household choir of children gathering round the hearth of my maternal
grand-parents, whose name was Penson. My grandfather at one time held an
office under the king; how named, I once heard, but have forgotten;
only this I remember, that it was an office which conferred the title of
_Esquire;_ so that upon each and all of his several coffins, lead,
oak, mahogany, he was entitled to proclaim himself an _Armiger;_ which,
observe, is the newest, oldest, most classic mode of saying that one
is privileged to bear arms in a sense intelligible only to the
Herald's College. This _Armiger_, this undeniable Squire, was doubly
distinguished: first, by his iron constitution and impregnable
health; which were of such quality, and like the sword of Michael, the
warrior-angel ("Paradise Lost," B. vi.), had "from the armory of God
been given him tempered so," that no insurance office, trafficking in
life-annuities, would have ventured to look him in the face. People
thought him good, like a cat, for eight or nine generations; nor did any
man perceive at what avenue death could find, or disease could force, a
practicable breach; and yet, such anchorage have all human hopes, in the
very midst of these windy anticipations, this same granite grandpapa of
mine, not yet very far ahead of sixty, being in fact three-score years
and none, suddenly struck his flag, and found himself, in his privileged
character of _Armiger_, needing those door (coffin-door) plates, which
all reasonable people had supposed to be reserved for the manufacturing
hands of some remote century. "_Armiger_, pack up your traps"--"Collige
sarcinas"--"Squire, you're wanted:" these dreadful citations were
inevitable; come they must; but surely, as everybody thought, not in
the eighteenth, or, perhaps, even the nineteenth century. _Diis aliter
visum._ My grandfather, built for an _Æonian_ duration, did not come
within hail of myself; whilst his gentle partner, my grandmother, who
made no show of extra longevity, lived down into my period, and had the
benefit of my acquaintance through half a dozen years. If she turned
this piece of good fortune to no great practical account, that (you
know) was no fault of mine. Doubtless, I was ready with my advice,
freely and gratuitously, if she had condescended to ask for it.
Returning to my grandfather: the other distinguishing endowment, by
which he was so favorably known and remembered amongst his friends,
was the magical versatility of his talents, and his power of
self-accommodation to all humors, tempers, and ages.
"Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res."
And in allusion to this line from Horace it was, that amongst his
literary friends he was known familiarly by the name of Aristippus. His
sons, Edward and Thomas, resembled him, by all accounts, in nothing;
neither physically, nor in moral versatility. These two sons of the
Squire, Edward and Thomas, through some traditional prejudice in the
family, had always directed their views to the military profession. In
such a case, the king's army is naturally that to which a young man's
expectations turn. But to wait, and after all by possibility to wait in
vain, did not suit my fiery grandfather. The interest which he could put
into motion was considerable; but it was more applicable to the service
of the East India Company than to any branch of the home service. This
interest was so exerted that in one day he obtained a lieutenantcy in
the Company's service for each of his sons. About 1780 or 1781, both
young men, aged severally sixteen and seventeen years, went out to join
their regiments, both regiments being on the Bengal establishment. Very
different were their fates; yet their qualifications ought to have been
the same, or differing only as sixteen differs from seventeen; and also
as sixteen overflowing with levity differs from seventeen prematurely
thoughtful. Edward Penson was early noticed for his high principle, for
his benignity, and for a thoughtfulness somewhat sorrowful, that seemed
to have caught in childhood some fugitive glimpse of his own too
brief career. At noonday, in some part of Bengal, he went out of doors
bareheaded, and died in a few hours.
