Produced by David Widger
THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY
By Charles James Lever
With Illustrations By W. Cubitt Cooke, And E. J. Wheeler.
Boston:
Little, Brown, And Company.
1904.
TO ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, Esq. M.P., ETC., ETC.
My Dear Kinglake,--If you should ever turn over these pages, I have no
greater wish than that they might afford you a tithe of the pleasure I
have derived from your own writings. But I will not ask you to read me,
but to believe that I am, in all sincerity your devoted admirer, for
both your genius and your courage, and your attached friend,
CHARLES LEVER. Trieste, August 31, 1868.
THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY.
CHAPTER I. THE BISHOP'S FOLLY
Towards the close of the last century there was a very remarkable
man, Bishop of Down, in Ireland: a Liberal in politics, in an age
when Liberalism lay close on the confines of disloyalty; splendidly
hospitable, at a period when hospitality verged on utter recklessness;
he carried all his opinions to extremes. He had great taste, which had
been cultivated by foreign travel, and having an ample fortune, was able
to indulge in many whims and caprices, by which some were led to doubt
of his sanity; but others, who judged him better, ascribed them to
the self-indulgence of a man out of harmony with his time, and
comtemptuously indifferent to what the world might say of him.
He had passed many years in Italy, and had formed a great attachment to
that country. He liked the people and their mode of life; he liked the
old cities, so rich in art treasures and so teeming with associations
of a picturesque past; and he especially liked their villa architecture,
which seemed so essentially suited to a grand and costly style of
living. The great reception-rooms, spacious and lofty; the ample
antechambers, made for crowds of attendants; and the stairs wide enough
for even equipages to ascend them. No more striking illustration of
his capricious turn of mind need be given than the fact that it was
his pleasure to build one of these magnificent edifices in an Irish
county!--a costly whim, obliging him to bring over from Italy a whole
troop of stucco-men and painters, men skilled in fresco-work and
carving,--an extravagance on which he spent thousands. Nor did he live
to witness the completion of his splendid mansion.
After his death the building gradually fell into decay. His heirs, not
improbably, little caring for a project which had ingulfed so large
a share of their fortune, made no efforts to arrest the destroying
influences of time and climate, and “Bishop's Folly”--for such was the
name given to it by the country people--soon became a ruin. In some
places the roof had fallen in, the doors and windows had all been
carried away by the peasants, and in many a cabin or humble shealing in
the county around slabs of colored marble or fragments of costly carving
might be met with, over which the skill of a cunning workman had been
bestowed for days long. The mansion stood on the side of a mountain
which sloped gradually to the sea. The demesne, well wooded, but with
young timber, was beautifully varied in surface, one deep glen running,
as it were, from the very base of the house to the beach, and showing
glimpses, through the trees, of a bright and rapid river tumbling onward
to the sea. Seen in its dilapidation and decay, the aspect of the place
was dreary and depressing, and led many to wonder how the bishop could
ever have selected such a spot; for it was not only placed in the midst
of a wild mountain region, but many miles away from anything that could
be called a neighborhood. But the same haughty defiance he gave the
world in other things urged him here to show that he cared little
for the judgments which might be passed upon him, or even for the
circumstances which would have influenced other men. “When it is my
pleasure to receive company, I shall have my house full no matter where
I live,” was his haughty speech, and certainly the whole character of
his life went to confirm his words.
Some question of disputed title, after the bishop's death, threw the
estate into Chancery, and so it remained till, by the operation of the
new law touching incumbered property, it became marketable, and was
purchased by a rich London banker, who had declared his intention of
coming to live upon it.
That any one rich enough to buy such a property, able to restore such
a costly house, and maintain a style of living proportionate to its
pretensions, should come to reside in the solitude and obscurity of
an Irish county, seemed all but impossible; and when the matter became
assured by the visit of a well-known architect, and afterwards by the
arrival of a troop of workmen, the puzzle then became to guess how it
chanced that the great head of a rich banking firm, the chairman of
this, the director of that, the promoter of Heaven knows what scores of
industrial schemes for fortune, should withdraw from the great bustle of
life to accept an existence of complete oblivion.
In the little village of Portshandon--which straggled along the beach,
and where, with a few exceptions, none but fishermen and their families
lived--this question was hotly debated; an old half-pay lieutenant, who
by courtesy was called Captain, being at the head of those who first
denied the possibility of the Bramleighs coming at all, and when that
matter was removed beyond a doubt, next taking his stand on the fact
that nothing short of some disaster in fortune, or some aspersion on
character, could ever have driven a man out of the great world to finish
his days in the exile of Ireland.
“I suppose you'll give in at last, Captain Craufurd,” said Mrs. Bayley,
the postmistress of Portshandon, as she pointed to a pile of letters and
newspapers all addressed to “Castello,” and which more than quadrupled
the other correspondence of the locality.
