As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been

willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond

creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed both his

hands in an outbreak of passionate love and gratitude, such as could not

but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and thankful that God

had given him the power to show his love for her, and to prove it by

some little sacrifice on his own part. To be able to bestow benefits

or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred

upon a man--and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or

vanity, could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to

confer some kindness upon his best and dearest friends?

“Dearest saint,” says he--“purest soul, that has had so much to suffer,

that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. 'Tis

for me to kneel, not for you: 'tis for me to be thankful that I can make

you happy. Hath my life any other aim? Blessed be God that I can serve

you! What pleasure, think you, could all the world give me compared to

that?”

“Don't raise me,” she said, in a wild way, to Esmond, who would have

lifted her. “Let me kneel--let me kneel, and--and--worship you.”

Before such a partial judge as Esmond's dear mistress owned herself to

be, any cause which he might plead was sure to be given in his favor;

and accordingly he found little difficulty in reconciling her to the

news whereof he was bearer, of her son's marriage to a foreign lady,

Papist though she was. Lady Castlewood never could be brought to think

so ill of that religion as other people in England thought of it: she

held that ours was undoubtedly a branch of the Catholic church, but that

the Roman was one of the main stems on which, no doubt, many errors had

been grafted (she was, for a woman, extraordinarily well versed in this

controversy, having acted, as a girl, as secretary to her father, the

late dean, and written many of his sermons, under his dictation); and if

Frank had chosen to marry a lady of the church of south Europe, as she

would call the Roman communion, there was no need why she should not

welcome her as a daughter-in-law: and accordingly she wrote to her new

daughter a very pretty, touching letter (as Esmond thought, who had

cognizance of it before it went), in which the only hint of reproof was

a gentle remonstrance that her son had not written to herself, to ask

a fond mother's blessing for that step which he was about taking.

“Castlewood knew very well,” so she wrote to her son, “that she never

denied him anything in her power to give, much less would she think of

opposing a marriage that was to make his happiness, as she trusted, and

keep him out of wild courses, which had alarmed her a good deal:” and

she besought him to come quickly to England, to settle down in his

family house of Castlewood (“It is his family house,” says she, to

Colonel Esmond, “though only his own house by your forbearance”) and to

receive the accompt of her stewardship during his ten years' minority.

By care and frugality, she had got the estate into a better condition

than ever it had been since the Parliamentary wars; and my lord was now

master of a pretty, small income, not encumbered of debts, as it

had been, during his father's ruinous time. “But in saving my son's

fortune,” says she, “I fear I have lost a great part of my hold on him.”

And, indeed, this was the case: her ladyship's daughter complaining that

their mother did all for Frank, and nothing for her; and Frank himself

being dissatisfied at the narrow, simple way of his mother's living at

Walcote, where he had been brought up more like a poor parson's son

than a young nobleman that was to make a figure in the world. 'Twas this

mistake in his early training, very likely, that set him so eager upon

pleasure when he had it in his power; nor is he the first lad that has

been spoiled by the over-careful fondness of women. No training is so

useful for children, great or small, as the company of their betters in

rank or natural parts; in whose society they lose the overweening sense

of their own importance, which stay-at-home people very commonly learn.

But, as a prodigal that's sending in a schedule of his debts to his

friends, never puts all down, and, you may be sure, the rogue keeps back

some immense swingeing bill, that he doesn't dare to own; so the poor

Frank had a very heavy piece of news to break to his mother, and which

he hadn't the courage to introduce into his first confession. Some

misgivings Esmond might have, upon receiving Frank's letter, and knowing

into what hands the boy had fallen; but whatever these misgivings were,

he kept them to himself, not caring to trouble his mistress with any

fears that might be groundless.

However, the next mail which came from Bruxelles, after Frank had

received his mother's letters there, brought back a joint composition

from himself and his wife, who could spell no better than her young

scapegrace of a husband, full of expressions of thanks, love, and duty

to the Dowager Viscountess, as my poor lady now was styled; and along

with this letter (which was read in a family council, namely, the

Viscountess, Mistress Beatrix, and the writer of this memoir, and which

was pronounced to be vulgar by the maid of honor, and felt to be so by

the other two), there came a private letter for Colonel Esmond from poor

Frank, with another dismal commission for the Colonel to execute, at his

best opportunity; and this was to announce that Frank had seen fit,

“by the exhortation of Mr. Holt, the influence of his Clotilda, and the

blessing of heaven and the saints,” says my lord, demurely, “to change

his religion, and be received into the bosom of that church of which

his sovereign, many of his family, and the greater part of the civilized

world, were members.” And his lordship added a postscript, of which

Esmond knew the inspiring genius very well, for it had the genuine twang

of the Seminary, and was quite unlike poor Frank's ordinary style of

writing and thinking; in which he reminded Colonel Esmond that he too

was, by birth, of that church; and that his mother and sister should

have his lordship's prayers to the saints (an inestimable benefit,

truly!) for their conversion.

If Esmond had wanted to keep this secret, he could not; for a day or

two after receiving this letter, a notice from Bruxelles appeared in

the Post-Boy and other prints, announcing that “a young Irish lord, the

Viscount C-stlew--d, just come to his majority, and who had served the

last campaigns with great credit, as aide-de-camp to his Grace the Duke

of Marlborough, had declared for the Popish religion at Bruxelles, and

had walked in a procession barefoot, with a wax-taper in his hand.” The

notorious Mr. Holt, who had been employed as a Jacobite agent during

the last reign, and many times pardoned by King William, had been, the

Post-Boy said, the agent of this conversion.

The Lady Castlewood was as much cast down by this news as Miss Beatrix

was indignant at it. “So,” says she, “Castlewood is no longer a home

for us, mother. Frank's foreign wife will bring her confessor, and there

will be frogs for dinner; and all Tusher's and my grandfather's sermons

are flung away upon my brother. I used to tell you that you killed him

with the catechism, and that he would turn wicked as soon as he broke

from his mammy's leading-strings. Oh, mother, you would not believe that

the young scapegrace was playing you tricks, and that sneak of a Tusher

was not a fit guide for him. Oh, those parsons, I hate 'em all!” says

Mistress Beatrix, clapping her hands together; “yes, whether they wear

cassocks and buckles, or beards and bare feet. There's a horrid Irish

wretch who never misses a Sunday at Court, and who pays me compliments

there, the horrible man; and if you want to know what parsons are, you

should see his behavior, and hear him talk of his own cloth. They're all

the same, whether they're bishops, or bonzes, or Indian fakirs. They

try to domineer, and they frighten us with kingdom come; and they wear a

sanctified air in public, and expect us to go down on our knees and ask

their blessing; and they intrigue, and they grasp, and they backbite,

and they slander worse than the worst courtier or the wickedest old

woman. I heard this Mr. Swift sneering at my Lord Duke of Marlborough's

courage the other day. He! that Teague from Dublin! because his Grace is

not in favor, dares to say this of him; and he says this that it may get

to her Majesty's ear, and to coax and wheedle Mrs. Masham. They say

the Elector of Hanover has a dozen of mistresses in his court at

Herrenhausen, and if he comes to be king over us, I wager that the

bishops and Mr. Swift, that wants to be one, will coax and wheedle them.

Oh, those priests and their grave airs! I'm sick of their square toes

and their rustling cassocks. I should like to go to a country where

there was not one, or turn Quaker, and get rid of 'em; and I would, only

the dress is not becoming, and I've much too pretty a figure to hide

it. Haven't I, cousin?” and here she glanced at her person and the

looking-glass, which told her rightly that a more beautiful shape and

face never were seen.

“I made that onslaught on the priests,” says Miss Beatrix, afterwards,

“in order to divert my poor dear mother's anguish about Frank. Frank is

as vain as a girl, cousin. Talk of us girls being vain, what are WE to

you? It was easy to see that the first woman who chose would make a fool

of him, or the first robe--I count a priest and a woman all the same. We

are always caballing; we are not answerable for the fibs we tell; we are

always cajoling and coaxing, or threatening; and we are always making

mischief, Colonel Esmond--mark my word for that, who know the world,

sir, and have to make my way in it. I see as well as possible how

Frank's marriage hath been managed. The Count, our papa-in-law, is

always away at the coffee-house. The Countess, our mother, is always in

the kitchen looking after the dinner. The Countess, our sister, is at

the spinet. When my lord comes to say he is going on the campaign, the

lovely Clotilda bursts into tears, and faints--so; he catches her in his

arms--no, sir, keep your distance, cousin, if you please--she cries

on his shoulder, and he says, 'Oh, my divine, my adored, my beloved

Clotilda, are you sorry to part with me?' 'Oh, my Francisco,' says

she, 'oh my lord!' and at this very instant mamma and a couple of young

brothers, with moustaches and long rapiers, come in from the kitchen,

where they have been eating bread and onions. Mark my word, you will

have all this woman's relations at Castlewood three months after she has

arrived there. The old count and countess, and the young counts and all

the little countesses her sisters. Counts! every one of these wretches

says he is a count. Guiscard, that stabbed Mr. Harvey, said he was

a count; and I believe he was a barber. All Frenchmen are

barbers--Fiddledee! don't contradict me--or else dancing-masters, or

else priests.” And so she rattled on.

“Who was it taught YOU to dance, Cousin Beatrix?” says the Colonel.

She laughed out the air of a minuet, and swept a low curtsy, coming up

to the recover with the prettiest little foot in the world pointed out.

Her mother came in as she was in this attitude; my lady had been in her

closet, having taken poor Frank's conversion in a very serious way; the

madcap girl ran up to her mother, put her arms round her waist, kissed

her, tried to make her dance, and said: “Don't be silly, you kind little

mamma, and cry about Frank turning Papist. What a figure he must be,

with a white sheet and a candle, walking in a procession barefoot!” And

she kicked off her little slippers (the wonderfullest little shoes

with wonderful tall red heels: Esmond pounced upon one as it fell close

beside him), and she put on the drollest little moue, and marched up and

down the room holding Esmond's cane by way of taper. Serious as her mood

was, Lady Castlewood could not refrain from laughing; and as for

Esmond he looked on with that delight with which the sight of this fair

creature always inspired him: never had he seen any woman so arch, so

brilliant, and so beautiful.

Having finished her march, she put out her foot for her slipper. The

Colonel knelt down: “If you will be Pope I will turn Papist,” says he;

and her Holiness gave him gracious leave to kiss the little stockinged

foot before he put the slipper on.

Mamma's feet began to pat on the floor during this operation, and

Beatrix, whose bright eyes nothing escaped, saw that little mark of

impatience. She ran up and embraced her mother, with her usual cry of,

“Oh, you silly little mamma: your feet are quite as pretty as mine,”

says she: “they are, cousin, though she hides 'em; but the shoemaker

will tell you that he makes for both off the same last.”

