Produced by David Widger and Dagny
DEVEREUX
BY
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON (Lord Lytton)
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
IN this edition of a work composed in early youth, I have not attempted
to remove those faults of construction which may be sufficiently
apparent in the plot, but which could not indeed be thoroughly rectified
without re-writing the whole work. I can only hope that with the defects
of inexperience may be found some of the merits of frank and artless
enthusiasm. I have, however, lightened the narrative of certain
episodical and irrelevant passages, and relieved the general style of
some boyish extravagances of diction. At the time this work was written
I was deeply engaged in the study of metaphysics and ethics, and out of
that study grew the character of Algernon Mordaunt. He is represented
as a type of the Heroism of Christian Philosophy,--a union of love and
knowledge placed in the midst of sorrow, and labouring on through the
pilgrimage of life, strong in the fortitude that comes from belief in
Heaven.
KNEBWORTH, May 3, 1852.
E. B. L.
DEDICATORY EPISTLE
TO
JOHN AULDJO, ESQ., ETC.,
AT NAPLES
LONDON.
MY DEAR AULDJO,--Permit me, as a memento of the pleasant hours we passed
together, and the intimacy we formed by the winding shores and the rosy
seas of the old Parthenope, to dedicate to you this romance. It was
written in perhaps the happiest period of my literary life,--when
success began to brighten upon my labours, and it seemed to me a fine
thing to make a name. Reputation, like all possessions, fairer in the
hope than the reality, shone before me in the gloss of novelty; and I
had neither felt the envy it excites, the weariness it occasions, nor
(worse than all) that coarse and painful notoriety, that, something
between the gossip and the slander, which attends every man whose
writings become known,--surrendering the grateful privacies of life to
“The gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day.”
In short, yet almost a boy (for, in years at least, I was little more,
when “Pelham” and “The Disowned” were conceived and composed), and full
of the sanguine arrogance of hope, I pictured to myself far greater
triumphs than it will ever be mine to achieve: and never did architect
of dreams build his pyramid upon (alas!) a narrower base, or a more
crumbling soil!... Time cures us effectually of these self-conceits, and
brings us, somewhat harshly, from the gay extravagance of confounding
the much that we design with the little that we can accomplish.
“The Disowned” and “Devereux” were both completed in retirement, and
in the midst of metaphysical studies and investigations, varied and
miscellaneous enough, if not very deeply conned. At that time I was
indeed engaged in preparing for the press a Philosophical Work which
I had afterwards the good sense to postpone to a riper age and a more
sobered mind. But the effect of these studies is somewhat prejudicially
visible in both the romances I have referred to; and the external and
dramatic colourings which belong to fiction are too often forsaken for
the inward and subtile analysis of motives, characters, and actions. The
workman was not sufficiently master of his art to forbear the vanity
of parading the wheels of the mechanism, and was too fond of calling
attention to the minute and tedious operations by which the movements
were to be performed and the result obtained. I believe that an author
is generally pleased with his work less in proportion as it is good,
than in proportion as it fulfils the idea with which he commenced it. He
is rarely perhaps an accurate judge how far the execution is in itself
faulty or meritorious; but he judges with tolerable success how far it
accomplishes the end and objects of the conception. He is pleased with
his work, in short, according as he can say, “This has expressed what
I meant it to convey.” But the reader, who is not in the secret of the
author’s original design, usually views the work through a different
medium; and is perhaps in this the wiser critic of the two: for the book
that wanders the most from the idea which originated it may often
be better than that which is rigidly limited to the unfolding and
_denouement_ of a single conception. If we accept this solution, we may
be enabled to understand why an author not unfrequently makes favourites
of some of his productions most condemned by the public. For my own
part, I remember that “Devereux” pleased me better than “Pelham” or
“The Disowned,” because the execution more exactly corresponded with the
design. It expressed with tolerable fidelity what I meant it to express.
That was a happy age, my dear Auldjo, when, on finishing a work, we
could feel contented with our labour, and fancy we had done our best!
