
antagonist, thus far it is an eligible one, that, in the event of losing
the suit, the honorable company is solvent; and such an event, after
some nine or ten years' delay, did really befall the company. The
question at issue respected some docks which Colonel Watson had built
for the company in some Indian port. And in the end this lawsuit,
though so many years doubtful in its issue, proved very valuable to Miss
Watson; I have heard (but cannot vouch for it) not less valuable than
that large part of her property which had been paid over without demur
upon her twenty-first birth-day. Both young ladies married happily; but
in marriage they found their separation, and in that separation a shock
to their daily comfort which was never replaced to either. As to Miss
Smith's husband, I did not know him; but Lord Carbery was every way an
estimable man; in some things worthy of admiration; and his wife never
ceased to esteem and admire him. But she yearned for the society of her
early friend; and this being placed out of her reach by the accidents of
life, she fell early into a sort of disgust with her own advantages of
wealth and station, which, promising so much, were found able to perform
nothing at all in this first and last desire of her heart. A portrait of
her friend hung in the drawing-room; but Lady Carbery did not willingly
answer the questions that were sometimes prompted by its extraordinary
loveliness. There are women to whom a female friendship is
indispensable, and cannot be supplied by any companion of the other sex.
That blessing, therefore, of her golden youth, turned eventually into
a curse for her after-life; for I believe that, through one accident or
another, they never met again after they became married women. To me,
as one of those who had known and loved Miss Smith, Lady Carbery always
turned the more sunny side of her nature; but to the world generally she
presented a chilling and somewhat severe aspect--as to a vast illusion
that rested upon pillars of mockery and frauds. Honors, beauty of
the first order, wealth, and the power which follows wealth as its
shadow--what could these do? what _had_ they done? In proportion as they
had settled heavily upon herself, she had found them to entail a load
of responsibility; and those claims upon her she had labored to fulfil
conscientiously; but else they had only precipitated the rupture of such
ties as had given sweetness to her life.
From the first, therefore, I had been aware, on this visit to Laxton,
that Lady Carbery had changed, and was changing. She had become
religious; so much I knew from my sister's letters. And, in fact, this
change had been due to her intercourse with my mother. But, in reality,
her premature disgust with the world would, at any rate, have made her
such; and, had any mode of monastic life existed for Protestants, I
believe that she would before this have entered it, supposing Lord
Carbery to have consented. People generally would have stated the case
most erroneously; they would have said that she was sinking into gloom
under religious influences; whereas the very contrary was the truth;
namely, that, having sunk into gloomy discontent with life, and its
miserable performances as contrasted with its promises, she sought
relief and support to her wounded feelings from religion.
But the change brought with it a difficult trial to myself. She
recoiled, by natural temperament and by refinement of taste, from all
modes of religious enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a large word, and in many
cases I could not go along with her; but _canting_ of all descriptions
was odious to both of us alike. To cultivate religious knowledge in an
intellectual way, she very well understood that she must study divinity.
And she relied upon me for assisting her. Not that she made the mistake
of ascribing to me any knowledge on that subject; but I could learn;
and, whatsoever I _had_ learned, she knew, by experience, that I
could make abundantly plain to her understanding. Wherever I did _not_
understand, I was far too sincere to dissemble that fact. Where I _did_
understand, I could enable _her_ to understand.
On the subject of theology, it was not easy indeed for anybody, man or
boy, to be more ignorant than myself. My studies in that field had been
none at all. Nor was this any subject for wonder, or (considering my
age) for blame. In reality, to make theology into a captivating study
for the young, it must be translated into controversial theology. And
in what way could such a polemic interest be evoked except through
political partisanship? But such partisanship connects itself naturally
with the irritability of sectarianism, and but little with the majestic
repose of a church such as the Romish or the Anglican, founded upon the
broad basis of national majorities, and sheltered from danger, or the
sense of danger, by state protection. Dissenters stand upon another
footing. The Dissenter from the national church, whether in England or
in France, is reminded by his own distinguishing religious opinions of
the historic struggles through which those opinions have travelled. The
doctrines which give to his own sect a peculiar denomination are also
those which record its honorable political conflicts; so that his own
connection, through his religious brotherhood, with the civil history of
his country, furnishes a standing motive of pride for some acquaintance
more or less with divinity; since it is by deviating painfully,
conscientiously, and at some periods dangerously, from the established
divinity, that his fathers have achieved their station in the great
drama of the national evolution.
But, whilst I was ignorant of theology, as a direct and separate branch
of study, the points are so many at which theology inosculates with
philosophy, and with endless casual and random suggestions of the
self-prompted reason, that inevitably from that same moment in which I
began to find a motive for directing my thoughts to this new subject, I
wanted not something to say that might have perplexed an antagonist,
or (in default of such a vicious associate) that might have amused a
friend, more especially a friend so predisposed to a high estimate of
myself as Lady Carbery. Sometimes I did more than amuse her; I startled
her, and I even startled myself, with distinctions that to this hour
strike me as profoundly just, and as undeniably novel. Two out of many I
will here repeat; and with the more confidence, that in these two I can
be sure of repeating the exact thoughts; whereas, in very many other
cases, it would not be so certain that they might not have been
insensibly modified by cross-lights or disturbing shadows from
intervening speculations.