In 1800-1801, my mother had become dissatisfied with Bath as a
residence; and, being free from all ties connecting her with any one
county of England rather than another, she resolved to traverse the most
attractive parts of the island, and, upon personal inspection, to
select a home; not a ready-built home, but the ground on which she might
herself create one; for it happened that amongst the few infirmities
besetting my mother's habits and constitution of mind, was the costly
one of seeking her chief intellectual excitement in architectural
creations. She individually might be said to have built Greenhay; since
to _her_ views of domestic elegance and propriety my father had resigned
_almost_ everything. This was her _coup-d'essai_; secondly, she built
the complement to the Priory in Cheshire, which cost about one thousand
pounds; thirdly, Westhay, in Somersetshire, about twelve miles from
Bristol, which, including the land attached to the house, cost twelve
thousand five hundred pounds, not including subsequent additions; but
this was built at the cost of my uncle; finally, Weston Lea, close
to Bath, which being designed simply for herself in old age, with a
moderate establishment of four servants (and some reasonable provision
of accommodations for a few visitors), cost originally, I believe, not
more than one thousand pounds--excluding, however, the cost of all after
alterations.
It may serve to show how inevitably an amateur architect, without
professional aid and counsel, will be defrauded, that the first of
these houses, which cost six thousand pounds, sold for no more than
twenty-five hundred pounds, and the third for no more than five thousand
pounds. The person who superintended the workmen, and had the whole
practical management of one amongst these four houses, was a common
builder, without capital or education, and the greatest knave that
personally I have known. It may illustrate the way in which lady
architects, without professional aid, are and ever will be defrauded,
that, after all was finished, and the entire wood-work was to be
measured and valued, each party, of course, needing to be represented
by a professional agent, naturally the knavish builder was ready at
earliest dawn with _his_ agent; but, as regarded my mother's interest,
the task of engaging such an agent had been confided to a neighboring
clergyman,--"evangelical," of course, and a humble sycophant of Hannah
More, but otherwise the most helpless of human beings, baptized or
infidel. He contented himself with instructing a young gentleman, aged
about fifteen, to take his pony and ride over to a distant cathedral
town, which was honored by the abode of a virtuous though drunken
surveyor. This respectable drunkard he was to engage, and also with
obvious discretion to fee beforehand. All which was done: the drunken
surveyor had a sort of fits, it was understood, that always towards
sunset inclined him to assume the horizontal posture. Fortunately,
however, for that part of mankind whom circumstances had brought under
the necessity of communicating with him, these fits were intermitting;
so that, for instance, in the present case, upon a severe call arising
for his pocketing the fee of ten guineas, he astonished his whole
household by suddenly standing bolt upright as stiff as a poker; his
sister remarking to the young gentleman that he (the visitor) was in
luck that evening: it wasn't everybody that could get that length in
dealing with Mr. X. O. However, it is distressing to relate that the
fits immediately returned; and, with that degree of exasperation which
made it dangerous to suggest the idea of a receipt; since that must have
required the vertical attitude. Whether that attitude ever was recovered
by the unfortunate gentleman, I do not know. Forty-and-four years have
passed since then. Almost everybody connected with the case has had time
to assume permanently the horizontal posture,--namely, that knave of
a builder, whose knaveries (gilded by that morning sun of June) were
controlled by nobody; that sycophantish parson; that young gentleman of
fifteen (now, alas! fifty-nine), who must long since have sown his wild
oats; that unhappy pony of eighteen (now, alas! sixty-two, if living;
ah! venerable pony, that must (or mustest) now require thy oats to be
boiled); in short, one and all of these venerabilities--knaves, ponies,
drunkards, receipts--have descended, I believe, to chaos or to Hades,
with hardly one exception. Chancery itself, though somewhat of an Indian
juggler, could not play with such aerial balls as these.
On what ground it was that my mother quarrelled with the advantages of
Bath, so many and so conspicuous, I cannot guess. At that time, namely,
the opening of the nineteenth century, the old traditionary custom of
the place had established for young and old the luxury of sedan-chairs.
