congratulations about Dunkirk, interesting to the street-populations and
general public, had not yet withdrawn, when at Hampton Court there had
begun a private scene, of much deeper and quite opposite interest there.
The Lady Claypole, Oliver's favorite Daughter, a favorite of all the
world, had fallen sick we know not when; lay sick now,--to death, as it
proved. Her disease was of a nature, the painfullest and most harassing
to mind and sense, it is understood, that falls to the lot of a human
creature. Hampton Court we can fancy once more, in those July days, a
house of sorrow; pale Death knocking there, as at the door of the
meanest hut. "She had great sufferings, great exercises of spirit."
Yes:--and in the depths of the old Centuries, we see a pale anxious
Mother, anxious Husband, anxious weeping Sisters, a poor young Frances
weeping anew in her weeds. "For the last fourteen days" his Highness had
been by her bedside at Hampton Court, unable to attend to any public
business whatever. Be still, my Child; trust thou yet in God: in the
waves of the Dark River, there too is He a God of help!--On the 6th day
of August she lay dead; at rest forever. My young, my beautiful, my
brave! She is taken from me; I am left bereaved of her. The Lord giveth,
and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the Name of the Lord!--...
In the same dark days, occurred George Fox's third and last interview
with Oliver.--.... George dates nothing; and his facts everywhere lie
round him like the leather-parings of his old shop: but we judge it may
have been about the time when the Manzinis and the Ducs de Crequi were
parading in their gilt coaches, That George and two Friends "going out
of Town," on a summer day, "two of Hacker's men" had met them,--taken
them, brought them to the Mews. "Prisoners there awhile:"--but the
Lord's power was over Hacker's men; they had to let us go. Whereupon:
"The same day, taking boat I went down" (_up_) "to Kingston, and from
thence to Hampton Court, to speak with the Protector about the
Sufferings of Friends. I met him riding into Hampton-Court Park; and
before I came to him, as he rode at the head of his Lifeguard, I saw and
felt a waft" (_whiff_) "of death go forth against him."----Or in favor
of him, George? His life, if thou knew it, has not been a merry thing
for this man, now or heretofore! I fancy he has been looking, this long
while, to give it up, whenever the Commander-in-Chief required. To quit
his laborious sentry-post; honorably lay-up his arms, and be gone to his
rest:--all Eternity to rest in, O George! Was thy own life merry, for
example, in the hollow of the tree; clad permanently in leather? And
does kingly purple, and governing refractory worlds instead of stitching
coarse shoes, make it merrier? The waft of death is not against _him_, I
think,--perhaps against thee, and me, and others, O George, when the
Nell-Gwynn Defender and Two Centuries of all-victorious Cant have come
in upon us! My unfortunate George----"a waft of death go forth against
him; and when I came to him, he looked like a dead man. After I had laid
the Sufferings of Friends before him, and had warned him according as I
was moved to speak to him, he bade me come to his house. So I returned
to Kingston; and, the next day, went up to Hampton Court to speak
farther with him. But when I came, Harvey, who was one that waited on
him, told me the Doctors were not willing that I should speak with him.
So I passed away, and never saw him more."
Friday the 20th of August 1658, this was probably the day on which
George Fox saw Oliver riding into Hampton Park with his Guards, for the
last time. That Friday, as we find, his Highness seemed much better: but
on the morrow a sad change had taken place; feverish symptoms, for which
the Doctors rigorously prescribed quiet. Saturday to Tuesday the
symptoms continued ever worsening: a kind of tertian ague, "bastard
tertian" as the old Doctors name it; for which it was ordered that his
Highness should return to Whitehall, as to a more favorable air in that
complaint. On Tuesday accordingly he quitted Hampton Court;--never to
see it more.
"His time was come," says Harvey; "and neither prayers nor tears could
prevail with God to lengthen out his life and continue him longer to us.
Prayers abundantly and incessantly poured out on his behalf, both
publicly and privately, as was observed, in a more than ordinary way.