“You are taller than I am, dearest,” says her mother, blushing over her

whole sweet face--“and--and it is your hand, my dear, and not your foot

he wants you to give him;” and she said it with a hysteric laugh, that

had more of tears than laughter in it; laying her head on her daughter's

fair shoulder, and hiding it there. They made a very pretty picture

together, and looked like a pair of sisters--the sweet simple matron

seeming younger than her years, and her daughter, if not older, yet

somehow, from a commanding manner and grace which she possessed above

most women, her mother's superior and protectress.

“But oh!” cries my mistress, recovering herself after this scene, and

returning to her usual sad tone, “'tis a shame that we should laugh

and be making merry on a day when we ought to be down on our knees and

asking pardon.”

“Asking pardon for what?” says saucy Mrs. Beatrix--“because Frank takes

it into his head to fast on Fridays and worship images? You know if you

had been born a Papist, mother, a Papist you would have remained to the

end of your days. 'Tis the religion of the King and of some of the best

quality. For my part, I'm no enemy to it, and think Queen Bess was not a

penny better than Queen Mary.”

“Hush, Beatrix! Do not jest with sacred things, and remember of what

parentage you come,” cries my lady. Beatrix was ordering her ribbons,

and adjusting her tucker, and performing a dozen provokingly pretty

ceremonies, before the glass. The girl was no hypocrite at least. She

never at that time could be brought to think but of the world and her

beauty; and seemed to have no more sense of devotion than some people

have of music, that cannot distinguish one air from another. Esmond

saw this fault in her, as he saw many others--a bad wife would Beatrix

Esmond make, he thought, for any man under the degree of a Prince. She

was born to shine in great assemblies, and to adorn palaces, and to

command everywhere--to conduct an intrigue of politics, or to glitter in

a queen's train. But to sit at a homely table, and mend the stockings of

a poor man's children! that was no fitting duty for her, or at least

one that she wouldn't have broke her heart in trying to do. She was a

princess, though she had scarce a shilling to her fortune; and one

of her subjects--the most abject and devoted wretch, sure, that ever

drivelled at a woman's knees--was this unlucky gentleman; who bound his

good sense, and reason, and independence, hand and foot, and submitted

them to her.

And who does not know how ruthlessly women will tyrannize when they are

let to domineer? and who does not know how useless advice is? I could

give good counsel to my descendants, but I know they'll follow their own

way, for all their grandfather's sermon. A man gets his own experience

about women, and will take nobody's hearsay; nor, indeed, is the young

fellow worth a fig that would. 'Tis I that am in love with my mistress,

not my old grandmother that counsels me: 'tis I that have fixed the

value of the thing I would have, and know the price I would pay for

it. It may be worthless to you, but 'tis all my life to me. Had Esmond

possessed the Great Mogul's crown and all his diamonds, or all the Duke

of Marlborough's money, or all the ingots sunk at Vigo, he would have

given them all for this woman. A fool he was, if you will; but so is

a sovereign a fool, that will give half a principality for a little

crystal as big as a pigeon's egg, and called a diamond: so is a wealthy

nobleman a fool, that will face danger or death, and spend half his

life, and all his tranquillity, caballing for a blue ribbon; so is a

Dutch merchant a fool, that hath been known to pay ten thousand crowns

for a tulip. There's some particular prize we all of us value, and that

every man of spirit will venture his life for. With this, it may be

to achieve a great reputation for learning; with that, to be a man of

fashion, and the admiration of the town; with another, to consummate a

great work of art or poetry, and go to immortality that way; and with

another, for a certain time of his life, the sole object and aim is a

woman.

Whilst Esmond was under the domination of this passion, he remembers

many a talk he had with his intimates, who used to rally Our Knight of

the Rueful Countenance at his devotion, whereof he made no disguise, to

Beatrix; and it was with replies such as the above he met his friends'

satire. “Granted, I am a fool,” says he, “and no better than you; but

you are no better than I. You have your folly you labor for; give me the

charity of mine. What flatteries do you, Mr. St. John, stoop to whisper

in the ears of a queen's favorite? What nights of labor doth not the

laziest man in the world endure, foregoing his bottle, and his boon

companions, foregoing Lais, in whose lap he would like to be yawning,

that he may prepare a speech full of lies, to cajole three hundred

stupid country-gentlemen in the House of Commons, and get the hiccupping

cheers of the October Club! What days will you spend in your jolting

chariot.” (Mr. Esmond often rode to Windsor, and especially, of later

days, with the secretary.) “What hours will you pass on your gouty

feet--and how humbly will you kneel down to present a despatch--you, the

proudest man in the world, that has not knelt to God since you were a

boy, and in that posture whisper, flatter, adore almost, a stupid woman,

that's often boozy with too much meat and drink, when Mr. Secretary goes

for his audience! If my pursuit is vanity, sure yours is too.” And then

the Secretary, would fly out in such a rich flow of eloquence, as this

pen cannot pretend to recall; advocating his scheme of ambition, showing

the great good he would do for his country when he was the undisputed

chief of it; backing his opinion with a score of pat sentences from

Greek and Roman authorities (of which kind of learning he made rather

an ostentatious display), and scornfully vaunting the very arts and

meannesses by which fools were to be made to follow him, opponents to be

bribed or silenced, doubters converted, and enemies overawed.

“I am Diogenes,” says Esmond, laughing, “that is taken up for a ride

in Alexander's chariot. I have no desire to vanquish Darius or to tame

Bucephalus. I do not want what you want, a great name or a high place:

to have them would bring me no pleasure. But my moderation is taste, not

virtue; and I know that what I do want is as vain as that which you long

after. Do not grudge me my vanity, if I allow yours; or rather, let us

laugh at both indifferently, and at ourselves, and at each other.”

“If your charmer holds out,” says St. John, “at this rate she may

keep you twenty years besieging her, and surrender by the time you are

seventy, and she is old enough to be a grandmother. I do not say the

pursuit of a particular woman is not as pleasant a pastime as any other

kind of hunting,” he added; “only, for my part, I find the game won't

run long enough. They knock under too soon--that's the fault I find with

'em.”

“The game which you pursue is in the habit of being caught, and used to

being pulled down,” says Mr. Esmond.

“But Dulcinea del Toboso is peerless, eh?” says the other. “Well, honest

Harry, go and attack windmills--perhaps thou art not more mad than other

people,” St. John added, with a sigh.

CHAPTER III.

A PAPER OUT OF THE “SPECTATOR.”

Doth any young gentleman of my progeny, who may read his old

grandfather's papers, chance to be presently suffering under the passion

of Love? There is a humiliating cure, but one that is easy and almost

specific for the malady--which is, to try an alibi. Esmond went away

from his mistress and was cured a half-dozen times; he came back to her

side, and instantly fell ill again of the fever. He vowed that he could

leave her and think no more of her, and so he could pretty well, at

least, succeed in quelling that rage and longing he had whenever he was

with her; but as soon as he returned he was as bad as ever again. Truly

a ludicrous and pitiable object, at least exhausting everybody's pity

but his dearest mistress's, Lady Castlewood's, in whose tender breast he

reposed all his dreary confessions, and who never tired of hearing him

and pleading for him.

Sometimes Esmond would think there was hope. Then again he would be

plagued with despair, at some impertinence or coquetry of his mistress.

For days they would be like brother and sister, or the dearest

friends--she, simple, fond, and charming--he, happy beyond measure at

her good behavior. But this would all vanish on a sudden. Either he

would be too pressing, and hint his love, when she would rebuff him

instantly, and give his vanity a box on the ear; or he would be jealous,

and with perfect good reason, of some new admirer that had sprung up,

or some rich young gentleman newly arrived in the town, that this

incorrigible flirt would set her nets and baits to draw in. If Esmond

remonstrated, the little rebel would say--“Who are you? I shall go my

own way, sirrah, and that way is towards a husband, and I don't want

YOU on the way. I am for your betters, Colonel, for your betters: do

you hear that? You might do if you had an estate and were younger; only

eight years older than I, you say! pish, you are a hundred years older.

You are an old, old Graveairs, and I should make you miserable, that

would be the only comfort I should have in marrying you. But you have

not money enough to keep a cat decently after you have paid your man his

wages, and your landlady her bill. Do you think I am going to live in

a lodging, and turn the mutton at a string whilst your honor nurses the

baby? Fiddlestick, and why did you not get this nonsense knocked out of

your head when you were in the wars? You are come back more dismal and

dreary than ever. You and mamma are fit for each other. You might be

Darby and Joan, and play cribbage to the end of your lives.”

“At least you own to your worldliness, my poor Trix,” says her mother.

“Worldliness. Oh, my pretty lady! Do you think that I am a child in the

nursery, and to be frightened by Bogey! Worldliness, to be sure; and

pray, madam, where is the harm of wishing to be comfortable? When you

are gone, you dearest old woman, or when I am tired of you and have

run away from you, where shall I go? Shall I go and be head nurse to my

Popish sister-in-law, take the children their physic, and whip 'em,

and put 'em to bed when they are naughty? Shall I be Castlewood's upper

servant, and perhaps marry Tom Tusher? Merci! I have been long enough

Frank's humble servant. Why am I not a man? I have ten times his brains,

and had I worn the--well, don't let your ladyship be frightened--had

I worn a sword and periwig instead of this mantle and commode to which

nature has condemned me--(though 'tis a pretty stuff, too--Cousin

Esmond! you will go to the Exchange to-morrow, and get the exact

counterpart of this ribbon, sir; do you hear?)--I would have made our

name talked about. So would Graveairs here have made something out of

our name if he had represented it. My Lord Graveairs would have done

very well. Yes, you have a very pretty way, and would have made a very

decent, grave speaker.” And here she began to imitate Esmond's way of

carrying himself and speaking to his face, and so ludicrously that his

mistress burst out a-laughing, and even he himself could see there was

some likeness in the fantastical malicious caricature.

“Yes,” says she, “I solemnly vow, own, and confess, that I want a

good husband. Where's the harm of one? My face is my fortune. Who'll

come?--buy, buy, buy! I cannot toil, neither can I spin, but I can play

twenty-three games on the cards. I can dance the last dance, I can hunt

the stag, and I think I could shoot flying. I can talk as wicked as any

woman of my years, and know enough stories to amuse a sulky husband for

at least one thousand and one nights. I have a pretty taste for dress,

diamonds, gambling, and old China. I love sugar-plums, Malines lace

(that you brought me, cousin, is very pretty), the opera, and everything

that is useless and costly. I have got a monkey and a little

black boy--Pompey, sir, go and give a dish of chocolate to Colonel

Graveairs,--and a parrot and a spaniel, and I must have a husband.

Cupid, you hear?”

“Iss, Missis!” says Pompey, a little grinning negro Lord Peterborrow

gave her, with a bird of Paradise in his turbant, and a collar with his

mistress's name on it.

“Iss, Missis!” says Beatrix, imitating the child. “And if husband not

come, Pompey must go fetch one.”