Nine tenths, at least, of the colds and catarrhs, those initial stages
of all pulmonary complaints (the capital scourge of England), are caught
in the transit between the door of a carriage and the genial atmosphere
of the drawing-room. By a sedan-chair all this danger was evaded: your
two chairmen marched right into the hall: the hall-door was closed;
and not until then was the roof and the door of your chair opened: the
translation was--from one room to another. To my mother, and many in
her situation, the sedan-chair recommended itself also by advantages of
another class. Immediately on coming to Bath her carriage was "laid up
in ordinary." The trifling rent of a coach-house, some slight annual
repairs, and the tax, composed the whole annual cost. At that time, and
throughout the war, the usual estimate for the cost of a close carriage
in London was three hundred and twenty pounds; since, in order to have
the certain services of two horses, it was indispensable to keep three.
Add to this the coachman, the wear-and-tear of harness, and the duty;
and, even in Bath, a cheaper place than London, you could not accomplish
the total service under two hundred and seventy pounds. Now, except the
duty, all this expense was at once superseded by the sedan-chair--rarely
costing you above ten shillings a week, that is, twenty-five guineas
a year, and liberating you from all care or anxiety. The duty on four
wheels, it is true, was suddenly exalted by Mr. Pitt's triple assessment
from twelve guineas to thirty-six; but what a trifle by comparison with
the cost of horses and coachman! And, then, no demands for money were
ever met so cheerfully by my mother as those which went to support Mr.
Pitt's policy against Jacobinism and Regicide. At present, after five
years' sinecure existence, unless on the rare summons of a journey, this
dormant carriage was suddenly undocked, and put into commission. Taking
with her two servants, and one of my sisters, my mother now entered
upon a _periplus_, or systematic circumnavigation of all England; and
in England only--through the admirable machinery matured for such a
purpose, namely, inns, innkeepers, servants, horses, all first-rate of
their class--it was possible to pursue such a scheme in the midst of
domestic comfort. My mother's resolution was--to see all England with
her own eyes, and to judge for herself upon the qualifications of each
county, each town (not being a bustling seat of commerce), and each
village (having any advantages of scenery), for contributing the main
elements towards a home that might justify her in building a house.
The qualifications insisted on were these five: good medical advice
somewhere in the neighborhood; first-rate means of education; elegant
(or, what most people might think, aristocratic) society; agreeable
scenery: and so far the difficulty was not insuperable in the way of
finding all the four advantages concentrated. But my mother insisted on
a fifth, which in those days insured the instant shipwreck of the entire
scheme; this was a church of England parish clergyman, who was to be
strictly orthodox, faithful to the articles of our English church, yet
to these articles as interpreted by Evangelical divinity. My mother's
views were precisely those of her friend Mrs. Hannah More, of
Wilberforce, of Henry Thornton, of Zachary Macaulay (father of the
historian), and generally of those who were then known amongst sneerers
as "the Clapham saints." This one requisition it was on which the scheme
foundered. And the fact merits recording as an exposition of the broad
religious difference between the England of that day and of this. At
present, no difficulty would be found as to this fifth requisition.
"Evangelical" clergymen are now sown broad-cast; at that period, there
were not, on an average, above six or eight in each of the fifty-two
counties.
The conditions, as a whole, were in fact incapable of being realized;
where two or three were attained, three or two failed. It was too
much to exact so many advantages from any one place, unless London; or
really, if any other place could be looked to with hope in such a chase,
that place was Bath--the very city my mother was preparing to leave.