Now, alas I I have learned enough of the wonders of the Art to recognize
all the deficiencies of the Disciple; and to know that no author worth
the reading can ever in one single work do half of which he is capable.
What man ever wrote anything really good who did not feel that he had
the ability to write something better? Writing, after all, is a cold and
a coarse interpreter of thought. How much of the imagination, how much
of the intellect, evaporates and is lost while we seek to embody it
in words! Man made language and God the genius. Nothing short of an
eternity could enable men who imagine, think, and feel, to express
all they have imagined, thought, and felt. Immortality, the spiritual
desire, is the intellectual _necessity_.
In “Devereux” I wished to portray a man flourishing in the last century
with the train of mind and sentiment peculiar to the present; describing
a life, and not its dramatic epitome, the historical characters
introduced are not closely woven with the main plot, like those in
the fictions of Sir Walter Scott, but are rather, like the narrative
romances of an earlier school, designed to relieve the predominant
interest, and give a greater air of truth and actuality to the supposed
memoir. It is a fiction which deals less with the Picturesque than the
Real. Of the principal character thus introduced (the celebrated and
graceful, but charlatanic, Bolingbroke) I still think that my sketch,
upon the whole, is substantially just. We must not judge of the
politicians of one age by the lights of another. Happily we now demand
in a statesman a desire for other aims than his own advancement; but at
that period ambition was almost universally selfish--the Statesman was
yet a Courtier--a man whose very destiny it was to intrigue, to plot, to
glitter, to deceive. It is in proportion as politics have ceased to be
a secret science, in proportion as courts are less to be flattered and
tools to be managed, that politicians have become useful and honest
men; and the statesman now directs a people, where once he outwitted an
ante-chamber. Compare Bolingbroke--not with the men and by the rules of
this day, but with the men and by the rules of the last. He will lose
nothing in comparison with a Walpole, with a Marlborough on the one
side,--with an Oxford or a Swift upon the other.
And now, my dear Auldjo, you have had enough of my egotisms. As our
works grow up,--like old parents, we grow garrulous, and love to recur
to the happier days of their childhood; we talk over the pleasant pain
they cost us in their rearing, and memory renews the season of dreams
and hopes; we speak of their faults as of things past, of their merits
as of things enduring: we are proud to see them still living, and, after
many a harsh ordeal and rude assault, keeping a certain station in the
world; we hoped perhaps something better for them in their cradle, but
as it is we have good cause to be contented. You, a fellow-author, and
one whose spirited and charming sketches embody so much of personal
adventure, and therefore so much connect themselves with associations of
real life as well as of the studious closet; _you_ know, and must feel
with me, that these our books are a part of us, bone of our bone and
flesh of our flesh! They treasure up the thoughts which stirred us, the
affections which warmed us, years ago; they are the mirrors of how
much of what we were! To the world they are but as a certain number
of pages,--good or bad,--tedious or diverting; but to ourselves, the
authors, they are as marks in the wild maze of life by which we can
retrace our steps, and be with our youth again. What would I not give to
feel as I felt, to hope as I hoped, to believe as I believed, when this
work was first launched upon the world! But time gives while it takes
away; and amongst its recompenses for many losses are the memories I
referred to in commencing this letter, and gratefully revert to at
its close. From the land of cloud and the life of toil, I turn to that
golden clime and the happy indolence that so well accords with it; and
hope once more, ere I die, with a companion whose knowledge can
recall the past and whose gayety can enliven the present, to visit the
Disburied City of Pompeii, and see the moonlight sparkle over the waves
of Naples. Adieu, my dear Auldjo,
And believe me,
Your obliged and attached friend,
E. B. LYTTON.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHER’S INTRODUCTION.
MY life has been one of frequent adventure and constant excitement. It
has been passed, to this present day, in a stirring age, and not without
acquaintance of the most eminent and active spirits of the time. Men of
all grades and of every character have been familiar to me. War, love,
ambition, the scroll of sages, the festivals of wit, the intrigues of
states,--all that agitate mankind, the hope and the fear, the labour and
the pleasure, the great drama of vanities, with the little interludes
of wisdom; these have been the occupations of my manhood; these will
furnish forth the materials of that history which is now open to your
survey. Whatever be the faults of the historian, he has no motive to
palliate what he has committed nor to conceal what he has felt.
