Henry Mackenzie, the son of an Edinburgh physician, was born
in that city on August 26, 1745. He was educated for the law,
and at the age of twenty became attorney for the crown in
Scotland. It was about this time that he began to devote his
attention to literature. His first story, "The Man of
Feeling," was published anonymously in 1771, and such was its
popularity that its authorship was claimed in many quarters.
Considered as a novel, "The Man of Feeling" is frankly
sentimental. Its fragmentary form was doubtlessly suggested by
Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," and the adventures of the hero
himself are reminiscent of those of Moses in "The Vicar of
Wakefield." But of these two masterpieces Mackenzie's work
falls short: it has none of Sterne's humour, nor has it any of
Goldsmith's subtle characterisation. "The Man of Feeling" was
followed in 1773 by "The Man of the World," and later by a
number of miscellaneous articles and stories. Mackenzie died
on January 14, 1831.
_I.--A Whimsical History_
I was out shooting with the curate on a burning First of September, and
we had stopped for a minute by an old hedge.
Looking round, I discovered for the first time a venerable pile, to
which the enclosure before us belonged. An air of melancholy hung about
it, and just at that instant I saw pass between the trees a young lady
with a book in her hand. The curate sat him down on the grass and told
me that was the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman of the name of
Walton, whom he had seen walking there more than once.
"Some time ago," he said, "one Harley lived there, a whimsical sort of
man, I am told. The greatest part of his history is still in my
possession. I once began to read it, but I soon grew weary of the task;
for, besides that the hand is intolerably bad, I never could find the
author in one strain for two chapters together. The way I came by it was
this. Some time ago a grave, oddish kind of a man boarded at a farmer's
in this parish. He left soon after I was made curate, and went nobody
knows whither; and in his room was found a bundle of papers, which was
brought to me by his landlord."
"I should be glad to see this medley," said I.
"You shall see it now," answered the curate, "for I always take it along
with me a-shooting. 'Tis excellent wadding."
When I returned to town I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I had
made, and found it a little bundle of episodes, put together without
art, yet with something of nature.
The curate must answer for the omissions.
_II.--The Man of Feeling in Love_
Harley lost his father, the last surviving of his parents, when he was a
boy. His education, therefore, had been but indifferently attended to;
and after being taken from a country school, the young gentleman was
suffered to be his own master in the subsequent branches of literature,
with some assistance from the pastor of the parish in languages and
philosophy, and from the exciseman in arithmetic and book-keeping.
There were two ways of increasing his fortune. One of these was the
prospect of succeeding to an old lady, a distant relation, who was known
to be possessed of a very large sum in the stocks. But the young man was
so untoward in his disposition, and accommodated himself so ill to her
humour, that she died and did not leave him a farthing.
The other method pointed out to him was an endeavour to get a lease of
some crown lands which lay contiguous to his little paternal estate. As
the crown did not draw so much rent as Harley could afford to give, with
very considerable profit to himself, it was imagined this lease might be
easily procured. However, this needed some interest with the great,
which neither Harley nor his father ever possessed.
His neighbour, Mr. Walton, having heard of this affair, generously
offered his assistance to accomplish it, and said he would furnish him
with a letter of introduction to a baronet of his acquaintance who had a
great deal to say with the first lord of the treasury.
Harley, though he had no great relish for the attempt, could not resist
the torrent of motives that assaulted him, and a day was fixed for his
departure.
The day before he set out he went to take leave of Mr. Walton--there was
another person of the family to whom also the visit was intended. For
Mr. Walton had a daughter; and such a daughter!
As her father had some years retired to the country, Harley had frequent
opportunities of seeing her. He looked on her for some time merely with
that respect and admiration which her appearance seemed to demand; he
heard her sentiments with peculiar attention, but seldom declared his
opinions on the subject. It would be trite to observe the easy gradation
from esteem to love; in the bosom of Harley there scarce needed a
transition.
Harley's first effort to interview the baronet met with no success, but
he resolved to make another attempt, fortified with higher notions of
his own dignity, and with less apprehensions of repulse. By the time he
had reached Grosvenor Square and was walking along the pavement which
led to the baronet's he had brought his reasoning to the point that by
every rule of logic his conclusions should have led him to a thorough
indifference in approaching a fellow-mortal, whether that fellow-mortal
was possessed of six or six thousand pounds a year. Nevertheless, it is
certain that when he approached the great man's door he felt his heart
agitated by an unusual pulsation.