Yet, had this been otherwise, and the prospect of success more
promising, I have not a doubt that the pretty gem, which suddenly was
offered at a price unintelligibly low, in the ancient city of Chester,
would have availed (as instantly it _did_ avail, and, perhaps, ought
to have availed) in obscuring those five conditions of which else each
separately for itself had seemed a _conditio sine qua non_. This gem was
an ancient house, on a miniature scale, called the _Priory_; and, until
the dissolution of religious houses in the earlier half of the sixteenth
century, had formed part of the Priory attached to the ancient church
(still flourishing) of St. John's. Towards the end of the sixteenth and
through the first quarter of the seventeenth century, this Priory had
been in the occupation of Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquary, the friend
of Ben Jonson, of Coke, of Selden, etc., and advantageously known as one
of those who applied his legal and historical knowledge to the bending
back into constitutional moulds of those despotic twists which new
interests and false counsels had developed in the Tudor and Stuart
dynasties. It was an exceedingly pretty place; and the kitchen, upon the
ground story, which had a noble groined ceiling of stone, indicated, by
its disproportionate scale, the magnitude of the establishment to which
once it had ministered. Attached to this splendid kitchen were tributary
offices, etc. On the upper story were exactly five rooms: namely, a
servants' dormitory, meant in Sir Robert's day for two beds [Footnote:
The contrivance amongst our ancestors, even at haughty Cambridge and
haughtier Oxford, was, that one bed rising six inches from the floor
ran (in the day-time) under a loftier bed; it ran upon castors or little
wheels. The learned word for a little wheel is _trochlea_; from which
Grecian and Latin term comes the English word _truckle_-bed.] at the
least; and a servants' sitting-room. These were shut off into a separate
section, with a little staircase (like a ship's companion-ladder) and a
little lobby of its own. But the principal section on this upper story
had been dedicated to the use of Sir Robert, and consisted of a pretty
old hall, lighted by an old monastic-painted window in the door of
entrance; secondly, a rather elegant dining-room; thirdly, a bed-room.
The glory of the house internally lay in the monastic kitchen; and,
secondly, in what a Frenchman would have called, properly, Sir Robert's
own _apartment_ [Footnote: _Apartment_.--Our English use of the word
"apartment" is absurd, since it leads to total misconceptions. We read
in French memoirs innumerable of _the king's apartment_, of _the queen's
apartment_, etc., and for us English the question arises, How? Had the
king, had her majesty, only one room? But, my friend, they might have a
thousand rooms, and yet have only one apartment. An apartment means, in
the continental use, a section or _compartment_ of an edifice.] of three
rooms; but, thirdly and chiefly, in a pile of ruined archways, most
picturesque so far as they went, but so small that Drury Lane could
easily have found room for them on its stage. These stood in the
miniature pleasure-ground, and were constantly resorted to by artists
for specimens of architectural decays, or of nature working for the
concealment of such decays by her ordinary processes of gorgeous floral
vegetation. Ten rooms there may have been in the Priory, as offered to
my mother for less than five hundred pounds. A drawing-room, bed-rooms,
dressing-rooms, etc., making about ten more, were added by my mother for
a sum under one thousand pounds. The same miniature scale was observed
in all these additions. And, as the Priory was not within the walls of
the city, whilst the river Dee, flowing immediately below, secured
it from annoyance on one side, and the church, with its adjacent
church-yard, insulated it from the tumults of life on all the other
sides, an atmosphere of conventual stillness and tranquillity brooded
over it and all around it forever.
Such was the house, such was the society, in which I now found myself;
and upon the whole I might describe myself as being, according to
the modern phrase, "in a false position." I had, for instance, a vast
superiority, as was to have been expected, in bookish attainments, and
in adroitness of logic; whilst, on the other hand, I was ridiculously
short-sighted or blind in all fields of ordinary human experience.
