It is a terrible thing when youth--the time of sport and enjoyment,
the period which nature has set apart for acquiring knowledge, and
power, and expansion, and for tasting all the multitude of sweet and
magnificent things which crowd the creation, in their first freshness
and with the zest of novelty--is clouded with storms or drenched with
tears. It is not so terrible by any means when the mere ills of
fortune afflict us; for they are light things to the buoyancy of
youth, and are soon thrown off by the heart which has not learned the
foresight of fresh sorrows. The body habituates itself more easily to
anything than the mind, and privations twice or thrice endured are
privations no longer. But it is a terrible thing, indeed, when--in
those warm days of youth when the heart is all affection, the mind
longing for thrilling sympathies, the soul eager to love and be
beloved--the faults, the vices, or the circumstances of others cut us
off from those sweet natural ties with which nature, as with a wreath
of flowers, has garlanded our early days; when we have either lost and
regret, or known but to contemn, the kindred whose veins flow with the
same blood as our own, or the parents who gave us being.
There are few situations more solitary, more painful, more moving,
than that of an orphan. I remember a schoolfellow who had many friends
who were kind to him and fond of him: but he said to me one day, in
speaking of his holiday sports, "I, you know, have no father or
mother." And there was a look of thoughtful melancholy in his face,
and a tone of desolation in his voice, which struck me strangely, even
young as I then was. But that situation, lonely as it is, deprived of
all the tender and consoling associations of kindred feeling, is
bright and cheerful, gay and happy, compared with that in which
Charles Tyrrell commenced his career on earth.
He was as beautiful a child as ever was seen; strong vigorous, and
healthy; with his mother's fair complexion, a fine, intelligent
countenance, even in infancy and a smile of peculiar sweetness. His
father was fond of him as long as he continued an infant. He was proud
of him, I was going to say, but I believe the proper term would be,
conceited of him. Everybody admired the child, and expressed their
admiration, and, by some strange complication of ideas, the admiration
seemed to the father reflected back upon himself. The child amused him
too, and interested him, and for a certain time he seemed to derive a
pleasure from caressing it, which softened his manner, if not his
feelings.
Hard must be the heart and selfish the mind which is not softened and
expanded by communion with sweet infancy. The innocence of childhood
is the tenderest, and not the least potent remonstrance against the
vices and the errors of grown man, if he would but listen to the
lesson and take it to his heart. Seldom, too seldom, do we do so; and
I cannot say that it was the case with Sir Francis Tyrrell; but still
he could not undergo that influence without losing something of his
harshness from the gentle presence of the child.
To Lady Tyrrell the birth of her infant was a renewal of hope and a
solid store of happiness. She had a fresh object before her, a new
motive for exertion and endurance; and as she gazed upon his infant
face, she promised herself, for his sake, to bear all and to strive
for all. Her health, however, gave way under constant irritation; and
as the boy grew up, his father lost that pride in him which he had
before experienced; and though he had fondled the infant, he chided
and railed at the child; while Lady Tyrrell, who was, perhaps,
inclined to be a little over-indulgent to her only son, roused herself
to defend him from the bitter and unmerited reproaches of his father,
when, perhaps, in her own case, she might have borne those reproaches
in silence.
Every point of his education became a subject of contention. While a
child, he had been to Sir Francis a mere plaything; but the moment
that his reason began to expand, his father looked upon him as a new
object of tyranny, and Lady Tyrrell would often sit and gaze with
melancholy eyes upon her son's face, thinking of his future fate, and
sorrowing, from the sad experience of her own, over the long and
miserable years to be passed under the sway of such a man as his
father. She exerted herself to conquer even her own affection for the
child, and the selfishness of that affection. In order as much to
remove him from home, and to give him the blessing of other society,
as to ensure him a good education, she determined, if possible, to
send him to school, though she thereby lost the comfort of his
presence, and the continual solace and relief of all his sports, and
words, and looks.
Sir Francis, however, on the contrary, did not choose to sacrifice his
own pleasure. He did not choose to lose the new object of tyranny
which he had acquired. He declared he intended to have a tutor in the
house when his son was old enough to learn anything; and the very wish
which his wife expressed, that the boy should be sent to school, only
hardened his determination to keep him at home. He had no confidence
in virtue or in sincerity of any kind; and although he knew that Lady
Tyrrell was, when he married her, as frank and open as the day, he
still could not persuade himself that she acted towards him without
guile.