Children of an after century, the very time in which these pages will
greet you destroys enough of the connection between you and myself to
render me indifferent alike to your censure and your applause. Exactly
one hundred years from the day this record is completed will the seal I
shall place on it be broken and the secrets it contains be disclosed.
I claim that congeniality with you which I have found not among my own
coevals. _Their_ thoughts, their feelings, their views, have nothing
kindred to my own. I speak their language, but it is not as a native:
_they_ know not a syllable of mine! With a future age my heart may have
more in common; to a future age my thoughts may be less unfamiliar, and
my sentiments less strange. I trust these confessions to the trial!
Children of an after century, between you and the being who has traced
the pages ye behold--that busy, versatile, restless being--there is but
one step,--but that step is a century! His _now_ is separated from your
now by an interval of three generations! While he writes, he is exulting
in the vigour of health and manhood; while ye read, the very worms are
starving upon his dust. This commune between the living and the dead;
this intercourse between that which breathes and moves and _is_,
and that which life animates not nor mortality knows,--annihilates
falsehood, and chills even self-delusion into awe. Come, then, and look
upon the picture of a past day and of a gone being, without apprehension
of deceit; and as the shadows and lights of a checkered and wild
existence flit before you, watch if in your own hearts there be aught
which mirrors the reflection.
MORTON DEVEREUX.
NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION (1852).
If this work possess any merit of a Narrative order, it will perhaps be
found in its fidelity to the characteristics of an Autobiography.
The reader must, indeed, comply with the condition exacted from his
imagination and faith; that is to say, he must take the hero of the
story upon the terms for which Morton Devereux himself stipulates;
and regard the supposed Count as one who lived and wrote in the last
century, but who (dimly conscious that the tone of his mind harmonized
less with his own age than with that which was to come) left his
biography as a legacy to the present. This assumption (which is not an
unfair one) liberally conceded, and allowed to account for occasional
anachronisms in sentiment, Morton Devereux will be found to write as a
man who is not constructing a romance, but narrating a life. He gives
to Love, its joy and its sorrow, its due share in an eventful and
passionate existence; but it is the share of biography, not of fiction.
He selects from the crowd of personages with whom he is brought into
contact, not only those who directly influence his personal destinies,
but those of whom a sketch or an anecdote would appear to a biographer
likely to have interest for posterity. Louis XIV., the Regent Orleans,
Peter the Great, Lord Bolingbroke, and others less eminent, but still
of mark in their own day, if growing obscure to ours, are introduced
not for the purposes and agencies of fiction, but as an autobiographer’s
natural illustrations of the men and manners of his time.
And here be it pardoned if I add that so minute an attention has
been paid to accuracy that even in petty details, and in relation to
historical characters but slightly known to the ordinary reader, a
critic deeply acquainted with the memoirs of the age will allow that the
novelist is always merged in the narrator.
Unless the Author has failed more in his design than, on revising the
work of his early youth with the comparatively impartial eye of maturer
judgment, he is disposed to concede, Morton Devereux will also be found
with that marked individuality of character which distinguishes the man
who has lived and laboured from the hero of romance. He admits into his
life but few passions; those are tenacious and intense: conscious that
none who are around him will sympathize with his deeper feelings, he
veils them under the sneer of an irony which is often affected and never
mirthful. Wherever we find him, after surviving the brief episode of
love, we feel--though he does not tell us so--that he is alone in the
world. He is represented as a keen observer and a successful actor in
the busy theatre of mankind, precisely in proportion as no cloud from
the heart obscures the cold clearness of the mind. In the scenes of
pleasure there is no joy in his smile; in the contests of ambition there
is no quicker beat of the pulse. Attaining in the prime of manhood such
position and honour as would first content and then sate a man of this
mould, he has nothing left but to discover the vanities of this world
and to ponder on the hopes of the next; and, his last passion dying
out in the retribution that falls on his foe, he finally sits down in
retirement to rebuild the ruined home of his youth,--unconscious that to
that solitude the Destinies have led him to repair the waste and ravages
of his own melancholy soul.
