AN OLD STORY ABOUT A FOOL AND A WOMAN.
Any taste for pleasure which Esmond had (and he liked to desipere in
loco, neither more nor less than most young men of his age) he could
now gratify to the utmost extent, and in the best company which the town
afforded. When the army went into winter quarters abroad, those of the
officers who had interest or money easily got leave of absence, and
found it much pleasanter to spend their time in Pall Mall and Hyde Park,
than to pass the winter away behind the fortifications of the dreary
old Flanders towns, where the English troops were gathered. Yachts and
packets passed daily between the Dutch and Flemish ports and Harwich;
the roads thence to London and the great inns were crowded with
army gentlemen; the taverns and ordinaries of the town swarmed with
red-coats; and our great Duke's levees at St. James's were as thronged
as they had been at Ghent and Brussels, where we treated him, and he us,
with the grandeur and ceremony of a sovereign. Though Esmond had been
appointed to a lieutenancy in the Fusileer regiment, of which that
celebrated officer, Brigadier John Richmond Webb, was colonel, he
had never joined the regiment, nor been introduced to its excellent
commander, though they had made the same campaign together, and been
engaged in the same battle. But being aide-de-camp to General Lumley,
who commanded the division of horse, and the army marching to its point
of destination on the Danube by different routes, Esmond had not fallen
in, as yet, with his commander and future comrades of the fort; and it
was in London, in Golden Square, where Major-General Webb lodged, that
Captain Esmond had the honor of first paying his respects to his friend,
patron, and commander of after days.
Those who remember this brilliant and accomplished gentleman may
recollect his character, upon which he prided himself, I think, not a
little, of being the handsomest man in the army; a poet who writ a
dull copy of verses upon the battle of Oudenarde three years after,
describing Webb, says:--
“To noble danger Webb conducts the way,
His great example all his troops obey;
Before the front the general sternly rides,
With such an air as Mars to battle strides:
Propitious heaven must sure a hero save,
Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave.”
Mr. Webb thought these verses quite as fine as Mr. Addison's on the
Blenheim Campaign, and, indeed, to be Hector a la mode de Paris, was
part of this gallant gentleman's ambition. It would have been difficult
to find an officer in the whole army, or amongst the splendid courtiers
and cavaliers of the Maison du Roy, that fought under Vendosme and
Villeroy in the army opposed to ours, who was a more accomplished
soldier and perfect gentleman, and either braver or better-looking.
And if Mr. Webb believed of himself what the world said of him, and was
deeply convinced of his own indisputable genius, beauty, and valor, who
has a right to quarrel with him very much? This self-content of his kept
him in general good-humor, of which his friends and dependants got the
benefit.
He came of a very ancient Wiltshire family, which he respected above all
families in the world: he could prove a lineal descent from King Edward
the First, and his first ancestor, Roaldus de Richmond, rode by William
the Conqueror's side on Hastings field. “We were gentlemen, Esmond,” he
used to say, “when the Churchills were horse-boys.” He was a very
tall man, standing in his pumps six feet three inches (in his great
jack-boots, with his tall fair periwig, and hat and feather, he could
not have been less than eight feet high). “I am taller than Churchill,”
he would say, surveying himself in the glass, “and I am a better made
man; and if the women won't like a man that hasn't a wart on his nose,
faith, I can't help myself, and Churchill has the better of me there.”
Indeed, he was always measuring himself with the Duke, and always asking
his friends to measure them. And talking in this frank way, as he would
do, over his cups, wags would laugh and encourage him; friends would
be sorry for him; schemers and flatterers would egg him on, and
tale-bearers carry the stories to headquarters, and widen the difference
which already existed there, between the great captain and one of the
ablest and bravest lieutenants he ever had.
His rancor against the Duke was so apparent, that one saw it in the
first half-hour's conversation with General Webb; and his lady, who
adored her General, and thought him a hundred times taller, handsomer,
and braver than a prodigal nature had made him, hated the great Duke
with such an intensity as it becomes faithful wives to feel against
their husbands' enemies. Not that my Lord Duke was so yet; Mr. Webb had
said a thousand things against him, which his superior had pardoned; and
his Grace, whose spies were everywhere, had heard a thousand things more
that Webb had never said. But it cost this great man no pains to pardon;
and he passed over an injury or a benefit alike easily.
Should any child of mine take the pains to read these his ancestor's
memoirs, I would not have him judge of the great Duke* by what a
contemporary has written of him. No man hath been so immensely lauded
and decried as this great statesman and warrior; as, indeed, no man ever
deserved better the very greatest praise and the strongest censure. If
the present writer joins with the latter faction, very likely a private
pique of his own may be the cause of his ill-feeling.