It was this error which, in the present instance, ultimately produced
the result that she wished. He one day heard her say, by chance, while
stooping over her boy, that it would break her heart to part with him;
and a suspicion crossed his mind that she had proposed to send the
child to school for the purpose of inducing him to pursue exactly the
opposite course. The very thought was, indeed, but little
complimentary to his own disposition, and arose from an internal
consciousness (the full force of which he would not acknowledge) of
the contradictory and mulish character of his own mind. His
determination, however, was fixed by a scene of altercation with the
boy himself, whom he had punished severely for doing something that
his mother had directed him to do, but whom he could induce by no
means, neither by anger nor by blows, to acknowledge that he had done
wrong in the slightest degree. It was determined, in consequence, that
he should go to school, and to school he was accordingly sent; but,
unfortunately, not to a school which was at all likely to correct the
constitutional errors of his disposition, or to afford to his mind
that strong moral tone which might have served to counteract all the
evils with which his mind became familiarized at home.
As it is not our purpose to trace him through the uninteresting
details of a school life, we shall content ourselves with showing what
was his natural disposition; and though he is the person destined to
act the most prominent part in these pages, we shall in no degree
conceal that which was evil in his nature. His first great fault,
then, was a part of his inheritance, the violent passion of his
father. Even when a child, he would throw himself down in fits of
ungovernable anger, and lie writhing on the ground, as if in
convulsions, till the fit went off. He had much of the talent, too, of
his father; perhaps; indeed, more, and certainly possessed genius of a
higher order; for the qualities of his mind received a much greater
degree of expansion from being united with superior qualities of the
heart. There was, however, a frequent similarity to be observed
between the turn and form of his ideas and those of Sir Francis. In
his childhood, even, he had been known unconsciously to utter many a
keen and cutting phrase, which brought upon the countenance of his
father a sarcastic smile, in which was strangely blended an expression
of contempt and bitterness with that of approbation and pleasure.
The boy, indeed, would have been altogether what his nurses called the
"moral of his father," with a finer person and much greater corporeal
powers, had it not been that his mother's nature was intimately
mingled with the whole, and counterbalanced many faults, if it did not
counteract them. Under her tuition he acquired a love of truth which
never left him through life; but he had by nature a frank
straightforwardness of character which was very winning. One saw, even
in his very infancy and childhood, that the heart acted before the
mind had been taught to act; and with a spirit which was utterly
insusceptible of fear, and a body not very sensitive of suffering,
some of his very good qualities might have led him to wound the
feelings of others much more frequently than he did, if he had not
possessed a natural tenderness and kindness of heart, which led him,
with a sort of unerring instinct, to perceive the points on which
others were vulnerable, and to spare them on those points, except when
moved by some fierce opposition or angry passion. He was also by
nature--and that, too, he derived from his mother--most affectionate.
That is to say, he did not attach himself to every one, or lightly. He
was not as the seed of the mistletoe or the moss, that fixes itself
upon everything wherever it lights, and grows there till it is torn
away. But he had within his heart the power of deep attachment;
strong, permanent, immoveable. He was not likely to form friendships
very easily, or to love often; but where he did love, he loved wholly
and for ever.
The first instance in which these qualities were put to the proof, was
in choosing between his father and his mother. We may call it
choosing, though, indeed, there was no choice; for he could not but
love the one, and it was very easy not to love the other. On that
mother, then, fixed the whole strength of his infant affection, and it
grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength. Everything
that occurred--the gentle warnings and reproaches which she sometimes
forced herself to make when he behaved ill; her ill health; her deep
melancholy; her conduct to her husband, and his conduct to her, all
made him cling the more closely to her--made him love her and respect
her the more.