But while outward Dramatic harmonies between cause and effect, and the
proportionate agencies which characters introduced in the Drama bring
to bear upon event and catastrophe, are carefully shunned,--as real life
does for the most part shun them,--yet there is a latent coherence in
all that, by influencing the mind, do, though indirectly, shape out the
fate and guide the actions.
Dialogue and adventures which, considered dramatically, would be
episodical,--considered biographically, will be found essential to the
formation, change, and development of the narrator’s character. The
grave conversations with Bolingbroke and Richard Cromwell, the light
scenes in London and at Paris, the favour obtained with the Czar of
Russia, are all essential to the creation of that mixture of wearied
satiety and mournful thought which conducts the Probationer to the
lonely spot in which he is destined to learn at once the mystery of his
past life and to clear his reason from the doubts that had obscured the
future world.
Viewing the work in this more subtile and contemplative light, the
reader will find not only the true test by which to judge of its design
and nature, but he may also recognize sources of interest in the story
which might otherwise have been lost to him; and if so, the Author will
not be without excuse for this criticism upon the scope and intention of
his own work. For it is not only the privilege of an artist, but it is
also sometimes his duty to the principles of Art, to place the spectator
in that point of view wherein the light best falls upon the canvas. “Do
not place yourself there,” says the painter; “to judge of my composition
you must stand where I place you.”
CONTENTS.
Book I.
CHAPTER I.
Of the Hero’s Birth and Parentage.--Nothing can differ more from the
End of Things than their Beginning
CHAPTER II.
A Family Consultation.--A Priest, and an Era in Life
CHAPTER III.
A Change in Conduct and in Character: our evil Passions will some-
times produce good Effects; and on the contrary, an Alteration for
the better in Manners will, not unfrequently, have amongst its
Causes a little Corruption of Mind; for the Feelings are so blended
that, in suppressing those disagreeable to others, we often suppress
those which are amiable in themselves
CHAPTER IV.
A Contest of Art and a League of Friendship.--Two Characters in
mutual Ignorance of each other, and the Reader no wiser than
either of them
CHAPTER V.
Rural Hospitality.--An extraordinary Guest.--A Fine Gentleman is
not necessarily a Fool
CHAPTER VI.
A Dialogue, which might be dull if it were longer
CHAPTER VII.
A Change of Prospects.--A new Insight into the Character of the Hero.
--A Conference between two Brothers
CHAPTER VIII.
First Love
CHAPTER IX.
A Discovery and a Departure
CHAPTER X.
A very short Chapter,--containing a Valet
CHAPTER XI.
The Hero acquits himself honourably as a Coxcomb.--A Fine Lady of
the Eighteenth Century, and a fashionable Dialogue; the Substance
of fashionable Dialogue being in all Centuries the same
CHAPTER XII.
The Abbe’s Return.--A Sword, and a Soliloquy
CHAPTER XIII.
A mysterious Letter.-A Duel.--The Departure of one of the Family
CHAPTER XIV.
Being a Chapter of Trifles
CHAPTER XV.
The Mother and Son.--Virtue should be the Sovereign of the Feelings,
not their Destroyer
Book II.
CHAPTER I.
The Hero in London.--Pleasure is often the shortest, as it is the
earliest road to Wisdom, and we may say of the World what Zeal-of-
the-Land-Busy says of the Pig-Booth, “We escape so much of the
other Vanities by our early Entering”
CHAPTER II.
Gay Scenes and Conversations.--The New Exchange and the Puppet-
Show.--The Actor, the Sexton, and the Beauty
CHAPTER III.
