hopeless. When Mr. Bracebridge received accounts of their situation,
he hastened to their relief. He reached them just in time to soothe
the last moments of the mother, who was dying of a consumption, and to
make her happy in the assurance that her child should never want a
protector.
The good Squire returned with his prattling charge to his strong-hold;
where he had brought her up with a tenderness truly paternal. As he
has taken some pains to superintend her education, and form her taste,
she has grown up with many of his notions, and considers him the
wisest, as well as the best of men. Much of her time, too, has been
passed with Lady Lillycraft, who has instructed her in the manners of
the old school, and enriched her mind with all kinds of novels and
romances. Indeed, her ladyship has had a great hand in promoting the
match between Julia and the captain, having had them together at her
country-seat, the moment she found there was an attachment growing up
between them; the good lady being never so happy as when she has a
pair of turtles cooing about her.
I have been pleased to see the fondness with which the fair Julia is
regarded by the old servants at the Hall. She has been a pet with them
from childhood, and every one seems to lay some claim to her
education; so that it is no wonder that she should be extremely
accomplished. The gardener taught her to rear flowers, of which she is
extremely fond. Old Christy, the pragmatical huntsman, softens when
she approaches; and as she sits lightly and gracefully in her saddle,
claims the merit of having taught her to ride; while the housekeeper,
who almost looks upon her as a daughter, intimates that she first gave
her an insight into the mysteries of the toilet, having been
dressing-maid, in her young days, to the late Mrs. Bracebridge. I am
inclined to credit this last claim, as I have noticed that the dress
of the young lady had an air of the old school, though managed with
native taste, and that her hair was put up very much in the style of
Sir Peter Lely's portraits in the picture gallery.
Her very musical attainments partake of this old-fashioned character,
and most of her songs are such as are not at the present day to be
found on the piano of a modern performer. I have, however, seen so
much of modern fashions, modern accomplishments, and modern fine
ladies, that I relish this tinge of antiquated style in so young and
lovely a girl; and I have had as much pleasure in hearing her warble
one of the old songs of Herrick, or Carew, or Suckling, adapted to
some simple old melody, as I have had from listening to a lady amateur
skylark it up and down through the finest bravura of Rossini or
Mozart. We have very pretty music in the evenings, occasionally,
between her and the captain, assisted sometimes by Master Simon, who
scrapes, dubiously, on his violin; being very apt to get out, and to
halt a note or two in the rear. Sometimes he even thrums a little on
the piano, and takes a part in a trio, in which his voice can
generally be distinguished by a certain quavering tone, and an
occasional false note.
I was praising the fair Julia's performance to him, after one of her
songs, when I found he took to himself the whole credit of having
formed her musical taste, assuring me that she was very apt; and,
indeed, summing up her whole character in his knowing way, by adding,
that "she was a very nice girl, and had no nonsense about her."
FAMILY RELIQUES.
My Infelice's face, her brow, her eye,
The dimple on her cheek: and such sweet skill
Hath from the cunning workman's pencil flown,
These lips look fresh and lively as her own.
False colours last after the true be dead.
Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks,
Of all the graces dancing in her eyes,
Of all the music set upon her tongue,
Of all that was past woman's excellence
In her white bosom; look, a painted board
Circumscribes all!
--DEKKER.
An old English family mansion is a fertile subject for study. It
abounds with illustrations of former times, and traces of the tastes,
and humours, and manners of successive generations. The alterations
and additions, in different styles of architecture; the furniture,
plate, pictures, hangings; the warlike and sporting implements of
different ages and fancies; all furnish food for curious and amusing
speculation. As the Squire is very careful in collecting and
preserving all family reliques, the Hall is full of remembrances of
the kind. In looking about the establishment, I can picture to myself
the characters and habits that have prevailed at different eras of the
family history. I have mentioned, on a former occasion, the armour of
the crusader which hangs up in the Hall. There are also several
jack-boots, with enormously thick soles and high heels, that belonged
to a set of cavaliers, who filled the Hall with the din and stir of
arms during the time of the Covenanters. A number of enormous drinking
vessels of antique fashion, with huge Venice glasses, and
green-hock-glasses, with the apostles in relief on them, remain as
monuments of a generation or two of hard livers, that led a life of
roaring revelry, and first introduced the gout into the family.