The next instance in which he was tried was in the choice of a friend
among his schoolfellows. They were almost all inferior to himself; not
in point of birth indeed, for there were some superior in that
respect, but in talent, and corporeal as well as mental qualities;
besides a great and marked inferiority in that most inestimable of all
qualities, energy of character, which he possessed in an overwhelming
degree. The school contained a variety of dispositions, shades and
differences of every kind of mind; but he chose, as his companion and
his friend, a lad somewhat older than himself, but much less in
stature, inferior in station, not remarkable for any brilliant
qualities, but of a calm, quiet, and thoughtful disposition, giving
occasionally signs of dormant talent and penetration, which no one had
been at the pains to call forth, and of a determination of purpose and
constancy of character which is one of the greatest elements of
success in life. His health was by no means vigorous, and his
corporeal powers small; so that, in the contest with which we open out
the struggle of life in our schoolboy days, he was generally
vanquished, and, indeed, was somewhat ill-treated by stronger youths
than himself, till Charles Tyrrell appeared in the school, and at once
took the part of his defender.
Everard Morrison was grateful to him; admired the corporeal powers and
vigour which he did not himself possess, and still more admired the
brilliant and remarkable talent displayed by his new friend, though
those talents were of a character as strikingly opposite to his own as
Tyrrell's vigour to his feebleness. Even the wild and intemperate
bursts of passion to which the new scholar frequently gave way, the
rash and remorseless conduct which he displayed under those
circumstances, seemed to afford him matter for thought and
speculation, ay, and even admiration likewise; and when, on one
occasion, some extraordinary act of violence had called down upon the
head of the wealthy baronet's son a rare and reluctant punishment from
the master, Everard Morrison stood forward as his defender, and with
great ingenuity and talent endeavoured to show that the provocation
which Charles Tyrrell had received was sufficient to justify the acts
he had committed; and in boyish language, but with keen penetration,
he pointed out that the violent passions of his friend were seldom, if
ever, excited by any petty injury or offence solely to himself, but
rather by what was mean, pitiful, unjust, or tyrannical in others.
Their friendship lasted during the whole time that they were at school
together; but at length, on the same vacation, Morrison was removed to
take a clerk's place in the house of his father, a country attorney,
and Charles Tyrrell was sent to Eton to undergo the needful discipline
of a public school. They separated with a thousand boyish professions
of friendship, and consoled themselves with the idea that the county
town in which Morrison's father made his abode was only seven miles
distant from the seat of Sir Francis Tyrrell, called Harbury Park, so
that they could often meet during the holidays. They promised to do so
continually. But such promises, made in the guileless days of youth,
are rapidly forgotten. The grasp of our affection expands with the
grasp of our intellects, and the little things that we loved in
infancy and youth but too often slip away from us as our mind
enlarges, like sand through the fingers of a giant. It remains to be
inquired, in the present instance, which it was that forgot the other.
It certainly was not Charles Tyrrell; for his first expedition on his
midsummer return from Eton was to pay a visit to Everard Morrison: and
again and again he walked or rode over to the county town to see his
old companion. Morrison always received him gladly to all appearance;
but, notwithstanding all the reiterated invitations of his
schoolfellow, he never visited Harbury Park but once. He showed, in
short, no disposition to cultivate the acquaintance that he had formed
at school.
Charles Tyrrell saw this, and was hurt, but he said nothing, and
persevered for some time; but finding perseverance produced no effect,
he gradually ceased to seek for Everard Morrison's closer friendship.
But his peculiar tenacity of regard displayed itself in this instance
also. Although he was hurt and offended, he gave way to no anger; he
loved Everard Morrison still, and he did not cease to love him,
although he saw him but rarely, and then under some restraint.
His life at Eton we shall not inquire into, for it was exactly the
life of every person so situated, or with variations of no importance.
Neither is there much to be told in the detached periods of his
holiday residence at home; at least, not much which the reader may not
divine without being told.
Age seemed to squeeze out the last drop of honey from his father's
nature, and to leave all the bitter behind. His conduct to Lady
Tyrrell would not, perhaps, in any court established for the purpose
of dispensing justice or injustice, as the case may be, have been
pronounced cruelty, for such courts weigh nothing but that which
affects immediately the body; and the wounds, ay, or even the death
inflicted through the mind, are left to the judgment of another world.
Sir Francis Tyrrell showed no personal violence towards his wife. He
treated her apparently with ceremonious respect, except when the fit
of passion was upon him, and even then the weapon that he used against
her was but the tongue.