Besides many a secret sigh,--secret and unheard by men, yet like the cry
of Moses, more loud, and strongly laying hold on God, than many spoken
supplications. All which,--the hearts of God's People being thus
mightily stirred up,--did seem to beget confidence in some, and hopes in
all; yea some thoughts in himself, that God would restore him."
"Prayers public and private:" they are worth imagining to ourselves.
Meetings of Preachers, Chaplains, and Godly Persons; "Owen, Goodwin,
Sterry, with a company of others, in an adjoining room"; in Whitehall,
and elsewhere over religious London and England, fervent outpourings of
many a loyal heart. For there were hearts to whom the nobleness of this
man was known; and his worth to the Puritan Cause was evident.
Prayers,--strange enough to us; in a dialect fallen obsolete, forgotten
now. Authentic wrestlings of ancient Human Souls,--who were alive then,
with their affections, awestruck pieties; with their Human Wishes, risen
to be _transcendent_, hoping to prevail with the Inexorable. All
swallowed now in the depths of dark Time; which is full of such, since
the beginning!--Truly it is a great scene of World-History, this in old
Whitehall: Oliver Cromwell drawing nigh to his end. The exit of Oliver
Cromwell and of English Puritanism; a great Light, one of our few
authentic Solar Luminaries, going down now amid the clouds of Death.
Like the setting of a great victorious Summer Sun; its course now
finished. "_So stirbt ein Held_," says Schiller, "So dies a Hero! Sight
worthy to be worshipped!"--He died, this Hero Oliver, in Resignation to
God; as the Brave have all done. "We could not be more desirous he
should abide," says the pious Harvey, "than he was content and willing
to be gone." The struggle lasted, amid hope and fear, for ten days....
On Monday August 30th, there roared and howled all day a mighty storm of
wind.... It was on this stormy Monday, while rocking winds, heard in the
sickroom and everywhere, were piping aloud, that Thurloe and an Official
person entered to enquire, Who, in case of the worst, was to be his
Highness's Successor? The Successor is named in a sealed Paper already
drawn-up, above a year ago, at Hampton Court; now lying in such and such
a place. The Paper was sent for, searched for; it could never be found.
Richard's is the name understood to have been written in that Paper: not
a good name; but in fact one does not know. In ten years' time, had ten
years more been granted, Richard might have become a fitter man; might
have been cancelled, if palpably unfit. Or perhaps it was Fleetwood's
name,--and the Paper, by certain parties, was stolen? None knows. On the
Thursday night following, "and not till then," his Highness is
understood to have formally named "Richard",--or perhaps it might only
be some heavy-laden "Yes, yes!" spoken, out of the thick death-slumbers,
in answer to Thurloe's _question_ "Richard?" The thing is a little
uncertain. It was, once more, a matter of much moment;--giving color
probably to all the subsequent Centuries of England, this answer!--...
Thursday night the Writer of our old Pamphlet [Harvey] was himself in
attendance on his Highness; and has preserved a trait or two; with which
let us hasten to conclude. Tomorrow is September Third, always kept as a
Thanksgiving day, since the Victories of Dunbar and Worcester. The
wearied one, "that very night before the Lord took him to his
everlasting rest," was heard thus, with oppressed voice, speaking:
"'Truly God is good; indeed He is; He will not'----Then his speech
failed him, but as I apprehended, it was, 'He will not leave me.' This
saying, 'God is good,' he frequently used all along; and would speak it
with much cheerfulness, and fervor of spirit, in the midst of his
pains.--Again he said: 'I would be willing to live to be farther
serviceable to God and His People: but my work is done. Yet God will be
with His People.'
"He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often to himself.
And there being something to drink offered him, he was desired To take
the same, and endeavor to sleep.--Unto which he answered: 'It is not my
design to drink or sleep; but my design is, to make what haste I can to
be gone.'--
"Afterwards, towards morning, he used divers holy expressions, implying
much inward consolation and peace; among the rest he spake some
exceeding self-debasing words, _annihilating_ and judging himself. And
truly it was observed, that a public spirit to God's Cause did breathe
in him,--as in his lifetime, so now to his very last."