And Pompey went away grinning with his chocolate tray as Miss Beatrix

ran up to her mother and ended her sally of mischief in her common way,

with a kiss--no wonder that upon paying such a penalty her fond judge

pardoned her.

When Mr. Esmond came home, his health was still shattered; and he took a

lodging near to his mistresses, at Kensington, glad enough to be served

by them, and to see them day after day. He was enabled to see a little

company--and of the sort he liked best. Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison both

did him the honor to visit him; and drank many a glass of good claret

at his lodging, whilst their entertainer, through his wound, was kept to

diet drink and gruel. These gentlemen were Whigs, and great admirers of

my Lord Duke of Marlborough; and Esmond was entirely of the other party.

But their different views of politics did not prevent the gentlemen from

agreeing in private, nor from allowing, on one evening when Esmond's

kind old patron, Lieutenant-General Webb, with a stick and a crutch,

hobbled up to the Colonel's lodging (which was prettily situate at

Knightsbridge, between London and Kensington, and looking over

the Gardens), that the Lieutenant-General was a noble and gallant

soldier--and even that he had been hardly used in the Wynendael affair.

He took his revenge in talk, that must be confessed; and if Mr. Addison

had had a mind to write a poem about Wynendael, he might have heard from

the commander's own lips the story a hundred times over.

Mr. Esmond, forced to be quiet, betook himself to literature for a

relaxation, and composed his comedy, whereof the prompter's copy lieth

in my walnut escritoire, sealed up and docketed, “The Faithful Fool,

a Comedy, as it was performed by her Majesty's Servants.” 'Twas a

very sentimental piece; and Mr. Steele, who had more of that kind of

sentiment than Mr. Addison, admired it, whilst the other rather sneered

at the performance; though he owned that, here and there, it contained

some pretty strokes. He was bringing out his own play of “Cato” at the

time, the blaze of which quite extinguished Esmond's farthing candle;

and his name was never put to the piece, which was printed as by a

Person of Quality. Only nine copies were sold, though Mr. Dennis, the

great critic, praised it, and said 'twas a work of great merit; and

Colonel Esmond had the whole impression burned one day in a rage, by

Jack Lockwood, his man.

All this comedy was full of bitter satiric strokes against a certain

young lady. The plot of the piece was quite a new one. A young woman was

represented with a great number of suitors, selecting a pert fribble of

a peer, in place of the hero (but ill-acted, I think, by Mr. Wilks,

the Faithful Fool,) who persisted in admiring her. In the fifth act,

Teraminta was made to discover the merits of Eugenio (the F. F.), and

to feel a partiality for him too late; for he announced that he had

bestowed his hand and estate upon Rosaria, a country lass, endowed with

every virtue. But it must be owned that the audience yawned through the

play; and that it perished on the third night, with only half a dozen

persons to behold its agonies. Esmond and his two mistresses came to the

first night, and Miss Beatrix fell asleep; whilst her mother, who had

not been to a play since King James the Second's time, thought the

piece, though not brilliant, had a very pretty moral.

Mr. Esmond dabbled in letters, and wrote a deal of prose and verse at

this time of leisure. When displeased with the conduct of Miss Beatrix,

he would compose a satire, in which he relieved his mind. When smarting

under the faithlessness of women, he dashed off a copy of verses, in

which he held the whole sex up to scorn. One day, in one of these moods,

he made a little joke, in which (swearing him to secrecy) he got his

friend Dick Steele to help him; and, composing a paper, he had it

printed exactly like Steele's paper, and by his printer, and laid on his

mistress's breakfast-table the following--

“SPECTATOR.

“No. 341. “Tuesday, April 1, 1712.

Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur.--HORACE.

Thyself the morain of the fable see.--CREECH.

“Jocasta is known as a woman of learning and fashion, and as one of

the most amiable persons of this court and country. She is at home two

mornings of the week, and all the wits and a few of the beauties of

London flock to her assemblies. When she goes abroad to Tunbridge or the

Bath, a retinue of adorers rides the journey with her; and besides

the London beaux, she has a crowd of admirers at the Wells, the

polite amongst the natives of Sussex and Somerset pressing round her

tea-tables, and being anxious for a nod from her chair. Jocasta's

acquaintance is thus very numerous. Indeed, 'tis one smart writer's work

to keep her visiting-book--a strong footman is engaged to carry it;

and it would require a much stronger head even than Jocasta's own to

remember the names of all her dear friends.

“Either at Epsom Wells or at Tunbridge (for of this important matter

Jocasta cannot be certain) it was her ladyship's fortune to become

acquainted with a young gentleman, whose conversation was so sprightly,

and manners amiable, that she invited the agreeable young spark to visit

her if ever he came to London, where her house in Spring Garden should

be open to him. Charming as he was, and without any manner of doubt

a pretty fellow, Jocasta hath such a regiment of the like continually

marching round her standard, that 'tis no wonder her attention

is distracted amongst them. And so, though this gentleman made a

considerable impression upon her, and touched her heart for at least

three-and-twenty minutes, it must be owned that she has forgotten his

name. He is a dark man, and may be eight-and-twenty years old. His dress

is sober, though of rich materials. He has a mole on his forehead over

his left eye; has a blue ribbon to his cane and sword, and wears his own

hair.

“Jocasta was much flattered by beholding her admirer (for that everybody

admires who sees her is a point which she never can for a moment doubt)

in the next pew to her at St. James's Church last Sunday; and the manner

in which he appeared to go to sleep during the sermon--though from under

his fringed eyelids it was evident he was casting glances of respectful

rapture towards Jocasta--deeply moved and interested her. On coming out

of church, he found his way to her chair, and made her an elegant bow as

she stepped into it. She saw him at Court afterwards, where he carried

himself with a most distinguished air, though none of her acquaintances

knew his name; and the next night he was at the play, where her ladyship

was pleased to acknowledge him from the side-box.

“During the whole of the comedy she racked her brains so to remember his

name that she did not hear a word of the piece: and having the happiness

to meet him once more in the lobby of the playhouse, she went up to

him in a flutter, and bade him remember that she kept two nights in the

week, and that she longed to see him at Spring Garden.

“He appeared on Tuesday, in a rich suit, showing a very fine taste both

in the tailor and wearer; and though a knot of us were gathered round

the charming Jocasta, fellows who pretended to know every face upon

the town, not one could tell the gentleman's name in reply to Jocasta's

eager inquiries, flung to the right and left of her as he advanced up

the room with a bow that would become a duke.

“Jocasta acknowledged this salute with one of those smiles and curtsies

of which that lady hath the secret. She curtsies with a languishing air,

as if to say, 'You are come at last. I have been pining for you:' and

then she finishes her victim with a killing look, which declares: 'O

Philander! I have no eyes but for you.' Camilla hath as good a curtsy

perhaps, and Thalestris much such another look; but the glance and the

curtsy together belong to Jocasta of all the English beauties alone.

“'Welcome to London, sir,' says she. 'One can see you are from the

country by your looks.' She would have said 'Epsom,' or 'Tunbridge,'

had she remembered rightly at which place she had met the stranger; but,

alas! she had forgotten.

“The gentleman said, 'he had been in town but three days; and one of his

reasons for coming hither was to have the honor of paying his court to

Jocasta.'

“She said, 'the waters had agreed with her but indifferently.'

“'The waters were for the sick,' the gentleman said: 'the young and

beautiful came but to make them sparkle. And as the clergyman read the

service on Sunday,' he added, 'your ladyship reminded me of the angel

that visited the pool.' A murmur of approbation saluted this sally.

Manilio, who is a wit when he is not at cards, was in such a rage that

he revoked when he heard it.

“Jocasta was an angel visiting the waters; but at which of the

Bethesdas? She was puzzled more and more; and, as her way always is,

looked the more innocent and simple, the more artful her intentions

were.

“'We were discoursing,' says she, 'about spelling of names and words

when you came. Why should we say goold and write gold, and call china

chayney, and Cavendish Candish, and Cholmondeley Chumley? If we call

Pulteney Poltney, why shouldn't we call poultry pultry--and--'

“'Such an enchantress as your ladyship,' says he, 'is mistress of all

sorts of spells.' But this was Dr. Swift's pun, and we all knew it.

“'And--and how do you spell your name?' says she, coming to the point at

length; for this sprightly conversation had lasted much longer than is

here set down, and been carried on through at least three dishes of tea.

“'Oh, madam,' says he, 'I SPELL MY NAME WITH THE Y.' And laying down his

dish, my gentleman made another elegant bow, and was gone in a moment.

“Jocasta hath had no sleep since this mortification, and the stranger's

disappearance. If balked in anything, she is sure to lose her health and

temper; and we, her servants, suffer, as usual, during the angry fits of

our Queen. Can you help us, Mr. Spectator, who know everything, to read

this riddle for her, and set at rest all our minds? We find in her list,

Mr. Berty, Mr. Smith, Mr. Pike, Mr. Tyler--who may be Mr. Bertie, Mr.

Smyth, Mr. Pyke, Mr. Tiler, for what we know. She hath turned away

the clerk of her visiting-book, a poor fellow with a great family of

children. Read me this riddle, good Mr. Shortface, and oblige your

admirer--OEDIPUS.”

“THE TRUMPET COFFEE-HOUSE, WHITEHALL.

“MR. SPECTATOR,--I am a gentleman but little acquainted with the town,

though I have had a university education, and passed some years

serving my country abroad, where my name is better known than in the

coffee-house and St. James's.

“Two years since my uncle died, leaving me a pretty estate in the county

of Kent; and being at Tunbridge Wells last summer, after my mourning was

over, and on the look-out, if truth must be told, for some young lady

who would share with me the solitude of my great Kentish house, and be

kind to my tenantry (for whom a woman can do a great deal more good than

the best-intentioned man can), I was greatly fascinated by a young lady

of London, who was the toast of all the company at the Wells. Every one

knows Saccharissa's beauty; and I think, Mr. Spectator, no one better

than herself.

“My table-book informs me that I danced no less than seven-and-twenty

sets with her at the Assembly. I treated her to the fiddles twice. I

was admitted on several days to her lodging, and received by her with a

great deal of distinction, and, for a time, was entirely her slave. It

was only when I found, from common talk of the company at the Wells, and

from narrowly watching one, who I once thought of asking the most sacred

question a man can put to a woman, that I became aware how unfit she was

to be a country gentleman's wife; and that this fair creature was but a

heartless worldly jilt, playing with affections that she never meant to

return, and, indeed, incapable of returning them. 'Tis admiration such

women want, not love that touches them; and I can conceive, in her old

age, no more wretched creature than this lady will be, when her beauty

hath deserted her, when her admirers have left her, and she hath neither

friendship nor religion to console her.

“Business calling me to London, I went to St. James's Church last

Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behavior

during the whole service was so pert, languishing, and absurd; she

flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I

was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever

I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still staring at

me. I fell in with her afterwards at Court, and at the playhouse; and

here nothing would satisfy her but she must elbow through the crowd

and speak to me, and invite me to the assembly, which she holds at her

house, not very far from Ch-r-ng Cr-ss.

