SOCIETY OF A COUNTRY TOWN. SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOURABLE HABITAT FOR
SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON WOULD HAVE BEEN.
Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell;
Inn any where;
And seeing the snail, which every where doth roam,
Carrying his own home still, still is at home,
Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail;
Be thine own Palace, or the World's thy jail.
DONNE.
Such then as Daniel Dove was in the twenty-sixth year of his age we
are now to consider him, settled at Doncaster, and with his way of
life chosen, for better for worse, in all respects; except, as my
female readers will remember, that he was neither married, nor
engaged, nor likely to be so.
One of the things for which he used to thank God was that the world
had not been all before him where to chuse, either as to calling or
place, but that both had been well chosen for him. To chuse upon such
just motives as can leave no rational cause for after repentance
requires riper judgement than ought to be expected at the age when the
choice is to be made; it is best for us therefore at a time of life
when though perhaps we might chuse well, it is impossible that we
could chuse wisely, to acquiesce in the determination of others, who
have knowledge and experience to direct them. Far happier are they who
always know what they are to do, than they who have to determine what
they will do.
_Bisogna far quel che si deve fare,
E non gia tutto quello che si vuole._[1]
Thus he was accustomed to think upon this subject.
[Footnote 1: PANANTI.]
But was he well placed at Doncaster?
It matters not where those men are placed, who, as South says, “have
souls so dull and stupid as to serve for little else but to keep their
bodies from putrefaction.” Ordinary people whether their lot be cast
in town or country, in the metropolis or in a village, will go on in
the ordinary way, conforming their habits to those of the place. It
matters nothing more to those who live less in the little world about
them, than in a world of their own, with the whole powers of the head
and of the heart too (if they have one) intently fixed upon some
favourite pursuit:—if they have a heart I say, for it sometimes
happens that where there is an excellent head, the heart is nothing
more than a piece of hard flesh. In this respect, the highest and the
meanest intellects are, in a certain sense, alike self-sufficient;
that is they are so far independent of adventitious aid, that they
derive little advantage from society and suffer nothing from the want
of it. But there are others for whose mental improvement, or at least
mental enjoyment, collision and sympathy and external excitement seem
almost indispensable. Just as large towns are the only places in which
first-rate workmen in any handycraft business can find employment, so
men of letters and of science generally appear to think that no where
but in a metropolis can they find the opportunities which they desire
of improvement or of display. These persons are wise in their
generation, but they are not children of light.
Among such persons it may perhaps be thought that our friend should be
classed; and it cannot be doubted that in a more conspicuous field of
action, he might have distinguished himself, and obtained a splendid
fortune. But for distinction he never entertained the slightest
desire, and with the goods of fortune which had fallen to his share he
was perfectly contented. But was he favourably situated for his
intellectual advancement?—which if such an enquiry had come before him
concerning any other person, is what he would have considered to be
the question-issimus. I answer without the slightest hesitation, that
he was.
In London he might have mounted a Physician's wig, have ridden in his
carriage, have attained the honours of the College, and added F. R. S.
to his professional initials. He might, if Fortune opening her eyes
had chosen to favour desert, have become Sir Daniel Dove, Bart.
Physician to his Majesty. But he would then have been a very different
person from the Dr. Dove of Doncaster, whose memory will be
transmitted to posterity in these volumes, and he would have been much
less worthy of being remembered. The course of such a life would have
left him no leisure for himself; and metropolitan society in rubbing
off the singularities of his character, would just in the same degree
have taken from its strength.
It is a pretty general opinion that no society can be so bad as that
of a small country town; and certain it is that such towns offer
little or no choice. You must take what they have and make the best of
it. But there are not many persons to whom circumstances allow much
latitude of choice any where except in those public places, as they
are called, where the idle and the dissipated, like birds of a
feather, flock together. In any settled place of residence men are
circumscribed by station and opportunities, and just as much in the
capital, as in a provincial town. No one will be disposed to regret
this, if he observes where men have most power of chusing their
society, how little benefit is derived from it, or in other words with
how little wisdom it is used.
After all, the common varieties of human character will be found
distributed in much the same proportion everywhere, and in most places
there will be a sprinkling of the uncommon ones. Everywhere you may
find the selfish and the sensual, the carking and the careful, the
cunning and the credulous, the worldling and the reckless. But kind
hearts are also every where to be found, right intentions, sober
minds, and private virtues,—for the sake of which let us hope that God
may continue to spare this hitherto highly-favoured nation,
notwithstanding the fearful amount of our public and manifold
offences.
The society then of Doncaster, in the middle of the last century, was
like that of any other country town which was neither the seat of
manufactures, nor of a Bishop's see; in either of which more
information of a peculiar kind would have been found,—more active
minds, or more cultivated ones. There was enough of those
eccentricities for which the English above all other people are
remarkable, those aberrations of intellect which just fail to
constitute legal insanity, and which, according to their degree,
excite amusement, or compassion. Nor was the town without its full
share of talents; these there was little to foster and encourage, but
happily there was nothing to pervert and stimulate them to a premature
and mischievous activity.
In one respect it more resembled an episcopal than a trading city. The
four kings and their respective suits of red and black were not upon
more frequent service in the precincts of a cathedral, than in the
good town of Doncaster. A stranger who had been invited to spend the
evening with a family there, to which he had been introduced, was
asked by the master of the house to take a card as a matter of course;
upon his replying that he did not play at cards, the company looked at
him with astonishment, and his host exclaimed—“What, Sir! not play at
cards? the Lord help you!”
I will not say the Lord helped Daniel Dove, because there would be an
air of irreverence in the expression, the case being one in which he,
or any one, might help himself. He knew enough of all the games which
were then in vogue to have played at them, if he had so thought good;
and he would have been as willing, sometimes, in certain moods of
mind, to have taken his seat at a card-table, in houses where
card-playing did not form part of the regular business of life, as to
have listened to a tune on the old-fashioned spinnet, or the then
new-fashioned harpsichord. But that which as an occasional pastime he
might have thought harmless and even wholesome, seemed to him
something worse than folly when it was made a kill-time,—the serious
occupation for which people were brought together,—the only one at
which some of them ever appeared to give themselves the trouble of
thinking. And seeing its effects upon the temper, and how nearly this
habit was connected with a spirit of gambling, he thought that cards
had not without reason been called the Devil's Books.
I shall not therefore introduce the reader to a Doncaster card-party,
by way of shewing him the society of the place. The Mrs. Shuffles,
Mrs. Cuts and Miss Dealems, the Mr. Tittles and Mrs. Tattles, the
Humdrums and the Prateapaces, the Fribbles and the Feebles, the Perts
and the Prims, the Littlewits and the Longtongues, the Heavyheads and
the Broadbelows, are to be found everywhere.
“It is quite right,” says one of the Guessers at Truth, “that there
should be a heavy duty on cards: not only on moral grounds; not only
because they act on a social party like a torpedo, silencing the merry
voice and numbing the play of the features; not only to still the
hunger of the public purse, which reversing the qualities of
Fortunatus's, is always empty, however much you may put into it; but
also because every pack of cards is a malicious libel on courts, and
on the world, seeing that the trumpery with number one at the head, is
the best part of them; and that it gives kings and queens no other
companions than knaves.”