When the morrow's sun rose, Oliver was speechless; between three and
four in the afternoon, he lay dead. Friday 3rd September 1658. "The
consternation and astonishment of all people," writes Fauconberg, "are
inexpressible; their hearts seem as if sunk within them. My poor
Wife,--I know not what on earth to do with her. When seemingly quieted,
she bursts out again into a passion that tears her very heart in
pieces."--Husht, poor weeping Mary! Here is a Life-battle right nobly
done. Seest thou not,
"The storm is changed into a calm,
At His command and will;
So that the waves which raged before
Now quiet are and still!
"Then are _they_ glad,--because at rest
And quiet now they be:
So to the haven He them brings
Which they desired to see."
"Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord;" blessed are the valiant
that have lived in the Lord. "Amen, saith the Spirit,"--Amen. "They do
rest from their labors, and their works follow them."
"Their works follow them." As, I think, this Oliver Cromwell's works
have done and are still doing! We have had our "Revolutions of
Eighty-eight," officially called "glorious"; and other Revolutions not
yet called glorious; and somewhat has been gained for poor Mankind.
Men's ears are not now slit-off by rash Officiality; Officiality will,
for long henceforth, be more cautious about men's ears. The tyrannous
Star-chambers, branding-irons, chimerical Kings and Surplices at
All-hallowtide, they are gone, or with immense velocity going. Oliver's
works do follow him!--The works of a man, bury them under what
guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish,
cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and
his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities; remains
forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things; and no owl's voice,
this way or that, in the least avails in the matter.--But we have to
end here.
Oliver is gone; and with him England's Puritanism, laboriously built
together by this man, and made a thing far-shining, miraculous to its
own Century, and memorable to all the Centuries, soon goes. Puritanism,
without its King, is _kingless_, anarchic; falls into dislocation,
self-collision; staggers, plunges into ever deeper anarchy; King,
Defender of the Puritan Faith there can now none be found;--and nothing
is left but to recall the old disowned Defender with the remnants of his
Four Surplices, and Two Centuries of _Hypocrisis_ (or Play-acting _not_
so-called), and put-up with all that, the best we may. The Genius of
England no longer soars Sunward, world-defiant, like an Eagle through
the storms, "mewing her mighty youth," as John Milton saw her do: the
Genius of England, much liker a greedy Ostrich intent on provender and a
whole skin mainly, stands with its _other_ extremity Sunward; with its
Ostrich-head stuck into the readiest bush, of old Church-tippets,
King-cloaks, or what other "sheltering Fallacy" there may be, and _so_
awaits the issue. The issue has been slow; but it is now seen to have
been inevitable. No Ostrich, intent on gross terrene provender, and
sticking its head into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day,--in a
terrible _a-posteriori_ manner, if not otherwise!----Awake before it
come to that; gods and men bid us awake! The Voices of our Fathers, with
thousand-fold stern monition to one and all, bid us awake.
FOOTNOTES:
[M] The author's use of capital letters and punctuation marks has
been retained.
LVIII. EACH AND ALL.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.--1803-1882.
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloak'd clown
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
While his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one--
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home in his nest, at even,
He sings the song, but it pleases not now;
For I did not bring home the river and sky;
He sang to my ear--they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam--
I fetch'd my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand, and the wild uproar.
The lover watch'd his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she stray'd;
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;
The gay enchantment was undone--
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhoods cheat--
I leave it behind with the games of youth."
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soar'd the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird;
Beauty through my senses stole--
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
LIX. WATERLOO.
CHARLES JAMES LEVER.--1806-1872.
_From_ CHARLES O'MALLEY.
"This is the officer that I spoke of," said an aid-de-camp, as he rode
up to where I was standing, bare-headed and without a sword. "He has
just made his escape from the French lines, and will be able to give
your lordship some information."
The handsome features and gorgeous costume of Lord Uxbridge were known
to me; but I was not aware, till afterwards, that a soldierlike,
resolute looking officer beside him, was General Graham. It was the
latter who first addressed me.