More Lions
CHAPTER IV.
An intellectual Adventure
CHAPTER V.
The Beau in his Den, and a Philosopher discovered
CHAPTER VI.
A universal Genius.--Pericles turned Barber.--Names of Beauties in
171-.--The Toasts of the Kit-Cat Club
CHAPTER VII.
A Dialogue of Sentiment succeeded by the Sketch of a Character, in
whose Eyes Sentiment was to Wise Men what Religion is to Fools;
namely, a Subject of Ridicule
CHAPTER VIII.
Lightly won, lightly lost.--A Dialogue of equal Instruction and
Amusement.--A Visit to Sir Godfrey Kneller
CHAPTER IX.
A Development of Character, and a long Letter; a Chapter, on the
whole, more important than it seems
CHAPTER X.
Being a short Chapter, containing a most important Event
CHAPTER XI.
Containing more than any other Chapter in the Second Book of this
History
Book III.
CHAPTER I.
Wherein the History makes great Progress and is marked by one
important Event in Human Life
CHAPTER II.
Love; Parting; a Death-Bed.--After all human Nature is a beautiful
Fabric; and even its Imperfections are not odious to him who has
studied the Science of its Architecture, and formed a reverent
Estimate of its Creator
CHAPTER III.
A great Change of Prospects
CHAPTER IV.
An Episode.--The Son of the Greatest Man who (one only excepted)
_ever rose to a Throne_, but by no means of the Greatest Man (save
one) _who ever existed_
CHAPTER V.
In which the Hero shows Decision on more Points than one.--More of
Isora’s Character is developed
CHAPTER VI.
An Unexpected Meeting.--Conjecture and Anticipation
CHAPTER VII.
The Events of a Single Night.--Moments make the Hues in which
Years are coloured
Book IV.
CHAPTER I.
A Re-entrance into Life through the Ebon Gate, Affliction
CHAPTER II.
Ambitious Projects
CHAPTER III.
The real Actors Spectators to the false ones
CHAPTER IV.
Paris.--A Female Politician, and an Ecclesiastical One.--Sundry other
Matters
CHAPTER V.
A Meeting of Wits.--Conversation gone out to Supper in her Dress of
Velvet and Jewels
CHAPTER VI.
A Court, Courtiers, and a King
CHAPTER VII.
Reflections.--A Soiree.--The Appearance of one important in the
History.--A Conversation with Madame de Balzac highly satisfactory
and cheering.--A Rencontre with a curious old Soldier.--
The Extinction of a once great Luminary
CHAPTER VIII.
In which there is Reason to fear that Princes are not invariably free
from Human Peccadilloes
CHAPTER IX.
A Prince, an Audience, and a Secret Embassy
CHAPTER X.
Royal Exertions for the Good of the People
CHAPTER XI.
An Interview
Book V.
CHAPTER I.
A Portrait
CHAPTER II.
The Entrance into Petersburg.--A Rencontre with an inquisitive and
mysterious Stranger.--Nothing like Travel
CHAPTER III.
The Czar.--The Czarina.--A Feast at a Russian Nobleman’s
CHAPTER IV.
Conversations with the Czar.--If Cromwell was the greatest Man
(Caesar excepted) who ever _rose_ to the Supreme Power, Peter was
the greatest Man ever _born_ to it
CHAPTER V.
Return to Paris.--Interview with Bolingbroke.--A gallant Adventure.
--Affair with Dubois.--Public Life is a Drama, in which private
Vices generally play the Part of the Scene-shifters
CHAPTER VI.
A long Interval of Years.--A Change of Mind and its Causes
Book VI.
CHAPTER I.
The Retreat
CHAPTER II.
The Victory
CHAPTER III.
The Hermit of the Well
CHAPTER IV.
The Solution of many Mysteries.--A dark View of the Life and Nature
of Man
CHAPTER V.
In which the History makes a great Stride towards the final Catastrophe.
--The Return to England, and the Visit to a Devotee
CHAPTER VI.