He observed a young gentleman coming out, dressed in a white frock and a
red laced waistcoat; who, as he passed, very politely made him a bow,
which Harley returned, though he could not remember ever having seen him
before. The stranger asked Harley civilly if he was going to wait on his
friend the baronet. "For I was just calling," said he, "and am sorry to
find that he is gone some days into the country."
Harley thanked him for his information, and turned from the door, when
the other observed that it would be proper to leave his name, and very
obligingly knocked for that purpose.
"Here is a gentleman, Tom, who meant to have waited on your master."
"Your name, if you please, sir?"
"Harley."
"You'll remember, Tom, Harley."
The door was shut.
"Since we are here," said the stranger, "we shall not lose our walk if
we add a little to it by a turn or two in Hyde Park."
The conversation as they walked was brilliant on the side of his
companion.
When they had finished their walk and were returning by the corner of
the park they observed a board hung out of a window signifying, "An
excellent ordinary on Saturdays and Sundays." It happened to be
Saturday, and the table was covered for the purpose.
"What if we should go in and dine, sir?" said the young gentleman.
Harley made no objection, and the stranger showed him the way into the
parlour.
Over against the fire-place was seated a man of a grave aspect, who wore
a pretty large wig, which had once been white, but was now of a brownish
yellow; his coat was a modest coloured drab; and two jack-boots
concealed in part the well-mended knees of an old pair of buckskin
breeches. Next him sat another man, with a tankard in his hand and a
quid of tobacco in his cheek, whose dress was something smarter.
The door was soon opened for the admission of dinner. "I don't know how
it is with you, gentlemen," said Harley's new acquaintance, "but I am
afraid I shall not be able to get down a morsel at this horrid
mechanical hour of dining." He sat down, however, and did not show any
want of appetite by his eating. He took upon him the carving of the
meat, and criticised the goodness of the pudding, and when the
tablecloth was removed proposed calling for some punch, which was
readily agreed to.
While the punch lasted the conversation was wholly engrossed by this
young gentleman, who told a great many "immensely comical stories" and
"confounded smart things," as he termed them. At last the man in the
jack-boots, who turned out to be a grazier, pulling out a watch of very
unusual size, said that he had an appointment. And the young gentleman
discovered that he was already late for an appointment.
When the grazier and he were gone, Harley turned to the remaining
personage, and asked him if he knew that young gentleman. "A gentleman!"
said he. "I knew him, some years ago, in the quality of a footman. But
some of the great folks to whom he has been serviceable had him made a
ganger. And he has the assurance to pretend an acquaintance with men of
quality. The impudent dog! With a few shillings in his pocket, he will
talk three times as much as my friend Mundy, the grazier there, who is
worth nine thousand if he's worth a farthing. But I know the rascal, and
despise him as he deserves!"
Harley began to despise him, too, but he corrected himself by reflecting
that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed, too, by this
same ganger, as he should have been by such a man of fashion as he had
thought proper to personate.
_III.--Harley's Success with the Baronet_
The card he received was in the politest style in which disappointment
could be communicated. The baronet "was under a necessity of giving up
his application for Mr. Harley, as he was informed that the lease was
engaged for a gentleman who had long served his majesty in another
capacity, and whose merit had entitled him to the first lucrative thing
that should be vacant." Even Harley could not murmur at such a disposal.
"Perhaps," said he to himself, "some war-worn officer, who had been
neglected from reasons which merited the highest advancement; whose
honour could not stoop to solicit the preferment he deserved; perhaps,
with a family taught the principles of delicacy without the means of
supporting it; a wife and children--gracious heaven!--whom my wishes
would have deprived of bread--!"
He was interrupted in his reverie by someone tapping him on the
shoulder, and on turning round, he discovered it to be the very man who
had recently explained to him the condition of his gay companion.
"I believe we are fellows in disappointment," said he. Harley started,
and said that he was at a loss to understand him.