"Are you aware, Sir," said he, "if Grouchy's force is arrived?"
"They had not: on the contrary, shortly before I escaped, an aid-de-camp
was despatched to Gembloux, to hasten his coming. And the troops, for
they must be troops, debouching from the wood yonder--they seem to form
a junction with the corps to the right--they are the Prussians. They
arrived there before noon from St. Lambert, and are part of Buelow's
corps. Count Loebau and his division of ten thousand men were despatched,
about an hour since, to hold them in check."
"This is great news," said Lord Uxbridge. "Fitzroy must know it at
once."
So saying he dashed spurs into his horse, and soon disappeared amid the
crowd on the hill top.
"You had better see the Duke, Sir," said Graham: "your information is
too important to be delayed. Captain Calvert, let this officer have a
horse; his own is too tired to go much further."
"And a cap, I beg of you," added I, in an under tone; "for I have
already found a sabre."
By a slight circuitous route, we reached the road upon which a mass of
dismounted artillery-carts, baggage-wagons, and tumbrils, were heaped
together as a barricade against the attack of the French dragoons, who
more than once had penetrated to the very crest of our position. Close
to this, and on a little rising ground, from which a view of the entire
field extended from Hougoumont to the far left, the Duke of Wellington
stood, surrounded by his staff. His eye was bent upon the valley before
him, where the advancing columns of Ney's attack still pressed onwards;
while the fire of sixty great guns poured death and carnage into his
lines. The second Belgian division, routed and broken, had fallen back
upon the twenty-seventh regiment, who had merely time to throw
themselves into square, when Milhaud's cuirassiers, armed with a
terrible long straight sword, came sweeping down upon them. A line of
impassable bayonets, a living _chevaux-de-frise_ of the best blood of
Britain, stood firm and motionless before the shock: the French
_mitraille_ played mercilessly on the ranks; but the chasms were filled
up like magic, and in vain the bold horsemen of Gaul galloped round the
bristling files. At length the word "fire!" was heard within the square,
and as the bullets at pistol range rattled upon them, the cuirass
afforded them no defence against the deadly volley. Men and horses
rolled indiscriminately upon the earth: then would come a charge of our
dashing squadrons, who, riding recklessly upon the foe, were, in their
turn, to be repulsed by numbers, when fresh attacks would pour down upon
our unshaken infantry.
"That column yonder is wavering: why does he not bring up his
supporting squadrons?" inquired the Duke, pointing to a Belgian regiment
of light dragoons, who were formed in the same brigade with the seventh
hussars.
"He refuses to oppose his light cavalry to cuirassiers, my lord," said
an aid-de-camp, who had just returned from the division in question.
"Tell him to march his men off the ground," said the Duke, with a quiet
and impassive tone.
In less than ten minutes the regiment was seen to defile from the mass,
and take the road to Brussels, to increase the panic of that city, by
circulating and strengthening the report, that the English were
beaten,--and Napoleon in full march upon the capital.
"What's Ney's force? can you guess, Sir?" said Lord Wellington turning
to me.
"About twelve thousand men, my lord."
"Are the Guard among them?"
"No, Sir; the Guard are in reserve above La Belle Alliance."
"In what part of the field is Buonaparte?"
"Nearly opposite to where we stand."
"I told you, gentlemen, Hougoumont never was the great attack. The
battle must be decided here," pointing, as he spoke, to the plain
beneath us, where still Ney poured on his devoted columns, where yet the
French cavalry rode down upon our firm squares.
As he spoke an aid-de-camp rode up from the valley.
"The ninety-second requires support, my lord: they cannot maintain their
positions half an hour longer, without it."
"Have they given way, Sir?"
"No----"
"Well, then, they must stand where they are. I hear cannon towards the
left; yonder, near Frischermont."
At this moment the light cavalry swept past the base of the hill on
which we stood, hotly followed by the French heavy cuirassier brigade.
Three of our guns were taken; and the cheering of the French infantry,
as they advanced to the charge, presaged their hope of victory.