“Having made her a promise to attend, of course I kept my promise; and

found the young widow in the midst of a half-dozen of card tables, and

a crowd of wits and admirers. I made the best bow I could, and advanced

towards her; and saw by a peculiar puzzled look in her face, though she

tried to hide her perplexity, that she had forgotten even my name.

“Her talk, artful as it was, convinced me that I had guessed aright. She

turned the conversation most ridiculously upon the spelling of names and

words; and I replied with as ridiculous fulsome compliments as I could

pay her: indeed, one in which I compared her to an angel visiting the

sick wells, went a little too far; nor should I have employed it, but

that the allusion came from the Second Lesson last Sunday, which we both

had heard, and I was pressed to answer her.

“Then she came to the question, which I knew was awaiting me, and asked

how I SPELT my name? 'Madam,' says I, turning on my heel, 'I spell it

with a Y.' And so I left her, wondering at the light-heartedness of the

town-people, who forget and make friends so easily, and resolved to look

elsewhere for a partner for your constant reader,

“CYMON WYLDOATS.”

“You know my real name, Mr. Spectator, in which there is no such a

letter as HUPSILON. But if the lady, whom I have called Saccharissa,

wonders that I appear no more at the tea-tables, she is hereby

respectfully informed the reason Y.”

The above is a parable, whereof the writer will now expound the meaning.

Jocasta was no other than Miss Esmond, Maid of Honor to her Majesty.

She had told Mr. Esmond this little story of having met a gentleman

somewhere, and forgetting his name, when the gentleman, with no such

malicious intentions as those of “Cymon” in the above fable, made the

answer simply as above; and we all laughed to think how little Mistress

Jocasta-Beatrix had profited by her artifice and precautions.

As for Cymon, he was intended to represent yours and her very humble

servant, the writer of the apologue and of this story, which we had

printed on a “Spectator” paper at Mr. Steele's office, exactly as

those famous journals were printed, and which was laid on the table

at breakfast in place of the real newspaper. Mistress Jocasta, who had

plenty of wit, could not live without her Spectator to her tea; and

this sham Spectator was intended to convey to the young woman that

she herself was a flirt, and that Cymon was a gentleman of honor and

resolution, seeing all her faults, and determined to break the chains

once and for ever.

For though enough hath been said about this love-business

already--enough, at least, to prove to the writer's heirs what a silly

fond fool their old grandfather was, who would like them to consider him

as a very wise old gentleman; yet not near all has been told concerning

this matter, which, if it were allowed to take in Esmond's journal the

space it occupied in his time, would weary his kinsmen and women of a

hundred years' time beyond all endurance; and form such a diary of folly

and drivelling, raptures and rage, as no man of ordinary vanity would

like to leave behind him.

The truth is, that, whether she laughed at him or encouraged him;

whether she smiled or was cold, and turned her smiles on another;

worldly and ambitious, as he knew her to be; hard and careless, as she

seemed to grow with her court life, and a hundred admirers that came to

her and left her; Esmond, do what he would, never could get Beatrix out

of his mind; thought of her constantly at home or away. If he read his

name in a Gazette, or escaped the shot of a cannon-ball or a greater

danger in the campaign, as has happened to him more than once, the

instant thought after the honor achieved or the danger avoided, was,

“What will SHE say of it?” “Will this distinction or the idea of this

peril elate her or touch her, so as to be better inclined towards me?”

He could no more help this passionate fidelity of temper than he could

help the eyes he saw with--one or the other seemed a part of his nature;

and knowing every one of her faults as well as the keenest of her

detractors, and the folly of an attachment to such a woman, of which the

fruition could never bring him happiness for above a week, there was yet

a charm about this Circe from which the poor deluded gentleman could

not free himself; and for a much longer period than Ulysses (another

middle-aged officer, who had travelled much, and been in the foreign

wars,) Esmond felt himself enthralled and besotted by the wiles of this

enchantress. Quit her! He could no more quit her, as the Cymon of

this story was made to quit his false one, than he could lose his

consciousness of yesterday. She had but to raise her finger, and he

would come back from ever so far; she had but to say I have discarded

such and such an adorer, and the poor infatuated wretch would be sure to

come and roder about her mother's house, willing to be put on the ranks

of suitors, though he knew he might be cast off the next week. If he

were like Ulysses in his folly, at least she was in so far like Penelope

that she had a crowd of suitors, and undid day after day and night after

night the handiwork of fascination and the web of coquetry with which

she was wont to allure and entertain them.

Part of her coquetry may have come from her position about the Court,

where the beautiful maid of honor was the light about which a thousand

beaux came and fluttered; where she was sure to have a ring of admirers

round her, crowding to listen to her repartees as much as to admire her

beauty; and where she spoke and listened to much free talk, such as

one never would have thought the lips or ears of Rachel Castlewood's

daughter would have uttered or heard. When in waiting at Windsor or

Hampton, the Court ladies and gentlemen would be making riding parties

together; Mrs. Beatrix in a horseman's coat and hat, the foremost after

the stag-hounds and over the park fences, a crowd of young fellows at

her heels. If the English country ladies at this time were the most pure

and modest of any ladies in the world--the English town and court ladies

permitted themselves words and behavior that were neither modest nor

pure; and claimed, some of them, a freedom which those who love that

sex most would never wish to grant them. The gentlemen of my family that

follow after me (for I don't encourage the ladies to pursue any such

studies), may read in the works of Mr. Congreve, and Dr. Swift and

others, what was the conversation and what the habits of our time.

The most beautiful woman in England in 1712, when Esmond returned to

this country, a lady of high birth, and though of no fortune to be sure,

with a thousand fascinations of wit and manners, Beatrix Esmond was

now six-and-twenty years old, and Beatrix Esmond still. Of her hundred

adorers she had not chosen one for a husband; and those who had asked

had been jilted by her; and more still had left her. A succession of

near ten years' crops of beauties had come up since her time, and had

been reaped by proper HUSBANDmen, if we may make an agricultural simile,

and had been housed comfortably long ago. Her own contemporaries were

sober mothers by this time; girls with not a tithe of her charms, or

her wit, having made good matches, and now claiming precedence over

the spinster who but lately had derided and outshone them. The young

beauties were beginning to look down on Beatrix as an old maid, and

sneer, and call her one of Charles II.'s ladies, and ask whether her

portrait was not in the Hampton Court Gallery? But still she reigned,

at least in one man's opinion, superior over all the little misses

that were the toasts of the young lads; and in Esmond's eyes was ever

perfectly lovely and young.

Who knows how many were nearly made happy by possessing her, or, rather,

how many were fortunate in escaping this siren? 'Tis a marvel to think

that her mother was the purest and simplest woman in the whole world,

and that this girl should have been born from her. I am inclined to

fancy, my mistress, who never said a harsh word to her children (and

but twice or thrice only to one person), must have been too fond and

pressing with the maternal authority; for her son and her daughter both

revolted early; nor after their first flight from the nest could they

ever be brought back quite to the fond mother's bosom. Lady Castlewood,

and perhaps it was as well, knew little of her daughter's life and real

thoughts. How was she to apprehend what passes in Queen's ante-chambers

and at Court tables? Mrs. Beatrix asserted her own authority so

resolutely that her mother quickly gave in. The maid of honor had her

own equipage; went from home and came back at her own will: her mother

was alike powerless to resist her or to lead her, or to command or to

persuade her.

She had been engaged once, twice, thrice, to be married, Esmond

believed. When he quitted home, it hath been said, she was promised to

my Lord Ashburnham, and now, on his return, behold his lordship was just

married to Lady Mary Butler, the Duke of Ormonde's daughter, and his

fine houses, and twelve thousand a year of fortune, for which Miss

Beatrix had rather coveted him, was out of her power. To her Esmond

could say nothing in regard to the breaking of this match; and, asking

his mistress about it, all Lady Castlewood answered was: “do not speak

to me about it, Harry. I cannot tell you how or why they parted, and I

fear to inquire. I have told you before, that with all her kindness, and

wit, and generosity, and that sort of splendor of nature she has, I can

say but little good of poor Beatrix, and look with dread at the marriage

she will form. Her mind is fixed on ambition only, and making a

great figure; and, this achieved, she will tire of it as she does

of everything. Heaven help her husband, whoever he shall be! My Lord

Ashburnham was a most excellent young man, gentle and yet manly, of very

good parts, so they told me, and as my little conversation would enable

me to judge: and a kind temper--kind and enduring I'm sure he must have

been, from all that he had to endure. But he quitted her at last,

from some crowning piece of caprice or tyranny of hers; and now he has

married a young woman that will make him a thousand times happier than

my poor girl ever could.”

The rupture, whatever its cause was, (I heard the scandal, but indeed

shall not take pains to repeat at length in this diary the trumpery

coffee-house story,) caused a good deal of low talk; and Mr. Esmond was

present at my lord's appearance at the Birthday with his bride, over

whom the revenge that Beatrix took was to look so imperial and lovely

that the modest downcast young lady could not appear beside her, and

Lord Ashburnham, who had his reasons for wishing to avoid her, slunk

away quite shamefaced, and very early. This time his Grace the Duke of

Hamilton, whom Esmond had seen about her before, was constant at Miss

Beatrix's side: he was one of the most splendid gentlemen of Europe,

accomplished by books, by travel, by long command of the best company,

distinguished as a statesman, having been ambassador in King Williamn's

time, and a noble speaker in the Scots' Parliament, where he had led the

party that was against the Union, and though now five or six and forty

years of age, a gentleman so high in stature, accomplished in wit, and

favored in person, that he might pretend to the hand of any Princess in

Europe.

“Should you like the Duke for a cousin?” says Mr. Secretary St. John,

whispering to Colonel Esmond in French; “it appears that the widower

consoles himself.”

But to return to our little Spectator paper and the conversation which

grew out of it. Miss Beatrix at first was quite BIT (as the phrase of

that day was) and did not “smoke” the authorship of the story; indeed

Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he could Mr. Steele's manner

(as for the other author of the Spectator, his prose style I think is

altogether inimitable); and Dick, who was the idlest and best-natured of

men, would have let the piece pass into his journal and go to posterity

as one of his own lucubrations, but that Esmond did not care to have

a lady's name whom he loved sent forth to the world in a light so

unfavorable. Beatrix pished and psha'd over the paper; Colonel Esmond

watching with no little interest her countenance as she read it.

“How stupid your friend Mr. Steele becomes!” cries Miss Beatrix. “Epsom

and Tunbridge! Will he never have done with Epsom and Tunbridge, and

with beaux at church, and Jocastas and Lindamiras? Why does he not call

women Nelly and Betty, as their godfathers and godmothers did for them

in their baptism?”

“Beatrix. Beatrix!” says her mother, “speak gravely of grave things.”