It must not be supposed that I regarded my own particular points of
superiority, or that I used them, with any vanity or view to present
advantages. On the contrary, I sickened over them, and labored to defeat
them. But in vain I sowed errors in my premises, or planted absurdities
in my assumptions. Vainly I tried such blunders as putting four terms
into a syllogism, which, as all the world knows, ought to run on three;
a tripod it ought to be, by all rules known to man, and, behold, I
forced it to become a quadruped. Upon my uncle's military haste,
and tumultuous energy in pressing his opinions, all such delicate
refinements were absolutely thrown away. With disgust _I_ saw, with
disgust _he_ saw, that too apparently the advantage lay with me in the
result; and, whilst I worked like a dragon to place myself in the wrong,
some fiend apparently so counterworked me, that eternally I was reminded
of the Manx half-pennies, which lately I had continually seen current in
North Wales, bearing for their heraldic distinction three human legs in
armor, but so placed in relation to each other that always one leg
is vertical and mounting guard on behalf of the other two, which,
therefore, are enabled to sprawl aloft in the air--in fact, to be as
absurdly negligent as they choose, relying upon their vigilant brother
below, and upon the written legend or motto, STABIT QUOCUNQUE JECERIS
(Stand it will upright, though you should fling it in any conceivable
direction). What gave another feature of distraction and incoherency to
my position was, that I still occupied the position of a reputed
boy, nay, a child, in the estimate of my audience, and of a child in
disgrace. Time enough had not passed since my elopement from school
to win for me, in minds so fresh from that remembrance, a station of
purification and assoilment. Oxford might avail to assoil me, and to
throw into a distant retrospect my boyish trespasses; but as yet Oxford
had not arrived. I committed, besides, a great fault in taking often a
tone of mock seriousness, when the detection of the playful extravagance
was left to the discernment or quick sympathy of the hearer; and I was
blind to the fact, that neither my mother nor my uncle was distinguished
by any natural liveliness of vision for the comic, or any toleration
for the extravagant. My mother, for example, had an awful sense of
conscientious fidelity in the payment of taxes. Many a respectable
family I have known that would privately have encouraged a smuggler,
and, in consequence, were beset continually by mock smugglers,
offering, with airs of affected mystery, home commodities liable to
no custom-house objections whatsoever, only at a hyperbolical price.
I remember even the case of a duke, who bought in Piccadilly, under
laughable circumstances of complex disguise, some silk handkerchiefs,
falsely pretending to be foreign, and was so incensed at finding himself
to have been committing no breach of law whatever, but simply to have
been paying double the ordinary shop price, that he pulled up the
_soi-disant_ smuggler to Bowstreet, even at the certain price of
exposure to himself. The charge he alleged against the man was the
untenable one of _not_ being a smuggler. My mother, on the contrary,
pronounced all such attempts at cheating the king, or, as I less harshly
termed it, cheating the tax-gatherer, as being equal in guilt to a fraud
upon one's neighbor, or to direct appropriation of another man's purse.
I, on my part, held, that government, having often defrauded me through
its agent and creature the post-office, by monstrous over-charges on
letters, had thus created in my behalf a right of retaliation. And
dreadfully it annoyed my mother, that I, stating this right in a very
plausible rule-of-three form--namely, As is the income of the said
fraudulent government to my poor patrimonial income of one hundred and
fifty pounds per annum, so is any one special fraud (as, for instance,
that of yesterday morning, amounting to thirteen pence upon a single
letter) to that equitable penalty which I am entitled to recover upon
the goods and chattels (wherever found) of the ill-advised Britannic
government. During the war with Napoleon, the income of this government
ran, to all amounts, between fifty and seventy millions pounds sterling.
Awful, therefore, seemed the inheritance of retaliation, inexhaustible
the fund of reprisals, into which I stepped. Since, even a single case
of robbery, such as I could plead by dozens, in the course of a few
years, though no more than thirteen pence, yet multiplied into seventy
million times two hundred and forty pence, _minus_ one hundred and fifty
pounds, made a very comfortable property. The right was clear; and the
sole difficulty lay in asserting it; in fact, that same difficulty
which beset the philosopher of old, in arguing with the Emperor Hadrian;
namely, the want of thirty legions for the purpose of clearly pointing
out to Cæsar where it was that the truth lay; the secret truth; that
rarest of all "nuggets."
This counter-challenge of government, as the first mover in a system
of frauds, annoyed, but also perplexed my mother exceedingly. For an
argument that shaped itself into a rule-of-three illustration seemed
really to wear too candid an aspect for summary and absolute rejection.