The Retreat of a celebrated Man, and a Visit to a great Poet
CHAPTER VII.
The Plot approaches its _Denouement_
CHAPTER VIII.
The Catastrophe
CONCLUSION
DEVEREUX.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE HERO’S BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.--NOTHING CAN DIFFER MORE FROM THE END
OF THINGS THAN THEIR BEGINNING.
MY grandfather, Sir Arthur Devereux (peace be with his ashes!) was a
noble old knight and cavalier, possessed of a property sufficiently
large to have maintained in full dignity half a dozen peers,--such as
peers have been since the days of the first James. Nevertheless, my
grandfather loved the equestrian order better than the patrician,
rejected all offers of advancement, and left his posterity no titles but
those to his estate.
Sir Arthur had two children by wedlock,--both sons; at his death, my
father, the younger, bade adieu to the old hall and his only brother,
prayed to the grim portraits of his ancestors to inspire him, and
set out--to join as a volunteer the armies of that Louis, afterwards
surnamed _le grand_. Of him I shall say but little; the life of a
soldier has only two events worth recording,--his first campaign and his
last. My uncle did as his ancestors had done before him, and, cheap as
the dignity had grown, went up to court to be knighted by Charles II. He
was so delighted with what he saw of the metropolis that he forswore all
intention of leaving it, took to Sedley and champagne, flirted with Nell
Gwynne, lost double the value of his brother’s portion at one sitting to
the chivalrous Grammont, wrote a comedy corrected by Etherege, and took
a wife recommended by Rochester. The wife brought him a child six months
after marriage, and the infant was born on the same day the comedy was
acted. Luckily for the honour of the house, my uncle shared the fate of
Plemneus, king of Sicyon, and all the offspring he ever had (that is to
say, the child and the play) “died as soon as they were born.” My
uncle was now only at a loss what to do with his wife,--that remaining
treasure, whose readiness to oblige him had been so miraculously
evinced. She saved him the trouble of long cogitation, an exercise
of intellect to which he was never too ardently inclined. There was a
gentleman of the court, celebrated for his sedateness and solemnity;
my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and, six weeks after
her confinement, she put this rock into motion,--they eloped. Poor
gentleman! it must have been a severe trial of patience to a man never
known before to transgress the very slowest of all possible walks, to
have had two events of the most rapid nature happen to him in the same
week: scarcely had he recovered the shock of being run away with by my
aunt, before, terminating forever his vagrancies, he was run through by
my uncle. The wits made an epigram upon the event, and my uncle, who
was as bold as a lion at the point of a sword, was, to speak frankly,
terribly disconcerted by the point of a jest. He retired to the country
in a fit of disgust and gout. Here his natural goodness soon recovered
the effects of the artificial atmosphere to which it had been exposed,
and he solaced himself by righteously governing domains worthy of a
prince, for the mortifications he had experienced in the dishonourable
career of a courtier.
Hitherto I have spoken somewhat slightingly of my uncle, and in his
dissipation he deserved it, for he was both too honest and too simple to
shine in that galaxy of prostituted genius of which Charles II. was the
centre. But in retirement he was no longer the same person; and I do
not think that the elements of human nature could have furnished forth a
more amiable character than Sir William Devereux presiding at Christmas
over the merriment of his great hall.
Good old man! his very defects were what we loved best in him: vanity
was so mingled with good-nature, that it became graceful, and we
reverenced one the most, while we most smiled at the other.
One peculiarity had he which the age he had lived in and his domestic
history rendered natural enough; namely, an exceeding distaste to the
matrimonial state: early marriages were misery, imprudent marriages
idiotism, and marriage, at the best, he was wont to say, with a kindling
eye and a heightened colour, marriage at the best was the devil! Yet it
must not be supposed that Sir William Devereux was an ungallant man. On
the contrary, never did the _beau sexe_ have a humbler or more devoted
servant. As nothing in his estimation was less becoming to a wise man
than matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental than flirtation.