"Pooh! you need not be so shy," answered the other; "everyone for
himself is but fair, and I had much rather you had got it than the
rascally ganger. I was making interest for it myself, and I think I had
some title. I voted for this same baronet at the last election, and made
some of my friends do so, too; though I would not have you imagine that
I sold my vote. No, I scorn it--let me tell you I scorn it; but I
thought as how this man was staunch and true, and I find he's but a
double-faced fellow after all, and speechifies in the House for any side
he hopes to make most by. A murrain on the smooth-tongued knave, and
after all to get it for this rascal of a ganger."
"The ganger! There must be some mistake," said Harley. "He writes me
that it was engaged for one whose long services--"
"Services!" interrupted the other; "some paltry convenience to the
baronet. A plague on all rogues! I shall but just drink destruction to
them to-night and leave London to-morrow by sunrise."
"I shall leave it, too," said Harley; and so he accordingly did.
In passing through Piccadilly, he had observed on the window of an inn a
notification of the departure of a stage-coach for a place on his road
homewards; on the way back to his lodgings, he took a seat in it.
_IV.--He Meets an Old Acquaintance_
When the stage-coach arrived at the place of its destination, Harley,
who did things frequently in a way different from what other people call
natural, set out immediately afoot, having first put a spare shirt in
his pocket and given directions for the forwarding of his portmanteau.
It was a method of travelling which he was accustomed to take.
On the road, about four miles from his destination, Harley overtook an
old man, who from his dress had been a soldier, and walked with him.
"Sir," said the stranger, looking earnestly at him, "is not your name
Harley? You may well have forgotten my face, 'tis a long time since you
saw it; but possibly you may remember something of old Edwards? When you
were at school in the neighbourhood, you remember me at South Hill?"
"Edwards!" cried Harley, "O, heavens! let me clasp those knees on which
I have sat so often. Edwards! I shall never forget that fireside, round
which I have been so happy! But where have you been? Where is Jack?
Where is your daughter?"
"'Tis a long tale," replied Edwards, "but I will try to tell it you as
we walk."
Edwards had been a tenant farmer where his father, grandfather, and
great-grandfather had lived before him. The rapacity of a land steward,
heavy agricultural losses, and finally the arrival of a press-gang had
reduced him to misery. By paying a certain sum of money he had been
accepted by the press-gang instead of his son, and now old Edwards was
returning home invalided from the army.
When they had arrived within a little way of the village they journeyed
to, Harley stopped short and looked steadfastly on the mouldering walls
of a ruined house that stood by the roadside.
"What do I see?" he cried. "Silent, unroofed, and desolate! That was the
very school where I was boarded when you were at South Hill; 'tis but a
twelve-month since I saw it standing and its benches filled with
cherubs. That opposite side of the road was the green on which they
sported; see, it is now ploughed up!"
Just then a woman passed them on the road, who, in reply to Harley, told
them the squire had pulled the school-house down because it stood in the
way of his prospects.
"If you want anything with the school-mistress, sir," said the woman. "I
can show you the way to her house."
They followed her to the door of a snug habitation, where sat an elderly
woman with a boy and a girl before her, each of whom held a supper of
bread and milk in their hands.
"They are poor orphans," the school-mistress said, when Harley addressed
her, "put under my care by the parish, and more promising children I
never saw. Their father, sir, was a farmer here in the neighbourhood,
and a sober, industrious man he was; but nobody can help misfortunes.
What with bad crops and bad debts, his affairs went to wreck, and both
he and his wife died of broken hearts. And a sweet couple they were,
sir. There was not a properer man to look on in the county than John
Edwards, and so, indeed, were all the Edwardses of South Hill."
"Edwards! South Hill!" said the old soldier, in a languid voice, and
fell back in the arms of the astonished Harley.
He soon recovered, and folding his orphan grandchildren in his arms,
cried, "My poor Jack, art thou gone--"
"My dear old man," said Harley, "Providence has sent you to relieve
them. It will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you."
"Yes, indeed, sir," answered the boy. "Father, when he was a-dying, bade
God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to
support us. I have told sister," said he, "that she should not take it
so to heart. She can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig. We
shall not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather
neither."
The little girl cried afresh. Harley kissed off her tears, and wept
between every kiss.
_V.--The Man of Feeling is Jealous_
Shortly after Harley's return home his servant Peter came into his room
one morning with a piece of news on his tongue.