“Mamma thinks the Church Catechism came from heaven, I believe,”

says Beatrix, with a laugh, “and was brought down by a bishop from a

mountain. Oh, how I used to break my heart over it! Besides, I had a

Popish godmother, mamma; why did you give me one?”

“I gave you the Queen's name,” says her mother blushing. “And a very

pretty name it is,” said somebody else.

Beatrix went on reading--“Spell my name with a Y--why, you wretch,” says

she, turning round to Colonel Esmond, “you have been telling my story to

Mr. Steele--or stop--you have written the paper yourself to turn me into

ridicule. For shame, sir!”

Poor Mr. Esmond felt rather frightened, and told a truth, which was

nevertheless an entire falsehood. “Upon my honor,” says he, “I have not

even read the Spectator of this morning.” Nor had he, for that was not

the Spectator, but a sham newspaper put in its place.

She went on reading: her face rather flushed as she read. “No,” she

says, “I think you couldn't have written it. I think it must have been

Mr. Steele when he was drunk--and afraid of his horrid vulgar wife.

Whenever I see an enormous compliment to a woman, and some outrageous

panegyric about female virtue, I always feel sure that the Captain and

his better half have fallen out over-night, and that he has been brought

home tipsy, or has been found out in--”

“Beatrix!” cries the Lady Castlewood.

“Well, mamma! Do not cry out before you are hurt. I am not going to say

anything wrong. I won't give you more annoyance than you can help, you

pretty kind mamma. Yes, and your little Trix is a naughty little Trix,

and she leaves undone those things which she ought to have done, and

does those things which she ought not to have done, and there's--well

now--I won't go on. Yes, I will, unless you kiss me.” And with this the

young lady lays aside her paper, and runs up to her mother and performs

a variety of embraces with her ladyship, saying as plain as eyes could

speak to Mr. Esmond--“There, sir: would not YOU like to play the very

same pleasant game?”

“Indeed, madam, I would,” says he.

“Would what?” asked Miss Beatrix.

“What you meant when you looked at me in that provoking way,” answers

Esmond.

“What a confessor!” cries Beatrix, with a laugh.

“What is it Henry would like, my dear?” asks her mother, the kind soul,

who was always thinking what we would like, and how she could please us.

The girl runs up to her--“Oh, you silly kind mamma,” she says, kissing

her again, “that's what Harry would like;” and she broke out into a

great joyful laugh; and Lady Castlewood blushed as bashful as a maid of

sixteen.

“Look at her, Harry,” whispers Beatrix, running up, and speaking in her

sweet low tones. “Doesn't the blush become her? Isn't she pretty? She

looks younger than I am, and I am sure she is a hundred million thousand

times better.”

Esmond's kind mistress left the room, carrying her blushes away with

her.

“If we girls at Court could grow such roses as that,” continues Beatrix,

with her laugh, “what wouldn't we do to preserve 'em? We'd clip their

stalks and put 'em in salt and water. But those flowers don't bloom

at Hampton Court and Windsor, Henry.” She paused for a minute, and the

smile fading away from her April face, gave place to a menacing shower

of tears; “Oh, how good she is, Harry,” Beatrix went on to say. “Oh,

what a saint she is! Her goodness frightens me. I'm not fit to live with

her. I should be better I think if she were not so perfect. She has had

a great sorrow in her life, and a great secret; and repented of it. It

could not have been my father's death. She talks freely about that; nor

could she have loved him very much--though who knows what we women do

love, and why?”

“What, and why, indeed,” says Mr. Esmond.

“No one knows,” Beatrix went on, without noticing this interruption

except by a look, “what my mother's life is. She hath been at early

prayer this morning; she passes hours in her closet; if you were to

follow her thither, you would find her at prayers now. She tends the

poor of the place--the horrid dirty poor! She sits through the curate's

sermons--oh, those dreary sermons! And you see on a beau dire; but

good as they are, people like her are not fit to commune with us of the

world. There is always, as it were, a third person present, even when I

and my mother are alone. She can't be frank with me quite; who is always

thinking of the next world, and of her guardian angel, perhaps that's in

company. Oh, Harry, I'm jealous of that guardian angel!” here broke out

Mistress Beatrix. “It's horrid, I know; but my mother's life is all

for heaven, and mine--all for earth. We can never be friends quite; and

then, she cares more for Frank's little finger than she does for me--I

know she does: and she loves you, sir, a great deal too much; and I hate

you for it. I would have had her all to myself; but she wouldn't. In my

childhood, it was my father she loved--(oh, how could she? I remember

him kind and handsome, but so stupid, and not being able to speak after

drinking wine). And then it was Frank; and now, it is heaven and the

clergyman. How I would have loved her! From a child I used to be in a

rage that she loved anybody but me; but she loved you all better--all, I

know she did. And now, she talks of the blessed consolation of religion.

Dear soul! she thinks she is happier for believing, as she must, that

we are all of us wicked and miserable sinners; and this world is only a

pied-a-terre for the good, where they stay for a night, as we do, coming

from Walcote, at that great, dreary, uncomfortable Hounslow Inn, in

those horrid beds--oh, do you remember those horrid beds?--and the

chariot comes and fetches them to heaven the next morning.”

“Hush, Beatrix,” says Mr. Esmond.

“Hush, indeed. You are a hypocrite, too, Henry, with your grave airs

and your glum face. We are all hypocrites. O dear me! We are all alone,

alone, alone,” says poor Beatrix, her fair breast heaving with a sigh.

“It was I that writ every line of that paper, my dear,” says Mr. Esmond.

“You are not so worldly as you think yourself, Beatrix, and better than

we believe you. The good we have in us we doubt of; and the happiness

that's to our hand we throw away. You bend your ambition on a great

marriage and establishment--and why? You'll tire of them when you win

them; and be no happier with a coronet on your coach--”

“Than riding pillion with Lubin to market,” says Beatrix. “Thank you,

Lubin!”

“I'm a dismal shepherd, to be sure,” answers Esmond, with a blush;

“and require a nymph that can tuck my bed-clothes up, and make me

water-gruel. Well, Tom Lockwood can do that. He took me out of the fire

upon his shoulders, and nursed me through my illness as love will scarce

ever do. Only good wages, and a hope of my clothes, and the contents of

my portmanteau. How long was it that Jacob served an apprenticeship for

Rachel?”

“For mamma?” says Beatrix. “It is mamma your honor wants, and that I

should have the happiness of calling you papa?”

Esmond blushed again. “I spoke of a Rachel that a shepherd courted five

thousand years ago; when shepherds were longer lived than now. And my

meaning was, that since I saw you first after our separation--a child

you were then . . .”

“And I put on my best stockings to captivate you, I remember, sir . . .”

“You have had my heart ever since then, such as it was; and such as you

were, I cared for no other woman. What little reputation I have won, it

was that you might be pleased with it: and indeed, it is not much; and

I think a hundred fools in the army have got and deserved quite as much.

Was there something in the air of that dismal old Castlewood that made

us all gloomy, and dissatisfied, and lonely under its ruined old roof?

We were all so, even when together and united, as it seemed, following

our separate schemes, each as we sat round the table.”

“Dear, dreary old place!” cries Beatrix. “Mamma hath never had the heart

to go back thither since we left it, when--never mind how many years

ago.” And she flung back her curls, and looked over her fair shoulder at

the mirror superbly, as if she said, “Time, I defy you.”

“Yes,” says Esmond, who had the art, as she owned, of divining many of

her thoughts. “You can afford to look in the glass still; and only be

pleased by the truth it tells you. As for me, do you know what my scheme

is? I think of asking Frank to give me the Virginian estate King Charles

gave our grandfather. (She gave a superb curtsy, as much as to say,

'Our grandfather, indeed! Thank you, Mr. Bastard.') Yes, I know you are

thinking of my bar-sinister, and so am I. A man cannot get over it in

this country; unless, indeed, he wears it across a king's arms, when

'tis a highly honorable coat; and I am thinking of retiring into the

plantations, and building myself a wigwam in the woods, and perhaps, if

I want company, suiting myself with a squaw. We will send your ladyship

furs over for the winter; and, when you are old, we'll provide you with

tobacco. I am not quite clever enough, or not rogue enough--I know not

which--for the Old World. I may make a place for myself in the New,

which is not so full; and found a family there. When you are a mother

yourself, and a great lady, perhaps I shall send you over from the

plantation some day a little barbarian that is half Esmond half Mohock,

and you will be kind to him for his father's sake, who was, after all,

your kinsman; and whom you loved a little.”

“What folly you are talking, Harry,” says Miss Beatrix, looking with her

great eyes.

“'Tis sober earnest,” says Esmond. And, indeed, the scheme had been

dwelling a good deal in his mind for some time past, and especially

since his return home, when he found how hopeless, and even degrading

to himself, his passion was. “No,” says he, then: “I have tried half a

dozen times now. I can bear being away from you well enough; but being

with you is intolerable” (another low curtsy on Mistress Beatrix's

part), “and I will go. I have enough to buy axes and guns for my men,

and beads and blankets for the savages; and I'll go and live amongst

them.”

“Mon ami,” she says quite kindly, and taking Esmond's hand, with an air

of great compassion, “you can't think that in our position anything more

than our present friendship is possible. You are our elder brother--as

such we view you, pitying your misfortune, not rebuking you with it.

Why, you are old enough and grave enough to be our father. I always

thought you a hundred years old, Harry, with your solemn face and grave

air. I feel as a sister to you, and can no more. Isn't that enough,

sir?” And she put her face quite close to his--who knows with what

intention?

“It's too much,” says Esmond, turning away. “I can't bear this life,

and shall leave it. I shall stay, I think, to see you married, and then

freight a ship, and call it the 'Beatrix,' and bid you all . . .”

Here the servant, flinging the door open, announced his Grace the Duke

of Hamilton, and Esmond started back with something like an imprecation

on his lips, as the nobleman entered, looking splendid in his star and

green ribbon. He gave Mr. Esmond just that gracious bow which he would

have given to a lackey who fetched him a chair or took his hat, and

seated himself by Miss Beatrix, as the poor Colonel went out of the room

with a hang-dog look.

Esmond's mistress was in the lower room as he passed down stairs. She

often met him as he was coming away from Beatrix; and she beckoned him

into the apartment.

“Has she told you, Harry?” Lady Castlewood said.

“She has been very frank--very,” says Esmond.

“But--but about what is going to happen?”

“What is going to happen?” says he, his heart beating.

“His Grace the Duke of Hamilton has proposed to her,” says my lady. “He

made his offer yesterday. They will marry as soon as his mourning is

over; and you have heard his Grace is appointed Ambassador to Paris; and

the Ambassadress goes with him.”

CHAPTER IV.

BEATRIX'S NEW SUITOR.