* This passage in the Memoirs of Esmond is written on a leaf
inserted into the MS. book, and dated 1744, probably after
he had heard of the Duchess's death.
On presenting himself at the Commander-in-Chief's levee, his Grace had
not the least remembrance of General Lumley's aide-de-camp, and though
he knew Esmond's family perfectly well, having served with both lords
(my Lord Francis and the Viscount Esmond's father) in Flanders, and in
the Duke of York's Guard, the Duke of Marlborough, who was friendly
and serviceable to the (so-styled) legitimate representatives of the
Viscount Castlewood, took no sort of notice of the poor lieutenant
who bore their name. A word of kindness or acknowledgment, or a single
glance of approbation, might have changed Esmond's opinion of the great
man; and instead of a satire, which his pen cannot help writing, who
knows but that the humble historian might have taken the other side of
panegyric? We have but to change the point of view, and the greatest
action looks mean; as we turn the perspective-glass, and a giant appears
a pigmy. You may describe, but who can tell whether your sight is clear
or not, or your means of information accurate? Had the great man said
but a word of kindness to the small one (as he would have stepped out
of his gilt chariot to shake hands with Lazarus in rags and sores, if he
thought Lazarus could have been of any service to him), no doubt Esmond
would have fought for him with pen and sword to the utmost of his might;
but my lord the lion did not want master mouse at this moment, and so
Muscipulus went off and nibbled in opposition.
So it was, however, that a young gentleman, who, in the eyes of his
family, and in his own, doubtless, was looked upon as a consummate hero,
found that the great hero of the day took no more notice of him than
of the smallest drummer in his Grace's army. The Dowager at Chelsey was
furious against this neglect of her family, and had a great battle with
Lady Marlborough (as Lady Castlewood insisted on calling the Duchess).
Her Grace was now Mistress of the Robes to her Majesty, and one of the
greatest personages in this kingdom, as her husband was in all Europe,
and the battle between the two ladies took place in the Queen's
drawing-room.
The Duchess, in reply to my aunt's eager clamor, said haughtily, that
she had done her best for the legitimate branch of the Esmonds, and
could not be expected to provide for the bastard brats of the family.
“Bastards!” says the Viscountess, in a fury. “There are bastards among
the Churchills, as your Grace knows, and the Duke of Berwick is provided
for well enough.”
“Madam,” says the Duchess, “you know whose fault it is that there are
no such dukes in the Esmond family too, and how that little scheme of a
certain lady miscarried.”
Esmond's friend, Dick Steele, who was in waiting on the Prince, heard
the controversy between the ladies at court. “And faith,” says Dick, “I
think, Harry, thy kinswoman had the worst of it.”
He could not keep the story quiet; 'twas all over the coffee-houses ere
night; it was printed in a News Letter before a month was over, and “The
reply of her Grace the Duchess of M-rlb-r-gh to a Popish Lady of the
Court, once a favorite of the late K--- J-m-s,” was printed in half a
dozen places, with a note stating that “this duchess, when the head
of this lady's family came by his death lately in a fatal duel, never
rested until she got a pension for the orphan heir, and widow, from her
Majesty's bounty.” The squabble did not advance poor Esmond's promotion
much, and indeed made him so ashamed of himself that he dared not show
his face at the Commander-in-Chief's levees again.
During those eighteen months which had passed since Esmond saw his dear
mistress, her good father, the old Dean, quitted this life, firm in his
principles to the very last, and enjoining his family always to remember
that the Queen's brother, King James the Third, was their rightful
sovereign. He made a very edifying end, as his daughter told Esmond, and
not a little to her surprise, after his death (for he had lived always
very poorly) my lady found that her father had left no less a sum than
3,000L. behind him, which he bequeathed to her.
With this little fortune Lady Castlewood was enabled, when her
daughter's turn at Court came, to come to London, where she took a small
genteel house at Kensington, in the neighborhood of the Court, bringing
her children with her, and here it was that Esmond found his friends.
As for the young lord, his university career had ended rather abruptly.
Honest Tusher, his governor, had found my young gentleman quite
ungovernable. My lord worried his life away with tricks; and broke out,
as home-bred lads will, into a hundred youthful extravagances, so that
Dr. Bentley, the new master of Trinity, thought fit to write to the
Viscountess Castlewood, my lord's mother, and beg her to remove the
young nobleman from a college where he declined to learn, and where he
only did harm by his riotous example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set
fire to Nevil's Court, that beautiful new quadrangle of our college,
which Sir Christopher Wren had lately built. He knocked down a
proctor's man that wanted to arrest him in a midnight prank; he gave
a dinner-party on the Prince of Wales's birthday, which was within
a fortnight of his own, and the twenty young gentlemen then present
sallied out after their wine, having toasted King James's health with
open windows, and sung cavalier songs, and shouted “God save the
King!” in the great court, so that the master came out of his lodge at
midnight, and dissipated the riotous assembly.