He had the old man’s weakness, garrulity; and he told the wittiest
stories in the world, without omitting anything in them but the point.
This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or of humour;
but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to all jesters. He
could not persuade his lips to repeat a sarcasm hurting even the dead or
the ungrateful; and when he came to the drop of gall which should have
given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier,
despite of himself,--and washed it away. He was a fine wreck, a little
prematurely broken by dissipation, but not perhaps the less interesting
on that account; tall, and somewhat of the jovial old English girth,
with a face where good-nature and good living mingled their smiles
and glow. He wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiously
particular in the choice of his silk stockings. Between you and me, he
was not a little vain of his leg, and a compliment on that score was
always sure of a gracious reception.
The solitude of my uncle’s household was broken by an invasion of three
boys,--none of the quietest,--and their mother, who, the gentlest and
saddest of womankind, seemed to follow them, the emblem of that primeval
silence from which all noise was born. These three boys were my two
brothers and myself. My father, who had conceived a strong personal
attachment for Louis XIV., never quitted his service, and the great
King repaid him by orders and favours without number; he died of wounds
received in battle,--a Count and a Marshal, full of renown and destitute
of money. He had married twice: his first wife, who died without issue,
was a daughter of the noble house of La Tremouille; his second, our
mother, was of a younger branch of the English race of Howard. Brought
up in her native country, and influenced by a primitive and retired
education, she never loved that gay land which her husband had adopted
as his own. Upon his death she hastened her return to England, and
refusing, with somewhat of honourable pride, the magnificent pension
which Louis wished to settle upon the widow of his favourite, came to
throw herself and her children upon those affections which she knew they
were entitled to claim.
My uncle was unaffectedly rejoiced to receive us; to say nothing of his
love for my father, and his pride at the honours the latter had won to
their ancient house, the good gentleman was very well pleased with the
idea of obtaining four new listeners, out of whom he might select an
heir, and he soon grew as fond of us as we were of him. At the time of
our new settlement, I had attained the age of twelve; my second brother
(we were twins) was born an hour after me; my third was about fifteen
months younger. I had never been the favourite of the three. In the
first place, my brothers (my youngest especially) were uncommonly
handsome, and, at most, I was but tolerably good-looking: in the second
place, my mind was considered as much inferior to theirs as my body; I
was idle and dull, sullen and haughty,--the only wit I ever displayed
was in sneering at my friends, and the only spirit, in quarrelling with
my twin brother; so said or so thought all who saw us in our childhood;
and it follows, therefore, that I was either very unamiable or very much
misunderstood.
But, to the astonishment of myself and my relations, my fate was now to
be reversed; and I was no sooner settled at Devereux Court than I became
evidently the object of Sir William’s pre-eminent attachment. The fact
was, that I really liked both the knight and his stories better than
my brothers did; and the very first time I had seen my uncle, I had
commented on the beauty of his stocking, and envied the constitution of
his leg; from such trifles spring affection! In truth, our attachment
to each other so increased that we grew to be constantly together; and
while my childish anticipations of the world made me love to listen to
stories of courts and courtiers, my uncle returned the compliment by
declaring of my wit, as the angler declared of the River Lea, that one
would find enough in it, if one would but angle sufficiently long.
Nor was this all; my uncle and myself were exceedingly like the waters
of Alpheus and Arethusa,--nothing was thrown into the one without being
seen very shortly afterwards floating upon the other. Every witticism or
legend Sir William imparted to me (and some, to say truth, were a little
tinged with the licentiousness of the times he had lived in), I took the
first opportunity of retailing, whatever might be the audience; and few
boys, at the age of thirteen, can boast of having so often as myself
excited the laughter of the men and the blushes of the women. This
circumstance, while it aggravated my own vanity, delighted my uncle’s;
and as I was always getting into scrapes on his account, so he was
perpetually bound, by duty, to defend me from the charges of which he
was the cause. No man defends another long without loving him the better
for it; and perhaps Sir William Devereux and his eldest nephew were the
only allies in the world who had no jealousy of each other.