The gentleman whom Beatrix had selected was, to be sure, twenty years

older than the Colonel, with whom she quarrelled for being too old; but

this one was but a nameless adventurer, and the other the greatest duke

in Scotland, with pretensions even to a still higher title. My Lord Duke

of Hamilton had, indeed, every merit belonging to a gentleman, and he

had had the time to mature his accomplishments fully, being upwards of

fifty years old when Madam Beatrix selected him for a bridegroom. Duke

Hamilton, then Earl of Arran, had been educated at the famous Scottish

university of Glasgow, and, coming to London, became a great favorite

of Charles the Second, who made him a lord of his bedchamber, and

afterwards appointed him ambassador to the French king, under whom the

Earl served two campaigns as his Majesty's aide-de-camp; and he was

absent on this service when King Charles died.

King James continued my lord's promotion--made him Master of the

Wardrobe and Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Horse; and his lordship

adhered firmly to King James, being of the small company that never

quitted that unfortunate monarch till his departure out of England; and

then it was, in 1688 namely, that he made the friendship with Colonel

Francis Esmond, that had always been, more or less, maintained in the

two families.

The Earl professed a great admiration for King William always, but never

could give him his allegiance; and was engaged in more than one of the

plots in the late great King's reign which always ended in the plotters'

discomfiture, and generally in their pardon, by the magnanimity of the

King. Lord Arran was twice prisoner in the Tower during this reign,

undauntedly saying, when offered his release, upon parole not to engage

against King William, that he would not give his word, because “he

was sure he could not keep it;” but, nevertheless, he was both times

discharged without any trial; and the King bore this noble enemy so

little malice, that when his mother, the Duchess of Hamilton, of her

own right, resigned her claim on her husband's death, the Earl was,

by patent signed at Loo, 1690, created Duke of Hamilton, Marquis

of Clydesdale, and Earl of Arran, with precedency from the original

creation. His Grace took the oaths and his seat in the Scottish

parliament in 1700: was famous there for his patriotism and eloquence,

especially in the debates about the Union Bill, which Duke Hamilton

opposed with all his strength, though he would not go the length of the

Scottish gentry, who were for resisting it by force of arms. 'Twas

said he withdrew his opposition all of a sudden, and in consequence

of letters from the King at St. Germains, who entreated him on his

allegiance not to thwart the Queen his sister in this measure; and the

Duke, being always bent upon effecting the King's return to his kingdom

through a reconciliation between his Majesty and Queen Anne, and quite

averse to his landing with arms and French troops, held aloof, and

kept out of Scotland during the time when the Chevalier de St. George's

descent from Dunkirk was projected, passing his time in England in his

great estate in Staffordshire.

When the Whigs went out of office in 1710, the Queen began to show

his Grace the very greatest marks of her favor. He was created Duke

of Brandon and Baron of Dutton in England; having the Thistle already

originally bestowed on him by King James the Second, his Grace was

now promoted to the honor of the Garter--a distinction so great and

illustrious, that no subject hath ever borne them hitherto together.

When this objection was made to her Majesty, she was pleased to say,

“Such a subject as the Duke of Hamilton has a pre-eminent claim to every

mark of distinction which a crowned head can confer. I will henceforth

wear both orders myself.”

At the Chapter held at Windsor in October, 1712, the Duke and other

knights, including Lord-Treasurer, the new-created Earl of Oxford

and Mortimer, were installed; and a few days afterwards his Grace was

appointed Ambassador-Extraordinary to France, and his equipages, plate,

and liveries commanded, of the most sumptuous kind, not only for his

Excellency the Ambassador, but for her Excellency the Ambassadress,

who was to accompany him. Her arms were already quartered on the coach

panels, and her brother was to hasten over on the appointed day to give

her away.

His lordship was a widower, having married, in 1698, Elizabeth, daughter

of Digby Lord Gerard, by which marriage great estates came into the

Hamilton family; and out of these estates came, in part, that tragic

quarrel which ended the Duke's career.

From the loss of a tooth to that of a mistress there's no pang that is

not bearable. The apprehension is much more cruel than the certainty;

and we make up our mind to the misfortune when 'tis irremediable, part

with the tormentor, and mumble our crust on t'other side of the jaws.

I think Colonel Esmond was relieved when a ducal coach and six came and

whisked his charmer away out of his reach, and placed her in a higher

sphere. As you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the

clouds at the end of the piece where Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the

divine company of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song

as a goddess: so when this portentous elevation was accomplished in

the Esmond family, I am not sure that every one of us did not treat the

divine Beatrix with special honors; at least the saucy little beauty

carried her head with a toss of supreme authority, and assumed a

touch-me-not air, which all her friends very good-humoredly bowed to.

An old army acquaintance of Colonel Esmond's, honest Tom Trett, who had

sold his company, married a wife, and turned merchant in the city, was

dreadfully gloomy for a long time, though living in a fine house on the

river, and carrying on a great trade to all appearance. At length Esmond

saw his friend's name in the Gazette as a bankrupt; and a week after

this circumstance my bankrupt walks into Mr. Esmond's lodging with a

face perfectly radiant with good-humor, and as jolly and careless as

when they had sailed from Southampton ten years before for Vigo. “This

bankruptcy,” says Tom, “has been hanging over my head these three

years; the thought hath prevented my sleeping, and I have looked at poor

Polly's head on t'other pillow, and then towards my razor on the table,

and thought to put an end to myself, and so give my woes the slip. But

now we are bankrupts: Tom Trett pays as many shillings in the pound as

he can; his wife has a little cottage at Fulham, and her fortune secured

to herself. I am afraid neither of bailiff nor of creditor: and for the

last six nights have slept easy.” So it was that when Fortune shook her

wings and left him, honest Tom cuddled himself up in his ragged virtue,

and fell asleep.

Esmond did not tell his friend how much his story applied to Esmond too;

but he laughed at it, and used it; and having fairly struck his docket

in this love transaction, determined to put a cheerful face on his

bankruptcy. Perhaps Beatrix was a little offended at his gayety.

“Is this the way, sir, that you receive the announcement of your

misfortune,” says she, “and do you come smiling before me as if you were

glad to be rid of me?”

Esmond would not be put off from his good-humor, but told her the story

of Tom Trett and his bankruptcy. “I have been hankering after the grapes

on the wall,” says he, “and lost my temper because they were beyond my

reach; was there any wonder? They're gone now, and another has them--a

taller man than your humble servant has won them.” And the Colonel made

his cousin a low bow.

“A taller man, Cousin Esmond!” says she. “A man of spirit would have

sealed the wall, sir, and seized them! A man of courage would have

fought for 'em, not gaped for 'em.”

“A Duke has but to gape and they drop into his mouth,” says Esmond, with

another low bow.

“Yes, sir,” says she, “a Duke IS a taller man than you. And why should I

not be grateful to one such as his Grace, who gives me his heart and his

great name? It is a great gift he honors me with; I know 'tis a bargain

between us; and I accept it, and will do my utmost to perform my part of

it. 'Tis no question of sighing and philandering between a noble man

of his Grace's age and a girl who hath little of that softness in her

nature. Why should I not own that I am ambitious, Harry Esmond; and if

it be no sin in a man to covet honor, why should a woman too not desire

it? Shall I be frank with you, Harry, and say that if you had not been

down on your knees, and so humble, you might have fared better with

me? A woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry, and not

by sighs and rueful faces. All the time you are worshipping and singing

hymns to me, I know very well I am no goddess, and grow weary of the

incense. So would you have been weary of the goddess too--when she was

called Mrs. Esmond, and got out of humor because she had not pin-money

enough, and was forced to go about in an old gown. Eh! cousin, a

goddess in a mob-cap, that has to make her husband's gruel, ceases to

be divine--I am sure of it. I should have been sulky and scolded; and of

all the proud wretches in the world Mr. Esmond is the proudest, let me

tell him that. You never fall into a passion; but you never forgive, I

think. Had you been a great man, you might have been good-humored; but

being nobody, sir, you are too great a man for me; and I'm afraid of

you, cousin--there! and I won't worship you, and you'll never be happy

except with a woman who will. Why, after I belonged to you, and after

one of my tantrums, you would have put the pillow over my head some

night, and smothered me, as the black man does the woman in the play

that you're so fond of. What's the creature's name?--Desdemona. You

would, you little black-dyed Othello!”

“I think I should, Beatrix,” says the Colonel.

“And I want no such ending. I intend to live to be a hundred, and to

go to ten thousand routs and balls, and to play cards every night of my

life till the year eighteen hundred. And I like to be the first of my

company, sir; and I like flattery and compliments, and you give me none;

and I like to be made to laugh, sir, and who's to laugh at YOUR

dismal face, I should like to know? and I like a coach-and six or a

coach-and-eight; and I like diamonds, and a new gown every week; and

people to say--'That's the Duchess--How well her Grace looks--Make

way for Madame l'Ambassadrice d'Angleterre--Call her Excellency's

people'--that's what I like. And as for you, you want a woman to bring

your slippers and cap, and to sit at your feet, and cry, 'O caro! O

bravo!' whilst you read your Shakespeares and Miltons and stuff. Mamma

would have been the wife for you, had you been a little older, though

you look ten years older than she does--you do, you glum-faced,

blue-bearded little old man! You might have sat, like Darby and Joan,

and flattered each other; and billed and cooed like a pair of old

pigeons on a perch. I want my wings and to use them, sir.” And she

spread out her beautiful arms, as if indeed she could fly off like the

pretty “Gawrie,” whom the man in the story was enamored of.

“And what will your Peter Wilkins say to your flight?” says Esmond, who

never admired this fair creature more than when she rebelled and laughed

at him.

“A duchess knows her place,” says she, with a laugh. “Why, I have a

son already made for me, and thirty years old (my Lord Arran), and four

daughters. How they will scold, and what a rage they will be in, when I

come to take the head of the table! But I give them only a month to

be angry; at the end of that time they shall love me every one, and

so shall Lord Arran, and so shall all his Grace's Scots vassals and

followers in the Highlands. I'm bent on it; and when I take a thing in

my head, 'tis done. His Grace is the greatest gentleman in Europe, and

I'll try and make him happy; and, when the King comes back, you may

count on my protection, Cousin Esmond--for come back the King will and

shall; and I'll bring him back from Versailles, if he comes under my

hoop.”

“I hope the world will make you happy, Beatrix,” says Esmond, with a

sigh. “You'll be Beatrix till you are my Lady Duchess--will you not? I

shall then make your Grace my very lowest bow.”

“None of these sighs and this satire, cousin,” she says. “I take his

Grace's great bounty thankfully--yes, thankfully; and will wear his

honors becomingly. I do not say he hath touched my heart; but he has my

gratitude, obedience, admiration--I have told him that, and no more;

and with that his noble heart is content. I have told him all--even the

story of that poor creature that I was engaged to--and that I could not

love; and I gladly gave his word back to him, and jumped for joy to get

back my own. I am twenty-five years old.”

“Twenty-six, my dear,” says Esmond.