This was my lord's crowning freak, and the Rev. Thomas Tusher, domestic
chaplain to the Right Honorable the Lord Viscount Castlewood, finding
his prayers and sermons of no earthly avail to his lordship, gave up his
duties of governor; went and married his brewer's widow at Southampton,
and took her and her money to his parsonage house at Castlewood.
My lady could not be angry with her son for drinking King James's
health, being herself a loyal Tory, as all the Castlewood family were,
and acquiesced with a sigh, knowing, perhaps, that her refusal would be
of no avail to the young lord's desire for a military life. She would
have liked him to be in Mr. Esmond's regiment, hoping that Harry might
act as a guardian and adviser to his wayward young kinsman; but my young
lord would hear of nothing but the Guards, and a commission was got for
him in the Duke of Ormond's regiment; so Esmond found my lord, ensign
and lieutenant, when he returned from Germany after the Blenheim
campaign.
The effect produced by both Lady Castlewood's children when they
appeared in public was extraordinary, and the whole town speedily rang
with their fame: such a beautiful couple, it was declared, never had
been seen; the young maid of honor was toasted at every table and
tavern, and as for my young lord, his good looks were even more admired
than his sister's. A hundred songs were written about the pair, and
as the fashion of that day was, my young lord was praised in these
Anacreontics as warmly as Bathyllus. You may be sure that he accepted
very complacently the town's opinion of him, and acquiesced with that
frankness and charming good-humor he always showed in the idea that he
was the prettiest fellow in all London.
The old Dowager at Chelsey, though she could never be got to acknowledge
that Mistress Beatrix was any beauty at all, (in which opinion, as it
may be imagined, a vast number of the ladies agreed with her), yet, on
the very first sight of young Castlewood, she owned she fell in love
with him: and Henry Esmond, on his return to Chelsey, found himself
quite superseded in her favor by her younger kinsman. The feat of
drinking the King's health at Cambridge would have won her heart, she
said, if nothing else did. “How had the dear young fellow got such
beauty?” she asked. “Not from his father--certainly not from his mother.
How had he come by such noble manners, and the perfect bel air? That
countrified Walcote widow could never have taught him.” Esmond had his
own opinion about the countrified Walcote widow, who had a quiet grace
and serene kindness, that had always seemed to him the perfection of
good breeding, though he did not try to argue this point with his aunt.
But he could agree in most of the praises which the enraptured old
dowager bestowed on my Lord Viscount, than whom he never beheld a more
fascinating and charming gentleman. Castlewood had not wit so much as
enjoyment. “The lad looks good things,” Mr. Steele used to say; “and
his laugh lights up a conversation as much as ten repartees from
Mr. Congreve. I would as soon sit over a bottle with him as with Mr.
Addison; and rather listen to his talk than hear Nicolini. Was ever
man so gracefully drunk as my Lord Castlewood? I would give anything to
carry my wine” (though, indeed, Dick bore his very kindly, and plenty
of it, too), “like this incomparable young man. When he is sober he is
delightful; and when tipsy, perfectly irresistible.” And referring to
his favorite, Shakspeare (who was quite out of fashion until Steele
brought him back into the mode), Dick compared Lord Castlewood to Prince
Hal, and was pleased to dub Esmond as ancient Pistol.
The Mistress of the Robes, the greatest lady in England after the Queen,
or even before her Majesty, as the world said, though she never could be
got to say a civil word to Beatrix, whom she had promoted to her place
as maid of honor, took her brother into instant favor. When young
Castlewood, in his new uniform, and looking like a prince out of a fairy
tale, went to pay his duty to her Grace, she looked at him for a minute
in silence, the young man blushing and in confusion before her, then
fairly burst out a-crying, and kissed him before her daughters and
company. “He was my boy's friend,” she said, through her sobs. “My
Blandford might have been like him.” And everybody saw, after this mark
of the Duchess's favor, that my young lord's promotion was secure, and
people crowded round the favorite's favorite, who became vainer and
gayer, and more good-humored than ever.