I shall pass over several more such indications of temporary tastes of
the Squire's predecessors; but I cannot forbear to notice a pair of
antlers in the great hall, which is one of the trophies of a
hard-riding squire of former times, who was the Nimrod of these parts.
There are many traditions of his wonderful feats in hunting still
existing, which are related by old Christy, the huntsman, who gets
exceedingly nettled if they are in the least doubted. Indeed, there is
a frightful chasm, a few miles from the Hall, which goes by the name
of the Squire's Leap, from his having cleared it in the ardour of the
chase; there can be no doubt of the fact, for old Christy shows the
very dints of the horse's hoofs on the rocks on each side of the
chasm.
Master Simon holds the memory of this squire in great veneration, and
has a number of extraordinary stories to tell concerning him, which he
repeats at all hunting dinners; and I am told that they wax more and
more marvellous the older they grow. He has also a pair of Rippon
spurs which belonged to this mighty hunter of yore, and which he only
wears on particular occasions.
The place, however, which abounds most with mementos of past times, is
the picture gallery; and there is something strangely pleasing, though
melancholy, in considering the long rows of portraits which compose
the greater part of the collection. They furnish a kind of narrative
of the lives of the family worthies, which I am enabled to read with
the assistance of the venerable housekeeper, who is the family
chronicler, prompted occasionally by Master Simon. There is the
progress of a fine lady, for instance, through a variety of portraits.
One represents her as a little girl, with a long waist and hoop,
holding a kitten in her arms, and ogling the spectator out of the
corners of her eyes, as if she could not turn her head. In another, we
find her in the freshness of youthful beauty, when she was a
celebrated belle, and so hard-hearted as to cause several unfortunate
gentlemen to run desperate and write bad poetry. In another, she is
depicted as a stately dame, in the maturity of her charms; next to the
portrait of her husband, a gallant colonel in full-bottomed wig and
gold-laced hat, who was killed abroad; and, finally, her monument is
in the church, the spire of which may be seen from the window, where
her effigy is carved in marble, and represents her as a venerable dame
of seventy-six.
In like manner, I have followed some of the family great men through a
series of pictures, from early boyhood to the robe of dignity, or
truncheon of command; and so on by degrees, until they were garnered
up in the common repository, the neighbouring church.
There is one group that particularly interested me. It consisted of
four sisters, of nearly the same age, who flourished about a century
since, and, if I may judge from their portraits, were extremely
beautiful. I can imagine what a scene of gayety and romance this old
mansion must have been, when they were in the heyday of their charms;
when they passed like beautiful visions through its halls, or stepped
daintily to music in the revels and dances of the cedar gallery; or
printed, with delicate feet, the velvet verdure of these lawns. How
must they have been looked up to with mingled love, and pride, and
reverence by the old family servants; and followed with almost painful
admiration by the aching eyes of rival admirers! How must melody, and
song, and tender serenade, have breathed about these courts, and their
echoes whispered to the loitering tread of lovers! How must these very
turrets have made the hearts of the young galliards thrill, as they
first discerned them from afar, rising from among the trees, and
pictured to themselves the beauties casketed like gems within these
walls! Indeed, I have discovered about the place several faint records
of this reign of love and romance, when the Hall was a kind of Court
of Beauty.
Several of the old romances in the library have marginal notes
expressing sympathy and approbation, where there are long speeches
extolling ladies' charms, or protesting eternal fidelity, or bewailing
the cruelty of some tyrannical fair one. The interviews, and
declarations, and parting scenes of tender lovers, also bear the marks
of having been frequently read, and are scored and marked with notes
of admiration, and have initials written on the margins; most of which
annotations have the day of the month and year annexed to them.