“Twenty-five, sir--I choose to be twenty-five; and in eight years no man

hath ever touched my heart. Yes--you did once, for a little, Harry, when

you came back after Lille, and engaging with that murderer Mohun, and

saving Frank's life. I thought I could like you; and mamma begged me

hard, on her knees, and I did--for a day. But the old chill came over

me, Henry, and the old fear of you and your melancholy; and I was glad

when you went away, and engaged with my Lord Ashburnham, that I might

hear no more of you, that's the truth. You are too good for me, somehow.

I could not make you happy, and should break my heart in trying, and

not being able to love you. But if you had asked me when we gave you

the sword, you might have had me, sir, and we both should have been

miserable by this time. I talked with that silly lord all night just to

vex you and mamma, and I succeeded, didn't I? How frankly we can talk

of these things! It seems a thousand years ago: and, though we are here

sitting in the same room, there is a great wall between us. My dear,

kind, faithful, gloomy old cousin! I can like now, and admire you too,

sir, and say that you are brave, and very kind, and very true, and a

fine gentleman for all--for all your little mishap at your birth,” says

she, wagging her arch head.

“And now, sir,” says she, with a curtsy, “we must have no more talk

except when mamma is by, as his Grace is with us; for he does not half

like you, cousin, and is jealous as the black man in your favorite

play.”

Though the very kindness of the words stabbed Mr. Esmond with the

keenest pang, he did not show his sense of the wound by any look of his

(as Beatrix, indeed, afterwards owned to him), but said, with a perfect

command of himself and an easy smile, “The interview must not end yet,

my dear, until I have had my last word. Stay, here comes your mother”

(indeed she came in here with her sweet anxious face, and Esmond going

up kissed her hand respectfully). “My dear lady may hear, too, the

last words, which are no secrets, and are only a parting benediction

accompanying a present for your marriage from an old gentleman your

guardian; for I feel as if I was the guardian of all the family, and an

old old fellow that is fit to be the grandfather of you all; and in this

character let me make my Lady Duchess her wedding present. They are the

diamonds my father's widow left me. I had thought Beatrix might have

had them a year ago; but they are good enough for a duchess, though not

bright enough for the handsomest woman in the world.” And he took the

case out of his pocket in which the jewels were, and presented them to

his cousin.

She gave a cry of delight, for the stones were indeed very handsome,

and of great value; and the next minute the necklace was where Belinda's

cross is in Mr. Pope's admirable poem, and glittering on the whitest and

most perfectly-shaped neck in all England.

The girl's delight at receiving these trinkets was so great, that after

rushing to the looking-glass and examining the effect they produced upon

that fair neck which they surrounded, Beatrix was running back with her

arms extended, and was perhaps for paying her cousin with a price, that

he would have liked no doubt to receive from those beautiful rosy

lips of hers, but at this moment the door opened, and his Grace the

bridegroom elect was announced.

He looked very black upon Mr. Esmond, to whom he made a very low bow

indeed, and kissed the hand of each lady in his most ceremonious manner.

He had come in his chair from the palace hard by, and wore his two stars

of the Garter and the Thistle.

“Look, my Lord Duke,” says Mistress Beatrix, advancing to him, and

showing the diamonds on her breast.

“Diamonds,” says his Grace. “Hm! they seem pretty.”

“They are a present on my marriage,” says Beatrix.

“From her Majesty?” asks the Duke. “The Queen is very good.”

“From my cousin Henry--from our cousin Henry”--cry both the ladies in a

breath.

“I have not the honor of knowing the gentleman. I thought that my Lord

Castlewood had no brother: and that on your ladyship's side there were

no nephews.”

“From our cousin, Colonel Henry Esmond, my lord,” says Beatrix, taking

the Colonel's hand very bravely,--“who was left guardian to us by our

father, and who has a hundred times shown his love and friendship for

our family.”

“The Duchess of Hamilton receives no diamonds but from her husband,

madam,” says the Duke--“may I pray you to restore these to Mr. Esmond?”

“Beatrix Esmond may receive a present from our kinsman and benefactor,

my Lord Duke,” says Lady Castlewood, with an air of great dignity. “She

is my daughter yet: and if her mother sanctions the gift--no one else

hath the right to question it.”

“Kinsman and benefactor!” says the Duke. “I know of no kinsman: and I do

not choose that my wife should have for benefactor a--”

“My lord!” says Colonel Esmond.

“I am not here to bandy words,” says his Grace: “frankly I tell you

that your visits to this house are too frequent, and that I choose no

presents for the Duchess of Hamilton from gentlemen that bear a name

they have no right to.”

“My lord!” breaks out Lady Castlewood, “Mr. Esmond hath the best right

to that name of any man in the world: and 'tis as old and as honorable

as your Grace's.”

My Lord Duke smiled, and looked as if Lady Castlewood was mad, that was

so talking to him.

“If I called him benefactor,” said my mistress, “it is because he has

been so to us--yes, the noblest, the truest, the bravest, the dearest of

benefactors. He would have saved my husband's life from Mohun's sword.

He did save my boy's, and defended him from that villain. Are those no

benefits?”

“I ask Colonel Esmond's pardon,” says his Grace, if possible more

haughty than before. “I would say not a word that should give him

offence, and thank him for his kindness to your ladyship's family. My

Lord Mohun and I are connected, you know, by marriage--though neither

by blood nor friendship; but I must repeat what I said, that my wife can

receive no presents from Colonel Esmond.”

“My daughter may receive presents from the Head of our House: my

daughter may thankfully take kindness from her father's, her mother's,

her brother's dearest friend; and be grateful for one more benefit

besides the thousand we owe him,” cries Lady Esmond. “What is a string

of diamond stones compared to that affection he hath given us--our

dearest preserver and benefactor? We owe him not only Frank's life, but

our all--yes, our all,” says my mistress, with a heightened color and a

trembling voice. “The title we bear is his, if he would claim it. 'Tis

we who have no right to our name: not he that's too great for it. He

sacrificed his name at my dying lord's bedside--sacrificed it to my

orphan children; gave up rank and honor because he loved us so nobly.

His father was Viscount of Castlewood and Marquis of Esmond before

him; and he is his father's lawful son and true heir, and we are the

recipients of his bounty, and he the chief of a house that's as old as

your own. And if he is content to forego his name that my child may

bear it, we love him and honor him and bless him under whatever name he

bears”--and here the fond and affectionate creature would have knelt to

Esmond again, but that he prevented her; and Beatrix, running up to her

with a pale face and a cry of alarm, embraced her and said, “Mother,

what is this?”

“'Tis a family secret, my Lord Duke,” says Colonel Esmond: “poor Beatrix

knew nothing of it; nor did my lady till a year ago. And I have as good

a right to resign my title as your Grace's mother to abdicate hers to

you.”

“I should have told everything to the Duke of Hamilton,” said my

mistress, “had his Grace applied to me for my daughter's hand, and not

to Beatrix. I should have spoken with you this very day in private, my

lord, had not your words brought about this sudden explanation--and now

'tis fit Beatrix should hear it; and know, as I would have all the world

know, what we owe to our kinsman and patron.”

And then in her touching way, and having hold of her daughter's hand,

and speaking to her rather than my Lord Duke, Lady Castlewood told the

story which you know already--lauding up to the skies her kinsman's

behavior. On his side Mr. Esmond explained the reasons that seemed quite

sufficiently cogent with him, why the succession in the family, as at

present it stood, should not be disturbed; and he should remain as he

was, Colonel Esmond.

“And Marquis of Esmond, my lord,” says his Grace, with a low bow.

“Permit me to ask your lordship's pardon for words that were uttered in

ignorance; and to beg for the favor of your friendship. To be allied to

you, sir, must be an honor under whatever name you are known” (so his

Grace was pleased to say); “and in return for the splendid present you

make my wife, your kinswoman, I hope you will please to command any

service that James Douglas can perform. I shall never be easy until I

repay you a part of my obligations at least; and ere very long, and with

the mission her Majesty hath given me,” says the Duke, “that may perhaps

be in my power. I shall esteem it as a favor, my lord, if Colonel Esmond

will give away the bride.”

“And if he will take the usual payment in advance, he is welcome,” says

Beatrix, stepping up to him; and, as Esmond kissed her, she whispered,

“Oh, why didn't I know you before?”

My Lord Duke was as hot as a flame at this salute, but said never a

word: Beatrix made him a proud curtsy, and the two ladies quitted the

room together.

“When does your Excellency go for Paris?” asks Colonel Esmond.

“As soon after the ceremony as may be,” his Grace answered. “'Tis fixed

for the first of December: it cannot be sooner. The equipage will not be

ready till then. The Queen intends the embassy should be very grand--and

I have law business to settle. That ill-omened Mohun has come, or is

coming, to London again: we are in a lawsuit about my late Lord Gerard's

property; and he hath sent to me to meet him.”

CHAPTER V.

MOHUN APPEARS FOR THE LAST TIME IN THIS HISTORY.

Besides my Lord Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, who for family reasons had

kindly promised his protection and patronage to Colonel Esmond, he had

other great friends in power now, both able and willing to assist him,

and he might, with such allies, look forward to as fortunate advancement

in civil life at home as he had got rapid promotion abroad. His Grace

was magnanimous enough to offer to take Mr. Esmond as secretary on

his Paris embassy, but no doubt he intended that proposal should be

rejected; at any rate, Esmond could not bear the thoughts of attending

his mistress farther than the church-door after her marriage, and so

declined that offer which his generous rival made him.

Other gentlemen in power were liberal at least of compliments and

promises to Colonel Esmond. Mr. Harley, now become my Lord Oxford and

Mortimer, and installed Knight of the Garter on the same day as his

Grace of Hamilton had received the same honor, sent to the Colonel to

say that a seat in Parliament should be at his disposal presently,

and Mr. St. John held out many flattering hopes of advancement to

the Colonel when he should enter the House. Esmond's friends were all

successful, and the most successful and triumphant of all was his dear

old commander, General Webb, who was now appointed Lieutenant-General of

the Land Forces, and received with particular honor by the Ministry, by

the Queen, and the people out of doors, who huzza'd the brave chief

when they used to see him in his chariot going to the House or to the

Drawing-room, or hobbling on foot to his coach from St. Stephen's upon

his glorious old crutch and stick, and cheered him as loud as they had

ever done Marlborough.

That great Duke was utterly disgraced; and honest old Webb dated all

his Grace's misfortunes from Wynendael, and vowed that Fate served the

traitor right. Duchess Sarah had also gone to ruin; she had been forced

to give up her keys, and her places, and her pensions:--“Ah, ah!” says

Webb, “she would have locked up three millions of French crowns with her

keys had I but been knocked on the head, but I stopped that convoy at

Wynendael.” Our enemy Cardonnel was turned out of the House of Commons

(along with Mr. Walpole) for malversation of public money. Cadogan lost

his place of Lieutenant of the Tower. Marlborough's daughters resigned

their posts of ladies of the bedchamber; and so complete was the Duke's

disgrace, that his son-in-law, Lord Bridgewater, was absolutely obliged

to give up his lodgings at St. James's, and had his half-pension,

as Master of the Horse, taken away. But I think the lowest depth of

Marlborough's fall was when he humbly sent to ask General Webb when he

might wait upon him; he who had commanded the stout old General, who

had injured him and sneered at him, who had kept him dangling in his

ante-chamber, who could not even after his great service condescend to

write him a letter in his own hand. The nation was as eager for peace as

ever it had been hot for war. The Prince of Savoy came amongst us, had

his audience of the Queen, and got his famous Sword of Honor, and strove

with all his force to form a Whig party together, to bring over the

young Prince of Hanover to do anything which might prolong the war, and

consummate the ruin of the old sovereign whom he hated so implacably.