Meanwhile Madam Beatrix was making her conquests on her own side, and
amongst them was one poor gentleman, who had been shot by her young eyes
two years before, and had never been quite cured of that wound; he knew,
to be sure, how hopeless any passion might be, directed in that quarter,
and had taken that best, though ignoble, remedium amoris, a speedy
retreat from before the charmer, and a long absence from her; and not
being dangerously smitten in the first instance, Esmond pretty soon got
the better of his complaint, and if he had it still, did not know he had
it, and bore it easily. But when he returned after Blenheim, the young
lady of sixteen, who had appeared the most beautiful object his eyes had
ever looked on two years back, was now advanced to a perfect ripeness
and perfection of beauty, such as instantly enthralled the poor devil,
who had already been a fugitive from her charms. Then he had seen her
but for two days, and fled; now he beheld her day after day, and when
she was at Court watched after her; when she was at home, made one of
the family party; when she went abroad, rode after her mother's chariot;
when she appeared in public places, was in the box near her, or in the
pit looking at her; when she went to church was sure to be there, though
he might not listen to the sermon, and be ready to hand her to her chair
if she deigned to accept of his services, and select him from a score of
young men who were always hanging round about her. When she went away,
accompanying her Majesty to Hampton Court, a darkness fell over London.
Gods, what nights has Esmond passed, thinking of her, rhyming about her,
talking about her! His friend Dick Steele was at this time courting
the young lady, Mrs. Scurlock, whom he married; she had a lodging in
Kensington Square, hard by my Lady Castlewood's house there. Dick and
Harry, being on the same errand, used to meet constantly at Kensington.
They were always prowling about that place, or dismally walking thence,
or eagerly running thither. They emptied scores of bottles at the
“King's Arms,” each man prating of his love, and allowing the other to
talk on condition that he might have his own turn as a listener. Hence
arose an intimacy between them, though to all the rest of their friends
they must have been insufferable. Esmond's verses to “Gloriana at the
Harpsichord,” to “Gloriana's Nosegay,” to “Gloriana at Court,” appeared
this year in the Observator.--Have you never read them? They were
thought pretty poems, and attributed by some to Mr. Prior.
This passion did not escape--how should it?--the clear eyes of Esmond's
mistress: he told her all; what will a man not do when frantic with
love? To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he
not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart of a part
of its own pain? Day after day he would seek his dear mistress, pour
insane hopes, supplications, rhapsodies, raptures, into her ear. She
listened, smiled, consoled, with untiring pity and sweetness. Esmond was
the eldest of her children, so she was pleased to say; and as for her
kindness, who ever had or would look for aught else from one who was
an angel of goodness and pity? After what has been said, 'tis needless
almost to add that poor Esmond's suit was unsuccessful. What was a
nameless, penniless lieutenant to do, when some of the greatest in
the land were in the field? Esmond never so much as thought of asking
permission to hope so far above his reach as he knew this prize was
and passed his foolish, useless life in mere abject sighs and impotent
longing. What nights of rage, what days of torment, of passionate
unfulfilled desire, of sickening jealousy can he recall! Beatrix
thought no more of him than of the lackey that followed her chair. His
complaints did not touch her in the least; his raptures rather fatigued
her; she cared for his verses no more than for Dan Chaucer's, who's
dead these ever so many hundred years; she did not hate him; she rather
despised him, and just suffered him.
One day, after talking to Beatrix's mother, his dear, fond, constant
mistress--for hours--for all day long--pouring out his flame and his
passion, his despair and rage, returning again and again to the theme,
pacing the room, tearing up the flowers on the table, twisting and
breaking into bits the wax out of the stand-dish, and performing a
hundred mad freaks of passionate folly; seeing his mistress at last
quite pale and tired out with sheer weariness of compassion, and
watching over his fever for the hundredth time, Esmond seized up his
hat, and took his leave. As he got into Kensington Square, a sense of
remorse came over him for the wearisome pain he had been inflicting upon
the dearest and kindest friend ever man had. He went back to the house,
where the servant still stood at the open door, ran up the stairs, and
found his mistress where he had left her in the embrasure of the window,
looking over the fields towards Chelsey. She laughed, wiping away at the
same time the tears which were in her kind eyes; he flung himself down
on his knees, and buried his head in her lap. She had in her hand the
stalk of one of the flowers, a pink, that he had torn to pieces. “Oh,
pardon me, pardon me, my dearest and kindest,” he said; “I am in hell,
and you are the angel that brings me a drop of water.”
“I am your mother, you are my son, and I love you always,” she said,
holding her hands over him: and he went away comforted and humbled in
mind, as he thought of that amazing and constant love and tenderness
with which this sweet lady ever blessed and pursued him.