With him, however, that weapon was worse than a poisoned dagger,
inflicting wounds that could never be healed. Everything that was
stinging, everything that was venomous, everything that was scornful,
everything that was irritating, then poured from his lips without the
slightest remorse, and without the slightest regard to truth or
justice. There can be little doubt that he believed what he said at
the time; for his passion acted as a sort of magician in his own
breast, and conjured up chimeras, and phantoms, and demons which had
no existence but in the phantasmagoria of his own imagination.
These fits of passion, too, were of frequent, nay, of daily
occurrence; and his life with Lady Tyrrell, passed thus, either absent
from her when, in order to avoid him or on account of illness, she
confined herself to her own room; in cold and sneering ceremony when
there was no absolute cause of offence; or in violent and angry
dispute when she roused herself to resist or to deny.
The effect on her was such as might be expected. Ere she had reached
the age of forty, the buoyant health which she had once possessed, the
radiant yet gentle beauty, the cheerful and contented disposition,
were all gone; and she remained old before her time, with a heart
wrung and torn, and without one trace of that loveliness with which
Heaven had at first endued her.
The conduct of Sir Francis Tyrrell to his son was also such as might
be expected from his disposition. The first two or three days after
his return during the vacations, the natural feeling of a parent, of
course, had its way. He seemed glad to see him; fond of him; proud of
him; but the third day scarcely ever passed over without some sharp
rebuke, and the fourth never came to an end without one of those
violent scenes of altercation, which increased in frequency and
intensity as the boy grew up towards the man.
The power of reasoning, the will of acting for himself, which soon
became evident in Charles Tyrrell, though not exercised prematurely,
insolently, or obstinately, gave his father daily offence. It was with
the gradual work of nature that he quarrelled in reality, while he
affected to find fault with the conduct of his son. It was that he did
not choose to see one, over whom he still thought to keep extended the
rule of his iron rod, emancipated gradually, by the development of his
corporeal and mental powers, from the authority which is given to
parents for the protection and guidance of our immature years.
All this irritated him; but yet we do not mean to say that young
Charles Tyrrell entertained any great veneration for his father's
character, any love for his person, or any respect for his opinions:
but that he did not do so was not his fault. The treatment which he
daily experienced himself, and which he saw his mother undergo, had
put an end altogether to anything like love and veneration; and the
frequent variations of opinion which he daily beheld in his father;
the arguing one day on one side of the question, and the next on the
other side, as the passion of the moment dictated, left him, whether
he would or not, without anything like respect for his judgment.
He had learned at a public school to put some degree of restraint upon
himself, and to show some degree of respect, whether he felt it or
not, to older persons than himself. Thus, as far as he could, he
restrained himself and obeyed; but it was when his mother was
concerned that he forgot all deference towards his father. Then the
strong passions which he had inherited from him would burst forth;
then the indignation, which he smothered in his own case, would find a
voice; then the vehement energy of his nature would display itself,
employing all the talents he possessed to give fire and point to his
angry rejoinders.
Still, however, his father's experience, knowledge of the world,
learning, and skill in sarcasm, would furnish him with weapons which
almost drove the boy to madness; and more than once, during the first
two or three years after he had ventured to oppose his father in
regard to his mother, his anger ended in bitter and disappointed tears
at being overpowered by arguments and sarcasms which he felt to be
wrong and unjust.
After a time, however, as he approached the age of seventeen or
eighteen, instead of tears, he fell into deep silence, partly from
finding himself unable to express his indignation in words such as he
dared to use towards his father; partly from the desire to examine
intensely what could be the cause which prevented him from proving
himself right when he knew himself to be so. That silence, however,
was mortifying to Sir Francis: the tears he had liked very well to
see; but when once in the career of passion, he loved to provoke a
rejoinder, almost sure that it would throw his opponent open to some
new blow. Silence, therefore, was the most irritating thing that could
be opposed to him; and twice, when, in some of their violent
altercations, his son suddenly ceased and said no more, he was even
hurried on to strike him, although the period of life at which such an
act from a father to a son is at all justifiable had long passed.
On those two occasions, Charles Tyrrell put both his hands behind his
back, and clasped them tight together, till round each of the fingers,
as they pressed upon the flesh of the other hand, a deep white space
might be seen, showing the stern energy with which he clinched them
together. On both these occasions, too, after gazing, with a frowning
brow and a quivering lip, on his father's face for two or three
moments in deep silence, he rushed suddenly out of the house and
plunged into the woods around.