MY BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTAGE.
Dolce sentier,
Colle, che mi piacesti,
Ov'ancor per usanza amor mi mena!
PETRARCH.
Sweet, secluded, shady Saxonholme! I doubt if our whole England contains
another hamlet so quaint, so picturesquely irregular, so thoroughly
national in all its rustic characteristics. It lies in a warm hollow
environed by hills. Woods, parks and young plantations clothe every
height and slope for miles around, whilst here and there, peeping down
through green vistas, or towering above undulating seas of summer
foliage, stands many a fine old country mansion, turreted and gabled,
and built of that warm red brick that seems to hold the light of the
sunset long after it has faded from the rest of the landscape. A silver
thread of streamlet, swift but shallow, runs noisily through the meadows
beside the town and loses itself in the Chad, about a mile and a half
farther eastward. Many a picturesque old wooden bridge, many a foaming
weir and ruinous water-mill with weedy wheel, may be found scattered up
and down the wooded banks of this little river Chad; while to the brook,
which we call the Gipstream, attaches a vague tradition of trout.
The hamlet itself is clean and old-fashioned, consisting of one long,
straggling street, and a few tributary lanes and passages. The houses
some few years back were mostly long and low-fronted, with projecting
upper stories, and diamond-paned bay-windows bowered in with myrtle and
clematis; but modern improvements have done much of late to sweep away
these antique tenements, and a fine new suburb of Italian and Gothic
villas has sprung up, between the town and the railway station. Besides
this, we have a new church in the mediæval style, rich in gilding and
colors and thirteenth-century brass-work; and a new cemetery, laid out
like a pleasure-garden; and a new school-house, where the children are
taught upon a system with a foreign name; and a Mechanics' Institute,
where London professors come down at long intervals to expound popular
science, and where agriculturists meet to discuss popular grievances.
At the other extremity of the town, down by Girdlestone Grange, an old
moated residence where the squire's family have resided these four
centuries past, we are full fifty years behind our modern neighbors.
Here stands our famous old "King's-head Inn," a well-known place of
resort so early as the reign of Elizabeth. The great oak beside the
porch is as old as the house itself; and on the windows of a little
disused parlor overlooking the garden may still be seen the names of
Sedley, Rochester and other wits of the Restoration. They scrawled those
autographs after dinner, most likely, with their diamond rings, and went
reeling afterwards, arm-in-arm, along the village street, singing and
swearing, and eager for adventures--as gentlemen were wont to be in
those famous old times when they drank the king's health more freely
than was good for their own.
Not far from the "King's Head," and almost hidden by the trees which
divide it from the road, stands an ancient charitable institution called
the College--quadrangular, mullion-windowed, many-gabled, and colonized
by some twenty aged people of both sexes. At the back of the college,
adjoining a space of waste ground and some ruined cloisters, lies the
churchyard, in the midst of which, surrounded by solemn yews and
mouldering tombs, stands the Priory Church. It is a rare old church,
founded, according to the county history, in the reign of Edward the
Confessor, and entered with a full description in Domesday Book. Its
sculptured monuments and precious brasses, its Norman crypt, carved
stalls and tattered banners drooping over faded scutcheons, tell all of
generations long gone by, of noble families extinct, of gallant deeds
forgotten, of knights and ladies remembered only by the names above
their graves. Amongst these, some two or three modest tablets record the
passing away of several generations of my own predecessors--obscure
professional men for the most part, of whom some few became soldiers and
died abroad.
In close proximity to the church stands the vicarage, once the Priory; a
quaint old rambling building, surrounded by magnificent old trees. Here
for long centuries, a tribe of rooks have held undisputed possession,
filling the boughs with their nests and the air with their voices, and,
like genuine lords of the soil, descending at their own grave will and
pleasure upon the adjacent lands.
Picturesque and mediæval as all these old buildings and old associations
help to make us, we of Saxonholme pretend to something more. We claim to
be, not only picturesque but historic. Nay, more than this--we are
classical. WE WERE FOUNDED BY THE ROMANS. A great Roman road, well known
to antiquaries, passed transversely through the old churchyard. Roman
coins and relics, and fragments of tesselated pavement, have been found
in and about the town. Roman camps may be traced on most of the heights
around. Above all, we are said to be indebted to the Romans for that
inestimable breed of poultry in right of which we have for years carried
off the leading prizes at every poultry-show in the county, and have
even been enabled to make head against the exaggerated pretensions of
modern Cochin-China interlopers.
Such, briefly sketched, is my native Saxonholme. Born beneath the shade
of its towering trees and overhanging eaves, brought up to reverence its
antiquities, and educated in the love of its natural beauties, what
wonder that I cling to it with every fibre of my heart, and even when
affecting to smile at my own fond prejudice, continue to believe it the
loveliest peacefulest nook in rural England?