“I did n't pretend they were not coming, Mrs. Bayley,” said he, in the
cracked and cantankerous tone he invariably spoke in. “I simply observed
that I 'd be thankful for any one telling me why they were coming.
That's the puzzle,--why they 're coming?”
“I suppose because they like it, and they can afford it,” said she, with
a toss of her head.
“Like it!” cried he, in derision. “Like it! Look out of the window
there beside you, Mrs. Bayley, and say, is n't it a lovely prospect,
that beggarly village, and the old rotten boats, keel uppermost, with
the dead fish and the oyster-shells, and the torn nets, and the dirty
children? Is n't it an elegant sight after Hyde Park and the Queen's
palace?”
“I never saw the Queen's palace nor the other place you talk of, but I
think there's worse towns to live in than Portshandon.”
“And do they think they'll make it better by calling it Castello?”
said he, as with a contemptuous gesture he threw from him one of the
newspapers with this address. “If they want to think they 're in Italy
they ought to come down here in November with the Channel fogs sweeping
up through the mountains, and the wind beating the rain against the
windows. I hope they'll think they're in Naples. Why can't they call the
place by the name we all know it by? It was Bishop's Folly when I was a
boy, and it will be Bishop's Folly after I 'm dead.”
“I suppose people can call their house whatever they like? Nobody
objects to your calling your place Craufurd's Lea.”
“I'd like to see them object to it,” cried he, fiercely. “It's
Craufurd's Lea in Digge's 'Survey of Down,' 1714. It's Craufurd's Lea
in the 'Anthologia Hibernica,' and it's down, too, in Joyce's 'Irish
Fisheries;' and we were Craufurds of Craufurd's Lea before one stone of
that big barrack up there was laid, and maybe we 'll be so after it's a
ruin again.”
“I hope it's not going to be a ruin any more, Captain Craufurd, all
the same,” said the postmistress, tartly, for she was not disposed to
undervalue the increased importance the neighborhood was about to derive
from the rich family coming to live in it.
“Well, there's one thing I can tell you, Mrs. Bayley,” said he, with his
usual grin. “The devil a bit of Ireland they 'd ever come to, if they
could live in England. Mind my words, and see if they 'll not come true.
It's either the bank is in a bad way, or this or that company is going
to smash, or it's his wife has run away, or one of the daughters married
the footman;--something or other has happened, you 'll see, or we would
never have the honor of their distinguished company down here.”
“It's a bad wind blows nobody good,” said Mrs. Bayley. “It's luck for
us, anyhow.”
“I don't perceive the luck of it either, ma'am,” said the Captain, with
increased peevishness. “Chickens will be eighteenpence a couple, eggs a
halfpenny apiece. I 'd like to know what you'll pay for a codfish, such
as I bought yesterday for fourpence?”
“It's better for them that has to sell them.”
“Ay, but I'm talking of them that has to buy them, ma'am, and I'm
thinking how a born gentleman with a fixed income is to compete with one
of these fellows that gets his gold from California at market price, and
makes more out of one morning's robbery on the Stock Exchange, than a
Lieutenant-General receives after thirty years' service.”
A sharp tap at the window-pane interrupted the discussion at this
critical moment, and Mrs. Bayley perceived it was Mr. Dorose, Colonel
Bramleigh's valet, who had come for the letters for the great house.
“Only these, Mrs. Bayley?” said he, half contemptuously.
“Well, indeed, sir; it's a good-sized bundle after all. There's eleven
letters, and about fifteen papers and two books.”
“Send them all on to Brighton, Mrs. Bayley. We shall not come down
here till the end of the month. Just give me the 'Times,' however;” and
tearing open the cover, he turned to the City article. “I hope you've
nothing in Ecuadors, Mrs. Bayley; they look shaky. I'm 'hit,' too, in
my Turks. I see no dividend this half.” Here he leaned forward, so as to
whisper in her ear, and said, “Whenever you want a snug thing, Mrs. B.,
you're always safe with Brazilians;” and with this he moved off, leaving
the postmistress in a flurry of shame and confusion as to what precise
character of transaction his counsel applied.
“Upon my conscience, we 're come to a pretty pass!” exclaimed the
Captain, as, buttoning his coat, he issued forth into the street; nor
was his temper much improved by finding the way blocked up by a string
of carts and drays, slowly proceeding towards the great house, all
loaded with furniture and kitchen utensils, and the other details of a
large household. A bystander remarked that four saddle-horses had passed
through at daybreak, and one of the grooms had said, “It was nothing to
what was coming in a few days.”
Two days after this, and quite unexpectedly by all, the village awoke
to see a large flag waving from the flagstaff over the chief tower of
Castello; and the tidings were speedily circulated that the great
people had arrived. A few sceptics, determining to decide the point for
themselves, set out to go up to the house; but the lodge-gate was closed
and the gatekeeper answered them from behind it, saying that no visitors
were to be admitted; a small incident, in its way, but, after all, it is
by small incidents that men speculate on the tastes and tempers of a new
dynasty.