Several of the windows, too, have scraps of poetry engraved on them
with diamonds, taken from the writings of the fair Mrs. Philips, the
once celebrated Orinda. Some of these seem to have been inscribed by
lovers; and others, in a delicate and unsteady hand, and a little
inaccurate in the spelling, have evidently been written by the young
ladies themselves, or by female friends, who have been on visits to
the Hall. Mrs. Philips seems to have been their favourite author, and
they have distributed the names of her heroes and heroines among their
circle of intimacy. Sometimes, in a male hand, the verse bewails the
cruelty of beauty, and the sufferings of constant love; while in a
female hand it prudishly confines itself to lamenting the parting of
female friends. The bow-window of my bed-room, which has, doubtless,
been inhabited by one of these beauties, has several of these
inscriptions. I have one at this moment before my eyes, called
"Camilla parting with Leonora:"
"How perish'd is the joy that's past,
The present how unsteady!
What comfort can be great and last,
When this is gone already;"
And close by it is another, written, perhaps, by some adventurous
lover, who had stolen into the lady's chamber during her absence:
"THEODOSIUS TO CAMILLA.
I'd rather in your favour live,
Than in a lasting name;
And much a greater rate would give
For happiness than fame.
THEODOSIUS. 1700."
When I look at these faint records of gallantry and tenderness; when I
contemplate the fading portraits of these beautiful girls, and think,
too, that they have long since bloomed, reigned, grown old, died, and
passed away, and with them all their graces, their triumphs, their
rivalries, their admirers; the whole empire of love and pleasure in
which they ruled--"all dead, all buried, all forgotten," I find a
cloud of melancholy stealing over the present gayeties around me. I
was gazing, in a musing mood, this very morning, at the portrait of
the lady whose husband was killed abroad, when the fair Julia entered
the gallery, leaning on the arm of the captain. The sun shone through
the row of windows on her as she passed along, and she seemed to beam
out each time into brightness, and relapse into shade, until the door
at the bottom of the gallery closed after her. I felt a sadness of
heart at the idea, that this was an emblem of her lot: a few more
years of sunshine and shade, and all this life and loveliness, and
enjoyment, will have ceased, and nothing be left to commemorate this
beautiful being but one more perishable portrait; to awaken, perhaps,
the trite speculations of some future loiterer, like myself, when I
and my scribblings shall have lived through our brief existence, and
been forgotten.
AN OLD SOLDIER
I've worn some leather out abroad; let out a heathen soul or two; fed
this good sword with the black blood of pagan Christians; converted
a few infidels with it.--But let that pass.
--_The Ordinary_.
The Hall was thrown into some little agitation, a few days since, by
the arrival of General Harbottle. He had been expected for several
days, and had been looked for, rather impatiently, by several of the
family. Master Simon assured me that I would like the general hugely,
for he was a blade of the old school, and an excellent table
companion. Lady Lillycraft, also, appeared to be somewhat fluttered,
on the morning of the general's arrival, for he had been one of her
early admirers; and she recollected him only as a dashing young
ensign, just come upon the town. She actually spent an hour longer at
her toilette, and made her appearance with her hair uncommonly frizzed
and powdered, and an additional quantity of rouge. She was evidently a
little surprised and shocked, therefore, at finding the lithe, dashing
ensign transformed into a corpulent old general, with a double chin;
though it was a perfect picture to witness their salutations; the
graciousness of her profound curtsy, and the air of the old school
with which the general took off his hat, swayed it gently in his hand,
and bowed his powdered head.
All this bustle and anticipation has caused me to study the general
with a little more attention than, perhaps, I should otherwise have
done; and the few days that he has already passed at the Hall have
enabled me, I think, to furnish a tolerable likeness of him to the
reader.
He is, as Master Simon observed, a soldier of the old school, with
powdered head, side locks, and pigtail. His face is shaped like the
stern of a Dutch man-of-war, narrow at top and wide at bottom, with
full rosy cheeks and a double chin; so that, to use the cant of the
day, his organs of eating may be said to be powerfully developed.