My father's name was John Arbuthnot. Sprung from the Arbuthnots of
Montrose, we claim to derive from a common ancestor with the celebrated
author of "Martinus Scriblerus." Indeed, the first of our name who
settled at Saxonholme was one James Arbuthnot, son to a certain
nonjuring parson Arbuthnot, who lived and died abroad, and was own
brother to that famous wit, physician and courtier whose genius, my
father was wont to say, conferred a higher distinction upon our branch
of the family than did those Royal Letters-Patent whereby the elder
stock was ennobled by His most Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth,
on the occasion of his visit to Edinburgh in 1823. From this James
Arbuthnot (who, being born and bred at St. Omer, and married, moreover,
to a French wife, was himself half a Frenchman) we Saxonholme Arbuthnots
were the direct descendants.
Our French ancestress, according to the family tradition, was of no very
exalted origin, being in fact the only daughter and heiress of one
Monsieur Tartine, Perruquier in chief at the Court of Versailles. But
what this lady wanted in birth, she made up in fortune, and the modest
estate which her husband purchased with her dowry came down to us
unimpaired through five generations. In the substantial and somewhat
foreign-looking red-brick house which he built (also, doubtless, with
Madame's Louis d'ors) we, his successors, had lived and died ever since.
His portrait, together with the portraits of his wife, son, and
grandson, hung on the dining-room walls; and of the quaint old
spindle-legged chairs and tables that had adorned our best rooms from
time immemorial, some were supposed to date as far back as the first
founding and furnishing of the house.
It is almost needless to say that the son of the non-juror and his
immediate posterity were staunch Jacobites, one and all. I am not aware
that they ever risked or suffered anything for the cause; but they were
not therefore the less vehement. Many were the signs and tokens of that
dead-and-gone political faith which these loyal Arbuthnots left behind
them. In the bed-rooms there hung prints of King James the Second at the
Battle of the Boyne; of the Royal Martyr with his plumed hat, lace
collar, and melancholy fatal face; of the Old and Young Pretenders; of
the Princess Louisa Teresia, and of the Cardinal York. In the library
were to be found all kinds of books relating to the career of that
unhappy family: "Ye Tragicall History of ye Stuarts, 1697;" "Memoirs of
King James II., writ by his own hand;" "La Stuartide," an unfinished
epic in the French language by one Jean de Schelandre; "The Fate of
Majesty exemplified in the barbarous and disloyal treatment (by
traitorous and undutiful subjects) of the Kings and Queens of the Royal
House of Stuart," genealogies of the Stuarts in English, French and
Latin; a fine copy of "Eikon Basilike," bound in old red morocco, with
the royal arms stamped upon the cover; and many other volumes on the
same subject, the names of which (although as a boy I was wont to pore
over their contents with profound awe and sympathy) I have now for the
most part forgotten.
Most persons, I suppose, have observed how the example of a successful
ancestor is apt to determine the pursuits of his descendants down to the
third and fourth generations, inclining the lads of this house to the
sea, and of that to the bar, according as the great man of the family
achieved his honors on shipboard, or climbed his way to the woolsack.
The Arbuthnots offered no exception to this very natural law of
selection. They could not help remembering how the famous doctor had
excelled in literature as in medicine; how he had been not only
Physician in Ordinary to Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark, but a
satirist and pamphleteer, a wit and the friend of wits--of such wits as
Pope and Swift, Harley and Bolingbroke. Hence they took, as it were
instinctively, to physic and the _belles lettres_, and were never
without a doctor or an author in the family.
My father, however, like the great Martinus Scriblerus, was both doctor
and author. And he was a John Arbuthnot. And to carry the resemblance
still further, he was gifted with a vein of rough epigrammatic humor, in
which it pleased his independence to indulge without much respect of
persons, times, or places. His tongue, indeed, cost him some friends and
gained him some enemies; but I am not sure that it diminished his
popularity as a physician. People compared him to Abernethy, whereby he
was secretly flattered. Some even went so far as to argue that only a
very clever man could afford to be a bear; and I must say that he pushed
this conclusion to its farthest limit, showing his temper alike to rich
and poor upon no provocation whatever. He cared little, to be sure, for
his connection. He loved the profession theoretically, and from a
scientific point of view; but he disliked the drudgery of country
practice, and stood in no need of its hardly-earned profits. Yet he was
a man who so loved to indulge his humor, no matter at what cost, that I
doubt whether he would have been more courteous had his bread depended
on it. As it was, he practised and grumbled, snarled at his patients,
quarrelled with the rich, bestowed his time and money liberally upon the
poor, and amused his leisure by writing for a variety of scientific
periodicals, both English and foreign.