"Do it, then," said the Duke, in reply to some whispered question of
Lord Uxbridge; and shortly after the heavy trot of advancing squadrons
was heard behind.
They were the Life Guards and the Blues, who, with the first Dragoon
Guards and the Enniskilleners, were formed into close column.
"I know the ground, my Lord," said I to Lord Uxbridge.
"Come along, Sir, come along," said he, as he threw his hussar jacket
loosely behind him, to give freedom to his sword-arm.--"Forward, my men,
forward; but steady, hold your horses in hand; threes about, and
together charge."
"Charge!" he shouted; while, as the word flew from squadron to squadron,
each horseman bent upon his saddle, and that mighty mass, as though
instinct with but one spirit, dashed like a thunder-bolt upon the column
beneath them. The French, blown and exhausted, inferior beside in weight
both of man and horse, offered but a short resistance. As the tall corn
bends beneath the sweeping hurricane, wave succeeding wave, so did the
steel-clad squadrons of France fall before the nervous arm of Britain's
cavalry. Onward they went, carrying death and ruin before them, and
never stayed their course, until the guns were recaptured, and the
cuirassiers, repulsed, disordered, and broken, had retired beneath the
protection of their artillery.
There was, as a brilliant and eloquent writer on the subject
mentions, a terrible sameness in the whole of this battle. Incessant
charges of cavalry upon the squares of our infantry, whose sole
manoeuvre consisted in either deploying into line to resist the
attack of infantry, or falling back into square when the cavalry
advanced--performing those two evolutions under the devastating fire
of artillery, before the unflinching heroism of that veteran infantry
whose glories had been reaped upon the blood-stained fields of
Austerlitz, Marengo, and Wagram--or opposing an unbroken front to the
whirlwind swoop of infuriated cavalry;--such were the enduring and
devoted services demanded from the English troops, and such they
failed not to render. Once or twice had temper nearly failed them,
and the cry ran through the ranks, "Are we never to move
forward?--Only let us at them!" But the word was not yet spoken which
was to undam the pent-up torrent, and bear down with unrelenting
vengeance upon the now exulting columns of the enemy.
It was six o'clock: the battle had continued with unchanged fortune for
three hours. The French, masters of La Haye Sainte, could never advance
further into our position. They had gained the orchard of Hougoumont,
but the chateau was still held by the British Guards, although its
blazing roof and crumbling walls made its occupation rather the
desperate stand of unflinching valor than the maintenance of an
important position. The smoke which hung upon the field rolled in slow
and heavy masses back upon the French lines, and gradually discovered to
our view the entire of the army. We quickly perceived that a change was
taking place in their position. The troops which on their left
stretched far beyond Hougoumont, were now moved nearer to the centre.
The attack upon the chateau seemed less vigorously supported, while the
oblique direction of their right wing, which, pivoting upon Planchenoit,
opposed a face to the Prussians,--all denoted a change in their order of
battle. It was now the hour when Napoleon was at last convinced that
nothing but the carnage he could no longer support could destroy the
unyielding ranks of British infantry; that although Hougoumont had been
partially, La Haye Sainte, completely, won; that although upon the right
the farm-houses Papelotte and La Haye were nearly surrounded by his
troops, which with any other army must prove the forerunner of defeat:
yet still the victory was beyond his grasp. The bold stratagems, whose
success the experience of a life had proved, were here to be found
powerless. The decisive manoeuvre of carrying one important point of
the enemy's lines, of turning him upon the flank, or piercing him
through the centre, were here found impracticable. He might launch his
avalanche of grape-shot, he might pour down his crashing columns of
cavalry, he might send forth the iron storm of his brave infantry; but,
though death in every shape heralded their approach, still were others
found to fill the fallen ranks, and feed with their heart's blood the
unslaked thirst for slaughter. Well might the gallant leader of this
gallant host, as he watched the reckless onslaught of the untiring
enemy, and looked upon the unflinching few, who, bearing the proud badge
of Britain, alone sustained the fight, well might he exclaim, "Night,
or Bluecher!"