The general, though a veteran, has seen very little active service,
except the taking of Seringapatam, which forms an era in his history.
He wears a large emerald in his bosom, and a diamond on his finger,
which he got on that occasion, and whoever is unlucky enough to notice
either, is sure to involve himself in the whole history of the siege.
To judge from the general's conversation, the taking of Seringapatam
is the most important affair that has occurred for the last century.
On the approach of warlike times on the continent, he was rapidly
promoted to get him out of the way of younger officers of merit;
until, having been hoisted to the rank of general, he was quietly laid
on the shelf. Since that time, his campaigns have been principally
confined to watering-places; where he drinks the waters for a slight
touch of the liver which he got in India; and plays whist with old
dowagers, with whom he has flirted in his younger days. Indeed, he
talks of all the fine women of the last half century, and, according
to hints which he now and then drops, has enjoyed the particular
smiles of many of them.
He has seen considerable garrison duty, and can speak of almost every
place famous for good quarters, and where the inhabitants give good
dinners. He is a diner out of first-rate currency, when in town; being
invited to one place, because he has been seen at another. In the same
way he is invited about the country-seats, and can describe half the
seats in the kingdom, from actual observation; nor is any one better
versed in court gossip, and the pedigrees and intermarriages of the
nobility.
As the general is an old bachelor, and an old beau, and there are
several ladies at the Hall, especially his quondam flame Lady
Jocelyne, he is put rather upon his gallantry. He commonly passes some
time, therefore, at his toilette, and takes the field at a late hour
every morning, with his hair dressed out and powdered, and a rose in
his button-hole. After he has breakfasted, he walks up and down the
terrace in the sunshine, humming an air, and hemming between every
stave, carrying one hand behind his back, and with the other touching
his cane to the ground, and then raising it up to his shoulder. Should
he, in these morning promenades, meet any of the elder ladies of the
family, as he frequently does Lady Lillycraft, his hat is immediately
in his hand, and it is enough to remind one of those courtly groups of
ladies and gentlemen, in old prints of Windsor terrace, or Kensington
garden.
He talks frequently about "the service," and is fond of humming the
old song,
Why, soldiers, why,
Should we be melancholy, boys?
Why, soldiers, why,
Whose business 't is to die!
I cannot discover, however, that the general has ever run any great
risk of dying, excepting from an apoplexy or an indigestion. He
criticises all the battles on the continent, and discusses the merits
of the commanders, but never fails to bring the conversation,
ultimately, to Tippoo Saib and Seringapatam. I am told that the
general was a perfect champion at drawing-rooms, parades, and
watering-places, during the late war, and was looked to with hope and
confidence by many an old lady, when labouring under the terror of
Buonaparte's invasion.
He is thoroughly loyal, and attends punctually on levees when in town.
He has treasured up many remarkable sayings of the late king,
particularly one which the king made to him on a field-day,
complimenting him on the excellence of his horse. He extols the whole
royal family, but especially the present king, whom he pronounces the
most perfect gentleman and best whist-player in Europe. The general
swears rather more than is the fashion of the present day; but it was
the mode in the old school. He is, however, very strict in religious
matters, and a staunch churchman. He repeats the responses very loudly
in church, and is emphatical in praying for the king and royal family.
At table, his loyalty waxes very fervent with his second bottle, and
the song of "God save the King" puts him into a perfect ecstasy. He is
amazingly well contented with the present state of things, and apt to
get a little impatient at any talk about national ruin and
agricultural distress. He says he has travelled about the country as
much as any man, and has met with nothing but prosperity; and to
confess the truth, a great part of his time is spent in visiting from
one country-seat to another, and riding about the parks of his
friends. "They talk of public distress," said the general this day to
me, at dinner, as he smacked a glass of rich burgundy, and cast his
eyes about the ample board; "they talk of public distress, but where
do we find it, sir? I see none. I see no reason why any one has to
complain. Take my word for it, sir, this talk about public distress is
all humbug!"
THE WIDOW'S RETINUE.
Little dogs and all!
--_Lear_.