Our home stood at the corner of a lane towards the eastern extremity of
the town, commanding a view of the Squire's Park, and a glimpse of the
mill-pool and meadows in the valley beyond. This lane led up to
Barnard's Green, a breezy space of high, uneven ground dedicated to
fairs, cricket matches, and travelling circuses, whence the noisy music
of brass bands, and the echoes of alternate laughter and applause, were
wafted past our windows in the summer evenings. We had a large garden at
the back, and a stable up the lane; and though the house was but one
story in height, it covered a considerable space of ground, and
contained more rooms than we ever had occasion to use. Thus it happened
that since my mother's death, which took place when I was a very little
boy, many doors on the upper floor were kept locked, to the undue
development of my natural inquisitiveness by day, and my mortal terror
when sent to bed at night. In one of these her portrait still hung above
the mantelpiece, and her harp stood in its accustomed corner. In
another, which was once her bedroom, everything was left as in her
lifetime, her clothes yet hanging in the wardrobe, her dressing-case
standing upon the toilet, her favorite book upon the table beside the
bed. These things, told to me by the servants with much mystery, took a
powerful hold upon my childish imagination. I trembled as I passed the
closed doors at dusk, and listened fearfully outside when daylight gave
me courage to linger near them. Something of my mother's presence, I
fancied, must yet dwell within--something in her shape still wander from
room to room in the dim moonlight, and echo back the sighing of the
night winds. Alas! I could not remember her. Now and then, as if
recalled by a dream, some broken and shadowy images of a pale face and a
slender hand floated vaguely through my mind; but faded even as I strove
to realize them. Sometimes, too, when I was falling off to sleep in my
little bed, or making out pictures in the fire on a winter evening,
strange fragments of old rhymes seemed to come back upon me, mingled
with the tones of a soft voice and the haunting of a long-forgotten
melody. But these, after all, were yearnings more of the heart than
the memory:--
"I felt a mother-want about the world.
And still went seeking."
To return to my description of my early home:--the two rooms on either
side of the hall, facing the road, were appropriated by my father for
his surgery and consulting-room; while the two corresponding rooms at
the back were fitted up as our general reception-room, and my father's
bed-room. In the former of these, and in the weedy old garden upon which
it opened, were passed all the days of my boyhood.
It was my father's good-will and pleasure to undertake the sole charge
of my education. Fain would I have gone like other lads of my age to
public school and college; but on this point, as on most others, he was
inflexible. Himself an obscure physician in a remote country town, he
brought me up with no other view than to be his own successor. The
profession was not to my liking. Somewhat contemplative and nervous by
nature, there were few pursuits for which I was less fitted. I knew
this, but dared not oppose him. Loving study for its own sake, and
trusting to the future for some lucky turn of destiny, I yielded to that
which seemed inevitable, and strove to make the best of it.
Thus it came to pass that I lived a quiet, hard-working home life, while
other boys of my age were going through the joyous experience of school,
and chose my companions from the dusty shelves of some three or four
gigantic book-cases, instead of from the class and the playground. Not
that I regret it. I believe, on the contrary, that a boy may have worse
companions than books and busts, employments less healthy than the study
of anatomy, and amusements more pernicious than Shakespeare and Horace.
Thank Heaven! I escaped all such; and if, as I have been told, my
boyhood was unboyish, and my youth prematurely cultivated, I am content
to have been spared the dangers in exchange for the pleasures of a
public school.
I do not, however, pretend to say that I did not sometimes pine for the
recreations common to my age. Well do I remember the manifold
attractions of Barnard's Green. What longing glances I used to steal
towards the boisterous cricketers, when going gravely forth upon a
botanical walk with my father! With what eager curiosity have I not
lingered many a time before the entrance to a forbidden booth, and
scanned the scenic advertisement of a travelling show! Alas! how the
charms of study paled before those intervals of brief but bitter
temptation! What, then, was pathology compared to the pig-faced lady, or
the Materia Medica to Smith's Mexican Circus, patronized by all the
sovereigns of Europe? But my father was inexorable. He held that such
places were, to use his own words, "opened by swindlers for the ruin of
fools," and from one never-to-be-forgotten hour, when he caught me in
the very act of taking out my penny-worth at a portable peep-show, he
bound me over by a solemn promise (sealed by a whipping) never to repeat
the offence under any provocation or pretext whatsoever. I was a tiny
fellow in pinafores when this happened, but having once pledged my word,
I kept it faithfully through all the studious years that lay between six
and sixteen.