"The morning is main cold, sir," began Peter.
"Is it?" said Harley.
"Yes, sir. I have been as far as Tom Dowson's to fetch some barberries.
There was a rare junketting at Tom's last night among Sir Harry Benson's
servants. And I hear as how Sir Harry is going to be married to Miss
Walton. Tom's wife told it me, and, to be sure, the servants told her;
but, of course, it mayn't be true, for all that."
"Have done with your idle information," said Harley. "Is my aunt come
down into the parlour to breakfast?"
"Yes, sir."
"Tell her I'll be with her immediately."
His aunt, too, had been informed of the intended match between Sir Harry
Benson and Miss Walton, Harley learnt.
"I have been thinking," said she, "that they are distant relations, for
the great-grandfather of this Sir Harry, who was knight of the shire in
the reign of Charles I., married a daughter of the Walton family."
Harley answered drily that it might be so, but that he never troubled
himself about those matters.
"Indeed," said she, "you are to blame, nephew, for not knowing a little
more of them; but nowadays it is money, not birth, that makes people
respected--the more shame for the times."
Left alone, Harley went out and sat down on a little seat in the garden.
"Miss Walton married!" said he. "But what is that to me? May she be
happy! Her virtues deserve it. I had romantic dreams. They are fled."
That night the curate dined with him, though his visits, indeed, were
more properly to the aunt than the nephew. He had hardly said grace
after dinner when he said he was very well informed that Sir Harry
Benson was just going to be married to Miss Walton. Harley spilt the
wine he was carrying to his mouth; he had time, however, to recollect
himself before the curate had finished the particulars of his
intelligence, and, summing up all the heroism he was master of, filled a
bumper, and drank to Miss Walton.
"With all my heart," said the curate; "the bride that is to be!" Harley
would have said "bride," too, but it stuck in his throat, and his
confusion was manifest.
_VI.--He Sees Miss Walton and is Happy_
Miss Walton was not married to Sir Harry Benson, but Harley made no
declaration of his own passion after that of the other had been
unsuccessful. The state of his health appears to have been such as to
forbid any thoughts of that kind. He had been seized with a very
dangerous fever caught by attending old Edwards in one of an infectious
kind. From this he had recovered but imperfectly, and though he had no
formed complaint, his health was manifestly on the decline.
It appears that some friend had at length pointed out to his aunt a
cause from which this decline of health might be supposed to proceed, to
wit, his hopeless love for Miss Walton--for, according to the
conceptions of the world, the love of a man of Harley's modest fortune
for the heiress of £4,000 a year is indeed desperate.
Be that as it may, I was sitting with him one morning when the door
opened and his aunt appeared, leading in Miss Walton. I could observe a
transient glow upon his face as he rose from his seat. She begged him to
resume his seat, and placed herself on the sofa beside him. I took my
leave, and his aunt accompanied me to the door. Harley was left with
Miss Walton alone. She inquired anxiously about his health.
"I believe," said he, "from the accounts which my physicians unwillingly
give me, that they have no great hopes of my recovery."
She started as he spoke, and then endeavoured to flatter him into a
belief that his apprehensions were groundless.
"I do not wish to be deceived," said he. "To meet death as becomes a man
is a privilege bestowed on few. I would endeavour to make it mine. Nor
do I think that I can ever be better prepared for it than now." He
paused some moments. "I am in such a state as calls for sincerity. Let
that also excuse it. It is perhaps the last time we shall ever meet." He
paused again. "Let it not offend you to know your power over one so
unworthy. To love Miss Walton could not be a crime; if to declare it is
one, the expiation will be made."
Her tears were now flowing without control.
"Let me entreat you," said she, "to have better hopes. Let not life be
so indifferent to you, if my wishes can put any value on it. I know your
worth--I have known it long. I have esteemed it. What would you have me
say? I have loved it as it deserved."
He seized her hand, a languid colour reddened her cheek; a smile
brightened faintly in his eye. As he gazed on her it grew dim, it fixed,
it closed. He sighed, and fell back on his seat. Miss Walton screamed at
the sight.
His aunt and the servants rushed into the room. They found them lying
motionless together.
His physician happened to call at that instant. Every art was tried to
recover them. With Miss Walton they succeeded, but Harley was gone for
ever.
* * * * *