But the nation was tired of the struggle: so completely wearied of it

that not even our defeat at Denain could rouse us into any anger, though

such an action so lost two years before would have set all England in

a fury. 'Twas easy to see that the great Marlborough was not with the

army. Eugene was obliged to fall back in a rage, and forego the dazzling

revenge of his life. 'Twas in vain the Duke's side asked, “Would we

suffer our arms to be insulted? Would we not send back the only

champion who could repair our honor?” The nation had had its bellyful of

fighting; nor could taunts or outcries goad up our Britons any more.

For a statesman that was always prating of liberty, and had the grandest

philosophic maxims in his mouth, it must be owned that Mr. St. John

sometimes rather acted like a Turkish than a Greek philosopher, and

especially fell foul of one unfortunate set of men, the men of letters,

with a tyranny a little extraordinary in a man who professed to respect

their calling so much. The literary controversy at this time was very

bitter, the Government side was the winning one, the popular one, and

I think might have been the merciful one. 'Twas natural that the

opposition should be peevish and cry out: some men did so from their

hearts, admiring the Duke of Marlborough's prodigious talents, and

deploring the disgrace of the greatest general the world ever knew:

'twas the stomach that caused other patriots to grumble, and such men

cried out because they were poor, and paid to do so. Against these my

Lord Bolingbroke never showed the slightest mercy, whipping a dozen into

prison or into the pillory without the least commiseration.

From having been a man of arms Mr. Esmond had now come to be a man of

letters, but on a safer side than that in which the above-cited poor

fellows ventured their liberties and ears. There was no danger on ours,

which was the winning side; besides, Mr. Esmond pleased himself by

thinking that he writ like a gentleman if he did not always succeed as a

wit.

Of the famous wits of that age, who have rendered Queen Anne's reign

illustrious, and whose works will be in all Englishmen's hands in ages

yet to come, Mr. Esmond saw many, but at public places chiefly; never

having a great intimacy with any of them, except with honest Dick Steele

and Mr. Addison, who parted company with Esmond, however, when that

gentleman became a declared Tory, and lived on close terms with the

leading persons of that party. Addison kept himself to a few friends,

and very rarely opened himself except in their company. A man more

upright and conscientious than he it was not possible to find in public

life, and one whose conversation was so various, easy, and delightful.

Writing now in my mature years, I own that I think Addison's politics

were the right, and were my time to come over again, I would be a Whig

in England and not a Tory; but with people that take a side in politics,

'tis men rather than principles that commonly bind them. A kindness or a

slight puts a man under one flag or the other, and he marches with it

to the end of the campaign. Esmond's master in war was injured by

Marlborough, and hated him: and the lieutenant fought the quarrels of

his leader. Webb coming to London was used as a weapon by Marlborough's

enemies (and true steel he was, that honest chief); nor was his

aide-de-camp, Mr. Esmond, an unfaithful or unworthy partisan. 'Tis

strange here, and on a foreign soil, and in a land that is independent

in all but the name, (for that the North American colonies shall remain

dependants on yonder little island for twenty years more, I never can

think,) to remember how the nation at home seemed to give itself up to

the domination of one or other aristocratic party, and took a Hanoverian

king, or a French one, according as either prevailed. And while the

Tories, the October club gentlemen, the High Church parsons that held by

the Church of England, were for having a Papist king, for whom many of

their Scottish and English leaders, firm churchmen all, laid down their

lives with admirable loyalty and devotion; they were governed by men who

had notoriously no religion at all, but used it as they would use any

opinion for the purpose of forwarding their own ambition. The Whigs, on

the other hand, who professed attachment to religion and liberty too,

were compelled to send to Holland or Hanover for a monarch around

whom they could rally. A strange series of compromises is that English

History; compromise of principle, compromise of party, compromise of

worship! The lovers of English freedom and independence submitted their

religious consciences to an Act of Parliament; could not consolidate

their liberty without sending to Zell or the Hague for a king to live

under; and could not find amongst the proudest people in the world a

man speaking their own language, and understanding their laws, to govern

them. The Tory and High Church patriots were ready to die in defence of

a Papist family that had sold us to France; the great Whig nobles, the

sturdy republican recusants who had cut off Charles Stuart's head for

treason, were fain to accept a king whose title came to him through a

royal grandmother, whose own royal grandmother's head had fallen under

Queen Bess's hatchet. And our proud English nobles sent to a petty

German town for a monarch to come and reign in London and our prelates

kissed the ugly hands of his Dutch mistresses, and thought it no

dishonor. In England you can but belong to one party or t'other, and you

take the house you live in with all its encumbrances, its retainers, its

antique discomforts, and ruins even; you patch up, but you never build

up anew. Will we of the new world submit much longer, even nominally,

to this ancient British superstition? There are signs of the times which

make me think that ere long we shall care as little about King George

here, and peers temporal and peers spiritual, as we do for King Canute

or the Druids.

This chapter began about the wits, my grandson may say, and hath

wandered very far from their company. The pleasantest of the wits I

knew were the Doctors Garth and Arbuthnot, and Mr. Gay, the author of

“Trivia,” the most charming kind soul that ever laughed at a joke or

cracked a bottle. Mr. Prior I saw, and he was the earthen pot swimming

with the pots of brass down the stream, and always and justly frightened

lest he should break in the voyage. I met him both at London and Paris,

where he was performing piteous congees to the Duke of Shrewsbury, not

having courage to support the dignity which his undeniable genius and

talent had won him, and writing coaxing letters to Secretary St. John,

and thinking about his plate and his place, and what on earth should

become of him should his party go out. The famous Mr. Congreve I saw

a dozen of times at Button's, a splendid wreck of a man, magnificently

attired, and though gouty, and almost blind, bearing a brave face

against fortune.

The great Mr. Pope (of whose prodigious genius I have no words to

express my admiration) was quite a puny lad at this time, appearing

seldom in public places. There were hundreds of men, wits, and pretty

fellows frequenting the theatres and coffee-houses of that day--whom

“nunc perscribere longum est.” Indeed I think the most brilliant of that

sort I ever saw was not till fifteen years afterwards, when I paid my

last visit in England, and met young Harry Fielding, son of the Fielding

that served in Spain and afterwards in Flanders with us, and who for fun

and humor seemed to top them all. As for the famous Dr. Swift, I can say

of him, “Vidi tantum.” He was in London all these years up to the death

of the Queen; and in a hundred public places where I saw him, but no

more; he never missed Court of a Sunday, where once or twice he was

pointed out to your grandfather. He would have sought me out eagerly

enough had I been a great man with a title to my name, or a star on my

coat. At Court the Doctor had no eyes but for the very greatest. Lord

Treasurer and St. John used to call him Jonathan, and they paid him

with this cheap coin for the service they took of him. He writ their

lampoons, fought their enemies, flogged and bullied in their service,

and it must be owned with a consummate skill and fierceness. 'Tis said

he hath lost his intellect now, and forgotten his wrongs and his rage

against mankind. I have always thought of him and of Marlborough as the

two greatest men of that age. I have read his books (who doth not know

them?) here in our calm woods, and imagine a giant to myself as I think

of him, a lonely fallen Prometheus, groaning as the vulture tears him.

Prometheus I saw, but when first I ever had any words with him, the

giant stepped out of a sedan chair in the Poultry, whither he had come

with a tipsy Irish servant parading before him, who announced him,

bawling out his Reverence's name, whilst his master below was as yet

haggling with the chairman. I disliked this Mr. Swift, and heard many a

story about him, of his conduct to men, and his words to women. He could

flatter the great as much as he could bully the weak; and Mr. Esmond,

being younger and hotter in that day than now, was determined, should he

ever meet this dragon, not to run away from his teeth and his fire.

Men have all sorts of motives which carry them onwards in life, and are

driven into acts of desperation, or it may be of distinction, from a

hundred different causes. There was one comrade of Esmond's, an honest

little Irish lieutenant of Handyside's, who owed so much money to a camp

sutler, that he began to make love to the man's daughter, intending to

pay his debt that way; and at the battle of Malplaquet, flying away from

the debt and lady too, he rushed so desperately on the French lines,

that he got his company; and came a captain out of the action, and had

to marry the sutler's daughter after all, who brought him his cancelled

debt to her father as poor Roger's fortune. To run out of the reach of

bill and marriage, he ran on the enemy's pikes; and as these did not

kill him he was thrown back upon t'other horn of his dilemma. Our great

Duke at the same battle was fighting, not the French, but the Tories in

England; and risking his life and the army's, not for his country but

for his pay and places; and for fear of his wife at home, that only

being in life whom he dreaded. I have asked about men in my own company,

(new drafts of poor country boys were perpetually coming over to us

during the wars, and brought from the ploughshare to the sword,) and

found that a half of them under the flags were driven thither on account

of a woman: one fellow was jilted by his mistress and took the shilling

in despair; another jilted the girl, and fled from her and the parish

to the tents where the law could not disturb him. Why go on

particularizing? What can the sons of Adam and Eve expect, but to

continue in that course of love and trouble their father and mother set

out on? Oh, my grandson! I am drawing nigh to the end of that period of

my history, when I was acquainted with the great world of England and

Europe; my years are past the Hebrew poet's limit, and I say unto thee,

all my troubles and joys too, for that matter, have come from a woman;

as thine will when thy destined course begins. 'Twas a woman that made a

soldier of me, that set me intriguing afterwards; I believe I would have

spun smocks for her had she so bidden me; what strength I had in my head

I would have given her; hath not every man in his degree had his Omphale

and Delilah? Mine befooled me on the banks of the Thames, and in dear

old England; thou mayest find thine own by Rappahannock.

To please that woman then I tried to distinguish myself as a soldier,

and afterwards as a wit and a politician; as to please another I would

have put on a black cassock and a pair of bands, and had done so but

that a superior fate intervened to defeat that project. And I say, I

think the world is like Captain Esmond's company I spoke of anon;

and could you see every man's career in life, you would find a woman

clogging him; or clinging round his march and stopping him; or cheering

him and goading him: or beckoning him out of her chariot, so that he

goes up to her, and leaves the race to be run without him or bringing

him the apple, and saying “Eat;” or fetching him the daggers and

whispering “Kill! yonder lies Duncan, and a crown, and an opportunity.”