At sixteen an immense crisis occurred in my life. I fell in love. I had
been in love several times before--chiefly with the elder pupils at the
Miss Andrews' establishment; and once (but that was when I was very
young indeed) with the cook. This, however, was a much more romantic and
desperate affair. The lady was a Columbine by profession, and as
beautiful as an angel. She came down to our neighborhood with a
strolling company, and performed every evening, in a temporary theatre
on the green, for nearly three weeks. I used to steal out after dinner
when my father was taking his nap, and run the whole way, that I might
be in time to see the object of my adoration walking up and down the
platform outside the booth before the performances commenced. This
incomparable creature wore a blue petticoat spangled with tinfoil, and a
wreath of faded poppies. Her age might have been about forty. I thought
her the loveliest of created beings. I wrote sonnets to her--dozens of
them--intending to leave them at the theatre door, but never finding the
courage to do it. I made up bouquets for her, over and over again,
chosen from the best flowers in our neglected garden; but invariably
with the same result. I hated the harlequin who presumed to put his arm
about her waist. I envied the clown, whom she condescended to address as
Mr. Merriman. In short, I was so desperately in love that I even tried
to lie awake at night and lose my appetite; but, I am ashamed to own,
failed signally in both endeavors.
At length I wrote to her. I can even now recall passages out of that
passionate epistle. I well remember how it took me a whole morning to
write it; how I crammed it with quotations from Horace; and how I fondly
compared her to most of the mythological divinities. I then copied it
out on pale pink paper, folded it in the form of a heart, and directed
it to Miss Angelina Lascelles, and left it, about dusk, with the
money-taker at the pit door. I signed myself, if I remember rightly,
Pyramus. What would I not have given that evening to pay my sixpence
like the rest of the audience, and feast my eyes upon her from some
obscure corner! What would I not have given to add my quota to
the applause!
I could hardly sleep that night; I could hardly read or write, or eat my
breakfast the next morning, for thinking of my letter and its probable
effect. It never once occurred to me that my Angelina might possibly
find it difficult to construe Horace. Towards evening, I escaped again,
and flew to Barnard's Green. It wanted nearly an hour to the time of
performance; but the tuning of a violin was audible from within, and the
money-taker was already there with his pipe in his mouth and his hands
in his pockets. I had no courage to address that functionary; but I
lingered in his sight and sighed audibly, and wandered round and round
the canvas walls that hedged my divinity. Presently he took his pipe out
of, his mouth and his hands out of his pockets; surveyed me deliberately
from head to foot, and said:--
"Hollo there! aint you the party that brought a three-cornered letter
here last evening!"
I owned it, falteringly.
He lifted a fold in the canvas, and gave me a gentle shove between the
shoulders.
"Then you're to go in," said he, shortly. "She's there, somewhere.
You're sure to find her."
The canvas dropped behind me, and I found myself inside. My heart beat
so fast that I could scarcely breathe. The booth was almost dark; the
curtain was down; and a gentleman with striped legs was lighting the
footlamps. On the front pit bench next the orchestra, discussing a plate
of bread and meat and the contents of a brown jug, sat a stout man in
shirt-sleeves and a woman in a cotton gown. The woman rose as I made my
appearance, and asked, civilly enough, whom I pleased to want.
I stammered the name of Miss Angelina Lascelles.
"Miss Lascelles!" she repeated. "I am Miss Lascelles," Then, looking at
me more narrowly, "I suppose," she added, "you are the little boy that
brought the letter?"
The little boy that brought the letter! Gracious heavens! And this
middle-aged woman in a cotton gown--was she the Angelina of my dreams!
The booth went round with me, and the lights danced before my eyes.
"If you have come for an answer," she continued, "you may just say to
your Mr. Pyramid that I am a respectable married woman, and he ought to
be ashamed of himself--and, as for his letter, I never read such a heap
of nonsense in my life! There, you can go out by the way you came in,
and if you take my advice, you won't come back again!"
How I looked, what I said, how I made my exit, whether the doorkeeper
spoke to me as I passed, I have no idea to this day. I only know that I
flung myself on the dewy grass under a great tree in the first field I
came to, and shed tears of such shame, disappointment, and wounded
pride, as my eyes had never known before. She had called me a little
boy, and my letter a heap of nonsense! She was elderly--she was
ignorant--she was married! I had been a fool; but that knowledge came
too late, and was not consolatory.
By-and-by, while I was yet sobbing and disconsolate, I heard the
drumming and fifing which heralded the appearance of the _Corps
Dramatique_ on the outer platform. I resolved to see her for the last
time. I pulled my hat over my eyes, went back to the Green, and mingled
with the crowd outside the booth. It was growing dusk. I made my way to
the foot of the ladder, and observed her narrowly. I saw that her ankles
were thick, and her elbows red. The illusion was all over. The spangles
had lost their lustre, and the poppies their glow. I no longer hated the
harlequin, or envied the clown, or felt anything but mortification at my
own folly.
"Miss Angelina Lascelles, indeed!" I said to myself, as I sauntered
moodily home. "Pshaw! I shouldn't wonder if her name was Snooks!"