In giving an account of the arrival of Lady Lillycraft at the Hall, I
ought to have mentioned the entertainment which I derived from
witnessing the unpacking of her carriage, and the disposing of her
retinue. There is something extremely amusing to me in the number of
factitious wants, the loads of imaginary conveniences, but real
encumbrances, with which the luxurious are apt to burthen themselves.
I like to watch the whimsical stir and display about one of these
petty progresses. The number of robustious footmen and retainers of
all kinds bustling about, with looks of infinite gravity and
importance, to do almost nothing. The number of heavy trunks, and
parcels, and bandboxes belonging to my lady; and the solicitude,
exhibited about some humble, odd-looking box, by my lady's maid; the
cushions piled in the carriage to make a soft seat still softer, and
to prevent the dreaded possibility of a jolt; the smelling-bottles,
the cordials, the baskets of biscuit and fruit; the new publications;
all provided to guard against hunger, fatigue, or ennui; the led
horses, to vary the mode of travelling; and all this preparation and
parade to move, perhaps, some very good-for-nothing personage about a
little space of earth!
I do not mean to apply the latter part of these observations to Lady
Lillycraft, for whose simple kind-heartedness I have a very great
respect, and who is really a most amiable and worthy being. I cannot
refrain, however, from mentioning some of the motley retinue she has
brought with her; and which, indeed, bespeak the overflowing kindness
of her nature, which requires her to be surrounded with objects on
which to lavish it.
In the first place, her ladyship has a pampered coachman, with a red
face, and cheeks that hang down like dew-laps. He evidently domineers
over her a little with respect to the fat horses; and only drives out
when he thinks proper, and when he thinks it will be "good for the
cattle."
She has a favourite page, to attend upon her person; a handsome boy of
about twelve years of age, but a mischievous varlet, very much
spoiled, and in a fair way to be good for nothing. He is dressed in
green, with a profusion of gold cord and gilt buttons about his
clothes. She always has one or two attendants of the kind, who are
replaced by others as soon as they grow to fourteen years of age. She
has brought two dogs with her, also, out of a number of pets which she
maintains at home. One is a fat spaniel, called Zephyr--though heaven
defend me from such a zephyr! He is fed out of all shape and comfort;
his eyes are nearly strained out of his head; he wheezes with
corpulency, and cannot walk without great difficulty. The other is a
little, old, gray-muzzled curmudgeon, with an unhappy eye, that
kindles like a coal if you only look at him; his nose turns up; his
mouth is drawn into wrinkles, so as to show his teeth; in short, he
has altogether the look of a dog far gone in misanthropy, and totally
sick of the world. When he walks, he has his tail curled up so tight
that it seems to lift his feet from the ground; and he seldom makes
use of more than three legs at a time, keeping the other drawn up as a
reserve. This last wretch is called Beauty.
These dogs are full of elegant ailments, unknown to vulgar dogs; and
are petted and nursed by Lady Lillycraft with the tenderest kindness.
They are pampered and fed with delicacies by their fellow-minion, the
page; but their stomachs are often weak and out of order, so that they
cannot eat; though I have now and then seen the page give them a
mischievous pinch, or thwack over the head, when his mistress was not
by. They have cushions for their express use, on which they lie before
the fire, and yet are apt to shiver and moan if there is the least
draught of air. When any one enters the room, they make a most
tyrannical barking that is absolutely deafening. They are insolent to
all the other dogs of the establishment. There is a noble stag-hound,
a great favourite of the Squire's, who is a privileged visitor to the
parlour; but the moment he makes his appearance, these intruders fly
at him with furious rage; and I have admired the sovereign
indifference and contempt with which he seems to look down upon his
puny assailants. When her ladyship drives out, these dogs are
generally carried with her to take the air; when they look out of each
window of the carriage, and bark at all vulgar pedestrian dogs. These
dogs are a continual source of misery to the household as they are
always in the way, they every now and then get their toes trod on, and
then there is a yelping on their part, and a loud lamentation on the
part of their mistress, that fills the room with clamour and
confusion.